Most people think it will be a grind and what not, which I don’t disagree with, but that is what will make it the precursor for a LEGENDARY. Legendaries aren’t meant to be easy to get and just buy all your materials.
You are making the same mistake a lot of MMORPG players do.
“Grind” is not challenging. Grind is easy, so easy that you could have a bot doing it. It only takes time. Which means, legendaries will still be easy to make, only more time consuming than they already are.
ArenaNet could make Legendary acquisition actually require skill, turning it into something people could really be proud of, like defeating Liandri. But instead, all they are doing is making it require more time – which is good for them, since that means more people playing longer. It’s still bad design, though.
Kids have a life in which they have a lot of time and little of anything else, so they really enjoy that kind of thing. Adults, in other hand, understand that “time” is the most important commodity you have – everything else you can get back, but time just goes away. Hence the thing people call “effort” being translated to literally a waste of time – it’s not a challenge and it’s not fun, so it’s not worth doing.
Of course these hints could mean a lot of different things, But upon reading them the light of hope inside me from GW1 Factions lit up. Could GW2 introduce factions in HoT? I would think if they did it’d be based on the Personal story maybe Priory, Whispers or something entirely different. Who knows, what do you guys think?
They said they have already announced all features of HoT. Expecting anything more than what they have announced will only lead to disappointment. You should actually expect less, too – now that they have said they won’t release all new legendary weapons with HoT, only a few, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next update is that they won’t release all specializations with HoT, only a few as well.
New blog. It regurgitates some of the info we already know in the beginning, and then goes on about storytelling in the middle.
It says:
“Key story instances also have binary choices that define how the story unfolds; for example, after choosing to trust Laranthir and rescue the sylvari prisoners from their Mordrem captors, players can go back and instead relieve Laranthir of command to experience entirely different gameplay and narrative-path challenges. These branching choices always pay off within the same story instance, so players see the results of their decisions right away.”
And later…
“For example, whether players trust or distrust Laranthir in that initial story instance, the Vigil’s second-in-command will patrol the open world with a crack squadron of sylvari snipers, providing overwatch to beleaguered Pact survivors and raining destruction down on Mordremoth’s hordes.”
So, just like in the personal storyline, our choices will continue to be meaningless. No matter what we choose, in the example they have given, the exact same thing will happen with the relevant NPC.
This lack of relevance on the player character was one of the worst things in the personal storyline, and it’s sad to see it will continue in the expansion. We are given the illusion of choice while having little to no impact, and the NPCs are the ones giving orders and commanding the action (Traheanne, anyone?).
Does combining exotics have more chance of spawning the precursor than the rares at MF? Or is it all same
Yes, using exotics has a much higher chance.
Can’t log in either. Why am I not surprise? Great job, ArenaNet!
Or maybe the LS team is working on the LS coming after the expansion?
Uh huh.
More than one year ago:
“What is most of ArenaNet doing, since in theory there is only a small team working on the Living World?”
“They’re making an expansion! You will see, they will announce it any time now!”
More than one year later…
ArenaNet: “Hey guys, we will release an expansion! But it will take some time since we have to work on it, you know.”
Ergo…
Now the same “reasoning” returns. “The LS team is working on LS for after the expansion”. Hah! The LS team is probably in crunch mode together with the rest of ArenaNet trying to adapt Season 3 in an expansion.
They have already announced that there won’t be any underwater content in HoT.
That’s as it should be. Underwater content is a bugged mess that never should have been in the game in the first place. It goes completely against ArenaNet’s stated philosophy of not releasing content that they know is broken. It’s a pity they usually don’t bother with improving old content, it would make the game significantly better if they simply removed all enemies from underwater and removed underwater combat from the game.
They never said: “There will be a full set of Legendary weapons at release of HoT”.
Indeed. They just said we would get new Legendaries with HoT, and only when describing the details did they reveal the disappointing news, that we would get only a handful of new legendaries. Makes one wonder what other disappointing news they have been hiding.
And they actually added more mini-games between release and now as well. Including Crab-toss and Southsun Survival.
Meanwhile, the firing range in Divinity’s Reach continues to be only a decoration.
