I truly appreciate the segment about the music - it's so underappreciated, but incredible in this expansion. SOTO's ost is tense, filled with layered instrumentations, polytonality and synth. It captures the enigmatic atmosphere of regions presenting both beauty and strangeness of Wizards and Kryptis. 🎵I love the callback of Nightfall's leitmotif in "The Beast Emerges" (it begins at 3: 49); 🎵the use of fujara in "Memories Forgotten" is a tribute to the war between the Dwarves and Primordus; 🎵the demonic chanting is an amazing addition to many of the tracks, especially "Isgarren the Curator"; 🎵and all those epic synth beat drops, like in "Malaise" or "The Bloodied Lord" are so satisfying. :) 🎵the music pieces of cinematics are all very fitting and filled with beautiful emotions The whole soundtrack, like EoD's, involves a lot of incredible artists and composers aiming to push the boundries of music in video games and music in general, and both EoD and SOTO's osts show that Maclaine isn't afraid to experiment and create original, beautiful music with his teams. Thank you for the great review, Teapot!
SotO's encounter design also leaned heavily on damage sponge health pools, which isn't fun to chew through. Even mobs take ages to kill, especially when other players start scaling up the events. And in a game where most players also struggle to deal adequate damage, that scaling system on damage-sponge enemies proved to be pretty horrible for both rifts and the Eparch meta. Even *dead* players scale the enemies up.
I don't think being health sponge alone is the issue. The issue is not that enemies live long, it's that they don't have many unique stages. I would not mind boss taking time to kill if gameplay was less repetitive.
@@lorkano It's not just bosses that have the issue. I find it even more noticeable on mobs. Part of what makes Skywatch meta such a slog is having to chew through the endless health pools of the trash that spawn on the platforms, especially phase one east. Rifts get the same way with scaling.
Is it worth it if it’s going to be as consistently bad as SOTO? I mean really, what an absolutely dreadful expansion. “Phoning it in” doesn’t even capture how awful it was.
BANGER video. Great summary of your experience and your perspective, well-structured, precise and concise. I think it serves well as a summary for anyone thinking about buying the expansion or anyone unsure what to think (or at least unsure how to articulate their feelings), having played through the expac. I honestly wish someone at Anet would see this and actually take your praises and criticisms to heart.
Glad you put your take on the expansion. I'll share a moment which i thought connected me with veterans: suddenly heard an incredible song playing on Droknar's Light during meta and immediatelly was filled with awe. I asked in map chat "Hey what's the name of the epic song that plays here ?" and veterans responded with "Oh trust me look for it in the Soundtrack". I listened to the entire soundtrack, relearned i love Eagle Flight and Attack on Tarir, and still didn't find the song... then it hit me what they meant: Guild Wars 1 soundtrack. I had my palms in my face when i found it was the dwarves theme song because i honestly didn't try searching the most obvious option lol
My thoughts: Story: 1st half was cool but rushed. 2nd half was confusing and dragged out. Maps: Skywatch and Amnytas were very cool. Nayos was super boring. Color palette and design were just boring. Content: Strikes were serviceable. ToF was good. CO was below average. Systems: Mastery was forgettable unless you are going for PvE legendaries. New weapons were excellent. QoL changes were welcome to see.
Everyone praises Amnytas and I don't super get it. 10:26 is really promising, but when you get to the buildings and the greener islands, they're just barren? Sure there's some token libraries thrown about but its generally 100ft tall halls that are completely empty, just screaming "Do gameplay here, that's its only purpose." Go check out the priory in the core game or even the academy in vabbi when they still remembered buildings have a point. Strictly in terms of environmental flow (not aesthetic), its even worse than New Kaineng
man thank you for calling out the lameness of the visuals during the "big eparch reveal" at the end of the story!! I felt the same, I was just confused over what I was supposed to be looking at, it did not land for me at all.
I think Anet devs need to learn how to tell a real short story. A story that can be satisfying even though it is short. As a book reader I know such things exist so they need to go to short story writing school or something. I am not a writer, but maybe SotO would have been better with just the first 2 maps, dealing with the wizards and the mess they made. With the demons as an increasing annoyance. Then the next expansion could have been the demons with better character development. And I agree it should have not been so friendly. Maybe more emphasis that you're only helping them to get rid of Eparch who wants to invade Tyria and eat everyone. The other demons should not be sympathetic but helping them is helping to defeat Eparch.
