Guild Wars 2

I honestly can’t stand to play this game now because of the new expansion and it’s grind based additions to the games with HoT. I’m too casual of a player to get a legendary but this new addition for a precursor are so much of a grind fest I might as well grind for gold and buy one off the market. The maps are ok, VB being the best, and TD being the absolute worst to play in. The mastery system is horrible because after completing the expansion with two characters and grinding towards map completions with multiple characters I’m nowhere near to maxing out my mastery for HoT alone (note I’m a casual player) and yet no longer have the interest in replaying these maps after doing it so many times. The core game is still more fun to play than HoT to me, I’ve still done fractals for a while but haven’t seen a single ascended drop besides rings, honestly ascended rates from all areas of the game should be a lot higher due to the costs of materials rising, the amount of gold you are likely using to help out your guild with, who unfortunately are dying due to realizing the new guild updates are killing small guilds altogether. This game has been nothing fun like and previous Guild Wars content I’m used to, I was with GW1 core game when Factions and Nightfall came out and it was always a fun new experience to play, yes it was a new game but the fun content was what mattered. I just am not liking this HoT content and I want to know who else agrees or disagrees.

Me.
First time i quit the game since Factions came out.

1st what does “casual” exactly mean?
2nd “hate” ist a rly hard word^^ Its just a game no need to “hate” it.

And pls stop comparing GW1 to GW2. Its a different game.
A-Net told us bevore HoT came out that the addon is not as easy as the core game. Masteries take time. You dont need to play the maps with many chars to unlock them all. Just do big events like DS etc.

If you are a small guild and you cant afford the mats etc for your guild hall just do one step after another. No need to unlock everything now.

Masteries, guild halls, etc are part of a progress that the player/guilds go through. And progress takes time. No need to hurry.

As a 95% pvp only player, I haven’t felt this way. I was very disappointed with many things in the expansion(lack of skins, gliders, change to spell effects like fireball, being so slow to implement some of the great ideas to improve stronghold such as no starting supply, etc), so I stopped spending money in the gem store. By now, I’d probably would have spent close to 60$.

Even still, I’ve been playing the game, and enjoying it, although again, I’m bummed that there is no pvp between seasons for ranked. However, this had led me into my 5% margin and I’ve been trying to unlock my gliding so I can glide in central tyria endlessly.

I don’t hate the game, and I still do my dailies (sometimes) in hopes they can see the folly of their ways someday. I am VERY disappointed that they basically put the core player base on the road in front of a speeding bus.

I am not talking timers, although they really suck, I am not talking challenging content, as we needed some things to be more challenging IMO. I am talking about having an Xpac that focused to heavily upon certain player types. These are the platform gamers that enjoy jumping puzzles and the hardcore raiders. The esports crowd gets a mention here too as ANet no longer separates the 3 distinct game modes (league icons).

In short, no, I don’t hate the game, but at this point I am wishing I did not waste over 7k hours in a game where I felt I was now being thrown under said bus!

edit: clarity

I don’t see it as much of a difference from the base game just slightly more challenging than the base maps which is refreshing. I think mastery is a good replacement for increased level cap which comes with most MMO expansions their are very few "must have " masteries and the ones that are can be found at the lower mastery levels most often. I can’t understand why you feel the need to max out mastery i am at level 73 or something in mastery and that is just from doing what i always do participate in events , explore maps etc and without ever deliberately trying to level mastery.

The guild hall has been one of the things i spend most of my time in so far my small guild usually max 5 people on have loved it so i don’t buy the idea that it is killing small guilds.

Nothing is ever perfect though and i have a few issues with the expansion stuff like making ascended gear even more costly to craft , making new and useful stats like viper way more costly to craft than base stat choices. Adventures where hit and miss also some are fine but getting gold in certain adventures can be pretty bs.

All and all HoT has been a good experience and a progression from the base game and i am looking forward to what comes next.

P.S Tangled Depths is the best map in game! if you can’t appreciate the scope and detail that went into creating something as crazy as this beast i don’t know what to tell you.

I know, the right answer is me!
In fact I’ve left the game. Which is a shame as I’ve been playing it since the beta. The expansion pack is the complete opposite of what I was expecting and wanted.

I’m a dungeon junkie. Before the expansion I’ve been well on my way to getting all the dungeon armour collections done. No new dungeons after so long really struck me hard. I know that there’s raids now, but dungeons were something where my friends and me could fool around, try whacky combos, not solve boss mechanics by just bursting and dodging… Raids are serious business. You’re organizing a larger group of people and you do have to bring a serious attitude. On top of that the nerf to dungeon rewards felt like getting slapped and told that I’m not welcome in the game anymore.

Fractal masteries is something that I hate. I climbed all the way to 49 before I left and been running fractals for quite a while. Now you’re not as welcome if you don’t have the expansion as you don’t have the mastery. I have a feeling that core game content should have been left alone.

My favorite thing about the old maps was everything! Hearts, skill points, vistas, how open to exploration they were! The new maps are nothing like that. I don’t do well with endless dynamic event grinding. I don’t like zones on timers either. And to make it worse parts of the map are either gated behind masteries, or behind events, meaning I am unable to explore what there is as it is.

