The following words come from someone who did hate the expansion at release, even with my having enjoyed their game for about three years now. I’ve explored, done puzzles, jumped here and there. Built a legendary or two, as well as completed Mawdrey through the journey of finding a fair, yet challenging enjoyment out of the Living Story 2 content.
I’d say that there’s always been a hardcore audience as well as a casual one to GW 2, even though the former mentality has evaded my personal understanding.
I really did hate Heart of Thorns at first. I found it confusing, unrewarding and just plain boring. I didn’t return after my first few visits there, and it wasn’t because the content offered proved too difficult, instead it was more of being walled in-between masteries to explore, and the more I think about it, that was probobly why I found it so incredibly dull to begin with.
A few weeks later I decided to give it another try, and having unlocked Mushrooms, Updraft and Nuhoch Wallows, I found myself enjoying the expansion more and more. Leveling became rather fun, even with the, to me – minor annoyances of maxing out HoT masteries which have started to come up towards the end. Adventures with masteries tucked into Gold, and having a good/perfect run ruined with even the most minute of lags. A glider activating half a second too late, or a skill activating just a bit too slow can lead to a few frustrating moments of throwing things around, or the risk of possible head injury due to facedesking.
With this being said, I’ve begun to enjoy HoT in its current state. Sure, Anet needs to work on a few things like adventures, fixes and some tuning here and there, as well as the current state of the megaservers. Running as com, explaining things to new players – only to get DCed on the final event on Dragon’s Stand isn’t very fun, nor helpful for anyone there.
I think the game would also benefit from a reworked LFG tool, since the one we players currently have feels rather outdated. Give the players more options and more tabs, especially since Taxi LFG is mainly a workaround to Anets flawed server mechanics, this would help things greatly.
All in all however, with all of the flaws mentioned – I found myself enjoying Heart of Thorns, once I gave it a fair chance. But only after having certain masteries done, which strikes me as an odd. But I’m glad I gave it another chance. There are however tons of things I could go through in addition to this, lack of basic skins to unlock and so on and so forth, but for a new player coming into Guild Wars 2 – HoT is worth it’s price imo, for veterans, it’s a more complicated question in my humble opinion.
It’s placing the game in a new direction, yet with Auric Basin, Verdant Brink and Dragon’s Stand, I’d say the game is fairly casual still, even though certain mobs will indeed one or two-shot you if you don’t pay attention.
Final thoughts,
- Mega Servers needs a revamp.
- LFG system should get a rework, this shouldn’t be too hard to code either.
- Adventures needs some tuning, while still letting players compete with one another on times.
- Dungeons need to be reworked as well, might not be that easy to solve but has to be done. Having them in this state of utter despair is just utterly sad. And I’m not only talking about rewards. (Mind you, I almost never ran them before either, apart from Aether.)
Not there yet anet, but after giving HoT a fair chance I’m actually enjoying my time spent there, and you did a good job with the fractals imo. I would perhaps speak of how lovely it all looks, but my wooden PC can’t keep up with todays standards so I’ll leave that to someone else.
Besides, the graphics to me has never made a game.
Just my two sents, and since my post lacked kittens, here’s one