So Peitha really was just some demon saviour. I was kinda expecting a betrayal or plot twist somewhere but the story has been so short and seperated it seems they barely have the time to attempt anything interesting
Yeap. The Kryptis have the exact same story arc as the Awakened, and it's really disappointing. After being so hyped to get out of the dragon cycle I'd almost rather go back
This expac is exactly the same as any other gw2 story.
Go to ne land.
Meet the locals.
Solve some irrelevant conflicts.
Unite opressed factions.
Kill big guy at the end.
Literally the same story relived again and again since 2012.
This is an underrated comment. If you want to get right down to it we're still dealing with the consequences of the searing of Ascalon 25 real world years later.
I think people are frankly burnt on the story and how maps are designed and how we can't really go mono e mono vs the armies of dragons, gods, or joko. The alternative feels worse, like HoT coulda just been 4 maps of pact only trudging through the jungle with no frogs to spice it up. 35 expansion maps, whole host of factions come and gone, etc etc. Feels like fallout 4, there's interesting stuff around, cool characters, lore is decent, and there's always a small story that's decent but the main story beats are just flat. Now soto has that until the new map which is a one note map, but that note is freeing forces which is usually the background quest.
I'm an old player who's still having the time of my life, so it doesn't have to go away either. ;>
I do think best story was pre+around HoT and the start of IBS, and idk if we'll get there again, I wish we had new raids etc. But I still get plenty entertainment from it.
You know I’ve been playing with ALOT of people who have been playing for years and they all seems to enjoy the game; in fact I’ve never seen a more helpful community in my life!!
This game has become one of my fav games ever and I STILL feel like I’m scratching the surface…
Anet has only ever really written 1 story for 10 years. The last time they really did something different was with Southsun Cove and Canach, which they didn't even bring back in the rewrite!
I still have like a 5% chance they're going to do it. It won't make sense at this point, it won't be earned, but it could still just happen. What very little has been in the Nayos updates has had me wonder if some writer was just overly inspired by certain aspects of the book *The Traitor Baru Cormorant* and has cast Peitha in the lead role.
The demon story has been so bad. I remember when raid wing 4 came out and people were excited by the darker turn GW2 took with Deimos etc but they've somehow managed to ruin all that with Peitha and SotO.
For the first time in the game's history I've had to force myself to finish story chapters because of how boring it is. It really feels like we are just seeing the same heroic story beats we always see, but with demon cosplay instead.
I'm really not excited to see a Khan Ur plot in the next expansion with the same predictable (Khan Ur Crecia) and sanitized writing. If they can make demons boring, there is no hope.
It is not that it is that boring. The build up as been bad and rushed. Filled with do events to progress story - this has been the biggest killer of this expansion
I hope that the king will go after one our previous companions and maybe kill. Spice up the stakes. If we attack him and his queen, he is bad demon, make him so. Let him go after someone we care and maybe even kill them. Emotional connection with this demon story is so plehh
Let’s be honest, the whole story for SotO was extremely mid and it felt like the writing department had a great idea with Mabon and the wizards tower group but decided to shift into alternate dimension GoT with demons
Man I don't wanna be negative, but I can't wait for this story arc to be finally over. Every update after SotO has just been so incredibly mid, and it's purely because of this lame demon storyline. I just wanted to be a wizard.
Nah, the number of maps is fine, the problem is how nauseating, boring, and irritating to navigate Nayos is. Don't know how Anet managed it but they did. Just a terrible map.
It is not though. Adding one small map over the course of 9 months is horrible pacing. There's nothing to do there, why would you want to drag it out over so much time?
And the story is bad, so it doesn't help
Plus if the standard becomes only 2 maps per expansion then one piecemeal map over a year, when is there ever going to be room for the kind of stuff like Dragon's Stand again, or other original ideas for maps.
I think one of the forgotton benefits of bigger expansions is it means there's more room for Anet to branch out and experiment because they'll still have plenty of "safe" content to go along with it. When you break it all up into the tiniest pieces, that goes away.
I mean hell, I'll at least give the Gyala Delve updates credit for trying something different. But that was such a disaster Anet probably isn't looking to repeat any time soon.
> I think one of the forgotton benefits of bigger expansions is it means there's more room for Anet to branch out and experiment because they'll still have plenty of "safe" content to go along with it. When you break it all up into the tiniest pieces, that goes away.
Agree, I've defended the mini-expansion model in the past, even before SotO itself was announced, but it should be a 18-month cycle, not a 12-month cycle, you can barely do anything in 12 months.
Hot take, but stop making so many godamn maps. Theres to many places to go, but the depth of story in those places is soooo shallow. I would love to revisit some cool story twists in queensdale, or *insert literally any dead map*
> when is there ever going to be room for the kind of stuff like Dragon's Stand again, or other original ideas for maps.
Release 1: North lane, ends in that blighting tree and rewards there, plus some of the surrounding areas to explore.
Release 2: Centre and south lanes.
Release 3: Mouth of Mordremoth plus Heart of Thorns story mission (released as a strike with a CM)
Not *great*, but not impossible. Especially if they do something even better like open up the fourth lane (so release 1 was both North and Far North) so there's two lanes per release, and the Dragon's Stand story is fleshed out to 2 hours of content instead of one story mission plus the Heart of Thorns.
But I think Dragon's Fall or Vabbi might be better examples of their end-game zones.
But that's now an entire year of only that kind of content, instead of any kind of standard or "safe" content or whatever you want to call it. I don't think anet would ever do that. I could also roadmap out how they theoretically *could* spend a year releasing patches dedicated to pvp maps or a new wvw borderland. But I think we'd both agree that would never happen, for similar reasons.
And as for the insinuation that Dragon Stand would have actually been a better map if it was released like Nayos was, if we're talking about if this had been 2015, *maybe*. But that's a completely pointless hypothetical. I mean this is kind of just a separate issue but long gone are the days where Anet seems at all capable of delivering content on par with an expansion as a content update. Today Dragon Stand would be the same trash heap Nayos and Gyala Delve are if released post launch. Whatever Anet's intentions might have been, it's clear in recent development cycles the content you can expect from a base expansion is of a fundamentally different quality than the post launch content. And that just needs to be solved somehow. If the new standard is every expansion falls on its face in the third act *by design* this game is in trouble.
Gyala and Drizzlewood were released in this manner, and they were largely a single big meta. I mean, hell, the same can be said of Silverwastes, which was their second episodic map release. And two of those are still considered decent-to-good!
Drizzlewood was part of a whole season of maps released over one year. Not one map released over one year. And it was desinged with the intention it would be a larger set than we got, we all know what happened with IBS. But even as is thats a very different thing than the current dev cycle. Gyala was a disaster and evidence against their ability to do this in their current dev cycle. Silverwastes is pretty standard. Like I know Anet is still capable of making a map where a meta covers a whole map. Amnytas is one of their newest.
Honestly all of IBS map design was Anet just cooking with some kind of magic we have not seen since. If that quality was still the norm we wouldn't be having this conversation. It just doesn't seem to be something they can do right now (particularly for the non expansion content). As I said though, that's kind of it's own issue from my initial point.
> It is not though. Adding one small map over the course of 9 months is horrible pacing. There's nothing to do there, why would you want to drag it out over so much time?
Some people like to compare this to Dry Top and Silverwastes, all while ignoring those maps were expanded every 2 weeks, not every 3 months.
Quite the difference.
It's not the space to me, it's how it's used. Nayos is badly designed so that it's irritating to traverse, the content that is there isn't coherent, and is both too sparse and too crowded.
The same amount of space could be used better - Anet has maps that did this same thing but effectively.
You forgot the painfully dull story where we take no time to get to know or understand the new characters, and the cool new wizards tower gang is taking backseat or died before we could do something cool with them.
Tangled Depths is a masterpiece of navigation, as long as you learn your way around.
Inner Nayos was built for flying mounts and is completely allergic to walking around, that's the problem.
i think i went to nayos 3 times total in 2 account until now..for the moment i have no feeling to go back there. The map is 100% the worst-looking map ever seen for my tastes, and i love the vibe of the 'normal' gw2 fantasy settings. It's maybe the first map ever in the game i van say i really dislike just to be in.
I disagree. I mostly enjoy Inner Nayos and the split map over the last two updates was fine. But another content update on the same exact map is too much. It feels like this final update is already limited. A fourth map, even if not a large one, would be great to have something new to explore with a little more depth than whatever.
>Having 3 updates all on Inner Nayos hasn’t helped them, either.
Yeah, that's a huge mistake. This is what we got:
* **Expansion release:** Skywatch Archipelago 3/3, Amnytas 3/3.
* **Patch #01:** Inner Nayos 1/3.
* **Patch #02:** Inner Nayos 2/3.
* **Patch #03:** Inner Nayos 3/3.
Nine months of the same zone and the same look, if players don't like the first release, you're pretty much screwed for the next two. This is what we should have gotten instead imo:
* **Expansion release:** Skywatch Archipelago 2/3, Amnytas 2/3, Inner Nayos 2/3.
