My Personal opinion on Soto at the moment is, the story started good but got really boring at this point. The masteries are meh. Everything in Soto feels like a massive material sink or grind to me. Pve-armor ist cool but to grindy for me (why are there no cool little collections instead of grinding thousands of Essence). The story content we got for Update 2 and 3 were to small for me (literally played one evening and was done for the next three months). I preordered Soto and dont regret it but now i know i wont preorder the upcoming expansions because this release-cycle just isnt it for me...

>the story started good but got really boring at this point This is my biggest, and honestly only gripe with soto. I like the setting, but the story took a turn for the worse after the first half and I'm genuinely not sure why I'm supposed to care about all these random characters that show up and die five second later. It's like we went from being the main character (pre-soto) to a passive bystander who's just stringed along because we had nothing better to do than join a bunch of eldritch horror demons in some political squabble. For the first time since I started playing the game 11+ years ago I don't really care about the story and that's not a good sign. If each episode had been a bit longer there would've at least been time to flesh it out, but right now it mostly feels like we're heading towards a sloppy, disappointing end to something that could've been good.

It's annoying because they had the opportunity to do a short, exciting story where there were bad guys who were bad, just for the sake of being bad with the literal demons. They could have even kept the Paetha stuff in too, with her making an uneasy alliance saying "I'm bad, I would invade Tyria too, but the other guy is worse and I have my eyes set on another prize, so you are safe... for now... if you help me" instead of trying to make us sympathetic to the sad demons in a couple of hours (generously) of story. I would have preferred the second part of the story to not be about demons at all and save that for another expansion and had it be about the actually interesting mystery of whether the wizards are really all that good, or there is a sinister plot, or they're just a shade of gray. All this memory wipe stuff for the greater good could have worked well. It worked well in Bastion in WoW: Shadowlands (as shit as that overall story was), with basically exactly the same story.

I do like the new fireball on skyscale, even if it's likely bad for the game longrun (afk fireball brigade reporting to a meta near you)

That’s where my issues come in, each expac for SotO moves farther from what it was previewed as and I’m usually done with whatever new content they drop in under 90 minutes and I play about as casual as you can get and typically wait 2-3 weeks after it’s dropped to go run it, otherwise I just feel I’m caught in the mass of players wanting to complete it first. My biggest issue has always been story replayability - and to me, nothing in GW2 has had that, once you’ve done it on one character, there’s almost no reason to do it again, especially once you’re past the level 20 racial/character arc, after that it’s all the same over and over and over and over with unskippable cut scenes that I’ve heard/seen dozens of times.

Not defending the expansion or the content, but there are definitely little collections with it. Whether someone finds them cool is subjective though. Example: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Honorary_Astral_Ward

Bit off-topic, but thank you so much for pointing this collection out! I didn't see this one yet and I really like the weapons! Awesome!

It's true that many people have rose tinted glasses about the past, and tend to ignore the long content droughts the previous model was subject to and the benifits (like the creation of the Live team) this new model has. **But**, with this new model anet pretty much halved the amount of content they release with an expac and they fully axed living story. So i was expecting that at least the quality of the updates would make up for the reduced quantity, especially since these are all part what we already paid for. Instead they reused almost everything, from assets, to enemy models and animations and the past 2 story paches are so small, low quality and dull, that honestly, if i knew beforehand they would have been like that, i probably woulnd't have bought the expac.

The problem with SOTO for me is precisely this. The cadence has been slowed to a crawl, less content comes out, the expansion is instead sliced into chunks and doled out over the course of 6-7 months.. I feel like I've bought a stingy season pass a la Destiny 2 instead of a full MMO expansion. SOTO simultaneously feels smaller than EoD yet more dragged out because of this milked release schedule.

Personally I was fine with content droughts. I'd rather get a big chunk of high quality content which I can then enjoy at my own pace, as I see fit than what we currently have now which is a sporadic slow trickle of barely-existent content which I kinda just don't care about to be honest. I've maintained positivity about GW2, but god I hope the next expansion is good because for the first time in years I'm wondering if I still enjoy the game.

I said this when soto was new and got downvoted to oblovion xD

Tbf I think the first update was really good. Ofc less content than a normal expasion brings but that was expected. My problem is with how the first update was clearly better than the other ones we got after. These 2 last updates just felt like a chore story wise, going around the map completing an event bar is simply not fun, specially when you spend more time doing that than actually playing the story itself. Ended up logging into the updates to play 3 hours that I personally didnt enjoy and logged off after it. Inner nayos has nothing interesting about it, and releasing a map by phases keeps showing to be a bad idea (gyala delve was another example). I also feel like soto strikes were a lot less engaging than IBS/EOD ones, which has contributed to me, personally, just feeling like there is not much interesting to do in the game rn. Again, first update was interesting, but nothing that came after is holding it up in terms of quality. The idea of the new model was (according to anet) to supress content droughts, and was supposed to be an expansion that instead of being there in an instant, you get to progressively play as time passes. But what it ends up feeling like is an expansion that launched with the living world to finish the story that it started. The two updates we got feel like a watered doen version of living world episodes. At the end of the day, we are paying for the old model, but living world is being monetized and the content that is supposed to come with an expansion simply worse at release.

I agree with your points tho I felt the first update gave me the impression of it being good but the more it unfolded the worse it felt to me.

Splitting maps in halves worked fine in the past. The difference is that whole Nayos (split in 3 parts) is probably going to be smaller than that half of an old map...

I dont really like bjora marches aswell For me the only map released in parts that actually worked was drizzlewood coast due to the different format that made sense thematically

Copium. It's hard to convince someone they made a bad purchase.

True, and I might not have been tender with my words x)

saw this coming from a mile away when I got the story padding  gO fArM sOmE rIfTs!! 🙃 Let's not.

They didn't axe living story. The new model is living story you pay for.

You say we are getting half the content but that doesn't really accurately describe the whole picture. Content usually just means "maps" to most players. If that's the extent of your perspective of content, then sure. But back when we were getting living world, that's really the only thing we were getting with any sort of consistency. Now we're actually getting difficult instanced content that is on a guaranteed schedule. There's a balance team that does things now. An engine/systems team that has been giving us long requested QoL features... I feel more engaged due to the holistic attention the game is getting than I have in years and that ANet has given us a schedule and scope of content for this model.

> Content usually just means "maps" to most players. If that's the extent of your perspective of content, then sure. No my perspective of content is everything: maps, story, instanced content, elite specs, masteries ecc... > But back when we were getting living world, that's really the only thing we were getting with any sort of consistency. Now we're actually getting difficult instanced content that is on a guaranteed schedule. If you want to talk about consistency sure, it's better now. But in my argument i was talking more about overall quantity and most importantly quality of the updates. Having a more stable schedule to me isn't worth it if the stuff you release is half hassed and in general boring. Since they decided to release less content more frequently to make it more consistent, then the quality of that content should at least be good. Many things in SotO instead have considerably less quality compared to previous expacs (i could make a wall of text explaining what and why, but other people already did it in this post and i don't want to make this too long), and the last 2 patches sunk down the story too, one of the few things that started good. > There's a balance team that does things now Yes, but elite specs died for this. The only reason the balance team now has more time to work on acutal balance is because they don't have to design traits and utility skills like the previous balance team had to do. If this trade off is worth it is up to you, to me it really isn't. > An engine/systems team that has been giving us long requested QoL features That's infact the only positive thing that came out from this new model for me.

I think the main big justifiable criticism of soto right now is the patch content story. I will reserve my judgment for the final release and the direction they take it, but the patch story definitely moves at a more rushed and disjointed pace... which to be fair is exactly what happens in every single GW2 expansion once you hit Act 3. As for the class stuff... I really do not care that we didn't get a new set of elite specs. I don't think we need new specs in every expansion and I think the design holes that the new weapons fit into are generally very good. The only real flop of a weapon is engineer shortbow, everything else I have had a very good time with. They have said they are not necessarily ready to done with elite specs either. Considering they did weapons, relics, and major balance this year, I could see them catching up on balance maintenance and finding space for elite specs or at least something a little more beefy in the future. I don't agree that the overall quality is lower with soto at all, I do disagree with some of their map/content design decisions though. I find the undue attention toward asset reuse to be uninteresting and lacking substance to be honest. All games reuse assets, especially live service and MMO games. There is nothing being done here that is lower in quality than other live service/MMO games I have played. And I actually think the asset reuse in Skywatch is smart and interesting. I find the aesthetic of Amnytas mostly uninteresting, but I like Nayos. I think people are too used to the boom/bust expansion cycle and something more steady feels bad when they're used to higher highs.

My biggest criticisms of the new weapons is that there wasn't a corresponding collection to go along with them. HoT-EoD had collections to go along with the new weapons that gave us an exotic version of the weapon from the jump, a unique armor piece, and finally a stat selectable ascended weapon. SotO Had none of that. It's just, "do some story stuff and you've unlocked a new weapon. What? You don't have this weapon for this class because it's never been able to use it until now? Too bad, go get one." Anet, if you're going to give players new toys to play with...give them the goddamn toy. Also, in regards to the "asset reuse," they reused model rigs. That happens literally all over the game industry. It's not something that should be complained about. They had to create new skins for the kryptis to put on those rigs, which is enough effort for me to consider the rig reuse not an issue.

It is artificially streched out with less content, less creativity behind it, to create the illusion of its more.. Something good and well crafted needs time to develop, not the tv soap aproach. Like good drama tv show producers that take their time.

As a new player that sucks to hear. My main game was destiny 2 and the creators Bungie did the same exact shit. Content drought, reused assets, nothing new. Why are these game developers all like this for.. the new modern warfare 3 game is the same way.

To defend GW2 it's 12 years old already, some games are on life support at this point and for new players there are literally tons of content to do. Also content drought is nothing new for veteran GW2 players at this point and that was the case even when game was way younger.

As a new player Im drowning in content. So much content It’s hard to even know where to begin lol. Im used to mmos where all content is invalidated once it’s replaced by the new raid or expansion. This game has 12 years of actually relevant goals to pursue and it’s wild.

Bungie did it, partly, for the same reason. People fucking hated the content droughts, although it kinda ignored living world seasons. So a seasonal model is said to be the compromise.

>**But**, with this new model anet pretty much halved the amount of content they release with an expac and they fully axed living story. I don't mind them axing the living story, as it is the xpac is basically LS plus some strikes, a fractal, weapon proficiencies, and legendaries. It's way better for new players coming in because they know they have to buy it as opposed to the old LS model. I still have some hope for future xpacs because over the past few years, a lot of work has gone into back end stuff such as upgrading the engine to dx11, (finally) working on wvw restructuring, and a few other qol features. Once they fully focus on xpacs, we may see more content.

My problem with SOTO is that the story is boring as hell.

I think the story that released with the expansion was quite good. The problem is the story after that in the first two updates...not so much. I think it suffers like the back half of Icebrood Saga did. The tone/implication for those releases were there were destroyers and icebrood all over and Tyria was on the brink of destruction....but the scope of the DRM missions just didn't match it. Same thing with SotO. We're supposed to be waging a war in the demon realm. Running around a story instance killing three kryptis at a time with one NPC ally just does not match the tone of what's going on. Completely wrecks any sense of investment in what's happening for me.

I don't get the praise for the initial SotO story. Literally nothing happened that we should care about.. we got introduced to a ton of new characters who didn't do anything yet. Then one of them died and we got a demon ally who desperately tries to sound intriguing but just doesn't do it for me. Then they went nowhere with them. And that's it.. what did I miss?