The initial experience of getting smashed by the incredibly designed Cerus hard carried the expansion for me. Great video as always, excited for your content with JW soon.
High quality video. Fair criticism. The reason I follow Teapot is because hes not afraid to criticize something he loves, and when he does its fair as he truly wants the game to succeed.
To compare GW2 encounters to FF14; in FF14 there are rarely phase changes on normal difficulty encounters, particularly in dungeons. Instead the most common thing to happen is the boss will show you single mechanics once and then it will start pairing them together and harder normal mode encounters will even do a third follow up attack once the pair of mechanics finish. It's simple on paper but some pairings can do some really cursed things that challenge you to adapt and this make the fight more engaging. To give an example; Dagda has a half room damage over time effect that lasts all of like... 4 seconds... but what if she overlapped that with well... ANYTHING; suddenly half the room is unavailable for dealing with the mechanic and you gotta think about where you're going beyond "out" with it. It certainly would have done wonders for her theme of being the Wizard of the Stars if half the room had stars raining on it....
I love GW2 . But this may as well have been named Secrets of the Trashmobs. Environment team saved the day, as always. Hopefully Janthir Wilds has some more enemy variety and interesting encounters.
Now that i played through the storyline of the game, of SoTo, i wanted to give my little perspective. There seemed to be more the developers wanted to do, as they reward you for going through all the different characters dialogue while in the wizards tower so they can give you exposition. One of the key features of the expansion was the ability to unlock being able to use the different weapons the different exalted specs allowed uniquely to be usable generally. And the method you unlock this feature is via a seemingly random library where you have to interact with different books without there having been any clue nor reason to be in such library in the second zone where if you do not specifically seek it you would never do the achievement. And i like the flavor that each book does unlock a different "profession" ability to use all the applicable weapons. For example, There's a "Special" marker but seemingly nothing associated with it and it's placement is confusing. Then you notice across the same platform your on there's an interactable along with right next to the book with the "special" marker. Interacting with these books will unlock the associated "professions" ability to use the other weapons. if i remember correctly, these two unlock the Warrior and the Elementalist.
How more elite specs are overwhelming for a new player when to even unlock them, said player needs to reach level 80, and reach expansion zones, at this point, they have a good chunk of experience in the game lol
I feel like with each new release we are promised cut corners for more content, yet we end up being underdelivered anyway. Also grinding just 2 maps on release gave me ptsd
re: 41:35 I kinda like that convergence final boss fights take place all over the map. I appreciate any excuse to mount up and put my riding skills to a test. That said, I think it would be a great QoL update for Anet to drop a portal under Zojja that players can piggyback. That would 1) encourage players to take that opportunity to deposit essences, 2) Give players an opt out for the mount traversal every 25%, and 3) add another layer of feeling like Zojja is actively participating in the battle beyond rezing characters.
Rifts could have maybe somewhat worked and here’s my fix Have Rifts attached also to already existing events in core tyria and beyond. Every now and again when doing specific events you may experience a change in the event where npcs and enemies are possessed and instead of normal enemies you get cryptis mobs from time to time And for champion mobs and above that would appear during the event you get demonic possessed versions of that mob It would take some coat of paint for some models but it allows players to revisit maps and events again with some new refreshing twists Have the players have the ability to toggle the event and it’s difficulty with the tier options used for rift hunting when the event is active during a certain time window from start to midway
Great review, I agree with pretty much everything. It's a shame about the story because I actually really enjoyed most of the missions that came out on-launch.
I played the final meta before I finished the story. I totally expected the end fight being Eparch, a seemingly weak stick figure of a demon, transforming into that gluttonous monster in a cool cutscene or something, with an epic end fight where you and your allies frantically tried to keep him from eating his own subjects while beating the crap out of him, but alas, it wasn't. What a missed opportunity!
