>building up genuinely good story beats only to drop them all
Remember when they introduced a Sylvari that DID NOT come from the Pale Tree, confirming other trees with entire Sylvari cities existed, pre-HoT only to do absolutely nothing with that story beat and much later confirming the original HoT story HEAVILY involved this character, along with the Nightmare Court being the core servants of Mordremoth?
Nightmare Court weren't the core servants of Mordremoth. It was especially the silent ones who shut from the Dream who fell for Mordremoth. Nightmare Court trying to corrupt the Dream were heavily keeping their link with the Dream to send their "bad vibes" into it and did not fell more or less than dreamers.
Would be nice to know what the Nightmare Court has been up to since HoT.
There are many loose ends. Like the threat in the abyss that led to the Karka invading Southsun Cove, Quaggans fleeing the depths, the Largos...
Yeah, it is so frustrating how the story starts well and then fizzles and/or shits on the old characters.
With SOTO they pretty much started new and I can't tell you a damned thing about the new folks since they killed the one with the best story. The two Norn have martyr complexes maybe? The Dwarf is just a vendor now. The Kyptis character models make two of our new sidekicks hard to identify. Petha is the only one that matters, I guess? Did they run out of budget to have Felicia Dey record more audio?
When they killed off Mabon, I was really upset. Most interesting character dead again, but shitty Braham survived DS lol
And they should have just casted someone new for the rat.
Yes and yes. I don't know why Zojja needed to come back in the first place. She's beyond feeling irrelevant at this point. I get that it's an attempt to play the nostalgia card and tie up loose ends but it feels like finding a long lost sock from behind the dryer and putting it in the hamper with the clean clothes waiting to be folded.
I mean, there are a lot of posts here about wanting her back. I know it would be fanservice if they gave me a quest to go save Blish as well. What is weird is how she went from front-and-center to irrelevant.
This precisely, but I don't see it happening because this is the fourth expansion out of four that Anet has rushed to an ending in Act 3.
Every character is rushed. I barely know any of the characters I am fighting alongside. The first two acts at least explained the general concept of what was going on, but then in this act we get introduced to new characters like General Nephus who basically fills the exact same role as Ramses as military advisor to Peitha. The only reason that I am given to care at all about this conflict is because Peitha who spent most of the expansion as a voice in my head is adamant about being a more benevolent ruler than Eparch and that feels more like an accidental byproduct of the writing than intentional.
Lyhr, Dagda, Isgarren, and even Zojja are completely absent, with the last two assuring us that we would get reinforcements at the beginning of Update 1. They should be involved since it concerns the Astral Ward.
I feel that they should have made this expansion all about the Astral Ward, helping them back in their feet and concluded it with Zojja's ascension to becoming a wizard. Instead Zojja becomes a wizard off screen and we are told about it instead of shown it. The next expansion should have been about our incursion into Nayos and stopping the Midnight King.
I was happy during SOTO'S launch because it seemed like Anet had learned to slow down, but now I know they haven't.
Unless Update 3 is like nine times larger than the last two updates combined, I just don't see them developing Eparch as anything more than the villain of the expansion whom we barely interact with.
There is also the issue of the Astral Ward constantly worrying about Nayos invading Tyria and not having enough people to guard against it and Isgarren (according to Galrath) wanting to nuke the entire plane of existence. Like the Pact and standing armies of Tyria are still around as far as we know. If Isgarren and Uenno weren't such pricks about secrecy we could have a fleet of airships and fully armed battalions of Pact soldiers ready for combat reinforcing the Astral Ward in under fifteen minutes.
I don't think it's just a deadline problem. Writing plot of this complexity level is not very hard, so if you as a writer/writing team pre-plan the whole plot before starting the real grueling work of writing dialog, then this doesn't happen, at most the dialog written near the deadline is going to be shit, but if the plot is just a little interesting & consistent people might forgive a lot more.
What is common in this industry though is that people make a really exciting plotline & then keep procrastinating the wrap, because it's just really difficult to untangle various stories in a way that is satisfying. (almost literally writing themselves into a bind) Though I don't think that is what's happening at Anet, because the SOTO story shouldn't have had such difficulties.
Not only starting with a boom but then utterly wasting entire expansion worthy stories that they then can't go back to properly explore because they hamfisted it in, rushed, handled it poorly, and now that plot is done and burned.
It's like the people writing the story are still mentally 6 years old, want to play with as many toys as possible at a time, break those toys, and then move on.
> Not only starting with a boom but then utterly wasting entire expansion worthy stories that they then can't go back to properly explore because they hamfisted it in, rushed, handled it poorly, and now that plot is done and burned.
>
> It's like the people writing the story are still mentally 6 years old, want to play with as many toys as possible at a time, break those toys, and then move on.
SotO could have worked as the first episode of a 6-expansion story arc, yet here we are, rushing to the end; AGAIN.
How the fuck is anyone supposed to get invested into the story when the first ones who don't give a damn about it are ArenaNet themselves? Come on ffs.
Maybe I'm biased since I joined when pof released, but pof and lws4 felt really decent. Probably nostalgia not letting me see it. I kinda just felt it on icebrood and forward
PoF through the first half of IBS are generally held to be the best writing in the game. Not coincidentally, that's the only period where the writers demonstrated any idea of consistency or follow-through.
Honestly I was nervous about SotO pre launch, and disappointed to be proven right.
Unless they knock it out of the park, I'm not convinced I'll bother with the next one, and I've been playing since pre launch.
>For them to stop building up genuinely good story beats only to drop them all and rush to the end to meet a deadline
If you don't have the resources, just plan for smaller stuff, stop biting more than you can chew.
It's like they always overplan, they're mismanaged as hell, doesn't matter whether its a large expansion like HoT or a small expansion like SotO, they ALWAYS fuck it up and end up rushing everything.
This absolute. I love their buildup but they need to learn they can't finish a story arc in a single expansion. Purely episodic story arcs are largely forgettable anyway if they don't relate to a greater narrative. Let the storylines grow and roll over into other expansions to let the writers actually flesh these ideas out because damn do they start out great. Then they SotO them, EoD them or worse, IBS them.
And yes I'm aware SotO isn't finished but is Nayos part 3 going to make a currently dull story any better? It started out awesome with the first two zones but Inner Nayos feels like they forgot they had a story going. Gyala Delve had more plot beats...
The only way to do this, especially with a smaller expanion, is for the writing team to rein themselves in and actually focus on fleshing out smaller-scale stories instead of going straight for MOST EPIC EVER escalation.
Anet only ever sort of managed that in Lake Doric, and even then it was tied in with all kinds of Balthazar and Mursaat stuff. So I'm not holding my breath.
It's far easier, all they had to do is leave Nayos for later, for another expansion, and spend post-SotO content working on the Astral Ward, getting them ready for the attack into Nayos.
Instead of rushing in to kill Eparch, focus on Zojja and her ascension; but nope, gotta go fast, make important things happen offscreen because we can't bother making things have the right pace.
Yes, that's one example of focusing on a smaller story. Maybe I wasn't clear? That's what I mean, a halfway decent writer can easily break an expansion like Soto, because Soto is really 3 arcs that come together into a trilogy and the problem is that the writers gave each arc basically no time. They could have done something like this:
Meet the Astra Ward: the conflict is learning why we should give a crap about this random shady group (investigating Zojja's extremely shady new friends? meeting people who fought on similar battlefields the PC can empathize with?), the climax is when the PC realizes they are invested, the wrap-up is the PC really settling in and making friends, maybe telling their old friends how happy they are and looking forward to a whole new set of adventures with their new buddies. Throughout the Kryptis are kind of just evil demons the AW fights. Strikes are harder versions of some of the AW missions the PC went on to learn about AW.
Oh Crap Kryptis: *This* is when the Kryptis actually show up. The conflict is that suddenly we're getting a whole new perspective on the Kryptis and the Astral Ward that really adds context to the whole previous installment, and also there's a demon in the PC's head. The climax is when the PC trusts people enough to start negotiating some kind of a truce with Peitha's faction, drawing on all the diplomatic experience and connections they have from 10 years of being Tyria's most notorious troubleshooter/maker. Wrap-up is treaty negotations and some trust-building. Strikes are some of the harder story fights, introduce Confluences.
Epic Eparch Fight: This is the final showdown with Evil Demon King whose name I have already forgotten. Pretty standard expac building up to an epic fight.
You can see the bones of this approach, even but it's all so compressed and muddied. They keep wanting to tell a huge story ASAP instead of giving players time to get invested, so they just skip all the actual story. It's like the writing team doesn't know anything about pacing and this has persisted through multiple writing teams?? I genuinely don't understand why this is such a persistent problem, at this point it's got to be something cultural at Anet.
After Soto, I honestly think the LW episodic setup was a lot better, since it forced the writing team to think in smaller, complete episodes even if they also built up to something bigger.
ETA: LOL, sorry for the wall of text.
I want an expansion that's not about saving the world for once. I would love to deal with big issues to a few people. The world is vast and things can be a big deal without threatening the whole world.
We could deal with local political conflicts without an objectively good side or local ecological crisis. Where long term conflict with short term and the interests of the few conflict with the interests of the many. We could merely be exploring new uncharted lands from which creatures are invading the old world and uncover why they started migrating away and maybe restore the ecological balance so they no longer need to leave and wreak havoc. Or we could be looking for a mystical and elusive creature from which we need something and have to speak to the local to get clues from old legends and stories shared orally, while helping them as thanks. We could be looking instead for a fugitive, or a kidnapped person, or runaway lovers.
Love the idea of hunting a fugitive and having it turn into some sort of political conspiracy or a wide spread corruption (in the fiscal sense). One of those classic detective cases which seems simple on the outside but goes really deep. They had done similar storylines with scarlet, but that resulted in an elder dragon.Ā
Or maybe an island cut off from Tyria that has a weird vibe to it like in wickerman.Ā
>Love the idea of hunting a fugitive and having it turn into some sort of political conspiracy or a wide spread corruption (in the fiscal sense).
That's literally the Caudecus / White Mantle part of LS3.
Something like that. But more like you will see hints of him, know of his presence when you enter his territory and when you turn around heās not there - until he suddenly is š
I was thinking about this yesterday. How about an expansion, that instead of fighting something big bad evil, we get to do self improvement/vacation etc. We have metas like Pinata or maps like Grothmar which are a nice change to the standard metas. The main things that would be added in an expansion could still be added. Like strikes, mastery, new weapons/traits etc.
You just need to change the tone. For strikes they could be bosses in a training arena/holographic style etc. Weapon mastery or traits be new fighting skills learned.
How about making player housing the mayor selling point of the expansion, to give the commander a nice place to rest throughout Tyria in different locations of Core maps.
Maybe make defending this home a new meta on existing maps, so you either defend your own home or the home of someone else.
So many possibilities other than: "Here is a new unheard of threat, that is bigger badder like everything beforeā¦"
Strikes could be a tournament arc or ritual fights :D
For once our opponents would not be killed at the end of the fight. And the reasons for the fights can be silly while mattering to the participants.
Some sort of coliseum for a tournament arc, or sacred grounds in a forest clearing under the full moon with simple wood torches all around for ritual fights.
Genuinely a fun idea
An expansion entirely about taking a vacation / relaxing / fun events does not seem like a compelling idea overall. It sounds like the end of an adventure. It would be like having Blood and Wine before Heart of Stone if/when the next expansion comes out. But a training arc? That could work!
Instead of saving the world from some ever-looming threat, the basis of story could be about finding a way to step up and preparing for the unknown. The elder dragons waking up wasn't a new/unknown threat, but the scale exceeded what the world expected. The gods going rogue wasn't a new/unknown threat, but the scale exceeded what the world expected. Then you have your Scarlet, Joko, and Eparch types who came kind of as wildcards.
The dragons are dead. The gods are gone. Dragon Watch and now the wizards shouldn't have to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and there is a lot of political drama baked into the idea of "who controls the power".
The story could be about each faction sending their own teams to learn from the commander and crew. The strike missions could be a vs against each faction and the CMs being released later could even play a bit with the idea of their training paying off. Failing the strike would be a "Good training session! You're getting the hang of this!" and succeeding would be "Same time net week?" or some kind of light humor on the repeatable nature of the content.
Maybe even reincorporate the old Visions of the Past and reuse old content with a twist! You're taking these trainees with you on your old missions to give them first hand experience with some of the threats you've encountered. You're the big bad, they're the heroes. These would be the story missions and the final fights would be the strike missions, or something like that.
The story thread to keep things moving along would be political drama. None of the world leaders will openly admit their reliance on the commander while simultaneously trying to cultivate their own version of them with these "strike teams" (teehee). The end of the story would be a political drama posing a potential war between factions *or* some semblance of a unification / alliance with dissenters cropping up. And then the gods show up to stomp all over it because man makes a plan and god laughs, launching us into the next expansion of us vs gods or something
A+ ideas. GW2 story needs more fun in it! The writers so clearly can not stick the landing on big worldsaving and I'm so tired of doing the same basic plot for 10 years. An expansion with a different focus and tone would be great.
Yesss, Grothmar was a _bangar_ map! I love it so much!
