Guild Wars 2

Ookamikun.6472:

OriOri.8724:

penelopehannibal.8947:

You can complete all three Orrian maps without anyone doing any of the metas.

I’m fairly certain that cursed shore has 1 HP that still requires you to complete the grenth temple to commune there. I’ve tried on several characters and was just unable to fully channel that HP before the stupid environmental effects from that statue hit me, interrupting the channel.

iirc Grenth statue doesn’t interrupt your channel since it’s just passive damage

Not the one in the temple but the one outside in the middle of the island certainly does. We tried everything to get it, and eventually just took the temple, when we could.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

what bad publicity exactly? apart from the usual nay-saying in gaming forums by the usual negative types the game was received very well across the board, for example:

pc gamer 85
ign 76
metacritic 85
mmorpg 82

If you were following meta critic at first, the game was down around 50. It LATER came up to 85. There was a concert effort by people who were outraged to downvote it on metacritic and that number was very low. I remember posting about it at the time.

Game review sites are meaningless anyway. Most games are sold by word of mouth or advertising. Anyone who wanted to do a search on Guild Wars 2 at that time would have encountered articles in places about fans being dissatisfied, and even reddit, which is usually quite positive about the game, was on the warpath.

In general terms, if you post a stupid negative post on reddit, it gets downvoted to hell. The negative posts on reddit are few and far between. Back then, reddit was on the warpath and the first page was filled with negative posts that remained top rated posts for days on end.

I agree there are often a few loud complaints that take front and center, but this was something completely different.

I said publicity, and those sites along with advertising is the publicity/word of mouth and on average HOT was well received, and is well regarded then and now. The fact is on average the typical punter who has not played GW looking for an opinion on HOT are going to see this and videos, and not disgruntled self-centered highly vocal posts on forums and reddit.

There were articles on MMO sites that told of how the community was unhappy with the company and the game. That’s publicity most new games never get. Those articles are rare and they did exist for HOT. That IS bad publicity.

Djinn.9245:

Blue.2734:

Wow, not a very nice person, are you? When you are lost and trying to figure out where you are and where you need to be takes a few minutes and the spawn rate is pretty high for mobs. It is so nice to see there are still the elitist that think their mean and not helpful things to say are okay and just for the record, I have played it, although not as high as some I have seen my mastery level is 23 all zones open with completion between 57 to 96%. If you have nothing nice to say, then please say nothing at all.

No, that was not a very nice post. I’m not going to respond to it in case it gets removed.

I agree that mobs in HoT are very deadly. Anyone who thinks that mobs in core Tyria are anywhere near as bad (in general) are just not truthful.

Yep mobs in HoT are harder. There are snipers who will kill you with a red line of death fired from their bows. But there’s also a target that appears over you when that’s happening that lets you know it’s coming and if you move sideways, it will always miss you.

There’s smokescale who do a ton of damage and can’t seem to be hit at all. Unless you learn to back out of their circle of smoke, where they can’t be hit, and let them come to you, in which case they still do a lot of damage, but they die very quickly.

And yes, there are pocket raptors which do a lot of damage, but die quickly to AOE and there are a ton of them around to rally on.

Creatures in HOT are harder, but most of them do have a strategy to deal with them. It takes a bit of patience to learn the strategy.

The hardest stuff in HoT for most people are probably the frogs that create poison circles. Shadow leapers are better to attack from close range (and jump away from you), and blade dancers are better to attack from range. Just be conscious of the poison and move out of it as fast as possible.

Having condition removal is helpful as well.

HoT is harder, but it’s just a matter of knowing your enemy. In the mean time there should be somewhere in the game where you’re fighting a powerful foe like an elder dragon that just destroyed the entire pact fleet, where you feel like you’re in some kind of danger at some point.

Ashabhi.1365:

cesmode.4257:

I quit the game a few years back…I didnt really like the living story stuff.

How is it now?

I am a returning player myself. I was gone for almost 2 years, so I missed a lot. Since being back, here is my take on what I have discovered.

I was never a Living Story person. Having said that, I like season 3 so far. It is more like the personal story from way back when than the staged event system that the whole Scarlett debacle was. I am enjoying it immensely, and I am looking forward to the next episode.

WvW has changed in that the new elite classes and specs make it difficult for old-school eles like me to get back in the swing of things, but I am learning.

I never got into sPvP, so I can’t comment.

The new zones are pleasantly difficult. I like the fact that I can’t take a nap on my keyboard and still complete the meta.

Eventually, I hope to get into raiding, but until I get farther along with my character and learn the things that others already have down pat, I’ll putter along with what I am doing.

The only thing that I really dislike is the grind involved for the masteries. I am bored with the same events over and over for the experience necessary to make it to the next mastery level. Not only for HoT, but now for Tyria core as well. Not that I mind working for them, but it just doesn’t seem to go as smoothly as leveling my character did.

Hope that helps. Keep in mind that its only my opinion, and YMMV.

Just some advice on leveling masteries. Use buffs. Don’t just depend on dynamic events. Killing stuff with high bonus XP will level your masteries faster than doing events will, and it’s far easier to find that stuff. Using food, utility, guild buff, birthday booster, celebration booster, XP boosters will get your masteries leveled very quickly. Far more quickly than you’d think possible, I’d guess.

Jski.6180:

Aeolus.3615:

Jski.6180:

Cyninja.2954:

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Jski.6180:

The big thing HoT did wrong was making raids way too important to the over all game. Classes live and die off of the balancing to raids aimed builds but for some reason it effects both wvw and open world pve. In a way anet is giving up there old game types for a new one and much smaller / less played. HoT kind of messed things up in that way.

Open world pve doesn’t need balance, it never has and never will unless arenanet moves away from gather 50-100 people, zerg down event, done.

That’s exactly the thinking that leads to raids’ overblown importance in this game.

No, there’s no content that “doesn’t need balancing”. Not unless you treat it as completely unimportant.

No that’s the type of thinking which realises that open world content in this game is not designed around certain classes but certain amounts of people doing said content. Yes, some classes are easier/stronger in open world (necromancer for example) and others are inherintly more difficult (mesmer comes to mind) but guess what, that was the case before raids were introduced and it would remain to be the case even if raids were to be removed.

The only difference is we now actualy have some sort of balance being done. It doesn’t change that the difficulty in open world content is about as hard as finding your 1 key and targeting stuff with it.

Raid balance has literally 0 effect on class viability in open world content at this point in time.

Ele dose less dmg vs big mobs in open pve and over all has lost dmg due to blunt dmg -% because of nerf aimed purely at raids. Have you not seen any of the updates up to this point a -7% dmg reduction to an effect of air overload hits ele in raids (the aim) open world pve dungeon pve and wvw.

wich was nosense… thats one of the points of having AOE radios spells, huge mobs will take more damage sicne they will get more hits due its size :\.

That balance tells alot of the quality of balaces this guys do… and why i dotn expect good stuff from this dev team balance and the way they think.

Even on WvW, its the other sources of cleaves/aoe that need to be reduced in quantity not damage… AOE strong spells should be the way to actually aoe… damage instad of stacking every source of anything that atacks more than 1 target in a spamzone.

It kind of shows that the game is falling apart. I do not think they have the dev team any more and the next expansion maybe the last. I realty do like the combat in this game (the main thing that sells me on games) but not being able to play staff ele in wvw as dmg has comply sucked the fun out of the game for me.

They factually have a dev team. Aside from the fact that I have a couple of devs in my guild that have been with the company for quite some time. they couldn’t produce a new zone and new story every 2-3 months, plus a new raid wing, plus new fractals, if they didn’t have a dev team.