Btw, if they did a "phantom expansion" were they would finance a reworking of core games activities and features, including (for example) improving SotO encounters, or adding proper metas to PoF, or adding difficulties to dungeons, or extending Fractal levels, or adding CM and LM to all previous raids, I would 100% drop 100€, even yearly
Guild wars 2 has always nailed the worldbuilding and showcasing the beauty of the world to me. Skywatch and the wizard’s tower succeeded in that regard imo but it all went downhill after which had repercusions on most things: fractal, story, strikes and open world. I would have excused all the other flaws and mishaps if that remained present as it is always the strongest point across all expansions, unfortunately, it wasn’t there for me. Also, we got Zojja back for like 1/3 of the story lol like why. Anyways, as you said, cautiously optimistic for Janthir Wilds 🙏🏼
First off a positive note: ANet wanted to try something different and they did. I will give them credit for at least being willing to try and see how it turns out. Unfortunately this attempt fell flat. Having enemies that just sit there and take hits for a half hour are not fun at all. Having a boss with a billion HP that takes forever to kill is not "challenging", its tedious, boring and lazy. ANet has had a record of fumbling the ball at the last minute with bosses and this is no different. They need to do better in the future because right now, if this keeps up, Janthir Wilds is going to be my last expansion and I've been playing since beta. I'm just glad I grinded out full legendary armor before JW came out so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
I have a lot of experience with MMOs from OSRS to WoW and ESO and beyond. I've said it before. and I'll say it again. I think content droughts are healthy for a game. both for the playerbase to equalize on the same level for even the most casual of players. and for a development team to refine a cohesive environment for the next update. I think far too much of this video could be summarized as. splitting into four chunks throughout a year doesn't give enough development time or enough time for players to immerse. I think if Anet wants to keep doing once a year expansions. that it would be much better split into 2 release chunks a year instead of 4. could they improve on the 4 releases a year with janthir wilds? absolutely. but I think a fair question is. would it be better to improve a stretched thin release method (that they admitted they had concepts that were too ambitious to fit into) or would it be better to take these lessons and put them into a better release method as well? I've seen far too many MMO's with rushed releases fall flat and by the time it's fixed a chunk of the playerbase has already abandoned it. so I know where I would want them to go. whether they will? who knows. but we can only hope the next time is better
I agree with all of this, plus more critisism from me. - The overuse of the Special Action Key (Specially in Amnytas) with, as a result, the constant bombardement of Tip popups makes me not want to explore Amnytas. - The Skyscale is now a fully pledged AFK minimal effort maximal reward boring piece of ... at meta's - Leyline should never have been introduced for the Griffon, it does not EVER need it, it's pointless. It just shows how little ArenaNet knows themselves about the mechanics of the best mount ingame. I am glad they recognized a lot of their mistakes, and I am also cautiously optimistic about the next one, we'll see what they learned. I sure wish though, that they take more care of content. Going back to content to fix annoyances and mistakes instead of only purely focussing on the new stuff. And there is a lot to fix.
rifts could have been so much better if anet had made the enemies spawn much closer to the rifts and in larger groups then it wouldnt have been so annoying to do. anet already did this on jahai bluffs map, where enemies spawn from portals or something in an event. you cant even use necro aoe pull, since the enemies spawn so far away from eachother. its like anet thought how they could make rifts as annying to do as possible, without time gating it heavily like those meteors in domain of istan.
My thoughts: 1. Maps: Skywatch has a great concept, Amnytas looks stunning & is the best Map for Griffon use in the game. Inner Nayos unfortunately is very boring visually. Overall the males were quite good, but we spent 9 months in the one boring map. 2. Meta Events: Skywatch meta is actually nice - you have to split in different phases (pre-event & main event) & kill enemies at the same time. The collecting orb phase could have been left out though. Amnytas meta is in parts really good (splitting, completing stuff across the map, killing the spire tentacles) but in other parts so so bad (boss is a sponge, we all do yoga for 2 mins). Inner Nayos: Feels disjointed due to the 3 parts. Too long. First 2 metas are actually both good - nothing crazy but nice little fights. The last part starts really nice, then falls off when going to the final boss, who is again just a sponge that does nothing. 