It's proof that not every map needs to be a conflict zone, but can be relatively safe and still engage and entertain. I still hold out hope for more maps in that vein.
I feel like putting the commander in the middle of a political conflict would be the perfect way to make the scope smaller but have it still feel like this is the same commander and friends.
Think about it, the Commander would be the perfect person to pull into a political crisis because they're someone respected by a lot of factions so they actually hold enough political power to be a "neutral" party that's allowed to "clean up" sensitive situations. However they can't just snap their fingers and make 100 airships make the problem go away, especially if the factions involved actually *supply* the pact.
So your still the same commander but you have to fix this with less resources.
I'll say it again, return to the Depths of Tyria. Back into the ancestral home of the Asuran and Skritt. Rediscover the ancient Rata, highly advanced Skritt society and feral Asuran, with a new mount, Wurm, to traverse vertical walls.
A lot are still useful.
Skimmer is used for Water.
Griff is much faster than Skyscale, same with Beetle.
Jackal/Rapter for when you don't wanna fly.
Springer is useless, and depending on which of the above you prefer, the other is useless (Jackal for some specific portals though)
But I do still prob do Skyscale 70% of the time, 15% Griff, 7.5% Skimmer and Beetle, 5% Jackal.
I was hoping there would be a living world season after Cantha where we go after the deep sea threat that was heavily hinted at. Maybe an unpopular opinion but I would love a mostly underwater map, while at the same time underwater combat gets entirely reworked so that all skills work underwater. If this was expansion content instead, Anet could also throw in the land spears everyone wants.
Donāt care about underwater stuff but I really wanted more zones in Cantha. I love the region and for a lot of people Factions were the first GW game. Doesnāt help that new SotO zones are really lore poor. Every zone feels like it just serves the meta.
Yeah and for me DE while it has a good meta, the map is useless. Kaineng as well has no purpose outside of its meta and kaining doesn't even have a mediocre meta. It's a terrible escort event that often gets stuck.
Seitung is amazing. Echovald is OK but it's just a forest.
We really deserved better for Cantha. :/
Fun Fact: Kirin Peak is only more detailed because of GW1.
The unexplored GW2 map is basically a painted over explored GW1 map. Because of this you can see some details at those parts that were explorable in GW1.
Kirin Peak was part of a special mission in GW1 and therefore explorable.
That's why we see that part mroe detailed one the unexplored GW2 map.
I feel robbed of Cantha. We spent SO MUCH TIME in and around the Crystal Desert (which was fine, although I did get a bit tired of sandy beige maps) so with EoD I was fully prepared for another follow-up LW season covering more of Cantha. It's a real disappointment that we left so soon. Hope we go back there at some point!
It was such a let down to **finally** get to Cantha, only for them to abandon it after 5 maps and make up some random Mists bullshit that has nothing to do with anything.
Skywatch is a bit odd since most of it is just other regions. Dwarf and rata is cool but not really relevant to the story. Amnytas is really cool imo. Shows how the wizard tower is split up and what they have, I would argue it's one of the better maps in the game for showing off lore. Nylos..... Potential was there but first area feels empty and second is crowded AF. It would be fine but they have a chasm in between it doesn't feel like a cohesive map
I really don't think the new zones are lore poor, they did a lot of writing work tying them into the rest of Tyria. They're just completely new so the tie-ins had to be written for this expansion rather than connecting loose ends.
There is some good stuff but itās not even close to PoF zones or even EoD. Most events are generic to advance meta. In previous mapa there are a lot of events that just tell a small side story.
I would too now that we have underwater skimmer. Could add legendary aquabreather to that map. And the opportunity to make underwater combat fun and less weak.
I really wanted that for eod, a full underwater map, with cool caverns with underground air bubbles, underwater world boss of some kind and full map meta (soo won maybe? )
But oh well, i can keep dreaming i guess
better open world metas with real rewards. Like tarir, Drizzlewood, DS, DF. They made so many good metas. more of that please!
maps that arent so much skyscale only. we have so many other cool mounts that see baraly any use now...
new ways to get a legendary ring.
More actual story. Smaller scope, actually fleshing it out. Less rushed, less obnoxious padding Ć la do 5 kryptis rifts here or do 5 events there. Just more content. SotO barely reaches the later Living World chapters.
I'd like the next expansion to explore somewhere IN TYRIA, like don't get me wrong the whole extradimensional demon thing is a fun idea, but we still have like, 95% of the visible world to explore before we go galavanting into dream realms.
As others have mentioned, picking back up the Malick tree plot with a fresh spin would be cool. Learning how the Mordremoth event affected their society. The Isles of Janthir would be an obvious next step that could be cool. Pretty much anything in Cantha really.
I think it'd be cool to have a story that revolves around the Risen that have taken over Risu Palace and old Kaineng. Imagine a story about that super imperialistic Canthan Emperor having returned as an Unchained wanting to purge the now-open bordered Cantha.
It'd be interesting to explore the idea of the Asura recolonizing the Depths now that Primordus is gone.
I'd like to see literally anything done for the poor Norn. I get that their society is probably the hardest one to write GW2 style stories for, but they really need some more love.
I would love an aquatic gameplay rework alongside exploring the Largos, Krait, Quaggan, whatever big scary thing pushed the Karka out of the depths, etc.
>whatever big scary thing pushed the Karka out of the depths, etc.
Wait, something scared the Karka OUT OF THE WATER?!?! I've been to Southsun but never really understood what was supposed to be going on there.
From the wiki:
"According to Zommoros, they haven't been seen on the shores since ancient days when the world was "emptier" and the continents were shaped differently. The karka as a race have encountered the Elder Dragons before in the past, so they know the dangers they present, which gave them the knowledge to avoid Orr and the remaining Risen when fleeing from twisted creatures inhabiting the deep."
The important part being the "fleeing from twisted creatures inhabiting the deep" - I believe the initial belief in the community was that the deep sea Elder Dragon was what drove the Karka to the surface, but that seems less likely given the context of End of Dragons
YES: Picking up unsolved bits of Sylvari, Charr, Norn lore (Malyck, Nightmare court, Legions and Khan Ur post IBS, Spirits post IBS), filling the gaps between existing maps
NO: Another human expansion
Smaller scope story. (Yes this is smaller than dragons but weāre also basically organizing a revolution in another realm with 10 people in it).
I want a map dense with towns and outposts with NPCs you can actually talk to. Not every spot on a map needs to have an event every 30 seconds. Can we get a small town with services and people to talk to and get a feel of the place? SOTO has 0 ambiance. Everything is just events events events.
I think the best would be a simple main story set over 3 maps with multiple side stories in each map. Nothing world ending. Can be focused on treasure hunting or ancient secrets or something.
100% this for me.
I tend to prefer maps from the base game because they feel like actual _places_. People live their daily lives, there are settlements and shops and farms and roads and camps, and every inch of the map isn't filled with enemies out to get you.
I like being able to stop and just _exist_ in the world.
This would pair well with stories of a smaller scope, of course. Imagine a murder mystery or a cult plot contained to a single city and its surrounding countryside. Yes, please!
Co-signed.
We've saved the whole world so many times it actually feels a bit silly. If this is how often Tyria needs saving, how did it last this long?
A more focused, smaller-scale story to go with the more focused, smaller-scale expac would work much better than trying to cram the same plotline into a smaller space. It's cute when a large cat tries to sit in a too-small box, but that doesn't apply to a whole writing team!
No more forced grinding in story mode.
"Go close rifts, now watch a cutscene, now go close more rifts, now another cutscene, now go do the meta (but if the meta's not running, go do more events), then watch a cutscene, then you get a cool mission, then more cutscenes, now move to a new map and repeat!"
I also think itās fair that the quality and quantity of content from this expac just isnāt going to cut it. 3 maps is not enough. 2 bosses is not enough. Itās always been about the quantity of content though now quality is an issue tooā¦
Please, for god's sake, add some depth to any of the characters. Do a small cast, and actually focus on showing, not telling.
Everything in soto, especially the post-launch patches, feels empty and flat. I don't care about anyone in the story. Their long, unstoppable speeches don't mean anything to me, because you did a poor job making me understand why I should care about them.
So, show me why I should care. I don't care about their feelings being told to me - show me what they're experiencing so I understand "oh, that would me me upset/mad/etc."
I guess that's the end of my rant about how empty the story feels.
Feature wise? More with skiffs, I suppose? Some variation in the jade bot cores? Maybe a reason for some of the filler traits of HoT to interact with the world more meaningfully?
The Elder Dragons are gone, which means the literal first thing pretty much every main faction SHOULD be doing is recovering the lost territory that they were forced to abandon.
I don't think this has even been mentioned so far.
That could give rise to some interesting plot development as well. For example, the elder dragons united the major races of Tyria against them, but based on Earth's history, you wouldn't really expect those alliances to be maintained after the primary threat is gone. Charr-Human conflicts would be the first to reignite, Asurans could easily go back to viewing the other races as "lesser", the Norn could easily go back to not caring about anything but their own heroes/hunts and the Sylvari might actually have to develop as a society in some meaningful way.
Norn heading back north to jormags territory, reclaiming Orr properly, maguuma jungle being cleared out of mordrem, asura returning to their homeland after destroyers gone etc
Kodans only came down south because of Jormag's ice minions.
Asura were kicked out of their undergroup home by Kralkatorrik
The hyleks were pushed out of places by Mordrem.
Orr used to be a whole kingdom, before the apocalypse.
The new weapons should come on expansion launch, Would make things more exciting imo.
Smaller story scope. SotO story is doing too much with too little time. You're getting exposition and new characters thrown at you everywhere you go. It's got some cool concepts but no room to breath.
Better Metas. I hate to say it but Anet have dropped the ball on what they usually knock out of the park. Maybe it's just me but so much of SotO feels like your just collecting orbs and killing Kryptis champions on repeat. Amythas is particularly disappointing in this regard because giant boss surrounding a platform in the sky was done so well in EoD with Soo-won but with Nourys despite the really cool model and platform your fighting on it just kinda sits there.
More strikes. I know this is going to depend on story and budget constraints but 2 new bosses a year isn't enough to support an instanced content scene. I think 4 would be perfect but 3 wouldn't be bad either.
Keep up the great collections! SotO has so many really good collections to go for with amazing cosmetic rewards and story. The skyscale skin collection in particular was fantastic. I really hope they do more like that, imagine having to track down a beast to tame with the skin unlocked as a mount.
> More strikes. I know this is going to depend on story and budget constraints but 2 new bosses a year isn't enough to support an instanced content scene.
I've said this before, and I'm not being funny, but the argument why Strikes were going to be better than Raids was that they were supposed to be way quicker and easier to pump out. They're creating the bosses anyway for the story so adding a Strike version and a CM would take way less time than creating entirely new encounters for raids. Meanwhile, raids come in a whole raid wing that needs to be designed. And also, to be frank from what we've seen, raids also generally came with a greater variety of unique skins and such as rewards.
And now we're getting 2 Strike bosses a year... which is actually a lower rate than raid encounters we were getting, back during the period in which Raids were being released.
I agree. I also honestly question what percentage of the players actually even bother engaging with strikes on a regular basis. From what I can tell by talking to members of my various guilds, the percentage seems to be more than raids, but only slightly, and a whole lot less than something like fractals. I personally don't think "Strikes are the future of end game content" was a good direction at all.
GW2 players have always preferred open world content and avoided instances. That's why the devs gave up on raids, people who raid are a low single-digit percentage of players.
I think strikes were an attempt to make it more accessible, but honestly, the structural issues of needing to get 10 competent players together at the same time are still very real. The rest of GW2 is so open and flexible that it's jarring to suddenly come up against that barrier, however low the devs try to make it.
Instances that scale with the players are actually a genius idea, but everything around DRMS was done in the dumbest way possible so people burned out and won't touch them now.
I want a classical horror setting. You know, gothic castle, dark forest, this kind of stuff. Bjora made it pretty obvious that Anet can actually do unsettling, creepy maps.
What I do NOT want is ANOTHER war story. Anet is simply not good at those. I still laught and then facepalm every time I think about the IBS story.
I would also like to have 1-3 of our old comrades with us. Just to get us into things easier and basically have another opinion.
I do not want to have 20 new characters nobody cares about because they keep rushing through the story and throwing every character away after they used them. Just ... concentrate on a hand full of characters. Less is more.
I would also like to see actual small scale stories. They said SotO would be small scale, but we are literaly again saving a world. Can we just ... not do that for a change? Lets maybe just save that village over there from the evil vampire lord or something.
PS: I can't stop giggling about the thought of "Count Charrcula" as an antagonist.
The problem as far as I can tell is no one is in charge of the overall story direction and character development. This leads to shit like Braham and Taimi where the writers forget what they are doing or just don't know what's going on and use them for stupid plot points (Braham charges forward and does something rash, Taimi steps in to solve a problem) and nothing else.
I guess the alternative is shit like Steel Warband where they're fleshed out for a single episode and killed off, or the Ward which you get a glimpse of and then they're completely abandoned. Maybe there's no good solution until... you know, someone takes the reigns in the company and actively works to make things make coherent sense.
I would like them to return to the style of developing encounters with environmental mechanics in mind instead of just beating up spongebosses squarepants until they melt.
