Thanks for the video. Lowland Shore is definitely one of my favorite maps now. It's the first time I actually just *feel* like hanging around the NPCs just for the immersive fun of it. I really hope they do more with Janthir Syntri.
Agreed. I think it would be a big improvement to have the side stories in the actual story journal, it would also open the door for replayability. I think some of the best lore is tucked away in the side stories, which is quite unfortunate.
i appreciate this content. i feel as you are the only gw2 video maker that did an honest review. I feel most content on gw2 make it always seem so perfect that the game is flawless and every expansion and all the content is a masterpiece way worth the money and time spent.
I mean it’s $25 usd. That’s really cheap. Like it would take a minimum wage worker 4 hours to get the money to buy this expansion, and the story alone has at least 4 hours. I think some of the critiques she has for the second zone are a little nitpicked given the lore of the zone.
@@wisteriaotaku for me it is less so about the money more so about the content i enjoy. I enjoy WVW and PVP activities which i believe the game heavily promotes with dailys and weeklies yet never sees updates. I wait a year for the expansion and as a player who likes a specific aspect of the game i get nothing.
I'm on the last 2 story quests in Janthir. I have gotten my Bearkin War Helm. I have completed the meta. At no point in this expansion have I felt bored or that I'm just filling up a progress bar. It didn't have the slog of everything be about grinding rifts. Don't get me wrong , I see where they were going with rifts but the execution wasn't there. The way they handled hearts and adding heart ranks is pretty cool. The New armor is cool looking. I think there's a set for everyone. The one off pieces are also nice. Adding the Falling Star the way they did was a nice fresh addition as well but that's not so much about Janthir. I'll end this by saying the world is stunning.
Overall I find JW to be a huge improvement over SotO but it does have some annoying issues. I like most of the spears but some are buggy, some like Mirage, Engi (those 2 to a lesser extent) and Ele I have a lot of problems with. Not a fan of the constant use of warclaw abilities in fights personally, I wish it was less frequent because it becomes tedious IMO, not a fan pf rot and the huge puddles. But I enjoyed almost everything else. The story was a lot more enjoyable for me than SotO but they need to let us skip if we want to, or at least on repeat playthroughs on alts. Those monologues are painful on alts. P.S. I agree about the side quests. Some of those hints were as obscure as side quests in Elden Ring.
The Janthir Syntri meta kinda needs some better rewards. I think part of the reason participation fell off so quickly is you don't really get all that much for beating what is, while by no means the hardest meta out there, still a reasonably tough one that requires a high number of players with good coordination and event-mechanics knowledge.
I love the dialog aswell the first time, but not looking into doing it a second time I must admit. They should add a skip dialog mechanic, like in the early days when we had this cinematic dialog UI
I am actually glad the side stories are structured the way they are. MMO quest design is not a good thing, nor something to aspire to. Questing should never boil down to mindlessly walking between quest markers. I'm not saying there's not room for improvement, but that improvement should not take the form of removing a need for actual gameplay and critical thinking. I think what would be cool is a hint system that allows you to unlock more and more specific hints (maybe even to the point of an actual quest marker) for completing certain objectives related to the quest.
I too like a bit of an adventure, but when the side stories feel like such a scavenger hunt where you need to use outside tools (wiki) to finish them, I find that to be a major downside. I'd bet most people use the wiki anyways, to finish them. So, instead of taking players away from the game, have a better system where it is not necessary to tab out. MMO quest design is actually a really powerful tool when used properly -- and in the case of GW2 they are utilizing it more wisely. Having more dialogue infused into the quests and making them closely tied to the main narrative gives the quests more substance.
@@KROOF I completely agree and this is why GW2 is always doing fine but never a top dog. Its narration and story telling is very bad in comparison to many other MMO by far.. The main quest is ok but I am more interested in the whole world and that is where the game fails incredibly. It does nothing to make the player fall in love with the world as a whole sure there a few chars you will like in the main story but its never done well enough to explain to the player more than the primary issue. There are many reasons WoW is so loved and same thing with Elder Scrolls and Lord of The Rings cause it helps and shows you the issues of the WHOLE world not just the current one. That is why GW2 as a whole in terms of narration fails to keep an audience for more than a single lvl 80.