3. Convergences & Rifts: Very subjective. I made the legendary armor & did not enjoy rifting - and I only did the weeklies. Convergences are great ideas & I actually like all the CMs. Pugged them, failed a few times, but got the title and made friends along the way. Very reminiscent of Dragon Storm - but with possibility to fail. Great utilization of GW2’s large scale battles from Metas. I’m converging & I enjoy it. 4. Story: nothing to add here. Starts off good, then falls off a cliff & lacks depth completely. Which is unfortunate because we had a good setup. And the story steps that were added are too short. 5. Instanced content: I don’t mind CO normal mode - easy, but you still need to do some mechanics. CO cm was a let down. ToF on the other hand is a great fight in all 3 difficulties & it’s great that going forward they’ll continue with these different modes - FINALLY! The Fractal I’m split about. I’m not a big fan of the mini-game that they force onto us - I want to fight in my dungeons please. Reusing 2 old bosses also seems low effort. The final fight I actually kinda enjoy - admittedly only after they nerfed the health, but hey at least they saw their mistake & did it. 6. Other things: QoL updates were great, wizards vault especially. I don’t care that much about the weapon proficiency - mainly because it barely affected the classes I play - but it’s a welcome addition to get more choice. Relics may be a bit unbalanced but still a great change, gives more freedom. Overall: The main issue just seems to be that ArenaNet doesn’t have the resources to push out enough content for quarterly releases. And to still push stuff out they have taken some shortcuts here - with the story & with the fractal, also with the monotonous Rifts. And next expac does not look like it will be much more. 1 Raid wing for 1 year & 1 fractal just isn’t that much. But I am looking forward on them expanding on convergences & I hope they’ll nail the fights in the same way they nailed ToF. And as long as they don’t make meta bosses immovable objects that just stand there, and instead look at the great EoD metas, I do have hopes for the meta events and maps.
So did I enjoy the expansion? Yes. But that was because it was hard carried by the 1 good strike mission ToF, Convergences CM’s & the wizards vault - which usually didn’t include much content from SoTO. None of the meta events were outstanding in the way that dragons end was & I will likely not be returning to them anytime soon. Overall, ArenaNet didn’t have enough content to keep me engaged the whole year through.
As a veteran player (started back 2012) it is nice to see Anet creating more expacs after a long break. The combat system is just too enjoyable, but there needs to be nice repeatable end game content to make use of it. And it's fine that CM versions have high hp pools, but normal modes especially in fracs should not have 25 million hp (level 25 Eparch on release) or even more. Just imagine a new player without a proper build/gear etc. dealing with that.
32:24 Poor @WorldofEnders lol 51:32 that statement didn't age well, since they're confirmed convergences as of today and not actually open world events. Pretty fair review overall. The biggest problem was those comments about lack of fun gameplay for me, and I was cautious to not buy the expansion when they were initially revealing the lower levels of content before it came out. After seeing that you were pretty much done with it on stream just 2 or 3 days in and were looking for things to actually DO after that, I knew I'd made the right personal choice to skip this one. Unfortunately, SoTO was the one that got me to finally give up on GW2, but I still follow along just to see the story and people's reactions to stuff.
@@hardbrocklife You can be real all you like, but I haven't logged in since before SoTO, I don't and won't own that expansion and JW doesn't interest me at all. This isn't some sort of weird brag, I'm just saying maybe don't make assumptions.
Peitha started out so interesting and threatening and amount to absolutely nothing... They had the opportunity to make such an alien horror society and turned it into a therapy session...
At 7:28 you can see me flying overhead with my blue manticore skyscale! My in game name is Leona27.16 and known as Leantru. I command a nightly reset infusion train every day. We start at ammoon city at reset. Mighty teapot has done a few trains with me in the past and I LOVE TO SEE IT that I am in the video!!!!! LOVE TO SEE IT!!!!!! UNHINGED!!!!! Shoutout to Teapot's editor!!!!!! Great job!
"asset reuse criticism is unwarranted" huge disagree, they do it way too much and the whole idea of it being another reality is just an excuse to reuse the assets, it's extremely cringe.
It’s a fine line but I agree that they’ve gone overboard with it. EoD slapping a Void texture over existing enemies was meh. Making everything in Soto Kryptis all day every day was excessive.
