The Unbroken and Eternity’s Guard were the other options. They all sound dumb to me. Eternity’s Guard would fit some time-traveling Dr. Who wannabes, and The Unbroken… well, I’d rather be unbroken than broken, but it doesn’t have much to do with anything, does it?
The tower event is horribly boring IMO. At best, you end up in a good map and run in a circle for several minutes, killing boring mobs, when a single mistake you can’t do anything about can cause the whole thing to fail. At worst, you realize one of the lanes is full of players who don’t read the chat and can’t organize, so you fail. The entire event being based around infinite spawns and unintuitive mechanics doesn’t help.
Tarir’s meta is the same thing, but much better, because once you’ve done your job, you can wait for the others to finish instead of repeating it ad nauseam.
It depends on your expectations. HoT is much harder than most of GW2. However, I don’t find it hard and I’m not particularly good at GW2 nowadays. Most of my builds are self-made, I haven’t theorycrafted at all, and most of my characters run around in exotics.
I do think HoT zones are harder than Orr. Not by much, but Risen are more predictable and less damaging than HoT’s monsters.
What do people do about it?
Suffer. I was particularly annoyed at the extra books. Not one book, no, that would be too easy. Let’s give ’em three! And a new non-wallet currency, too, just for fun!
I try to keep my boosters and other such items in the bank, but it’s gotten to the point where half of my inventory is permanently occupied by junk I barely ever use.
Why would you want to read about fluffy bunnies being treated horribly? You monster.
Oh, that’s good to know. They seemed to turn around for me, but I guess I wasn’t running fast enough.
The only mobs that annoy me in HoT melee wise are the Mushroom King near the entry to TD and the bigger Arrowheads. The former has an annoying AoE damage ability that lasts through most of his fight and the latter roll around too much for your endurance to keep up. It leads to boring encounters, especially on my Daredevil, whose ranged options are crappy. It feels like they promote boring “11111111” gameplay instead of dynamic combat. Strangely enough, the shroom king spawned by the HP is much better than the one in TD.
While we’re discussing HoT mobs, how do people deal with Veteran Bristlebacks? They’re uncommon outside of Bristleback Chasm, but I find them really annoying to fight, since they just spam you to death with their ranged volley attack and have a ton of HP. You can reflect their attacks, but is there a way to deal with them without that? Their design seems to be lackluster.
It’s almost certainly not because of high-profile actors. The actresses of Eir and Faolain don’t look particularly high-profile, especially when you’ve got better-known VAs like Troy Baker, Steve Blum and Kari Wahlgren voicing other DE members. No, it’s probably for drama, or due to the VAs not wanting to work on GW2 anymore for some reason.
GS + Sw/X with wells works well enough. Generally, OW content is quite easy even in HoT, so you want to tag mobs with lots of semi-reliable and quick AoE. Some of the new zones have a decent amount of champs in events, so you can put iZerkers on them and nuke everything else with wells and melee. The rotation is 3 illusions > Continuum Split > nuke > repeat.
Generally, though, the others are right in that Mesmer is a clunky profession for OW content. Chrono gives you some ok abilities, but other classes have an easier time. On the other hand, I find soloing champs (like HoT’s HPs) extremely easy on a Mesmer, so there’s that.
This annoys me because it seems to be a repeat of the Phlanx armor debacle. For those who don’t remember, this is what Phalanx looks like:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_male_front.jpg
Wow, that’s cool! I’ll just go and buy it for my female Warrior…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_female_front.jpg
…wait, where’s the cool helmet? The sleek breastplate? The practical, yet slightly intimidating pants? Why’s the female version made from a different material?
The issue isn’t as noticeable in the Envoy armor designs, but they still look off. The medium male design has a nicely detailed shirt, while the female one is just a bikini. It looks dumb, not sexy.
This is an issue with taste really. Male and female armors cannot be identical. Just look at phoenix armor. Most people agree that the male version is horrible, while the female version is great. In fact, female armors are generally better looking and more detailed. Just because one armor set ended up looking inferior for females, it’s not the end of the world.
Sure, in some cases they can’t. Kasmeer’s armor would look weird on males. However, nothing in the female physique is in conflict with the male version of Phlanx. The male model could easily be applied to females after some adjustments to make it fit their slightly different shape, like a wider hip, thinner waist and maybe some boob plates if they’re really necessary. Instead, ANet made a completely separate female design for no reason at all.
And yes, it’s not the end of the world and I don’t see anyone claiming it is. However, sometimes designers and/or marketing screw up and it’s good if someone points that out to them. I thought they learned their lesson after the community backlash from Phlanx, but apparently they didn’t.