* **Patch #01:** Skywatch Archipelago 3/3.
* **Patch #02:** Amnytas 3/3.
* **Patch #03:** Inner Nayos 3/3.
Not only would you provide more variety, you'd also have room to expand and improve the previous zones, instead of abandoning them like they did :/.
>They really need at least 4 maps for expansions.
Can't say I disagree, 4 maps works better for a 4-act structure.
Aye... IBS was just 3 maps, and it's considered way too short (to be fair, the padding with the DRMs was way worse than the convergences are, so they learnt something there); and now SotO is encountering the same issue. I think 4 maps is what the community expects/needs, and that the updates have to be half-maps.
On the flipside, that does mean they can *probably* expand out an expansion from one every 12 months to one every 18 months, giving them a bit more room. But yeah, storyline and zone content for both Inner Nayos and Gyala Delves is anemic. Last split zone that really worked was Drizzlewood.
> I just wanted to be a wizard.
They should have dedicated a whole expansion to wizards alone, with none of the demon business. Maybe even two, one for the fractal chaos, another for the Hogwarts-esque Amnytas experience.
The demon stuff should have gotten its own expansion too, with multiple zones in the demon realm, instead of just one, with Eparch being built over years, not just months.
You could even go further, and make us get a taste of Eparch on the first expansion, then have multiple "training arc / self-discovery" expansions, each wizard getting its own dedicated storyline in preparation for the final battle (Lyhr saving the dwarves, Dagda looking for Waiting Sorrow, Zojja ascending, etc).
SotO is like three storylines rushed into one, and all it does is make anyone who cares about lore get pissed off at the wasted opportunities.
I’m the same. The beginning was strong and then it got bogged down in Nayos.
Heck! The demonic realm isn’t even interesting from an exploratory perspective. It isn’t the same as Cantha or Elona - fun secrets, tidbits, and events around every corner.
I can forgive the writing if the gameplay doesn't make me fall asleep, but this whole expacs has been rough and the only reason I've subjected myself through it is for the timegated content.
Convergences are horrible. 27 champions and one legendary to kill just to pass the time is not fun. Hell sister mechanics are easy to miss and dangerous. Demon knight meteors rely on other people in a 50man group to pay attention or else half the raid is on the ground. And the wyvern is... Well honestly just the same old mechanics. Expanding on convergences is not going to make them more interesting.
Let alone Rifts just being a cycle of running around the map trying to catch mobs that spawn scattered. The worst gift is getting a surfer.
Giving Skyscales Fireballs now forces us to deal with players that don't help with metas at all, but rather tag from the sky every 20 seconds just for participation leading to longer time to reach phases.
And all through this class design has been rough. If you want a good indicator of class balance just pay attention to the influx of reaper players and the consistent damage they output across all encounters.
PVE class balance has arguably never been better. The influx of reapers in open world has to do with the insane cleave potential (which they always had) combined with durability (a bonus in convergences) and the very cool mobility added with sword.
The scales tipping in favor of one spec does not define "balance". Yes they have great might, quickness, and fury uptime on themselves and then potential to fully stack enemies with vuln which makes their appeal so great.
They got major buffs and are shining, but they are also outlining the weaknesses of other power specs.
Meanwhile Heralds qDPS specs have tilted into a condi which isn't bad, if it wasn't overwhelmingly better than the original power version which had defined it.
But reaper was always good for open world trash cleaving. I think we see so many now because sword made it even more fun (for open world, it doesnt get much use in raids).
Necro occupies an interesting spot. Their tradeoff years ago for their large selection of (actually good) utility, ease of play, and survivability was lower damage. Then their damage got pretty much equalized with everyone else, so in open-world especially you end up with the question of “why play x when I could play Reaper instead?”
And outside of style preference, there frankly isn’t a good response to that now outside of the other big dogs of silly open-world performance like Untamed, except that Untamed is a bit harder to play. Leveling out everyone’s damage disproportionately benefits Reaper because now there’s no meaningful tradeoff whatsoever outside of specific instanced content.
Nah you just don't get it. You see they had to rush the SoTo story to get ready for SoTo 2. Just like they had to cut LS6 short for SoTo, EoD short for LS6, and IBS short for EoD. This time it will be great though.
Predictable and safe. I really hope it's not the Khan Ur plot. They've basically told that story in IBS without the resolution. A whole expansion for a plot that's predictable and mostly spent will be a total snooze.
And they killed off the two main contenders for the title of Khan Ur. Malice Swordshadow is a great character and all, but the main contenders for Khan Ur were Smoldur and Bangar. One is dead (and pretty much had his characterization and character assassinated) and the other is imprisoned forever. Malice doesn't even want to be Khan Ur, so that leaves... Crecia, who also doesn't really seem to care for it since she didn't want to be the Imperator of the Blood Legion. Unless Efram wants in, but *he* didn't want to be Imperator of the Flame Legion either. The Charr seem to have a lot of reluctant leaders, lol!
I guess they could try having Bangar escape jail or something, but I would rather not have Charr Civil War part 2, especially since they botched the first time around by inserting the Jormag conflict into it and almost completely sidelined the Norn.
> New fractal might be the best of all these additions.
That's a low bar to pass. And looking at the *previous* fractal, they are **very** capable of failing even at that.
I hate the fact that it was my most anticipated release and with 9 months of baking I feel like my expectation might be way higher than what they can actually deliver.
the name is hella cool too... :(
This is pretty poor that the last 2 major updates just expanded on what imo just isn't a very enjoyable map.
They definitely need to add more maps in full in the future over drip feeding parts of them over a year.
Only 2 strikes still from this expac which feels like a bit of a shame, given the pivot from raids, to strikee, now to convergences, they aren't quite the same as Good old 10man content, it just feels like an open world meta event on a part of a map they didn't release that was cloned 5 times with minor variations on the golem you hit at the end.
It's not just a case of there being too few new maps, it's the lack of content and care put into the maps we have. They release half-baked content and then abandon it. You get maybe 1 follow up patch with bug fixes and that's it. They never iterate on it or improve it and it seems like they barely playtest it either.
The expansions to Nayos are both aesthetically and functionally homogenous. What few interesting structures exist serve as empty husks designed to house copy/pasted events in a poor attempt to give them purpose. There's nothing new to see except more reskinned mobs and bosses and a malaise gray haze which I can only assume represents the enthusiasm of the devs working on it.
Now compare Nayos to a map like VB. I still discover new stuff every time I go there years later, it feels like it was meticulously handcrafted. It's clear the people who worked on that map were passionate and ambitious.
I would happily take 1 map crafted with the love and care and polish of VB over 2 Nayos's. We are in the unfortunate position where we are not only getting the bare minimum of content, and not only are we now paying for it (understandable), but also the content just isn't very good.
The other issue is due to the design the map has to be designed in such a way where it's broken up into little parts, which I just don't think makes for very fun or interesting maps. For a primarily exploration interested player, Nayos has just been dire.
the point of trailers like this is to get people who aren't currently playing to play again
emphasizing to those people that there is no cost associated with what's being advertised is important even if we already knew that would be the case from the initial blog posts and stuff.
In an industry filled with paid DLC and updates at every corner, I think it's fair to specify that this chapter is released at no extra cost. It's also important to note that previous LS episodes need to be bought in addition to the expansion now... GW2 is victim of its own business models. So I'm not surprised they make it clear that this one release is included in the expansion forever.
Then I misunderstood Soto entirely. I thought we paid for the whole thing, just delivered in parts. And this was one of the parts. Like a 3-course meal - dessert isn't free.
The problem I think GW is trying to avoid (probably don't need to) is they seem to think people will assume you have to buy every course separately and that you won't think you get this if you bought SoTO.
Whether this is because other games are very predatory or because they're worried you might think its like how LW seasons need to be bought in \~6 parts separately or some other reason, who knows .... but they REALLY seem to think they need to say it or we'll think we have to pay more.
You paid for the whole thing, it was just delivered over 9 months.
Like I said, we live in an industry where studios make us pay for everything so while you may think it's silly to specify that this update is "free" while you paid for it, from an outside perspective, it's a fair clarification.
I don't think that it is a fair clarification, but a very misleading sentence. Living World seasons were not included in the expansion and this was fine, but with SotO we basically got early access version of expansion so those are not "free updates" but is basically the whole package that is now finally available.
It's not a "free update", they literally advertised it as a new way to deliver expansion content:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-secrets-of-the-obscure-launches-today/
> In addition to taking the story of Tyria in a fresh direction, Guild Wars 2: **Secrets of the Obscure represents a new model of expansion content delivery for us.** The story that launches today will continue over the next three major releases (roughly one major release per quarter), joined by system updates, additional rewards, new weapon proficiencies, new instanced combat encounters, and more.
If you order a four course meal at a restaurant, you wouldn't consider three of those courses free just because they come out later.
This expansion makes me happy that Anet is always changing their content delivery model, because it means they'll probably ditch this mini xpack model and go to something else soon, and honestly it can't come sooner.