You don’t like the game does not equal the game is falling apart. From my observations the game seems to be doing okay. Not as good as it was at it’s height, but nowhere near falling apart.

I still get groups for everything, all the metas are still done, there’s a leather farm going actively over 90% of the time even. I just did the jade meta in Bloodstone Fen for two days in a row and it was quite populated. One of those times was at off hours.

It’s true with more new zones the population is more spread out, but it doesn’t stop me from doing anything in the game.

vesica tempestas.1563:

what bad publicity exactly? apart from the usual nay-saying in gaming forums by the usual negative types the game was received very well across the board, for example:

pc gamer 85
ign 76
metacritic 85
mmorpg 82

If you were following meta critic at first, the game was down around 50. It LATER came up to 85. There was a concert effort by people who were outraged to downvote it on metacritic and that number was very low. I remember posting about it at the time.

Game review sites are meaningless anyway. Most games are sold by word of mouth or advertising. Anyone who wanted to do a search on Guild Wars 2 at that time would have encountered articles in places about fans being dissatisfied, and even reddit, which is usually quite positive about the game, was on the warpath.

In general terms, if you post a stupid negative post on reddit, it gets downvoted to hell. The negative posts on reddit are few and far between. Back then, reddit was on the warpath and the first page was filled with negative posts that remained top rated posts for days on end.

I agree there are often a few loud complaints that take front and center, but this was something completely different.

Work on the second generation of legendaries is not suspended indefinitely. That is to say, we’ve had weapons delivered to us, after it was supposedly suspended.

What Anet isn’t doing is making long collections, but they’ve been delivering new legendary weapons to us.

I’m not sure that’s going to change any time soon.

zealex.9410:

Vayne.8563:

zealex.9410:

Vayne.8563:

Hey mate, welcome back. Yeah, I’m still here. Not as happy with the direction of the game, but still happy with quite a bit of the stuff that’s come out. For example, a new zone with each living story chapter. The stories are better than the were too, at least to me.

If you own Heart of Thorns, there’s more challenging content in both the open world and raids. Gliding has changed the game quite a bit for me, and my guild hall is fully upgraded, and happily chugging along.

I still play every day.

whats the direction that the game is taking that you dont like?

I never felt raiding belonged in this game. I think some of the grind for certain items is too high for casual players, combined with timers and having to use LFG to get into specific maps, which seems to offend some people, even though I don’t mind it.

At the end of the day, with the new content, without a timer site and using LFG, it’s much harder to get stuff done. Half the playerbase doesn’t realize it.

Raids are a symptom of the game moving to harder content that requires more dedication to beat.

This game was once more pick up and play. You can still play it casually but you need to know a lot more.

Interestng opinions. I believe tho that there need to be content and pace for 2 diff groups because not everyone plays this game casually as well as not everyone plays it hardcore. Both are parts of the population and both should be pleased by diff things anet does. Tbh i felt like the game needed some atttention to ppl who put alot more effort to do things and what not because imho completing harder things and getting what you came for that way feels all the more satisfying.

I’ve discussed this elsewhere, and I’m not 100% sure this is the place for it, but I guess it does tie in to how the game is doing.

The game was mostly casual for 3 plus years. That means a lot of hard core players didn’t wait around. The game attracted casual players. It’s business model was based on casual players. And casual players came to play. That’s the game that was provided.

HoT is less casual. It can be soloed, but it can’t necessarily be casually soloed. When you change the game from it’s core offering, you end up with dissatisfied people. So maybe you do get some new people who like hard core stuff, but only at the risk of alienating your core player base…which is almost always a bad idea.

We’ve seen many comments on the difficulty of HoT, or the increased grind, or the inability to solo, or the lack of access for casual players. It’s not just one or two opinions, a lot of people hold these ideas. But they didn’t get those ideas in a vacuum. The game trained people to understand what they were going to get.

If you don’t like more difficult, more grindy content, and you bought the expansion, there’s at least a reasonable chance that you were going to be put off by something.

It’s not because the game doesn’t need harder core content. But the balance of casual content in the expansion to harder core content is off. If casual people were the most loyal, biggest part of the player base, then the game stood the most to lose by not catering to that demographic.

I’ve been saying this since long before HoT launched, in relation to raids, and the image of the game to casuals.

I really do believe that what I expected to happen has actually happened. I think the game did lose a percentage of it’s casual player base. I’m not sure enough hard core players are here to offset that loss.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

Nole.3017:

Guys look at the bright side at least now they know what they shouldn’t do in next xpacs and better sooner than later

Actually this is a good point, but I’m also worried that Anet will throw about the baby with the bathwater. There are some people who love HoT and there are things in HoT that will probably never be repeated, in spite of that.

“some” people are not enough for big budget projects
for those, you need MANY people
and know we know, why nobody tried something like this before
Anet should hire a market researcher (or get a better one)

Some people are mostly all the ever buy an expansion. As I’ve already mentioned elsewhere, we don’t know WHY those people didn’t buy. If price was the biggest indicator, and it might have been, then you can’t tell if the expansion is niche or not.

And if the price and bad publicity in combination drove people to stop playing the game, there’s a decent chance changing the direction again, will kitten off the players there now, rather than the players who have already left.

Sometimes, even if you make a mistake, you can’t go back to how it was.

At any rate, all this really says is you don’t like the expansion so you think not enough people have bought it, for the reasons you don’t like it. That’s not only not proven, but not provable.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Feanor.2358:

Djinn.9245:

I think its funny how so many people put words in others’ mouths. I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying “I can’t play in HoT.” What I do see is people saying “I don’t like it.”

Now here’s an interesting thought: you literally can’t create content that everyone would like. People are different and so are their tastes. Try to appease one and you’ll upset another.

Creating different content aimed at different players is ultimately good for the game – it expands its potential player base.

any mmo needs bread and butter content to keep the wheels turning
if they spend all the resources on niche content, there will only be niche players
left to pay the bills
i still miss tyria…and i still blame mordy

I don’t believe that HOT is niche content. It may not be universally liked content, but that was true of core Tyria as well. Plenty of people expressed boredom while leveling in core Tyria. Not everyone had the same experience.

HoT provides an experience that is not the same as core Tyria, but that doesn’t make it niche content. I believe more people play HoT than most who don’t like it believe. Certainly plenty of people in my casual guild play hot relatively regularly.

Raids, however, I do believe are niche content.

if it isnt universally liked, then it IS niche content, how else would you define
niche?
lets look at the merits of HoT:
first they fired the director
then they nerfed it
now they have just abandoned it, to work on the next expansion
does that look like a success to you?

Leveling in core Tyria wasn’t universally liked. By your definition Core Tyria is niche content.

They didn’t fire the director. He left for a job with Amazon. Had they fired him, after they announced he was leaving they wouldn’t have allowed him to participate in an AMA. Colin left of his own accord. Saying he was fired is simply not true.

They didn’t particularly nerf HOT, except for the TD meta. They added some veteran events, and thinned out a couple of paths.

They haven’t abandoned HoT, they’ve moved onto the living story. They did make major changes to the last story episode of HOT only recently, and they’ve added current events in HOT, and even a new raid wing. Not sure how you can say HOT was abandoned.

The fact is, there are still plenty of people playing HoT. Anyone who doesn’t play HOT has no real idea how many people are still playing. Even off times, there are people there doing event chains, and if you use a timer site and LFG, there are people doing the metas as well, at all hours of the day and night.