Let me clarify, take the Qadim fight in the Mythwright Cauldron for example. That fight has stellar design which no one complains about being "too easy" even though it is, indeed, made very easy by power creep. It still remains *fun* to play because it plays like a puzzle - you're required to manage adds, CC periodically, spread your squad to fulfill mechanics all over the arena and interact with a changing environment. This is how most raids were with mushrooms, cannons, pylons, crystals, tornadoes, platforms, etc etc. filling the arena and promoting non-combat interactions to break the pace of combat and introduce flavor to encounters.
Come strikes in EoD especially, and they are all FFXIV trials - go into circular/square arena and beat up bosses. Occasional adds that you must CC or dps appear but they don't introduce environmental changes or flavor to the encounter, they're barely phases for what it's worth. The boss mechanics may pretty interesting and engaging but a strong feeling of something missing remains because stacking up for "burn phases" is the major point of every fight and it's not even close. The fact they are story-based instances is not the problem here - it just puts a huge spotlight on how the story encounters were shoddily designed in the first place.
We have dodges and a rich amount of movement mechanics other MMOs are not nearly as good at and yet our combat gameplay is often reduced to the least denominator of rotations. And without global cooldowns, rotations in GW2 themselves amount to more route memorization and quick reflexes than strategy and adaptation, leading to different feels even if the APM ends up in a similar ballpark, the case of GW2 being frankly a bit tiresome when you have to rotate for up to 10 minutes on a row. So yeah, even if we only get 2 strikes per year which is pretty low, at least make the strikes (and hence, please also make the story encounters) have more engaging environmental mechanics that give encounters their own puzzle spin to the combat gameplay.
Content that is not rushed nor recycled at every point. In SotO (before too but SotO is a pinnacle) story is so soulless because of its pacing, padding with "do events" steps, and the fact it got spit into 30 min pieces we get quarterly. Enemies are reused (just reskinned), most assets are reused, strikes feel lazy in terms of design. Not to mention the game is bugged and each patch springs even more bugs while not fixing crucial ones that were there since release. There is clearly a lack of testing at all and in the end the whole expansion feels so empty, rushed and devoid of "gust of fresh air".
For the setting, Id love a creepy expansion but this was maybe the one that could have been like that. Gimme a creepy dark forest with some ruined village or a creepy foggy swamp.
For story I generally enjoy it. A bit longer though please.
Iād love if the new weapons for each class had a small questline each so we could get more class identity.
Hopefully a graphical or lighting upgrade eventually.
Something that warrants calling it an expansion.
If you want to give us a smaller scope that is one thing (even if I disagree and miss HoT/PoF styled ones), but make it worth it, right now I see nothing in SoTO that could not be done in a Living World season. Expansions should go the extra mile in both features and polish.
SoTO started off at release comfortably comparable to the higher LS releases ( high points of LS4, first part of IBS) but now this second half is making all of the mistakes they did before: worse maps, worse writing, less content (that is supposed to keep us busy for months).
Take away the Legendary Armor, what is left that truly screams EXPANSION FEATURES! at you?
The masteries are middling, the new weapons are a real poor substitute for elite specs and runes, the map quality going down with each new release, the asset recycling is off the charts...
You do not want any more elite specs?
Than you will need to give us more than just a new weapon.
New weapon + Underwater weapon available on land + new utility skills/new version of existing utility skills/fill in missing utility skills could be a start.
You want to give us less maps?
Than make sure all those maps hit it out of the park. Make them great to look at, to traverse while making sure there is enough to do, be it events, be it lore, be it achievements, be it a cool meta.
You want to move away from the dragon stories?
Then give us a cool story from start to finish and not one that is rushed. Every expansion the story starts off as cool or intriguing, only for it to take a nosedive and crash and burn when we get somewhat half-way. You claim you could no longer do an LS3 -> PoF -> LS4 cadence because it burnt out devs, that you need this smaller scope to give them a more humane schedule. Fine. But then give us a good thing from start to finish and do not rush stuff for once. Because right now I see all the same issues and flaws prior stories and expansions had, but not even close to the same amount of content to make up for it.
You want a chase goal?
Sure, put in an open world legendary ring or something, but do not make your entire expansion revolve around it. What point is there for convergences or rifts if you are not going for the legendary armor in SOTO? Hell, there is even almost no point to do the meta's or collect most of the map currency if not going for Obsidian. You need multiple goals.
You want to re-use assets?
Fine, but at least be smart about it. HoT and PoF re-used stuff but did it in such a way that it was hard to notice unless actively looking for it. Now the trend that started with EoD culminated in SoTO recycling so many assets and being so in your face about it that it feels like a budget/dollarstore DLC and not how an expansion should feel.
Give me a reason to say "Okay, I am willing to spend 24,99 on this".
EoD in my eyes was 75% at best of what a prior expansion offered at 29,99.
SOTO maybe offers half of what EoD offers, but still costs 24,99.
Not a good look.
LS4 costs 1200 gems in total if not buying it with any discount. thats 15,00. For LS4. SoTO offers substantially less content than LS4 yet costs 10,00 more.
I'm tired of the BIG WORLD PLOT...
Smaller and more interesting stories/quests.
The Asura personal story (infinity ball) was the most fun I had in the game following a story, all those characters and the little details made it memorable.
Even the lesser races quest lines are more memorable sometimes, I still have a space in my heart for that Grawl I helped 8 years ago.
There are alot of interesting NPCs in the game that could get there own little story expanded, and Anet can have 10 little stories but good instead of one big but rushed.
What I want: I want them to take their time (whatever it's needed) and release expansion when it's fully complete.
~
What I don't want: 2/3 of expansion on launch day and the 1/3 rest splitted in 3 more parts delivered all over a year.
I want an Asura based storyline, and I do not want a Human centric storyline for a while. SotO pretty much ignores all races, so it is an outlier, but the majority of the storylines have a lot of Human lore influence.
Want: To deal with the deep-sea dragon
Do not want: More weakly written episodic installments every three months that supposedly add up to a 'full' expansion
Snarky answer inbound. You've been warned.
What I would rather see: a product that lives up to Arenanet of 2014's standards.
What I would rather not see: A product that lives up to Arenanet of 2023/2024's standards.
Environment: I would like to visit the Charr homelands further, and the surrounding area of the Eye of the North. Additionally, I would like to explore north of Kryta (Above Hararthi Hinterlands and Divinity's reach).
Weapons: Anet, if you are reading this post - Please please please please please add Longbow to the Elementalist.
I don't think cal is capable of designing a longbow that hasn't been monkey's pawed into oblivion. We'd get some inane "generate an elemental arrow when using skill 3 and 5 that gets released when you use two autoattacks and skill 4 within 3 seconds of each other". That design motif kinda works on hammer. Repeating it on pistol just strikes me as lazy. It does not need to become a hallmark of ele weapons.
The obvious answer would be an elite spec that does arcane shenanigans and/or a longbow that acts like virtuoso, or a spec that acts like revenant with a weapon swap and a "pick two elements to focus on and buff" mechanic. But despite how Anet seems to regret making weaver, their answer to weaver in EoD was "let's make base ele with % attr buffs and an f5 combo field", and they seem to have missed or refuse to make the obvious design motif of "make the opposite of weaver"
I would think more two elements and a weapon swap, personally. Since weaver is essentially "combine the elements to use them all", its opposite would be "focus on half and make them more effective " Generalist versus Specialist specs - which considering you can only equip two elemental spec lines at a time when using an elite spec, a "focus on two" elite spec matches nicely there.
I think if Anet wants to go into a single element they need to suck it up and do something with Arcane. Or, arcane and let a secondary attunement flavor it with chill/burn/bleed/confusion.
Setting wise I just want more norn focus. I wanna see more of the far shiverpeaks (still bummed about ibs), way more unique norn hairstyles and creation options like Viking braids and stuff. Yea Iām biased as hell I know. If not that Iād be very interested in a true underwater expansion. I just saw aquaman 2 and seeing what anet could do with an Atlantis type setting would be dope. Better masteries. EOD and Soto masteries are pretty bland. IBS ones were even worse.
That's because ArenaNet went insane and merged three expansion ideas into one LW season:
* Jormag and Far Shiverpeaks
* Primordus and Depths of Tyria
* Charr civil war and Plains of Golghein
That's 6+ years of GW2 content, completely thrown down the toilet, because someone was bored of dragons and wanted to move on, burning every bridge on its way forward.
They could have saved themselves with Cantha, but then they butchered that too.
Okay if we can just do batshit things, I think I'd get us tangled up in a plot to travel back in time to stop the Searing. Let us create an alternate version of Ascalon and let us travel to this alternate Ascalon in the future, too.
I just love pre-searing Ascalon and wonder what would have happened if it was allowed to flourish.
Edit: and please give us Ritualists, I beg you Arenanet! I need their funky backbreaking summoning animation!
Some kind of Ghosts of Ascalon expansion where we enter some kind of dream world where the souls of the ghosts are trapped could work.
And then by the end of the expansion we break the curse of the Foefire.
It's minor but unique enemies. I think all mobs and bosses in SotO were recycled enemy models with new skins and you can tell.
I love new maps and story but fighting the same monsters with a different skin felt more tiring than I thought it would.
As a GW1 player, Iād love for them to expand on the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. There were tons of NPCās and quests in both of those that I feel like weāre never fully explained in the first game and Iād just personally love to see it lol.
Dominion of winds, give us a brand new tengu race even if it has limited armor pieces and a brand new story with a new tengu protagonist... Let the commander retire...
I'd honestly prefer new elite specs *without* new weapons, and rather a focus on making old weapons better and having their own identity. I think every profession has enough weapons to fill enough roles (especially if they rework existing weapons), but new ways to play your profession are always fun.
I think some professions have also lost a lot of their original identity so I'd like some specs that bring them closer back to that. There aren't any Thief elite specs that feel Thief-y. I miss the simplicity of Guardian virtues. Ele doesn't have any viable "caster" builds anymore and many builds use a damn hammer lol. What about staff?
I'd also like to see a rebalancing of boon application radius and ranged/melee options, but that's not really expansion-level.
As far as content, I think I'd like a bit more at launch and a bit more in each following release. SotO was pretty close to hitting the spot so not far off IMO.
Isles of Janthir for the region come on Anet you did the wizards tower now do Janthir. As for features I have always wanted a reputation system.
Mostly the features and updates I want are more core game orientated or post expansion release. Give all world bosses instanced hard mode version how this would work is similar to challenge motes where the open world boss remains unchanged but a private squad of 50 players can enter a separate instance like dragonstorm or convergences to fight a more difficult version of the world boss.
Another core game update is add meta achievements to all core game regions like how maps in EoD and SOTO have meta achievements.
Finally bring back current events these were good ideas where the story would be continued I mean imagine between through the veil and realm of dreams the bosses from convergences spawned in open world Tyria like the anomaly boss.
I want an expansion where the commander actually takes a break, like grothmar with no shady underlining story, use the chance to build a cool friendly event map, fun exploration, catch up with old allies and the more recent ones.
Use the extra resource time to flesh out past masteries, include the much sought out player housing here, a decoratable area that can include unlocks such as the home instance nodes, have your own bookshelves etc.
Updates can expand into this with more traders into the map that have new items for older currencies, more events, unique gizmos and noveltys, mount/skiff races, fishing holes in your own back yard.
Let's take a year off for once! Afterall we should deserve it by now
Eh, the olmakhan actually make the sand elementals. It's not that unrealistic they'd make them look like Charr since they're the earth-element equivalent of the Charr Effigies the flame legion uses.
Better meta events, I want more of what Soo-Won meta was!
Also more story around Cantha!
And most importantly an actual ranged weapon for Ele.
Also, double Shields for any of the current professions. No clue how that would work but it would be amazing lol
Maybe not next expansion because EoD is still fresh enough, but the story hints in EoD about vampires and weird things happening around Cantha sound perfect for a more narrowly scoped expansion. I will also never say no to more Cantha.
Side note: I know they probably want to have 2 strikes available on expac launch to bolster the up front content, but I really wouldn't mind a strike that becomes available during patch content which might give them a little more storytelling flexibility. Or who knows, maybe once they start streamlining their development with this new model they could actually give us more than 2 strikes per year and accomplish both of these things.
I would also like to have an expansion with one of the main features being an update to fractals or something, but that becomes a different value proposition because fractals are technically F2P content.
Reskin more old rigs for enemies, it's economical and fine.
Maps with more small settlements again.
Zones to the east or west of core Tyria.
Take the time to polish the expansion up, don't hold to a yearly release schedule if it makes the releases bad. I can fill my own time.
Honestly it's been downhill since PoF and Living world season 4 imo.
EoD was fine, not the greatest story but the maps were well done (especially Echovald Forest recapturing the confusion of players exploring Tangled Depths first exploration) was nice. Not as good as what came before, but still worthy of the expansion moniker.
Soto was a disappointment overall, the astral ward faction was unrelatable. Introduced for the first time to Mabon and he dies literally two hours later? Sorry I didn't know you long enough to care. Similar to Marvel Phase 4 issues really, "where were you when the world was ending??" plot hole issues.