And later that year they informed us that it would not happen that year, due to changes to the reward-system. But I suppose that doesn’t count?
Oh, it counts. It reminds us how we can’t believe in ArenaNet’s plans. See, they can’t have their cake and eat it too. ArenaNet’s main excuse for the horrible communication they have is how they only talk about news once they know it has been ready to be implemented in the game. If that’s why they barely tell us anything, they can’t afford to tell us about something and later say, “sorry, it’s not really going to happen”.
So yep, we will get a few legendaries with HoT. More may one day be released, but considering ArenaNet’s track record, it’s better if you don’t believe in them and assume there won’t be any new legendary any time soon.
Would you rather have HoT released without some parts of content you wanted to see in the package (like the hardcore endgame pve content everyone is speculating about) just to be able to play it earlier?
That’s already what we will get.
ArenaNet said they will release a “handful” of Legendaries, with the rest coming “later”.
When the game was announced, years ago, they said they would add more minigames like the shooting range, “later”. That “later” never came.
In 2013, they said they would add new legendary weapons and new kinds of legendary gear, “later” in the year. That “later” never came.
Don’t expect a full game with HoT. Just like the camera PoV patch, that was delayed because it had too many bugs and was still released as a bugged mess, expect ArenaNet to take a long time to release HoT so they can add content, only to have it severely lacking content when it’s actually released.
That’s what I’m afraid of. GW2 tried to pass itself off as a game that was challenging all the “mmo” fundamentals, it’s why they tried to get rid of the trinity, and it sounds great. However, the reality is that GW2, to me at least, suffers from the most extreme versions of some of the worst fundamentals in MMO’s. Grind Wars 2; Heart of Thorns doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.
You are exactly right, unfortunatelly. All that talk about being a “revolution” and etc turned to be a lie. ArenaNet is catering to the exact same demographic of any other MMORPG – the grind people who don’t really care about the quality of the content, as long as they can grind it for a shiny reward.
The expansion will very likely be just like the Silverwastes – a bunch of copy & paste events that people repeat ad nausem just to get some reskin of an already existing item.
All the promise the game had in the beginning, all the things they could have done with the dynamic event system – all of those have been thrown in the trash.
The expansion will probably be bought by many players – there are many grinders out there. Will it be successful enough, though? I wonder. I expect it will be low quality content, so time will tell if the grinder playerbase is really enough to make a successful game.
I remember a thred with a dev saying communications will be improved on the forums.
They don’t care.
Have you seen that forum bug, that prevents people from seeing posts until someone makes a new post in a new thread page? You have probably seen posts saying “fixing forum bug”. Have you noticed how ArenaNet has made zero forum improvements for years now?
That’s because ArenaNet lost the contract with the company that developed and mantained the forum, so they cannot change any feature nor fix any bug. If ArenaNet actually cared, they could do something about it, but nope, they won’t.
Enjoy the forum you currently have, knowing it’s a carcass that has been left to rot and won’t be improved any time ever. That’s how much ArenaNet cares about “communication”.
People use Zerker builds because the damage in fractals is so kitten high (on the upper end) that everything one shots you, regardless of what you are wearing or what your build is. There is literally no point in using anything other than zerk.
That’s more because of bad game design than any limitation of the engine. The enemies have mostly been designed to have very slow, very high damage attacks, the kind of thing that is best countered by dodging. If you change it a bit – make some enemies to high speed, low damage attacks for example – then zerker won’t be so good, since the kind of defense it relies on, like dodging, wouldn’t work so well.
Unfortunatelly, ArenaNet isn’t that good at designing enemies.
Since you are going to change Victory or Death into a solo mode, can you also change the disappointing Zhaitan encounter to make the dragon more menacing during the battle?
They could, but they won’t. A recent interview mentioned how they are not going to work significantly on old content since most people play new content anyway. Guess this means we won’t have any world boss rework like Teq any time soon.
I’am guessing they’re working on raids, since there was a CDI etc.
The guy who managed the CDIs has left ArenaNet. Don’t expect any CDI development any time soon.
Hopefully Specializations next week!