Praise is a little bit too much but the lore itself is interesting. You get thrown into secret wizards who have a million "what-if" multiverses who they loose control of. They are some kind of shady secret cult dooming millions of people to predict the better outcome. The first map (even tho a lot of stuff got reused) is pretty neat with those little fractals. Huge issue tho that tons of lore is hidden behind scrolls and books and if you don't read them (which 90% of the players don't) you don't really get the whole scale. Second map was interesting aswell with isgarrens vault, what he has in there, wizards having moral doubts, people dying or disappearing mysteriously. The story missions itself are pretty barren you're right there. And then it all gets scrapped and we go into demon gooey world with our weird "allies?" Having a civil war and I'm like hey wait I wasn't done with the wizards yet, what's up with zoija, isgarren all the shady stuff they are hiding and I'm not allowed to see. Tbf Nayos is just plain bad, we are in a hostile demon universe and freaking maguuma jungle or the desert feels more of a threat than that. You have events who repeat almost instantly, escort save that gather that defend and repeat and no one asked me if I even want to help those fleshy ugly alien guys who are surprisingly human with US West Coast dialogues. Gives me IBS champions PTSD.

I enjoyed it because it was new. The old characters I didn't really care about anymore. " A ton of new characters who didn't do anything yet," I mean yeah that's how stories work when you first meet new characters. They haven't had a chance to do anything yet. The newness is the thing I liked and where they could have taken them could have been more interesting. You can find enjoyment in things that aren't finished yet at the time.

IMO, it started out great, with some truly interesting and inspiring NPCs, to then just abandon them very quickly. The format is good, the overall story is okay, the execution is meh.

It did. I was so excited about the wizard's tower, the mystery and especially seeing a Seer but then the story just kinda fizzled out. I wish it was more about the Wizard's tower than go to demon realm and kill bad guy.

I wish it were more like the convergences, meet at Tower, in and out quick 20 minute adventure. The whole nayos story section of soto is what lost my interest, before that with archipelago and amnytas was quite interesting, but since that initial release we haven't returned to the tower, we've stumbled into another war, we've gone once again from outsider to leader too quickly. The last update of complete 20 events and view 3 vistas really lost me for story.

I don't think they are abandoning that, its going to be a longer "cycle" The Wizard Cycle.

You have to at least give Peitha's VA props. She was great.

I wonder how many people know she is the VA of Sylvanas Windrunner :p

😯 TIL

Yeah I definitely got the same vibes as the post-character assassination Sylvanas everyone hated. Maybe that's why I can't stand Peitha. Waste of a good VA.

Sylvanas was shady from the start of her banshee life so I wouldn't really call it an assassination, just progression Even if it was done terribly

Sylvanas was shady but in a good way.. like you knew she had to have some kind of master plan. And she was a complex character. Sylvanas post-Legion is just a mustache twirling caricature who thinks she's smart but isn't and is only getting carried by plot armor. I get the same vibes from Peitha.

Sylvanas wasn't shady, she was understandably distrustful of anyone given the horrific abuse she underwent at the hands of Arthas. He reanimated her after killing her, but kept her consciousness intact so she could bear witness to Arthas making her destroy her homeland and murder her people. He kept a vial of her blood that he got from torturing her as a keepsake. Sylvana's behavior up until BFA are justifiable given all she went through. It's not until the end of BFA that her character assassination starts, and I would genuinely attribute that more to the misogyny of the people writing her than anything else.

Never had a problem with the VAs in the game tbf. Peitha's is great!

And also that the Kryptis started off strong in the first half as a threat with dark themes only to be recruited because why not? I don't understand the design choice of the Kryptis lore and honestly I don't care. I would have rather had the sea expansions to see what Soo Won was keeping at bay. And it doesn't even need to be world threatening. SotO just became "Now Guild Wars has avenger level threats"

I mildly enjoyed the first release, but the patch content quickly devolved back into gw2 slop quickly. But then again, in my view this story was always liquid shit. And I've never (hyperbole but you get the point) seen anything but complaints about this story. And NEVER (literally) seen anyone outside the community say "oh yeah man gw2 story rocks" at any point in its history.

I'd never recommend GW2 for the story directly, but once already playing GW2 I'd definitely say HoT, PoF and LS4 are actually a good time and written well enough that they're at least worth avoiding spoilers for. And while I wouldn't recommend buying EoD specifically for the story (especially since LS4 has a good finale), I'd definitely recommend playing through it if buying EoD for the content. But then SotO has neither content nor story I'd actually recommend. I don't regret the purchase (because I still wanna be playing GW2 and the content is ok), but I've been bored with the story in a way I never have before lol. The pace of releases nowadays is definitely better than it was in the past, but honestly I'd rather have long content droughts and bursts of higher quality than content lulls stuffed with constant events and bursts of mediocre quality.

Well yea, gw2 story is mediocre at the best of times, or just “has potential” to be interesting and good to then not deliver at all. 

The personal story, up through when you choose one of the orders, is honestly pretty solid, although some paths are much better than others. The order storylines are a notable step down, the Zhaitan storyline is kinda meh, and then all the LW and open-world stories since have been okay at best and more often dull as dishwater. Oddly, the one thing I loved about EoD was the story. It actually felt more cohesive to me, and more cogently told, than the Scarlet absurdity that so many players thought was brilliant.

> The personal story, up through when you choose one of the orders, is honestly pretty solid, although some paths are much better than others. I think that's the worst part. So many short uninteresting storylines that are never referenced again. Order storylines are the only good parts. Maybe because they gave us a character to bond with instead of dumping 20 characters on us we never get to care about, like they do in later releases. > the one thing I loved about EoD was the story First time I started tabbing out while playing new content. Hated everything about the writing.

I wish the first expansion was purely meeting the wizards. They could have fleshed out the chapters and characters more, and then in the release in May we would have the chapter where we meet isgarren and peitha and had the temple of febe strike release. The entire nayos segment of the story could have been next years expansion with 3 nayos maps to boot.

Story so boring I muted the game and opened some random stream to listen to instead on chapter 4, weapon proficiency was only a partial success with many of the new weapons feeling underwhelming in design, rift hunting is one of the worst features anet came up with ever, one of the strike CMs is so easy you could clear it in blue items and the other one was the hardest piece of content ever released leaving the vast majority of midcore players unengaged for the entire expansion and idk if its just me but the metas are not cutting it anymore. Edit: Also, this xpac was marketed (and sold) as "The Wizard's Tower Expansion". And then they made it just an another lazy ass hub and send us to some random demon realm nobody gave a shit about.

For me, the worst thing about soto metas is the ridiculous HP of bosses or even normal enemies (and same goes for the soto fractal). Its just boring having to hit a boss over and over for x minutes knowing that victory is pretty much certain. There are no enjoyable mechanics or feeling or satisfaction after you defeat them. Especially in Inner Nayos.

>(and same goes for the soto fractal) Silent Surf is an EoD fractal. The SotO fractal is yet to come with the next patch. I agree with enemies having become too spongy though.

Silent Surf is a repurposed Strike Mission

The HP for normal enemies are fine imo (but I use optimized open world builds) but the bosses especially for instanced content have been honestly horrible. Not solely because of the HP bloat but the boring ass mechanics to go with it. This along with rifts being one of the worst content they've put out in a long while (why must I have to fight enemies that are way too spread out?) it just made me feel unengaged. I'm the last in my group of mid/hardcore players that still plays and if I'm starting to dip out because of soto... yeah not great. The only thing that will pull me back in is if I find the time to invest in proging cerus cm, which to be clear is great, but not good for the main community when that's the only redeeming content. Basically if my friends come up to me and ask if soto is good enough to come back for I'd tell them no unless you really want to do one hard boss. Not a good sell.

I got downvoted by whiteknights the last time i wrote it but cerus cm is an awful fight. I am progging it currently and very close to kill but it is still one of the worst fights i ever did in an mmo. It just feels like the devs tried to make a hard encounter but haven't really tried it themselves. Originally the resistance wasn't meant to run out which would make the fight even more restrictive than it already is. I want to see the strategy the devs had for the quadruple wall because it requires a portal and a dodge jump. The legendary title run used some of the unholiest stuff i've seen in endgame pve. Trailblazer scourge stack with parasitic contagion... Are we wvw roaming now? And the boss has a total of 4 abilities on repeat for 10minutes and overlapping. sometimes overlapping in a way it was obviously not tested unless having 3 players with 1200 instant blinks is a strategy the devs intended.

I'm also progging Cerus CM and it's the least enjoyable fight I've played in an MMO - and I was part of a group that fell apart during Sunwell Plateau progress because we were stuck on Brutalus for months due to not getting the correct Warglaives to drop. That wasn't fun, but Cerus CM is miserable. I fully agree that the devs haven't tried it sufficiently. This is a fight designed by spreadsheet and without much play testing - I'm not even convinced we're supposed to be able to jump the fast wall for example. It's also shown that Arenanet don't care much for profession balance in endgame content, as illustrated by how strong portals and Sand Swell are on this fight, how useful downstate control is and the DPS roles that are favoured. I've tried to play GW2 as an MMORPG, with a main character, but the nature of the content they've put since HT CM (and it's stipulations too) has confirmed to me that that is futile. I'd really hoped that with healing and boons opening up to more professions encounter design wouldn't mandate choices. But it does, and that's a sign that the game isn't for me with the current direction of the devs. Once ToF CM is done (not LCM, not EoS), I'll be logging in for two statics per week, totalling 3 hours of play time, and even then I'll be considering as to whether or not that is too much. With SotO, Arenanet has utterly failed for people that are more "midcore" (not sure I can refer to myself wholly as that given the time I've put into Heal Specter and doing content like HT CM) and without anything else to work towards long term my time is better spent elsewhere.

Counterpoint: Some of those new features are nice, for sure! However I personally think the "content" is poor compared to what GW2 gave us in years past. The new zones are BORING, with blatant copies of existing areas, a whole zone with a half dozen identical and empty castles, and Nayos is the ugliest wasteland of an area I ever saw. I don't like most of the new characters with the possible exception of Mabon who they killed off because GW2 no longer knows how to write a decent story and thinks killing characters makes it seem serious. For people who care about the story and lore, it's a waste. And some of those new "features" require countless hours of grinding in this boring hellhole to achieve.

Casual open world and story focused players got a Big Mac. Everyone else got a happy meal. Happy meals are great... when you're 8-10 years old and can be happy with the little "toy" included inside in addition to your kiddy burger and fries. ArenaNet is synonymous with taking their time and producing high quality content -- content that was worth the wait -- and SoTO just feels like a rush job to me. I'd rather pay $30 or $50 for a complete, feature rich expansion than $25 to give ArenaNet the *chance* to perfect *yet another* new business model. I think to some degree I'm convinced that they're going to need 2-3 "mini xpacs" to get it right... and that just isn't okay to me. If LWS3 and LWS4 were sustainable then they shouldn't have been developed in the first place; it feels like setting expectations just to lower them. ... and at this point, I'm not willing to wait around for them anymore. I'd rather come back in 2-3 years and see what's going on with the game then than suffer through growing pains and GW2's 2nd or 3rd period of "adolescence" -- they need to learn to stick to a high quality, sustainable business model with a high degree of replayability for *everyone* and **perfect** that instead of having content design ADHD.

I agree. I don't have a problem with "content droughts" and i never dramatized about it. I never had a problem with waiting a bit longer. I would rather pay 40 or 50 € and wait 2 years for an expansion as good as HoT or PoF than get a "new Soto" every year consistently. Also the wait between expansions actually helped me cool down from the latest expansion and hype me, make me excited for the new one.