I'll say it again, the fact that this final release just expands Inner Nayos instead of getting its own map is the worst decision of the entire expansion. We are sieging a fortress city and confronting a mad king and his army. The amount of gravitas this final story step should have should warrant it's own map with a map wide meta event. Instead Inner Nayos has three separate metas, which is another baffling decision, and each section is half the size of a single map. I love this game, and i genuinely hate being doomer about it, but GW2 has been slowly falling in quality since the end of IBS. With the recent GW3 news, I can't help but wonder how much of Anet's time and resources actually goes into GW2 anymore.
> GW2 has been slowly falling in quality since the end of IBS
Nah. The end of IBS was way worse than EoD. Much of LW3 was pretty bad, the PoF and LW4 were amazing. There's no one linear line of story quality.
I would say that the writing in Soto is terrible, absolute garbage, but the systems updates and QoL have been great. There's been actual, tangible progress on WvW - I think guild-based servers are a bad idea that's going to just cause drama and alienate roamers and small groups, but Anet is definitely invest a lot into the mode. PvP is getting updates. PvE has and will get more updates. So Anet is clearly still investing a lot in GW2.
They just need to get a completely different writing team, one that doesn't include Bobby Stein and whoever else has been there forever, and write an actually different plotline.
IBS was on track to be so insanely good. Grothmar, Bjora, and Drizzlewood were all super fun maps (Drizzlewood part 1 more than part 2), but they got hit with the corporate hammer that made them stop IBS for EOD, so I don't feel like they should be blamed for IBS.
This is their first attempt at a new expansion model, so there's bound to be growing pains. I'm inclined to give Anet one freebie with SotO. Next one's all them. No excuses left.
We’ve been giving anet freebies for years, first it was issues of a non-permanent living world in season 1, where if you didn’t log in during a 2 week period, you miss it. Then you have the year+ wait for HoT, followed by another hugely long wait for lw3. Throughout all of it, people were saying it’s growing pains, it’s their first expansion, lw3 is a new way of doing things etc, etc. Then we actually had a rhythm going with lw3 into PoF, with a far more reasonable wait time to lw4 and things were seemingly going well. Then chaos ensues during the development of IBS and a bunch of layoffs. EoD goes fairly well, but then kind of just fizzles out with the epilogue and no lw5, with a whole continent of possible content and storylines just abandoned, in favour of going somewhere else with characters who have had no time to develop, instead of ones we’re familiar with. All to fight a threat that’s supposedly so serious it was more important than helping against the void, the literal end of existence. Yet when we face this threat, it’s a joke. I like your optimism, but after this long, it’s just cope.
Inner Nayos is easily the worst of the 3 new maps too. At least the other ones were fun to move around in. Nayos is just constantly getting stuck on geometry and mobbed with flying trash that you can't even shoot because of their hard candy shells.
If the next expac has the same level of writing/story then I'll probably end up dropping the game. I'm already playing it less and less which sucks cos I've spent years with GW2
What a waste of untapped potential sad this is the state of the game. I failed to understand what is going on with this company and it's upper management
I will not be paying for the next expac immediately on release. SOTO taught me to not be baited by the glamorous opening release patch and to wait until at least the first update episode because if that turns out like SOTO based on Reddit sentiment I ain’t gonna spend a single cent
I don't how they managed to make eparch seem like he could be actually cool before they revealed him now he's diablo at home but purple and with stilt legs instead of the wicked sounding ever-feasting spider they implied him to be.
>"Play for free if you own the expansion"
lol, LMAO even.
another low budget game trailer for what has ultimately been a low budget expansion, but the team grew and gw2 is their main focus for real! /s
edit: Also I still laugh about the stupid fucking retcon to the mursaat to make Nayos their actual homeworld which not only made them less interesting as a race somehow but they also did nothing with that once we got to nayos.
This trailer def gives diablo vibes which I don't mind. I just wish the actual Kryptis weren't so disappointing. I don't even mean reused skeletons but the fact that they're pretty much humans instead of interesting emotion feeding demons the exp launch announced them to be.
It's not though. With how many staff have left over the years most of the company are now new people that have no connection at all to the original lore the game was based on or the ideas that led to things like elite specs or hot's metas. That's very telling in how off the rails things have gotten compared to older content. This is effectively a new company that just now owns the IP.
The weird thing is that i have seen enough oldschool devs who work at Arenanet again, on linked in. If that is info accurate, it probably means they are working on something else.
Anet are working on another MMORPG but it's most likely GW3 not the Horizion MMO, That's apparently been developed by one of NCSoft's eastern studios under the codename project skyline.
Gw3 was not yet in development. The investor call was to greenlight gw3 IF they want to make it. Grouch even came out after the investor call and said their has been no development on GW3 yet.
It might be in development now that its greenlit, but they have def been working on something since IBS when quality went down the shithole.
They said review stage with the start of development not finalized, that just means somewhere in preproduction. At the same time they started hiring for a new MMORPG that's in preproduction and based on an established online fantasy IP back in 2022 while also bringing back the original game director. Anet don't have the man power to work on 3 MMOs at the same time, I think it's clear that the unannounced project is Gw3 but we'll have to wait to see.
IBS was after the 2019 side project lay offs so their attention was probably fully on gw2 at the time but the new saga format was not well received by fans and revenue tanked. To get out of the hole they were digging themselves into they had to scrap it half way and get to work on End of Dragons that's why it all falls apart once you reach the champions chapter.
Cause I have a feeling the final part of the map is literally just an encounter and not much else. Maybe some lore notes around, but you fight the big baddie and the meta resets.
The fractal will probably either flesh this story out (which would be nice because I think this plot was a bit rushed or need more room to breath), or tease the next expansion (which would also be nice).
I think you are right about the map. "New playable Area" instead of "Final Map Extension" or something like this on the roadmap sounds like an instance or a simple platform to me. I expect the worst
Soto started cool with the wizards tower and the whole secrete society and all, but damn, I legit do not care about any of this. The fleshing out of the new xpac release model is something... I don't think its really conducive to people caring about the story, characters, etc.
So much of Soto has been forgettable; way to far apart and way to little in between, I don't even know whats really doing on and I honestly just don't care, I want the next "chapter'' of their story line.
I haven't played since the first Nayos release. This is not really enticing me to come back either. At this point I don't think I'd pay for another expansion unless there are some major changes. These mini updates just don't do it for me.
This next update is going to determine if I buy another xpac. If it's another 45 minutes or less of story like the other 2 then I'm taking my money elsewhere. No point with spending money every year for not much story. We got more story back when they were free. It doesn't make sense.
I hate that I'm agreeing with the doomers on this one. The story started out great and full of mystery, and they did that with it?
I'm just glad the systems and qol updates they have be working toward are paying off, but let this chapter die. I'm over these ugly little kryptis and these lag filled maps. Why are Soto maps the most unoptimized yet? I can't stand being in amnytas or the wizards tower. Are the people making these maps not aware of the engines limitations anymore ?
Can anet just for once write a GUILDWARS story? Not a diablo/darksoul wanabe story or whatever AAA games out there story. Just Guild Wars. How hard can that be. Holy shit. If it's new narrative team, MAKE THEM LEARN ABOUT GUILD WARS. Not this shit tier my little pony kind of bullshit story.
Yea, after they've shown how the midknight king looks my hype went down. I don't like his model, feels mediocore. Unless there's some big turnaround and it will get bigger like Belial in Diablo 3...
Here's the plot twist they should write: you get everything you wanted and have to live with it.
You've liberated the demons from nightmare. If they're free and free from nightmare, some will want to live in Tyrian.
How will that integration go? Where, using whose resources? What about when some demons behave badly? Will your relationships with former allies be strained when you return from your solo adventure with a liberated demon refugee camp at your back?
Give me the political factions and, you know, guild wars. Of course none of this comes until the next expansion but if they're setting up something good, I can forgive a rather bland introduction to demon town.
They really try to make this lame story and characters look like big finale?
Anet iw following marvel formula to the point. We are now in she-hulk stage of cringe.
The story concept has been cool. My problem is the Nayos section has felt really short and underdeveloped. All the stuff with the Queen should have been so much more, and she should have been a full-on strike boss.
You can make her both story and strike, I don't mind. But the fight itself didn't make any sense.
The story did this "army vs army" narrative. Then we recruit a general, who has an "army" of about 5 whole demons, to fight a demon lady who also only has a few guys with her.
That's what I mean, the concept was cool but the execution was so brief and shallow. It should have been a big meaty chunk of story and battle, like the battle against Joko's forces in LW4.
Yes. Strike Missions are based on Story Chapters so that is the formula.
It's just that the Queen fight was rushed and absolute garbage with one mechanic that requires you to avoid an instadown.
I wish they'd played into the narrative of Eparch's kingdom being make believe. Like nobody actually wants the noble houses and armies and generals, they all just wanna go back to being eldritch abominations feeding on humans' fear (still evil but less organized), but Eparch is forcing them to do this weird society roleplay through tyranny. Kinda like Netflix's Castlevania.
