Teapot told me to write a comment or he'd make me "GG and stay dead".

HoT metas are straight fire, it's the only metas I went to do just for fun and not the rewards.

I think to Sneb’s point of “these aren’t fun”, SOTO missed the demographics of GW2. Some people want more world bosses where you Zerg 100 people and everyone stands still pressing 1. Other people want another dragons end, dragons stand, or Chak Garent. There’s some people that want VB night or Octovine- but SOTO is none of those. It’s too hard (too much health on bosses, too many mechanics) for the World Boss mob. It’s too linear for the Octovine or VB night gang (meaning- you have to follow these events and end at this boss, period). It’s not complex enough for people who want multiple lanes- it has One path in each meta, and that’s just kinda boring. You need multiple “lanes” and each one needs to have a really distinct and important job to make a good meta (I think? I don’t understand the public on this)

Currently replaying PoF for some achievements and the quality difference compared to SoTO is significant. PoF just overall feels a much higher quality and polished experience. I would even say the map events are more fun too. This does make me unsure about the whole yearly expansion model moving forward. I think SoTO is a drop in overall quality compared to EoD too.

What they should have done is have a part 1 collection for the spear on launch for the open world. Then when the raid hits, boom second collection -> go do the raid

Call current dungeons Legacy dungeons and rename fractals to dungeons. Also, please just rename strikes into something raid related. Like a flash raid or something along those lines. In general lets just keep names of content simplified :)

I don't hear people discuss it a lot but I REALLY wished they talked about how Gamey SOTO was. All maps and metas were there purely for a function mechanical and the gameplay felt constrained and designed. It was never immersive. From Wii-fit Genius game to the orbs throwing and then going back and forth from islands, grinding rifts etc... It was clear a game and not a very great designed one... Encounters were mostly lackluster.

Not having to stop and fill up a progress bar twice per map would be cool.

I am excited to use Sneb's affiliate link to preorder Janthir Wilds after I see some vaseline-soaked roleplay :D

The one opportunity they had for interesting mechanics was on the Amnytas meta and they flubbed it. They had some interesting ideas about splitting up to summon the golems, then each mechanic is brought back to deal with the tentacles. The problem is, once one person does the mechanic the tentacles are just a bag of hit points and the mechanic is never anything more different than hitting your SAK. They even have a DDR phase for the summoning ritual, but instead of having an actual challenge you sit there for two minutes pressing 6, waiting, 7, waiting, 8, waiting, 9 waiting, 0, waiting, then repeat. To add insult to injury, the burn phase is just you hitting the boss’ mouth as it just sits there. And when you do finish your burn, you get on your skyscale, throw 10 fireballs, wait 20 seconds, throw a 1-2 more fireballs. There is zero danger at this point since the golem tanks all the bosses eye rays. then the event ends and you get a cut scene of a golem posing? None of this feels earned. Now take this fight to a new level. The DDR phase has actual randomness and each channel is 1 second or less. You have Group A running DDR while the rest of the players have to take on the tentacles because the DDR players can’t defend themselves and if you don’t DPS the tentacles hard enough, they knock down the DDR players. Then when you summon the big golem instead of just standing there it breaks a barrier that opens up the burn phase. However, the boss isn’t static and fires its eye rays at the players similar to Harvest Temple. At first it’s too much to burn well unless you’re good, so most players start on sky scales, unload all 10, then drop.

Man, I really feel like you raid lovers are setting yourself up for disappointment here. This isn't going to be a contained area, with its own story and such. I have a feeling this will be more of a longform strike, than a raid in the style of the wings.

I think from the start legendary gear should have require you to unlock a specific stat set or rune/sigil before you can use it infinitely. Something simple like first having to acquire an exotic insignia or salvage a rune/sigil to unlock that for your legendary wardrobe.

Ahhhhh right in the middle of my workday. Thank you Teapot, I now have entertainment 🙌🏻

The most complex thing in GW2 is scrolling through guildwiki figuring out what Mats u need next to build ur legendary, whereas the combat and -skillsystem has gotten bland after all those years.

Mount in combat discussion remind me of Gorseval when DPS wasn't that high and you had to do the gliding phase to dodge the megadeath aoe ! I'm disappointed you never do that anymore on this boss because, damn ! That's so sick to jump off the cliff at the last second and come back right after the explosion on the platform

I started with GW1 before it was called profecies. i bought everything and played everything, up until now. SOTO was so disappointing to me that I will wait for reviews and what people say before I consider janthir wilds.