The hearts on the Syntri map are exhausting to complete, especially the fist and the one in the west. There's not much to do to fill them up unless you wait around for events and their range is too short so many events fall out of them. The one of the west must require 100 Mursat relics as each gives a tiny sliver of progress.
i'm with you nikki, i like the way quests are structured into the achievs panel, its like every other facet of the game: it is there, you don't have to do it, if you want to it'll reward you in one way or another. There are a lot of people who doesn't wanna know the game story, or help a kodan find its lover, or be in a heist with some animals, a lot of players just wanna be gamers, so do not make an effort to people who will not consume this kind of content. and tbh, its not even called quests, they are side stories, they are there to complement the player's experience not dictate it...
Two weeks in. Gotta say that I agree that Lowlands is much more enjoyable. Haven’t played much on the second map. Did map completion and story through episode 8, participated in the Meta then noticed that the Meta was failing in subsequent battles due to lack of players and that was in the first week! So back to Lowlands to get more masteries and achievements. Just finished star crossed lovers and ascended spear quests. Thanks for your comments. Spot on!
@@KROOF Hmm usually the older sets don't age particularly well, I know some of the weapon textures look quite awful but this one doesn't look that bad.
sorry for the completely out of topic question, but how was your asura able to dodge normally backwards as a mirage at @4:51 ? that really caught me off guard @@
Ok seriously why is nobody bothered by the fact that there is no endgame content at launch? No strikes and both the raid and convergence are coming only in 3 months. Not adding everything at launch is ok, but nothing, really? There were room for some fun strikes so it sucks that they did not do any.
So far, I only have one critic of the JW exp., the SE and SW Hearts in Janthir Syntri are a pain to complete. I really enjoy having Housing in-game but my lack of imagination just don't "allow" me to use/develop it properly.
I agree on the difficulty of the side quests. I really wanted and tried to do them on my own without the wiki but at some point it was way too vague, especially when you have to go back to the core map. Do they expect me to know every corner of the map and every npc lol ?? So yeah I eventually finished them with the wiki which is a shame honestly. I wish they would balanced it with some more approachable (not necessarily easier) side quests because they are a very good part of the xpac imo.
GW2 has a good story which is completely ruined by unfun puzzles, and unfair/punishing game mechanics...it's like they are trying to humiliate the player. There is nothing I want/need in this expansion. Thank you for helping me to decide!
Looks like Game Design Team 1 is trying to do as much as humanly possible for the game living up to expectations and Game Design Team 2 is doing the second map and nullifying the benefits of Team 1. Based on the observations of how bipolar these two maps seem to be.
So mindlessly running around from heart to heart is the key? I do not agree at all it lacks any way to bring the player on board through Narrative.. It has great combat and pvp and the wvw is fun but in terms of PvE GW2 lacks very heavily in that regard.. I do think a mix of its heart type content and some ol school quests dialog would be a good mix. I will say this as you go from zone to zone in GW2 try to figure out what is going on in the area through its heart content while your running around and leveling up.. You will get 0 answers and instead you end up running around endlessly doing tasks JUST LIKE NORMAL QUESTING however in GW2 there is no reason for it.. You have no narrative as to why and you just end up doing it cause its there instead.. A mix of the two would be good tough.
Honestly hearts And all the WoW type quests in MMo suck lol... Gw2 at least has events And good maps to Explore thats why Its open world Is great not cause of quests lol
Honestly I feel the whole heart content in GW2 is terrible at keeping any sort of narrative going or explaining why.. You just bump into things and do things and it does make the world feel alive but then you end up doing these things for no reason at all with no clue whats going on. I do think a mix of ol school questing and dialog and the heart content would be a good mix but my issues is the lack of any narrative out side of the main quests in GW2.. I do love the combat and pvp and wvw though and to be honest that is all I do anytime I am on cause there is no real reason to do anything else cause the world does not incentivize story telling in any way outside of the initial main quest in the areas.