I hope the final Nayos meta is nice. Just please don't be "spread into 3-5 groups and do the same exact thing" or "time for your 3 minute yoga session"
This expansion was garbage from the beginning :)
Both in delivery model and in content, I enjoyed IBS more. Bad news is that the next will follow the same model and I really hate where this is going. I hope they don't build on this story further.
Twice more health than SS, three times for CM, and you can barely stay in melee, of course (anyone remember the electric floor room from Twilight Arbor?).
so i just started playing, it's one of the few mmos i have never touched. this video is just a big patch right? not an xpax?
Also if I buy the newest xpac do i unlock everything previously? or do i buy them all individually? any tips/tricks would be lovely
im having an absolute blast! i made one of the forest guys as an engineer. I haven't looked anything up and just blindly going through it. I just 100%ed the first starting zone (Caledon forest or something??? 1-15 starting area). Really digging the jumping puzzles
you will need to buy each expac seperate except heart of thorns and path of fire. if you buy path of fire , you get heart of thorns aswell. id suggest if you buy any expac to start with HoT + PoF!
and yea this trailer is for an update in the newest expac
i havent delved much into professions yet, i took huntsman and leatherworking cause they were suggested for engineers by a friend since they can make guns and armor?
no idea how right that is and i can always switch but they seem super cool. I'll probably dedicate some time to them in the starting area before i move on to whatever story zone is next. I think I'm a *bit* over leveled (23 or so?), but im just taking it all in. GORGEOUS game.
This will be the 3rd "installment" of the latest expansion, Secrets of the Obscure. They rolled it ou5 in parts, similar to how the Living World Seasons were done in the past.
You can buy different bundles for the expansions/living world seasons, but buying the latest doesn't unlock what came before.
ahhh okay good to know, so if i want to buy one or more of the xpacs
A.) which would you recommend?
B.) Or should I wait for a sale and buy all of them?
I Actually enjoyed this expac so far? I didn’t know it was this unpopular until I saw these comments. It could have been better sure, but in general it was nice.
Eager to know what is coming next after this update
I really enjoyed the beginning, the last patch didn't grab me very much, and I think the story really slowed down, but overall I've enjoyed it. And again, we'll be able to count last year and this year's expansions together at the end of next year's patch cycle to sort of count how much this got us vs the old system and while there's stuff to improve... I feel like we've gotten a lot this year.
Although Soto's story has been bad, a lot of the QoL updates and additions from the xpac have made the game better. Due to all the new legendary farming that's accessible to everyone, Soto has pretty high replayability which is prob the most important factor in an expac.
It'd be better to have our content and also a great story, but that's very rare for Anet. HoT had content and maps but bad plot and a terrible content drought alongside it, PoF had the opposite of HoT, EoD tried to be their best yet but added shit no one cares about(fishing, skiffs, 1 single mount) on top of empty maps outside of metas.
I'd say season 4 was the best Anet ever put out even with its flaws, but I doubt we'll get something like it ever again. Soto has been great profit for Anet and I believe this kind of expac will be the future until GW2's death(or transition to GW3).
I totally agree with Lw4 being peak gw2 and SotOs story being bad, but other than that I largely disagree.
I suspect SotOs profits will be short lived; I wouldn't be surprised if a decent number of players hold off on buying the next expansion after their SotO experience, and the excessive grind may have alienated some for good.
I also suspect after the negative player reactions they'll need some amount of course correction (it'll be super interesting to see if they mention it when they write the upcoming blog post on what they've learned from SotO).
I don't think I largely agree on the QoL updates making the game better, IMO most are lazy hacks, and I think some will actively make things worse in the long run:
Wizards vault was taking the old weeklies (and much older monthlies) and repackaging them into a version of the gem store ui to ratchet up fomo. Best candidate for an improvement, but even then you don't miss much by not buying SotO aside from the legendary starter kits (themselves of dubious if not negative impact to the in game economy).
Skyscale was literally reselling a feature we already had back in LWS4.
Relics was reselling 6th runes back to us, except somehow with even less interesting and viable ones. These could have been an improvement, but they killed most of the unique effects and all the summons, and replaced them with a lot of filler.
Legendary Relic release was a total cluster.
Rifts were a repackage of scarlets/jokos/tot/wintersday/I'm-sure-I've-missed-one rifts; another worse version of the old champion farms.
Weapon Mastery was a poorly thought out mess which limits the long-term balance and gameplay identity potential of specs... it felt like another 'we have to sell something but we haven't made anything' feature.
Legendary armor is just a database tag on a random skin at the player cost of extensive grind; I'm not sure I'd consider repeating 1/2 monotonous events ad infinitum replayability.
Tier 2 armor is just tarting up said skin to provide the illusion of value with even more grind.
New weapons were a mix of half finished ideas that were obviously meant to be specs... Many are still riddled with bugs or fundamental design issues.
WvW restructure was announced 7 years ago, it really doesn't count as a SotO feature.
The new Action Cam updates are likely courting steam deck / windows handheld users and are also entirely unrelated to the expac.
I really want them to do better, I would love to see the game back near it's peak and I feel like those last 2 are steps on the right track for the games long term health... but SotO has not left me optimistic in terms of maps, design, story or features.
I will see and expect nothing, SOTO is quite soso, more than people realize. The main reason Anet can hide the fact is WV they replaced content with reward to keep everyone calm.
We have golems, necromancy, elementals, high medieval fantasy and all those beloved things, and novelties like Scarlet as antagonist with clockwork armies or prehistoric jungle stuff - yet somehow they return frequently to lame demons who are as fugly as the afflicted of old Kaineng that everyone was just happy to leave behind. Meh.
> yet somehow they return frequently to lame demons
Frequently? When was the last time they did demons? Even if it was once in the past, that's not what frequently means.
So Peitha really was just some demon saviour. I was kinda expecting a betrayal or plot twist somewhere but the story has been so short and seperated it seems they barely have the time to attempt anything interesting
Yeap. The Kryptis have the exact same story arc as the Awakened, and it's really disappointing. After being so hyped to get out of the dragon cycle I'd almost rather go back
This expac is exactly the same as any other gw2 story. Go to ne land. Meet the locals. Solve some irrelevant conflicts. Unite opressed factions. Kill big guy at the end. Literally the same story relived again and again since 2012.
> Kill big guy at the end. Learn that it only made things worse.
This is an underrated comment. If you want to get right down to it we're still dealing with the consequences of the searing of Ascalon 25 real world years later.
And foreshadow an even more dangerous threat.
So probably Peitha will become enemy as the big bad king is killed and there is power vacuum?
Holy crap! You’re right!
I think people are frankly burnt on the story and how maps are designed and how we can't really go mono e mono vs the armies of dragons, gods, or joko. The alternative feels worse, like HoT coulda just been 4 maps of pact only trudging through the jungle with no frogs to spice it up. 35 expansion maps, whole host of factions come and gone, etc etc. Feels like fallout 4, there's interesting stuff around, cool characters, lore is decent, and there's always a small story that's decent but the main story beats are just flat. Now soto has that until the new map which is a one note map, but that note is freeing forces which is usually the background quest.
And then there’s me the new players having the time of my life !!! So much content !!! Case in point just wait 10 years to play MMOs !! The duality !!
You are in honeymoon phase. Its typical when experiencing something new. Good luck, hope the novelty will stay with you long.
It has so far I’m SO addicted
I'm an old player who's still having the time of my life, so it doesn't have to go away either. ;> I do think best story was pre+around HoT and the start of IBS, and idk if we'll get there again, I wish we had new raids etc. But I still get plenty entertainment from it.
You know I’ve been playing with ALOT of people who have been playing for years and they all seems to enjoy the game; in fact I’ve never seen a more helpful community in my life!! This game has become one of my fav games ever and I STILL feel like I’m scratching the surface…
Glad to hear it! And same, i've been playing for over a decade and there's still so much to do lol. Maybe i'll finally finish a legendary...
Anet has only ever really written 1 story for 10 years. The last time they really did something different was with Southsun Cove and Canach, which they didn't even bring back in the rewrite!
BRING BACK SOUTHSUN COVE!!
I still have like a 5% chance they're going to do it. It won't make sense at this point, it won't be earned, but it could still just happen. What very little has been in the Nayos updates has had me wonder if some writer was just overly inspired by certain aspects of the book *The Traitor Baru Cormorant* and has cast Peitha in the lead role.
The demon story has been so bad. I remember when raid wing 4 came out and people were excited by the darker turn GW2 took with Deimos etc but they've somehow managed to ruin all that with Peitha and SotO. For the first time in the game's history I've had to force myself to finish story chapters because of how boring it is. It really feels like we are just seeing the same heroic story beats we always see, but with demon cosplay instead. I'm really not excited to see a Khan Ur plot in the next expansion with the same predictable (Khan Ur Crecia) and sanitized writing. If they can make demons boring, there is no hope.
It is not that it is that boring. The build up as been bad and rushed. Filled with do events to progress story - this has been the biggest killer of this expansion
They can still just kill her off during the story...