I liked doing a bunch of map completions to make a set of obsidian armor only to do it again for those suffused credits when you could've had it overlap and progress at the same time had they just released both systems at the same time
I don't very often agree with anything you say an don't think your narrative of the game represents much of the community but Hat off to you Mr Teapot that was a very well written and critical look at the expansion an very much enjoyed the video. Your voice over was excellent too (from mobile)
@@MightyTeapot it wasn't ment to be back handed. I just wanted to say the content was very good in the absence of me being a fan. I've rage quit teatime a fair few times 😏
This expan was for "Veteran" players, and I don't mean the 10% who have everything, I mean the people who have played for years who have already started their legendary journey.. Which is great! But the average player doesn't have the funds/time to do a lot of this stuff.. Like I get its not a sprint, but even the new Skyscale isn't cheap to an average player. If someone asks me about Soto I'd likely reccomend it last just due to progression wise.. The content is for later down the line. It's why I'm glad to see the new expan looks like its for everyone.
i wasn't really a fan of the sound track, the only time the sound track peaked my attention was at the end of the wizards tower meta in skywatch it plays the main theme of gw1 eye of the north
This vid should not be on auto play. Was taking a shit on the toilet when this played trough the speakers. Now i got the whole story spoiled to me before i got to clean my ass. FML
I enjoyed EoD, even thou it slapped me in the face with DEI crap all the time. But Soto just felt like a slog to go through. I like bosses and fights in EoD, great music, story was really nice and my only complaint would be lazy approach to npc armors. They were just recycled, old armors looking nothing like the Cantha from GW1. The Soto was painful to play through. I didn't like the writing at all.. And while I almost always explore npcs backgrounds and stories, this one just made skip most of dialogues. The only thing I really enjoyed in Soto was the music. Damn it is nice. Well, new world looks great but the story writing, killed my interest. In comparison, demons in GW1 were unique, interesting, with nice visuals and animations. You knew they were different, evil and alien. Soto demons are just fleshy reskins that feel hollow and lazy.
I'm amazed anet moved away from the dialogue in the personal story (where you have the black bars and you can skip dialogue line by line). And instead we have this terrible dialogue where you're just standing there as they say their lines... very slowly... with no option to skip if you accidentally hit the wrong chat option.
One thing I want to point out is how horrendous the performance was on the first 2 maps -- they clearly pushed the engine too far and didn't spend enough time optimizing. I'm really hoping Janthir Wilds isn't in a similar spot, because it's honestly unacceptable.
So the main good thing was the weapons as the story makes no sense and the scope of the threat dont feel threatening at all, none of the main characters are interesting or not in tune with the world shown heck the reason they destroy memory dont hold up at all . And the inability of your character to question what the wizards are doing is just grating there is so many times any thinking character would go no wait hold up why !? And boy do closing rifts get boring fast .. Metas are fine , not great but fine. The reused assets are so heavy that it looks copy-pasted into each other at times down to how the "Demons" only look like they got a store skin.
Personally did not enjoy SOTO all that much compared to the other releases. Mostly because the maps were not fun to explore and the meta events became boring to complete very quickly, although they were a cool spectacle the first time through. Most of all I did not enjoy ANY of the Skyscale content or mid-air combat. I don’t regret buying or playing it, but I hope Janthir is a lot different
This xpack ruined the game for me. The intro stealth quest just ruined the whole game for me as I didn't want to pull a single other character through that BS to enter that xpack's area. I haven't played GW2 since about a week after this xpack's launch.
I don’t know if you’re trolling, but there’s a scroll that will teleport you to the wizard’s tower that you can use for alt characters. Same as the living world zones’ scrolls.
SoTo is the reason why I now wait for the release, check in streams if the game is somewhat interesting, NOT FULL OF BUGS ( I know you can't have 0 bugs), and if the game is not a disappointment, then I will give it a try, if not, I will not waste my money in a work in progress game like SoTo was.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm converging
I'm blasting
I'm rifting
I truly appreciate the segment about the music - it's so underappreciated, but incredible in this expansion.
SOTO's ost is tense, filled with layered instrumentations, polytonality and synth. It captures the enigmatic atmosphere of regions presenting both beauty and strangeness of Wizards and Kryptis.
🎵I love the callback of Nightfall's leitmotif in "The Beast Emerges" (it begins at 3: 49);
🎵the use of fujara in "Memories Forgotten" is a tribute to the war between the Dwarves and Primordus;
🎵the demonic chanting is an amazing addition to many of the tracks, especially "Isgarren the Curator";
🎵and all those epic synth beat drops, like in "Malaise" or "The Bloodied Lord" are so satisfying. :)
🎵the music pieces of cinematics are all very fitting and filled with beautiful emotions
The whole soundtrack, like EoD's, involves a lot of incredible artists and composers aiming to push the boundries of music in video games and music in general, and both EoD and SOTO's osts show that Maclaine isn't afraid to experiment and create original, beautiful music with his teams.