I actually think the addition of what the spears are offering to be rather dangerous. Primarily because they hold more then the other weapon options, If Spear turns out to be rather bad for some classes, its going to feel real bad While ur friends are having fun to have to use the core more "Basic" Weapons comparitively. the More High Designed New weapons get without any going bad to update the old runs the risk of shooting one self in foot realistically. The quantity of stuff being left behind is getting scarier each launch, and i really hope at some point Anet come back to enhance these core weapons and bring them uptoo par. Spears do look REALLY good though, theres no denying this.

snebsor : "Its Okaaaaaay, its Okaaaaay"

Playing GW2 is like dating a girl with multiple personality disorder. You wake up, she cuddles you, gives you a cup of coffee and makes breakfast. Then she gives you a lunchbox before you depart for work. The fruits have the shape of a heart, and "I love you" is written on a handkerchief. Then you step in your car and find out she put a dead hamster in your exgaust pipe and the head of a racoon on your dashboard.

Anet has to unify some systems asap. I wish Anet would scrap the fractal levelling system, and replace it with just tiers instead. Essentially creating an endless scaling dungeon system, fit for both casuals and hardcore players (like rifts in Diablo3). For Fractals and Dungeons: Add the dungeons and fractal maps themselves into the new system, and let us choose the difficulty for each run. This way, we won't be confined to 100 levels, limited map selection, etc. For Raids: Raids would be split into boss fights with their pre-event/escort if there is one. creating multiple strikes from each raid. So entering such a system would look like this: 1. Interact with the Location/Portal/NPC/UI to enter. 2. Choose the encounter: Raid Boss or Dungeon *Boss Fights would have 3 difficulties, Normal, Challange, and Legendary. *Dungeons would have an endless scaling tier-based difficulty. 3. Choices: Boss Fight: you choose which boss you want to encounter, and then choose one of the 3 difficulties mentioned above. Dungeon: you choose a map, (Cliffside Fractal, Nightmare Fractal, Ascalonian Catacombs, Volcanic Fractal, Twilight Arbor, etc.) and then select the Tier to fight through. *Tier1: should be the easiest with 0 agony requirement, feels like the vanilla dungeons. *Tier2: 10 agony res required *Tier3: 20 agony res required and so on... (The challenge modes would be moved into a separate encounter, where the Boss Fights are). This type of selection and endless tiers would ensure that the current agony resists on gear won't be hit too hard, as most fractal lovers have 150+ agony res. In such a system, 150 agony res would be enough to run Tier15 fractals. This system would also make the higher and rarer agony resistance infusions useful, as there are limited infusion slots, and higher levels of infusion would add up to more agony. Creating a goal for hardcore climbers.

Fractals overlap with both strikes and dungeons. They can't seem to pick a route. Mae Trin Boss would make a fun Strike. Love to see them push these in a more dungeon/event vibe. Strikes themselves could turn into one of two things to fit beside raids. Either a repeatable "harder" Story boss mode like EoD. Or a weekly rotation of hologram raid bosses. Like week 1 is Vale. Week 2 Sloth. Just rewarding shards and reusing those fights for people who haven't the time to do a full raid. Gives some training and keeps the strike pool a bit fresher with rotations. Overall I love the open world idea for raid bosses. Hopefully it works out positively. I think strikes are still useful to gw2 as quick fire encounters and can work alongside raids.

The point about mount integretion in the content of the game I agree is a really lacking part of the game. For instance, the roller beetle is very cool. Roller beetle racing imo is sorta fine but does not fulfill the potential the mount has to provide a unique and engaging experience. Give me a piece of instanced content where me and my party members have to chase down something really fast, or run from something fucking crazy like an instakill avalanche, or give us a scenario where we go in a big baddie's house and we get to the main control room and hear "self destruct sequence activated" and we gotta mount the fuck up and belt out of there with shit blowing up all around us, falling and crashing obstacles. And I think something really important as well for integration is making the places that mounts are being used in conducive to the use of that mount. Another roller beetle example: have the players going downhill a lot of the time, have ramps, have it so where there are obstacles but we never have to actually stop with enough skill expression, maybe even temporarily increase the speed cap in a special case for some lore reason. And that's just a symptom of a bigger issue i think with gw2 in that an experience is not just how an area looks + story writing + music. Not that those things aren't working for them but they are to an extent. It's just that creating unique experiences mechanically and situationally, requiring the player to engage with aspects of their array of tools (not just skills and mounts, pick anything) in new and memorable and engaging and FUN ways, is another aspect of gw2 that I want to believe arenanet has the potential to perform much better at. Potentially even better than they've ever done before, and I think it's a bit of a doomer mindset that a game company can't continue to innovate in those ways over time. And of course there's the "if you expect X out of Y well you're just gonna be disappointed bc Y has to appease the shareholders and if they did X then they wouldn't be optimizing time for profit" Idgaf dude, I will just be disappointed. I think it's way more interesting and honestly self-respecting to speculate/hope for what the game could be, rather than abandoning criticism for the sake of maintaining illusion of contentment with the game or "being realistic". All that said, I do quite enjoy and have hundreds of hours in guild wars 2 and want to see it do better. It's doing okay I suppose right now but it could be more.