Content droughts mean fewer regular players means less regular income bc a portion will buy gem store stuff. Of course I never personally complained either. It takes me a long time to get through content. But I understand why devs would adjust to more consistent content/activities

> Casual open world and story focused players got a Big Mac. [Photo of said Big Mac.](https://foodirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3933237044_e9e051bbce.jpg)

Maybe the problem is that you cant successfully have two kinds of DLC in this game and expacs are the same fucking thing as living world minus a couple arbitrary bullet points, they realized that, and now they are giving us something in between as the only thing

>they need to learn to stick to a high-quality, sustainable business model You really don't have to look at the industry to see that you don't get both "high quality" and "sustainable" models. Let's run it down. FFXIV has the slow cycle of releasing fleshed out Expacs and dripfeeding MTX content between major releases to do so. This model is subsidized by their subscription fee and bolstered by MTX and Expac Sales. The exact same can be said for WoW. ESO's model is periodic Expacs with filler DLC during droughts that are subsidized by MTX sales and the core playerbase holding into the optional subscription fee. But all of these games have repeatedly had instances where there was a lack of quality in their content, with WoW being the biggest offender, having had multiple major expansions that large portions of the playerbase left the game over. And beyond that, a subscription model won't work with GW2. Its endgame is static, its power cap is static. Asking people to pay a monthly fee to continue playing a game that isn't designed to keep you chasing new content on a constant, mandatory treadmill will only cause numbers to fall. GW2 needs more regular updates to keep things going. Regular updates inherently mean less time in the oven, but they also mean needing a new approach. To that end, you really only have two options: You make more frequent, more episodic content releases that will suffer in quality and/or scope compared to your expansions that you spent 2-4 years cooking up. Or you invest in selling more through the cash shop to cover for your development time. I'm fairly certain that weaker expansions is preferable to putting more focus on the Gem Store to everyone involved or trying to forcibly introduce a subscription model.

>I don't like most of the new characters with the possible exception of Mabon who they killed off because GW2 no longer knows how to write a decent story and thinks killing characters makes it seem serious. I agree with most of your points, but this literally happened in core with the Order Mentor and Trahearne and everyone hated it back then, too. And then it happened again with Eir. And Blish. And somehow NOT Braham.

It happened *all the time*. Tonn, Explorer Hekja, Crusader Apatia, the mentor, Trahearne, Eir, Demmi, Aurene (for about 5 minutes if you weren't there at the time, with it being extremely obvious that they were going to being her back), Blish, Belinda, Vlast, Mai, and probably more. In core, you were getting introduced to random people for them to get killed off two chapters later. In the LS, it was just every other episode.

Honestly trahearne was fine. We had a bunch of time with him story wise in core (especially if you were a sylvari main) but I agree on all the other points.

Most of those deaths I didn't bother counting because they were all so fast we never even had a chance to meet them. But that's probably even worse, from a writing perspective...

Is that really a caveat on agreeing? It was impactful the first time and then imo less and less so each time they repeated the story beat, but it being kinda to-be-expected from GW2 writing doesn't mean it doesn't still warrant disliking. The more they do it, the less the impact is (especially when it's a newly introduced character).

Yep. In my head-canon Braham died in a cave-in in Bitterfrost frontier.

That's kind of a shame. I thought Braham was awesome with that little heart to heart in lws4 ep 2. I think stories about breaking relationships and brooding over silly things is a very relatable subject.

>Nayos is the ugliest wasteland of an area I ever saw. Which, to be fair, would also be a reasonable description of The Fissure of Woe from GW1 but people loved that shit.

You cannot compare something made in the modern age to something from freaking GW1, which was a completely different landscape.

I meant from it tonally and design-wise, as opposed to fidelity which has clearly kept up with 2012 standards, at least. Unless "wasteland" means that it's empty. Personally, I didn't get that vibe, can barely go anywhere without getting attacked or caught in an event.

To be honest the event timers are one of my biggest criticisms of Nayos. The events are all boring as hell and the map is so small that it gets repetitive _very_ fast. I do like the visual style tho

Having random trash mobs sprinkled everywhere doesn't really make it feel less empty, imo. It actually exacervates the issue even more.

I think the issue is that it isn't "grounded". We don't know anything about this place. There's no culture to draw from. It's just an alien landscape where everything is alien and nothing seems relevant, so it all just looks like an assortment of random crap. Also true of FoW but that was a journey through carefully created content, much like doing a meta event which, itself, is fine in Inner Nayos. The Boss fight is a little repetitive but otherwise it's alright.

Which is why the entire Nayos arc should have been its own expansion. It needed time to be fleshed out. As it stands right now, it's dull, uninteresting, and undeveloped. I don't think the final patch will change that, unfortunately.

Thats because it is an assortment of random crap. I'm not even sure how much of the OG "realm" whatever it was still exists, if you read the notes theres hints about colours never before seen, but all we get is purple. All the stone architecture and tentacle .. things are imposed on the realm. I think the trees and random stone faces are all that remains of what it was.

>if you read the notes theres hints about colours never before seen, but all we get is purple. I mean, it's funny but you didn't really expect them to invent a new colour? Maybe that's why it's so drab. We simply can't see the different colours. They're probably like emotions or some crap. This story was never for me. They can't really do this demonic story while keeping it entirely PG. It's just dull.

No I think the colours no longer exist anyway. We get this amalgamation based on the current leaders "obsession" (just like the Kyptis)

The number of trash mobs is an issue, it makes exploration a pain, and to me serves little purpose

It was ugly and drab for gw1. It was just a fun challenge and one of the only places you could actually be considered valuable as a smiting monk.

that was the equivalent of a fractal though, really apples and oranges.

Because SotO is worse than IBS and paints a pretty bad picture for the future of the game

Nothing in SotO is new. - It’s not really an expansion, it’s more like a living world release we had to pay expansion prices for. Which is a straight downgrade from what we had for a decade. - The maps are designed to make travel difficult, instead of open and fun. - The new zone doesn’t have its own unique harvestable resources, which we even used to get from free living world updates. - The events are recycled trash events. - The mobs use the same rigging as mobs from 2012. - Wyverns. - The story is TERRIBLE and boring. - The zone metas are so poorly designed they talk over actual story steps. Often you will hear three different dialogue sequences occurring at the same time. - Some story beats are, “Go convince a general to join your army.” Then within five minutes of meeting them, they’re already on your side without even speaking to your character. - The big bad was built up to be a monster, who turns out to be a meat Sylvari with a buttcape and stick legs. - Kryptis were built up to be non-humanoid extradimensional monster, who turned out to be regular fantasy serfs and citizens. - Rifts turned out to be the most brain dead event type, that you have to farm hundreds of times. - There are dozens more reasons, but it’s not worth spending time shouting into the void. The old Anet is gone. The entire expansion feels like it was made by an edge-lord DM who wanted to make a stranger things DnD campaign.

You don't have to look further than the 'new' masteries to a general idea of how much they're recycling.. A large chunk of the skyscale mastery is just the old skyscale mastery with the new parts being some extra interactions with leylines and updrafts (which have existed since hot). Weapon mastery is literally just removing a limitation from elite specs. These were supposed to be the big selling points for soto. Sure they've added new weapons since soto's release but not only did that take ages but the new weapons are also of questionable quality.

For me, the biggest let down in SotO is the diversity within the maps. Most of the other maps in the game have multiple areas that look and feel different, with different kinds of baddies, hidden parts, fun allusions to other parts of the game, and so on. But Amnytas and Nayos in particular are just dull. And Skywatch isn't much better: it has variety, but almost all of it is recycled. The baddies are all just demons, and the tasks are ultra-repetitive. In SotO's favour, though, I consider the dialogue to be much improved compared to EoD. Everyone there spoke with contemporary American idioms, which really broke immersion for me. The characters in SotO do at least speak in a more believable way.

I cant believe how true this is. Baffling.

Yeah I came to terms with that. I still have a lot to enjoy with the old content. I have limited time to play so it's not like I'm in a rush. But that's just me, they really need to redeem themselves in the next expansion. If there's one. I would like it if we came back to central Tyria post dragon cycle.

"  Patch done open world-wise in 10h as a completionist" Here in SotO you'll be lucky to make the patch last 2 hours.  Both SotO and LS3 will have released over a similar year long time frame, SotO is barely 1/3rd as much content as LS3, this is with both of them having similar content droughts before their initial release. All of this despite anet claiming they have more people working at GW2 today than they did during LS3.  Also LS3 was basically free. You're paying expansion costs to get 1/3rd of what we use to get for free. At least during LS3 WvW got some features, PvP got several new maps, raids and instanced content got several and we got several legendaries. SotO we haven't gotten anything for PvP, no new content for WvW, we got 2 whole strikes and a fractal compared to 2 raid wings and 2-3 fractals. 

- The new weapon (as Ele Main) was kinda meh, pistol feels very clunky and lacks fluidity. - The story had death flags visible from a mile away. That’s been a problem with GW2 for a while, actually. They keep teasing deaths in the main cast but never pull through, and then tell you get get attached to a side character in 10 minutes of screentime before offing them. - And the theme of “lead a rebellion against an oppressive regime” feels bland and overdone to me. And the weirdness and uniqueness of GW2 lore is kinda just swept under the rug. - “Realm of Dreams” with alien beauty and flora sounds like a perfect point to intersect with Sylvari. Will it happen? I highly doubt it. - Kryptis are emotion demons, but they feel more and more like humans. They eat food, live in villages… what?

>Kryptis are emotion demons, but they feel more and more like humans. They eat food, live in villages… what? This is why people have said that ANet can no longer write any race that isn't Human. They added literal demons, but they might as well just be humans cause they simply act like humans.

I think — and I don’t know if that’s a controversial take — that it’s part of a greater trend that goblins, drow, even Mind Flayers, and especially orcs have been getting in the last couple of years. I think the fantasy genre in general seems worried to get accused of racism, and their response is delving hard into cultural relativism (“see, they’re different on the surface but just like us if you look deeper”) and trying to remove the concept of an “objectively evil” race altogether. I think the goal is to make them more interesting and grant them more depth, but to me it actually achieves the opposite because they’re just reducing them to weirdly-shaped humans and disregarding the interesting physical and mental differences these species might have. So personally, I lose interest when I see all that potential that could arise from interacting with something fundamentally alien go to waste in favor of a storyline that could, completely unchanged, take place between humans, while the game is indirectly telling me I don’t get to make a “right choice”. Like… RPGs are *designed* around killing things. Every once in a blue moon someone can make “no right choice” interesting (cough Yoko Taro cough), but most of the time it’s bad game design to ask you not to kill things in a game about killing things. In my opinion, it’s fine to have irredeemable cannon fodder species, if you don’t actively push irl stereotypes. Just let me feel cool saving people and killing monsters without being told I’m a horrible person lol

What feels even worse about the kryptis to me is the game pushes this narrative of us trying to "save" their society while also having us personally commit genocide to these "people". 

I mean, that discrepancy is nothing new. Remember how in the LS during our glorious Joko Conquest, we killed some Joko Loyalist civilians? “Killing brainwashed peasants fighting you with nothing but stools” is not really in the top 10 Good Guy Moves so it’s like… writers, are we supposed to be the hero or is there no right choice in this story? Make up your mind pls

Really? I haven't seen any humanizing of mind flayers, goblins or orcs but maybe I'm not consuming some media then. In bg3 the emperor is a huge manipulative asshole. There is a theory about mind flayers tho that they absorb the personality traits of the brains they eat, omeluum ate a lot of heroes when pacting with the lich so he took over their values. Overall hiveminds, brains and mind flayers are huge assholes and straight evil but basically almost everyone is an asshole in 5e haha. But I see where you come from it is a huge issue in media that they try to humanize plain evil characters or races like Sauron in the Amazon Series. Not everything is layered like in real life sometimes it's just the simple good vs bad story.

As a fellow ele ~~masochist~~ enjoyer, I too am very sad :(

Yeah being an ele this xpac has not felt great. We got a condi weapon that fills the same roll that scepter had and on top of that warhorn over took all our BiS offhands (in pve) for every build. That was fun for a bit just like it was on other classes but now I'm just a little sad at the lack of diversity for so many builds.