Saying something is abandoned doesn’t actually make it abandoned.

if it can sell a mio copies a year, then it isnt niche
very few games could do that, even fewer mmos
tyria got people in, HoT scared them away

Until you can produce actual metrics, this is just conjecture on your part. HoT has people in it. Tyria has people in it. Only Anet knows just how much are in either.

More to the point, only Anet knows which group of people are actively supporting the game with cash, as well.

Aeolus.3615:

Xenon.4537:

I know you guys are entitled to your opinions, but when I read these comments I envision a bunch of oil baron monopoly-guys scoffing and struggling to keep their monocle from falling out.

“Harumph! I cannot approve of this plebeian Wooden Potatoes. What a crass, uncouth, boorish man! I certainly don’t agree with all he says, wot wot!”

Some people here never played mmo’s before so anything that Anet does looks AAAAMMMAAZZZINNG!

actually.. they artwork is amazing ._., still could have a more natural feel for building design.

And some people have played a bunch of MMOs thought they all basically sucked and like this better. Liking this better than other MMOs I’ve played isn’t a function of me love this game unconditionally. It’s a function of not liking the way other MMOs were laid out.

I hated competing for resource nodes in any game where that was a thing. Didn’t like it at all. I don’t really like quest hubs, and what quest hubs do to a game. Follow the arrow, talk to the guy, wall of text, here’s a reward you may or may not need. No thanks.

As for the WP review, he’s entitled to his opinion but it is, after all, just one mans opinion. I agree with some of what he says, not all of it. It’s a good review, all things being equal.

qbalrog.8017:

Vayne.8563:

I never felt raiding belonged in this game. I think some of the grind for certain items is too high for casual players, combined with timers and having to use LFG to get into specific maps, which seems to offend some people, even though I don’t mind it.

At the end of the day, with the new content, without a timer site and using LFG, it’s much harder to get stuff done. Half the playerbase doesn’t realize it.

…

This game was once more pick up and play. You can still play it casually but you need to know a lot more.

“much harder to get stuff done” pretty much nails it for me. There is much I like about the game but it is hard to progress at the goals I am interested in pursuing at a rate that feels fun. That to me is what they broke with HoT. The content I want to do feels locked behind timegates and content I don‘t want to do.

I wouldn’t mind working on another legendary for instance but i need to run fractals to get masteries and to unlock the collections and a bunch of other things that might appeal on my terms but not as a must do.

It is all made worse by the lurking sense that they knowingly wedged everything up to try to mask the somewhat limited content in HoT

Okay so how is running fractals for a legendary any different from running dungeons, which you had to do originally?

Nole.3017:

Guys look at the bright side at least now they know what they shouldn’t do in next xpacs and better sooner than later

Actually this is a good point, but I’m also worried that Anet will throw about the baby with the bathwater. There are some people who love HoT and there are things in HoT that will probably never be repeated, in spite of that.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Feanor.2358:

Djinn.9245:

I think its funny how so many people put words in others’ mouths. I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying “I can’t play in HoT.” What I do see is people saying “I don’t like it.”

Now here’s an interesting thought: you literally can’t create content that everyone would like. People are different and so are their tastes. Try to appease one and you’ll upset another.

Creating different content aimed at different players is ultimately good for the game – it expands its potential player base.

any mmo needs bread and butter content to keep the wheels turning
if they spend all the resources on niche content, there will only be niche players
left to pay the bills
i still miss tyria…and i still blame mordy

I don’t believe that HOT is niche content. It may not be universally liked content, but that was true of core Tyria as well. Plenty of people expressed boredom while leveling in core Tyria. Not everyone had the same experience.

HoT provides an experience that is not the same as core Tyria, but that doesn’t make it niche content. I believe more people play HoT than most who don’t like it believe. Certainly plenty of people in my casual guild play hot relatively regularly.

Raids, however, I do believe are niche content.

if it isnt universally liked, then it IS niche content, how else would you define
niche?
lets look at the merits of HoT:
first they fired the director
then they nerfed it
now they have just abandoned it, to work on the next expansion
does that look like a success to you?

Leveling in core Tyria wasn’t universally liked. By your definition Core Tyria is niche content.

They didn’t fire the director. He left for a job with Amazon. Had they fired him, after they announced he was leaving they wouldn’t have allowed him to participate in an AMA. Colin left of his own accord. Saying he was fired is simply not true.

They didn’t particularly nerf HOT, except for the TD meta. They added some veteran events, and thinned out a couple of paths.

They haven’t abandoned HoT, they’ve moved onto the living story. They did make major changes to the last story episode of HOT only recently, and they’ve added current events in HOT, and even a new raid wing. Not sure how you can say HOT was abandoned.

The fact is, there are still plenty of people playing HoT. Anyone who doesn’t play HOT has no real idea how many people are still playing. Even off times, there are people there doing event chains, and if you use a timer site and LFG, there are people doing the metas as well, at all hours of the day and night.

Saying something is abandoned doesn’t actually make it abandoned.

scrumsome.7198:

Vayne.8563:

…

The problem is so many people listen to what’s said on the forums, fairly or unfairly and don’t buy HoT because of it. I met another player in game today who put off buying hot for ages, because everyone told him it wasn’t soloable, except she’s finding it easy enough to solo.

That’s the problem with generalizations in general. They affect how people feel about a product, even if what they’re saying isn’t true for everyone. It’s definitely affected HoT sales.

That was a surprising statement from you Vayne: “The problem is so many people…” – Really? I would consider that a marginal reason why HoT underperformed. Especially since much of the negative feedback came 2-3 months after realease when most copies were sold.

The state/quality of the expansion, the amount of content vs. price and the new “direction” was IMO “the problem” – Anet is responsible and could have fixed that. No amount of Apple-logic applied by fans (it’s the clients doing it wrong) can!

And yes, your statement as well as mine is a generalization

I really don’t understand Anet. With their new direction they painted themselves into a corner. In their next expansion they can choose to please the people who loves HoT, or try to bring back some of us who felt that the new “direction” destroyed the game we liked. Doing the latter would probably alienate quite a few of the HoT fans. Option 3 would be yet another change in direction to attract a completely new crop of players.

So far they have tried:

• Casual content and storytelling
• 3 “faction” PvP/RvR
• Their version of E-sport
• 5-person instanced content
• Largescale PvE events
• Gliding/“flying”
• Raids
• Increased open world difficulty
• Rep. grind as horizontal progression

If they continue their strange “fuzzy logic” way of determining development direction, it seems only a few options haven’t been explored:

• Traditional gear progression
• Mounts
• Corpse running
• Full/partial loot open world PvP.

I will be interesting to see which way the next expansion will push this game

See this is the kind of logic/post that I’m talking about.

I do believe the expansion underperformed. However, you’re making an assumption that it under-performed based on your issues with the expansion.

The expansion underperformed based on a TON of issues, many of which was solved early on, but it often doesn’t matter once you get to that point. I know this as someone who sold games for most of my adult life. If you don’t get the launch right, what you do after is just a band-aid. There are exceptions to this,. but there are very few of them.

For example, a lot of people didn’t buy the expansion, in my opinion,. simply because it was priced to high for what was offered, and if you don’t buy the expansion, you very often move to other games. If this expansion were $30, in my opinion, you’d not be able to make that post.

Add into that the original decision about the character slot…that hurt the company. It was a bad decision in my opinion and set up a bad situation. Now you have two reasons why people might not buy the expansion, and they have very very little to do with the content of the expansion.

Just the price for what people perceived they were getting alone, could have tanked the expansion. Keep in mind, the drection of the expansion wouldn’t really have been known during the pre-order period and far more people might have preordered it, if the expansion didn’t look too expensive and people didn’t wait to see.

