According to the replies soo far, this might be the unpopular opinion. The following is my own personal experience with the Expansion soo far – I find the expansion to be just a mess of a chore.
Everything from the level design, story progression, timed events and mastery system has been made to slow you down and hold you back.
- Let me start with the lesser annoyance, the level design. You can not go from one point to another directly, like in every other map of the game, you must wind and weave, and travel a maze of verticals, up and down, which without a glider is a huge pain because nearly everything are Elites or Vets which knock you down or cripple you. Why oh god, must everything cripple you?
- Story progression: Remember how they added a whole punch of level caps to the story missions in GW2 awhile ago? It’s the same thing but with the mastery system. You must always be a level over next in masteries to continue with the “Very Urgent Chase”, which is an issue because masteries take a long time to level up, how? Because
- Mastery progression places up huge walls which you need to go around and grind little rewarding events – which are interrupted in Auric basin, at least, by the Gates event – which are literally walls in front of walls. There is a 15 minute period where you can’t go into the city, walls are blocking the doors – then a 45? Minute event where you need to to coordinate with other players on the map to chisel down vines which are trying to get into the heart of the city. And you can forget trying to do this with 15 people.
This, for the very least, interrupted our Guild hall claiming last night by ONE and a HALF hours because all Waypoints where contested, no way to teleport into the city, no Mesmer, no NOTHING, can’t run and glide because of the bubble at the heart, not even a Waypoint INSIDE the hole inside the heart of the city to act as a rallying waypoint. Those that were in, were stuck in, those that were out were SOL until the event failed or disappeared.
- Now, about the Hero points, it’s very nice and all that you get ten points each event, but the events are seriously over long. Whoever designed them, made it so you can not solo them like in the old world, you need half a raid to to get even one champ down. Their health and toughness is through the roof, not to mention all the conditions they throw at you. You can’t do any one of them with less than 4 people. Try finding 4 people, depending on your Time Zome and IRL commitments, it can be next to impossible.
Add to that the constant crashes (I pressed Print Screen – I crashed, I was talking to an NPC, double clicked to talk to another – I crashed. I changed maps – I crashed, I FINALLY lvled to Mastery 3 – I crashed, I spawned my glidder – crashed) When you do find a populated event, the chances of you crashing are N times more, and when you log back in – over flow, if you’re lucky. If not, event over.
TL;DR : Everything about HoT is made to slow you down, hold you back and pad out the game and you should care.
I want to raid. I LIKE being in a huge group and taking down challenges – the guild hall claiming was LOADS of fun. I’ve been doing the same Fractals for two years, it’s FUN. “Lack of content” is not an issue – the quality is.
They purposefully broke up the pace of the game to make it feel bigger. I don’t care about leveling, at all. They way they made it is just soo convoluted. I want to get my masteries up, have my druid healing skills, and raid with my guild.
Lastly, you want to know how to do a well paced story without holding you back and padding things out? Guild Wars 1 (Prophecies and Nightfalls). Somehow – they lost sight of how to do it properly.
(edited by Koala MeatPie.9341)