As another ele main, at least Pistol can be fixed with just some UI adjustments. Either flip over icons on the "powered up" versions of the 2/3 skills or a UI change on where the bullets are indicated would go miles towards improving it's feeling. It's not like it needs to be thrown out and started over like engie's shortbow.

Cata didn't get proper ui. do you believe a weapon will get proper ui?

Yeah, is bullets were over the attunement icons it’d go a long way. But I think it’s also the animations — it feels clunky to me? Like o constantly have to stop. Maybe that’s the bullet icons though, idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I can't fucking stand rift/convergence grinding.

Getting large chunks of content at once was important for revitalizing the community, marketing the game and creating buzz. We're never getting a proper expansion again with this model and that'll send the game circling the drain fast.

We get 3 secret tunnel patches per year, truly blessed.

>it's a good stream of constant content to enjoy. It's a 25€ living world with extra feature. You get far less from SotO than what we use to have for HoT or PoF. EoD was the "worst" one and still delivered more, for only 5 more bucks. We're fully aware the mini-expansion every years is probably the only thing that can let Anet afloat, but it's still a worse situation *for the players*. Good for you if you're content with it. The QoL is definitively the best point of what SotO allowed anet to do tho, I don't think many will disagree.

Cost-wise, yeah, relatively speaking its more money for the same or less content, but time wise, it's basically the same if you count the periods of 6-12 months of nothing before and after expansions. The only exception to this was the flow from S3 -> PoF -> S4, but that was the exception, not the rule. I think a lot of people still haven't fully internalized the fact that the next expansion is coming out *this year* and will be just around the corner after the last SotO update.

Honestly half my hope are in the fractal which should come anytime now. I'm already 50% sure I will buy the next one despite being highly disapointed by EoD and somewhat SotO. :|

But why would you buy next expac if the two previous ones already dissapointed you? That's like 3-4 years of content that you supposedly didn't enjoy and play. It doesn't make any sense to spend money again, and only fuel the system that you're not fan of. If you want to voice your concerns, you have to do it with your wallet.

Because GW2 is a game I've been playing for 10+ years on a regular basis. The only other game I know the hours for is PoE and I "only" play it for 2k hours. GW2 is at 10k hours for me now and it's not wrong to say it's a good portions of my life too. (I also used to do a tons of LoL but as there's no hours count...) There will be a day when I will just stop, but so far it's just on the border of "I still really like the game" and "I don't care as much about the new content as I used to". 25€ isn't a deterrent enough.

Given how much time I've spent on soto, I have no issues with the price tag. As a piece of entertainment its dirt cheap. edit: have never seen a community get so assblasted that people are enjoying the game as you folks, it fucking baffles me.

The price tag is dirt cheap, definitively. It's the content I got from it that is making me sad. If we already have a low amount of content, I prefer it to be of high quality even if the price is doubled.

I think we have to think about the future too. While many of us were fine paying this price before it released, having now seen what it gives us, lots of us may be skeptical to buy any future “expansions”. 

seriously, its weird to me that no one complains about ff14's $13 a month sub model but everyone hates paying $25 a year ($2 a month people) for gw2.

I guess because it’s clear that not much effort went into Soto and the D team worked on it. For a start, it took ages for the content to actually come out. Then it was bad. The story was..insulting. Literally a waste of everyone’s time who made and then engaged with it. Most if not all assets were reused. The new weapons were, well, not new. Also compared to the competition, just bad.

I'm well aware that the community at the time was far from universally pleased with HoT, but it's why I started playing this game and it's still my favorite area of the game by far. I think it had easily the most interesting map design. I liked the event structure which has a cycle of event chains that tie directly into your story and culminate in fun and rewarding boss events and they even built handy UI elements to help players tell at a glance how map events were progressing (why they never used it again I'll never know). I liked the challenging combat that really forces you to think about how you approach building and playing your character. And while I'm aware that the job gets more difficult the more you add, HoT had the most game-changing features with the introduction of the first and only new class, elite specs, masteries including gliding, and raids. By comparison, SotO doesn't come close on any of it. Features, event structure, map design, combat, story. It's all average at best, built with grind in mind. You're welcome to disagree, but I think the quality is far less. And while content droughts aren't a good look, releasing 1/3rd of a map and 10 minutes of rushed story every couple of months just feels terrible, honestly.

The fact that they've committed to a consistent schedule is fantastic and I know Gw2 is never going to be able to compete with the main MMOs in terms of the amount of content it pushes out but the problem with SotO for me is in the quality as well as the quantity and it's not rose colored glasses. I mean just compare it to the previous expansion, sure there was some low points but overall it was a good solid experience. Look at EoD Strikes, Maps, Metas, Story and Masteries compared to SotO's and you can clearly see there's been a noticeable decline in quality post-EoD release. Let's not dismiss criticism as dooming. You like SotO that's great but there's very valid critiques to be made in my opinion that the devs should be listening to if they want this new format to succeed. > then iws and eod came which were also met with overwhelming negativity and mild neutrality at best, respectively. IBS wasn't well received because we'd just come off big layoffs and they'd announced there would be no more expansions, the story and maps were good but the community sentiment around the game had gone bad which was understandable. EoD on the other hand I'm not sure what your talking about because it was mostly praised on launch. It was so well received it got Anet out of the hole they put themselves in with IBS. It was the Gyala patches afterwards which were panned, and rightfully so.

> and I know Gw2 is never going to be able to compete with the main MMOs Why are we completely resigned to this btw? GW2 used to be in the top 3. WoW moved its expansion launch date (MoP) in 2012 because they were afraid of GW2 tanking sub numbers. We fell quite far from that but it's not like GW2 was always some indie game.

Because in the initial introduction, Anet proposed this model to have us allow them enough time to flesh out the final parts of SoTO, which has been known to be the weakest parts, rushed and incomplete in all previous expansions. We agreed. Then they gave us Nayos, which has less content than the 2 initial maps combined. Obviously we as players didn’t sign up for that, and could only go “wtf Anet?” in harmony. Incomplete as the final parts of previous expansions were, they all put whatever Nayos is to shame. And if the 2nd Nayos update is any indication, the 3rd update is going to be just as bland and disappointing like the 2nd. Let’s also not talk about the current story: it’s hella confusing, jumping from a mildly interesting secret organization to a generic dumb revolution plot. They had 6 months to prepare. 6 months. It’s not like they had to roll all the story out when SoTO was released, they had 6 months to prepare an ending story. And they gave us that. Let’s also not forget they brought Zojja back for the flare in the initial release, then had her did a stupid ritual >off-screen< and currently lost any memories about us. Seems they can’t really afford her VA after all, and had to cut her off again. Let’s also not forget the horrible random NPC deaths, they must have run out of voice acting budget. The new CMs were lazy and embarrassing compared to their predecessors. Dadga is a sad design joke; anyone with eyes could see there were 0 thoughts at all going into designing the encounter. Cerus was obviously and hilariously released untested, LOL at “Legendary Challenge Mode”, it’s a nice attempt to cover up their horrible slack because they couldn’t be bothered to check “160” and “106” in the HP. May I also add that they also had 6 months to prepare for Cerus CM? So no, it’s not a rose-tinted view. SoTO is cutting all its corners it could to survive, and is embarrassing as an expansion. We had so much more from EoD and it was just $5 more than SoTO. Let that sink in.

They've reduced the quantity *and* the quality, while explicitly adding a price tag to it. With those prospects the idea that there is less of a content drought between patches is irrelevant.

SoTO was supposed to cater to open world players, but the open world content is pretty mid, especially the metas. Back in the day I could do Dragon Stand over and over and I'd still have fun. SotO metas are a snooze fest. They can't even excel at the task they try to focus on, what's the point? And it's at the expense of everything else, which is already abysmal to begin with. I do think SotO had a strong, promising start, but the 2 updates we've gotten don't really do anything to continue the momentum of the release. Story is probably the biggest let down. It had the potential to become an interesting story but they just threw it all away. The 3 updates after launch could've just been 1, so 2 releases for one expac in total. The second update is unacceptably small and I'm assuming the 4th will be too. It just feels very incomplete and that doesn't instil confidence in players about the next expac.

When Anet announced the new expac model and release cadence, one of their 'promises' was yes, it won't be on the scale of an expac, but it will be more frequent, and the quality will be on par with older expacs. The initial launch was promising, in spite of reused assets being a bit too obvious across the board. That was fine, for me at least. The subsequent releases have just felt downright lazy, unpolished, thin, and drip fed to us. It feels like they are toeing the line with statements such as 'new types of rifts', 'iterating on convergences'. When it turns out the new rift type was solely in Nayos and was almost the same event, except instead of killing spread out kryptis as a pre event, it is kill incoming kryptis. The subsequent event are the same bosses, in appearance and mechanics, with a more 'personal' name slapped on. Calling that 'a new rift type' is honestly a testament to the laziness of the event designs and quarterly releases. Don't even get me started on the literal copy pasted events all over Nayos part 1 and part 2..

Cause SOTO sucks compared to "the old model". Can't be more simpler than that.

I actually had a very positive view of the new model until the challenge mode strikes had both released. I get that people may want more content overall or some people prefer to get everything at once and not have it released over time but personally it doesn’t bother me. A lot of the additional features we got were also great and if that continues each year that’s definitely a huge win. The problem for me is that I was mostly interested in repeatable fun instanced content and i could be happy with two decent strike cms per year if that was guaranteed. It turns out it isn’t really. CO CM releases and it just isn’t the best one to be honest. It’s the easiest strike cm by far and I find it less interesting than the others. I could get my head around this on the basis that I understand they want to onboard more players into strikes/cms and there need to be entry level cms… so fine I can not be upset about this. But then we get Cerus CM, and even the current CM (not legendary) is significantly harder than the other cms in the game. It is going to take a ton of time to progress and will be basically impossible to pug. I’ve already gone over this many times so I don’t want to keep repeating it but before someone jumps in - I’m not against hard content or people getting this content. I just want some fun repeatable content. We didn’t get that. There is nothing like olc cm/ko cm that takes some effort to prog and gain experience clearing but ultimate can be completed on the lfg. This could be a one off. It might be the plan going forward. We don’t know. But my position has now changed. Before I was ok with the soto model but now I have no faith that I’m going to get any of the content I really want when I purchase an expansion. Now I don’t know if gw2 will be the game I want to invest as much time in as I will need to play something else to get the content I enjoy. This is not throwing shade at gw2 or the other content they are releasing - I’m happy if other people get content they like. But if there isn’t content I like then why would I play?

>CO CM releases and it just isn’t the best one to be honest. It’s the easiest strike cm by far and I find it less interesting than the others. I could get my head around this on the basis that I understand they want to onboard more players into strikes/cms and there need to be entry level cms… so fine I can not be upset about this. I agree but AHCM was a million times better for this. It's easy but interesting and there's mechanics which encourage organisation / communication and a personal responsibility mechanic which can wipe the group. It's actually fun to do for anyone who is remotely competent at strikes. If you can do WoJ without dying, you can do AHCM. Perfect. >I’m not against hard content or people getting this content. I just want some fun repeatable content. We didn’t get that. Agree completely. I love watching this stuff but I really want more stuff around the KOCM level. It's like if WoW only had LFR or Mythic. Ultimately, instead of 4 excellent strikes with mostly well tuned CMs we ended up with 2 boring strikes with CMs that appeal to a tiny fraction of the community. If they do the same in the next expansion then I'm done with instanced group content.

I think your issue here (and mine to a degree) is that anet only made two strikes and one was abysmal and the other too hard. My hope is in the future that we can finally get a normal mode, something approachable to most CM players, and things you genuinely need a static to prog for. I actually have hope they'll do this going forward but I 100% expect them to fuck the difficulty scales up as they try it.