What happened to "show, don't tell!"? I don't like exposition all that much, neither in games nor in movies or books. It's more interesting to tell a minimalist story, with details able to be discovered if you look for it.
Well, they are showing. Instead of saying "Yeah the world leaders had a council meeting -- these are the results:..." they actually have us a part of the meetings and decision making process. "Show, don't tell" doesn't really equate to any quantity of dialogue or action, it is very dependent on what the beat of the stories are about.
I completely disagree.. I like narrative to drive my want to explore the world.. Not having any at all is a completely bad idea. Matter of fact GW2 fails heavily cause there is no story to keep you loving the world... Instead you got a main story that is ok a best and that is it.. Outside of that narration there is nothing that shows and explains to the player the world and its people and what each of them are dealing with and going through and it fails to make fans stick around and instead turns into a lvl 80 pvp lobby or the players quit and go back to WoW or Eso or wherever they came from.. A story is what keeps fans fans for 20+ years not just the game itself.. A great example is Lord of The Rings.
As someone who routinely gets distracted during dialogue, I can say there is tons of "show don't tell" and even better for a video game "play don't show", I have no idea what the story of SotO is, but the story of Janthir Wilds was crystal clear despite my lack of focus.
@@MrCarlWax I love you. I do not know how I missed that. I finished this late at night, uploaded it, and have come back here on occasion and never clicked.
Thanks for the video. Lowland Shore is definitely one of my favorite maps now. It's the first time I actually just *feel* like hanging around the NPCs just for the immersive fun of it. I really hope they do more with Janthir Syntri.
Syntri deserves a bit more love.
1st map - 🐻 ❤️
2nd map - pomegranate picker
Agreed. I think it would be a big improvement to have the side stories in the actual story journal, it would also open the door for replayability.
I think some of the best lore is tucked away in the side stories, which is quite unfortunate.
i appreciate this content. i feel as you are the only gw2 video maker that did an honest review. I feel most content on gw2 make it always seem so perfect that the game is flawless and every expansion and all the content is a masterpiece way worth the money and time spent.
I mean it’s $25 usd. That’s really cheap. Like it would take a minimum wage worker 4 hours to get the money to buy this expansion, and the story alone has at least 4 hours. I think some of the critiques she has for the second zone are a little nitpicked given the lore of the zone.
@@wisteriaotaku for me it is less so about the money more so about the content i enjoy. I enjoy WVW and PVP activities which i believe the game heavily promotes with dailys and weeklies yet never sees updates. I wait a year for the expansion and as a player who likes a specific aspect of the game i get nothing.
I'm on the last 2 story quests in Janthir. I have gotten my Bearkin War Helm. I have completed the meta. At no point in this expansion have I felt bored or that I'm just filling up a progress bar. It didn't have the slog of everything be about grinding rifts. Don't get me wrong , I see where they were going with rifts but the execution wasn't there. The way they handled hearts and adding heart ranks is pretty cool. The New armor is cool looking. I think there's a set for everyone. The one off pieces are also nice. Adding the Falling Star the way they did was a nice fresh addition as well but that's not so much about Janthir. I'll end this by saying the world is stunning.
Overall I find JW to be a huge improvement over SotO but it does have some annoying issues. I like most of the spears but some are buggy, some like Mirage, Engi (those 2 to a lesser extent) and Ele I have a lot of problems with. Not a fan of the constant use of warclaw abilities in fights personally, I wish it was less frequent because it becomes tedious IMO, not a fan pf rot and the huge puddles. But I enjoyed almost everything else. The story was a lot more enjoyable for me than SotO but they need to let us skip if we want to, or at least on repeat playthroughs on alts. Those monologues are painful on alts.
P.S. I agree about the side quests. Some of those hints were as obscure as side quests in Elden Ring.
New GW2 Player, enjoyed the review. What class do you main?
Main Guardian :D
Welcome welcome to the game!
@@KROOF Thanks for the reply! what is it about the guardian that you enjoy so much?
