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Hype or no hype? Disappointment and uncertain future.
Magnetia
Member UncommonPosts: 1,015
In the beginning I hated gw2 for many reasons. Most of these were unfair comparisons to GW1, a game which has no jumping or super fancy animations. Over time I started to enjoy gw2 for what it was and not what I wanted it to be.
As my perspective shifted I started to appreciate just how much they have changed the game (for good or bad) for the cost of the box price.
I see many people complaining that the expansion 'isn't worth it' or that 'it's too small' which is a fair call if you compared it to a GW1 expansion. Now I was pretty hyped for the announcement event and honestly I came away from it disappointed because of what I wanted and not what they're giving. Even I think the expansion is small and light. However this brings me to what they have already achieved in GW box set after launch.
While there are many quality of life improvements made but I'm going to focus on talking about content in terms of maps / extra zones / new enemies.
I think it started with southsun cove Which introduced a number of new enemies and a new type of enemy. A new world boss was included in this update as well.
Super Adventure box was the most impressive april fools event I've ever seen. Everything was new in that area.
Fractals - over 10 mini dungeons (I don't do these often) added free of charge. Used existing enemies but has some impressive level design.
Later came Dry Top and Silverwastes, two very impressive maps having learned from their many many mistakes over the living story arcs. I personally enjoy jumping puzzles and hidden places so these places spoke out to me.
(I've excluded seasonal things because we expect those - included SAB because it was simply incredible)
Now at the launch of HoT there will be only one new area, the size of which is uncertain, but we don't really know what will happen after launch. What kind of updates they have planned for the said systems they are introducing. What kind of updates have to be re-prioritized due to player feedback.
So after letting the hype train die down a little bit, at least until they tease us with details, I am left to wonder how many years of updates that this 're-imagining of the core pillars' will provide.
How much content will we REALLY be getting until the next expansion? The answer to that lies in the future and behind a paywall. A paywall I am more than willing to break with money.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Comments
1 new region.
Maguuma Jungle is huge.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Agreed, there should be at least a few zones and not a single one. Maguuma djungle alredy had a several zones in GWEN where it was just a small part of that expansion, here it is the main focus.
Still I expect it to be a smaller expansion compared to GWEN or the 2 GW1 campaigns, but I doubt it will be tiny. A single zone would upset all GW2 players including me.
The answer to that is still mostly very vague. And the devil will be in the details.
I'm maintaining a cautiously optimistic, though the more info I here that's underwhelming the more pessimistic I'm becoming. The new region is a welcome one, I hope it feels as huge as they seem to think. They have been working on it for some time now. Perhaps the most exciting announcements to me (so far) are the masteries (a design choice that's been absent from most games for far too long), and bosses that seem to actually have decent mechanics (finally).
The new class I'm curious about, I hope it is indeed similar to dervish / ritualist from GW1 in many ways. Both were very fun & interesting classes I would love to see re-imagined in this game. However, the more I hear about specializations, the more skeptical I get about them. At a base level, they can basically just be '1 new weapon, a couple new skills, and 1 new trait line'. And technically, that would change how the class can play. But that isn't what I think most of us want. We don't want the technicality, we want to be blown off our feet. We want to get lost in new choices. And I just don't know how they are going to do that with just one weapon, and a bite-sized handful of new skills.
As for PvP, I'm sure that guilds will welcome the ability to actually do legit GvG (maybe even involving guild halls?). Hopefully the team sizes will be large enough to make them feel like a proper GvG (because I don't think queing as a 5-man guild is going to do it for most people). The WvW changes will need to be significant, so we'll see if they do infact solve the problems most servers are having w/ WvW atm.
- There is a lot not that needs to be done for this xpansion to work. However they have been at it for a couple years now, so they have had time to get it right. We'll see.
Mmm, I dunno about it being "huge". I took a moment to sketch out the possible regions that HoT might use.
It looks pretty big....until you realize that you could pretty much fill the bulk of that space with just the Ascalonian maps on the original world map. And keep in mind that I was being generous and highlighting ALL of the regions that they could potentially use on the map, assuming no "dead space". It's honestly not very likely that they'll use ALL of that highlighted area.
So I'd say "big", perhaps. "Huge"....not really. It's only about equivalent to the size of any one major map region. That's a big step up from the Living Story's usual pace of one small map every once in a while....but still pretty far away from reaching "huge" levels IMO ("huge", to me, would be "a new map large enough to nearly match the existing world map in scale")
Ya, hopefully they will clear up this confusion before too long.
They definitely said one new region (area), but not how many zones will actually make it up. I also agree that this xpac is feeling like it will be smaller in comparison to some of the other stuff we've seen in the past. I only hope we're all wrong about that.
I am imagining something like lornars pass but as deep as dry top. It's a lot of map IF it's that big. I heard a few quotes about 'bigger than any zone currently in the game but that can mean any number of things.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
If I had to guess, the new content will likely be limited to the southern 2 areas. The northern one seems unlikely given the aesthetic they've shown, but I could be wrong. It would fit much more of a barren / oasis theme than a jungle one.
I think what they're banking on is that the vertical nature of the zones will make them feel more like 6-9 zones instead of 2-3. This'll really depend on how well they're put together, though. As to whether they'll feel like one big zone full of stuff, or more like a few smaller ones w/ a lot of annoying jumping parts.
I'm wondering what kind of maps they will release after HoT releases (if any) and how big they will be. Each of the free maps have gotten better each time (southsun was a fail map, dry top was fun but silverwastes nails it) so I am hoping that any subsequent map releases will be at least half decent.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
I'm kinda getting the same idea tbh. The big question is going to be in HOW the content is packed into these more vertical zones. if it's done in a clever enough way to make them feel larger, then it might actually work. However if it just feels like the same amount of content spread out over difficult to get to spot (lots of jumping puzzles / etc.) It will probably backfire pretty hard. Personally I enjoy jumping puzzles, but not all the time. And I know many people who actually hate them.