Do you know what the worst scenario is?
That they haven’t said anything because not even they know what they are going to do.
Wouldn’t be the first time ArenaNet announces an idea before they actually try to implement it and learn that their original idea is not going to happen.
I’m concerned that with precursor crafting, legendary weapons will lose the exclusivity and prestige associated with them.
LOL?
What “exclusivity”? What “prestige”?
Do you honestly think ANY kind of item in any kind of game is going to make people admire you?
There are some things worth admiring other people for. In-game accomplishments are not those things. Especially in a game like GW2, in which most of the time those “accomplishments” are mindless grind that could have been done by a bot.
I doubt this information is out there but will we get a free character slot along with the release of HoT?
Not answered, there was a topic about that in which Gaile said she didn’t know the answer, and would update us as soon as she did.
However, it’s very likely they will use the expansion as a way to milk money from players by not offering a new character slot. I can even see the excuse already – GW2 had five character slots, five races and eight professions, so since it was one slot per race (it wasn’t one slot per race, actually), and the expansion is not adding any new race, it would make no sense for the expansion to come with a character slot (which is obviously not true). It’s a poor excuse, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what we get.
the biggest cited reason for people not playing Charr, and the biggest complaint from people who still played Charr regardless was the horrible armour clipping and texture stretching
You realize why the /plane emote fixed that, don’t you?
Because the armors have been made for the more humanoid professions, and poorly adapted to the Charr. Making the Charr stand just like humans do would fix some of it (the tail would still be an issue), but the complete fix would be deleting the character and making a human, a norn or a sylvari.
In the end, that’s the simple truth. ArenaNet already said they won’t fix Charr armor, because few players play as them – ironically, if the armors were fixed, maybe more people would play as Charr. But since it’s cheaper to just throw aside something instead of trying to fix it, don’t expect changes any time soon.
In the end, ArenaNet has left the game with subpar races that they won’t fix. It’s funny to see people asking for more playable races, when ArenaNet probably wishes the game had less races, not more.
A “huge” outcry by professional moaners and attention seekers who represent probably 1% of the total GW2 population?
Do you have any evidence that only “1% of the total GW2 population” feels annoyed by this update?
Get over it and stop presuming you speak for everybody.
He never said he speaks for everybody. He did say a lot of people are bothered by this year’s April Fools, which is obviously true, considering the huge forum outcry. Or are you going to pretend the massive amount of posts complaining never happened?
Since today is the official day of lies, let’s take a look back at some old promises ArenaNet made us. Have you guys noticed how hard it is to actually find the developer update posts in the ArenaNet forum? There used to be a nice blog with the relevant information before the game released, but all there is now is a very crowded News archive filled with Gem Store advertisement.
All the way back in January 2013, we got this little bit of news, in which Colin mentions the importance of avoiding event repetition:
“The more persistent events we can provide in a specific area, the less often each of the events in that area needs to occur, which in turn adds to the sense of an ever-evolving open world.”
Meanwhile, we got the Silverwastes, that are just the same two events repeating over and over (defend from the Mordrem – rebuild walls – defend from the Mordrem again – and so on), until a Breach, and then back to the beginning. Definitely an “ever-evolving open world”, right?
It was also said:
“Improving the new player experience to make it easier for new players to learn how to play GW2, enter the game world, and more quickly learn the game without being overwhelmed.”
See? The marvelous and loved NPE update, that dumbified the early game, had its roots far deeper than we expected.
Later, on July 2013, we got a new update. It was said then:
“We’ll begin regularly adding new skills and traits to the game for each profession to expand your characters and builds!”
…With “regularly” meaning “once and never again”, it appears, considering how we got one new profession-specific skill since release and nothing else; and only once we got new traits.
It was said:
“We’ll expand all crafting professions to allow them to reach a new milestone: 500 points!”
…Which in truth meant "all crafting professions other than Chef and Jeweler, as those are still down on 400.
It was said:
“On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013”
…Which has been changed to, “you will see a handful of new legendary weapons on our expansion, that maybe will be released on 2015, and hopefully a few new weapons later”. Yay for accuracy.