The Janthir Syntri meta kinda needs some better rewards. I think part of the reason participation fell off so quickly is you don't really get all that much for beating what is, while by no means the hardest meta out there, still a reasonably tough one that requires a high number of players with good coordination and event-mechanics knowledge.
An Amalgamated Gemstone would be nice.
I love the dialog aswell the first time, but not looking into doing it a second time I must admit. They should add a skip dialog mechanic, like in the early days when we had this cinematic dialog UI
I am actually glad the side stories are structured the way they are. MMO quest design is not a good thing, nor something to aspire to. Questing should never boil down to mindlessly walking between quest markers. I'm not saying there's not room for improvement, but that improvement should not take the form of removing a need for actual gameplay and critical thinking. I think what would be cool is a hint system that allows you to unlock more and more specific hints (maybe even to the point of an actual quest marker) for completing certain objectives related to the quest.
I too like a bit of an adventure, but when the side stories feel like such a scavenger hunt where you need to use outside tools (wiki) to finish them, I find that to be a major downside. I'd bet most people use the wiki anyways, to finish them. So, instead of taking players away from the game, have a better system where it is not necessary to tab out.
MMO quest design is actually a really powerful tool when used properly -- and in the case of GW2 they are utilizing it more wisely. Having more dialogue infused into the quests and making them closely tied to the main narrative gives the quests more substance.
@@KROOF I completely agree and this is why GW2 is always doing fine but never a top dog. Its narration and story telling is very bad in comparison to many other MMO by far.. The main quest is ok but I am more interested in the whole world and that is where the game fails incredibly. It does nothing to make the player fall in love with the world as a whole sure there a few chars you will like in the main story but its never done well enough to explain to the player more than the primary issue. There are many reasons WoW is so loved and same thing with Elder Scrolls and Lord of The Rings cause it helps and shows you the issues of the WHOLE world not just the current one. That is why GW2 as a whole in terms of narration fails to keep an audience for more than a single lvl 80.
The hearts on the Syntri map are exhausting to complete, especially the fist and the one in the west. There's not much to do to fill them up unless you wait around for events and their range is too short so many events fall out of them. The one of the west must require 100 Mursat relics as each gives a tiny sliver of progress.
@@PrincessJaetara I really don't see what this has to do with what I said in my comment lol
i'm with you nikki, i like the way quests are structured into the achievs panel, its like every other facet of the game: it is there, you don't have to do it, if you want to it'll reward you in one way or another. There are a lot of people who doesn't wanna know the game story, or help a kodan find its lover, or be in a heist with some animals, a lot of players just wanna be gamers, so do not make an effort to people who will not consume this kind of content.
and tbh, its not even called quests, they are side stories, they are there to complement the player's experience not dictate it...
Two weeks in. Gotta say that I agree that Lowlands is much more enjoyable. Haven’t played much on the second map. Did map completion and story through episode 8, participated in the Meta then noticed that the Meta was failing in subsequent battles due to lack of players and that was in the first week! So back to Lowlands to get more masteries and achievements. Just finished star crossed lovers and ascended spear quests. Thanks for your comments. Spot on!
What armor is that in the intro? Been looking for a "normal looking" "standard issue" soldier armor but there are very few.
Standard scale armor you get from leveling I believe, and Human cultural armor.
@@KROOF Hmm usually the older sets don't age particularly well, I know some of the weapon textures look quite awful but this one doesn't look that bad.
@@Jmvars Oh correction: The Banded set.
sorry for the completely out of topic question, but how was your asura able to dodge normally backwards as a mirage at @4:51 ? that really caught me off guard @@
@@RafaelContemplacion That’s the Mirage ability: “Sands Through Glass”
Ok seriously why is nobody bothered by the fact that there is no endgame content at launch? No strikes and both the raid and convergence are coming only in 3 months. Not adding everything at launch is ok, but nothing, really? There were room for some fun strikes so it sucks that they did not do any.
Yeah, I would have killed for a dungeon on each map.