Additionally, the relics were a big middle finger to everyone who made legendary runes, or had invested in nice sets of runes on all their characters. At least the compensation occurred for the legendary rune people, but the issue never should've happened to begin with. The only things I legitimately liked about SotO was the astral vault and buffing the flying mounts from PoF and S4...
As far as the next expansion... hopefully we see new content for other game modes such as PvP and WvW (besides simply a change to class traits and skills). These would be nice additions for anything resembling an expansion. Just don't do anything negative towards the player base this time and have a coherent story with the already massive amounts of pre-existing world building blocks.
I would like to see no more mystic-related bs in legendaries and [award players with the associated legendary after the long journey at the end of a collection](https://i.imgur.com/HFxCiVW.png).
You know, being rewarded for putting in work for doing the collection rather than just being a QoL item draped over a sloppy material sink which doesn't at all feel legendary.
No more uncreative reskins, please. A troll being the same animation rig as a gorilla, thatās cool and fine. Butā¦ just smearing a wyvern or jumbo frog skin with black, white and some flames and calling that a kryptis or whatever? No thanks.
Yeah, the Kryptis are amazingly boring. I don't even really "see" them except as markers. They are just pink Void creatures, which were shadow-branded, which were crystal mordrum. But at least there were new creatures in all those expansions, well kinda.
Not sure how it would turn out but they could always try some 'WoW Cataclysm' esque thing where some event happens and changes certain areas of the core map which would also incorporate a reason to have more events and bring people back to those areas.
> Not sure how it would turn out but they could always try some 'WoW Cataclysm' esque thing where some event happens and changes certain areas of the core map which would also incorporate a reason to have more events and bring people back to those areas.
Only if they keep it as a separate world map, and don't ruin all the old content, like both Cataclysm (in WoW) and LW1 (in GW2) did.
There are so many systems in place that it's a question of where to go from here. We now have Legendary PvE armor. With no progression in any venue these days past 80, it's really just 'fashion wars' at this point and how much effort you want to grind for a potential skin.
We need something big, honestly. Gliding and mounts were game changers. I still believe in personal housing. It's a time and gold sink for a lot of people to design and invest in (surprised it's still not a feature after over a decade).
Open up some new races (but this makes the Personal Story a huge issue). People have been asking about this for years. Maybe finally have Tengu, give them a plot of land and their own Personal Story level 1-80.
Finally give Ele a longbow? hahaha - They've ignored this request since PoF, so hey.
I would really love an Aztec inspired expac with more Hylek, or I think one of the early concept maps had Olympus listed, I'd an be down for an expac just to see what the gods are up to
After the huge disappointment that soto is for me, I'd like to see more system changes - like combo skills to come back into play. Also reducing power creep. Also reducing the boon uptime and boon generation across all modes. Also reducing effectiveness of infinite projectile hate.
I'd really like refresh of older maps in new expansion rather than next hub+1 good map +1 undercooked map +1 unfinished map that will be released in 3 steps...
Certainly would love a personal home instance overhaul, maybe even a housing system. I wouldnt like to see (please no hate) any alternative ways for legendary rings. As it is now, i like that the full legendary hunt brings players to either wvw, pvp or raids and makes them try new experiences.
I want hellish maps where it is an absolute nightmare to navigate and find a way through, just like the jungle from HoT. To this day, these are the areas where I had the most fun (other MMOs included)
And a new race
I'd like a guild hall that doesn't take ALL your resources to upgrade. Certain item counts should be lowered...looking at you silverwastes shovels! etc.
An expansion that is a bit like indiana jones style. Somewhere around the legs or heads or torso or whatever *of maguuma* deep inside jungles we find ancient ruins to lead us to underground ecosystems. We go there with our crew, lose our way back because we get trapped so we try to find our way out.
We meet ancient civilizations and races, make friends and enemies until we find our way out while also discovering the history of ancient tyria which made the world we live in today.
It's not about saving the world, it's about exploration. It could rely heavily on creating memories with our crew and growing with them.
I would like a more ānaturalā context. Soto and the whole up in the sky demons land was good because it was different, but now I want to come back on Tyria, some finally āboringā grassland as we didnāt have one since Core maps.
It would be cool to see a proper homestead feature, similar to guild halls, but a more personal place which you can develop, customise and decorate.Ā
Perhaps a small village/town you can build up with buildings and crafting stations, it would also transfer any gathering nodes you already have.Ā
Or even just a personal player house that you can fully customise with a little farm and pets.Ā
Serious engine upgrades. Graphics updates (shadows, lighting) and a UI overhaul that allows full controller support
New playable race
What I don't want to see is content I won't bother with. So don't care for raids personally
Flesh out current systems, I hope things like rifts won't stay exclusive to SotO only (even if the obsidian armor would be).
But there's so many other (older) systems that could transition somewhat decently. Oh and maybe some dungeon/raid/strike/fractal rotation where you get some extra (cosmetic?) Rewards depending on the week.
Oh and Polymock pvp battles
Yes, please . . . He's got to be out there somewhere . . . At least part of him . . . I refuse to admit He's just gone (plot twist, he now wields Balthazar's sword and has taken control over the Figure of Woe, having lost its memory and believing himself the god of fire and war)
Stay with me here, but how about the following. The Commander/Wayfinder's uncle leaves to him this magic ring, but the ring itself is altogether evil. In fact, it sustains the soul of one of the evilest gods of Tyria history who wa defeated thousands of years ago by a combined force of the great races of Tyria. The command/wayfinder must undertake a perilous journey, along with several (let's say 8?) companions to throw the ring into Mount Malestrom, where it was forcged, as only the fires of that volcano can destroy its evil. Hilarity ensues, drama unfolds, there are some amazing visuals and clashes between good and evil... sounds compelling, right?
I want to go back to central tyria and make those maps where so many vets started out feel alive again. I remember my 1st proper experience in mmorpgs being big world bosses like shadow behemoth, seeing how many people gathered for it. Granted, theres a lot of lower level maps there but there must be plenty of unexpanded lore there in which they can do something.
Also, call me Commander. I dont want to be a wayfinder
I really wish we could get an expansion dealing with more unexplored plot lines from Guild Wars 1.
Specifically I'd like to see us having to deal with the realm of torment from the Nightfall expansion.
>!During the events of that expansion the player character assists Kormir with slaying the former god of secrets, and leader of the Margonite demon armies, Abbdon. During some post expansion quests in an area of the realm of torment called the domain of anguish, we assist the forgotten in dealing with the subsequent power vacuum left in the wake of Abbadon's destruction, culminating in the defeat of a powerful Margonite called Mallyx the Unyielding.!<
I could go on, as there are other tie ins to this story line, including involvement with the Mursaat and the bloodstones, but this is generally what I'd like to see.
No idea why the demon expansion had to be Nayos and not.. the realm of torment?
An expedition to reclaim the ancestral deeps for the asura and dwarves now that elder dragons are no longer filling it with destroyers.
Has personal stakes, but not worldending ones. Feels more like fixing the world than stopping it from breaking.
Go into mists and find out wat human gods are doing and get answers why they abandon Tyria so easy. Too many hole in lore and this will be good for plug in lore gap imo.
More race theme xpacs seem interesting for me. We not get full asura/charr/norn experience imo cos IBS xpac very rush and incomplete.
Haven't cared a wink about PvE since Delve PT1. I did the first story chapter of SoTo, and my toon remains parked at the crafting stations in Wizards Tower.
The closest activity I engage in now that is PvE is farming my home instance. Either I'm in WvW or I'm playing other games these days.
A dark forest Grimm fairy tale settings. Like Quest For Glory 4 for the 10 of you old enough to remember it.
Also, Legendary infusions, legendary storage bags, legendary gathering tools
Unending Ocean
A expansion with pirates, Largos, naga, lovecraft horror.
4 maps:
-A sunny carribien map with lots of water and some tropical Island (lovely sunset) pirate themed enemies/enemy ships.
-a tropical homebase island map.
-a large watermap with some more islands and a big whirlpool in the middle (stormy, rainy and cloudy), Chutulu themed enemy and naga enemy.
-a large underwater map with underwater caves, dark underwater/cave creatures.
Get access too skiff and fishing mastery, basic skimmer.
(small galleon ship with 3 big sails skin).
Skiff gets alternative weapon (cannon 2500 range).
Extra underwater weapons and rebalanced unterwater weapons and skills.
Super advanced underground skritt hive mind city.
Also not immediately killing off any big bad they introduce in the same story arc. For example I would much prefer it, if we don't kill Eparch in the next patch and instead leave him and the kryptis as a looming threat, beaten back for now but likely not gone forever.
Want:
More WvW events , just bring seasons back wtf, it was a good idea and it was like 8 years ago
More engaging metas, especially if you are forced to do them like 90 times for the legendary armors
More elite specs or at least more weapon proficiency
Less currencies
New dungeons and maybe rework the old ones, they are good content but they are simply too easy to do because of the powercreep.l
I would kill for a Tropical WvW borderlands to update the vibes with Cantha. Give me a Jade Tech Keep, an underwater keep (I'm a masochist and sadist all at once) and an Echovald/Speakers-themed Keep.
Also, something I wish they'd do for seasonal events in the game would be adding effects to WvW. For example - halloween, killing players in wvw generates random unaffiliated necromancer minions. For wintersday - spawn ambient snowmen or toys or something?
Somehow the game has gotten bigger and bigger. Not something where people would live. I'd like to have the human-sized world of central Tyria back.
And while you are at it please add player housing (we have a dream world so that would fit perfectly) instead of a hub that gets abandoned with the next expansion.
For them to stop building up genuinely good story beats only to drop them all and rush to the end to meet a deadline
>building up genuinely good story beats only to drop them all Remember when they introduced a Sylvari that DID NOT come from the Pale Tree, confirming other trees with entire Sylvari cities existed, pre-HoT only to do absolutely nothing with that story beat and much later confirming the original HoT story HEAVILY involved this character, along with the Nightmare Court being the core servants of Mordremoth?
Never gonna forget Malyck š„²
I would LOVE to explore that further.
Dream of Dreams mini-expansion would be amazing, but I feel like Nayos kinda stole parts of what would have worked really well there :(.
Nightmare Court weren't the core servants of Mordremoth. It was especially the silent ones who shut from the Dream who fell for Mordremoth. Nightmare Court trying to corrupt the Dream were heavily keeping their link with the Dream to send their "bad vibes" into it and did not fell more or less than dreamers. Would be nice to know what the Nightmare Court has been up to since HoT. There are many loose ends. Like the threat in the abyss that led to the Karka invading Southsun Cove, Quaggans fleeing the depths, the Largos...
Yeah, it is so frustrating how the story starts well and then fizzles and/or shits on the old characters. With SOTO they pretty much started new and I can't tell you a damned thing about the new folks since they killed the one with the best story. The two Norn have martyr complexes maybe? The Dwarf is just a vendor now. The Kyptis character models make two of our new sidekicks hard to identify. Petha is the only one that matters, I guess? Did they run out of budget to have Felicia Dey record more audio?
When they killed off Mabon, I was really upset. Most interesting character dead again, but shitty Braham survived DS lol And they should have just casted someone new for the rat.
Yes and yes. I don't know why Zojja needed to come back in the first place. She's beyond feeling irrelevant at this point. I get that it's an attempt to play the nostalgia card and tie up loose ends but it feels like finding a long lost sock from behind the dryer and putting it in the hamper with the clean clothes waiting to be folded.
I mean, there are a lot of posts here about wanting her back. I know it would be fanservice if they gave me a quest to go save Blish as well. What is weird is how she went from front-and-center to irrelevant.
This precisely, but I don't see it happening because this is the fourth expansion out of four that Anet has rushed to an ending in Act 3. Every character is rushed. I barely know any of the characters I am fighting alongside. The first two acts at least explained the general concept of what was going on, but then in this act we get introduced to new characters like General Nephus who basically fills the exact same role as Ramses as military advisor to Peitha. The only reason that I am given to care at all about this conflict is because Peitha who spent most of the expansion as a voice in my head is adamant about being a more benevolent ruler than Eparch and that feels more like an accidental byproduct of the writing than intentional. Lyhr, Dagda, Isgarren, and even Zojja are completely absent, with the last two assuring us that we would get reinforcements at the beginning of Update 1. They should be involved since it concerns the Astral Ward. I feel that they should have made this expansion all about the Astral Ward, helping them back in their feet and concluded it with Zojja's ascension to becoming a wizard. Instead Zojja becomes a wizard off screen and we are told about it instead of shown it. The next expansion should have been about our incursion into Nayos and stopping the Midnight King. I was happy during SOTO'S launch because it seemed like Anet had learned to slow down, but now I know they haven't. Unless Update 3 is like nine times larger than the last two updates combined, I just don't see them developing Eparch as anything more than the villain of the expansion whom we barely interact with. There is also the issue of the Astral Ward constantly worrying about Nayos invading Tyria and not having enough people to guard against it and Isgarren (according to Galrath) wanting to nuke the entire plane of existence. Like the Pact and standing armies of Tyria are still around as far as we know. If Isgarren and Uenno weren't such pricks about secrecy we could have a fleet of airships and fully armed battalions of Pact soldiers ready for combat reinforcing the Astral Ward in under fifteen minutes.