I think the issue with adventures is that all of them have the same rewards. The current rewards are fine for Salvage Pit, but not for some of the others. ANet would have to remake the whole Adventure reward system, and that’s probably not worth the time.
This annoys me because it seems to be a repeat of the Phlanx armor debacle. For those who don’t remember, this is what Phalanx looks like:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_male_front.jpg
Wow, that’s cool! I’ll just go and buy it for my female Warrior…
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_female_front.jpg
…wait, where’s the cool helmet? The sleek breastplate? The practical, yet slightly intimidating pants? Why’s the female version made from a different material?
The issue isn’t as noticeable in the Envoy armor designs, but they still look off. The medium male design has a nicely detailed shirt, while the female one is just a bikini. It looks dumb, not sexy.
Another metaevent-only expansion. Since launch we’ve not gotten anything but meta-focused maps. IMO maps should be more like Harathi Hinterlands: half of it is focused on the centaur shaman meta, while the other half is more focused on side stories and exploration. I even made a topic about it before HoT came out and was a bit disappointed when my hunch was mostly correct.
I agree that in every area of the game elite specs dominate and are stronger than core specs. I do however believe that this is intended and that as BRA above states these elite specs will be balanced against OTHER elite specs.
If it’s intended, why did ANet claim otherwise?
Sort of. I don’t think there’s much less diversity now then there was before. Yes, previously you could put 9 points into a trait line just to be different(10 points was when you got the first major trait), but the number of viable builds wasn’t much higher than it is now. Many of the reworks streamlined the game in a good way: they trimmed the fat without losing any complexity.
The only thing I’m a bit displeased with is the current inability to use more than 3 trait lines. I wish ANet let you choose 7-9 “steps” (minor+major trait) from the available lines freely. Additionally, I don’t like how some classes are almost forced to use their elite specs. Mesmer is a good example of that. It feels like ANet added Chrono as a band-aid instead of fixing Mesmer’s issues.
Well, I have a solution. You might not like it, but it’s saved me a ton of trouble on plenty of meta runs or SW chest farms:
Mystic Forge Conduit
It’s not really a solution, since putting all those runes in the MF isn’t any easier than, for example, destroying them.
If you’re a WvW player, you can unlock the elite specs via scrolls of heroics.
The Zhaitan fight has always been awful, so nothing’s changed there. The only difference is that it’s soloable now.
For future reference. As you can see, dlgamer and GamesPlanet UK have good pirces on HoT right now.
Here is a guide for soloable HPs. Combined with HPs from central Tyria, these should be more than enough to unlock your elite spec. Additionally, as far as I’ve seen people often help others with HPs, as long as they’re not too hard to reach.
The current cost is fine IMO.
Anet has lost several key people in I think it’s the last six months. They’ve lost others as well. And it takes time to train new people and bring them up to speed. Even in something as simple as a retail store, the turnover can affect profitably and production.
Oh, I’m not denying that. However, with good management they’d have well-documented, clean code, a system where the leaving staff members train their replacements for a month or two, and a recruitment process finding adequate replacements. Losing a few guys in a company of 250 shouldn’t a catastrophe that halts the entire process. Besides, if ANet is constantly losing people, it’s almost certainly a symptom of some bigger issues, not the cause of them.
How much worse is it with 3 years of spaghetti code?
Spaghetti code is an entirely different issue. One I’m pretty sure GW2 has. Makes me wonder what’s going on with their code quality control. Some of GW2’s features are remarkable and unique feats of software engineering, so they clearly have/had really good programmers.
I think half the issue is constantly losing devs. It seems to happen pretty often. Not sure how any studio can function on time and under budget with that constraint.
You lose some, you get some. It’s typical turnover and I haven’t seen any indication of ANet’s turnover being drastically higher than usual in the software industry. It slows development down, but good management can minimize the negative effects. Sometimes, you can even benefit from it by recruiting people with fresh ideas and more motivation, especially when it comes to a huge, long project like GW2. Working on a game for this many years can be tiring, even if everything goes well.
Anet tried to do something different and give us a villain that wasn’t a dragon with Scarlet.
And when they did, people were constantly complaining about the lack of focus on dragons.
While this is true, I think the real reason people were dissatisfied was that the Scarlet storyline was rather bad. When people are dissatisfied and want something more exciting from a story, they often present “solutions” that wouldn’t solve anything, like going back to dragons. Dragons sound exciting (for many), but they don’t improve the story’s quality automatically.
Similarly, I don’t think switching gears away from dragons would make the story any better. Yes, dragon fights have been underwhelming so far, but the problem lies with ANet’s failure to make villains interesting and threatening, not with the dragons themselves.