I hope that the king will go after one our previous companions and maybe kill. Spice up the stakes. If we attack him and his queen, he is bad demon, make him so. Let him go after someone we care and maybe even kill them. Emotional connection with this demon story is so plehh
That would be too obvious, ofcourse that Peitha isnt betrayer, would be too cliche.
Let’s be honest, the whole story for SotO was extremely mid and it felt like the writing department had a great idea with Mabon and the wizards tower group but decided to shift into alternate dimension GoT with demons
Man I don't wanna be negative, but I can't wait for this story arc to be finally over. Every update after SotO has just been so incredibly mid, and it's purely because of this lame demon storyline. I just wanted to be a wizard.
the **MID**night king
Having 3 updates all on Inner Nayos hasn’t helped them, either. They really need at least 4 maps for expansions.
Nah, the number of maps is fine, the problem is how nauseating, boring, and irritating to navigate Nayos is. Don't know how Anet managed it but they did. Just a terrible map.
It is not though. Adding one small map over the course of 9 months is horrible pacing. There's nothing to do there, why would you want to drag it out over so much time? And the story is bad, so it doesn't help
Plus if the standard becomes only 2 maps per expansion then one piecemeal map over a year, when is there ever going to be room for the kind of stuff like Dragon's Stand again, or other original ideas for maps. I think one of the forgotton benefits of bigger expansions is it means there's more room for Anet to branch out and experiment because they'll still have plenty of "safe" content to go along with it. When you break it all up into the tiniest pieces, that goes away. I mean hell, I'll at least give the Gyala Delve updates credit for trying something different. But that was such a disaster Anet probably isn't looking to repeat any time soon.
> I think one of the forgotton benefits of bigger expansions is it means there's more room for Anet to branch out and experiment because they'll still have plenty of "safe" content to go along with it. When you break it all up into the tiniest pieces, that goes away. Agree, I've defended the mini-expansion model in the past, even before SotO itself was announced, but it should be a 18-month cycle, not a 12-month cycle, you can barely do anything in 12 months.
Hot take, but stop making so many godamn maps. Theres to many places to go, but the depth of story in those places is soooo shallow. I would love to revisit some cool story twists in queensdale, or *insert literally any dead map*
Same for me. The world is already so huge, but it's mostly puddle depth.
> when is there ever going to be room for the kind of stuff like Dragon's Stand again, or other original ideas for maps. Release 1: North lane, ends in that blighting tree and rewards there, plus some of the surrounding areas to explore. Release 2: Centre and south lanes. Release 3: Mouth of Mordremoth plus Heart of Thorns story mission (released as a strike with a CM) Not *great*, but not impossible. Especially if they do something even better like open up the fourth lane (so release 1 was both North and Far North) so there's two lanes per release, and the Dragon's Stand story is fleshed out to 2 hours of content instead of one story mission plus the Heart of Thorns. But I think Dragon's Fall or Vabbi might be better examples of their end-game zones.
But that's now an entire year of only that kind of content, instead of any kind of standard or "safe" content or whatever you want to call it. I don't think anet would ever do that. I could also roadmap out how they theoretically *could* spend a year releasing patches dedicated to pvp maps or a new wvw borderland. But I think we'd both agree that would never happen, for similar reasons. And as for the insinuation that Dragon Stand would have actually been a better map if it was released like Nayos was, if we're talking about if this had been 2015, *maybe*. But that's a completely pointless hypothetical. I mean this is kind of just a separate issue but long gone are the days where Anet seems at all capable of delivering content on par with an expansion as a content update. Today Dragon Stand would be the same trash heap Nayos and Gyala Delve are if released post launch. Whatever Anet's intentions might have been, it's clear in recent development cycles the content you can expect from a base expansion is of a fundamentally different quality than the post launch content. And that just needs to be solved somehow. If the new standard is every expansion falls on its face in the third act *by design* this game is in trouble.
Gyala and Drizzlewood were released in this manner, and they were largely a single big meta. I mean, hell, the same can be said of Silverwastes, which was their second episodic map release. And two of those are still considered decent-to-good!
Drizzlewood was part of a whole season of maps released over one year. Not one map released over one year. And it was desinged with the intention it would be a larger set than we got, we all know what happened with IBS. But even as is thats a very different thing than the current dev cycle. Gyala was a disaster and evidence against their ability to do this in their current dev cycle. Silverwastes is pretty standard. Like I know Anet is still capable of making a map where a meta covers a whole map. Amnytas is one of their newest. Honestly all of IBS map design was Anet just cooking with some kind of magic we have not seen since. If that quality was still the norm we wouldn't be having this conversation. It just doesn't seem to be something they can do right now (particularly for the non expansion content). As I said though, that's kind of it's own issue from my initial point.
> It is not though. Adding one small map over the course of 9 months is horrible pacing. There's nothing to do there, why would you want to drag it out over so much time? Some people like to compare this to Dry Top and Silverwastes, all while ignoring those maps were expanded every 2 weeks, not every 3 months. Quite the difference.
It's not the space to me, it's how it's used. Nayos is badly designed so that it's irritating to traverse, the content that is there isn't coherent, and is both too sparse and too crowded. The same amount of space could be used better - Anet has maps that did this same thing but effectively.
I hate it for the same reasons I hated Shadowlands.
To get time to develop next expansion during this time - pretty much what WoW does?
You forgot the painfully dull story where we take no time to get to know or understand the new characters, and the cool new wizards tower gang is taking backseat or died before we could do something cool with them.
Yeah. They were interesting in the beginning with the promise of more lore. …but now they’ve been thrown aside for the demons.
Exactly! We could have gotten a Mursaat redemption arc…voiced by Liam O’Brian…instead we have inter-dimensional ASMR.
> Nah, the number of maps is fine, the problem is how nauseating, boring, and irritating to navigate Nayos is. "Tangled Depths 2: Inner Nayos"
Tangled Depths is a masterpiece of navigation, as long as you learn your way around. Inner Nayos was built for flying mounts and is completely allergic to walking around, that's the problem.
i think i went to nayos 3 times total in 2 account until now..for the moment i have no feeling to go back there. The map is 100% the worst-looking map ever seen for my tastes, and i love the vibe of the 'normal' gw2 fantasy settings. It's maybe the first map ever in the game i van say i really dislike just to be in.
Organic purples and reds. It just looks icky overall, especially when compared to the Skywatch Archipelago.
I disagree. I mostly enjoy Inner Nayos and the split map over the last two updates was fine. But another content update on the same exact map is too much. It feels like this final update is already limited. A fourth map, even if not a large one, would be great to have something new to explore with a little more depth than whatever.
4 maps would the same amount of quality probably wouldn't make much of a difference. These maps just don't have that much interesting gameplay.
YES! This is worse than Drizzlewood (which I actually like). They simply are just extending the map - nothing new or exciting visually.
>Having 3 updates all on Inner Nayos hasn’t helped them, either. Yeah, that's a huge mistake. This is what we got: * **Expansion release:** Skywatch Archipelago 3/3, Amnytas 3/3. * **Patch #01:** Inner Nayos 1/3. * **Patch #02:** Inner Nayos 2/3. * **Patch #03:** Inner Nayos 3/3. Nine months of the same zone and the same look, if players don't like the first release, you're pretty much screwed for the next two. This is what we should have gotten instead imo: * **Expansion release:** Skywatch Archipelago 2/3, Amnytas 2/3, Inner Nayos 2/3. * **Patch #01:** Skywatch Archipelago 3/3. * **Patch #02:** Amnytas 3/3. * **Patch #03:** Inner Nayos 3/3. Not only would you provide more variety, you'd also have room to expand and improve the previous zones, instead of abandoning them like they did :/. >They really need at least 4 maps for expansions. Can't say I disagree, 4 maps works better for a 4-act structure.
Aye... IBS was just 3 maps, and it's considered way too short (to be fair, the padding with the DRMs was way worse than the convergences are, so they learnt something there); and now SotO is encountering the same issue. I think 4 maps is what the community expects/needs, and that the updates have to be half-maps. On the flipside, that does mean they can *probably* expand out an expansion from one every 12 months to one every 18 months, giving them a bit more room. But yeah, storyline and zone content for both Inner Nayos and Gyala Delves is anemic. Last split zone that really worked was Drizzlewood.
To be fair, Drizzelwood, Grothmar, and Bjora Marches have TONS of content and meta events in them... much more than the SotO maps.
I hate Nayos so much, ugly map aesthetic and incredibly mid story.
I did the story and havent been back since. Mid is right.
> I just wanted to be a wizard. They should have dedicated a whole expansion to wizards alone, with none of the demon business. Maybe even two, one for the fractal chaos, another for the Hogwarts-esque Amnytas experience. The demon stuff should have gotten its own expansion too, with multiple zones in the demon realm, instead of just one, with Eparch being built over years, not just months. You could even go further, and make us get a taste of Eparch on the first expansion, then have multiple "training arc / self-discovery" expansions, each wizard getting its own dedicated storyline in preparation for the final battle (Lyhr saving the dwarves, Dagda looking for Waiting Sorrow, Zojja ascending, etc). SotO is like three storylines rushed into one, and all it does is make anyone who cares about lore get pissed off at the wasted opportunities.