But then, Anet made the decision to make the elite spec be unlocked for 400 hero points, meaning, that people who didn’t have a lot of extra hero points, had to do every hero point in HoT to unlock their elite spec. That was a bad decision that received a ton of negative publicity, which was fixed early on.

Other complaints about HoT were fixed in the patch last April, and even more recently when they applied fixes to the last story instance.

Most people seem to think that it was “their” issues with HOT that prevented people from buying HoT. Instead what HoT had from almost day one was very bad publicity. Not sure how anyone can assume that wasn’t the largest contributing factor.

battledrone.8315:

Feanor.2358:

Djinn.9245:

I think its funny how so many people put words in others’ mouths. I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying “I can’t play in HoT.” What I do see is people saying “I don’t like it.”

Now here’s an interesting thought: you literally can’t create content that everyone would like. People are different and so are their tastes. Try to appease one and you’ll upset another.

Creating different content aimed at different players is ultimately good for the game – it expands its potential player base.

any mmo needs bread and butter content to keep the wheels turning
if they spend all the resources on niche content, there will only be niche players
left to pay the bills
i still miss tyria…and i still blame mordy

I don’t believe that HOT is niche content. It may not be universally liked content, but that was true of core Tyria as well. Plenty of people expressed boredom while leveling in core Tyria. Not everyone had the same experience.

HoT provides an experience that is not the same as core Tyria, but that doesn’t make it niche content. I believe more people play HoT than most who don’t like it believe. Certainly plenty of people in my casual guild play hot relatively regularly.

Raids, however, I do believe are niche content.

susana.7814:

Vayne.8563:

susana.7814:

Vayne.8563:

Vegeta.2563:

heh, half expansion Mike. Yeah this should be interesting :P

I don’t know, missing legendary armor, so far, and a bit over half the legendary weapons. The only other thing even mentioned was Fractal Leaderboards. Everything else was delivered, so I’m not sure why people think that’s half.

Aside from that, I think Mo is doing a good job with the game. I agree he’s made some tough decisions, but I’m pretty sure tough decisions had to be made.

The real poof either way, will be the next expansion.

Because HOT was literally 4 maps and systems that should have been included with the game at launch, and if not at launch, added over time free of charge

Why is that? Why should those four maps have been included in the game or given away for free, considering they’re the most detailed and complex maps we have?

the maps shouldnt have been given away free, the systems that came with HOT should have.

The maps may well be what was promised, I never said they didn’t deliver on those. but it was not nearly enough to call it an expansion or justify the price tag. My point about that was thats why so many of us feel that it was " half an expac"

And yet if you played a game like WoW you’d be paying for an expansion and 2 years worth of monthly fees between expansions, during which not much is released.

That’s the issue with this whole ZOMG the expansion was so expensive for four maps. I don’t know about you but I got 8 maps. Because there have been four maps of the Living Story, which I also got free, in addition to the story.

I said from day one that the expansion was like an expansion and a season pass, and I that opinion hasn’t changed.

People who look at only what’s in the box and nothing else, are missing half the expansion themselves. That’s not Anet’s fault.

It’s too bad people are so trained by other games that they can’t actually see that the expansion didn’t just include what was in the box, but everything that came after until the next expansion.

Maybe people need to play more “free to play games” that require huge investments to continue, or play a sub game before they start talking about value.

susana.7814:

Vayne.8563:

Vegeta.2563:

heh, half expansion Mike. Yeah this should be interesting :P

I don’t know, missing legendary armor, so far, and a bit over half the legendary weapons. The only other thing even mentioned was Fractal Leaderboards. Everything else was delivered, so I’m not sure why people think that’s half.

Aside from that, I think Mo is doing a good job with the game. I agree he’s made some tough decisions, but I’m pretty sure tough decisions had to be made.

The real poof either way, will be the next expansion.

Because HOT was literally 4 maps and systems that should have been included with the game at launch, and if not at launch, added over time free of charge

Why is that? Why should those four maps have been included in the game or given away for free, considering they’re the most detailed and complex maps we have?

Darknicrofia.2604:

Vayne.8563:

Vegeta.2563:

heh, half expansion Mike. Yeah this should be interesting :P

I don’t know, missing legendary armor, so far, and a bit over half the legendary weapons. The only other thing even mentioned was Fractal Leaderboards. Everything else was delivered, so I’m not sure why people think that’s half.

Aside from that, I think Mo is doing a good job with the game. I agree he’s made some tough decisions, but I’m pretty sure tough decisions had to be made.

The real poof either way, will be the next expansion.

For all we know the rest of the legendary weapons and legendary armor might have been already released and we just don’t know it yet because Mo refuses to say kitten to build hype.

Sure, but that’s not relevant to what I’m saying. It’s far far more than half of what they announced. Probably over 90% of it.

Vegeta.2563:

heh, half expansion Mike. Yeah this should be interesting :P

I don’t know, missing legendary armor, so far, and a bit over half the legendary weapons. The only other thing even mentioned was Fractal Leaderboards. Everything else was delivered, so I’m not sure why people think that’s half.

Aside from that, I think Mo is doing a good job with the game. I agree he’s made some tough decisions, but I’m pretty sure tough decisions had to be made.

The real poof either way, will be the next expansion.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I wasn’t making a claim about you Vayne….. I was generalizing a group of people just like you were….. you said those who didn’t like HOT think it is bleeding players and I observed that players who like HOT don’t think it is bleeding players…… I made no definitive statement…. just a lazy generalization…. I don’t think I am the only one guilty of that either : )

That, in any case, is almost a complete certainty. Doesn’t change what I’ve said though.

The problem is so many people listen to what’s said on the forums, fairly or unfairly and don’t buy HoT because of it. I met another player in game today who put off buying hot for ages, because everyone told him it wasn’t soloable, except she’s finding it easy enough to solo.

That’s the problem with generalizations in general. They affect how people feel about a product, even if what they’re saying isn’t true for everyone. It’s definitely affected HoT sales.

Feanor.2358:

I didn’t say it’s not casual, I said it’s a different type of casual. In my opinion, it is targeted toward slightly more invested players, the type more likely to join in guilds and be active in communities rather than wander and explore solo.

Of course, it is still far from hardcore content.

Also, this isn’t actually a bad thing. It’s making the game more diverse, it has to offer something to a wider spectrum of users. Personally, I love the new maps. They get me more involved and they are more rewarding to play, both in loot and feel.

Right but I’ve played with many casuals who said, I can’t do this, I don’t like this, and then I showed them around and suddenly they were able to do it, and it was fine. That’s my point.

Half the problem is the rhetoric. It’s like a bunch of people repeating stuff they’ve heard, or they have a bad experience early on and never tried it again after that big patch last April.

It is more like Orr than it is like Queensdale, that’s true.

But it’s just not as hard as some people are making it out to be, even if you’re just an average player.

Feanor.2358:

voltaicbore.8012:

When all is said and done, however, adding in LS2 (or any sort of difficulty ratcheting, however paced) is ultimately a departure from the stroll-in-the-park feeling of ease that attracts so many to core GW2. I’m not sure that even if they feel less overwhelmed by HoT thanks to a transitional phase, players who really feel wedded to the core game’s casualness would change their minds about HoT’s enjoyability, since HoT itself would remain a step above the core game’s challenge.

It’s a fair point. Perhaps HoT was just designed for slightly more invested players. Kind of, ANet wanting to increase the spectrum of casualness their game offers.

I’d almost agree with that, except that I can play HOT casually and I have people in my guild who do it too.