Also, giving eles a weapon swap would have huge balance implications. Not being able to swap weapons is why they have access to 20 weapon skills by default.
You can use some healing skills to make the hog trial easier. Sylvari have their racial heal, engis have healing turrets and med kits, warriors have regen banners, etc.
Dulfy’s guide is great, but keep in mind that a lot of it depends on your skill, as some of the champions are easy to solo. The one spawned by the flower HP in Auric Basin has never been a threat to me, for example. On the other hand, some of them can be quite challenging.
Additionally, HoT’s HPs give 10 points each, so you only have to do a few to unlock everything your elite spec needs, especially if you have some skill points left over from basic GW2.
Most likely not, but to be fair I didn’t pre-order HoT, either. I might pre-order it if the terms are customer-friendly (not character slot BS this time), ANet is completely transparent about the expansion’s content, and there’s a lot of it.
Human females look so different from males largely due to what we deem to be attractive. Functionally, one doesn’t need big breasts to produce milk and only needs wide hips to give birth comfortably. Having a thin waist, feminine facial features, etc. is unnecessary.
Asura seem to think smart is sexy and that’s it, so big visual differences between sexes would be strange in their case.
No it wasn’t, LS2 was much different to LS1, and how the game was supposed to be at release (one time events if you recall) was also different to how LS1 worked. The thing is, they’ve been changing their release model a LOT. If it was so superior and successful why would they? It’s the same with the LS vs Expansion debate, did they just cave in to the demands of the vocal forum posters, or they somehow had metrics that showed an expansion would be better?
[…]
Don’t change what is working, it’s simple. So, if they indeed changed it (multiple times), it stands to reason that it wasn’t working as well as they wanted it to. Otherwise why change it in the first place?
You’re lumping building on your previous work and changing directions completely into the same category. Yes, of course there’s change. ANet would be a hopeless developer if they didn’t try to learn from their mistakes and improve. Raids, however, aren’t an improvement over dungeons and fractals. They’re an entirely different direction. They target a different demographic. People came to GW2 to get away from raids and all the BS that follows them.
It wasn’t 3 years of making content for “all of us” and now it’s the “raiders” turn. It was 3 years of making content that played to it’s strengths and niche market and now, the only reason the concerns of the raiding demographic even matters is because Anet said “Hey, screw all that. We’re gonna start directly competing with every other MMO on the market.”
They changed from their LS1 system to the LS2 system for a reason, they didn’t do it because they thought it was fun. The LS1 system wasn’t working as well as they wanted, that’s why they changed to the expansion model and that’s why they added things like PVP leagues and Raids.
If the LS1 model was such a glorius success we wouldn’t have either of those, we wouldn’t have expansions, we wouldn’t have raids, we wouldn’t have PVP leagues, we would still get a new episode every 2 weeks and that’s it. But apparently it wasn’t working as well as they wanted it to and it still caused loads of complaints.
What does the LS1 model have to do with this? LS1 and LS2 had the same focus. LS2 was a logical step forward from LS1. It let new players catch up better by moving most of the action from old maps to new and introducing the Story Journal. It dropped temporary content. It dropped the new, harder dungeons like Aetherpath. It improved instanced content. It dropped the 2 weeks release schedule in favor of bigger releases. It moved open world gameplay in HoT’s direction, with Dry Top’s scheduled map states and Silverwastes’ map-wide metas.
Raids don’t fit into any of this.
Silverwastes isn’t a part of HoT. It was released during Living Story S2 and acts as a transitional area between HoT and normal GW2. It’s quite similar to Orr in that it’s one big push from your camp to the enemy camp/boss. It’s a well-made and rewarding zone, but you don’t have to spend much time in it to get to HoT zones.
Verdant Brink is the jungle zone and admittedly it can be a bit confusing at first, especially since you’re new to gliding. However, I think it’s in many ways one of GW2’s best zones, so exploring it is worth the effort. When you’re used to gliding and have the updraft & mushroom hopping masteries, it’s rather easy to navigate. To get the hang of it, hop on it when daytime starts and follow the Pale Reavers from the eastern WP. That should open up a big chunk of the map’s southern side and give you some mastery XP.
As for the masteries changing constantly, that never happened to me, so I don’t know how to help.
They should make a game-wide announcement of the Crystal Desert being open to players, with a WP attached. When you get to that WP, there’s a DE to open the gates to the desert… and it’s stuck.
Call me cynical, but I think this is the standard “temporary power creep” strategy many F2P companies employ. It goes like this:
1) Company A wants people to buy product X.
2) They release product X and make it overpowered.
3) As a result, people want to buy X.
4) After enough people have bought X, A nerfs X so it’s not OP anymore.