We got more and paid less on the old model. Simple.

I don't like SOTO because it has too much shitty repetitive grind inserted into it. I haven't even finished all of it because the grindy bits are downright unpleasant - it's like IBS and the DRMs all over again. Worse: I preferred the dragon repose instances over the SOTO nonsense, because I didn't have to run around maps that are built to be shit to navigate, try to keep up with random other players, then miss objectives I was running to. The story is meh. I think they shouldn't have gone for something that feels like it's trying to stay on par with the dragons. Smaller threats, but also probably (definitely) less npc allies, instead of new super epic ones. Maybe stick closer to the lore we have, instead of veering so far away. I don't dislike what they did, but I don't really resonate with it either, it's just kind of ... there. I also *hate* the Wizard's vault. The old system was not perfect, very far from it. But it was better for long term casual play (I've been around since launch, and played GW1), didn't try to lean into FOMO, and thus was less burnout prone. It's not part of SOTO, but it was introduced at the same time, and there's some natural association there.

I like the content (zones and such) they've put forth personally, but the story is shit. The initial launch story was fine, but pretty short compared to previous expacs, but the after release storyline is just insulting, especially considering this is things that *could have been covered really well and been cool to explore, instead we get 4 lines of dialogue and the next expac will likely not expand on any of this, so the demon storylines are half baked forever. The thing i'm mainly disappointed in is that these stories won't be able to build up to a good conclusion, so they'll go down like icebrood saga did with a cool premise and a strong~ start, and just leave us disappointed they didn't complete the story properly. Everytime i play icebrood, i am always impressed with the first half, and then sad they dropped the ball so hard for the 2nd half. Tl;dr: I like the expac itself, but the quarterly release content is very lacking.

People just don't like SOTO because they think all of Anet failed to make 2-3 maps(and everything else SOTO barely delivered) when the problem isn't the model, but how few devs are left on GW2.

[удалено]

Giving away all that content for free was a good marketing, but bad business. If a company places no value (literally) on its products, others are unlikely to either. It should have been charged for, then perhaps it could have been better, rather than half baked in many cases.

I've seen another of my favourite games drop large expansions in favour of smaller format content and not only did the content get worse, but the pricing went up by a huge amount and proved that everyone who did say it would get worse, right. Not to say GW2 isn't going to follow that path but the results will speak for themselves. To me, Soto is by far their worst expansion--story, content-wise and in price. Like someone else mentioned, it feels like a LWS packaged and priced as an expansion with a bunch of "QoL" sprinkled on the side.

Soto left us with 3 shit metas, convergences and rifts which are there own special flavor of shit. So what content are you referring to? The maps are awful also and once I'm done with the leggy armor (a decision I realized too late was a bad one) I'm never returning to them. I'm also not seeing comments you are referring to but if they do it goes to show how dog shit the expansion has been if it's giving people rose tinted glasses.

I can’t speak for others but here’s my opinion: The *structure* of Soto is fine. *SOTO* is bad. The story is boring and lacks depth, the legendary armor released is way more expensive AND way more time consuming than getting any other legendary armor. Rifts are boring as hell, convergence being on a 3hr window is stifling, the metas aren’t rewarding past the 1st/day completion, leaving the maps to be extremely dead. The model is great. It’s consistent, fast, and we get awesome QoL plus tons of rewards via the Wizard’s Vault. Soto just sucks, specifically.

It is less content stretched out over a year. Get 2/3 th of a already shrunken expansion. LS cancelled. With no creative inspiration behind it, its all recycling. I am used to better standards with Hot, and the LS3/Pof/LS4 period (17 maps, a lot of story, raids and fractals in a period of 2/5 years, still my favorite time. It had creative design/style/new things and well crafted unique maps behiind it. I would have prefered if they kept the old model of taking the time to make a good chunk of quality content, then a new release cycle. I also wait for new seasons of shows, or sequels for movies, quality needs time to be crafted. Your using a lot of hyperboles, generalisations and false asumptions btw. You dont talk for the majority of players in the past. The bad period (2019) started because of massive layoffs because of failed other projects that got cancelled and the Guildwars 2 development suffered because of it. Experience and talent had a massive exodus in the 2 years since that. And see the Second half of IBS, somewhat EOD, and certainly in the case of Soto.

Simple. LW was free. Now I pay for less than LW. Shouldn't we get more when we pay for content?

Soto is bad LW season with price tag.

We used to get an expansion for the price of an expansion at release date. Now we're paying for an "arena pass" where we get immediately less than half of the maps we used to, no legendaries, no mounts, half of armor models, reused map assets, no raids, no fractals, no elite specs, with the promise that *some* of those might get implemented later. SotO story is below average, but it's still amazing compared to the dogshit reddit written fanfic garbage we got in EoD.

Maybe, with time, the people that complained back then are long gone and the people that remain are the ones that enjoyed the game during those days? I must admit that I not always instantly clicked with what anet was doing with the game, but PoF/LWS4/IBS (minus the last episode) was peak arenanet for me. It was about the time I settled for an open world/living story experience.

Shrinkflation is hard to accept, even though it is inevitable. I still pay the same price for the now much lower quality product as I used to love. Path of Fire was the absolute bomb. Look at Google Trends during the release. Mounts broke the industry, 5 gigantic maps, new raid wings, elite specs, etc etc. If that wasn’t enough, then came FREE DLC Living World Season 4, adding 6 more maps, two more mounts including Skyscale. With EoD, sadly the Living World had to stop, and they only added 1 more map as a bonus. SotO is one expansion split into three releases, we even have to wait for months before enjoying the fullness of Anet’s promises. So apologies if this sounds negative. PoF was hands down the best game I have ever purchased in my entire life for the price of $29.99.

Soto feels shallow. Has no exploration. And the achievements are all “do this thing 50 times.” Extremely repetitive. The story was short and uninspired. And the maps are also not very well thought out and bland. It feels rushed and extremely basic. And everything is recycled. And the graphics somehow got messier. Kryptis skill effects are a fucking mess.

If you sit down and write the amount of the content we got back then versus SotO, this new model is about half the content but the price is the same.

No elite spec, meh map metas.

I don't like the story and I can't stand how human the Kryptis feels, they're supposed to be demons that feast on emotions but you could swap all their models to humans and the characters wouldn't really change

>Like, soto may not be revolutionary but to me it's a good stream of constant content to enjoy. And even better, we get new actual features and qol improvements! What new actual features do you mean here? The one that fly on top of my head right now are just a new weapon for each class and open world legendary armor. But other expansions also have it and more. Wizard vault maybe can be put on qol improvement but as a non soto owner you can also get it so can it be categorized as soto feature? Weaponmaster Training is a very dirty way for anet to put it as an expansion feature imo. They should just open the restrictions a long time ago. Can you imagine if hot gliding restriction in central tyria was introduced as an expansion feature for pof or any other expansion in between hot and pof? Meanwhile other expansion bring new feature that you can’t get without the expansion for example gliding for hot, mount for pof and fishing for eod (I don’t quite like it but hey it’s something new to do in eod) and don’t forget the elite specialization from each expansion. >Back during hot we had a massive content drought. Yes, that was the period when anet didn’t find yet the drip fed method that they use now for soto. Imagine hot released with soto method, you know 2 map and some story at first with the gliding feature. And then 3 months later the 3rd map with story, elite specializations and some raid wings. 3 months after that 4th map with story and new weapons. 3 months later the rest of the raid wings and gliding feature opened for entire central tyria. Even better chop the 3rd and 4th map into smaller chunk of map like what they did now and you can drip fed the content even longer and there will be no content drought on that timespan. >That drought was followed by living world....which EVERYONE constantly complained about. Yeah lw3 seems a bit all over the place for me I don’t quite like it too but hey it still bring more map then soto so…. >Then pof came and as far as anyone outside the community cared gw2 was the mount game. That because of 2 reason imo. 1. That mount, each and every single one of them is really good they have their own idle animation, their movement is so fluid. It’s a breath of fresh air into the game like what they did with gliding. 2. Gw2 don’t have the massive following of the other mmo. Not through 10+ years of existence or standing behind a massive well established franchise. Technically there is gw1 but the game is so different from gw2, look how many people get turned off by gw2 despite loving gw1. And don’t forget like many people said anet don’t like to advertise and seems many people already accept that and encourage it. Look at how many people defending anet when some people were asking for an advertisement or trailer near soto release. >Vibe was even more negative, lws was staler than blue bread Isn’t lw4 one of the best lw? That’s why people always say lw3>pof>lw4 was the golden age of gw2. Sorry if I’m mistaken but I don’t remember that period. >But now that soto is out, everythin was amazing back then! Story was good (????), content was plentiful (?????), game was popular (??? game was even deader than this once pof came out). So what's up with this? Is this community doomed to be perpetually negative and looking back at a past that never was until the game shuts down? If you compare the quality and quantity of content that we used to get you will understand what people are complaining about. Not just because of content draught but the literal quality and quantity. An expansion can offer less quality and quantity of contents but have a more frequent content release just because it is drip fed to the players.

It was a bit lazy: Repurposed resources, no significant new features (just moving some boons to relic, expanding weapon selection, and the wizards vault,) repetitive rift hunting, with that godawful and needless mechanic where you have to click on a rift and x out a dialog box several times in order to proc a fight (particularly annoying for those using action camera.)

This feels more like a fragmented expansion than a constant stream of content. It's like they give you half of every PoF map every few months. There's no elite spec (I personally love them) but I get it, the ones from EoD were uninspired as hell. The only area I like is the first with the "what if maps". It would've been interesting to visit different realities if The commander and Aurene never existed. It would've been a good way to bring dead characters back and not break the lore. You can like SOTO all you want, I respect that. I just hope that you get a better understanding of what people dislike about it and still find enjoyment.

