GW2 new expac impressions
Mar. 6th, 2022 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoSo the new Cantha expansion released on Feb 28, and I played a bit of it over the weekend. I haven't finished the story, but I'm about 4/5 of the way there. Have traveled a bit around all of the maps. Did 3 of the 4 map metas. Haven't unlocked the siege turtle mastery track yet but have played the other tracks a bit. So this is just a first impressions review.
Maps:
A little oversaturated, but bearable and certainly unique from the other maps/places in GW2. They've managed to do "oriental" and modern architecture mixed with magitech pretty well.
Mechanics wise, at first glance, the first 2 maps doesn't feel like there's a lot of verticality, but then you start trying to go places, and boy it's all so vertical. There's a built in zipline mechanic to help get around, but it's a bit fiddly because it's all point-to-point, so you'd have to memorize where the major shortcuts are.
On the Seitung map and the last Jade sea map, you can probably get by on jumpers. Though there are places like towers and similar, were they're risky to use, because the ledges don't line up well, and a slight mistake will have you falling all the way back down. In those places, and in the Kaineng map, you pretty much have to have the skyscale to move around quickly and frustration-free.
And then the Echovald map is just Tangled Depths Mk II, ugh, both in terms of looks (gloomy forest is gloomy) and in terms of convoluted verticality. There are spots where I have run/flown in circles from the sky to the floor and have not been able to figure out how to get to the POI/mastery/skill point. -_-
Metas:
Nothing new here. It's the bog standard metas they've been doing since HoT and with the living story. I have heard rumors that some of them get buggy and NPCs get stuck, but the couple of times I did it have all run smoothly. The balance seems better than the ones for PoF, honestly, because nobody did those while there are still people doing HoT metas.
Story:
Nobody cares about the writing quality at this point, so will just talk about the story mission mechanics. Honestly, there's nothing new here either. Pretty much the same thing they've been doing. The story missions are either intro to a map which has you run around all over the place to talk to people. Or they're fighty ones where you...fight. Though, the difficulty hasn't been bad there. I guess they've gotten it down now with the living story experience. The boss fights aren't as bad as some of the PoF ones. There's one puzzle mission which I just used the wiki for.
Masteries:
Fishing - have done a bit of this. The fishing minigame is...eh. Barely a minigame. Feels like a collector/completionist's game at this point. Rack up your fishing points and battle with the RNG to catch all the fish species everywhere. I suppose it's possible the fish bits do other stuff, but I haven't really looked that far. I suppose it's also a way to relax in the game for those people who are in it for the social or role playing bits. They can sit somewhere and fish while chatting with friends and everything or whatnot.
Skiffs - At this point it feels like a supporting mastery for fishing, in order to get you out to the parts of the water where the good fishing spots are. They also serve as bits of "land" for the group to stand on and use land skills in the middle of water, but I'm not sure how relevant that is in the rest of the game.
Jade Bot - This seems to be the main thing that will impact the rest of the game. At the base, the bot will flat out give you a vit bonus. It also has other slottable bonuses such as increasing mount energy recharge, or converting junk drops to useful drops, or dropping extra stuff on kills. All useful stuff, and only a teeny bit of power creep. And the parts are all craftable, with recipes that use up a loooot of low priced stuff on the TP. It's pretty clear the devs are using this mechanic as a way to clean up bloat on the trading post, and it's working. Lot of stuff that had been sitting around at lowest base price (like 5 copper) have gone up to the point they're actually worth something.
Arborstone buffs - This mastery is basically to add stuff to the "city" map, like crafting stations, vendors, etc. Rather, since it's a public instance, it's more like unlock access to stuff. Not sure how I feel about this. One one hand, it feels like an excuse for getting rid of the banker / auction like we had at the start of PoF/Crystal Desert and making you work to get access back. On the other hand, normally crafting station are part of the paid access pavilion area even in Crystal Desert, while here it's free. Eh.
Seige Turtle - Haven't gotten there yet.
Specializations
Haven't really played around with these. For one thing, only my ranger had the extra skill points to get the entire new spec line straight up. Unfortunately the new spec for rangers is more PvP oriented. That, coupled with some soulbeast nerfs in the past, means I'm now playing as base ranger. Eh.
I will note that the skill point challenges on the new expac are mostly of the channel type. There's a few fighting related skill points, but the fights aren't bad either. In other words, it's much more solo friendly than HoT, where a lot of the skill points are unfeasible to solo unless you're really good.
Overall: It's...ok. Mechanically not much of a game changer as gliding and mounts brought, but I suppose that's a good thing in terms of power creep at this point. Maps are nice if you have skyscale and can bypass a lot of the difficulties in navigation. Not much of a wow factor as PoF but fight mechanics feel better balanced. I will probably finish out the story on my main, do most all of the masteries and try those out, and then get the full specialization for mesmer at least. Though, not sure I'll still play on after that.
Maps:
A little oversaturated, but bearable and certainly unique from the other maps/places in GW2. They've managed to do "oriental" and modern architecture mixed with magitech pretty well.
Mechanics wise, at first glance, the first 2 maps doesn't feel like there's a lot of verticality, but then you start trying to go places, and boy it's all so vertical. There's a built in zipline mechanic to help get around, but it's a bit fiddly because it's all point-to-point, so you'd have to memorize where the major shortcuts are.
On the Seitung map and the last Jade sea map, you can probably get by on jumpers. Though there are places like towers and similar, were they're risky to use, because the ledges don't line up well, and a slight mistake will have you falling all the way back down. In those places, and in the Kaineng map, you pretty much have to have the skyscale to move around quickly and frustration-free.
And then the Echovald map is just Tangled Depths Mk II, ugh, both in terms of looks (gloomy forest is gloomy) and in terms of convoluted verticality. There are spots where I have run/flown in circles from the sky to the floor and have not been able to figure out how to get to the POI/mastery/skill point. -_-
Metas:
Nothing new here. It's the bog standard metas they've been doing since HoT and with the living story. I have heard rumors that some of them get buggy and NPCs get stuck, but the couple of times I did it have all run smoothly. The balance seems better than the ones for PoF, honestly, because nobody did those while there are still people doing HoT metas.
Story:
Nobody cares about the writing quality at this point, so will just talk about the story mission mechanics. Honestly, there's nothing new here either. Pretty much the same thing they've been doing. The story missions are either intro to a map which has you run around all over the place to talk to people. Or they're fighty ones where you...fight. Though, the difficulty hasn't been bad there. I guess they've gotten it down now with the living story experience. The boss fights aren't as bad as some of the PoF ones. There's one puzzle mission which I just used the wiki for.
Masteries:
Fishing - have done a bit of this. The fishing minigame is...eh. Barely a minigame. Feels like a collector/completionist's game at this point. Rack up your fishing points and battle with the RNG to catch all the fish species everywhere. I suppose it's possible the fish bits do other stuff, but I haven't really looked that far. I suppose it's also a way to relax in the game for those people who are in it for the social or role playing bits. They can sit somewhere and fish while chatting with friends and everything or whatnot.
Skiffs - At this point it feels like a supporting mastery for fishing, in order to get you out to the parts of the water where the good fishing spots are. They also serve as bits of "land" for the group to stand on and use land skills in the middle of water, but I'm not sure how relevant that is in the rest of the game.
Jade Bot - This seems to be the main thing that will impact the rest of the game. At the base, the bot will flat out give you a vit bonus. It also has other slottable bonuses such as increasing mount energy recharge, or converting junk drops to useful drops, or dropping extra stuff on kills. All useful stuff, and only a teeny bit of power creep. And the parts are all craftable, with recipes that use up a loooot of low priced stuff on the TP. It's pretty clear the devs are using this mechanic as a way to clean up bloat on the trading post, and it's working. Lot of stuff that had been sitting around at lowest base price (like 5 copper) have gone up to the point they're actually worth something.
Arborstone buffs - This mastery is basically to add stuff to the "city" map, like crafting stations, vendors, etc. Rather, since it's a public instance, it's more like unlock access to stuff. Not sure how I feel about this. One one hand, it feels like an excuse for getting rid of the banker / auction like we had at the start of PoF/Crystal Desert and making you work to get access back. On the other hand, normally crafting station are part of the paid access pavilion area even in Crystal Desert, while here it's free. Eh.
Seige Turtle - Haven't gotten there yet.
Specializations
Haven't really played around with these. For one thing, only my ranger had the extra skill points to get the entire new spec line straight up. Unfortunately the new spec for rangers is more PvP oriented. That, coupled with some soulbeast nerfs in the past, means I'm now playing as base ranger. Eh.
I will note that the skill point challenges on the new expac are mostly of the channel type. There's a few fighting related skill points, but the fights aren't bad either. In other words, it's much more solo friendly than HoT, where a lot of the skill points are unfeasible to solo unless you're really good.
Overall: It's...ok. Mechanically not much of a game changer as gliding and mounts brought, but I suppose that's a good thing in terms of power creep at this point. Maps are nice if you have skyscale and can bypass a lot of the difficulties in navigation. Not much of a wow factor as PoF but fight mechanics feel better balanced. I will probably finish out the story on my main, do most all of the masteries and try those out, and then get the full specialization for mesmer at least. Though, not sure I'll still play on after that.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 03:32 pm (UTC)Maps: On the one hand, I feel like they're trying to prevent new travel mechanics from breaking old maps (like gliding negated a lot of jumping puzzle deaths on OG maps, and mounts made gliding obsolete in a lot of areas in HoT). On the other hand, I did like being able to glide past a lot of the old shitty obstacles, because OG map design was horrid.
But the verticality just puts me off. Especially Tangled Depth Redux. It's like they didn't get the feedback that Tangled Depth was the most hated HoT map.
Metas: I haven't done any of the PoF metas, what caused them to be unpopular?
Story: It's kinda sad that the devs can't figure out how to escape the "point player at X on map and fight" formula. When are we going to see a return of the personality driven quest lines of the n00b areas?
Fishing: I looked up the fishing mechanic on the wiki and it sounds like an awful mini-game. (Reminds me of the rifle FPS challenge in HoT). Also, I'm not sure how the attention demanding mini-game allows the player to chat while fishing. Doesn't seem possible since you have to focus on reeling the fish in. Can you at least cook the fish?
Skiffs: Underwhelming. That's all I've got.
Jade Bot: Power creep, again. These things that affect older maps in the game ought to be made available retroactively.
Arborstone: I don't understand why the devs can't just make these quality of life improvements by default instead of forcing the player to work for basic QoL tweaks. It's these kinds of decisions that make me really annoyed with GW2.
Specializations: Ugh, sorry to hear you're back to being a base ranger. Kinda sucks having dedicated your time to building a new spec only for it to not pan out. But surely Druid is still better than base Ranger?
Twiddling my thumbs as I wait for the new Engie spec assessment. (Is Mace+Pistol a thing or do most run Mace+Shield?)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 06:28 pm (UTC)And I'll disagree that mounts made gliding obsolete. At least, not the mounts that came out with PoF expac itself. Even the griffin didn't obsolete gliding, because the griffin is for long range and doesn't have a gain height mechanic, whereas gliding is more precise and had the updraft mechanic which was still present in some living story maps.
It was the skyscale that really obsoleted gliding, because it can do almost everything gliding does, but better. The skyscale also overlapped a lot with the jumper and griffin as well. The only caveat there is that you have to have the living world chapter and go through the involved quest chain to get it.
Tangled Depths -- I guess they want to retry it given all the advancements with mounts. I mean, original TD was hated because nobody had mounts back then. I haven't gone back there much, but I presume it wouldn't have been as painful if everyone had mounts (including skycale) at the time it came out.
Pof Metas -- I dunno, I have never played them. Because I could never find a group doing them. Or the small ad hoc groups I've seen doing them while I was in those maps doing something else, most failed (or gave up). That was how unpopular they were. I am guessing part of the issue is the gimmicky/annoying environmental effects stuff. The desolation meta had the sulfur sands environment to deal with. The Vabbi meta had the brand environmental effects.
Story -- I doubt they'll return to the branching missions structure of the core storyline. From a dev perspective, it's not worth the resources. You're basically creating content where some of it doesn't get played during any one playthrough. It's probably easier to just do dialogue options which result in various different ambient dialogue (like we saw in PoF). Presumably that's also in play in this expac. I just haven't been paying too much attention to ambient dialogue this playthough (mostly b/c I was playing my ZS playlist as BGM instead of the built in music, so I keep getting distracted aurally.)
Jade Bots - Not sure what you mean retroactively? I mean, characters who haven't done the story can also use it. Just have to buy the parts from the TP. Not sure if you can slot the item even if you haven't bought the expac. I'll check your account when I get a chance and see what it looks like.
Specs - Engi is a bit down my list of classes to play through. Not sure if my interest will keep long enough to fill out the spec. We'll see.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 06:47 pm (UTC)Mounts: I'm basing it on my experience when trying to keep up with the meta train on non-expac maps. It was either get the expac and mounts, or be unable to stay with the train, which made meta events all the more grindy. Like, trying to get Hero Challenges in TD was basically not possible because the jump mounts bypassed all the usual routes, leaving anyone who can't keep up with the train to be dead, because the mounts would aggro five billion mobs and anyone not jumping will get curb-stomped by those mobs.
Story: It's not that big of a deal to run multi-paths, tho'. They could just have one boss at the end, but change the path to the boss based on what you picked; and instead of throwing a gauntlet of mobs at the player, the path could be more dialogue focused quizzes. Y'know, offer the correct items or something like that. Minimal new assets with a more puzzle solving/dialogue focused progress. Also, given GW1:Factions had differing faction paths, branching story paths is the natural conclusion. They could always add new game+ or allow post-game unlock of the other branches, so that the player can still experience the content without feeling like it's just "go here, slay X" repeat ad nauseum.
Jade Bots: I meant that if the Jade Bot's upgrade affects drop rate and the ability to turn junk into more valuable stuff, then this squarely places anyone who doesn't buy the expansion at a significant disadvantage, and that kind of power creep is what drove me off of GW2 in the first place. I don't mind power creep if the creep is given to everyone, not just limited to people who buy the expansion. It feels too much like a slap in the face to veterans. Like, why bother buying anything at launch? Might as well wait until the entire thing is on life-support and then buy the bundle package for the best QoL experience.
Specs: Yeah, I can understand Engi not being high on your list. (T_T) Anet gives that class no love.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 08:14 pm (UTC)For example, at least one of the new expac metas assume that mounts will be in use. The NPC itself for the quest chain up and gets on a raptor and runs off. So if you don't have a raptor yourself you're not gonna keep up. (Though I guess you can camp at the sites the NPC eventually ends up as a sorta alternative...)
Story... eh, the thing with puzzles/quizzes for story mission is that a lot of people (like me) will just play with the wiki up. So not actually a lot of problem solving involved. =P
GW1 factions separation... I think that was eventually morphed into WvW game mode? That's my impression of it anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 08:41 pm (UTC)So...what if someone skipped the PoF expansion and jumped to the new campaign? What are they going to do to make sure that a player like that isn't left in the dust? Originally, PoF was playable without purchasing HoT, so is this new expansion following the same idea? Do you get a default mount if you don't have PoF?
Quizzes: I think if the story is remotely interesting, there wouldn't be so much skipping via wiki. I mean, if the developers advertised the narrative as the core engagement, rather than twitch-reflex action combat, then people will bother to sit down and read, or solve the quiz or whatever. Or if they'd designed the map to be more interesting in terms of interacting bits (like secret passageways), rather than just a giant circle with stuff sprinkled over it with zero visual clues and nothing to go on other than "follow the star on the mini-map", it'd feel more immersive.
Heck, I was just thinking that given Shing Jea is now a metropolis, having a grid-based map with houses that you can enter to explore would be far more interesting that more giant turtle battles.
Factions: I brought it up as an example of how to write story that has branching paths that nonetheless comes back to the same ending. This adds a bit more of a personal feel to the story, like the player's choice matters, rather than everything getting reduced to just "smack mobs", which is what GW2's story is becoming.
As I'm playing Another Eden, I'm struck by how different the game experience can be when the developers actually gave two shits about the narrative versus just using rewards to coerce players to stay longer. Like, right now, I'm doing a mining quest that requires going through a series of small maps that chain together in a branching manner, and while I could follow the wiki, I find it much easier to just learn the map myself as I slowly explore. The story is woven into the map exploration and it walks me through each map slowly, and introduces new concepts as if it were a whole new game (which it is, mechanically). It's that kind of care in game design, rather than an obsession with new art assets, that I'm looking for in games.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-07 11:04 pm (UTC)Quiz missions -- I dunno, whether a story is good or not is very YMMV. And what kind of story suits a game can also by YMMV.
Shing Jea isn't a metropolis. Shing Jea seems to be a rich country villa (island) now. Seems like the emperor/ess moved the court there after the old palace got overrun with risen way back when. (New) Kaineng is the metropolis. Jade Sea is where the turtle fights are.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 01:13 am (UTC)Mounts: Wait, you can use mounts without PoF mastery? But doesn't that make the mounts shittier?
Story: Quiz based puzzles is just one of many ways a developer can avoid "bash monster" as its only solution to game design. That's the point I was trying to make. I don't buy that pointing the players at a thing to kill is the only way they can make "engaging content".
Shing Jea: Mea culpa. The point is, the Cantha continent is supposed to be more "modernized" (aka big cities, huge building structures, etc.), and the developers could have incorporated the unique terrain into their game's problem. (A game, at its heart, is to create a problem and ask the players to solve it within the confines of the rules...it doesn't have to be combat.) I'm just saying it doesn't sound like the developers are doing anything interesting and are being lazy in designing new content. The fact that they're localizing the majority of the new mechanics on a flat open expanse of the Jade Sea just proves my point.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 01:29 am (UTC)Only the turtle mastery/mechanic benefits from flat(ish) land, I think. The jade bot mechanic is very general. Fishing and skiffs are if anything water dependent (of which the jade sea has none, despite the name :p). And Arborstone is by definition not part of it. :p
I think they did try to go for a medium in this expac between the pure flat maps of PoF and the pure vertical maps of HoT. How well they did I think depends on the player and their mood/goals. If you're trying to rush from point to point then some of the navigation might be frustrating (esp if you don't have skyscale). If you're taking your time or just looking for lore/ambience, it's very well done.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 09:00 pm (UTC)Ah, I see. OK, that sounds like it's more bearable. (Although I'm still not a fan of mounts, because they give me virtual sickness.) So, did you get Skyscale or are you making do with griffin/raptors?
Jade Bot: I'm confused on how this works. If the Jade Bot upgrades requires the mastery track, how are you able to install the Jade Bot on an account that doesn't have access to EoD? (I'm assuming the new expansion is called EoD now?)
Fishing/Skiffs: Honestly, sounds like a bore. Seems like just one more excessive thing to chase after without that much engagement. They should've at least released new fish-based recipes! Blech.
As for the lore/ambiance...I'm not sold that the writing is good enough to get me into the ambiance. And it doesn't help that my further reading on the new engi spec makes me roll my eyes. Ranger pet mechanics but with a shittier pet does not inspire confidence. Nor does removal of toolbelt skills. It's almost like the devs are admitting they fucked up with the design and are now struggling to figure out where to slot the engi among the less broken professions.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-09 01:34 am (UTC)The alt account has only the 4 main PoF mounts, and masteries are at 3/4 raptor, 3/4 springer, 0/4 skimmer, 1/4 jackal. No griffin, skyscale, rollerbeetle. The mounts are actually usable without the full mastery, at least for the purposes of keeping up with most meta blobs. Then again, sometimes it depends on the map.
EoD is the new expac. Jade bot has 2 aspects to it:
One is the mechanism which is available to all players regardless if they have EoD. This consists of being able to equip the core mod (gives vit/HP), and the 2 bonus mods (mount recharge buff, skiff buff, drop buffs, etc.).
The other is EoD only mechanics and tied to the mastery. For example being able to gain charges from batteries & use them for buffs, transport, rez skill(?) etc. This stuff only exists in EoD maps. Part of the mastery is also the ability to craft the bot mods, so you're not dependent on the TP for them.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 01:07 am (UTC)Fishing and Skiffs are disabled though, so those are expac only.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 01:14 am (UTC)Oooh. Ok, then that sounds like it's better designed than before.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 09:14 pm (UTC)Then I guess the skiff can serve as a replacement for the manta mount. Skyscale is still their for flying.
Oh, and gliding. Apparently if you don't have HoT, you can get base gliding access unlocked too. Just won't be able to level up the mastery track.
I guess that's all the basic movement stuff covered.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-08 09:28 pm (UTC)Is there even a point to getting mounts if you can't get their mastery tracks? (o.O)
Personally, I don't think base gliding nullifies the geographical barriers nearly as much as the mounts, but base mounts probably don't do all that much.