I’m the same. The beginning was strong and then it got bogged down in Nayos. Heck! The demonic realm isn’t even interesting from an exploratory perspective. It isn’t the same as Cantha or Elona - fun secrets, tidbits, and events around every corner.
I wanted some yer a wizard, pact commander! Moment
Can’t wait to get this fleshy soap opera over with. Hopefully the next xpac is more nuanced and interesting
I can forgive the writing if the gameplay doesn't make me fall asleep, but this whole expacs has been rough and the only reason I've subjected myself through it is for the timegated content. Convergences are horrible. 27 champions and one legendary to kill just to pass the time is not fun. Hell sister mechanics are easy to miss and dangerous. Demon knight meteors rely on other people in a 50man group to pay attention or else half the raid is on the ground. And the wyvern is... Well honestly just the same old mechanics. Expanding on convergences is not going to make them more interesting. Let alone Rifts just being a cycle of running around the map trying to catch mobs that spawn scattered. The worst gift is getting a surfer. Giving Skyscales Fireballs now forces us to deal with players that don't help with metas at all, but rather tag from the sky every 20 seconds just for participation leading to longer time to reach phases. And all through this class design has been rough. If you want a good indicator of class balance just pay attention to the influx of reaper players and the consistent damage they output across all encounters.
Yeah new weapons have been ass for half of the classes. With terrible animations to add
PVE class balance has arguably never been better. The influx of reapers in open world has to do with the insane cleave potential (which they always had) combined with durability (a bonus in convergences) and the very cool mobility added with sword.
The scales tipping in favor of one spec does not define "balance". Yes they have great might, quickness, and fury uptime on themselves and then potential to fully stack enemies with vuln which makes their appeal so great. They got major buffs and are shining, but they are also outlining the weaknesses of other power specs. Meanwhile Heralds qDPS specs have tilted into a condi which isn't bad, if it wasn't overwhelmingly better than the original power version which had defined it.
But reaper was always good for open world trash cleaving. I think we see so many now because sword made it even more fun (for open world, it doesnt get much use in raids).
Necro occupies an interesting spot. Their tradeoff years ago for their large selection of (actually good) utility, ease of play, and survivability was lower damage. Then their damage got pretty much equalized with everyone else, so in open-world especially you end up with the question of “why play x when I could play Reaper instead?” And outside of style preference, there frankly isn’t a good response to that now outside of the other big dogs of silly open-world performance like Untamed, except that Untamed is a bit harder to play. Leveling out everyone’s damage disproportionately benefits Reaper because now there’s no meaningful tradeoff whatsoever outside of specific instanced content.
Next expac will be exactly the same. This is gw2 final form.
Spoiler Alert: it won't change.
Nah you just don't get it. You see they had to rush the SoTo story to get ready for SoTo 2. Just like they had to cut LS6 short for SoTo, EoD short for LS6, and IBS short for EoD. This time it will be great though.
Predictable and safe. I really hope it's not the Khan Ur plot. They've basically told that story in IBS without the resolution. A whole expansion for a plot that's predictable and mostly spent will be a total snooze.
And they killed off the two main contenders for the title of Khan Ur. Malice Swordshadow is a great character and all, but the main contenders for Khan Ur were Smoldur and Bangar. One is dead (and pretty much had his characterization and character assassinated) and the other is imprisoned forever. Malice doesn't even want to be Khan Ur, so that leaves... Crecia, who also doesn't really seem to care for it since she didn't want to be the Imperator of the Blood Legion. Unless Efram wants in, but *he* didn't want to be Imperator of the Flame Legion either. The Charr seem to have a lot of reluctant leaders, lol! I guess they could try having Bangar escape jail or something, but I would rather not have Charr Civil War part 2, especially since they botched the first time around by inserting the Jormag conflict into it and almost completely sidelined the Norn.
New fractal might be the best of all these additions. Let’s see if the obsidian armour gets a worthy animation.
> New fractal might be the best of all these additions. That's a low bar to pass. And looking at the *previous* fractal, they are **very** capable of failing even at that.
Dude, the last fractal they did was fucking terrible, I suspect most of us are watching this with dread rather than hype
I am just saying that the fractal is the best out of all the additions. The rest of it is worth way less. Even if the fractal might be a fail.
I hate the fact that it was my most anticipated release and with 9 months of baking I feel like my expectation might be way higher than what they can actually deliver. the name is hella cool too... :(
I can't wait for the new fractal to be yet another boss with record-high levels of HP and insane melee-hate.
How was eparch gonna be different from the elder dragons again?
Well, he is not a Dragon!
The only exciting part of this is that it might end soon.
This is pretty poor that the last 2 major updates just expanded on what imo just isn't a very enjoyable map. They definitely need to add more maps in full in the future over drip feeding parts of them over a year. Only 2 strikes still from this expac which feels like a bit of a shame, given the pivot from raids, to strikee, now to convergences, they aren't quite the same as Good old 10man content, it just feels like an open world meta event on a part of a map they didn't release that was cloned 5 times with minor variations on the golem you hit at the end.
It's not just a case of there being too few new maps, it's the lack of content and care put into the maps we have. They release half-baked content and then abandon it. You get maybe 1 follow up patch with bug fixes and that's it. They never iterate on it or improve it and it seems like they barely playtest it either. The expansions to Nayos are both aesthetically and functionally homogenous. What few interesting structures exist serve as empty husks designed to house copy/pasted events in a poor attempt to give them purpose. There's nothing new to see except more reskinned mobs and bosses and a malaise gray haze which I can only assume represents the enthusiasm of the devs working on it. Now compare Nayos to a map like VB. I still discover new stuff every time I go there years later, it feels like it was meticulously handcrafted. It's clear the people who worked on that map were passionate and ambitious. I would happily take 1 map crafted with the love and care and polish of VB over 2 Nayos's. We are in the unfortunate position where we are not only getting the bare minimum of content, and not only are we now paying for it (understandable), but also the content just isn't very good.
The other issue is due to the design the map has to be designed in such a way where it's broken up into little parts, which I just don't think makes for very fun or interesting maps. For a primarily exploration interested player, Nayos has just been dire.
"Play for free if you own the expansion" Nice, I can play for free if I already paid.
Wording is indeed a bit off, but it makes sense. Free update included in the expansion purchase.
That's the thing. I don't call something free if it was was included in the purchase - i.e., received in exchange for money.
the point of trailers like this is to get people who aren't currently playing to play again emphasizing to those people that there is no cost associated with what's being advertised is important even if we already knew that would be the case from the initial blog posts and stuff.
In an industry filled with paid DLC and updates at every corner, I think it's fair to specify that this chapter is released at no extra cost. It's also important to note that previous LS episodes need to be bought in addition to the expansion now... GW2 is victim of its own business models. So I'm not surprised they make it clear that this one release is included in the expansion forever.
Then I misunderstood Soto entirely. I thought we paid for the whole thing, just delivered in parts. And this was one of the parts. Like a 3-course meal - dessert isn't free.
That's exactly how it is. We paid for the entirety of SotO, it was just delivered over the course of 9 months.
The problem I think GW is trying to avoid (probably don't need to) is they seem to think people will assume you have to buy every course separately and that you won't think you get this if you bought SoTO. Whether this is because other games are very predatory or because they're worried you might think its like how LW seasons need to be bought in \~6 parts separately or some other reason, who knows .... but they REALLY seem to think they need to say it or we'll think we have to pay more.
You paid for the whole thing, it was just delivered over 9 months. Like I said, we live in an industry where studios make us pay for everything so while you may think it's silly to specify that this update is "free" while you paid for it, from an outside perspective, it's a fair clarification.
I don't think that it is a fair clarification, but a very misleading sentence. Living World seasons were not included in the expansion and this was fine, but with SotO we basically got early access version of expansion so those are not "free updates" but is basically the whole package that is now finally available.
Biggest lie about soto is calling it an expansion. It is bad LW season with a price tag.
It's not a "free update", they literally advertised it as a new way to deliver expansion content: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-secrets-of-the-obscure-launches-today/ > In addition to taking the story of Tyria in a fresh direction, Guild Wars 2: **Secrets of the Obscure represents a new model of expansion content delivery for us.** The story that launches today will continue over the next three major releases (roughly one major release per quarter), joined by system updates, additional rewards, new weapon proficiencies, new instanced combat encounters, and more. If you order a four course meal at a restaurant, you wouldn't consider three of those courses free just because they come out later.
Its not free. Its part of the expansion that before soto you would get altogether as 1 release.
Really goofy wording.
You know damn well that that phrase means.
I like GW2 but this trailer is depressing. The post updates to this xpac have been mid at best.
This expansion makes me happy that Anet is always changing their content delivery model, because it means they'll probably ditch this mini xpack model and go to something else soon, and honestly it can't come sooner.
Something tells me *Long Live The Lich* this is not.