Thank you for the great review, Teapot!
I feel sorry for players who play GW2 with the music turned off.
This is your best video to date. I feel like you had some great points and i hope the team at arenanet sees this too.
SotO's encounter design also leaned heavily on damage sponge health pools, which isn't fun to chew through. Even mobs take ages to kill, especially when other players start scaling up the events. And in a game where most players also struggle to deal adequate damage, that scaling system on damage-sponge enemies proved to be pretty horrible for both rifts and the Eparch meta. Even *dead* players scale the enemies up.
This 100% trying to do anything by yourself in inner nayos is so tedious cause even the small mobs have insane hp
I don't think being health sponge alone is the issue. The issue is not that enemies live long, it's that they don't have many unique stages.
I would not mind boss taking time to kill if gameplay was less repetitive.
The sponge design is FULLY a result of the Boon system.
@@lorkano It's not just bosses that have the issue. I find it even more noticeable on mobs. Part of what makes Skywatch meta such a slog is having to chew through the endless health pools of the trash that spawn on the platforms, especially phase one east. Rifts get the same way with scaling.
@@cloudcleaver23 I personally don't have issues with normal mobs.
Teapot DM'd me and said, "Sneb, if you don't leave a comment on my new video I will NEVER teach NA players how to DPS."
@mightyteapot Please, help us.
This expansion felt like a glorified living world season but if it lets them produce more consistent content I'm here for it
Is it worth it if it’s going to be as consistently bad as SOTO?
I mean really, what an absolutely dreadful expansion. “Phoning it in” doesn’t even capture how awful it was.
@@synapse913 I don't really play the story so maybe that was bad, overall I think soto was fine, just uninspiring
masterclass edit on the music section
Spectacular retrospective, Teapot! Hit all the nails on the head, and very well structured and edited
BANGER video. Great summary of your experience and your perspective, well-structured, precise and concise. I think it serves well as a summary for anyone thinking about buying the expansion or anyone unsure what to think (or at least unsure how to articulate their feelings), having played through the expac.
I honestly wish someone at Anet would see this and actually take your praises and criticisms to heart.
i guess i didnt realize how hard the soundtrack slapped
Oh yea
Great video I love high effort reviews like this !
The Charr sleeping next to the rift is exactly how I feel when I do rifts 😂
man the editing is top notch especially at 6:38 hahaha boooy you really out done Anet themselves in hyping up that character 10/10
Incredibly well done video!
This was a GREAT overview of the whole expansion, awesome work mate
Glad you put your take on the expansion. I'll share a moment which i thought connected me with veterans: suddenly heard an incredible song playing on Droknar's Light during meta and immediatelly was filled with awe. I asked in map chat "Hey what's the name of the epic song that plays here ?" and veterans responded with "Oh trust me look for it in the Soundtrack".
I listened to the entire soundtrack, relearned i love Eagle Flight and Attack on Tarir, and still didn't find the song... then it hit me what they meant: Guild Wars 1 soundtrack. I had my palms in my face when i found it was the dwarves theme song because i honestly didn't try searching the most obvious option lol
Ooooh, I love this format!
My thoughts:
Story: 1st half was cool but rushed. 2nd half was confusing and dragged out.
Maps: Skywatch and Amnytas were very cool. Nayos was super boring. Color palette and design were just boring.
Content: Strikes were serviceable. ToF was good. CO was below average.
Systems: Mastery was forgettable unless you are going for PvE legendaries. New weapons were excellent. QoL changes were welcome to see.
Everyone praises Amnytas and I don't super get it. 10:26 is really promising, but when you get to the buildings and the greener islands, they're just barren? Sure there's some token libraries thrown about but its generally 100ft tall halls that are completely empty, just screaming "Do gameplay here, that's its only purpose." Go check out the priory in the core game or even the academy in vabbi when they still remembered buildings have a point. Strictly in terms of environmental flow (not aesthetic), its even worse than New Kaineng
This is a superb, high quality video, Teapot! Great writing, editing, and insights.
@7:10 the christmas skritt running from cerus with you😂
Thank you for calling out the music! That's something so often missing from reviews, but it makes such a big impression on player experience!