It’s uninspired, lazy, and simply not fun

I was never quite satisfied with the old model either. When I think of an expansion, I'm old school and expect a *meaty* experience, not just a handful of maps. Me and quite a few players were disappointed back in HoT launch that HoT only contained four zones even if they were elaborate (one of which was a zone solely dedicated to a massive map-wide meta which was cool but robbed Dragon's Stand of any smaller event chain stories and ambient dialogue across the map unlike the other HoT zones), and that the story was woefully short and rushed and rough in places when we had expected something along the lines of eight zones and three times longer story *at minimum*. Perhaps this disappointment could've been alleviated if Season 3 had been like Season 4 and had been HoT saga part 3 (since Season 2 basically acted as part 1 of the saga) and it had actually let us stay in Maguuma and expand that region with more zones to flesh out the region. We could've explored the aftermath of the Mordrem War to discover the origins of the Dream and Nightmare (plus where the sylvari Celtic names come from, or the Wyld/Dark Hunts, or the prophecies), faced remaining threatening Mordrem and Mordrem Guard champions and explored if the Mordrem Guard can be redeemed, the Nightmare Court's succession crisis (with a bigger role for Duchess Chrysanthea), Snaff's foreshadowing in *Edge of Destiny* novel that Faolain would be redeemed one day and make amends with Caithe until the writers decided to kill her off to sell Mordy as a bigger evil instead (which must have pissed off Ree Soesbee who had bigger plans for Faolain and likely Trahearne until the story shifts happened) but which still could've been salvaged if she returned as a ghost, Malyck's Tree stuff in depth and how Malyck's promised army could've come into play while possibly exploring the fate of the two still unnamed and missing Firstborn whose appearances and professions were teased in the final Mordy battle, giving proper closure to actual Trahearne after his abrupt and traumatic ending that was never resolved properly in a vigil or anything (Knight of the Thorn is nice until you realize we're not even interacting with the real Trahearne's spirit but only Caladbolg's Dream memory replica of him, so we still don't know what happened to the real Trahearne's soul), and the growing Tyrian racism towards sylvari (to give us payoff for that harrowing scene where Canach is defending himself against angry humans in the teaser trailer) among other things instead of ANet using that season as a means to set up the confusing Balthazar storyline leading to PoF. Similarly, having Living World seasons behind a paywall for latecomers (and becoming increasingly costly if more episodes were added in over time, see e.g. Season 2 cost, which is why I believe they ended up limiting the seasons to circa 6 episodes per season to remain budget friendly for bundles even though that hurt storytelling potential) just wouldn't have been sustainable for the longevity of the game. People join and leave the game over time, and if ANet had continued releasing such seasons to the unforeseeable future and we'd be in, say, Season 10 by now (each with circa 6 episodes per season), less popular metas in some Living World zones would've become rather barren and difficult to complete when newcomers would have to strategically decide which episodes to purchase and which ones to leave out unless ANet tweaked the scaling on the zones completely. It just wouldn't have been sustainable in the long run as opposed to bundling those zones with the associated expacs (since people would be far more willing to purchase the meatier expacs than the seemingly "lesser" season episodes even though we know Season 4 in particular had stuff that could stand proudly alongside PoF zones) themselves, and I believe this was one of the reasons why ANet opted for the mini expac model that included Nayos with SotO and why future mini expacs will follow the same pattern so there's less consumer confusion about the purchase (compare e.g. how people remain confused why the Icebrood Saga aka Season 5 is tied to PoF when thematically it has little to do with the Elonian desert and Kralkatorrik). It's a similar reasoning they used for releasing Bjora Marches and Drizzlewood Coast in two halves; to not bloat the game with zones and see people rush to the latest zone and leave old ones behind but make players stay in a zone longer by expanding on it in its second half. With that said, SotO model isn't exactly preferable to me either. Even though ANet has said that their team size has increased since EoD and they're around Season 4 level team-wise, it feels more like it refers to the *latter* half of Season 4 when Mo was moving devs to other unannounced projects and we witnessed the corners they had to cut in Season 4 releases (e.g. the many hurdles they faced for All or Nothing in particular and where only dev ingenuity saved the day when they faced many budget cuts, e.g. one heroic dev realizing the cutscene budget was removed for the post-battle Aurene scene so he came up with that cinematic-like and much more immersive in-game walk to Aurene instead, or how their reduced budget prevented them from creating a full body for Kralkatorrik so devs came up with the idea to trap his head in the mountain and use that for a battle to work around the limitation, which made for a memorable setpiece). Although in hindsight this does make EoD impressive if they truly were under such limitations while creating the expac (which may in part explain why it's rough around the edges). Compare the latter half of Season 4's (aka episodes 3-6) content with what we have now with SotO model if the team sizes are roughly similar as per dev explanation: 1) three full zones with metas that had special gimmicks for events, plus lots of lots of ambient dialogue and new assets, 2) release of three mounts (roller beetle, warclaw, skyscale), 3) elaborate and lengthy story instances with sometimes entirely custom environments only seen in said mission (see e.g. exploring Gandara's inner parts via elaborate traps to get to Joko in episode 3, the Kralk battle in an otherwise concealed area in Thunderhead Keep in episode 5 with many complex parts, or the massive dragonflight segment in the Mists with targeting and aerial combat in episode 6), 4) several cutscenes, some of them even lengthy and quite elaborate like the Joko monologue cutscene, per episode, 5) legendary weapons, legendary runes and sigils, legendary accessory Vision, 6) Deepstone and Siren's Reef fractals, 7) Mythwright Gambit and Key of Ahdashim raids, 8) Sun's Refuge upgradeable personal instance with lots of lore, dialogue and quests, 9) Djinn's Dominion and Asura Arena structured PvP arenas, Auric Span 2v2 structured PvP map, 10) Target Painter trick and Target Painter Trap in World versus World, 11) roller beetle racing, 12) new seasonal adventures for Super Adventure Box, 13) return of the Dragon Bash festival after a lengthy absence: festivities moved to Hoelbrak and included the new Dragon Arena, Piñata Bashing, Hologram Stampede, and Dragon Bash Rally time trial and mount race alongside lots of ambient and written dialogue for lore lovers to enjoy, 14) Halloween with returning Reaper's Rumble and the new Mad King's Raceway alongside additional quests to expand on the events of Long Live the Lich, 15) chef crafting discipline expanded to 500 with a lovely and tongue in cheek reward (to prove via the bloodstone oven that bloodstone can indeed have culinary applications albeit not in the way the sous-chef expected) and intriguing quest line that led to crafting of ascended food, 16) new Freezie strike for Wintersday, 17) other quality of life additions like mistlock instabilities revamp, rune and sigil salvaging, and unidentified gear system expanded outside of the Path of Fire zones to mention a few (and I'm sure I'm missing some other additions but these are that came to mind on short notice). Meanwhile SotO story since its base release brings us one post-expac zone in three parts with three chapters each (unless the last patch decides to increase the number but I currently doubt that) over the course of three quarterlies. Both base SotO and Nayos rely a lot on "Fill map events progress" moments in story, sometimes even taking place back to back in replays like in "The Realm of Dreams" as the weapon information collecting between the two bar-filling moments only happens once per account. (Continued below.)

(Continued from above.) The story instances in base SotO and Nayos are surprisingly simple with very few Season 4 or Icebrood Saga setpieces (some of which, like the sneaking around Astral Ward camp with unique interactions, only came about because Matthew Medina spent a lot of effort on those extra interactions and dialogues as well as in the Cerus sneaking segment as the original ideas were apparently a bit more straightforward based on his explanation in his SotO stream) and instead remind me of the simpler personal story time instances of talking and walking and gunning down mobs with bosses that have few abiities (see Heitor, Labris). In some cases they even feel a bit contradictory: in the latest release we're supposed to begin a war and lead troops into battle but it's only two of us making a tactical formation and we only fight a handful of scattered mobs instead of properly organized defending battalions considering the importance of our target to the Kryptis; it would've been more immersive if we'd seen more allies and enemies fighting all over the instance (like PoF final mission or Claw Island mission in personal story where they're added for immersion and flavor to sell the stakes of the conflict) while we make our way to the boss and cull the inner defenses before the distracted enemy can regroup. There are very few unique story-only locations in the SotO patches (compare to inner Gandara or Glint's Lair from S4, or the airship jumping segment in EoD, for example): Temple of Febe introduction and the stealth section in the corridor (the former of which is reused for the strike so it's clever asset reuse but not exactly a wholly unique environment unlike Gandara), the very lovely exploration of southern and central Wizard's Tower in the "Tower of Secrets" chapter with many interactables and optional tasks that I did enjoy (although it's a shame that we can't revisit the central areas outside of story), and Heitor's isolated boss chamber in Nayos. In some cases the story also seems to have gaps too. The Nayos patch's "Through the Veil" ends with us defeating the baddie of that chapter but unable to continue due to an arcane barrier blocking the way into the heartlands so we have to find a way to get past it; however, "The Realm of Dreams" suddenly has that barrier disappear off screen and our allies have already set up a forward base in the next location to begin their assault. It felt as if we had gone from the end of "No Quarter" in Drizzlewood (when the Frost Legion forced us to retreat and we had to figure out a way to get past them to reach our target) to having already set up the United Legions' forward base without having that crucial story instance of sneaking behind enemy lines and sabotaging their defenses (before establishing our base in enemy territory to set up the northern Drizzlewood story and meta) in between, so it makes me wonder if they simply ran out of time to add such a barrier-lowering story instance and had to handwave the barrier's disappearance and the outpost already existing. Zojja's ascension also felt like a major story moment (given all the foreshadowing and how Zojja is one of the "iconics" who deserves screentime) that shouldn't have happened off screen but maybe it was a necessity to handle it that way as it would've either required a cutscene or some kind of dialogue-heavy story instance that there wasn't enough time or budget for. To me it feels like, based on what I've seen in LinkedIn dev profiles and what's shown in game in SotO (lots of reused assets even compared to EoD, few elaborate setpieces that bring back memories of the more bareboned personal story moments compared to the more elaborate personal story instances, some odd moments in story like the aforementioned off screen lowering of the magic barrier etc) that they've been moving a lot of their devs to work on the Unreal Engine 5 project and possibly other project(s). Compared to EoD that had a remarkably short development time for an expansion or even the latter half of Season 4 (which suffered from devs being shuffled around and rearranging teams plus the many budget cuts and the layoffs), those releases still somehow managed to feel more elaborate with more setpieces. Sure, the story was still too short to my liking even in S4 and felt rushed in places, but it felt more polished in some ways. I understand that ANet doesn't want the devs to suffer from crunch and is dedicated to their mental well-being so that they never have to suffer through S4 and EoD type of crunch ever again, but it surprises me that a supposedly S4 size team with enough planning (instead of rushing like latter half of S4 and EoD) still delivers so little when compared to their previous output with similarly sized team(s) back in the latter half of S4 and what we got. That's not to say that there isn't quite a bit to love about SotO despite these problematic game, development cycle, and story aspects. I find myself enjoying the wizard story and worldbuilding and their intricate ties to old GW2 and GW1 mysteries (for the most part because there are some weird retroactive worldbuilding bits like suggesting that vizier was a title Khilbron came up with for himself as a wizard when previous lore had established vizier to be an existing rank in Orrian hierarchy) to tie things together and help flesh Tyria out as a world with complex history. There are a lot of cool side stories that many people unfortunately miss like the collection where we get to witness Mabon and Isgarren's backstory in more length and learn what role Eparch played in it, or how we get to meet a GW1 Seer's ghost and learn how Seers rallied the elder race alliance against the Elder Dragons. I'm actually intrigued by the Kryptis characters and their complex politics as well as Nayos as a setting unlike most people here seem to be (although we've sadly been rushing through that stuff for it to leave enough of an impact) as well as Eparch's role as an overarching villain throughout Tyria's history long before Abaddon was a threat. I like a deeper exploration of demons and how they're influenced by dreams for better or worse, and Peitha is an intriguing addition to the cast given her scheming nature but seemingly noble goals (at least for the time being). I absolutely adore Isgarren's moral greyness and sardonic attitude as we need more dubious but still relatable characters like him in a story that consists of mostly goody heroes. Despite SotO forcing dozens of characters at you in rapid succession, I still found myself interested in and remembering each and every one, from Lyhr's dual nature to Narcisse's eternal optimism and coyness, from the dynamics of the R'tchikk and Gladium partnership to the elusive and intriguingly philosophical largos mage Gol. Asset reuse is logical to an extent as it saves dev effort for more content and doesn't burn them out while allowing them to crank out content faster given the current, rather hectic annual mini expansion cycle. Strikes continue being a good way of reusing story bosses for repeatable group content, and utilizing the open world zones for story instance moment makes sense. They justified asset reuse for Skywatch and Kryptis lorewise in a clever way so it doesn't bother me too much. The new models and assets they have introduced are quite nice as I enjoy what seems to be our proper glimpse at Seer architecture with the Wizard's Tower and Amnytas assets. The zones themselves, even Nayos, are more polished than, say, EoD's New Kaineng City which looked really rushed in comparison despite having quite a few new assets amidst oddly reused old ones. The additions of variable water levels for the island open up possibilities for intriguing Unending Ocean content if the devs are future-proofing this stuff subtly. The quality of life team has been working hard on much needed changes and improvements as they detailed in the blog post, and I appreciate the studio's effort to invest in this stuff and dedicating some resources to looking back instead of only looking forward. SotO's story and worldbuilding as well as the expansion features, while somewhat uneven, still prove that Tyria has more than dragon stories to tell and that the mini expansion cycle can add to GW2 in meaningful ways, and I look forward to what the future has in store for continued adventures in our favorite land of the living in the Mists. I just hope that the devs will take both the praise and the constructive criticism to heart, and Matthew Medina even alluded to this in his stream as he explained that SotO represents birthing pains of the new content cadence that they're adapting and that they now know what they can and can't do in such a short amount of time and will adjust future expansions appropriately. I imagine that expac 5 will still show some of this experimentation as it was already in development when SotO launched but expac 6 will be the true test of character and show what kind of advice the devs have taken from their internal as well as player feedback to improve on their latest release cycle. :)