Let’s say I go to metrica province. I do events. I gather stuff. I run around. It may be harder, but it’s not impossible.

So a casual player spends more time in VB and AB than TD, but I have a guild full of casuals who play HoT some of the time. And yes some solo it.

You’re talking about things like meta events, on timers, and having to use LFG.

Well if you stay in a map, sooner or later, the meta will start, and most of the time, if you’re in the map a long time, people will come and play it.

I mean it’s not like you didn’t need a timer site for SB or any other world boss. You’ve needed those for years.

It’s not like there’s any timer for Orr temples. You just have to be there.

There’s this fallacy floating around that all there is in HoT maps is a single meta. It’s not true.

I can do events in VB and TD and get currency for them or in the case of VB crowbars and run around and open chests. That’s how I pretty much play the new zones.

It’s perfect for two people actually if you duo, like my wife and I.

You can absolutely play HOT casually if that’s your choice. It’s when people convince themselves that it can’t be done, or that it’s only about a meta that the issues start to arise.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Conversely, players who do like HOT think it is not bleeding players. bias goes both ways.

Actually this isn’t really true. I never made a claim one way or another. I asked for proof about someone else’s claim. It doesn’t seem to have lost much steam to me, but the truth is, no one really knows. I don’t know. You don’t know.

The difference is, I didn’t come here to make a post claiming something. I simply said my experience doesn’t necessarily bear out what someone else said.

Making definitive statements with no proof is generally pointless.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Do you like excessive farming requirements? if so you might like HOT

Do you like expansions that repackage core content and release them behind a paywall(guild buffs, fractal rewards) if so you might like HOT

Do you like gold sinks(guild hall, some mastery points) if so you might like HOT

Do you like Nintendo style gaming? if so you might like HOT

Do you like mazes or memorizing maps? if so you might like HOT

Do you like hyped features of this expansion being delayed while Anet works on the next expansion? if so you might like HOT

One a one sided story. Here’s the other side of the story:

Do you like more difficult open world content that requires you to do more than press 1, rinse and repeat? Then you might like HOT.

Do you like maps that make you think, that work as puzzles, that let you explore in an area that actually feels like it’s dangerous? Then you might like HOT.

Do you like horizontal progression that lets you feel like you’re actually making progress? Then you might like HOT.

Do you like meta events that require some sort of coordination? Then you might like HOT.

Do you like raiding? Then you might like HOT.

This is an easy game to play. You don’t like HOT. I get it. Plenty of people like it, however, and not for the reasons you list.

slashlizardy.9167:

Free to play players get the best part of the game, and cant post here on the forums. HoT is continuing to bleed players and so posts here are down.

Do you have any evidence for this? From perception it’s not my experience, though I agree, during SAB there will be less players in the rest of the game. Plenty of people playing HoT from my experience. I don’t believe it’s bleeding players.

I do believe that players who don’t like HOT think it’s bleeding players though.

kdaddy.5431:

@ vayne

I can agree with that. The difference i was trying to point out was the vast amount of maps. I mean you talked about Timber Line falls and this is its own area but there is also many other maps you can explore.

To the point that when you finish map completion with 1 character and you say that was fun. Let me try on a necro this time, you might forget some things or find some things you missed before. Since Core GW2 had alot more stuff to do.

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509

I too would also like to point out some things. In core GW2 you can run straight threw your personal story and go to the end dungeon or you can go threw all the dungeons story lines which tells the story of DE.

Core GW2 has a ton of story if you choose to do so. The reason why the maps are a issue is because in HOT you need mastery points to do the story. IN GW2 core you needed to strong enough to finish the last dungeon in ORR do finish the personal story.

At no point in either can you just run threw the story without getting gear or leveling.

Its part of the ride along.

@Kdaddy

While I played the HoT maps like I did the Timberline Falls map, the HOT maps, for me, were more complex, not just in design and because they were part of the story and because I play for immersion they meant a lot more to me than a map like Timberline.

There are so many instances where the map added necessary detail to the story, down to the last map which is almost like a sister to the last story. But the exploration and the interesting tidbits in HoT maps gave me more reason to stay on them even on different characters than Timberline Falls ever did, and I’m not just talking about grinding.

Finding more and better ways to get around and do completion is almost a game unto itself in HoT. It’s not just finding far too many POIs.

April.2468:

I have recently come back after playing at launch but was busy in a certain other mmo and dropped the game, GW2 has always been installed though and kept updated as I knew I would go back when I was done with raiding etc in wow.

I finally leveled my ranger 80 and have been blown away by the game and sad I did not stick with the game originally, finished the main story and spent a fair bit on gems expanding inventory and buying living season 2 and I also bought HoT before I had finished around level 60, I was about to put down on a second game, my wife loves the original and for a non game player, she has banged some serious hours into the original, she just loves the world completion side of it and the hearts, in turn she has got my daughter interested as well and it has turned into a family affair on a evening which has been great.

My hardcore days are long left behind in wow and this is why I came back, the original game is brilliant for the casual solo player or just playing with my family and we have fun doing it which has been amazing, I cant thank Anet enough for this.

I decided to skip the living story season 2 to get my gliding sorted and then go back and do it, my initial impression of HoT is wtf as it really does flip the game and changes to something totally different.

HoT is just frustration and not fun, you just get on with it the best you can and grind it out, it forces you to change play style but not to one that’s enjoyable or fun and again its just more frustration after playing 80 levels a certain way, a lot of it is also based on the grouping of players which more often and not I find my self in overflow maps with not enough to complete the main events which again is just wasting precious play time, and creating boredom.

I would stick it out if the wife would carry on playing but she has no interest in HoT after seeing me play it and I guess we will all be moving on to a different game or to wow once she hits 80.

For me HoT just removes all the things I love about the original game, it seems rushed and badly thought out, it seems it was designed for the few and not the many.

The thing is, if you’d played through LS 2, you’d probably have been more prepared for HOT. Like virtually all games, this game is a progression.

What you did, and this is partly Anet’s fault, is you jumped from great 7 to great 11, without passing through the grades between. So the difficulty jump would seem absurd.

When things get gradually harder, then people are much better at handling it than if they just skip ahead.

LS 2 really needed to come with HoT, because the jump from core to HOT is too drastic.

@kdaddy

I just feel you’re misrepresenting it, because I played the hot maps EXACTLY like I played Timberline falls. There was very very little different for me. A handful of hero points I couldn’t solo, but beyond that, I did everything the same. In fact, exploring was what made the hot maps so excellent for me.

@ Tanner Blackfeather, I’m not so sure it’s unrelated to what the OP is asking since so much of the story is in the zones themselves, rather than just story instances.

It definitely adds to the time it takes to “do the story”.

kdaddy.5431:

If you really enjoy farming then HOT is for you.

Anet tied some things you need to mastery skills, to do some of the story but alot of the HOT story lines are in the PvE areas.

For me personally HOT is alot of grind. For instance in VB land 100 rifle shots. Ive done this event a few times and it becomes a pain especially in a dead map.

Another great one is AB do the meta event 100 times.

I and many guild mates have had huge issues with 3 maps being mostly about the meta event. 3 of the 4 HOT maps are checking times of when the meta is coming on and getting into a good map.

The new maps with LS can be fun but another issue is they created a new type of currency for these maps. Then they do stuff like 100g for circus sword.

Or in the last map, many of us spent X amount of gold to scribe. (especially if you are in a smaller guild) Then say Logan Thackery picture for 50g.

HOT has alot of fun aspects but for me the farming garbage out weigh the garbage by way too much.

So if you like farming HOT has endless hours.

