Guild Wars 2

Cameirus.8407:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he3jqbDq5hA

/Sniffle.

Every dev at Anet should be forced to sit down and watch that, then honestly say if they think the game meets those aspirations, if it even gets close…

Just watched the gw2 manifesto and you’re right. They have strayed from that path. Of particular interest to this topic is 1:20-1:40 where he very clearly and passionately describes their grind philosophy.

Please give us an option to disable automatic glider deployment please, right now sometimes your glider opens up when you jump, sometimes it doesnt and you have to do it manually, and it’s just guesswork as to whether or not it’ll deploy. If you always hit space in mid air when you jump to deploy your glider, sometimes it’ll autodeploy and you just put it away instead, and if you make a jump that requires you to deploy immediately to make the jump, if you wait to see if your glider automatically deploys you wait too long and miss the jump.

The inconsistency is driving me nuts and sometimes the glider deploys when I make small jumps and don’t want it to deploy at all!

I either want it to be consistent and predictable, or better yet, give us an option to allow us to turn it off (so it’s consistent that way too)

This RNG glider deployment just does not fly.

The thing I don’t like is, Colin’s big defense was that it’d only cost 60 HP to get into the elite spec, and at worst, 40 hero challenges to get fully loaded.

The 60 HP is to just to let you handle the new weapon and get the new weapon skills. You arguably need an extra 15, as one other poster said, just to get what I would consider a baseline reaper, tempest, etc. I mean, seriously – what’s a tempest without the F1 overloads? An elementalist with a warhorn.

40 challenges spread out across most of the maps, with mastery gates in between them – that’s a little disingenuous.

ObsidianSaint.1079:

When I bought Guild wars 2 I bought it for ONE reason, to play all the classes and when I first logged on I realised all my profession traits were gated behind a stupid leveling system!

Imagine my dismay when I couldn’t unlock any of my skills until I reached level 40, 60 and 80.

Note the sarcasm*

And at level 80 you have all three spec lines fully maxed out…

…Unless one of them is an elite spec at which point you are effectively sub level 80 while playing in a post 80 zone vs post 80 opposition.

agreed.

Feels like Anet giving us a collecking kick in the balls, hyping up elite specialisations, then locking them behind a massive grind.

The absolutely worst decision they could have made on this matter.

Did they learn nothing from the trait lock debacle they did last year…..

TerminalMontage.5693:

I’m 5 hero points away from getting my last trait for Reaper, took about 2 days of just playing the game, not farming. Relax and play the game for fun dude.

You so hardcore dude…I guess you can’t be called casual.

Straylight.7529:

That is enough to feel like a reaper and enjoy playing it. You absolutely don’t need 400 HP to enjoy playing a reaper.

You might want to consider changing the word, “you,” to, “I,” as you cannot really speak for what someone else enjoys.

Merkin.8412:

When you make your character he doesn’t pop out level 80 with all skills, he is sub-optimal.

Then you progress in the game to build your character.

Expansion is no different.

Hope this helps.

When you first create a character he is level one in a level one area facing level one foes. Training an elite spec means playing your character at essentially sub level 80 while in a post 80 zone facing post 80 opponents. Its not progressing your character, its regressing him and then working your way back up to where you were before.

wew OP must have every single set of ascended gears all ready to go sitting in the backpacks of every single one of his characters, all of different classes, just so whenever he comes across a champion or event, he can stop to figure out what’s the most optimal build/class to solo the fun, challenging content!

Archy.1046:

Just let the low skill whiners rage quit. After a week or two they will be gone.

Quality > Quantity.

Let’s just hope Anet won’t be nerfing everyting just because of some cry babies.

That strat worked great for Wildstar, now there’s a small gaggle of elitists with no one to play with. It’s ok to be better than someone but when you use it as a weapon you become a bully.

Fun factor: 1/10

Main problem is that VB is empty, I know from Beta Weekends that the zone isn’t really playable/enjoyable as solo (initially at least), so what do you do? It’s frustrating that the product you paid for is essentially completely gated by numbers (a factor you have no real control over).

I do like the new WvW maps but again they are empty or feel so.