Because they rip you off for $ . Game is on life support
So far, I only have one critic of the JW exp., the SE and SW Hearts in Janthir Syntri are a pain to complete.
I really enjoy having Housing in-game but my lack of imagination just don't "allow" me to use/develop it properly.
I agree on the difficulty of the side quests. I really wanted and tried to do them on my own without the wiki but at some point it was way too vague, especially when you have to go back to the core map. Do they expect me to know every corner of the map and every npc lol ??
So yeah I eventually finished them with the wiki which is a shame honestly.
I wish they would balanced it with some more approachable (not necessarily easier) side quests because they are a very good part of the xpac imo.
GW2 has a good story which is completely ruined by unfun puzzles, and unfair/punishing game mechanics...it's like they are trying to humiliate the player. There is nothing I want/need in this expansion. Thank you for helping me to decide!
I really appreciate how you lip synced your script to the commanders /talk
Fair criticisms
Looks like Game Design Team 1 is trying to do as much as humanly possible for the game living up to expectations and Game Design Team 2 is doing the second map and nullifying the benefits of Team 1. Based on the observations of how bipolar these two maps seem to be.
Just finished War Within. ArenaNet is eons beyond, the mindless, formulaic nonsense from Blizz. Janthir Wilds is a triumph
So mindlessly running around from heart to heart is the key? I do not agree at all it lacks any way to bring the player on board through Narrative.. It has great combat and pvp and the wvw is fun but in terms of PvE GW2 lacks very heavily in that regard.. I do think a mix of its heart type content and some ol school quests dialog would be a good mix. I will say this as you go from zone to zone in GW2 try to figure out what is going on in the area through its heart content while your running around and leveling up.. You will get 0 answers and instead you end up running around endlessly doing tasks JUST LIKE NORMAL QUESTING however in GW2 there is no reason for it.. You have no narrative as to why and you just end up doing it cause its there instead.. A mix of the two would be good tough.
Honestly hearts And all the WoW type quests in MMo suck lol... Gw2 at least has events And good maps to Explore thats why Its open world Is great not cause of quests lol
Honestly I feel the whole heart content in GW2 is terrible at keeping any sort of narrative going or explaining why.. You just bump into things and do things and it does make the world feel alive but then you end up doing these things for no reason at all with no clue whats going on. I do think a mix of ol school questing and dialog and the heart content would be a good mix but my issues is the lack of any narrative out side of the main quests in GW2.. I do love the combat and pvp and wvw though and to be honest that is all I do anytime I am on cause there is no real reason to do anything else cause the world does not incentivize story telling in any way outside of the initial main quest in the areas.
What happened to "show, don't tell!"? I don't like exposition all that much, neither in games nor in movies or books. It's more interesting to tell a minimalist story, with details able to be discovered if you look for it.
Well, they are showing. Instead of saying "Yeah the world leaders had a council meeting -- these are the results:..." they actually have us a part of the meetings and decision making process. "Show, don't tell" doesn't really equate to any quantity of dialogue or action, it is very dependent on what the beat of the stories are about.
I completely disagree.. I like narrative to drive my want to explore the world.. Not having any at all is a completely bad idea. Matter of fact GW2 fails heavily cause there is no story to keep you loving the world... Instead you got a main story that is ok a best and that is it.. Outside of that narration there is nothing that shows and explains to the player the world and its people and what each of them are dealing with and going through and it fails to make fans stick around and instead turns into a lvl 80 pvp lobby or the players quit and go back to WoW or Eso or wherever they came from.. A story is what keeps fans fans for 20+ years not just the game itself.. A great example is Lord of The Rings.
As someone who routinely gets distracted during dialogue, I can say there is tons of "show don't tell" and even better for a video game "play don't show", I have no idea what the story of SotO is, but the story of Janthir Wilds was crystal clear despite my lack of focus.
I don't like being this person but.
Its*
@@MrCarlWax I love you. I do not know how I missed that. I finished this late at night, uploaded it, and have come back here on occasion and never clicked.
It's*. How about you have the intelligence yourself before being 'that person' :)
I am an man of action, there too much talking for me.