I never thought that I would have said something like this a year ago, but I take it back. If horizontal progression means grind grind grind, instead of challenging fights like GW1 (remember when certain enemies dropped certain abilities and you needed to go there and get them, rather than running around the same event for an eternity and a half?), if this is what horizontal progression will look like, I’ll take that level increase. If you give me dungeons I’ll regrind the gear for all 10 alts of mine. If you take me the hearts, I’ll do a full world explore all over again if I have to. Just not this. Not this endless event maps on timers and raids. This is not what GW2 was and it makes me very sad to see it like this.

People say that gamers treat their old MMOs like their ex-girlfriends. And I agree. I feel way too attached so I’m still here stalking and hoping. Hoping that maybe there will be a glimse of new expansion that will be more like the core game was. But I have a feeling that that train has long passed and I got left behind.

After culling the OP to find the TS’ points…

• Grind-based additions to the game with HoT…

If you’re too casual to go for a Legendary, why are you concerned about the grind in getting a precursor? Is there grind? Absolutely, but grind is kind of the nature of MMO’s.

• The mastery system…

If you have no desire to play through the HoT content again, why do the HoT Masteries matter to you?

• Ascended drops…

I’m afraid the high cost of mats is by design. ANet wants a thriving economy, with higher values on various material components. If you’ll remember, when Asc. was first introduced, one of the reasons ANet gave was that they were disappointed that people were selling the components to make Exotics for such small amounts. If Asc. dropped more frequently enough that the casual player would notice, the materials markets would likely suffer a downturn.

• Guilds and updates are killing small guilds…

Can’t speak to this one way or the other. The guilds I’m in are mostly dead, most of the time. The first died in October, 2012, a casualty of the principals dislike for GW2 PvP. It seems like the guild building serves those who demanded more stuff for guilds to do. Too bad it took something away from existing guilds to do so.

• Fun…

Fun is entirely subjective. I’m sorry you don’t like the HoT content. I can’t say I much care for it, either. However, while it does not make me hate the game, it does make me less likely to play — since the rest of the game is old. Unfortunately for me, the other MMO’s out there suffer from the same, or different issues. I think I’m going sour on the genre. GW2 is closer to being a game I like to play, but at the moment it’s not close enough.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If you have no desire to play through the HoT content again, why do the HoT Masteries matter to you?

I really needed to respond to this. If OP is too casual to raid, too casual to get a legendary, what is left for the OP in this expansion pack to do?

There’s nothing wrong with horizontal or vertical progression. However people want meaningful progression. It means one where you can see fruits of your labour fairly often (for example gaining levels, or climbing the gear ladder in a traditional MMO), or one that is challenging but relatively fast to achieve if you know what you’re doing.

OP is likely not the challenging type. Those types have raids to tackle, even though I would argue, there isn’t enough reward for doing so. OP is likely wishing to see his fruits of labour quite often. Original leveling really provided this. You either gained a level, gained a skill point or entered a new zone. In this case for the longest time you’re grinding the same courner of the map.
But lets say you got trough the initial grind. Well if you’re not a hardcore type that can go raiding, what new content are you left with? Well the masteries of course! The very grindy and slow masteries that you can only achieve trough exp gained in HoT maps where you do the same events over and over again…

EDIT: one could argue that nothing has gone missing from GW2 vanilla and that OP could go back to do that. Yes do what the OP has been doing for 3 years now, except with far less reward this time around.

I haven’t played since Christmas. Came back to check out the balance patch but nothing has really changed for me.

I’m chiefly a PvE player and I was incredibly disappointed in how they handled the expansion’s storyline. The game’s world and lore is what drew me into Guild Wars. I pretty much only like Auric’s Basin, because the map is the least gimmicky but doing the same meta over and over is boring. So I went back to old Tyria where I could do things on my own terms. Leveling up alts became the last thing I enjoyed doing.

The central problem for me with HoT is that there is an obvious structure, whether it is the use of large metas driving the ‘dynamic’ nature of maps or that things like masteries, adventures, etc… I miss being able to travel through maps and have things just happen. There were predictable things in the past like Hearts or Vistas. But GW2 used to balance that with the odd surprise. There’s no surprises or GW2 sense of exploration in HoT. Everything feels like it’s on a timetable now, so it’s no longer an organic experience.

Eir > Braham

I have no issue if you dislike the expansion but to say there is no sense of exploration in HoT is such a fallacy i have spent probably around 50+hrs in a map like TD so far and still finding tons of new things the intricacy’s of that map far over shadow anything in base Tyria so much that its not funny . The fact that you can get lost going through the new maps the first few times is testament to the design that they made a living breathing jungle to traverse through, it can feel confusing claustrophobic and dangerous as a jungle should be!

The HoT maps make many of the old Tyria maps seem one dimensional basically flat with a mountain here and there, a cave or two and town etc and every hour or so a boss may spawn just staples of every MMO/ RPG fantasy area. Not too mention generic quests hidden in hearts.

If you’re a WvW player, how could you not.