Like no expansion I have ever seen, tbh. Doesn’t feel like an expansion at all, the game feels smaller! ‘Gates of Thorns’ is a more accurate title for this expansion.

Update: Day 4.

Fun factor: 6/10

After an initial two days of empty VB the last two nights have had playability.
Also failed to understand you could equip your Elite Spec Weapon from the off, but only in HoT Maps (and I believe PvP).

Got six masteries but only two utilised due to gating on ExP.

Still, looking not bad at all now.

2/10

- horrible maze maps…..
…..that feel artificially convoluted……
…..prevent any fluid gameplay……
…..make the game feel like a platformer (I HATE PLATFORMERS)
- disappointingly little actual content (that’s why they had to gate everything)
- being forced into certain content -> no mastery xp in wvw, no mastery xp from crafting, no tyria mastery in maguuma…etc. = can’t play the game the way I’d like to without losing progress anymore
- generally a lot less convenient and accessible than the base game
- no love for pvpers
- no love for solo players

+ amazing art style
+ (would) enjoy the new elite specs (if they were not gated behind tedious mastery grind and horrid hero challenges [vampire, frogsofdoom….etc.])

Ball ache, it was fun at first but the hero point gating is terrible. The map designs aren’t fluid and it’s so kitten hard to find points I’m trying to get to. Add to that having to switch to necro because my thief just gets kitten d by all the mobs and you get a pretty disappointed customer. I compared it earlier to a dog being given a brain toy with a treat inside but it’s like one piece of kibble for lots of effort. 3/10. Also when you get to a hero point challenge good luck trying to solo it.

Visually, I love it.

The visual aspect of this game almost always makes me smile.

The jungle flowers, the Hylek and their treetop home are great.

So, I would give it a 5/10 overall, just for that alone.

I can’t really add any more points for anything else, yet.

It’s not completely devoid of fun, but some of it is unfortunately in negative territory, so that pretty much cancels out any fun you might have had, previously.

I’m still only on the first map, though.

Hopefully, once I have got used to it and/or moved on to other maps, I will be happier.

Kristine Heath.1483:

less fun than WoD. yeah i said it. and thats saying a lot.

I wouldn’t quite go that far…

For one thing, they added gliding, rather than taking away flying.

Also, they are giving no one anything much, in terms of gear.

As opposed to Blizz, who are only giving “real” raiders anything decent, this time around.

Anet may have wandered off the path slightly, but Blizz have well and truly thrown themselves in front of the truck.

Arenanet needs to really take a hard look at how they define ‘horizontal progression’ to what the definition of ‘gaming grind’ is.
I believe that in their quest to create no grind, they blurred the lines and are now on the other side of the fence.

Too much feature gating.
Too steep a learning curve from what the player base is used to
Slow flow story – (I find myself asking, “why do I care, again?”

It’s a real shame too, because you can see the amount of work the staff put into this xpac.
A bloody shame

3/10

This is an expansion they say!?
So why aren’t mobs dropping new items or skins and why aren’t we using new skills to kill these mobs!?
There are skills tied to elites which are gated behind story and a number of exp grind points so thats no fun as you have the same old skill till that point and not all elites are even fun…
There are new skins and items but there all in the cash shop and BLK Lion deal the term epic loot or even mediocre loot doesn’t describe this game at all…
We explorring maps? or are we checking out small tidbits of a map before we are forced to grind masteries…

GW2 was the feel good MMO were end game started the second you created your character. Casual grind with a friendly community and you could go even at level 1 into any map you wanted too if you could survive as exploration was unlimited and so was your desire. HoT is nothing like the core at all and nothing like what the devs initially promised for this game. This was a casual MMO that everyone could enjoy and it was fun and they stripped all that down when they released this game.

they need increase exp from kill and event beacause farming +2.5 mil exp for mastery when i got 4-12k exp from event and 500-700 exp from kill is terrible for me 1/10 hot 10/10 core game

Its a waste off cash and time, It is just one big jumping puzzle with very poor lay out.

One would think that the lack of players in Dry Tops would tell them that a lot of players dislike that kind of game play.

2 out of 10.

Around 4/10.