5) Repeat for all future products.
Made popular by Riot Games.
Good content is what really matters. Its delivery method is secondary. The problem with HoT isn’t that it’s an expansion. It’s that it’s small and doesn’t offer much for a large part of the player base. It’s only good for those who enjoy raids and high-level DEs… and even then it sabotages the latter with its dumb megaserver system.
Some of the dungeon bosses are awful. Wollam in Honor of the Waves gets a special mention for being a dull underwater fight. Most people don’t know how to play underwater well, making him even more of a pain.
You and I remember GW1 very differently.
You are generalizing in an almost criminal way. Yes, Dervish was severly overpowered when they were released with Nightfall. Right until the point where anet gutted the class for years to come shortly after.
There was almost no gvg meta of significant length where warrior was not being used. Especially in front line target calling, knockdown provider and single damage dealer warrior was near mandatory.
I played extensive amounts of time on a Dervish AFTER they had nerfed the class (and years later buffed up again). Most of the points you counted down were moot by then.
I think it’s pretty telling ANet had to overhaul the Dervish. It was overshadowed by Warrior so badly the only time it was used in optimized play was for gimmicky builds. Even after the overhaul, I remember loving Dervish opponents in PvP, because I was primarily a Mesmer player and could usually disable them almost too easily.
(edited by dekou.6012)
Everybody wants this, but ANet doesn’t want this badly enough.
Heh, and now you see people saying we should be “thankful” we can give ANet money without knowing what exactly we’ll get in return. Marketing at its best.
Pre-purchasing isn’t the same as buying after launch. There is much greater meaning to pre-purchasing a game, you are literally trusting Anet to deliver a great product, and for that trust Anet is thanking veteran players in the form of a character slot.
And if I don’t trust ANet to deliver a great product, they show me the middle finger instead of trying to win me over. That’s encouraging.
ANet has already annoyed a lot of players with their low-quality LS updates, stupid NPE and trait revamps and a multitude of other things. I haven’t played GW2 for months. I checked out the expansion, thinking maybe it’d be a good place to come back, but it’s “pre-purchase or go away”. Ok, I’ll go away, I suppose. Again.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: dekou.6012
They’re already doing that.
Link because I see nothing on the announcement or in the FAQ. If true then there is no issue.
The current outcry is a perception of value, whereas this is more about deceptive business practices.
Quote: “We’ll most certainly help anyone out who just bought the core game and would like to make the change to a HoT pre-purchase.”
How nice of ANet to bury that info in a Reddit thread instead of putting it somewhere where people could see it, like… oh, maybe the preorder page! That’s such a great idea, but I’m sure they just missed it. Surely, they’re not hoping people will miss their chance for a refund. With the latest lack of shady practices on Anet’s part, it’s easy to believe in their good intentions.
Likewise, the expansion is probably missing an extra character slot to teach veteran players to use the gem shop. It’s like a tutorial!
You’d think that by now ANet would realize these “you get X% more damage if you’re wearing Y” traits are awful, bland and boring. They should at least make the damage boost big and situational or… something. “Your critical chance increases by 25% for Xs after healing an ally” is already better.
Actually the X power from Y toughness ones are insanely efficient on Knight’s gear. Like Warriors and Necros.
I meant “awful” design wise. They may be efficient, but they don’t change the way your character plays at all.
You’d think that by now ANet would realize these “you get X% more damage if you’re wearing Y” traits are awful, bland and boring. They should at least make the damage boost big and situational or… something. “Your critical chance increases by 25% for Xs after healing an ally” is already better.
This is probably not going to happen, but it would be pretty cool if the Mesmer shield was a 2h weapon. In other words, one hand for the shield and one hand free for casting.
[Suggestion] Main hand pistol for Mesmer spec
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: dekou.6012
What, having one two MH weapons and a truckload of secondaries isn’t good enough?
Another OH sounds so horrible I hope they’ve got something up their sleeve, because ANet can’t be that strange… right?
I’m sure there are some mail carrier bugs they’ll have to sort out before addressing a low-priority issue like this.
The lore is sorely missed. Right now, many locations are just there. Additional lore would convince us to care about them. Scouts do that in a way, but they’re not enough.
To be honest, cat maps > toilet humor.
I think this feeling comes mostly from the expansion sounding so tiny at the moment. Kusumura covered it pretty well. You get a feeling there must be more to it, but… personally, I don’t have enough faith in ANet to believe that’s true. They can’t even deliver on the things they’ve talked about, so why would they deliver on other stuff?
Remove all unnecessary things from your GW2 folder, including the “bin” folder and possible SweetFX installations. That fixed it for me.