I really dont understand posts like this.
All HOT does is adds content and new stuff to do to the game.
You DONT HAVE to do it.
Its NOT mandatory.
No MMO ever will make everyone happy.
I find parts of HOT tuff, but the bits I cant do I simply ignore and do the bits I can.
I dont hate the game because there are parts of HOT that are too tuff for me.
I can simply go back and do all the parts of the original game that I havnt done.
If you do hate the game, then why are you still playing it

I don’t hate this game since nerf. I rather enjoy it greatly.

What’s so bad about WvW? People have been WvWing so long on the same maps, are they just too stuck in their ways to learn new strategies? What’s the issue they’re facing?

I’ve heard players complain about wanting new content in WvW for months, but now they’re not satisfied with a chance to learn a new approach?

I don’t hate the game, but I have an intense dislike for HoT.

I dont dislike HoT – I had fair amount of fun. But i cant put my finger on exact reason why i dont go to new maps anymore or do story after completeing it once.

Hate is a big word. I don’t hate HoT. I don’t even particulary dislike it.
There are however a lot of things i’m dissapointed in with HoT.
- Lack of new armour skins
- Short story
- Too long Meta events

Mastery system did not live up to expectations, but is not that bad overall. Gaining the experience is done as you play, and the mastery points offer some nice exploration/achievement targets.

However I didn’t get HoT just for the HoT content, but also for the long term updates that will keep coming. The continuation of the Living Story, added content, rework of exisiting content etc.
As a Cost to Game Time ratio, GW2 has already been, and I expect to continue to be extremely valuable.

Mirta.5029:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If you have no desire to play through the HoT content again, why do the HoT Masteries matter to you?

I really needed to respond to this. If OP is too casual to raid, too casual to get a legendary, what is left for the OP in this expansion pack to do?

There’s nothing wrong with horizontal or vertical progression. However people want meaningful progression.

The thing is, “meaningful progression” is as loaded term as is “casual/hardcore”, “new content” or “grind”. I enjoy, to a degree, all aspects of the expansion and I see plenty of meaningful progression for my character/account.

Mirta.5029:

It means one where you can see fruits of your labour fairly often (for example gaining levels, or climbing the gear ladder in a traditional MMO), or one that is challenging but relatively fast to achieve if you know what you’re doing.

Don’t PvP leagues provide just that? Or for that matter achieving maximum level of mastery that requires allot of gold medals from adventures?

I guess you could say that someone doesn’t play PvP, cannot adjust to new difficulty, finds most activities too bothersome etc. but is that really a problem with the game?

I don’t get it, I have a full time job and maxed masteries about 2 months ago, finished new Legendary a month ago. People just seem casual, uneffective and slow.

Mirta.5029:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If you have no desire to play through the HoT content again, why do the HoT Masteries matter to you?

I really needed to respond to this. If OP is too casual to raid, too casual to get a legendary, what is left for the OP in this expansion pack to do?

There’s nothing wrong with horizontal or vertical progression. However people want meaningful progression. It means one where you can see fruits of your labour fairly often (for example gaining levels, or climbing the gear ladder in a traditional MMO), or one that is challenging but relatively fast to achieve if you know what you’re doing.

OP is likely not the challenging type. Those types have raids to tackle, even though I would argue, there isn’t enough reward for doing so. OP is likely wishing to see his fruits of labour quite often. Original leveling really provided this. You either gained a level, gained a skill point or entered a new zone. In this case for the longest time you’re grinding the same courner of the map.
But lets say you got trough the initial grind. Well if you’re not a hardcore type that can go raiding, what new content are you left with? Well the masteries of course! The very grindy and slow masteries that you can only achieve trough exp gained in HoT maps where you do the same events over and over again…

EDIT: one could argue that nothing has gone missing from GW2 vanilla and that OP could go back to do that. Yes do what the OP has been doing for 3 years now, except with far less reward this time around.

What is there to do? The quest chains and the story in the new zones. Achievements in the new zones, of which there are many.

I haven’t made a legendary since the expansion launched and I don’t raid, yet somehow, I’m finding plenty to do.

Dynamic events are what casual players do. Collections are what casual players do (not all of them are hard core). We did some wintersday and now I’m playing dragonball, which I enjoy.

You could just hang out in VB as a new player, get crowbars, open chests, get currencies and buy one of the tonics or armor pieces.

The stuff for casuals to do is really the same as it’s always been. You do story. You do zone complete (which yes, requires a bit more challenge…but it’s doable). You explore. You do events. That’s what you do as a casual anyway. You unlock skins. You get achievements, you do the collections you can do.

I have a guild filled with casual players who play HoT. They chip away at stuff. They’re not raiding (only like three people in my guild raid) and they’re not working on legendaries, but they’re playing the game and apparently having fun.

If I want something, I can usually get it in a reasonable amount of time. The problem with HoT is, it has very little that I want. I don’t want the new armors. I don’t want the new legendaries nor do I want any other of the new weapon skins. HoT offers no rewards I care about. I look at the map currency merchant and I see nothing even remotely interesting.

It’s no surprise. I’m very particular about what I like with regard to visuals. Let’s face it, HoT offers very little in the way of new skins. If there’s hardly anything new at all, chances are, there’ll be nothing in it for me.

The new PvE stuff rubs me the wrong way as well. Every substantial bit of gameplay content is tied to timers. I don’t play on anyone’s schedule but my own whimsy. Games are light entertainment, they have no business demanding when I need to log on to get anything remotely interesting out of them. The notion is preposterous.

So, no rewards and gameplay I can’t be bothered to submit myself to. Yeah, I dislike HoT.

I live HoT and i think it has made significant additions to the game. Elite vs Core balance is terrible but I am not sure whether its by design or sloppy balancing.

Got to admit, “hate” is a term, that doesn’t fit in this case in my opinion. Way too heavy. But “dislike”, yes, I pretty much dislike this expansion for several reasons.

Apparently I’ve been stupid enough to throw 100€ at Arenanet in order to get an expansion, that makes me quit a few weeks later after a lot of years of playing Guild Wars. Which is sad. And a bit frustrating.

First let’s take a look on what type of player I really am. I’m a mid 20 guy with a full-time job, I study, I do sports regularly, have a girlfriend and a music project (second girlfriend) as well. So my time schedule is extremely unpredictable, so …

… raiding is pretty much nothing I can take care of. Pugging has always been a high risk factor due to the meta driven toxic playerbase. Dungeons and Fractals provided much more freedom. I could gather some friends for them almost all the time, try hilarious builds, theory crafting a bit and that’s it. Of course, after the years that content gets pretty much boring. Every content gets boring after rushing it year after year. Are new Dungeons added? No, their rewards are gutted so no one wants to do them anymore. Are new Fractals added? No, they are not. No need to stay here, doing the same content after three years is not what I call “fun”.

What has been the most interesting part of this game? PvP and WvW, right. Did theory crafting for both modes and I enjoyed it. Haven’t been bad either. Constructed several builds for all classes until they finally worked out well. Right now the PvP-meta is a total power creep without any tactic involved, thanks to the imbalance of the classes. Most of the PvE-players complain about Anet balancing on base on PvP, so they never achieve balance in PvE and I understand that. Fun fact: This company balances on base on PvP and even that is a complete mess right now. So, what about WvW? Well, because of the new map we, Elona Reach, don’t have any enemies anymore. Only a handful of servers are left, who care about the borderlands. Most of them seemed to abandon them. At the moment I don’t enjoy this particular game mode either.

The visuals and the design of the new maps are simply gorgeous, great job on that aspect. I even like TD. But the mob density is a bit overtuned in my opinion. These mobs aren’t even more challenging, they are more annoying. Very important difference! The raid is more challenging, yes. The mobs on the new maps aren’t. They’re just there to slow you down, to annoy you to oblivion, it seems.

Story, no big comment on that topic. Better than the last half of the base story, but still horribly executed.

So after all, what’s left for me? New maps with boring metas on timers I cannot stick to due to my unpredictable time schedule. Achievements I don’t care about, because they don’t add anything to the gameplay besides adding some points to an irrelevant number in your ingame profile. I just want to play a game due to the fact that the gameplay is fun. Not due to collections with skins as a reward, that are not even interesting for me. If HoT even has any skins.

Really don’t get the hate for masteries, everything you need is unlocked rather quickly, everything else is just gravy and you get it when you get it. No one is putting a gun to your head.

Overall i like the expansion but there are a few things i don’t like with the new maps.
What the hell happened to dynamic events!? Did they just scrap those?
Going to a zone you’d already been in was still fun because you’d always come across these events while you were exploring or doing other things, which seemed completely random to me.
In HoT it’s all these really long event chains on timers that play out exactly the same way over and over and over again. As much as i love the increase in difficulty and the mobs there, i rarely go to HoT maps anymore.
Also whatever happened to mini dungeons? Like the one at the top of the Gendarran Fields? I loved finding those.

I think “hate” is too strong of a word for how I feel.

It’s more like the base game is a decent cake, and HoT (including the changes that came with it) is a thick layer of that nasty frosting that’s mostly Crisco and powdered sugar. Yeah, the base game is there, but you have to deal with removing most of that other stuff to enjoy it, and it would have been so much better with a good frosting.

I don’t understand these kinds of posts. What are they good for? This isn’t facebook or 9gag, you can fish for likes there because such posts have only that purpose. Are you looking for an approval, or to see that you’re not alone? If you really hate it, ask for a refund, don’t play it, find something else that you will love.

And so what that you played GW1? This is a different game, it doesn’t entitle you to anything and doesn’t make you any better.

One thing is when you don’t like something and bring a constructive criticism. Another is just meaningless posts like this.

There’s no obligation for criticism to be constructive. That’s a demand made up by people who can’t deal with hearing bad stuff about themselves or something they created.

“I liked the original game but I think the direction they took with HoT is rubbish”, that’s a lot more meaningful than not posting anything at all.

And how can you be constructive about things you absolutely loathe?

“Well, the one thing I like about the chak weapons, is that you don’t have to use those skins if you don’t want to. That’s a nice degree of freedom.”

“Bladed armor? It’s indistinguishable from armors I do like if I squint until everything on my screen is a giant blur.”

“Those meta-event timers? They’re very punctual, well done. How about using them to determine when to get the cake out of the oven instead, and make event progress tied to player effort instead of the real world clock?”

If you really loathe something then you probably don’t even want to talk about it.

I don’t hate the game, and I don’t hate HoT, I just hate the so called “Adventures”, might come back if they ever change them.

Funny how such a small thing made me quit after sooo many years of playing everyday !

leviathan.2148:

If you really loathe something then you probably don’t even want to talk about it.

if it was something that you loved turned into something that you hate, then yes, you very much want to talk about it. It’s one thing to dislike a product and just walk past it, it’s another thing if you liked the product and it turned towards a direction that you loathe.

Freeelancer.2860:

Don’t PvP leagues provide just that? Or for that matter achieving maximum level of mastery that requires allot of gold medals from adventures?

I guess you could say that someone doesn’t play PvP, cannot adjust to new difficulty, finds most activities too bothersome etc. but is that really a problem with the game?

PvP leagues are accessible to all I believe, not to those with the expansion only. And the problem with masteries is that they slow down to a complete slog. So while yes, achieving a mastery must feel great, but when you have to spend months on it at a casual pace, you’re more likely to give up.
It’s also why ascendeds and legendaries feel like such a far off goals that you give up without even starting. With exotics you could run dungeons and tell yourself “there’s 1/3rd of a top that I’m holding in tickets!” and then it’s not so bad.
Because they’re gating the legendaries behind actual raids anyway, I suppose some good progression for casuals would be if they made a casual raid, or a dungeon, with a weekly lockout, that guaranteed that after a certain amount of tickets you’ll get your ascendeds. And it doesn’t matter how long it would take. You could say that you have to run this instance 4 times to get gloves and 6 times for the top for example. It doesn’t matter that it would take you well over half a year to deck out a single character in ascendeds. You could do some gameplay and tell yourself “I’m holding 1/4th of an ascended glove!”.
The main idea would be – less grind, more progression more often. The same way that for example if the skill progression was “kill this for this skill” instead of “amass this amount of points” it would feel better.

I don’t hate the game, but I was disappointed with the expansion. Not because of the new content or the lack of new content. I think that there was enough new things and most of them are good. I like the new 4 maps (event if I’m not a fan of the 2hours timers, I prefer shorter timer or player driven meta like in Dry Top and Silverwaste). The Raid are awesome (even if there is a couple of small things they could add to make them more approachable). The new elites are well done (but the power creep is horrible).

But what I’m disappointed about is the changes they did to the old content. For me they were suppose to improve the current content or at least leave it alone and they kind of make it worst.

- Fractal are so bad since HoT. Yes the 1 islands per level is nice, but they gave us no new fractals whatsoever, not even 1. The instabilities are probably one of the worst design I ever saw in fractal and they were laze about leaving the same for like 20 levels. They made nothing to promote doing several different fractal instead of just doing the 3 easiest over and over each day, even if that was a big concern in the forum since the day they talked about fractals in HoT. They still didn’t create a daily for level 75-100. There is no balance between difficulty and reward, so there is really no reason to do a level 100 more than once ever.

- Guild Hall. Removing core option for the guild and putting them being the Guild Hall isn’t new content. We use to have banners, do Karka Queen with our guild spawn, have guild wide buff, etc. Now? We have nothing of that since they cost up to 50 gold, not counting the 800 gold to level up scribes. No reason for people to represent the guild. I used to be super existed and push my guild to unlock the guild hall. Now? I understood that I wasted maybe 300 gold in the crap that is the guild hall. Half o the unlock just unlock more things to unlock. A good portion of the remaining are just bad, doesn’t work and only a tiny portion is useful. Not worth the gold or the time.

- Dungeon used to be a content that a lot of people loved. TBh they are still great for gold. Actually several of them are even more profitable than they used to because of the high price of low tier materials. Be the way they handle it discusted so many people that the amount of people playing dungeon is very small, making it harder for people to play them in pugs. I’m sure people will realize eventually how much more gold you make in some dungeon now and it will be popular again, but it’s been several months since HoT and it’s still hard to pug dungeons.

Hate it? No, but I’ve all but stopped playing and haven’t set foot in the HoT areas for over a month now. Not having fun > not playing > not spending.

UltraRaptor.4876:

I’m too casual of a player to get a legendary but this new addition for a precursor are so much of a grind fest I might as well grind for gold and buy one off the market.

I don’t get that. With HoT came a new way of getting a precursor which is as much work/cost as the old ones. And now you complain that there is another way? Prestige items have to be much work/cost if they were cheap there would be no prestige in them.

Change.

I think this is what it all comes down to. A lot of people have a hard time dealing with changes, especially when they have no control over the changes made. Besides that we’ve had 3 years of core GW2, 3 years of maximum level characters and the gear we’ve crafted/bought/received for them. People are used to their characters being top of the game, so to speak. Yes, you need a lot of XP to level all your masteries, but like people said, it’s only the low levels that are important. The rest is just a bonus. But people want to be top of the game as soon as possible, so they go out of their way to achieve that. Doing that makes it feel like a grind, when it really isn’t if you’re not in any hurry. I’ve maxed my masteries in 2.5 months time and it never felt like a grind. That’s because, besides gaining XP to level masteries, I also play the HoT maps to achieve other things, like saving up on map currency to buy the new stat recipes (just one example out of many). The added challenge is also no problem but a welcome addition. My semi-casual guild does the Raid 2 nights a week and even though we haven’t cleared it yet we are having lots of fun. Granted, the guild hall seems to be of little interest to most in my guild, but a little motivation and effort stemming from a hopeful and positive mindset go a long way. I don’t see obstacles, I see challenges to overcome, opportunities to hone my skills and become better at the game, like dungeons and fractals have done before HoT was released.