There have always been grindy achievements. So you point out two of the grindiest and use them as an example and completely ignore the rest of hot.

Tell me, what do you do in Timberline falls, or any other zone? You farm mats, you do events, maybe a jumping puzzle. All that exists in HoT, plus mini games if you like.

So you say nothing exists in HOT except for metas, but that’s not true any more than nothing exists in Queensdale except SB. It’s not true.

There’s plenty of stuff to do. In VB alone, there are 5 long event chains during the day, once in each outpost. They’re not just dynamic events, but they’re fun dynamic events.

By doing the events, you get crowbars and crowbars allow you to open chests constantly as you go which is loot.

It’s funny how the Silverwastes chest train is a good thing but VB has nothing to do but the meta.

TD is the same as VB. You can do events, get chak acid and open chests. I do it. I’ve done it. I find the event chains themselves fun. They’re well thought out. They tell a story. They’re more interesting than most event chains pre HoT.

But people keep saying there’s nothing but the meta.

There are other achievements too besides the ones you listed. There are scavenger hunt type things, for those who like those (which aren’t grindy). There’s the gliding achievement in AB which isn’t grindy. There’s the stealth chest achievement in TD which isn’t grindy. There are lockboxes to find, which arent’ grindy. And all those things also give you mastery points.

The fact is, you picked two really grindy achievements. Well, this game launched with shield killer and neither of the achievements you listed are grindier than that.

Something like getting the 100 runs of the Auric Basin meta, it’s in 4 parts. Every time you do 25 runs, you get achievement points. That doesn’t mean everyone is going to do 100 runs and grind them.

If you do a couple of runs a week, it’ll take less than year to get it,. which means many people now have it. You call a couple of runs a week of a profitable meta a grind?

I guess we shouldn’t talk to the people who do Teq every day, or who repeat Triple Trouble over and over again. Last time I saw you needed to use timers on those events too.

Maybe some people just enjoy the event.

kdaddy.5431:

If you really enjoy farming then HOT is for you.

Anet tied some things you need to mastery skills, to do some of the story but alot of the HOT story lines are in the PvE areas.

For me personally HOT is alot of grind. For instance in VB land 100 rifle shots. Ive done this event a few times and it becomes a pain especially in a dead map.

Another great one is AB do the meta event 100 times.

I and many guild mates have had huge issues with 3 maps being mostly about the meta event. 3 of the 4 HOT maps are checking times of when the meta is coming on and getting into a good map.

The new maps with LS can be fun but another issue is they created a new type of currency for these maps. Then they do stuff like 100g for circus sword.

Or in the last map, many of us spent X amount of gold to scribe. (especially if you are in a smaller guild) Then say Logan Thackery picture for 50g.

HOT has alot of fun aspects but for me the farming garbage out weigh the garbage by way too much.

So if you like farming HOT has endless hours.

There have always been grindy achievements. So you point out two of the grindiest and use them as an example and completely ignore the rest of hot.

Tell me, what do you do in Timberline falls, or any other zone? You farm mats, you do events, maybe a jumping puzzle. All that exists in HoT, plus mini games if you like.

So you say nothing exists in HOT except for metas, but that’s not true any more than nothing exists in Queensdale except SB. It’s not true.

There’s plenty of stuff to do. In VB alone, there are 5 long event chains during the day, once in each outpost. They’re not just dynamic events, but they’re fun dynamic events.

By doing the events, you get crowbars and crowbars allow you to open chests constantly as you go which is loot.

It’s funny how the Silverwastes chest train is a good thing but VB has nothing to do but the meta.

TD is the same as VB. You can do events, get chak acid and open chests. I do it. I’ve done it. I find the event chains themselves fun. They’re well thought out. They tell a story. They’re more interesting than most event chains pre HoT.

Keep telling yourself there’s nothing but the meta.

There are other achievements too besides the ones you listed. There are scavenger hunt type things, for those who like those (which aren’t grindy). There’s the gliding achievement in AB which isn’t grindy. There’s the stealth chest achievement in TD which isn’t grindy. There are lockboxes to find, which arent’ grindy. And all those things also give you mastery points.

The fact is, you picked two really grindy achievements. Well, this game launched with shield killer and neither of the achievements you listed are grindier than that.

Something like getting the 100 runs of the Auric Basin meta, it’s in 4 parts. Every time you do 25 runs, you get achievement points. That doesn’t mean everyone is going to do 100 runs and grind them.

If you do a couple of runs a week, it’ll take less than year to get it,. which means many people now have it. You call a couple of runs a week of a profitable meta a grind? lol

I guess we shouldn’t talk to the people who do Teq every day, or who repeat Triple Trouble over and over again. Last time I saw you needed to use timers on those events too.

Maybe some people just enjoy the event.

I love SAB, but I agree it’s most effective as a festival. Adding something else for the devs to debug all year around is just extra pressure on the team they don’t know while working on LS and an expansion at the same time.

zealex.9410:

Vayne.8563:

Hey mate, welcome back. Yeah, I’m still here. Not as happy with the direction of the game, but still happy with quite a bit of the stuff that’s come out. For example, a new zone with each living story chapter. The stories are better than the were too, at least to me.

If you own Heart of Thorns, there’s more challenging content in both the open world and raids. Gliding has changed the game quite a bit for me, and my guild hall is fully upgraded, and happily chugging along.

I still play every day.

whats the direction that the game is taking that you dont like?

I never felt raiding belonged in this game. I think some of the grind for certain items is too high for casual players, combined with timers and having to use LFG to get into specific maps, which seems to offend some people, even though I don’t mind it.

At the end of the day, with the new content, without a timer site and using LFG, it’s much harder to get stuff done. Half the playerbase doesn’t realize it.

Raids are a symptom of the game moving to harder content that requires more dedication to beat.

This game was once more pick up and play. You can still play it casually but you need to know a lot more.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Xenon.4537:

I think the next expansion will decide the future of this game. It’s very critical to make up for the shortcomings of HoT. The content was good but there just wasn’t enough of it and a LOT of missed opportunities in the story. We only got 3 real maps and people were expecting a lot more than that. If the next expansion doesn’t go above and beyond then I expect a lot of people will be leaving.

I worries me that these forums seem way less active than they used to be. The front page used to cycle through topics in less than an hour. Now I can post a new topic and get no replies and it will still be on the front page two days later. There are threads on the front page of class forums that are more than a week old and you can’t reply to them without checking the bypass bump box.

A lot of people say the game is great, and maybe it is. But the audience is definitely shrinking…

This.

Reddit seems pretty busy. Maybe it’s a forum thing more than an audience thing.

Free to play players can’t post on the forums. I keep bringing this up, and a lot of people ignore it, but it’s a fact.

Unless people don’t think that people play this game as free to play, which I can’t imagine, the forums can’t really be an accurate gauge of the in game population.

Aside from that, I know a number of people who used to post here all the time who stopped due to various infractions they didn’t feel they deserved.

zealex.9410:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Carighan.6758:

Vayne.8563:

So it’s not just a matter of play time. That is there’s more to this game that differentiates it from other games, besides just it being casual.

Of course, but personal like/dislike isn’t something you can quantify for someone else. Hence that’s hardly a useful recommendation to the OP. For every person liking GW2 more than FF14 personally, there is probably someone for which it is the other way around.

Yes it’s a huge factor of which game you can get into, but it’s not useful to base advise on it.

And yet your comment of only get into it if you dont’ have time to play, while essentially recommending over this game two other MMOs that are subscription MMOs seems to bit weird to me.

