First, let me say that I’ve spent too many hours in GW2. I enjoy it overall (I’ve even bought some more gems to help support the devs a bit more), but as we approach the new expansion, I’m finding it very hard to get excited for the new expansion.
First, as someone who plays for a month or two, then takes a break, then comes back…etc, I have noticed that very little seems to be “fixed” between those times. In dungeons, the “meta” is still to bug out, exploit, and overall abuse the system. It’s been the same since day 1. A week ago, I offered my AC group 5g each if they could beat Kholer without stacking. They, all 80’s in exotic/ascended gear who claimed to have run the dungeon a million times, all died on the first big wind-up. I tried my best to help them, to no avail. I was rezing the entire time. This is how long after release, and Anet still has a system where their players still can’t beat the first boss? This right here, dampens my spirits for HoT. They simply can’t design a dungeon that isn’t exploitable and it’s ruined the “dungeon” portion for me.
Second, the “meta” builds. I totally understand them. As a game that was touted as getting rid of the “trinity”, all I can see is that they ended up removing 2 of the 3 pillars in that trinity. It’s all about DPS. If you aren’t 100% dps, your doing it wrong. To make matters worse, this meta has made classes like necromancer almost useless by design and yet there has been no effort put into making a necro relevant outside of WvW zergs.
Third, “trains”. The massive events being on a giant timer means all you do is chase one world boss to the next world boss to the next one to the next one…. However, it doesn’t even end there, looking at SW, SW sets up the expansion in my mind as a giant grind. All you do in SW is chase one event to the next. Nothing really feels “important” either. I defend X camp, repair the wall, kill the next wave, repair wall…for what? To grind some more?
Third.5, World boss designs; So, they’ve made “some” progress on this since release (Teq), but overall, the bosses are all basically a giant walltrap that doesn’t “do” anything. Shatterer is the prime example. Since release, Shatterer has been a giant wall trap that Anet didn’t even have the decency to put on a wall. The strategy has always been “stand to his right” and, like any flame trap you’d find in a dungeon, Shatterer can’t do anything to anyone standing to his right. These giant, massive, visually impressive world bosses really don’t do anything, they don’t threaten anyone. Pick a world boss though, and that’s all they are, a wall trap that you have to try to die to…
Fourth, “stack here”. Stacking, nothing breaks immersion more than “stack here” tactics. WvW is “stack on commander” dungeons are “stack on the wall”.
These issues really, to me, paint a picture of what I can expect from HoT. Overall, I’ve enjoyed GW2, but I honestly don’t see any real appeal in the HoT news that makes me think that it won’t suffer from the same issues. The new specializations sound interesting, the new class sounds cool, but the core content of the game hasn’t really shown any sign of improvement. I don’t see, based on their history, why ANet would suddenly be able to make dungeons that didn’t rely on cheesing the systems or world bosses that didn’t turn into wallmounts or zones that didn’t turn into giant event grinds or create a game that makes more than one specific build/trait setup viable for endgame.