Shampanix.3928

This is what I kinda asked for a while ago! It's great! Expanding beyond in-game content with some additional cool stuff. Thank you Anet, loved reading it! I hope you'll be able to keep it up for a while, maybe with some longer side stories inserts that would compliment the stories that happen in game, but you don't have resources to actually implement them. I hope and would love to see writers share their additional work outside the game! Great stuff!

Some honest feedback: I take into consideration a huge harm that layoffs did. Tho you said that this should not affect the game? Because after today it feels like it did lot of harm. Makes me feel nervous about the future of my favorite game ever. You made an event for announcement. But you did only a video for PoF - amazingly it was far better than this announcement. Very good montage, lots of interesting information about expansion. For Icebrood Saga a cool video and later on a guild chat with Q&A session would do far more than this event.Of course I know it was supposed to be an LS announcement. You told us that. But showing this little with an event? When was an event like that last time? HoT announcement - the very first expansion for the game, right? Wasn't it obvious that people would expect more? I like the vague idea of sagas. It actually sounds interesting, cus it seems you try to transition from expansion + LS into one format which is saga. One would assume that sagas will have content that would fit in scope between these two formats. And yet we know nothing from the event that would clarify that. So again we're open to speculate and hope. And again a lot of people will be disappointed. "Sneaking in surprises" is cool, but we have no idea about the scope and actually future of the game. If you do an event - explain new stuff. So, yes - it's disappointing. My take on it? I assume you struggle to recover from layoffs. It affected studio far more that you want to admit. The situation is actually quite bad. Announcement felt like message - "guys, we still try to keep this boat afloat, tho we're barely manage to do it". So you did a very cool Living World season 4, then decided to go new direction to reuse some old assets to make it cheaper to keep afloat. Thus I think we will not see much new stuff in terms of new assets. And we should hope this will be enough to keep game alive with new releases before Ncsoft pulls the plug. You weren't ready for announcing new stuff and that's why this event was so underwhelming but your Ncsoft overlord told you to do it cus it's a good idea (no it wasn't, and I kinda felt like Mike Z behaved like he didn't want to be there basically empty-handed with only good thing being the trailer). This makes me sad for the devs. Really. I know there are some passionate people there in Anet. Sadly, it didn't work out well today guys. I'm still crossing my fingers. You were rising from ashes before, I think you can do it again. So I can only assume, cus you didn't tell us, that this time we will have perhaps a bit more content over time, but it will be spread across smaller, but more often releases. I can only hope it has a cadence of once a month. I'm totally fine with story-only release that happens on already existing maps. It's completely fine. I'm also fine with maps being released in parts. More often releases will be more healthy. My only hope is with renewed focus, and if you actually go saga-only, you can now produce at least 1,5 more that you did when there were 3 teams, thus making small releases actually feel a bit substantial every time. Thanks for trying, I'll stick around and observe. EDIT: typos.

Tried to be as short as I could: Story - 7/10 - it was decent, close to level of PoF release which I still consider top tier in GW2. I loved the encounters in instances, perhaps last one was a bit too long. Amnoon fight was thrilling! Map - 5/10 - sorry getting bored of this aesthetics. Too many rocks to fill empty space. Appreciate the artwork which is always on very high level (otherwise I would give it 1/10). Less hearts - more fun. Thanks! Events - 10/10 - holy smoke, great job with that metas. Best fun I had since HOT launch in terms of events. Finally something that gathers people and is not shutting down entire map, making space for everyone else who does not like meta maps. And there are bounties too! So - all I asked to happen, THANK YOU ANET <3 +++++ lot's of love for Aurene showing up during meta. This makes event feel more alive and characters from story more relevant - PLEASE DO MORE THINGS LIKE THIS IN THE FUTURE! Mastery - 2/10 - ok, I've seen it before with better rewards. Tho it's only the first level so I'm hopeful for the future Rewards - 4/10 - more stuff drops from metas than enitre PoF maps, which I like. Yet nothing special found this far to work for, which is meh. Meteor hunt - 1/10 - tried couple of times, had no luck to get there on time. Maybe finally I'll lern how to do it, marking very low cus no luck this far. EDIT: managed to do it, it's great! Would love to know what is it useful for in long shot, new weapons set from datamining perhaps? 10/10 Keys go to wallet - 10/10 - you know I love you, right? :))) Lore book UI - 10/10 - I love lore... add library to home instance or something, it's great! New fractal - 8/10 - high due to being related to main story and region. We lack dungeons that would expand on current region. Such fractal is a step in good direction. Not a 10/10 cus I'm moving away from fractals theese days. New raid - ?/10 - not playing raids, sorry. Tho I'm happy our top tier players have something new to enjoy. Overal score I'd give it 7/10It wins me with meta events and some stuff that yet I might find like skins or something to work for. And I love new QoL changes.

Bounties were the answer for HoT meta maps complaints. At least that's how I see it. They are not shutting down enitre maps, they do not break the pace of exploration, they are player-activated, smaller in scale, allowing to be done at any time, "hop in, hop out" events. Seems like a great idea!(and I hated that HoT had only meta maps. I always wanted mix of different types of open world content - exploration, world boss, meta, whatever else they can cook in one release - now bounties). And believe me - I gave bounties a try. Multiple times, with big zergs, with small squads. And kitten me how they are boring. Boring champ trains with weak rewards. You keep bouncing from champ to champ without any purpose except getting some weak loot. You can say - hey don't do them for an hour, kill 2-3 and be gone. Yeah, well I can get the achievements and never return to those beaurifully crafted maps (oh I love those maps). And at this point I'm thinking of going back to Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. I love these, not only for aesthethics but also for events and progression they bring and rewards they give. That epicness still thrills me. If only one map contained this kind of meta event. Every single Bob and his mom who's like me would be happy to have something new to chew on and all the other Joes from California who love relaxed exploration could enjoy everthing else this great expansion has to offer. So I see the place for bounties. And I'm happy there are a lot of people who enjoy them. It's just not enough for me to keep playing new maps. I want to make story on my second main, do 2x map completion, get last mount, max masteries and goodbye Crystal Desert. At least for now, cus I still believe that something new will happen soon (LS4 or PoF 2.0) and my mind will be blown away. Remember, PoF will evolve across next 2 years, just like HoT did. In conclusion an important note:If something changes, I'll definately stand for PoF model. Base expac with exploration zones and LS releases adding more to them and/or adding new maps with metas. This would be perfect. HoT killed the game for lot of players for a long while. LS3 brought stuff most people like about GW2. I predict that's now Anet tactics to reverse the content type, but we will see.

To star with - HUGE THANK YOU for this expac! Pros: Story far better than anything in gw2. Beautiful maps and music.Elite specs - some good some bad but variety!Amazingly well done mounts. More maps, more skins than HoT - great!Unindentified gear is good but unreliable (high rarity drop from low rarity package)Perfect pace for most of masteries and collections Tons of voice-overs. This is amazing how much you can hear not only in story but in ambient dialogs. Cons: Lack of huge metas like VB, SW, AB - this makes maps pointless to return to when you're done with collections (tho I hated DS)Also no real epic boss fight. Just like Bitterfrost Brontier deserved huge claw ow jormag moded to use mordy and zaithan influence, these maps could use that as well. Feels like everything rewards you with the same stuff. This makes doing anything more ambitious a bit pointless.

Lol first try here, it was very easy. You just need to observe your enemy and it's mechanics...