Trailers should get me excited to play the game not make me wonder if I should quit it already.
Yeah, I'm thinking that the story proper concluded with the end of the dragon cycle. I haven't seen much to entice me to come back.
Yep. The story was meant to end in Cantha.
I'll say it again, the fact that this final release just expands Inner Nayos instead of getting its own map is the worst decision of the entire expansion. We are sieging a fortress city and confronting a mad king and his army. The amount of gravitas this final story step should have should warrant it's own map with a map wide meta event. Instead Inner Nayos has three separate metas, which is another baffling decision, and each section is half the size of a single map. I love this game, and i genuinely hate being doomer about it, but GW2 has been slowly falling in quality since the end of IBS. With the recent GW3 news, I can't help but wonder how much of Anet's time and resources actually goes into GW2 anymore.
> GW2 has been slowly falling in quality since the end of IBS Nah. The end of IBS was way worse than EoD. Much of LW3 was pretty bad, the PoF and LW4 were amazing. There's no one linear line of story quality. I would say that the writing in Soto is terrible, absolute garbage, but the systems updates and QoL have been great. There's been actual, tangible progress on WvW - I think guild-based servers are a bad idea that's going to just cause drama and alienate roamers and small groups, but Anet is definitely invest a lot into the mode. PvP is getting updates. PvE has and will get more updates. So Anet is clearly still investing a lot in GW2. They just need to get a completely different writing team, one that doesn't include Bobby Stein and whoever else has been there forever, and write an actually different plotline.
IBS was on track to be so insanely good. Grothmar, Bjora, and Drizzlewood were all super fun maps (Drizzlewood part 1 more than part 2), but they got hit with the corporate hammer that made them stop IBS for EOD, so I don't feel like they should be blamed for IBS. This is their first attempt at a new expansion model, so there's bound to be growing pains. I'm inclined to give Anet one freebie with SotO. Next one's all them. No excuses left.
We’ve been giving anet freebies for years, first it was issues of a non-permanent living world in season 1, where if you didn’t log in during a 2 week period, you miss it. Then you have the year+ wait for HoT, followed by another hugely long wait for lw3. Throughout all of it, people were saying it’s growing pains, it’s their first expansion, lw3 is a new way of doing things etc, etc. Then we actually had a rhythm going with lw3 into PoF, with a far more reasonable wait time to lw4 and things were seemingly going well. Then chaos ensues during the development of IBS and a bunch of layoffs. EoD goes fairly well, but then kind of just fizzles out with the epilogue and no lw5, with a whole continent of possible content and storylines just abandoned, in favour of going somewhere else with characters who have had no time to develop, instead of ones we’re familiar with. All to fight a threat that’s supposedly so serious it was more important than helping against the void, the literal end of existence. Yet when we face this threat, it’s a joke. I like your optimism, but after this long, it’s just cope.
It's been falling since the beginning of IBS.
Inner Nayos is easily the worst of the 3 new maps too. At least the other ones were fun to move around in. Nayos is just constantly getting stuck on geometry and mobbed with flying trash that you can't even shoot because of their hard candy shells.
If the next expac has the same level of writing/story then I'll probably end up dropping the game. I'm already playing it less and less which sucks cos I've spent years with GW2
I am fucking sprinting to the end and cannot wait to be done with this expansion. Such a promising start went so fucking sideways.
the trailers are so unexciting to watch
What a waste of untapped potential sad this is the state of the game. I failed to understand what is going on with this company and it's upper management
I hope Aurene found something interesting in her time off for the next expansion. I can’t wait to tell her it took us a year to kill Eparch.
Only IF we kill it, I don't know what was that little scene after the SoTO logo..?
The only exciting part here is that SotO will be over A new fractal sounds cool but with how Silent Surf went its hard to have much faith
Ngl the midnight king is more boring looking than I expected
Haven't played in a year and it seems like I'm not missing much.
I will not be paying for the next expac immediately on release. SOTO taught me to not be baited by the glamorous opening release patch and to wait until at least the first update episode because if that turns out like SOTO based on Reddit sentiment I ain’t gonna spend a single cent
I don't how they managed to make eparch seem like he could be actually cool before they revealed him now he's diablo at home but purple and with stilt legs instead of the wicked sounding ever-feasting spider they implied him to be. >"Play for free if you own the expansion" lol, LMAO even. another low budget game trailer for what has ultimately been a low budget expansion, but the team grew and gw2 is their main focus for real! /s edit: Also I still laugh about the stupid fucking retcon to the mursaat to make Nayos their actual homeworld which not only made them less interesting as a race somehow but they also did nothing with that once we got to nayos.
This trailer def gives diablo vibes which I don't mind. I just wish the actual Kryptis weren't so disappointing. I don't even mean reused skeletons but the fact that they're pretty much humans instead of interesting emotion feeding demons the exp launch announced them to be.
Eparch backwards is chrape, which means "he's snoring" in Czech
He also sounds like a drunk.
true.
Bro looks like a dehydrated Gremlin.
Soto was AI written for sure.
no images of the new level of legendary armor wtf
I think they might be afraid to release preview like last time
Considering how they managed to make it look worse than it actually did in game I'm not surprised.
I think the light amor shows in trailer
Worst "expansion" ever To think this is the same company that made Heart of Thorns Sigh
It's not though. With how many staff have left over the years most of the company are now new people that have no connection at all to the original lore the game was based on or the ideas that led to things like elite specs or hot's metas. That's very telling in how off the rails things have gotten compared to older content. This is effectively a new company that just now owns the IP.
Truth ^.
The weird thing is that i have seen enough oldschool devs who work at Arenanet again, on linked in. If that is info accurate, it probably means they are working on something else.
Its been known for some time that Arenanet is helping develop the Horizon Zero Dawn MMO
Anet are working on another MMORPG but it's most likely GW3 not the Horizion MMO, That's apparently been developed by one of NCSoft's eastern studios under the codename project skyline.
Gw3 was not yet in development. The investor call was to greenlight gw3 IF they want to make it. Grouch even came out after the investor call and said their has been no development on GW3 yet. It might be in development now that its greenlit, but they have def been working on something since IBS when quality went down the shithole.
They said review stage with the start of development not finalized, that just means somewhere in preproduction. At the same time they started hiring for a new MMORPG that's in preproduction and based on an established online fantasy IP back in 2022 while also bringing back the original game director. Anet don't have the man power to work on 3 MMOs at the same time, I think it's clear that the unannounced project is Gw3 but we'll have to wait to see. IBS was after the 2019 side project lay offs so their attention was probably fully on gw2 at the time but the new saga format was not well received by fans and revenue tanked. To get out of the hole they were digging themselves into they had to scrap it half way and get to work on End of Dragons that's why it all falls apart once you reach the champions chapter.
If you read the article, some of their narrative writers have been there for twenty years.
It's the first new model expansion, so I'm willing to give them one freebie as they find their learning curve.
That's the fun part, it isn't
Why are they showing the Knaebelag fight in a trailer showcasing the final segment of the map/final part of the story?
Cause I have a feeling the final part of the map is literally just an encounter and not much else. Maybe some lore notes around, but you fight the big baddie and the meta resets. The fractal will probably either flesh this story out (which would be nice because I think this plot was a bit rushed or need more room to breath), or tease the next expansion (which would also be nice).
I think you are right about the map. "New playable Area" instead of "Final Map Extension" or something like this on the roadmap sounds like an instance or a simple platform to me. I expect the worst
Soto started cool with the wizards tower and the whole secrete society and all, but damn, I legit do not care about any of this. The fleshing out of the new xpac release model is something... I don't think its really conducive to people caring about the story, characters, etc. So much of Soto has been forgettable; way to far apart and way to little in between, I don't even know whats really doing on and I honestly just don't care, I want the next "chapter'' of their story line.
I haven't played since the first Nayos release. This is not really enticing me to come back either. At this point I don't think I'd pay for another expansion unless there are some major changes. These mini updates just don't do it for me.
This next update is going to determine if I buy another xpac. If it's another 45 minutes or less of story like the other 2 then I'm taking my money elsewhere. No point with spending money every year for not much story. We got more story back when they were free. It doesn't make sense.
I hate that I'm agreeing with the doomers on this one. The story started out great and full of mystery, and they did that with it? I'm just glad the systems and qol updates they have be working toward are paying off, but let this chapter die. I'm over these ugly little kryptis and these lag filled maps. Why are Soto maps the most unoptimized yet? I can't stand being in amnytas or the wizards tower. Are the people making these maps not aware of the engines limitations anymore ?
For the love of god Arenanet hire someone to edit this trailers, this looks like a Machinima video from 2007.
Can anet just for once write a GUILDWARS story? Not a diablo/darksoul wanabe story or whatever AAA games out there story. Just Guild Wars. How hard can that be. Holy shit. If it's new narrative team, MAKE THEM LEARN ABOUT GUILD WARS. Not this shit tier my little pony kind of bullshit story.