Oh, and it was also said:
“On top of all of this, look for the return of some of your favorite holiday festivals and super adventures mixed in among our Living World updates”
With this image:
https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/46c3flooking-ahead-02-590x331.jpg
Sooooo true, right?
So, what was YOUR favourite old promise for GW2?
Also I agree with ReaverKane, games with Portuguese localization sounds and looks weird most of the times, it is extremely rare to see a good one.
The Blizzard translation of StarCraft 2 to Portuguese was very well done. ArenaNet would never bother with that kind of thing, but at least Blizzard did it right.
ArenaNet has always been better at having ideas than at executing them. Release has always been disappointing, since the release of the original Guild Wars (in which there was a massive outcry from PvP players, when it was learned that, unlike in all of the many betas, people had to play PvE in order to unlock skills for PvP). They have never been able to properly implement the ideas they have. Some times they even lie to make it seen their ideas are bigger and bolder than they actually are (remember all the marketing around the GW2 release? The Manifesto? All that talk about a “revolution”?).
The thing is, with HoT, not even the ideas are that impressive. Most of what they have announced so far feels rather “meh”. Considering how it’s likely ArenaNet will overpromise and underdeliver, with the poor promises they have given us so far it’s very hard to feel hyped for the expansion.
I hope ArenaNet won’t ever add duels, it’s a waste of resources that could be used to actually improve the game instead.
What he said. They can try to make it as dark as they want, but it will pale in comparison to what they could accomplish if the game were rated M.
Not really. A good writer can make a very dark story with a very low rating. It’s not a matter of showing explicit content, rather of making subtext.
And even when talking about explicit content, in Guild Wars: Nightfall, one of the main antagonists tortured and ate the eyes of the PC’s mentor.
They could make dark stories if they wanted to. The thing is, ArenaNet probably doesn’t care that much. They work harder to add mindless grind to the game than to make a good storyline, as seen on how they are taking so long to fix the personal storyline, while delivering the Silverwastes grind.
Would it be possible to increase the distance from the character just slightly, and to reposition the way the greatsword is head on the back, so that it doesn’t clip?
Sorry, ArenaNet won’t do it.
They said, a long time ago, that they will not fix the many issues with Asura and Charr clipping because few players play as those.
So unless you want to be stuck with subpar races, I suggest deleting your Asura and making one of the more human-like ones.
Who could have guessed that ArenaNet would be guilty of racism in their own game?
If you turn off your postprocessing in your graphic settings, the septia screen and old-timey microphone sounds (no idea what else to call it) will be gone. Then you can mute your game sound so you don’t hear the airplane noises. Your arms will still be stuck straight out but this is just for 24hrs.
You mean, if you stop playing the game, you won’t have to endure this year’s tasteless, unfunny “joke”? That’s not a great solution, is it?
People are really overreacting to something that happens ONE out of 365 days of a year.
“ONE” day is one day too many for a “joke” that is not fun, breaks the game and can actually cause headaches on people. This is very poor quality control and poor design, as usual.
I would like to thank ArenaNet for keeping GW2 without the silly Gem Store items they removed from the game, like the boxing gloves and the bunny ears.
If they do have a medical condition then indeed they should see a doctor. That said I have yet to hear of a condition where viewing an in game character with their arms out making air plane noises causes medical distress. Like I said, hyperbole and the use of such does not help the person’s complaint.
The flickering effect they are using to mimmick old movies was well known for causing headaches when it was common, decades ago. Learning a bit of History is a good thing, especially when trying to mock other people’s opinions.
Why are people ignoring the fact that one actually can turn off the “game-stopping” parts of the thing?
Because it’s ridiculous that a game would present “game-stopping” parts, especially as a very unfunny joke.
So are you saying there is still no endgame PvE content then? Just grind quests/explore to finish off maps and get rewards? Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, do people just play this game for PvP then and that’s all?
No, no. People follow this timer so they go fight against an open world boss with dozens of other players, spamming auto-attack and hoping that they do enough damage (during the 5 seconds it takes for the boss to die) to register that they were part of the event, so they can get a reward.
That – what we call “zerging” open world bosses, which most of the time is a matter of spamming auto attack – is the main endgame here.