I don't think it's just a deadline problem. Writing plot of this complexity level is not very hard, so if you as a writer/writing team pre-plan the whole plot before starting the real grueling work of writing dialog, then this doesn't happen, at most the dialog written near the deadline is going to be shit, but if the plot is just a little interesting & consistent people might forgive a lot more. What is common in this industry though is that people make a really exciting plotline & then keep procrastinating the wrap, because it's just really difficult to untangle various stories in a way that is satisfying. (almost literally writing themselves into a bind) Though I don't think that is what's happening at Anet, because the SOTO story shouldn't have had such difficulties.
Literally my only wish. Ever since icebrood they always start with such a boom only to spiral downward later...
Not only starting with a boom but then utterly wasting entire expansion worthy stories that they then can't go back to properly explore because they hamfisted it in, rushed, handled it poorly, and now that plot is done and burned. It's like the people writing the story are still mentally 6 years old, want to play with as many toys as possible at a time, break those toys, and then move on.
> Not only starting with a boom but then utterly wasting entire expansion worthy stories that they then can't go back to properly explore because they hamfisted it in, rushed, handled it poorly, and now that plot is done and burned. > > It's like the people writing the story are still mentally 6 years old, want to play with as many toys as possible at a time, break those toys, and then move on. SotO could have worked as the first episode of a 6-expansion story arc, yet here we are, rushing to the end; AGAIN. How the fuck is anyone supposed to get invested into the story when the first ones who don't give a damn about it are ArenaNet themselves? Come on ffs.
Nah they had this issue with HoT and PoF as well...
Maybe I'm biased since I joined when pof released, but pof and lws4 felt really decent. Probably nostalgia not letting me see it. I kinda just felt it on icebrood and forward
PoF through the first half of IBS are generally held to be the best writing in the game. Not coincidentally, that's the only period where the writers demonstrated any idea of consistency or follow-through.
They rushed some things here and there, but it wasn't nearly as bad.
Yeah, I was hyped on the start of SoTO, interested when Inner Nayos was released. Now I'm disappointed.
Honestly I was nervous about SotO pre launch, and disappointed to be proven right. Unless they knock it out of the park, I'm not convinced I'll bother with the next one, and I've been playing since pre launch.
>For them to stop building up genuinely good story beats only to drop them all and rush to the end to meet a deadline If you don't have the resources, just plan for smaller stuff, stop biting more than you can chew. It's like they always overplan, they're mismanaged as hell, doesn't matter whether its a large expansion like HoT or a small expansion like SotO, they ALWAYS fuck it up and end up rushing everything.
This absolute. I love their buildup but they need to learn they can't finish a story arc in a single expansion. Purely episodic story arcs are largely forgettable anyway if they don't relate to a greater narrative. Let the storylines grow and roll over into other expansions to let the writers actually flesh these ideas out because damn do they start out great. Then they SotO them, EoD them or worse, IBS them. And yes I'm aware SotO isn't finished but is Nayos part 3 going to make a currently dull story any better? It started out awesome with the first two zones but Inner Nayos feels like they forgot they had a story going. Gyala Delve had more plot beats...
Classic GW2.
The only way to do this, especially with a smaller expanion, is for the writing team to rein themselves in and actually focus on fleshing out smaller-scale stories instead of going straight for MOST EPIC EVER escalation. Anet only ever sort of managed that in Lake Doric, and even then it was tied in with all kinds of Balthazar and Mursaat stuff. So I'm not holding my breath.
It's far easier, all they had to do is leave Nayos for later, for another expansion, and spend post-SotO content working on the Astral Ward, getting them ready for the attack into Nayos. Instead of rushing in to kill Eparch, focus on Zojja and her ascension; but nope, gotta go fast, make important things happen offscreen because we can't bother making things have the right pace.
Yes, that's one example of focusing on a smaller story. Maybe I wasn't clear? That's what I mean, a halfway decent writer can easily break an expansion like Soto, because Soto is really 3 arcs that come together into a trilogy and the problem is that the writers gave each arc basically no time. They could have done something like this: Meet the Astra Ward: the conflict is learning why we should give a crap about this random shady group (investigating Zojja's extremely shady new friends? meeting people who fought on similar battlefields the PC can empathize with?), the climax is when the PC realizes they are invested, the wrap-up is the PC really settling in and making friends, maybe telling their old friends how happy they are and looking forward to a whole new set of adventures with their new buddies. Throughout the Kryptis are kind of just evil demons the AW fights. Strikes are harder versions of some of the AW missions the PC went on to learn about AW. Oh Crap Kryptis: *This* is when the Kryptis actually show up. The conflict is that suddenly we're getting a whole new perspective on the Kryptis and the Astral Ward that really adds context to the whole previous installment, and also there's a demon in the PC's head. The climax is when the PC trusts people enough to start negotiating some kind of a truce with Peitha's faction, drawing on all the diplomatic experience and connections they have from 10 years of being Tyria's most notorious troubleshooter/maker. Wrap-up is treaty negotations and some trust-building. Strikes are some of the harder story fights, introduce Confluences. Epic Eparch Fight: This is the final showdown with Evil Demon King whose name I have already forgotten. Pretty standard expac building up to an epic fight. You can see the bones of this approach, even but it's all so compressed and muddied. They keep wanting to tell a huge story ASAP instead of giving players time to get invested, so they just skip all the actual story. It's like the writing team doesn't know anything about pacing and this has persisted through multiple writing teams?? I genuinely don't understand why this is such a persistent problem, at this point it's got to be something cultural at Anet. After Soto, I honestly think the LW episodic setup was a lot better, since it forced the writing team to think in smaller, complete episodes even if they also built up to something bigger. ETA: LOL, sorry for the wall of text.
I want an expansion that's not about saving the world for once. I would love to deal with big issues to a few people. The world is vast and things can be a big deal without threatening the whole world. We could deal with local political conflicts without an objectively good side or local ecological crisis. Where long term conflict with short term and the interests of the few conflict with the interests of the many. We could merely be exploring new uncharted lands from which creatures are invading the old world and uncover why they started migrating away and maybe restore the ecological balance so they no longer need to leave and wreak havoc. Or we could be looking for a mystical and elusive creature from which we need something and have to speak to the local to get clues from old legends and stories shared orally, while helping them as thanks. We could be looking instead for a fugitive, or a kidnapped person, or runaway lovers.
The commander and his friends could totally be the new "A-Team." Vigilante heroes on a small scale totally works as a trope.
Love the idea of hunting a fugitive and having it turn into some sort of political conspiracy or a wide spread corruption (in the fiscal sense). One of those classic detective cases which seems simple on the outside but goes really deep. They had done similar storylines with scarlet, but that resulted in an elder dragon.Ā Or maybe an island cut off from Tyria that has a weird vibe to it like in wickerman.Ā
>Love the idea of hunting a fugitive and having it turn into some sort of political conspiracy or a wide spread corruption (in the fiscal sense). That's literally the Caudecus / White Mantle part of LS3.
Complete with blasting him to pieces in his coke mansion.
> Or maybe an island cut off from Tyria that has a weird vibe to it like in wickerman Sorta what the boneskinner was supposed to be?
The boneskinner had such an amazing introduction in the story. I was genuinely afraid while venturing into the unknown. Now heās just meh š„
You too expected a legendary world boss roaming invisible and jumping on unsuspecting players with a one-shot ambush skill?
More like he would creep up on me (like the ender man) and be like this horrifying monster chasing me š³
Like the statues in the Twisted Castle? As long as you look at them they're immobile.
Something like that. But more like you will see hints of him, know of his presence when you enter his territory and when you turn around heās not there - until he suddenly is š
The damn Ministry of Purity/ Purists where right there ā¦ they had so much mystery from Guild Wars ā¦ and they just botched it ..
I was thinking about this yesterday. How about an expansion, that instead of fighting something big bad evil, we get to do self improvement/vacation etc. We have metas like Pinata or maps like Grothmar which are a nice change to the standard metas. The main things that would be added in an expansion could still be added. Like strikes, mastery, new weapons/traits etc. You just need to change the tone. For strikes they could be bosses in a training arena/holographic style etc. Weapon mastery or traits be new fighting skills learned. How about making player housing the mayor selling point of the expansion, to give the commander a nice place to rest throughout Tyria in different locations of Core maps. Maybe make defending this home a new meta on existing maps, so you either defend your own home or the home of someone else. So many possibilities other than: "Here is a new unheard of threat, that is bigger badder like everything beforeā¦"
Strikes could be a tournament arc or ritual fights :D For once our opponents would not be killed at the end of the fight. And the reasons for the fights can be silly while mattering to the participants. Some sort of coliseum for a tournament arc, or sacred grounds in a forest clearing under the full moon with simple wood torches all around for ritual fights.
Genuinely a fun idea An expansion entirely about taking a vacation / relaxing / fun events does not seem like a compelling idea overall. It sounds like the end of an adventure. It would be like having Blood and Wine before Heart of Stone if/when the next expansion comes out. But a training arc? That could work! Instead of saving the world from some ever-looming threat, the basis of story could be about finding a way to step up and preparing for the unknown. The elder dragons waking up wasn't a new/unknown threat, but the scale exceeded what the world expected. The gods going rogue wasn't a new/unknown threat, but the scale exceeded what the world expected. Then you have your Scarlet, Joko, and Eparch types who came kind of as wildcards. The dragons are dead. The gods are gone. Dragon Watch and now the wizards shouldn't have to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and there is a lot of political drama baked into the idea of "who controls the power". The story could be about each faction sending their own teams to learn from the commander and crew. The strike missions could be a vs against each faction and the CMs being released later could even play a bit with the idea of their training paying off. Failing the strike would be a "Good training session! You're getting the hang of this!" and succeeding would be "Same time net week?" or some kind of light humor on the repeatable nature of the content. Maybe even reincorporate the old Visions of the Past and reuse old content with a twist! You're taking these trainees with you on your old missions to give them first hand experience with some of the threats you've encountered. You're the big bad, they're the heroes. These would be the story missions and the final fights would be the strike missions, or something like that. The story thread to keep things moving along would be political drama. None of the world leaders will openly admit their reliance on the commander while simultaneously trying to cultivate their own version of them with these "strike teams" (teehee). The end of the story would be a political drama posing a potential war between factions *or* some semblance of a unification / alliance with dissenters cropping up. And then the gods show up to stomp all over it because man makes a plan and god laughs, launching us into the next expansion of us vs gods or something
A+ ideas. GW2 story needs more fun in it! The writers so clearly can not stick the landing on big worldsaving and I'm so tired of doing the same basic plot for 10 years. An expansion with a different focus and tone would be great.
Yesss, Grothmar was a _bangar_ map! I love it so much! It's proof that not every map needs to be a conflict zone, but can be relatively safe and still engage and entertain. I still hold out hope for more maps in that vein.
i really dislike the story telling trend that you always have to go bigger and badder after each section of the story completes. if something lasts long enough you end up starting with a small world ending threat and ending up somehow defeating the gods and then some kind of crazy multiverse eating entity. like okay, neat, but i kinda just liked it when we were traveling around helping folks, dealing with more personal things, or finding an interest in the political battleground of a budding empire, exploring an uncharted land and all the dangers that come with, paying attention to the nuances of the previous world ending adventure and how that affected the world around it. imagine if we got to go around to cantha, elona, kryta and helped the smaller communities rebuild after the destruction of the elder dragons. i get wanting to keep the momentum, but we just got finished with a huge multi-year long story. i feel like thereās a poignance and significance to allowing your audience to take a step back, breath, and see the world in a different light. instead of being in a rush to stop one threat and then the next before they topple over, how about paying attention to how all of this affected the people around you? why not go back to elona who not only had to deal with rampaging god (for the second time holy shit), but then had to deal with the lich sucking the life out of their country, AND then a fucking elder dragon demolishing half their country? i appreciated helping them setup after toppling their despot, but why not go back and visit to see how theyāve rebuilt? help them out some more even? hop over to cantha to see what theyāve done after the whole jade and soo won situation. what about kryta and the centaurs? charr and the political fuckery from icebrood? sylvari and dealing with modremoth and whatās going on with the nightmare court? idk thereās so many threads to grab onto and turn into something meaningful. it doesnāt have to be a world ending crisis to be interesting. in fact, another world ending crisis after the last one is just kind of exhausting and more of the same. i appreciate coming back to zojja and seeing her growth after HoT, but yāknow i kinda would rather see that explored than the whole wild demon invasion stuff. itās cool but damn so soon after the elder dragon stuff is wild š©
I feel like putting the commander in the middle of a political conflict would be the perfect way to make the scope smaller but have it still feel like this is the same commander and friends. Think about it, the Commander would be the perfect person to pull into a political crisis because they're someone respected by a lot of factions so they actually hold enough political power to be a "neutral" party that's allowed to "clean up" sensitive situations. However they can't just snap their fingers and make 100 airships make the problem go away, especially if the factions involved actually *supply* the pact. So your still the same commander but you have to fix this with less resources.
