Edit: After playing for a few hours and having several people agree I’ll just summarize the pros and cons followed by a paragraph to make it easier.
Pros:
-The Shatterer is good, while not worthy of it’s own update and spotlight and hype, the fix was welcome (while drastically over hyped). I didn’t expect a difficulty curve just, different.
-Gliding: Great for what it is, again over hyped and exactly as you’d come to expect.
-A few sPvP balances (Primarily Diamond Skin ele’s and ridding the world of Bunker Meta).
Cons:
-Major lack of content: While HoT provided a few weeks of content (maybe), most of what it consisted of was grind. Some grind for certain aspects or items is perfectly fine, but bundling every aspect of the game (the way masteries were implemented, ect) just is not how you place end game. Raids are great, however you NEED to implement LFG better. I love raids, I’ve only raided a few times only because you need to be in a higher skill group to even participate. Simply put, I miss the monthly content updates from living world that we use to have, not this poorly implemented “Look at all this stuff we’re working on and we’ll tease the good stuff but we’ll promise that stuff wont be out for awhile so enjoy these fixes in the mean time”. Everyone is saying this patch introduced some content that will run out fast while people like myself who don’t have the time or drive to want to grind everything have already run out of stuff to do. So please Arena Net, introduce something NEW (doesn’t have to be new mechanically, just, new events/maps/instances/ ect), the drought still continues.
Balances: I’ve just come to the conclusion that you guys don’t know how to “balance” the game at all and that the game will fail as a “esports” medium. It’s such a mess that I feel your team has piled up all these issues and balancing problems for so long that not only when minor fixes come out it seems like major ones to you all mixed with the fact that your teams are probably swamped with just focusing on the problems at hand opposed to creating new content. I’d suggest expanding your team to manage everything better.
WvW: Some changes are nice, some not so much. Still feels like a sinking ship.
Overall the patch didn’t really deliver what was hyped, and if we’re only getting 4 of these per year god help us all because the direction this game is heading in is not a good one. The lack of communication from the team in general with the community is cringe worthy (and im not talking about only the poorly done guild chats). What has been seen to me from launch to mid season 2 was that content put into the game was well thought through and it had direction. Everything now it’s just sporatic, a jumbled mess, and not very concise. The labor of love additions to the game are now gone but substituted with these “We’re listening to you guys huehue here you go!” content (Which not only do we not want, but is absorbing all of your time) as well as cash shop and ways to sell your expansion.
I want to do so much with your guy’s game but everything just feels like a chore now, I get hyped up for updates which overall have been underwhelming and deceitful in my eyes as you will say you’ll include stuff but just flat out wont or it will be delayed to hell and back. I guess I’ll just stick to logging in for my dailies then logging back off.
(edited by JiggyJoe.1835)