What you said was if you have to play an MMO, and you’re not casual give this a pass, without even referring to the fact that it’s different from most MMOs, and it is.

That to me is sort of like saying I didn’t like it and other MMOs I liked better. But most other MMOs I’ve played are cut from a similar cloth, this one isn’t.

Surely that’s worth a mention.

you missed his point, it wasnt wow and ffxiv are better games, it was that the games maintenance and development has not improved the game much.
essentially he is saying is the overall product has great potential, but the continued service hasnt realized that potential in 4.5 years.

I’d disagree with that too, but I guess that depends on what you consider important. There are many quality of life features that exist in this game that don’t exist in most others that make this game more playable for me to begin with.

However, that’s till irrelevant to my point.

He’s saying the only reason to play this game over others is if you don’t have a lot time to play the game. I’m not missing any points at all. It’s what he said.

And that I absolutely don’t agree with. Because I have all the time in the world to play and I still prefer this game to those other games.

Edit: Here’s the exact quote:

Unless you absolutely have to play a MMO, and you’re limited on time so it needs to be one which is super-casual-friendly. Then GW2 is the right choice, yes.

but this game right now is at its core a game you play casually.

I don’t agree with this. I know people who do play WvW hard core. I know people who raid religiously and try to improve their times.

Hard core is a mindset, nothing more.

There are even hard core achievement hunters.

One of the big things about HOT is that half the story isn’t really in instances. That is to say the story is a combination of instances AND what’s happening in the zones.

A lot of people see instances as the whole story, but it’s really not the case. As an example without spoilers, in the first story in HOT you meet a group of Sylvari, but their story is continued in the first quest chain you come across in VB, which is composed of 9 events.

Even in Guild Wars 1, the boardwalk was only opened a couple of times a year, which was content. Those quests you do daily during the lunar new year only happened once a year. That special event in Shing Jea only happened once a year. The mad king quests only happened once a year.

Rollerbeetle racing was one of my favorite things in Guild Wars 1, but it was only available a couple of times a year.

This is no different. It’s it’s own little festival now.

Hey mate, welcome back. Yeah, I’m still here. Not as happy with the direction of the game, but still happy with quite a bit of the stuff that’s come out. For example, a new zone with each living story chapter. The stories are better than the were too, at least to me.

If you own Heart of Thorns, there’s more challenging content in both the open world and raids. Gliding has changed the game quite a bit for me, and my guild hall is fully upgraded, and happily chugging along.

I still play every day.

drunkenpilot.9837:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure why a guild with 2-5 active members that don’t even play at the same time, wouldn’t join a larger guild in the first place and just play as they are now, without actually having a “guild” per se.

There’s something rewarding about building up a guild from the ground up with a small group of personal friends. Also, there’s nothing stopping these folks from having their own guild and also being a part of larger guilds. That’s the beauty of GW2, you can have it both ways.

That’s what I do.

You’d have to be pretty dedicated. I guess I see the guild hall as something more utilitarian. I don’t spend a huge amount of time in it.

Fortunately, we have a guy in our guild who loves building in it and he has pretty much free reign to do whatever he wants…he’s made it his personal playground and everyone else just enjoys it.

For me, it’s a place to gather, buff up, sell and get back to the game.

I’m not sure why a guild with 2-5 active members that don’t even play at the same time, wouldn’t join a larger guild in the first place and just play as they are now, without actually having a “guild” per se.

I strongly suspect you’ll spend more money over time in BDO than you ever will in GW 2. You’re at a pretty big disadvantage there if you don’t spend money. You think the cost of this game is a lot, wait until you try to be competitive there.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Oh yeah it would be totally simple. No problem at all moving all that authorization stuff client side, won’t be any problems with duping or exploits. Let’s just make this game totally single player, why even bother with chat at all? Clearly the OP is among a growing majority of players who don’t want contact with others, even in a game that was billed as an MMO which they knowingly signed up to. Afterall, it’s easier to force one’s ideas unto others to make oneself comfortable than to change themselves.

To be fair, if there are enough people who want to play this as a single player game and already do so, then changing the game to fit that large population isn’t really unreasonable. Not that what the OP is asking for is ever going to happen, but you can’t really fault players for coming here to play how they want…especially because before this game launched, in the FAQ, they even had a question addressing people who wanted to solo. They did say you can reach max level without having to group.

Of course they also said we believe that in an MMO there needs to be challenges where the community needs to come together.

But saying someone shouldn’t play an MMO as a solo game when so many obviously do, isn’t really going to get much traction. It’s just too prevalent for anyone to change that.

Try leveling in an area 7 levels above your level. That would be challenging.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Carighan.6758:

Vayne.8563:

So it’s not just a matter of play time. That is there’s more to this game that differentiates it from other games, besides just it being casual.

Of course, but personal like/dislike isn’t something you can quantify for someone else. Hence that’s hardly a useful recommendation to the OP. For every person liking GW2 more than FF14 personally, there is probably someone for which it is the other way around.

Yes it’s a huge factor of which game you can get into, but it’s not useful to base advise on it.

And yet your comment of only get into it if you dont’ have time to play, while essentially recommending over this game two other MMOs that are subscription MMOs seems to bit weird to me.

What you said was if you have to play an MMO, and you’re not casual give this a pass, without even referring to the fact that it’s different from most MMOs, and it is.

That to me is sort of like saying I didn’t like it and other MMOs I liked better. But most other MMOs I’ve played are cut from a similar cloth, this one isn’t.

Surely that’s worth a mention.

you missed his point, it wasnt wow and ffxiv are better games, it was that the games maintenance and development has not improved the game much.
essentially he is saying is the overall product has great potential, but the continued service hasnt realized that potential in 4.5 years.

I’d disagree with that too, but I guess that depends on what you consider important. There are many quality of life features that exist in this game that don’t exist in most others that make this game more playable for me to begin with.

However, that’s till irrelevant to my point.

He’s saying the only reason to play this game over others is if you don’t have a lot time to play the game. I’m not missing any points at all. It’s what he said.

And that I absolutely don’t agree with. Because I have all the time in the world to play and I still prefer this game to those other games.

Edit: Here’s the exact quote:

Unless you absolutely have to play a MMO, and you’re limited on time so it needs to be one which is super-casual-friendly. Then GW2 is the right choice, yes.

And yet I don’t find any more “forced” platforming in HoT than I do in the core game.

Halandir.3609:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Xyrus.6037:

I played GW2 for a while and enjoyed it immensely. I liked it so much that I abandoned one of my cardinal rules of gaming: NEVER PRE-ORDER.

That was a mistake.

After that came the 5 stages of grief. Or what would have been the 5 stages of grief if the decisions and direction in regards to the game didn’t keep me at stage 2.

It’s their game, so they can do what they want with it. And I’m sure there are people who like the way things have gone. But I just found myself logging in less and less, asking “why are they doing that?” a lot more, and finally just stopped playing altogether.

Lesson re-learned. No matter how great you think a game or a game company is, they can still totally wreck a game for you. Maybe just you, but that doesn’t really matter.

I still check the forums and such from time to time to see how things are going. I still see that they’re on the same path. If it keeps raking in the money I see scant reason for them to stop, but I certainly haven’t come across any incentive to get me playing again.

self awareness is a powerful thing, have you wondered why you didn’t return to the content you used to play prior to HOT if you didn’t like the HOT content?