What PvE content is there to do at endgame and are there dungeons/raids or other instanced content to do with groups of friends?
No raids.
No instanced group content for more than 5 people. Most of the instanced group content for 5 people are the dungeons that you saw at release.
PvE endgame? To grind a couple new maps. You get really “amazing” rewards, though, like a armor set that is a reskin of another set and that you cannot dye.
If they continue to do this then essentially we will be purchasing a portion of the expansion? But people will argue that all the remaining features will be added with subsequent updates after launch. Yes, that’s true, but these were promised with the expansion, any live updates after the release of HoT is essentially not part of the expansion.
I’m going to have a really good laugh if the “live updates after the release of HoT” get turned into other expansions we will be expected to pay for. So HoT would give us a couple new Legendaries, a couple new guild halls and a couple new maps, only for more options to be released later as another expansion, at the same price point.
I think specializations will be unlocked for a given character by using an item called a Specialization Contract.
The Specialization Contract will be an item made in the Mystic Forge, by combining the following:
- 250 Globs of Ectoplasm
- 250 Bolts of Silk
- 250 Obsidian Gemstones
- A Gift of Change
The Gift of Change, also crafted on the Mystic Forge, is account bound and is made through:
- 250 Mystic Clovers
- One Chaos of Lyssa
- 15 Vision Crystals
- 100 Globs of Chaos
Globs of Chaos are a new crafting material that results from salvaging precursors, but with a low drop rate (using a Mystic Salvage Kit, it averages on one Glob per 10 salvaged exotics). They’re also account bound.
With the Specialization Contract, one character unlocks one specialization. Unlocking specializations for other characters, or unlocking more specializations for the same character (once they are available) would require more Specialization Contracts.
Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun?
How do you people think we will unlock specializations?
If you’d like to substitute the word ‘crucial’ that’d be fine. The game is in a crucial stage of development. They are still creating it by designing things. HoT is still being birthed. I am saying exactly what you are. It’s odd for someone to be leaving while this is all still going on.
Indeed. It’s likely that they haven’t talked much about specializations because they don’t even know that much about specializations themselves. As GW2’s first expansion, HoT is critical in defining to players what they are to expect from future expansions.
Considering how Chris Whiteside has often worked closely to the community, trying to turn our feedback in reality, it’s obvious that his job would be crucial at a time like this. The fact he has left is not only a huge loss – notice how no one is doing the CDIs in his place – but also a very bad sign. I wonder if there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.
OP, you are right. From a gameplay point of view, the Transmutation Charges are pointless.
In fact, there are two very interesting systems in the game: in one hand, we can change the skin of any item. In other hand, we can change the stats of an item (which happens, for example, in the legendary weapons). Combining those two systems would lead to a situation in which it’s possible to completely split skins and stats, so players would easily be able to change builds on the fly, thus adding more variety to gameplay.
Unfortunatelly, doing so would remove the two things ArenaNet values the most in the game: a way to milk money from players (since that’s why transmutation charges exist) and grind (since, if we could freely change the stats of items, there would be no point in grinding for multiple ascended weapon sets).
ArenaNet’s excuse, often regurgitated, was that they need to make money somehow, considering how much content we got for free. Now that they are boxing the Living World Season 3 and calling it an “expansion”, that excuse has become invalid, but that won’t stop ArenaNet from trying to milk money as much as possible. They may not even have that many choices, considering how much they invested in the underperforming China release.
(Incidentally, the excuse was weak in the first place. For a new player who buys the game today, well, Season 1 doesn’t exist; Season 2 already has to be paid for; and Season 3 will be sold as an expansion. What does that player get “for free”? The feature packs? Hah, I wish those had been sold, so I wouldn’t have bought the delightful “NPE Feature Pack”.)
It’s rather obvious that a poor game studio is one that makes changes to a game that are bad for the players, but good for the studio itself. The Transmutation Charges, the scam-like lottery system for weapon skins, the fact the content some people will buy – HoT – will come with just a few legendaries while ArenaNet makes almost monthly releases of weapon skins in the Gem Store… All of those make it rather clear which kind of developer ArenaNet is.
