Hello everyone, since one month has already passed I thought of writing a long review about my time and adventures in Heart of Thorns. I will only talk about topics which require talking about. Prepare for a long wall of text but i will try to be as constructive as possible. I will list the positive and negative aspects on some of the features of the expansion but I will mainly focus on the negative side because that’s more important for the game and what the devs need to improve on.
1) The Story – So I have played through the story twice, once on my main ( a human) and another time on a sylvari .So here the pros and cons:
Pros : + Your player character speaks now which is a major plus. It keeps your attention unlike the personal story dialogues where you tend to skip ,skip, skip
+ Final fight is really well designed and balanced ( except for the bugs). It is not a zhaitan 2.0 and neither is it super difficult ( remember this is the
personal story and everyone has to finish it!).
+ The story instances overall are very engaging e.g Running away with the egg from Faolain? Brilliant
Cons: – Even though the story telling was vastly improved, the HoT story lacks depth. Now i do understand that the main priority was finding Destinys
Edge and the egg, however being a sylvari- centric plotline, it missed many plot threads. Why was the Nightmare Court barely touched upon? What happened to Malyck and his tree? This is just an example, but instead of Trahearne somehow magically giving us access to the Dream, why not add an extra instance or two, where we finally discover Malyck’s tree and their sylvari who are struggling against the corruption. The Tree’s avatar could have suggested that the only way to defeat Mordremoth was to destroy his mind and that avatar could have given us access to the dream instead of trahreane.
What I am saying is that, Anet had brilliant concepts but did not execute them properly. Eg: How do we defeat something so massive ,whose whole physical body is the jungle itself and can regrow anytime? We destroy it from the inside, from the source where the corruption spreads.
— The pacing was off at the end. It started off slow where we seek help from the Itzel, deliver the egg, and immediately later, we are inside Rata Novus and then an instance or 2 later , we are fighting Mordremoth?
— This is an expansion story, not a living world episode. Ending it so abruptly felt incomplete. The cliffhanger with egg was fine and all, however we don’t
get to find out what happened to the Pale Tree, what happened to the two members of Destiny’s Edge we just rescued. What happened to Nightmare Court after Faolain died. What about Canach, we know he was sent by
Countess Anise but why? What about Caithe? Do we fully trust her know and how is she dealing with Faolain’s death? Some of these things shouldhave been touched upon at the end.
— Rytlock? He was in the teaser trailer. He was in the launch trailer. But he did not play a major role in the story? I know this mainly focused on the Sylvari but still kind of disappointing.
2) The Open World
Pros + Beautiful , beautiful , beautiful! Looks amazing graphically. The verticality is
awesome.
+ Difficulty is good and well tuned. The jungle will require you to pay attention. It will require you to use a tankier gearset at the beginning, I know I did. I played a zerker Guardian. Upon entering the new maps, I did die a few times, so i switched some my trinkets and accessories around to soldiers and knights. Later on, when i got the hang of it, I switched back to zerker and did fine.
+The Meta events feel epic – specially Dragon’s Stand Eg. When I first encountered Mouth of Mordy , I was speechless. However these events have a serious flaw which I will touch up in the cons.
+ Amazing soundtracks. Nothing more to say here
Cons — Map wide Meta Events. While its fine that the new maps have these, it creates a feeling of rush. Everything is on a timer. Miss the timer? Miss the
events and the loot. Locking stuff because of these Meta Events – not a very good idea. It does nothing but block off content for those miss the
events and this leads to my next major point.
— Megaservers. Ok let me tell you a story. Friday evening, coming home from work , pretty tired, I decide to do the Dragon Stand meta to get the inscription for my Elite spec weapon. So after waiting for a new fresh map, I go Dragon’s Stand and as usual i end up in a semi empty map. Keep in mind that the timer was around 1:53:00. So i look in lfg and i see several parties saying " DS 3 COMM" bla bla but before i could even click them, they fill up in 1 millisecond! and disappear. Maybe i have slow reflexes but
still! After several attempts i managed to join one. Cool! Except Map is full. I spam click to join but with no luck. Timer is around 1:45:00 ish now. I thought, plenty of time so I joined other taxis, where it said ‘Organised / 3 commanders’ but all of them were full. Then guess what, " You can’t join anymore parties, because you have joined too many recently" . I was really annoyed and stressed out at that point but i decided to keep my cool andwait. Finally i joined one with 2 commanders and it was going fine. After we
finally destroyed the blighted towers , BAM , Crashed, gg. ( Yes i am using the 64 bit client) Could not get back in, inspite of spam clicking Join.