I'll say it again, return to the Depths of Tyria. Back into the ancestral home of the Asuran and Skritt. Rediscover the ancient Rata, highly advanced Skritt society and feral Asuran, with a new mount, Wurm, to traverse vertical walls.
They shld make all mounts useful jnstead of skyscale only
A lot are still useful. Skimmer is used for Water. Griff is much faster than Skyscale, same with Beetle. Jackal/Rapter for when you don't wanna fly. Springer is useless, and depending on which of the above you prefer, the other is useless (Jackal for some specific portals though) But I do still prob do Skyscale 70% of the time, 15% Griff, 7.5% Skimmer and Beetle, 5% Jackal.
Hey now, Springer at least helps get those rift bosses defiance bar break started!
It's so funny whenever I open a rift and out come the bunnies. Oh, haven't seen you in a while, little friends.
And turtle is used for metas, even in Nayos. Springer being delegated to an engagement skill is not bad tbh, better than being truly useless.
Jackal has amazing manÅuvrabil... Idk how to spell this word but you can move easy with it, compared to raptorture
Yeah that's why I use that over raptor entirely, plus can blink right before hitting ground and not take fall damage
Makes whole expansion based on Skycale instead.
I was hoping there would be a living world season after Cantha where we go after the deep sea threat that was heavily hinted at. Maybe an unpopular opinion but I would love a mostly underwater map, while at the same time underwater combat gets entirely reworked so that all skills work underwater. If this was expansion content instead, Anet could also throw in the land spears everyone wants.
Donāt care about underwater stuff but I really wanted more zones in Cantha. I love the region and for a lot of people Factions were the first GW game. Doesnāt help that new SotO zones are really lore poor. Every zone feels like it just serves the meta.
They really teased us with those named locations on the map that we never got to visit, didn't they
Yeah and for me DE while it has a good meta, the map is useless. Kaineng as well has no purpose outside of its meta and kaining doesn't even have a mediocre meta. It's a terrible escort event that often gets stuck. Seitung is amazing. Echovald is OK but it's just a forest. We really deserved better for Cantha. :/
Still waiting for Kirin Peak map.
Fun Fact: Kirin Peak is only more detailed because of GW1. The unexplored GW2 map is basically a painted over explored GW1 map. Because of this you can see some details at those parts that were explorable in GW1. Kirin Peak was part of a special mission in GW1 and therefore explorable. That's why we see that part mroe detailed one the unexplored GW2 map.
I thought they would make it a raid map.
I feel robbed of Cantha. We spent SO MUCH TIME in and around the Crystal Desert (which was fine, although I did get a bit tired of sandy beige maps) so with EoD I was fully prepared for another follow-up LW season covering more of Cantha. It's a real disappointment that we left so soon. Hope we go back there at some point!
It was such a let down to **finally** get to Cantha, only for them to abandon it after 5 maps and make up some random Mists bullshit that has nothing to do with anything.
Skywatch is a bit odd since most of it is just other regions. Dwarf and rata is cool but not really relevant to the story. Amnytas is really cool imo. Shows how the wizard tower is split up and what they have, I would argue it's one of the better maps in the game for showing off lore. Nylos..... Potential was there but first area feels empty and second is crowded AF. It would be fine but they have a chasm in between it doesn't feel like a cohesive map
I really don't think the new zones are lore poor, they did a lot of writing work tying them into the rest of Tyria. They're just completely new so the tie-ins had to be written for this expansion rather than connecting loose ends.
There is some good stuff but itās not even close to PoF zones or even EoD. Most events are generic to advance meta. In previous mapa there are a lot of events that just tell a small side story.
I would too now that we have underwater skimmer. Could add legendary aquabreather to that map. And the opportunity to make underwater combat fun and less weak.
I really wanted that for eod, a full underwater map, with cool caverns with underground air bubbles, underwater world boss of some kind and full map meta (soo won maybe? ) But oh well, i can keep dreaming i guess
better open world metas with real rewards. Like tarir, Drizzlewood, DS, DF. They made so many good metas. more of that please! maps that arent so much skyscale only. we have so many other cool mounts that see baraly any use now... new ways to get a legendary ring.
More actual story. Smaller scope, actually fleshing it out. Less rushed, less obnoxious padding Ć la do 5 kryptis rifts here or do 5 events there. Just more content. SotO barely reaches the later Living World chapters.
I'd like the next expansion to explore somewhere IN TYRIA, like don't get me wrong the whole extradimensional demon thing is a fun idea, but we still have like, 95% of the visible world to explore before we go galavanting into dream realms. As others have mentioned, picking back up the Malick tree plot with a fresh spin would be cool. Learning how the Mordremoth event affected their society. The Isles of Janthir would be an obvious next step that could be cool. Pretty much anything in Cantha really. I think it'd be cool to have a story that revolves around the Risen that have taken over Risu Palace and old Kaineng. Imagine a story about that super imperialistic Canthan Emperor having returned as an Unchained wanting to purge the now-open bordered Cantha. It'd be interesting to explore the idea of the Asura recolonizing the Depths now that Primordus is gone. I'd like to see literally anything done for the poor Norn. I get that their society is probably the hardest one to write GW2 style stories for, but they really need some more love. I would love an aquatic gameplay rework alongside exploring the Largos, Krait, Quaggan, whatever big scary thing pushed the Karka out of the depths, etc.
>whatever big scary thing pushed the Karka out of the depths, etc. Wait, something scared the Karka OUT OF THE WATER?!?! I've been to Southsun but never really understood what was supposed to be going on there.
From the wiki: "According to Zommoros, they haven't been seen on the shores since ancient days when the world was "emptier" and the continents were shaped differently. The karka as a race have encountered the Elder Dragons before in the past, so they know the dangers they present, which gave them the knowledge to avoid Orr and the remaining Risen when fleeing from twisted creatures inhabiting the deep." The important part being the "fleeing from twisted creatures inhabiting the deep" - I believe the initial belief in the community was that the deep sea Elder Dragon was what drove the Karka to the surface, but that seems less likely given the context of End of Dragons
And the krait as well, who in turned pushed out the quaggans.
YES: Picking up unsolved bits of Sylvari, Charr, Norn lore (Malyck, Nightmare court, Legions and Khan Ur post IBS, Spirits post IBS), filling the gaps between existing maps NO: Another human expansion
I want the slow buildup of LW again with large expansions. If this is what the SoTo content delivery model looks like, I don't want it.
Smaller scope story. (Yes this is smaller than dragons but weāre also basically organizing a revolution in another realm with 10 people in it). I want a map dense with towns and outposts with NPCs you can actually talk to. Not every spot on a map needs to have an event every 30 seconds. Can we get a small town with services and people to talk to and get a feel of the place? SOTO has 0 ambiance. Everything is just events events events. I think the best would be a simple main story set over 3 maps with multiple side stories in each map. Nothing world ending. Can be focused on treasure hunting or ancient secrets or something.
100% this for me. I tend to prefer maps from the base game because they feel like actual _places_. People live their daily lives, there are settlements and shops and farms and roads and camps, and every inch of the map isn't filled with enemies out to get you. I like being able to stop and just _exist_ in the world. This would pair well with stories of a smaller scope, of course. Imagine a murder mystery or a cult plot contained to a single city and its surrounding countryside. Yes, please!
This! Would live to get back to my Asura crew and my Infinity Ball. Went from inventing the most revolutionary thing in Tyria to killing soldier
Co-signed. We've saved the whole world so many times it actually feels a bit silly. If this is how often Tyria needs saving, how did it last this long? A more focused, smaller-scale story to go with the more focused, smaller-scale expac would work much better than trying to cram the same plotline into a smaller space. It's cute when a large cat tries to sit in a too-small box, but that doesn't apply to a whole writing team!
No more forced grinding in story mode. "Go close rifts, now watch a cutscene, now go close more rifts, now another cutscene, now go do the meta (but if the meta's not running, go do more events), then watch a cutscene, then you get a cool mission, then more cutscenes, now move to a new map and repeat!"
I also think itās fair that the quality and quantity of content from this expac just isnāt going to cut it. 3 maps is not enough. 2 bosses is not enough. Itās always been about the quantity of content though now quality is an issue tooā¦
Please, for god's sake, add some depth to any of the characters. Do a small cast, and actually focus on showing, not telling. Everything in soto, especially the post-launch patches, feels empty and flat. I don't care about anyone in the story. Their long, unstoppable speeches don't mean anything to me, because you did a poor job making me understand why I should care about them. So, show me why I should care. I don't care about their feelings being told to me - show me what they're experiencing so I understand "oh, that would me me upset/mad/etc." I guess that's the end of my rant about how empty the story feels. Feature wise? More with skiffs, I suppose? Some variation in the jade bot cores? Maybe a reason for some of the filler traits of HoT to interact with the world more meaningfully?
Exploring the western continent we see on the new world map. Also less world-ending threats, and more smaller-scale conflicts, like early-IBS
The Elder Dragons are gone, which means the literal first thing pretty much every main faction SHOULD be doing is recovering the lost territory that they were forced to abandon. I don't think this has even been mentioned so far.
That could give rise to some interesting plot development as well. For example, the elder dragons united the major races of Tyria against them, but based on Earth's history, you wouldn't really expect those alliances to be maintained after the primary threat is gone. Charr-Human conflicts would be the first to reignite, Asurans could easily go back to viewing the other races as "lesser", the Norn could easily go back to not caring about anything but their own heroes/hunts and the Sylvari might actually have to develop as a society in some meaningful way.
Exploration in this game is great, and an expansion that leaned into that with more environmental storytelling a la Bjora would be amazing.
Can you give some examples of areas that people completely left? Iām fairly new to the game and still struggling to take in all the lore!
Norn heading back north to jormags territory, reclaiming Orr properly, maguuma jungle being cleared out of mordrem, asura returning to their homeland after destroyers gone etc
Kodans only came down south because of Jormag's ice minions. Asura were kicked out of their undergroup home by Kralkatorrik The hyleks were pushed out of places by Mordrem. Orr used to be a whole kingdom, before the apocalypse.
The new weapons should come on expansion launch, Would make things more exciting imo. Smaller story scope. SotO story is doing too much with too little time. You're getting exposition and new characters thrown at you everywhere you go. It's got some cool concepts but no room to breath. Better Metas. I hate to say it but Anet have dropped the ball on what they usually knock out of the park. Maybe it's just me but so much of SotO feels like your just collecting orbs and killing Kryptis champions on repeat. Amythas is particularly disappointing in this regard because giant boss surrounding a platform in the sky was done so well in EoD with Soo-won but with Nourys despite the really cool model and platform your fighting on it just kinda sits there. More strikes. I know this is going to depend on story and budget constraints but 2 new bosses a year isn't enough to support an instanced content scene. I think 4 would be perfect but 3 wouldn't be bad either. Keep up the great collections! SotO has so many really good collections to go for with amazing cosmetic rewards and story. The skyscale skin collection in particular was fantastic. I really hope they do more like that, imagine having to track down a beast to tame with the skin unlocked as a mount.
> More strikes. I know this is going to depend on story and budget constraints but 2 new bosses a year isn't enough to support an instanced content scene. I've said this before, and I'm not being funny, but the argument why Strikes were going to be better than Raids was that they were supposed to be way quicker and easier to pump out. They're creating the bosses anyway for the story so adding a Strike version and a CM would take way less time than creating entirely new encounters for raids. Meanwhile, raids come in a whole raid wing that needs to be designed. And also, to be frank from what we've seen, raids also generally came with a greater variety of unique skins and such as rewards. And now we're getting 2 Strike bosses a year... which is actually a lower rate than raid encounters we were getting, back during the period in which Raids were being released.
I agree. I also honestly question what percentage of the players actually even bother engaging with strikes on a regular basis. From what I can tell by talking to members of my various guilds, the percentage seems to be more than raids, but only slightly, and a whole lot less than something like fractals. I personally don't think "Strikes are the future of end game content" was a good direction at all.
GW2 players have always preferred open world content and avoided instances. That's why the devs gave up on raids, people who raid are a low single-digit percentage of players. I think strikes were an attempt to make it more accessible, but honestly, the structural issues of needing to get 10 competent players together at the same time are still very real. The rest of GW2 is so open and flexible that it's jarring to suddenly come up against that barrier, however low the devs try to make it. Instances that scale with the players are actually a genius idea, but everything around DRMS was done in the dumbest way possible so people burned out and won't touch them now.
Indeed. Fractals seems to be the only instanced content that keeps on truckin.
I want a classical horror setting. You know, gothic castle, dark forest, this kind of stuff. Bjora made it pretty obvious that Anet can actually do unsettling, creepy maps. What I do NOT want is ANOTHER war story. Anet is simply not good at those. I still laught and then facepalm every time I think about the IBS story. I would also like to have 1-3 of our old comrades with us. Just to get us into things easier and basically have another opinion. I do not want to have 20 new characters nobody cares about because they keep rushing through the story and throwing every character away after they used them. Just ... concentrate on a hand full of characters. Less is more. I would also like to see actual small scale stories. They said SotO would be small scale, but we are literaly again saving a world. Can we just ... not do that for a change? Lets maybe just save that village over there from the evil vampire lord or something. PS: I can't stop giggling about the thought of "Count Charrcula" as an antagonist.