Honestly, i want fewer metas, but better metas. Give us some maps with a lot if smaller fun events and hearts, and have the expac end with One proper meta

UNDERWATER expansion with UNDERWATER masteries, improved Skimmer abilities when? itll be a great follow on from the amphibious nature of the spear UNDERWATER to ground. the Sky has been mastered, lets master UNDERWATER combat (may make underwater WvW, PvP and the water fractals sooo good!) ;)

I fully agree on the boringness of fighting kryptis. They all have this drab grey/red/brown color scheme that’s dumped across all of them. The skeletons look cool but there’s no variety in the visual designs. Not to mention just like the void they are all very clearly models we’ve seen before.

37:17 & 41:50 - Sneb nails the key point where SOTO glaringly fell short: the.gameplay.has.to.be.fun. Everything else is secondary. The event design - including the mob design - just did not work: kryptis are mostly boring enemies, skyscale battles are tedious and unfun, bosses that are static or HP sponges are tedious, etc. I seem to recall that only a small handful of open world events were actually enjoyable. I can't put my finger on what it is about the events and mobs, but SOTO greatly amplified the negative aspects of encounters and mob design that were detectable in EOD. Why are chak, mordrem, flame legion, awakened, forged, etc. better (i.e., more fun) enemies than kryptis? I don't know, but I think that needs to be elucidated if Janthir is to be successful.

"Raids".

TREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEING

I liked SotO story b4 Nayos, it was too thin later, cause in first part I feel we had more + books in story instances. Also liked the first map, tho the travel things rly made me want to have laylimes and such unlocked. Did not like the 1st meta, was meh, Eparch meta feels liked missed oportunity to finish stron cause the start of meta was ok imo

I don't get this "arena nets plans for raids and strikes aren't clear" mind set. It's unreasonable to think that a new raid wing can come with every new mini expansion - not if the raid wing should be good. So in an expac where there is no raid wing, you can have new strikes.

36:42 i did too, the farm was so aweful and boring...

Legys from before, Aurora and Vision where hard core greinds aswell

I HATE underwater gameplay in GW2... I know it's not going away... but a Dolphin mount might turn me into a underwater enjoyer! 🐬🐬🐬

people not wanting to do mechanics in favor or just blasting is so mmo culture lol. People will only do wow mechanics if it will wipe them otherwise

tunneling

the chat is unreadable...

That big ol' rant about stuff not being fun just before 1:19:35 from sneb is basically why I gave up playing. Events take ages to do because people arent putting any effort in and it felt like my time was being wasted constantly. To the point where why even bother trying to top the arcdps meter myself? It'll maybe save a couple of minutes at dragonstorm or whatever, but instead I could put my attention on my other monitor and save myself the effort entirely. And if I'm not even paying any attention to the game, then why bother actually playing it in the first place? So I stopped. That, and the lack of a journey that was mentioned much earlier, like everything boils down to efficient gold farming and that's it, is what's bothered me the most about GW2 content for literally years. Zero to hero was pretty much just a gold grind for a few hundred hours after the initial gear setup. SOTO looking extremely piecemeal from the first bits of advertising also told me all I needed to know to not bother buying it, was basically the final straw in getting me to put the game down. Nothing in JW so far has made me consider coming back, so I'll just live vicariously through you guys making content for now.

Most people dont understand something about the Dagda strike. This is fight is the first 10 man content that a new player will do if he buy SotO. In reality, the purpose of this strike is not to be entertaining, it is a "gear check" boss (or mechanical check boss). He is trivial because he needs to be like that. He check if people can do CC, dps (this is why this boss is long), not walking in the red, cleaving adds, stack in the green, spread when numbers, ... This boss do his job very well but the problem is that there is only 2 boss and it is very difficult to satisfy veteran and new player with that situation. That's why they are going to raid again with 3 boss instead of 2. And the first or second boss of the wing 8 will be another Dagda for the same reason

I didn't purchase or play SOTO. Janthir might make me come back.

Can we sign a petition for Anet to hire Teapot?

Yeah sorry Sneb I'm completely the opposite. I don't want to talk to anyone. I want the ability to play as a single player in a world where other people exist. I like seeing other people on the map. I don't like being required to coordinate a group to achieve my tasks. Don't make me talk to anyone, ever, frankly.

I just can't watch this with snebz in it . . .

really disappointed they are pivoting back to raids, not enough players do them (and I say this as someone who does them), its 99% wasted content for most players. strikes are accessible, as are fractals, they should have sorted out those.A big problem with SotO metas is the porting round map, thats just annoying, it makes it not feel like a cohesive event. also the illegibility of fights, 90% of the time you have no idea whats going on, you cant see the aoe, the mechanics, youjust stand there, sometimes die, have no idea what from, then ress and repeat In fact, just writing this, I think thats it, SotO events and content are illegible, so you dont care. Soo Won, I know whats going on, its readable, all the good metas you know whats happening, its clear, easy or hard is irrelevant, you feel involved.

Stop adding CMs, people dont have 3 hours for daily CMs every day.