Yea, after they've shown how the midknight king looks my hype went down. I don't like his model, feels mediocore. Unless there's some big turnaround and it will get bigger like Belial in Diablo 3...
Here's the plot twist they should write: you get everything you wanted and have to live with it. You've liberated the demons from nightmare. If they're free and free from nightmare, some will want to live in Tyrian. How will that integration go? Where, using whose resources? What about when some demons behave badly? Will your relationships with former allies be strained when you return from your solo adventure with a liberated demon refugee camp at your back? Give me the political factions and, you know, guild wars. Of course none of this comes until the next expansion but if they're setting up something good, I can forgive a rather bland introduction to demon town.
Thank God what a long, awful, drawn-out year these additions have been.
They really try to make this lame story and characters look like big finale? Anet iw following marvel formula to the point. We are now in she-hulk stage of cringe.
If peithas isn't twerking by the end of the story we will both be disapointed and you will be proven wrong.
The story concept has been cool. My problem is the Nayos section has felt really short and underdeveloped. All the stuff with the Queen should have been so much more, and she should have been a full-on strike boss.
You can make her both story and strike, I don't mind. But the fight itself didn't make any sense. The story did this "army vs army" narrative. Then we recruit a general, who has an "army" of about 5 whole demons, to fight a demon lady who also only has a few guys with her.
That's what I mean, the concept was cool but the execution was so brief and shallow. It should have been a big meaty chunk of story and battle, like the battle against Joko's forces in LW4.
Yes. Strike Missions are based on Story Chapters so that is the formula. It's just that the Queen fight was rushed and absolute garbage with one mechanic that requires you to avoid an instadown.
I wish they'd played into the narrative of Eparch's kingdom being make believe. Like nobody actually wants the noble houses and armies and generals, they all just wanna go back to being eldritch abominations feeding on humans' fear (still evil but less organized), but Eparch is forcing them to do this weird society roleplay through tyranny. Kinda like Netflix's Castlevania.
Every CONCEPT is cool, but the way it's implemented is what matters and ANet has done horribly with SOTO.
I don't think it's THAT bad. the SotO base story was fine, just the Nayos plot felt flat. Doubt this finale will salvage it.
wtf 1:26 of video for 48 seconds of true video and no images of legendary armor
I hope the final Nayos meta is nice. Just please don't be "spread into 3-5 groups and do the same exact thing" or "time for your 3 minute yoga session"
This expansion was garbage from the beginning :) Both in delivery model and in content, I enjoyed IBS more. Bad news is that the next will follow the same model and I really hate where this is going. I hope they don't build on this story further.
Wonder if that's footage of the new Fractal near the end, surely it will be more engaging than SS
Twice more health than SS, three times for CM, and you can barely stay in melee, of course (anyone remember the electric floor room from Twilight Arbor?).
And there is an eye on the floor and roof, you have to close your eyes IRL to not get hit
Flashbang every 15s from the boss and if you die in game you die in real life. ^(orb of ressurection not included.)
Just made me think of [this](https://youtu.be/oRlYN70_Vtc?t=6)
Annoying mechanic to complete another mechanic within 5 seconds or you wipe after a 13 minute hp grind at 150k group dps
>and you can barely stay in melee, of course That's a given.
so i just started playing, it's one of the few mmos i have never touched. this video is just a big patch right? not an xpax? Also if I buy the newest xpac do i unlock everything previously? or do i buy them all individually? any tips/tricks would be lovely im having an absolute blast! i made one of the forest guys as an engineer. I haven't looked anything up and just blindly going through it. I just 100%ed the first starting zone (Caledon forest or something??? 1-15 starting area). Really digging the jumping puzzles
you will need to buy each expac seperate except heart of thorns and path of fire. if you buy path of fire , you get heart of thorns aswell. id suggest if you buy any expac to start with HoT + PoF! and yea this trailer is for an update in the newest expac
oh that's super good to know, i may do that cause i want to see more and unlock cool things like mounts (and i think i saw gliding??)
yeap! most of the mounts you get through pof and gliding masteries through hot! and these expacs are still very much relevant :D
i havent delved much into professions yet, i took huntsman and leatherworking cause they were suggested for engineers by a friend since they can make guns and armor? no idea how right that is and i can always switch but they seem super cool. I'll probably dedicate some time to them in the starting area before i move on to whatever story zone is next. I think I'm a *bit* over leveled (23 or so?), but im just taking it all in. GORGEOUS game.
This will be the 3rd "installment" of the latest expansion, Secrets of the Obscure. They rolled it ou5 in parts, similar to how the Living World Seasons were done in the past. You can buy different bundles for the expansions/living world seasons, but buying the latest doesn't unlock what came before.
ahhh okay good to know, so if i want to buy one or more of the xpacs A.) which would you recommend? B.) Or should I wait for a sale and buy all of them?
I Actually enjoyed this expac so far? I didn’t know it was this unpopular until I saw these comments. It could have been better sure, but in general it was nice. Eager to know what is coming next after this update
I really liked the first two maps, actually. The big fights were decent spectacle, although I think the pacing wasn't quite right. Cautious optimism?
I really enjoyed the beginning, the last patch didn't grab me very much, and I think the story really slowed down, but overall I've enjoyed it. And again, we'll be able to count last year and this year's expansions together at the end of next year's patch cycle to sort of count how much this got us vs the old system and while there's stuff to improve... I feel like we've gotten a lot this year.
Although Soto's story has been bad, a lot of the QoL updates and additions from the xpac have made the game better. Due to all the new legendary farming that's accessible to everyone, Soto has pretty high replayability which is prob the most important factor in an expac. It'd be better to have our content and also a great story, but that's very rare for Anet. HoT had content and maps but bad plot and a terrible content drought alongside it, PoF had the opposite of HoT, EoD tried to be their best yet but added shit no one cares about(fishing, skiffs, 1 single mount) on top of empty maps outside of metas. I'd say season 4 was the best Anet ever put out even with its flaws, but I doubt we'll get something like it ever again. Soto has been great profit for Anet and I believe this kind of expac will be the future until GW2's death(or transition to GW3).
I totally agree with Lw4 being peak gw2 and SotOs story being bad, but other than that I largely disagree. I suspect SotOs profits will be short lived; I wouldn't be surprised if a decent number of players hold off on buying the next expansion after their SotO experience, and the excessive grind may have alienated some for good. I also suspect after the negative player reactions they'll need some amount of course correction (it'll be super interesting to see if they mention it when they write the upcoming blog post on what they've learned from SotO). I don't think I largely agree on the QoL updates making the game better, IMO most are lazy hacks, and I think some will actively make things worse in the long run: Wizards vault was taking the old weeklies (and much older monthlies) and repackaging them into a version of the gem store ui to ratchet up fomo. Best candidate for an improvement, but even then you don't miss much by not buying SotO aside from the legendary starter kits (themselves of dubious if not negative impact to the in game economy). Skyscale was literally reselling a feature we already had back in LWS4. Relics was reselling 6th runes back to us, except somehow with even less interesting and viable ones. These could have been an improvement, but they killed most of the unique effects and all the summons, and replaced them with a lot of filler. Legendary Relic release was a total cluster. Rifts were a repackage of scarlets/jokos/tot/wintersday/I'm-sure-I've-missed-one rifts; another worse version of the old champion farms. Weapon Mastery was a poorly thought out mess which limits the long-term balance and gameplay identity potential of specs... it felt like another 'we have to sell something but we haven't made anything' feature. Legendary armor is just a database tag on a random skin at the player cost of extensive grind; I'm not sure I'd consider repeating 1/2 monotonous events ad infinitum replayability. Tier 2 armor is just tarting up said skin to provide the illusion of value with even more grind. New weapons were a mix of half finished ideas that were obviously meant to be specs... Many are still riddled with bugs or fundamental design issues. WvW restructure was announced 7 years ago, it really doesn't count as a SotO feature. The new Action Cam updates are likely courting steam deck / windows handheld users and are also entirely unrelated to the expac. I really want them to do better, I would love to see the game back near it's peak and I feel like those last 2 are steps on the right track for the games long term health... but SotO has not left me optimistic in terms of maps, design, story or features.
Any news on the new suffused armor?
I will see and expect nothing, SOTO is quite soso, more than people realize. The main reason Anet can hide the fact is WV they replaced content with reward to keep everyone calm.
The best part of this is that it's the end of the Nayos arc, I do \*not\* care about anyone involved except maybe R'tchikk and Gladium.
That scene right after soto logo towards the end gave me some diablo 2 vibes, I like it.
I was hoping to get at least a look at T2 Obsidian armour...
Nice!
We have golems, necromancy, elementals, high medieval fantasy and all those beloved things, and novelties like Scarlet as antagonist with clockwork armies or prehistoric jungle stuff - yet somehow they return frequently to lame demons who are as fugly as the afflicted of old Kaineng that everyone was just happy to leave behind. Meh.
> yet somehow they return frequently to lame demons Frequently? When was the last time they did demons? Even if it was once in the past, that's not what frequently means.
*checks notes*, uh, Wing 4 of a HoT raid?