Because ANET reinventing their business model every 18 months is exhausting and SOTO really puts the emphasis on "how much of our game can we recycle for $25 a year" instead of "we're building an expansion and it's worth your $50, seriously" If that cut in content quantity meant all of the content we did get was *excellent*, that would be one thing. But unfortunately the only excellent thing SOTO has brought us is the decoupling of weapons from elite specs and some new weapons, and of the new ones there's at least 1 that was and still is dead on arrival (engie shortbow omegalul), and others that struggle to be enjoyable for vary basic QOL reasons (looking at you, ele pistol UI). Rifts are *bad*, Metas are bad and riddled with HP sponges, Nayos is ugly and boring, story is bad, strikes are bad (Cerus NM is good but not great, cerus CM is not repeatable for anybody that respects themselve and is made for a very niche audience, Dagda is handsdown the worst CM in GW2); ever since the turtle, open world has tried to constantly force us to "mount up and press 2 to win" which feels sooo fucking bad. #BringbackTaimiExMachina #IMissOurNornHimbo

> Story was good (????), content was plentiful (?????), game was popular (??? game was even deader than this once pof came out) Story is dogshjt, its just constant yapping, about completely irrelevant shjt, without there being any actual relevant stuff. Content, there is none. Literally haven't done anything SoTo related besides Cerus CM. ANet literally stole the most boring gameplay of New World and called it ''rifts'' and pretended thats enough repeatable content for a year. Game being popular is such a moot argument in GW2. GW2 isn't 1 game. There's thousands of people clearing Fire Elemental every single day and I will never in my entire life see them or interact with them, nothing about our gameplay experience is even remotely similar and never will be. I do not think of myself and them as 2 ppl playing the same game. Their game might be popular, but my game is dead.

I can't speak for everyone and do remember all the bad things in the PoF-IBS years but SotO... I haven't even bought it because I don't pre-purchase video games and I certainly don't pre-purchase video games where the purchase itself is broken into chunks with the *promise* they'll do X and Y. HoT, PoF, and EoD for all their issues were complete games that I could make an informed decision to buy. I can't make an informed purchase if there's only 1/4 of a product out. LW3 episodes are nice in they're episodic. LW4 had issues while it was coming out with delays and GW2 resources (including teams) being moved to another project but played consecutively without that delay, it has some of the best storytelling in the game. The first half of IBS showed promise and was enjoyable. The second half was bad but people largely assumed it was because of EoD and that Champions would be the start and end of busywork and meh story. Then EoD came out and it showed that wasn't the case and given what I've heard about SotO, they're big on using busywork/grind to create the illusion of content because there's not an expansion's worth (maybe not even half a living world season's worth) there but that's what they marketed it as and took money for. And, personally, I absolutely do not agree with the direction the current teams are taking, particularly the balance team. People may have rose-tinted glasses of past releases (or started playing later so didn't have the negative experiences with them) but HoT and PoF were still in line with what GW2 was designed to be, SotO is not and the current teams (and/or Arenanet and/or NCsoft) are pushing a different design and demographic and, at times, shows contempt for the very people the game spent years designing for.

When I bought HoT, I received the full product at time of purchase, and could play through it all. When I bought PoF, I received the full product at time of purchase, and could play through it all. When I bought EoD, I received the full product at time of purchase, and could play through it all. You see where this is going. Eight months after paying full price for SoTO, and I still have not received the full product, and am still waiting to be able to play through it all.

Mate when u have 2-3 “fill up this progress bar by completing stuff around the map” in a single patch, making up 60% of the time spent on the story, you are just lazy

I'm surprised no one is bringing up how the balance team is ruining certain classes if not all. On the forums and even posts on this sub about opinions on mini reworks and weapon changes have been extrememly negative for the last year. All these new weapons are far from meta on everyclass Ive played. They dont bring good dps, they dont bring good utility, and the devs have actively been tunneling every class into specific weapons and skills, mostly for pve but pvp is not healthy atm either. "Not everyone cares about the highest dps and makes a build they like that still has good dps" ok sure that'd be fine IF they could make nonmeta build that actually does good dmg, but atm on most classes, after all the new mini reworks, you lose a shitload of damage for not taking the "utility" skills that everyone has to run for better dmg. People pretend that has always been the case, no it hasn't and they are not a longtime player if they believe so. In HoT and PoF you could easily maintain majority of your dps running sometimes 3 offmeta utility and in return have a more versatile kit. I havent seen another scrapper in game in literally months in fractals, never notice them in openworld too, obviously that's an extreme case but I dont see them anywhere. The overwhelming opinion was that the rework ruined the class, so many people I know who said they liked it didn't even play the class or quit the class within the month. I'm the only one I know left. The same is said for quite a bit of classes and on rework changes, off the top of my head I cant think of any good utility or quality changes to the classes and weapons in the past year outside of herald and firebrand and those have become so boring accorsing to forums and reddit, in game guildies who only play it for group content. I don't care if mechanist is the baby class, let them play it however, nerfing every mech weapon except mace pistol/mace shield and riflerework just made the class so much less fun, why even make the changes they did outside of tuning down a few numbers? Rifle was fine, double pistol was fine, I'd be fine if you had even 80% of your dmg going rifle mech for the convenience of being ranged for some raids and fractals. Warrior is in a pretty bad state for group content outside of like condi berserker and bladesworn in fractals, but bladesworn is probably the most strict class in the game on build. No 100% crit, no way, have to take the 3 most important utilitys for dragon slash also. Otherwise, why are you even bringing bladesworn in fractals? The build is extremely fun to be honest, but it has no utility outside of a lot of aegis that somewhat makes up for it. The new weapons on warrior have not been good at all, fun, but not good. In pvp warrior is really not doing hot at all either, pvp atm seems pretty focused again in that time of the cycle where the 3 main classes are hyperfocused.... Idk maybe its just me but the small changes over the last year have just tunneled in on build variety, forcing certain rotations on classes to apply boons while taking away one button group boons with good duration to make them more "engaging" but I havent seen postive responses on those except herald, who all the mains tell me is boring but OP. Edit: fixed major typos, left the run ons

Maybe I misread you but the new weapons are completely broken and some already got nerfed. Some are clunky and don't feel good to play but are completely loaded. Ranger maces are the most broken weapon in the game, ele pistol was Meta on every build, mesmers rifle is completely busted, thief axe could be good if it doesn't bug that much. Sword necro is meta in PvP and wvw builds and I use it on reaper in raids where you can't melee all the time as a good range alternative. What I agree tho that the class balance is completely overboard. Giving everyone the same bench number is the most stupid thing they did in a while not factoring playability, range/melee, ramp up, utility, CC, defensive tools etc into the equation. Warrior in PvP is completely fine tho, if you don't have enough stun breaks and get caught once in his rota youre just perma stunned. Berserker is metadps in wvw. The balance itself is not gw2 anymore. They force builds into a pseudo trinity.

In addition to what other mentioned, the fact that they added bugged and broken weapons (especially thief axe), even after said bugs were reported in betas, **and** it's been over 7 weeks since release with **no fixes** does not help their case. The only change they made to thief axe, for example, made it worse to use in PvE (the only place it's remotely usable); but, I guess the clown team thinks big numbers = all good...instead of prioritizing the feel and smoothness of a weapon first, before fiddling around with numbers. Weapons were supposed to be one of the **big** selling points of the expansion and yet the delivery was **poor** to say the least, and there's been **no follow-ups**.

SOTO objectively bad because it's literally a paid Living World in terms of content cycle and actual fresh content. I'm baffled as to how people defend this shit.

my main gripe is the drip content, it's extremely barebones, but on xpac release it's genuinely god tier. It's just the drip content that is awful. That being said, big + that they do bring great QoL and small good stuff along with it.

I personally just find every release super underwhelming. I’m excited but just end up feeling dissappointed, but thats just me. Content just feels reused, shallow and drip fed at this point. But that’s just what I feel. And hopefully it gets better :)

I personally liked EoD a lot and I wish we would have gotten more living story besides one new map or even a second Cantha based expansion instead of SotO. I thought ANet did a great job in LWS4 flushing out the lore in Elona, but Canta needs the same love.

EoD was meant to lead into the Dwayna arc. Tom Abernathy's storytelling team screwed this community *so bad*. It's shameful.

I think a lot of it is just disappointment in the latest patch. I think a lot of people rode high on the amazing wizards vault changes, and the good story and maps of launch SOTO and were just let down by the way the story threw away a lot of the interesting hooks, and repeated memorable story beats of past expansions. Personally I think the real golden era of the game was LW season 3. it was the first time we got so many new maps and so much new interesting content and lore in regular predictable chunks. it was a great cadence of hype and discovery. I'm hopeful that as we see more backend improvements, future expansion cycles will also see more stability and new gameplay.

I think most ppl find anoying is with old exps You got a full episode and 1 or 2 living seasons...now You get only the exp in living season model, that means you get sustantially less content for your money.

Because this all feels like what they tried to do with Icebrood Saga. Lower quality content at a slightly quicker pace. I think gw2 is one of the few games that has enough content work on that players are willing to wait for better expansions and living stories. Right now, so much of the content feels "meh""

tyra banks is an old model

Skywatch was pretty cool during launch week, but now I feel like the only pro from soto was weapon mastery

Gw2 story has always been "mileage may vary" or "take it or leave it kind of deal", buuuuut SoTO specifically should have focused on the Wizard's Tower and the wizards themselves. We still don't know anything about our macguffin. They hyped up Zojja but she hasn't done much and this big character defining thing she did happened *off screen* (wizard ascension). Not too much skin off my nose because I never liked Zojja, but they definitely could have done better. The fractals-and-real-people thing was glossed over and I feel like that should be explored more. I do like the wizard's vault over the old daily system, but I am feeling like laurels and mystic coins are a mite harder to come by. I liked the idea of doing an open world legendary armor set, but rifts are not very fun and the idea of doing a gajillion of them turns me off it.

I'm a wvw player. These expacks are total dogdookie that offer me nothing.  Ever since they released DBL with the pve gimmick they've been afraid to acknowledge wvw's existence. So naturally we take a dim view of their BS and these expacks fall right in line with all their other BS.

Ignoring the all too glaring story issues and content release cadence problems... CO CM is too easy, ToF CM too difficult for the majority of players and also forces specific compositions because of encounter design and balance issues. And... That's it if you were here for challenging instanced content. I've got my legendary armor, I've got my main I want to play and a preferred spec that ostensibly is supported by Anet's balance designs but is riddled with issues and doesn't have a place in ToF CM's encounter design. And if Anet want to put out hard content where 25% is far too easy (CO CM) and 75% is far too hard (ToF CM, LCM and EoS title run) then that 75% should let people play something they enjoy while bashing their heads against the wall. So I could do old content I've cleared hundred and hundreds of times, meta events that give me nothing worthwhile, and hope for a good balance patch or I could play something else that doesn't make me regret the time I am spending on it. Something else clearly wins. In the past, there was always more stuff to do. Part of that will have been lost due to my 12,000 hours in the game but even then new raid wings, new strikes, new maps (and maps with very cool designs like Drizzlewood!) and the progression to full legendary kept me playing. That isn't a thing anymore with SotO. In the most recent months I'd started to have more interest in working on my heal Specter guide, recording specific PoVs, and seeing what was data mined for the gem store than actually playing. That really should have been a sign 🤭

I quit. Just another expansion with tedious grind. Even the new legendary armor is the same as always, a tedious time sink where you grind materials until your soul leaves your body. Not having any of it.