Excellent video. I really felt the green bar content that was ubiquitous this expansion.
man thank you for calling out the lameness of the visuals during the "big eparch reveal" at the end of the story!! I felt the same, I was just confused over what I was supposed to be looking at, it did not land for me at all.
Great review Teapot. Thanks for continuing with Gw2, I’m an enjoyer of sorts.
I think Anet devs need to learn how to tell a real short story. A story that can be satisfying even though it is short. As a book reader I know such things exist so they need to go to short story writing school or something. I am not a writer, but maybe SotO would have been better with just the first 2 maps, dealing with the wizards and the mess they made. With the demons as an increasing annoyance. Then the next expansion could have been the demons with better character development. And I agree it should have not been so friendly. Maybe more emphasis that you're only helping them to get rid of Eparch who wants to invade Tyria and eat everyone. The other demons should not be sympathetic but helping them is helping to defeat Eparch.
The initial experience of getting smashed by the incredibly designed Cerus hard carried the expansion for me. Great video as always, excited for your content with JW soon.
Now thats quality content!
Good to see some good MightyTeapot content on youtube. Great video.
High quality video. Fair criticism.
The reason I follow Teapot is because hes not afraid to criticize something he loves, and when he does its fair as he truly wants the game to succeed.
To compare GW2 encounters to FF14; in FF14 there are rarely phase changes on normal difficulty encounters, particularly in dungeons. Instead the most common thing to happen is the boss will show you single mechanics once and then it will start pairing them together and harder normal mode encounters will even do a third follow up attack once the pair of mechanics finish. It's simple on paper but some pairings can do some really cursed things that challenge you to adapt and this make the fight more engaging.
To give an example; Dagda has a half room damage over time effect that lasts all of like... 4 seconds... but what if she overlapped that with well... ANYTHING; suddenly half the room is unavailable for dealing with the mechanic and you gotta think about where you're going beyond "out" with it. It certainly would have done wonders for her theme of being the Wizard of the Stars if half the room had stars raining on it....
I love GW2 . But this may as well have been named Secrets of the Trashmobs. Environment team saved the day, as always. Hopefully Janthir Wilds has some more enemy variety and interesting encounters.
This was spectacular and spot on.
I can't believe how unbelievably right you are about SotO!
Now that i played through the storyline of the game, of SoTo, i wanted to give my little perspective. There seemed to be more the developers wanted to do, as they reward you for going through all the different characters dialogue while in the wizards tower so they can give you exposition. One of the key features of the expansion was the ability to unlock being able to use the different weapons the different exalted specs allowed uniquely to be usable generally. And the method you unlock this feature is via a seemingly random library where you have to interact with different books without there having been any clue nor reason to be in such library in the second zone where if you do not specifically seek it you would never do the achievement. And i like the flavor that each book does unlock a different "profession" ability to use all the applicable weapons. For example, There's a "Special" marker but seemingly nothing associated with it and it's placement is confusing. Then you notice across the same platform your on there's an interactable along with right next to the book with the "special" marker. Interacting with these books will unlock the associated "professions" ability to use the other weapons. if i remember correctly, these two unlock the Warrior and the Elementalist.
How more elite specs are overwhelming for a new player when to even unlock them, said player needs to reach level 80, and reach expansion zones, at this point, they have a good chunk of experience in the game lol
I feel like with each new release we are promised cut corners for more content, yet we end up being underdelivered anyway. Also grinding just 2 maps on release gave me ptsd
You’re unbelievably right about everything
Did you edit this yourself? Really well done!
re: 41:35 I kinda like that convergence final boss fights take place all over the map. I appreciate any excuse to mount up and put my riding skills to a test. That said, I think it would be a great QoL update for Anet to drop a portal under Zojja that players can piggyback. That would 1) encourage players to take that opportunity to deposit essences, 2) Give players an opt out for the mount traversal every 25%, and 3) add another layer of feeling like Zojja is actively participating in the battle beyond rezing characters.
High quality review!
Thanks for this. Now I don't feel bad for missing this exp.
marvel writing has irreparably damaged an entire generation of writers
"Cerus can move; he just doesn't want to." Relatable tbh.