No it doesn’t. And I never actually said that. Please read my post again.
You did.
You can’t honestly expect Anet to keep handing out new content and features for free forever.
They weren’t “handing out new content and features for free forever” before the release of HoT. They were already selling content before. They used to sell a lot of stuff under the excuse that, since we got the Living World for free, they had to charge us for something.
What’s the excuse now?
Even if that was true (and I’m very skeptical about that), I honestly don’t see the problem. What part of “Anet is a business, not a charity” do you not understand? You can’t honestly expect Anet to keep handing out new content and features for free forever.
They are not handing content for free forever. Character customization is a huge aspect of the game, and see the post above yours – a lot of weapon skins have been released and made available only through the scam-like lottery system, or by buying from those who have used the lottery system. It’s interesting, to say the least, that ArenaNet would say “Sorry, but we can’t release all legendaries at once” at the same time they say “here’s our monthly release of 19 weapon skins in the Gem Store!”.
So because they also release content that isn’t free, they’re not handing out content for free? That doesn’t make any sense.
It does. Your point was that ArenaNet can’t only release content for free, since they need to make a profit, thus it wouldn’t be bad if they charge for Living World Season 3 (aka HoT). But they have never been releasing only free content, they have always been selling us content in one way or another. The fact they have decided to sell the kind of content that used to be for free while still selling the same content they used to sell is not a matter of ArenaNet needing to make a profit, it feels more like they are desperate to make money right now.
1) Is the expansion anything more than gathering a whole season of a Living Story and gameplay features updates together and adding in a few more maps to bump up the quantity so we can pay instead of getting free LS?
Pretty much.
But more than the quantity, I’m concerned about the quality. If it’s all rushed content made to quickly make a few bucks, I wouldn’t be surprised if all maps are basically copy & paste like the Silverwastes, and all weapon skins available in game are like the extremely bland Makeshift Weapons, with the real stuff available only through the Gem Store.
…So does this mean that not ALL of the new Legendaries will be available the day Heart of Thorns hits store shelves, like maybe we’ll have access to Sword, Greatsword, and Bow, and then, a week or two later, we get Rifle and Hammer and Dagger, and then, another two weeks later they add in Staff and Pistol and Torch, and so on,
Or maybe they will give us a couple greatsword skins on HoT release, six months later a shield and a hammer skin, then one year after that a bow skin.
All the while releasing monthly new skins in the Gem Store, under the Black Lion Chest lottery system.
It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does.
This isn’t exclusive to GW2. In many MMORPGs, when the designers want to make a mob more interesting than just “spam auto-attacks in melee”, they often resort to some kind of stun due to lack of the creativity they would need in order to implement anything better.
You can see that clearly in the Living World Season 2. Knock backs happen pretty much everywhere. There’s even a boss whose main trick is being able to knock you down from a ledge knowing you can’t do the same to him.
ArenaNet crafted a combat system that could have been extremelly interesting, they just didn’t make good enough PvE enemies to make use of it. That’s why, when they’re in doubt, knock backs it is. And it’s getting even worse lately.
It’s easy to throw stones, it’s a lot harder to suggest what those “extremely interesting” mob mechanics might be. Do you lack creativity?
ArenaNet obviously does.
Even if that was true (and I’m very skeptical about that), I honestly don’t see the problem. What part of “Anet is a business, not a charity” do you not understand? You can’t honestly expect Anet to keep handing out new content and features for free forever.
They are not handing content for free forever. Character customization is a huge aspect of the game, and see the post above yours – a lot of weapon skins have been released and made available only through the scam-like lottery system, or by buying from those who have used the lottery system. It’s interesting, to say the least, that ArenaNet would say “Sorry, but we can’t release all legendaries at once” at the same time they say “here’s our monthly release of 19 weapon skins in the Gem Store!”.
I hope crafting the precursors are a grind and not something that can be completed in a matter of hours.
Maybe not a grind but limit the amount of progress you can make per day or week or something.
Because grind is SO MUCH fun /rolleyes
whats your thoughts?