In all honesty, I would rather “grind” to unlock 163 mastery points across my account than level 14 characters to a new level cap and gear them so they are top of the game again. I might not agree with everything ArenaNet does, but the concept of not invalidating all the work I’ve put in my characters is something I firmly stand by. Yes, the story is a bit short, but we all know that there are going to be new Living Story chapters expanding on the story and what happened during the 4 Acts of HoT. Yes, there aren’t many new armor or weapon skins but we all know that ArenaNet tends to add those as achievement rewards for stories and collections as well. And you won’t get any of that without HoT, so this expansion is very much not just what it is today, but also what it will be up until the point the next expansion comes out. Yes, guild hall upgrading (and scribe levelling) are highly expensive and pretty much lock out small guilds (or make reaching lvl 40 on your guild hall a process that will take a year, if not longer), but such things can (and almost always) will be tweaked. The expansion is released based partly on past feedback and wishes from players, and partly on the vision they have for their game. Yes, their game, not our game, a game that we choose to play and are not forced to play. A game that gives us an awful lot for a very low price (before anyone starts complaining about the HoT price package: everything that will be released up until the next expansion is what you’ve paid for by buying HoT, not just the stuff we have in game at the moment).

All in all, I do think it’s a perspective and expectation problem. People expect GW2 to largely remain the same, but that HoT would be more challenging was advertised pretty much from the start. Now it’s fine if people don’t like challenges but prefer to take it easy (understandably because gaming is a pastime and we all choose our own for personal reasons). But feeling obligated to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. And if you do things you don’t like that you don’t have to do, I feel like you’re setting the doors wide open for frustration and disappointment to come in. Focus on the parts of the game you do like to do. I personally find WvW extremely boring so I don’t do any of it and don’t complain about it. I obtained 4 world completions when the WvW maps were still part of that process, and as much as I disliked doing it, I did it because my goal was the Gifts of Exploration for the multiple legendaries I want to make. Legendaries, a long term goal for me, one I am in no hurry to achieve. Even if takes 3 years to get one, I’ll be happy for it. Happier than I’d be if I’d choose to grind everything needed in a limited amount of time because I feel I have to have it now, or possibly even yesterday. I don’t need to be the first or the best at something, because I am not doing it to impress anyone. Status is of absolutely no consequence to me, and a Legendary is just a nice skin that takes a while to obtain (which is worth it when it’s a skin you really like). It feels as if people don’t want to do the legwork anymore but feel like they should have everything as soon as possible. That’s great, but it has consequences. When you make choices but you can’t live with the consequences of those choices and complain about them, there is really only one person to “blame” for the position you’re finding yourself in. We are not entitled to a game that is exactly the way we want it to be, just because we spend money on it and invest our time in it. ArenaNet is not forced to do everything we want just because we want it. People threatening to leave the game and spreading the “bad news” to their friends and family aren’t much of a consequence either, because history and statistics show us that most people only vent frustrations but eventually don’t really put their money where their mouth is. And spreading the “bad news” is only efficient if you assume everyone will take your word for it, and people are individualistic enough to make up their own mind (and people who do blindly accept other people’s opinions are followers anyway, not the kind of people to tackle a challenge or adapt to new ways and evolve). Nothing, literally nothing in this world is perfect or exactly the way we want it to be. That is not a bad thing. But if you focus on the imperfections too much, everything becomes mighty messed up. And you only have yourself and your voluntary tunnel vision to thank for that. At the risk of sounding like a New Age guru: be mindful of what you’re doing, but most of all, be mindful of what it does to you.

I’m really, really annoyed at the chrono nerfs and the imbalance between professions in general. I liked HoT itself, but the latter updates released (‘balance’ changes) seemed to completely destroy some builds (shatter chrono) while nerfing ‘OP’ builds (chronobunker). I don’t see why it’s really this hard for ANet to balance their game in a way such as BnS has, the game I am fleeing to now. I will have limited game time (in comparison to what I previously had) in gw2 from now on until the obvious, and major, problems with WvW and PvP balance are fixed/changed (or removed, because it seems like that’s their fix for a lot of problems).

Mirta.5029:

Freeelancer.2860:

Don’t PvP leagues provide just that? Or for that matter achieving maximum level of mastery that requires allot of gold medals from adventures?

I guess you could say that someone doesn’t play PvP, cannot adjust to new difficulty, finds most activities too bothersome etc. but is that really a problem with the game?

PvP leagues are accessible to all I believe, not to those with the expansion only.

PvP leagues were a feature that came with expansion-ish. And try to get anywhere meaningful without the specializations. But, yeah I get your point.