Either way it seems like they're taking a pretty big gamble with how they are approaching these new zones. Hopefully it pays off.
I believe Colin chose his words very carefully about the specializations. According to the marketing department it will change the core experience of the class, of course we know that this may not necessarily be so. I main necro and am hoping to see myself as more than a condition handler. I too am looking for that 'hours of build theory crafting' like before.
I am going to be super super super generous in saying that they are essentially adding 9 new classes to play. That is IF the specializations make a genuine difference in gameplay. We'll have to wait and see on this point.
It will be nice when we see more details about the mastery system, it seemed to promote exploration which is always a plus in my books.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Indeed I know he chose his words very carefully.
It's for this reason that I try and pay attention to the actual words being said, and not get caught up in the intended ideal being presented. For example, lets talk about the specializations:
They're promising that 'they will change the core experience of the class'. Which sounds amazing. But in reality, what is needed to change the core experience of a class? New skills, a new trait line, and a new class-skill (the F1-4 keys)
This may all seem fairly obvious, but you can essentially add all that, and still have a class basically feel the same. Which is not what we want. What's going to determine how well this works is how effectively they are able to make the playstyles FEEL different from what we currently have. And we won't even begin to know that until more info is released, and people have had a chance to play the demo.
- I don't think I can support the '9 new classes' thing any more. I'm having a hard time believing they will feel that way (again, hopefully I'm wrong about this)
- I am with you 110% on the masteries, though. This system reminds me of games like Megaman, Metroid, Zelda. All gaming classics, whos mechanics we rarely see these days. Having the ability to acquire new abilities that open up the game world is HUGE. It's one of my favorite methods of progression (horizontal), and it shows top design sense. I really hope this aspect (if no others) catches momentum, because it is truly a crime that we do not have more games that use such design principles.
I think the last game to do this was Arkham City? Literally almost every example I can think of for games that have such a system has resulted in an amazing game. GW2.. don't dissapoint! ><
First players are the KING of Hype not A.Net - A.Net is good at Marketing.
As far as size of the maps - http://zoom.it/TWLx#full This is a comparison of GW1 and GW2 - look at how far Maguuma Jungle goes. In the canned video, you see a Mursaat - so we will be dealing with them again. More than likely to Bloodstone Fen.
Looking forward to seeing how big the expansion really is.
That's debatable. But really not worth arguing here.
This expansion is more focused around reshaping the end-game of GW2 and introducing features that the players have been asking for for a while. If Anet is doing this right, they should use the feedback they gotten from the past to shape the fundemental systems that they think their game should be based upon.
I would personally await future expansions to be more contnet-heavy. This one feels more like setting the last pieces of the puzzle in the right place prepearing to introduce content instead of reshaping the systems any further.
I kinda get the same sense tbh.
Which is why I think this is the make or break expansion for them. If they do this right, it paves the way for a lot of good things that players have wanted for a while now. If they mess this up, or it releases in an underwhelming state, it's going to completely backfire and scare off not only new players, but old players as well.
The other thing they need to keep in mind is that, if they do this right, they can't wait another 3 years to release decent content. They're going to need to be timely about it (i.e. within ~6months after the expac they need to have something significant lined up). I'm not saying an expansion, but they will need an intriguing LS story, and possibly more PvP maps or something, etc.
I think you're definitely being super super generous with that prediction. All they've confirmed so far is that a specialization will unlock one new weapon type, plus an unknown number of skills and/or traits. I think it's very unlikely that specializations will do anything more than provide one more flavor of weapon and a few more flavors of traits to choose from.
Though honestly, I'd rather they fix the skills and traits that are already hovering on the border of uselessness than add new ones at this point. Especially if the new ones also end up being similarly useless.
For example, I can't imagine the Ranger's "Druid" specialization being all that popular once the hype's died down, unless the staff is a very powerful weapon or the skills/traits somehow grant Rangers a lot more support and healing than they're currently capable of. Right, now, "support Ranger" might as well be synonymous with "waste of a party slot" in the vast majority of scenarios. Their shouts are infinitely worse off than a good shout warrior or guardian, and the best they can do for healing as a team right now is to drop a Healing Spring and let other people blast it.
but they are also making it vertical things very far below the surface and the top off tree with ways to fly up.... if you are looking at just the diameter and not the height then it does not seem so huge but if you include the vertical playable space then its much bigger....
I stopped reading RIGHT HERE because if you think Blowhanson and ANET has given GW2 players alot of content in 2 and a half years i'd like to know what your smoking.
They have given a lot of updates, but like you say the content in them was limited. The best updates were the bosses. Way too many of the updates were for the "Living World" stuff, but really I hope they give up on that. Imagine how much content we would have gotten if all the living world dev time had been spent on other, more permanent things. Making the zones full of dynamic events is "living" enough for me. Maybe add more dynamic events instead of scarlet briar.
Objectively I am saying it's a reasonable amount of content considering a few factors. Mainly the speed at which the updates came out and the cost of those updates to the player who does not spend gems.
While I may not have enjoyed what they've given, it has been produced and I can't say they have given us nothing.
Nothing meaningful? That's purely subjective.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
I don't know about you but I consider several hundred hours of content allot. Whether you liked the content or not is a different debate.
I agree.
Around 1-3 hours of story and/or exploration in every patch and/or non-instanced boss encounters (excluding with every update is at least 25 hours of content.
Many full price videogames are shorter than that.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders