tanithryudo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tanithryudo) wrote2022-03-06 09:28 pm
tanithryudo) wrote2022-03-06 09:28 pm
Entry tags:
GW2 new expac impressions
So 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.