Mirta.5029:

And the problem with masteries is that they slow down to a complete slog. So while yes, achieving a mastery must feel great, but when you have to spend months on it at a casual pace, you’re more likely to give up.

Actually, I’m just starting to work on masteries, and I’m already lv130+. No big deal, no problem, not an issue whatsoever.
And that whole critique sounds like one guy from this thread saying something along the lines of him being a beta player and an avid dungeoneer who is currently working on finishing his dungeon armors but will stop playing the game because of HoT.. Sounds more like he should first start playing the game in order to stop.
There’s a difference between being casual and going on a hiatus in order to join a Shaolin monastery and contemplate one’s existence.

Mirta.5029:

It’s also why ascendeds and legendaries feel like such a far off goals that you give up without even starting. With exotics you could run dungeons and tell yourself “there’s 1/3rd of a top that I’m holding in tickets!” and then it’s not so bad.
Because they’re gating the legendaries behind actual raids anyway, I suppose some good progression for casuals would be if they made a casual raid, or a dungeon, with a weekly lockout, that guaranteed that after a certain amount of tickets you’ll get your ascendeds. And it doesn’t matter how long it would take. You could say that you have to run this instance 4 times to get gloves and 6 times for the top for example. It doesn’t matter that it would take you well over half a year to deck out a single character in ascendeds. You could do some gameplay and tell yourself “I’m holding 1/4th of an ascended glove!”.
The main idea would be – less grind, more progression more often. The same way that for example if the skill progression was “kill this for this skill” instead of “amass this amount of points” it would feel better.

Ok, I’m getting mixed signals here.. You want less “grind stuff”, more “do stuff” which I guess is an argument against masteries, albeit a very weak one, but doesn’t stand at all for legendaries because they already follow the pattern you want.

Anyway, legendaries are now close to where they were supposed to be from the start. They are there to show someone’s achievement and commitment and, unlike most of the things in this game, they are not supposed to be participation awards. Yes, people who log in once every 3 months or can’t find space button on their keyboard will have a hard or maybe even impossible time getting them, but new legendaries are not made to participate in the race to the bottom and that’s perfectly OK.

I don’t ‘hate’ it, but I’m not happy with a lot of the decisions made for HoT.

Unfortunately, elite specializations seems to obsolete the core professions in almost every conceivable way. I feel stupid for not taking them in a lot of cases, which is a pretty big failure in my eyes; since most elite specs are just a straight upgrade to the base class without any real trade-off.

I was also primarily a WvW player and I don’t really need to expound on that since so many others have voiced their concern with that game mode and I tend to agree with those players.

UltraRaptor.4876:

The mastery system is horrible because after completing the expansion with two characters and grinding towards map completions with multiple characters I’m nowhere near to maxing out my mastery for HoT alone (note I’m a casual player) and yet no longer have the interest in replaying these maps after doing it so many times.

Obtaining the experience required for masteries can be very casual in terms of time played. Simply park alts around at various adventures and do them every day. If you can manage gold on most (~13) of them, you’ll get around 700k experience in about 30 minutes once you get used to it. If you only bother to unlock the useful/required masteries, which will make for a much more casual experience, it’ll only take about a week, or if you’d prefer everything, about a month of only doing this. Keep in mind that HoT will likely be the focus until the next expansion which is probably 2 years away at least, so there’s really no point in rushing.

With a expansion people want: New pvp maps, New borderlands, New pve maps, New legendary’s, New dungeons/fractal, New armorsets. Ofcourse are people upset. Paying 60bucks for 10dollar content. (maybe 15dollar) #ripoff.

I don’t hate HoT, but it’s extremely disappointing. If I would have known what I know now I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I don’t expect Anet to design an expansion around my interests, it’s just a matter of different priorities.

Collections-Seems everything new is unlocked through this method of grind and repetition.
Spvp-This should have been clear to me long time ago, I get it now, have at it Anet. I don’t believe I will give another xpac or GW3 much of a glance w/Anet love affair with this game mode.
WvW-I give up. Just going to stop banging me head on this one…CF & CU I’m waiting for you.
HoT maps-Beautiful maps ruined by timers, repetition, and walls. Have not stepped into a map since my one story play through/map completion.
Ghalls-Poorly designed, no creativity. Pointless grind.
Holiday events-about as exciting as rain in Seattle.

HoT has been a mixed bag for me. There are things I like about it, and things I don’t. I think that it demonstrates a consistent problem I’ve seen with the design of this game: They go overboard a lot.

Timers for metas seem like a good idea? Great, lets put timers on EVERYTHING. More challenging content seem like a good idea? Great, let’s make it a PITA to even walk across the street. New gear obtainable by obtaining map currencies? Great, let’s make it take thousands. There are similar examples from pre-HoT, too.

None of the ideas are bad, IMO, just the degree to which they’re taken. It’s a difficult thing to balance because the threshold of pain is highly subjective, but this game seems to have more trouble bracketing my sweet spot than most.

I still like the game, and I’m still here, but it is increasingly hard to find things to do right now that I’ll enjoy since I’m neither a cheev chaser nor a grinder.

I was very disappointed with HoT but it didn’t make me hate the game.