That I really wish the “simple character model” feature would hide backpacks and weapon skins, like it hides everything else. Then people could have a real size Karka Queen attached to their backs but it wouldn’t bother those who don’t wan’t to see it.
(Oh, and while we’re at it, please give us a way to remove the sound from the annoying Slaver-Tron backpack. I wish it were under the same volume slider as players’ instruments.)
The idea is interesting. I’m worried about the execution, though. Last time we heard from Linsey Murdock, it was at the announcement of ascended gear, and we all know how “fun” it is to craft that (only, NOT). Before that, it was all about the crafting system, and we still need to craft stuff we won’t use in order to advance in that, which is something they stated they would avoid So while the new way to craft legendaries appear to be interesting, well, I’ll wait to see the final product before claiming it’s an improvement over what we have today.
We’ll just have to disagree.
You’re probably right, though. It feels like the expansion is basically what Living World Season 3 would have been, with a few extras. It makes sense, even – with GW2 not making that much of a profit and the China release underperforming, it doesn’t surprise me that ArenaNet is in a hurry to find a way to make more money quickly.
It’s just, in PvE does every single mob need a knockback / stun / interrupt that it just opens with. It barely serves any purpose other than to plainly annoy, and that it does.
This isn’t exclusive to GW2. In many MMORPGs, when the designers want to make a mob more interesting than just “spam auto-attacks in melee”, they often resort to some kind of stun due to lack of the creativity they would need in order to implement anything better.
You can see that clearly in the Living World Season 2. Knock backs happen pretty much everywhere. There’s even a boss whose main trick is being able to knock you down from a ledge knowing you can’t do the same to him.
ArenaNet crafted a combat system that could have been extremelly interesting, they just didn’t make good enough PvE enemies to make use of it. That’s why, when they’re in doubt, knock backs it is. And it’s getting even worse lately.
This is such a disappointment. I was hoping the elementalist would be getting some new, exciting F-skills but apparently that would go beyond your creative scope… I hope this data-mining will prove me wrong but it doesn’t seem like it…
Do you know what would be really, really fun?
If those skills are not placeholders, and the sword really does get dagger and staff skills with just a few new skills at all.
I imagine how upset the community would be then.
Meh, I hope ArenaNet will never waste resources with this, and rather use them for more worthwhile features.
like gem store items and kasjory living story content
:)
Ah, you meant you wanted the artists and the writers to program dueling, instead of the programmers? Well, it would be something fun to see, at least. It would not work, but would look pretty and have a huge lore backstory. Probably something with Scarlet, even.
Meh, I hope ArenaNet will never waste resources with this, and rather use them for more worthwhile features.
Will specialisations be able to wield old weapons?
Mesmers are only going to get a shield off-hand. Do you believe the mesmer specialization will only have two weapon skills?
And if they are able to, will the weapon skills be the same?
In the last years since release, how many skills has ArenaNet added to the game? How many skills do you really think they are going to add in the expansion?
I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.
Most MMORPGs are very poor games.
I remember reading a review of a MMORPG some time ago and the reviewer saying, “All quests are of the ‘kill ten rats’ variety, but that’s just part of the genre, right?”, and I think that’s exactly why MMORPGs are so bad.
Because they are not even trying to be good.
MMORPGs cater to the lowest denominator. You can see it here – when someone complains that GW2’s story is weak, the usual reply is, “if you want a good story, go play a single player MMORPG”. When someone complains that GW2 has too much grind, the usual reply is, “if you want a game without grind, don’t play MMORPGs”, and so on. MMORPGs are bad games because MMORPG players are willing to accept bad games.
The irony is that there aren’t that many players willing to accept bad games out there. Not nearly enough to sustain all the MMORPGs that currently exist. It’s little surprise that so many have failed, that very few of them manage to keep themselves as pay-to-play, and that the MMORPG fad – when every single developer claimed to be working on one – has passed.
I think they’re a lost cause by now. The current generation of MMORPG players is happy to swim in the cesspool we currently have. Only when they’re gone, AND players demand good content from MMORPG developers, AND the genre isn’t seen as intrinsically subpar when compared to other games, is that MMORPGs may become something good.