OFC I can’t speak for Xyrus but he raised a lot of points I agree with (well the 5 points of grief I reserve for more lifechanging experiences than a computergame).
As for returning to 4 year old/8 alts played content: I could just start a new f2p account to relive that! It’s old, played through – Wth would I pay to replay that?
HoT added gliding in old maps: Great but not exactly a reason to relive old content.
Most other content requires contentgrind I simply dislike. I was looking for new similar (not same) content.
HoT marked a new direction. A direction I dislike but basically: It’s Anet’s game – It’s their decision.
My time/money: Better spent on something that caters to my ideas of great entertainment!

Of course you should pay games you like. But it doesn’t change the fact that every single MMO I’ve ever played suffers from exactly this complaint. People who play for thousands of hours end up running out of stuff to do except grind.

That’s because we consume content faster than devs can create it.

When games are made and they’re new and fresh, the devs have five years with no players in the game to create content. They don’t have to worry about anything but creating content. They create a huge amount of content, because they’re not actively running the game.

Then the game launches and it’s a constant battle to adjust to player expectation, and as that happens, content comes more slowly. This is true of every game.

Do you know what happens to WoW, 3 months after an expansion hits? People say they’re done with the content, and they stop playing. Maybe for some people it takes six months. That’s how it is.

Have you found an MMO where people have not had the same complaint?

This doesn’t mean a new person coming in won’t have thousands of hours to catch up to you though.

Carighan.6758:

Vayne.8563:

So it’s not just a matter of play time. That is there’s more to this game that differentiates it from other games, besides just it being casual.

Of course, but personal like/dislike isn’t something you can quantify for someone else. Hence that’s hardly a useful recommendation to the OP. For every person liking GW2 more than FF14 personally, there is probably someone for which it is the other way around.

Yes it’s a huge factor of which game you can get into, but it’s not useful to base advise on it.

And yet your comment of only get into it if you dont’ have time to play, while essentially recommending over this game two other MMOs that are subscription MMOs seems to bit weird to me.

What you said was if you have to play an MMO, and you’re not casual give this a pass, without even referring to the fact that it’s different from most MMOs, and it is.

That to me is sort of like saying I didn’t like it and other MMOs I liked better. But most other MMOs I’ve played are cut from a similar cloth, this one isn’t.

Surely that’s worth a mention.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly, as someone who still plays nearly every day (if often only briefly), probably not.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its charms. It’s a very casual-friendly experience, so there are few alternatives if (like me) you’re strictly limited in gameplay time. But recently comparing FF14 and WoW, while there are plenty things GW2 does better than those, the relative amount of dev-attention needed in GW2 feels much much higher.

Or in other words, for being 4,5 years old, this game feels like it freshly released. “Has lots of potential” would be the subtitle I’d assign to it. Which is mighty fine, plus the game has good elements, but for a game this old is just a weird “achievement” to accomplish. The live-team development is all over the place, being so consistently inconsistent it has taken on a meme character, and also having absolutely baffling design decisions standing from release (like the amount of loot spammed at you).

Overall it is a good game, but as it is aging, I’d say skip.
Unless you absolutely have to play a MMO, and you’re limited on time so it needs to be one which is super-casual-friendly. Then GW2 is the right choice, yes.

Okay here’s my issue with what you say.

Not all MMOs are created equal. I personally don’t like either WoW or Everquest. If you like that kind of content, those types of games., then what you say makes some sense.

The problem is this game is still vastly different in what it offers, in several important ways from those other offerings.

So it’s not just a matter of this MMO or those MMOs. If this MMO was to implode today, I’d play neither WoW nor Final Fantasy. Because those MMOs don’t do for me what this MMO does for me.

That’s not to say that GW 2 isn’t without it’s problems, but it’s not just this MMO or that MMO to decide to play MMOs. Problems and all, this MMO fits my playstyle better than any other MMO I’ve tried (and I’ve tried many), and I have a lot more time to play than you do.

So it’s not just a matter of play time. That is there’s more to this game that differentiates it from other games, besides just it being casual.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Vayne.8563:

@Pax

Stuff you listed as promised content, wasn’t actually promised. We were told before the launch there would be 4 maps. We were told there would be no new race.

Nor did Anet promise a branching story line for HoT.

Not sure where you got that from.

Arenanet developer’s have said multiple things in developing both GW2 and HoT

These remarks have included more info then just the short ramp up to HoT. Developer talks on livestream have hinted to more then was ever delivered, but we were watching with anticipating and extrapolating vision, and the hype made a bit of dough blow up like puff pastry. Unfortunately with way to much air… luckily our light crust has been suplemented by decent filling in the period after the Launch and teh LS S3 has been a great addition.

• It was known only 4 maps would be included with HoT, they would be multilayered, which was achieved in a different way then most expected cause in some views ppl expected the leayers to be separate maps.. Even though the maps are extermely nice IMHO it was to few for a lot of people, but since we had 4 more, bringing the total to 8 and there are decent indications there will be more maps. Thise doesn’t include the map area’s for the 4 raid segments.
• a new race might happen (during Gw2 vanilla), but a specific time was not given. Later on it was said no new races would be included with HoT.
• a new proffesion would happen with HoT. Revenant was a major selling point
• a new WvW map was available and would be implemented. The map was playtested and rejected by the majority of the WvW community, and still included as a complete replacement for the frost maps, whcih was changed after heavy protest and the near collapse of WvW, of which it didn’t recover fully (being political here)
• Developers hinted they were working on new legendaries while the hype train was on the fast track so this was interpreted as new legendaries included with HoT, these legendaries were put on hold after a few were realease, and the developpment has since been restarted. Legendary arrmor was noit hinted towards but the envoy and the collections proved it to be included in HoT, but it was not ready.

Still I am happy how it turned out, though some things might have gone smoother with more communication, and less hype, player expectation might (….might? it was) have been a bit overhyped.

I corrected some things in my former post. And am duly aware most things were my own expecatons based upon several years of developer talks and the sunbsequent “hypetrain to nowhere.”

This is largely the problem with a lot of the expectations set around HoT, though. A lot of people came with their own expectations. Probably not the best way to buy a product.

The problem has always been that people want to ride a hype train. I watched the same videos and announcements everyone else did, and I didn’t get disappointed, because I didn’t bother making assumptions.

Of course, not making assumptions is hard. And there were areas where Anet did say things that didn’t happen, particularly the Fractal Leaderboard (which I didn’t care about at all) and legendary weapons.

I think the HoT maps are massively more complex, and more interesting as they are than having three seperately flat maps that are just flat. Nor did I expect three maps from the description. I expected, more or less, what I got.

At any rate, I’ve always thought HoT was overpriced and would have sold a lot better at around the $30 mark.

Edit: You know thinking about it, there were a couple of things that worked the other way too. For example, we were originally told gliding wouldn’t be usable in core Tyria, and later it was enabled in core Tyria, which was a bonus that we couldn’t possibly have expected, but it was a huge game changer for a lot of us.

Another thing was how HoT was marketed. At the beginning, I said, and was often ridiculed for saying, that HoT wasn’t a boxed purchased but more along the lines of a season pass. That as the living story came online there’d be more and more value from HoT. A lot of people didn’t agree, but that’s how it ended up turning out.

The game has always been a game that keeps giving more for the purchase price, even long after you’ve bought it.

If you’re into raids, you’re getting new ones, same with Fractals. If you’re into story you’re getting more of it. If you’re into maps you’re getting more of those.

At the end of the day, Anet marketed HoT wrong. Instead of telling us the expansion would be light on content (which they did) they should have told us it wasn’t just about what was in the box, but what you’d get over time.

I do agree the value keeps going up.

Yannir.4132:

What exactly is a dodge-jump?

It’s a combination of a dodge and jump that moves you further and faster than either a dodge or a jump.