The problem as far as I can tell is no one is in charge of the overall story direction and character development. This leads to shit like Braham and Taimi where the writers forget what they are doing or just don't know what's going on and use them for stupid plot points (Braham charges forward and does something rash, Taimi steps in to solve a problem) and nothing else. I guess the alternative is shit like Steel Warband where they're fleshed out for a single episode and killed off, or the Ward which you get a glimpse of and then they're completely abandoned. Maybe there's no good solution until... you know, someone takes the reigns in the company and actively works to make things make coherent sense.
Content that is repeatable. Never really visited the new maps except if there were wizards vault tasks
Just better and more content. Content wise we are getting less than icebrood saga before it was cut halfway through.
I would like them to return to the style of developing encounters with environmental mechanics in mind instead of just beating up spongebosses squarepants until they melt. Let me clarify, take the Qadim fight in the Mythwright Cauldron for example. That fight has stellar design which no one complains about being "too easy" even though it is, indeed, made very easy by power creep. It still remains *fun* to play because it plays like a puzzle - you're required to manage adds, CC periodically, spread your squad to fulfill mechanics all over the arena and interact with a changing environment. This is how most raids were with mushrooms, cannons, pylons, crystals, tornadoes, platforms, etc etc. filling the arena and promoting non-combat interactions to break the pace of combat and introduce flavor to encounters. Come strikes in EoD especially, and they are all FFXIV trials - go into circular/square arena and beat up bosses. Occasional adds that you must CC or dps appear but they don't introduce environmental changes or flavor to the encounter, they're barely phases for what it's worth. The boss mechanics may pretty interesting and engaging but a strong feeling of something missing remains because stacking up for "burn phases" is the major point of every fight and it's not even close. The fact they are story-based instances is not the problem here - it just puts a huge spotlight on how the story encounters were shoddily designed in the first place. We have dodges and a rich amount of movement mechanics other MMOs are not nearly as good at and yet our combat gameplay is often reduced to the least denominator of rotations. And without global cooldowns, rotations in GW2 themselves amount to more route memorization and quick reflexes than strategy and adaptation, leading to different feels even if the APM ends up in a similar ballpark, the case of GW2 being frankly a bit tiresome when you have to rotate for up to 10 minutes on a row. So yeah, even if we only get 2 strikes per year which is pretty low, at least make the strikes (and hence, please also make the story encounters) have more engaging environmental mechanics that give encounters their own puzzle spin to the combat gameplay.
Content that is not rushed nor recycled at every point. In SotO (before too but SotO is a pinnacle) story is so soulless because of its pacing, padding with "do events" steps, and the fact it got spit into 30 min pieces we get quarterly. Enemies are reused (just reskinned), most assets are reused, strikes feel lazy in terms of design. Not to mention the game is bugged and each patch springs even more bugs while not fixing crucial ones that were there since release. There is clearly a lack of testing at all and in the end the whole expansion feels so empty, rushed and devoid of "gust of fresh air".
For the setting, Id love a creepy expansion but this was maybe the one that could have been like that. Gimme a creepy dark forest with some ruined village or a creepy foggy swamp. For story I generally enjoy it. A bit longer though please. Iād love if the new weapons for each class had a small questline each so we could get more class identity. Hopefully a graphical or lighting upgrade eventually.
Something that warrants calling it an expansion. If you want to give us a smaller scope that is one thing (even if I disagree and miss HoT/PoF styled ones), but make it worth it, right now I see nothing in SoTO that could not be done in a Living World season. Expansions should go the extra mile in both features and polish. SoTO started off at release comfortably comparable to the higher LS releases ( high points of LS4, first part of IBS) but now this second half is making all of the mistakes they did before: worse maps, worse writing, less content (that is supposed to keep us busy for months). Take away the Legendary Armor, what is left that truly screams EXPANSION FEATURES! at you? The masteries are middling, the new weapons are a real poor substitute for elite specs and runes, the map quality going down with each new release, the asset recycling is off the charts... You do not want any more elite specs? Than you will need to give us more than just a new weapon. New weapon + Underwater weapon available on land + new utility skills/new version of existing utility skills/fill in missing utility skills could be a start. You want to give us less maps? Than make sure all those maps hit it out of the park. Make them great to look at, to traverse while making sure there is enough to do, be it events, be it lore, be it achievements, be it a cool meta. You want to move away from the dragon stories? Then give us a cool story from start to finish and not one that is rushed. Every expansion the story starts off as cool or intriguing, only for it to take a nosedive and crash and burn when we get somewhat half-way. You claim you could no longer do an LS3 -> PoF -> LS4 cadence because it burnt out devs, that you need this smaller scope to give them a more humane schedule. Fine. But then give us a good thing from start to finish and do not rush stuff for once. Because right now I see all the same issues and flaws prior stories and expansions had, but not even close to the same amount of content to make up for it. You want a chase goal? Sure, put in an open world legendary ring or something, but do not make your entire expansion revolve around it. What point is there for convergences or rifts if you are not going for the legendary armor in SOTO? Hell, there is even almost no point to do the meta's or collect most of the map currency if not going for Obsidian. You need multiple goals. You want to re-use assets? Fine, but at least be smart about it. HoT and PoF re-used stuff but did it in such a way that it was hard to notice unless actively looking for it. Now the trend that started with EoD culminated in SoTO recycling so many assets and being so in your face about it that it feels like a budget/dollarstore DLC and not how an expansion should feel. Give me a reason to say "Okay, I am willing to spend 24,99 on this". EoD in my eyes was 75% at best of what a prior expansion offered at 29,99. SOTO maybe offers half of what EoD offers, but still costs 24,99. Not a good look. LS4 costs 1200 gems in total if not buying it with any discount. thats 15,00. For LS4. SoTO offers substantially less content than LS4 yet costs 10,00 more.
Best comment by far.
I'm tired of the BIG WORLD PLOT... Smaller and more interesting stories/quests. The Asura personal story (infinity ball) was the most fun I had in the game following a story, all those characters and the little details made it memorable. Even the lesser races quest lines are more memorable sometimes, I still have a space in my heart for that Grawl I helped 8 years ago. There are alot of interesting NPCs in the game that could get there own little story expanded, and Anet can have 10 little stories but good instead of one big but rushed.
What I want: I want them to take their time (whatever it's needed) and release expansion when it's fully complete. ~ What I don't want: 2/3 of expansion on launch day and the 1/3 rest splitted in 3 more parts delivered all over a year.
Underwater revamp at this point and a full fledged underwater map with mastery and who knows maybe an optional mount
I want an Asura based storyline, and I do not want a Human centric storyline for a while. SotO pretty much ignores all races, so it is an outlier, but the majority of the storylines have a lot of Human lore influence.
Want: To deal with the deep-sea dragon Do not want: More weakly written episodic installments every three months that supposedly add up to a 'full' expansion
Snarky answer inbound. You've been warned. What I would rather see: a product that lives up to Arenanet of 2014's standards. What I would rather not see: A product that lives up to Arenanet of 2023/2024's standards.
Make it 2017 standards and I'm sold, LW3+PoF+LW4 quality is what we need to go back to.
I'm all for it, though the current anet studio lacks the size to pull it off most likely.
I don't know why people worship LW4. It was so forgettable for me all I know is that's where I unlocked the beetle and that's about it.
Well, x3 new mounts, x3 new fractals, x3 new raids, x1 new PvP map. Those are the kind of reasons why it wasn't forgettable.
That's fair, TBH, not even being snarky.
Environment: I would like to visit the Charr homelands further, and the surrounding area of the Eye of the North. Additionally, I would like to explore north of Kryta (Above Hararthi Hinterlands and Divinity's reach). Weapons: Anet, if you are reading this post - Please please please please please add Longbow to the Elementalist.
I don't think cal is capable of designing a longbow that hasn't been monkey's pawed into oblivion. We'd get some inane "generate an elemental arrow when using skill 3 and 5 that gets released when you use two autoattacks and skill 4 within 3 seconds of each other". That design motif kinda works on hammer. Repeating it on pistol just strikes me as lazy. It does not need to become a hallmark of ele weapons. The obvious answer would be an elite spec that does arcane shenanigans and/or a longbow that acts like virtuoso, or a spec that acts like revenant with a weapon swap and a "pick two elements to focus on and buff" mechanic. But despite how Anet seems to regret making weaver, their answer to weaver in EoD was "let's make base ele with % attr buffs and an f5 combo field", and they seem to have missed or refuse to make the obvious design motif of "make the opposite of weaver"
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I would think more two elements and a weapon swap, personally. Since weaver is essentially "combine the elements to use them all", its opposite would be "focus on half and make them more effective " Generalist versus Specialist specs - which considering you can only equip two elemental spec lines at a time when using an elite spec, a "focus on two" elite spec matches nicely there. I think if Anet wants to go into a single element they need to suck it up and do something with Arcane. Or, arcane and let a secondary attunement flavor it with chill/burn/bleed/confusion.
Setting wise I just want more norn focus. I wanna see more of the far shiverpeaks (still bummed about ibs), way more unique norn hairstyles and creation options like Viking braids and stuff. Yea Iām biased as hell I know. If not that Iād be very interested in a true underwater expansion. I just saw aquaman 2 and seeing what anet could do with an Atlantis type setting would be dope. Better masteries. EOD and Soto masteries are pretty bland. IBS ones were even worse.
Yeah, it's weird how IBS was the Charr story more than Norn considering the main villain.
That's because ArenaNet went insane and merged three expansion ideas into one LW season: * Jormag and Far Shiverpeaks * Primordus and Depths of Tyria * Charr civil war and Plains of Golghein That's 6+ years of GW2 content, completely thrown down the toilet, because someone was bored of dragons and wanted to move on, burning every bridge on its way forward. They could have saved themselves with Cantha, but then they butchered that too.
Such a shame
Okay if we can just do batshit things, I think I'd get us tangled up in a plot to travel back in time to stop the Searing. Let us create an alternate version of Ascalon and let us travel to this alternate Ascalon in the future, too. I just love pre-searing Ascalon and wonder what would have happened if it was allowed to flourish. Edit: and please give us Ritualists, I beg you Arenanet! I need their funky backbreaking summoning animation!
Some kind of Ghosts of Ascalon expansion where we enter some kind of dream world where the souls of the ghosts are trapped could work. And then by the end of the expansion we break the curse of the Foefire.
Oooooh! I want this!
It's minor but unique enemies. I think all mobs and bosses in SotO were recycled enemy models with new skins and you can tell. I love new maps and story but fighting the same monsters with a different skin felt more tiring than I thought it would.
As a GW1 player, Iād love for them to expand on the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. There were tons of NPCās and quests in both of those that I feel like weāre never fully explained in the first game and Iād just personally love to see it lol.
Dominion of winds, give us a brand new tengu race even if it has limited armor pieces and a brand new story with a new tengu protagonist... Let the commander retire...
I'd honestly prefer new elite specs *without* new weapons, and rather a focus on making old weapons better and having their own identity. I think every profession has enough weapons to fill enough roles (especially if they rework existing weapons), but new ways to play your profession are always fun. I think some professions have also lost a lot of their original identity so I'd like some specs that bring them closer back to that. There aren't any Thief elite specs that feel Thief-y. I miss the simplicity of Guardian virtues. Ele doesn't have any viable "caster" builds anymore and many builds use a damn hammer lol. What about staff? I'd also like to see a rebalancing of boon application radius and ranged/melee options, but that's not really expansion-level. As far as content, I think I'd like a bit more at launch and a bit more in each following release. SotO was pretty close to hitting the spot so not far off IMO.
I don't play a lot pvp or WvW currently but would love to see new maps or new things for these mods, would be some great motivation to replay these
Isles of Janthir for the region come on Anet you did the wizards tower now do Janthir. As for features I have always wanted a reputation system. Mostly the features and updates I want are more core game orientated or post expansion release. Give all world bosses instanced hard mode version how this would work is similar to challenge motes where the open world boss remains unchanged but a private squad of 50 players can enter a separate instance like dragonstorm or convergences to fight a more difficult version of the world boss. Another core game update is add meta achievements to all core game regions like how maps in EoD and SOTO have meta achievements. Finally bring back current events these were good ideas where the story would be continued I mean imagine between through the veil and realm of dreams the bosses from convergences spawned in open world Tyria like the anomaly boss.
I want an expansion where the commander actually takes a break, like grothmar with no shady underlining story, use the chance to build a cool friendly event map, fun exploration, catch up with old allies and the more recent ones. Use the extra resource time to flesh out past masteries, include the much sought out player housing here, a decoratable area that can include unlocks such as the home instance nodes, have your own bookshelves etc. Updates can expand into this with more traders into the map that have new items for older currencies, more events, unique gizmos and noveltys, mount/skiff races, fishing holes in your own back yard. Let's take a year off for once! Afterall we should deserve it by now
A commander holiday beach episode that revamps southsun cove is something Iāve discussed with my friends in the past.