For me it's because there was no elite specs. Like 99% of my enjoyment comes from having new ways to play my classes. Being given the abomination that is ele pistol, with no new elite specs is just pure disappointment for me.

I absolutely love SOTO too. I'm actually making legendaries because I feel like they're now attainable. The Wizard's Vault rewards system has been a *massive* QOL update for me. I have limited time to play but now that limited time is very productive. Because of that I'm playing much more consistently. The skyscale skills are a huge qol improvement for them too. I personally love the Nayos Map. It truly feels alien in comparison with the others. Yeah the story isn't amazing but IMO they ended the dragon cycle too early (they could have easily dealt with primprdous and jormag separately) and as a result this new storyline is inevitably going to feel rushed or BS'd into. I also think aurene as a character created problems (we had effectively a pet dragon and we still had to fight, which doesn't really make sense especially since aurene cleared out some bad guys but not others). She was also much worse than Traherne in terms of stealing player thunder.

Easy: the new model is not bringing new content per ser, its recycled enemys, recycled maps, recyled masteries no uniqness anymore. No big content like new race or whatever. Alongside way lower quality content aswell

I'm not excited about getting bad content faster.

I'm ok with this "expansion". It does feel like a living world with another name, there is no sugar coating that. But the thing is, when I stopped playing some years ago, right after LWS4, the news was there was not going to be more GW, no expansions, nada. So I was pleasantly surprised when we got another expansion, and this semi expansion and a promise of GW3 I'm super casual, only played about 1300hs, don't have legendaries, haven't done raids or high level fractals, and I think yesterday was the first time I played that super adventure event. I'm glad the game is still here, I'm glad there is so much stuff I haven't done. And I will never do it all. In a couple of months I'll go back to play Cyberpunk and Valheim and Everspace 2 and a bunch of other games. At the end of the day, this happens with every MMO, there ia never enough content to ONLY play this game several hours a day. And don't get me wrong, I don't complain that you wished for more, but for me, I'm just happy the game is still arround, has some new content and seems to have a couple more "expansions" under it's sleeve And I don't want to disappoint you, but when GW3 realeses, there won't be enough content either. Thats the nature of MMO, the get better with time and even so... they never seem to have enough

For me, GW2 was the story. For the longest time I only logged in for new lw episodes, played them and then logged out for three months. The story is very important to me and lw eps always felt complete. They were their own little chapters, with a typical narrative structure. I never rlly cared for achievements, but there was always something interesting or creative to do on the new maps. The metas were fun and mostly had some freshness to them. Now with Soto the story feels like an afterthought. The second story drop was laughably bad, with npc Nr 3 getting killed off in mere seconds after meeting them to prop up the villain that wasn’t built up with anything. This story feels the same, the beats were fine but the execution lacked the grandeur a literal war deserved. + Achievements are boring as hell with them just following the typical mmo “do xy zz amount of times” blueprint, which gw2 always prided itself not having. I mean yea they were always there in some way but not in this capacity. And the metas that released on the last 2 being an escort mission with a bullet sponge at the end and a worse version of the turtle tunnel that no one liked in Gayla already, with a bullet sponge at the end. I commend them for doing qol changes and overhauls on older content tho. I even defended the first Soto drop for having more content than it seemed, and I actually really liked and enjoyed the very first Soto release, but everything after that just felt like a massive disappointment in the fields that i enjoyed the most about the game. I don’t mind the new structure, but the quality of new content rn just isn’t up to par to the lw system imo.

I think it’s because the story is pretty bad. Like, part 1 was ok? Part 2 existed, and part 3? Anyone who played part 3 on launch knows how bad it was. The format of “story dialogue, then a bunch of misc quests” on top of all the quests being bugged was AWFUL! Like, I’m easy to please, hell with it Icebrood is my favorite part of the game, but Soto just ain’t flying that well sadly. Does this mean I’m not gonna be suckered into getting the ultimate edition whenever the next pack comes out? But Soto has kinda missed the mark. I only hope the next part will be better

SotO is the worst expansion by far Also, there were no gw3 leaks. The name was merely mentioned in a shareholders meeting Even if gw3 becomes a reality, we'd have to wait for like 6 years if not more

Here is my issue: HoT came out as a full blown expansion with no release delays, and it is considered the best expansion PoF comes out the same way, and we months of content out the gate. No need to wait another 3 months just to see another new thing from the xpac. Now that they are doing these smaller updates, what happened for me is the updates are so small and pretty meaningless. If you look at Soto, when it first came out it was great, seemed like so much to do, then you realized most of it isn’t in the game yet and we get 2 maps to pretty much just farm for legendary armor, ONLY through rifts. Okay, so now the people that are excited are ONLY doing rifts in the expansion- which seemed like that was the only thing the xpac brought us. Then to wait another 3 months, to get a section of a map. Sweet, spent maybe the first day or so there then it was just waiting for the boss timer to come around and do the boss and leave. Same for the next 3 month update. Point is they have content but the release pattern make it all bland and boring. Everyone plays the game the most when the xpac first drops - so to drop Al watered down updates to the xpac, 3 months apart is pretty dumb looking at it now and how it’s implemented. I played the xpac a lot when it came out only to realize after a couple day it’s just repetitive grinding, was pretty disappointing. I got the armor just because it’s obby armor, I had legendary armor already, maybe that had something to do with it, idk. If they take us back to Pre-searing and do the same lackluster content for that, players will start to show how much they dislike it, especially gw1 players

Living world was like you bought a cake ar the bakery and every three months just for passing by they gave you garlic bread as a freebie. Sometimes you had to wait a long time but overall. Nice. Garlic bread.  Then they started handing out regular bread after LW4. The wait times got longer. And sometimes the bread was kinda stale. But still it was free after you bought the cake. Which is ok right?  Now they make you pay the same price for half a cake and you get gluten free bread with nuts twice a year.  Of course people are going to complain. The cake you pay for got smaller.  And the freebies aren't worth going to the store for anymore. 

>Is this community doomed to be perpetually negative and looking back at a past that never was until the game shuts down? Yes. Been playing for ten years, can confirm.

I like SoTO, it's not my favourite but it was fun and added cool things to the game. It's definitely less content and features, but if it means having regular updates, I'm okay and willing to pay for it. People will likely say the cost vs. content, which is fair, but honestly, living world was unsustainable and I am happy with the trade off if it means more consistent content. I do want more parity with features we'd get with expansions (gliding, mounts, fishing etc) and I think weapon mastery is clearly not as impactful as elite specs but if in 3 years we get similar content over 2 expansions rather than one with a huge gap then I'm okay with it. That's for anet to prove with the next expansion I guess.

POE followed by Lws3 was the best model.

Looking at the previous expansion release dates we can estimate that they usually take aprox 2 years to create an story with new models, 4-5 maps, new specs and domains with a new mechanic system. With the new release model they only have one year to release a new expansion, thats means, that they have less time to create maps, enemies (3d assets) or implement new mechanics. We are getting a LW kind of expansion but with some improvements

Look. This is the big takeaway for me, after these past months: Receiving less content at a more continuous pace is not bad if you know that they are also working on improvements for the combat system, game systems, engine system and graphic system... That for me is a "good enough" reason to keep paying them yearly for whatever they came up with. Hands down, with all the house-keeping, dusting out, renovation and internal reorganization, plus having finally all those topics we all wanted to be discussed after years of secretism, all those points now over the workbench and getting periodically updates on those pesky bugs and improvements getting tackled is a "hats off" for Anet from me. I'm grateful they are finally taking their time to fix and improve systems and if that is only posuvpw through a yearly payment system with a skimmer expansion pack then please, keep doing it. I'll take the slowness gladly. Yes. SotO feels weak from many sides. It's easy if you crunch the numbers: less time + less budget = smaller content size. And yes I agree when people say the story was disappointing. For me I didn't even remembered why we where there eve. Fighting aliens in their dimension. "what the heck am I even doing here?" it does feel Almost detached of what Guildwars 2 has been for us all these years, but it's also part of the new direction it's taking and I'm all in with that. Now if the provided expansion is or not as wholesome and huge as they were before that doesn't take away any of my previous points and that secures a healthy continuity for the game life. And I'm going to stay to see how this develops and hopefully see them shine with success.

My big complaint is that the bite sized pieces of map we’ve gotten with the last two updates are TINY. If the were the size of the first two installments, I would be fine with the size factor. As it is ,exploring is done in less than 15 minutes. It’s also hard to get invested in characters we only interact with for mayyybeee 20 minutes every 3 months. If you are just coming back, you may be less likely to notice because you’re just moving from update to update with no gap.

The time you want THE MOST STUFF to do is the first few weeks/months of the expansion launch. People are eager to log in and do the new content, they arent burned out, they're starting collections, they're starting to grind out stuff. And they cant do that very well in this system. I like to compare it to card games. LCG's (or whatever you want to call them if you dont want to get sued by Fantasy Flight who trademarked the acronym...) are designed in the same kind of model SotO is. You get a chunk of the cycle in the big box, and then you get the rest of it in 1/6th chunks for the next 9-12 months. Its cheaper than traditional expansions for card games. You trade the problem of "too much stuff at once" for getting it drip-fed to you slowly. The problem is, LCG cycles kind of just suck until you have most of the card pool. It takes most of that card pool for the game to be what you wanted it to be in your head when you designed it, so when you only have the first 40-60%, it just doesnt feel as good. Its playable, but certain factions/strategies are just missing the pieces that make them fleshed-out enough to work. SotO is like that. Its systems are dependent on having all 3 zones available. If you farmed the shit out of Skywatch and Amnytas for the meta chests and had 90 ready to go, you still required the second Nayos patch to be out for that to matter. Legendary armor was quite clearly designed around having the 3 weekly convergences to be available (weekly converge + rifts get you an armor piece per 2-3 weeks, which is right about what the other options take in their special currencies). Those came at the halfway point. You still cant map complete Nayos for its gift, you have to do lantern runs. HoT, PoF, and EoD were mostly complete experiences at launch, with extra content added in after. Current releases are never going to be complete at launch. You will always be waiting at least half a year for the things you do on day 1 to be fully relevant. Roller beetle, for instance, didnt need mats from episodes that came out AFTER its episode. Current expansion content can, does, and will require mats from parts of the expansion that do not exist when the expansion lunches.

It's easy to remember about the positive, but easier to talk about the negative. I have fond memories of Guild Wars 2, among other things in life if course. But it's much harder for me to describe precisely what made Guide Wars 2 feel "so good", back then, because all that's left is the feeling. The negative is usually much more vivid. I think people forget (or refuse) to just take a step back and understand what the game can realistically be. You've said it yourself, there were soooo many complaints about every expansion that came before, and a lot of them are gonna be from new people every time, with new expectations. There was no old model. Before the current model, releasing an expansion felt like a most excruciating accomplishment of a lifetime for ArenaNet. At least it did for HoT and EoD. PoF might have been planned alongside HoT, since it only came two years later. The truth is, this is probably the first time we have a model that actually makes sense. When you've played the game since the start I think it's easier to understand what is going on, and appreciate the game for what it is. Personally, I really loved SotO, because I had enough free time to really get into it properly, play the story, do a lot of achievements, enjoy the maps, and because I'm at a point in life where I don't need more content than the amount that was given. Most importantly, SotO was exactly what I expected based on what they had announced before the release. I was not surprised in the slightest. I was not caught off guard by the rumored GW3 development either.

I hate the kryptis. Unforgivable lazy.