SO what I am saying is that I know you cannot change the megaserver system, etc , but PLEASE include at least one map , where it is not tied to a giant map
wide meta event , so we can explore on our own and enjoy the scenery instead of wasting 30 mins , clicking on LFGs trying to find a good map and hurting our
fingers. Replayability =/= Meta Events behind a timer
— Tangled Depths and its meta. Now while i enjoy a challenge in the Open World the TD meta never has enough players to complete the meta and this causes
causes the map to be a ghost town. I see quite a few people in other 3 maps but never in TD. Why? I rarely see any taxis for Chak Gerent aswell. Coupled by the complexity in the map layout and the failure of this meta, people don’t find a reason to stay in this map.I can tell that so much resources and time and effort has been put into this map to create the level of detail, depth and design but itall goes to waste if it becomes a wasteland , since to complete most of the content , you need other people! Instead the resources could have gone to creating 2 simpler maps instead of TD with more fine tuned events and places to
explore. Whats done is done, but i seriously think , the TD meta needs some balancing. Balancing =/= nerfing the content but can be done in other ways.
3)Guild Halls -
Pros +Pretty spacious and beautiful maps overall.
+The buildings and their functionalities are well designed and the progression feels rewarding. I know i was pretty stoked to see our market upgrade to level 2.
+ Has lots of potential for new buildings to be added in the future. Eg: Trophy room anyone?
Cons — Now i do understand, that the materials and items required for upgrade buildings are designed for an average sized guild and not someone solo/a tiny guild, what about the people who play WvW. Let’s be honest. Compared to PvE and sPvP, WvW is pretty unrewarding. To Upgrade, the War Room, which u do need to if u want to fully enjoy the new features in WvW, u need tons of expensive mats. How will people who only play WvW, afford them? I understand the mat requirments for Tavern, Workshop, Arena but the War Room needs to be balanced.
— Scribing – Ok , seriously this needs to be fixed. I saw an earlier post, where max Scribing costed ~ 5000g. Is this a joke? I know this is supposed to be a shared guild funded effort to level up scribing but honestly its not. Leveling up a crafting proffession should not be like this. “The Guild Effort” goes into the mats required for building upgrades, “The Guild Effort” goes into the mats for crafting decorations, but to level up scribing? NO! The proffession is tied to your own character and this massive paywall is the reason why people ignore it. Again brilliant concept but poor execution.
Crafing and decorating your Guild Hall which slowly progresses could be so much fun! but this just ruins your experience and demotivates you!
4) Instanced Content
Pros + Raiding – an excellent addition to the game. This is what Gw2 needed in terms of challenging , group content and i think Anet delivered it perfectly. ( Talking about the mechanics and team coordination)
+ Fractals – I KNOW ppl are mad about this but overall adding 50 more scales gives people more to do but again this depends on whether the december “balance” patch will fix the issues currently.
Cons —Raiding and the lfg. Ok firstly, the open world lfg is a mess because there is not separate section for raiding. I know Anet said they did not want people pugging Raids, but honestly in a few months this will be puggable. I already see posts about people killing the Vale Guard as pugs. I really think Lfg needs a raiding section. Remove the WvW and Pvp ones , barely anyone uses them.
— Speaking of pugs. I think the difficulty is well balanced with the cool mechanics and stuff however coming to Gorseval and future bosses, I see the enrage timer being a wall to unorganised groups. To lure a higher pecentage of players to raids, Anet should add an easy mode to raiding. Whats the difference in easy mode u ask? All the mechanics stay the same BUT increase the enrage timer. For example Vale Guard 8 mins to 10. Gorseval 7 mins to 9/10. Rewards: Remove the legendary items for the armor from easy mode, but keep asc drops. What this does, is it will encourage people who are new to raiding to encounter these bosses,see how fun it is, and gear up with ascended equips to tackle the normal mode where they can get the mats required for Legendary Armour!
Increasing the timer by 2-3 mins doesn’t nerf the content but it does give people a chance to try out different build sets, try out the bosses, explore the lore behind the raids and get them motivated to try the normal mode.
I see lots of posts about “GET RID OF TIMER. DPS IS RUINING THE GAME” and therefore adding this easy mode should be a good balance and will teach people that dps is not harmful, it will not kill you , u need dps to defeat the bosses, but u will need to optimize your gear if you want to try normal mode.
— Fractals – too long of a list to mention here but they are planning to fix most of the issues in Decemeber so finger crossed for that.
Congratulations! If u read through all that ,you win a cookie!
Overall, Will i recommend Heart of Thorns to someone? – Of Course! HoT has been a great addition to the game, it has lots of content and gives us more to do and it will be even better if Arenanet fixes some of the core issues behind it. I apologize, if my spelling and grammar was off but feedback is very important for the game. This will help Anet make better expansions in the future.
Ps . I did not mention anything about WvW and SPvP because i am more of a PvE player so writing a review for game modes that i spend little time on is meaningless.
But i am aware of the major issues in WvW.
- Thanks for reading and feel free to add Contstructive!!!! feedback aswell.