- Changing from guild influence to cynical gold sink system
- taking things out of core game and repackaging in HoT( fractal rewards, guild boons, nerfing dungeons to force players into HoT content, etc.)
- Verticality and platforming… too much Nintendo crap
- Maps are pretty but for me they have no lasting charm
- Mastery points and hero points(this is the new player experience on steroids……. and I destested the original New player experience….. Experience alone should have been enough to get masteries)
- underwhelming amount of armor and weapon skins

I liked the addition of guild halls and elite specs(don’t care for the inflated price of either though)

HoT has definitely soured me on GW2
-Rewards are terrible
-Too many map currencies to buy nothing interesting
-Too many scheduled timers
-Too many long event chains to again basically get greens blues, junk and useless map currencies
-WvW double rekt First with Stab change (not HoT) then with crazy unbalanced elites
-Grind Halls
-Ascended price increase
-Fractal rewards nerf
-general gold nerf
-Massive gold sinks and nerfs throughout the entire game
-CC, condi, knockback overkill in all of the HoT maps is super tedious

The absolute best thing about HoT is that it now lets me glide in core Tyria.
Perhaps not the best accolade it could have got.

Manasa Devi.7958:

There’s no obligation for criticism to be constructive. That’s a demand made up by people who can’t deal with hearing bad stuff about themselves or something they created.

“I liked the original game but I think the direction they took with HoT is rubbish”, that’s a lot more meaningful than not posting anything at all.

And how can you be constructive about things you absolutely loathe?

“Well, the one thing I like about the chak weapons, is that you don’t have to use those skins if you don’t want to. That’s a nice degree of freedom.”

“Bladed armor? It’s indistinguishable from armors I do like if I squint until everything on my screen is a giant blur.”

“Those meta-event timers? They’re very punctual, well done. How about using them to determine when to get the cake out of the oven instead, and make event progress tied to player effort instead of the real world clock?”

I’m going to disagree with that point. Constructive criticism does not have to include positive things to be constructive. It just has to break down the complaint into things that the reader can identify as the cause of the perceived problem.

While, “I liked the original game but I think the direction they took with HoT is rubbish.” may be better than nothing at all, it’s awfully hard to do anything with that other than scrap everything. Better feedback would be, “HoT is rubbish because of overly long meta events on timers, lack of new skins and poor scaling.” That gives a developer some idea of what changes to make going forward to please the complainer. It also allows them to quantify the feedback. How many players dislike timers? How many think the number of new skins is too low? I think you generally do provide more detail than just, “It stinks.” At least, you did in the earlier post on this page.

“Rubbish” is also a pejorative. Use of such terms is essentially an emotional reaction. Were I a developer, I would absolutely want to hear the emotional reactions to my work. However, I’d also like to hear the rationale that produced that reaction. Even with skins — which as aesthetic rewards are primarily subjective, I’d want to hear as much detail as the complainer can offer. Does the X skin kitten because it has too many spikes? is too ornate? is yet another trench coat, etc.

About the only reason i currently dislike HoT is some of the lackluster gameplay and design choices being made.

From a balance perspective, we’ve regressed and regressed hard. Going to a uniform system has honestly made the game worse off.

From a “fun” perspective, while yes there’s more to do…it’s all gated behind timers instead of actions. Additionally, content was made obsolete for the sole intention of moving people into other more rewarding modes/area’s unfortunately the rewards team and economist are leading this game in the direction of Grindy Asian MMO’s and that’s killing a lot of gameplay.

I don’t “hate” HoT. However, I don’t play the game much anymore because of it. I played wintersday achievements and will do a little bit of Lunar stuff, but other than that I just sign in to get my daily log in, and then sign out. I didn’t care for the “challenge” of HoT open world PvE. I wasn’t able to complete VB and during the week I only have a max of 30 minutes to play, so there really isn’t much point for me going into HoT at all.

I find that HoT has introduced a good few highly enjoyable features, like gliding and the masteries.

Then there is the cost of guild hall upgrades, the cost of scribing (although they are supposedly reducing that), and having to max out all of the masteries to make a new skin legendary.

Another issue is that increasing the power of players means mobs need increased power too, just to stay even. Central Tyria mobs were not much of a challenge before HoT but now don’t even reach cannon fodder levels. anet really needs to think before giving players even more power we don’t need.

Worse it creates balance issues between players who have HoT and those that do not.

The main issue with HoT is the scheduled meta maps; it doesn’t kill GW2 for me, but in more extreme cases, I’ve left other games because of similar features. I don’t hate it, but I certainly have little success completing meta HoT maps on the weekdays as a casual player. Otherwise, HoT is win.

Serious.6940:

Another issue is that increasing the power of players means mobs need increased power too, just to stay even. Central Tyria mobs were not much of a challenge before HoT but now don’t even reach cannon fodder levels. anet really needs to think before giving players even more power we don’t need.

Worse it creates balance issues between players who have HoT and those that do not.

Im really starting to feel HOT players have an advantage in WvW/EoTM. Sorry but getting insta downed alot since HOT gives me the “Pay to Win” feeling. Never rage quit before HOT and been doing alot of that lately. I’ll give it some more time before exploring other options. HOT just isnt for me.