- elite grind is a chore, in order to get hero points you have to grind masteries…all of them. And not just first levels, all levels. I have to do this on all chars, some of which do not have even near world completion thus along with having to do hot + mastery grind in it’s entirety…I have to 100% every char I intend to play just to be able to use my elites. Wth!
- events are far and few between and give very very little exp. I am now grinding static trash spawns since with kill booster/food this is 2x faster than wandering around aimlessly looking for rare events. I expect after mentioning this, they will nerf static mob spawn exp post haste.
- event flow here is non-existant, they seem to have gone for a completely random design. this is not like SW where after a few runs it’s not only easy to understand what to do…it also ‘flows’. ie. there is no question what to do or where to go. Not so in HoT, endlessly running around in circles. Oops, I died for the 100th time to some unavoidable mechanic that my elite if fully unlocked might have prevents, well lets have that fun super long walk back and hope it’s not over by the time I get there. Opps it was. /camp
- speaking of rare events, when I do find an event there is NO people. Most these events need at least 5 people if not a zerg to complete. People who come after this intial rush are in for a suprise when they can’t advance since people before, due to bad experiences will not be coming back to help. GL completing these a month or two from now! You’ll need it!
- map design is like zelda but worse; it’s a maze from hell. There is no openness, no I am being funneled through and endless cave that is filled with dead ends. This cave is also three dimensional which makes it even worse. HoT is essentially one gigantic jump puzzle, I hate jump puzzles btw.
- despite this being a expansion launch that should have a massive amount of people, yet when I play in these new zones I rarely see anyone. Infact I went 1 hour last night wandering around and didn’t see a single person. I have reloged/zoned many many times now to try to get into a new instance with people but it’s always the same; hot is dead player wise. It’s either there isn’t many playing or mega server is not working right.
- this game now crashes without fail after 50-60 minutes with an OOM error. Assume this is a memory leak. this is really frustrating me. No other game I have does this, only gw2.
- and speaking of that crash, due to the design of events where you gotta be participating for the entire 2 hours of night/day and also get dumped into different instances once I re-load from a crash…I can’t get any thing done! Thus, like I said, I will have to grind static spawns to get exp. Fun? hardly.

All I can say, from the moment I logged into play HoT there has been kitten blocks at every single turn of the corner. Oh want to go next step story or get that HP? Tough kitten, you gotta grind like a dog. I should be having fun here. In the end, if I had full elite spec unlocked quickly without problems I think my opinion would be completely different…

As of such, playing HoT over the last few days has actually given RL headaches. The asprin company must be pleased.

3/10

I’m enjoying most of the story, but the maps are extremely frustrating for me. I can’t seem to reach hero points and the ones I do, I don’t have the mastery unlocked for it. It makes it very hard to enjoy the game.

3/10

Would be better if getting the elite spec wasn’t so frustrating.

I’m enjoying it, but the constant grind gates are a massive tedium, especially for someone like me who works every day and can only get on for a few hours each day.

I give it a big fat zero.

-10 at the moment. I regret having prepurchased this. Should have waited for the reviews.

HoT specifically zero. I want to enjoy it, but I’m spending too much time grinding for elite specs, which were the primary reason I bought the game.

im very frustrated because
the maps are stunning
the story is fine
the enemies, weapons, armors – all good to great

but – the pathfinding, complicated maps, hero points and mastery grinding – its incredibly frustrating to me right now….especially cause i feel im running around for 2 hours only to achieve something worth 15 minutes…

and this is really a shame – cause it has so much great and beautiful stuff – but after hours of not finding stuff im ready to throw my keyboard into the screen

At times, 9/10 the new zones are super cool. But the fact that I am grinding so that I can grind something else, so that I can unlock my elite specialization/ story progression is inherently unfun. I just spent like an hour staring at my character select screen trying to decide who I want to grind with the most… 0/10

I’d give it a 3.
The story was fun, up until “You need to unlock XX mastery to continue” coupled with the inability to unlock my elite spec.

I’ve just stopped playing entirely.

Solid 5. I’d give it a perfect 10 if i could unlock my elite sepc at a reasonable pace. Atm its just not that fun.