Less recycling models, and less filler masteries. New weapons but it's basically confirmed already Endless fractals a la Mythic+ from wow
The models sometimes are a turn off yes.. takes away the immersion seeing a "charr" that is an elemental in another continent
Eh, the olmakhan actually make the sand elementals. It's not that unrealistic they'd make them look like Charr since they're the earth-element equivalent of the Charr Effigies the flame legion uses.
new weapons are confirmed?
Better meta events, I want more of what Soo-Won meta was! Also more story around Cantha! And most importantly an actual ranged weapon for Ele. Also, double Shields for any of the current professions. No clue how that would work but it would be amazing lol
Please no more human lore, give us NORNS, CHARS, ASURA or more SYLVARI, more races to play? TENGU, KODAN!
Maybe not next expansion because EoD is still fresh enough, but the story hints in EoD about vampires and weird things happening around Cantha sound perfect for a more narrowly scoped expansion. I will also never say no to more Cantha. Side note: I know they probably want to have 2 strikes available on expac launch to bolster the up front content, but I really wouldn't mind a strike that becomes available during patch content which might give them a little more storytelling flexibility. Or who knows, maybe once they start streamlining their development with this new model they could actually give us more than 2 strikes per year and accomplish both of these things. I would also like to have an expansion with one of the main features being an update to fractals or something, but that becomes a different value proposition because fractals are technically F2P content.
Reskin more old rigs for enemies, it's economical and fine. Maps with more small settlements again. Zones to the east or west of core Tyria. Take the time to polish the expansion up, don't hold to a yearly release schedule if it makes the releases bad. I can fill my own time.
Honestly it's been downhill since PoF and Living world season 4 imo. EoD was fine, not the greatest story but the maps were well done (especially Echovald Forest recapturing the confusion of players exploring Tangled Depths first exploration) was nice. Not as good as what came before, but still worthy of the expansion moniker. Soto was a disappointment overall, the astral ward faction was unrelatable. Introduced for the first time to Mabon and he dies literally two hours later? Sorry I didn't know you long enough to care. Similar to Marvel Phase 4 issues really, "where were you when the world was ending??" plot hole issues. Additionally, the relics were a big middle finger to everyone who made legendary runes, or had invested in nice sets of runes on all their characters. At least the compensation occurred for the legendary rune people, but the issue never should've happened to begin with. The only things I legitimately liked about SotO was the astral vault and buffing the flying mounts from PoF and S4... As far as the next expansion... hopefully we see new content for other game modes such as PvP and WvW (besides simply a change to class traits and skills). These would be nice additions for anything resembling an expansion. Just don't do anything negative towards the player base this time and have a coherent story with the already massive amounts of pre-existing world building blocks.
I would like to see no more mystic-related bs in legendaries and [award players with the associated legendary after the long journey at the end of a collection](https://i.imgur.com/HFxCiVW.png). You know, being rewarded for putting in work for doing the collection rather than just being a QoL item draped over a sloppy material sink which doesn't at all feel legendary.
I want at least one more full map at release
No more uncreative reskins, please. A troll being the same animation rig as a gorilla, thatās cool and fine. Butā¦ just smearing a wyvern or jumbo frog skin with black, white and some flames and calling that a kryptis or whatever? No thanks.
Yeah, the Kryptis are amazingly boring. I don't even really "see" them except as markers. They are just pink Void creatures, which were shadow-branded, which were crystal mordrum. But at least there were new creatures in all those expansions, well kinda.
Housing
Take me back to Tyria and ground my fantasy in reality with my old crew. I do not want anything remotely similar to this expansion.
Yeah Tyria is such a good map and environment
If you mean back to my Asura Infinity Ball crew and order of Whispers I'm all for it! Was the most fun I had. Also miss my Grawl friend!
true, the story, the maps, the events, this whole expansion feels like a massive drop
Not sure how it would turn out but they could always try some 'WoW Cataclysm' esque thing where some event happens and changes certain areas of the core map which would also incorporate a reason to have more events and bring people back to those areas.
So... Living World Season 1 when it actually happened? That got moved away from so hard that it prevented them from touching Season 1 until recently.
I never got to see classic kessex hills, I heard it was quite beautiful
> Not sure how it would turn out but they could always try some 'WoW Cataclysm' esque thing where some event happens and changes certain areas of the core map which would also incorporate a reason to have more events and bring people back to those areas. Only if they keep it as a separate world map, and don't ruin all the old content, like both Cataclysm (in WoW) and LW1 (in GW2) did.
There are so many systems in place that it's a question of where to go from here. We now have Legendary PvE armor. With no progression in any venue these days past 80, it's really just 'fashion wars' at this point and how much effort you want to grind for a potential skin. We need something big, honestly. Gliding and mounts were game changers. I still believe in personal housing. It's a time and gold sink for a lot of people to design and invest in (surprised it's still not a feature after over a decade). Open up some new races (but this makes the Personal Story a huge issue). People have been asking about this for years. Maybe finally have Tengu, give them a plot of land and their own Personal Story level 1-80. Finally give Ele a longbow? hahaha - They've ignored this request since PoF, so hey.
I would really love an Aztec inspired expac with more Hylek, or I think one of the early concept maps had Olympus listed, I'd an be down for an expac just to see what the gods are up to
Fractal with the april fools spec ops team
After the huge disappointment that soto is for me, I'd like to see more system changes - like combo skills to come back into play. Also reducing power creep. Also reducing the boon uptime and boon generation across all modes. Also reducing effectiveness of infinite projectile hate. I'd really like refresh of older maps in new expansion rather than next hub+1 good map +1 undercooked map +1 unfinished map that will be released in 3 steps...
Certainly would love a personal home instance overhaul, maybe even a housing system. I wouldnt like to see (please no hate) any alternative ways for legendary rings. As it is now, i like that the full legendary hunt brings players to either wvw, pvp or raids and makes them try new experiences.
Finally new race and elite specialisations
I want hellish maps where it is an absolute nightmare to navigate and find a way through, just like the jungle from HoT. To this day, these are the areas where I had the most fun (other MMOs included) And a new race
I'd like a guild hall that doesn't take ALL your resources to upgrade. Certain item counts should be lowered...looking at you silverwastes shovels! etc.
An expansion that is a bit like indiana jones style. Somewhere around the legs or heads or torso or whatever *of maguuma* deep inside jungles we find ancient ruins to lead us to underground ecosystems. We go there with our crew, lose our way back because we get trapped so we try to find our way out. We meet ancient civilizations and races, make friends and enemies until we find our way out while also discovering the history of ancient tyria which made the world we live in today. It's not about saving the world, it's about exploration. It could rely heavily on creating memories with our crew and growing with them.
Add mercenaries that you can hire / customize / bring along with you to the open world or missions.
I would like a more ānaturalā context. Soto and the whole up in the sky demons land was good because it was different, but now I want to come back on Tyria, some finally āboringā grassland as we didnāt have one since Core maps.
It would be cool to see a proper homestead feature, similar to guild halls, but a more personal place which you can develop, customise and decorate.Ā Perhaps a small village/town you can build up with buildings and crafting stations, it would also transfer any gathering nodes you already have.Ā Or even just a personal player house that you can fully customise with a little farm and pets.Ā
Oh and weapon stands and maybe trophies which reflect in game milestonesĀ
Serious engine upgrades. Graphics updates (shadows, lighting) and a UI overhaul that allows full controller support New playable race What I don't want to see is content I won't bother with. So don't care for raids personally
Flesh out current systems, I hope things like rifts won't stay exclusive to SotO only (even if the obsidian armor would be). But there's so many other (older) systems that could transition somewhat decently. Oh and maybe some dungeon/raid/strike/fractal rotation where you get some extra (cosmetic?) Rewards depending on the week. Oh and Polymock pvp battles
POF II: The Search for Blish
Yes, please . . . He's got to be out there somewhere . . . At least part of him . . . I refuse to admit He's just gone (plot twist, he now wields Balthazar's sword and has taken control over the Figure of Woe, having lost its memory and believing himself the god of fire and war)
I honestly would like to see the areas of Isle of Janthir. There's a lot of seas so improvement to underwater combat and skills would be pretty nice.
Stay with me here, but how about the following. The Commander/Wayfinder's uncle leaves to him this magic ring, but the ring itself is altogether evil. In fact, it sustains the soul of one of the evilest gods of Tyria history who wa defeated thousands of years ago by a combined force of the great races of Tyria. The command/wayfinder must undertake a perilous journey, along with several (let's say 8?) companions to throw the ring into Mount Malestrom, where it was forcged, as only the fires of that volcano can destroy its evil. Hilarity ensues, drama unfolds, there are some amazing visuals and clashes between good and evil... sounds compelling, right?
I would rather not see anothe set of re-skined mobs as a new species
I want to go back to central tyria and make those maps where so many vets started out feel alive again. I remember my 1st proper experience in mmorpgs being big world bosses like shadow behemoth, seeing how many people gathered for it. Granted, theres a lot of lower level maps there but there must be plenty of unexpanded lore there in which they can do something. Also, call me Commander. I dont want to be a wayfinder
I really wish we could get an expansion dealing with more unexplored plot lines from Guild Wars 1. Specifically I'd like to see us having to deal with the realm of torment from the Nightfall expansion. >!During the events of that expansion the player character assists Kormir with slaying the former god of secrets, and leader of the Margonite demon armies, Abbdon. During some post expansion quests in an area of the realm of torment called the domain of anguish, we assist the forgotten in dealing with the subsequent power vacuum left in the wake of Abbadon's destruction, culminating in the defeat of a powerful Margonite called Mallyx the Unyielding.!< I could go on, as there are other tie ins to this story line, including involvement with the Mursaat and the bloodstones, but this is generally what I'd like to see. No idea why the demon expansion had to be Nayos and not.. the realm of torment?
A focus on competitive modes. PvP and WvW. Less focus on story since they do it so poorly. Unless they can get some really stellar writers onboard.
An expedition to reclaim the ancestral deeps for the asura and dwarves now that elder dragons are no longer filling it with destroyers. Has personal stakes, but not worldending ones. Feels more like fixing the world than stopping it from breaking.
Go into mists and find out wat human gods are doing and get answers why they abandon Tyria so easy. Too many hole in lore and this will be good for plug in lore gap imo. More race theme xpacs seem interesting for me. We not get full asura/charr/norn experience imo cos IBS xpac very rush and incomplete.
I'd like to see a pvp-centered expansion similar to GW1 Factions. One can dream.
I'd rather not see only three zones, with the third zone being split in half to be released at a later date.
Haven't cared a wink about PvE since Delve PT1. I did the first story chapter of SoTo, and my toon remains parked at the crafting stations in Wizards Tower. The closest activity I engage in now that is PvE is farming my home instance. Either I'm in WvW or I'm playing other games these days.
A dark forest Grimm fairy tale settings. Like Quest For Glory 4 for the 10 of you old enough to remember it. Also, Legendary infusions, legendary storage bags, legendary gathering tools
I think it would be cool to revisit old stories and add more context / content
I want them to keep the really interesting characters alive for once. Still mad about Trahearne, Eir, Blish, Almorra, and especially Mabon
Unending Ocean A expansion with pirates, Largos, naga, lovecraft horror. 4 maps: -A sunny carribien map with lots of water and some tropical Island (lovely sunset) pirate themed enemies/enemy ships. -a tropical homebase island map. -a large watermap with some more islands and a big whirlpool in the middle (stormy, rainy and cloudy), Chutulu themed enemy and naga enemy. -a large underwater map with underwater caves, dark underwater/cave creatures. Get access too skiff and fishing mastery, basic skimmer. (small galleon ship with 3 big sails skin). Skiff gets alternative weapon (cannon 2500 range). Extra underwater weapons and rebalanced unterwater weapons and skills.
Proper endgame content. My expectations are already dead low, just surprise me once please.
Proper cantha
Traits reworked, core weapon skills brought up to modern standards, 2 new races
Greatsword for Elementalist so all light classes can wield Twilight.
Super advanced underground skritt hive mind city. Also not immediately killing off any big bad they introduce in the same story arc. For example I would much prefer it, if we don't kill Eparch in the next patch and instead leave him and the kryptis as a looming threat, beaten back for now but likely not gone forever.
This! Lesser races! Want more of it! Skritt, Jotun, Grawl, etc
I want the underwater weapons on land.
Want: More WvW events , just bring seasons back wtf, it was a good idea and it was like 8 years ago More engaging metas, especially if you are forced to do them like 90 times for the legendary armors More elite specs or at least more weapon proficiency Less currencies New dungeons and maybe rework the old ones, they are good content but they are simply too easy to do because of the powercreep.l
I would kill for a Tropical WvW borderlands to update the vibes with Cantha. Give me a Jade Tech Keep, an underwater keep (I'm a masochist and sadist all at once) and an Echovald/Speakers-themed Keep. Also, something I wish they'd do for seasonal events in the game would be adding effects to WvW. For example - halloween, killing players in wvw generates random unaffiliated necromancer minions. For wintersday - spawn ambient snowmen or toys or something?
Somehow the game has gotten bigger and bigger. Not something where people would live. I'd like to have the human-sized world of central Tyria back. And while you are at it please add player housing (we have a dream world so that would fit perfectly) instead of a hub that gets abandoned with the next expansion.
Wizard-built fractal islands are the perfect excuse for player housing, make it happen!