Rifts could have maybe somewhat worked and here’s my fix
Have Rifts attached also to already existing events in core tyria and beyond. Every now and again when doing specific events you may experience a change in the event where npcs and enemies are possessed and instead of normal enemies you get cryptis mobs from time to time
And for champion mobs and above that would appear during the event you get demonic possessed versions of that mob
It would take some coat of paint for some models but it allows players to revisit maps and events again with some new refreshing twists
Have the players have the ability to toggle the event and it’s difficulty with the tier options used for rift hunting when the event is active during a certain time window from start to midway
It was good to GORMANDIZIE for a bit, but now it's time to MIND THE GAP.
Great review, I agree with pretty much everything. It's a shame about the story because I actually really enjoyed most of the missions that came out on-launch.
I played the final meta before I finished the story. I totally expected the end fight being Eparch, a seemingly weak stick figure of a demon, transforming into that gluttonous monster in a cool cutscene or something, with an epic end fight where you and your allies frantically tried to keep him from eating his own subjects while beating the crap out of him, but alas, it wasn't. What a missed opportunity!
You are unbelievably right about everything
Btw, if they did a "phantom expansion" were they would finance a reworking of core games activities and features, including (for example) improving SotO encounters, or adding proper metas to PoF, or adding difficulties to dungeons, or extending Fractal levels, or adding CM and LM to all previous raids, I would 100% drop 100€, even yearly
Thanks! What an amazing video. Thanks
Guild wars 2 has always nailed the worldbuilding and showcasing the beauty of the world to me. Skywatch and the wizard’s tower succeeded in that regard imo but it all went downhill after which had repercusions on most things: fractal, story, strikes and open world. I would have excused all the other flaws and mishaps if that remained present as it is always the strongest point across all expansions, unfortunately, it wasn’t there for me. Also, we got Zojja back for like 1/3 of the story lol like why. Anyways, as you said, cautiously optimistic for Janthir Wilds 🙏🏼
First off a positive note:
ANet wanted to try something different and they did. I will give them credit for at least being willing to try and see how it turns out.
Unfortunately this attempt fell flat. Having enemies that just sit there and take hits for a half hour are not fun at all. Having a boss with a billion HP that takes forever to kill is not "challenging", its tedious, boring and lazy.
ANet has had a record of fumbling the ball at the last minute with bosses and this is no different. They need to do better in the future because right now, if this keeps up, Janthir Wilds is going to be my last expansion and I've been playing since beta. I'm just glad I grinded out full legendary armor before JW came out so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
Wow...I can't believe how right you were about everything!
Also. I'm Riiiiiifting! I'm gonna Rift!
Superb content! :)
I have a lot of experience with MMOs from OSRS to WoW and ESO and beyond. I've said it before. and I'll say it again. I think content droughts are healthy for a game. both for the playerbase to equalize on the same level for even the most casual of players. and for a development team to refine a cohesive environment for the next update. I think far too much of this video could be summarized as. splitting into four chunks throughout a year doesn't give enough development time or enough time for players to immerse. I think if Anet wants to keep doing once a year expansions. that it would be much better split into 2 release chunks a year instead of 4.
could they improve on the 4 releases a year with janthir wilds? absolutely. but I think a fair question is. would it be better to improve a stretched thin release method (that they admitted they had concepts that were too ambitious to fit into) or would it be better to take these lessons and put them into a better release method as well? I've seen far too many MMO's with rushed releases fall flat and by the time it's fixed a chunk of the playerbase has already abandoned it. so I know where I would want them to go. whether they will? who knows. but we can only hope the next time is better
I agree with all of this, plus more critisism from me.
- The overuse of the Special Action Key (Specially in Amnytas) with, as a result, the constant bombardement of Tip popups makes me not want to explore Amnytas.
- The Skyscale is now a fully pledged AFK minimal effort maximal reward boring piece of ... at meta's
- Leyline should never have been introduced for the Griffon, it does not EVER need it, it's pointless. It just shows how little ArenaNet knows themselves about the mechanics of the best mount ingame.
I am glad they recognized a lot of their mistakes, and I am also cautiously optimistic about the next one, we'll see what they learned.
I sure wish though, that they take more care of content. Going back to content to fix annoyances and mistakes instead of only purely focussing on the new stuff. And there is a lot to fix.
Nice review, hopefully the next expac will be better and they learn from this.
Good review Teapot :)
rifts could have been so much better if anet had made the enemies spawn much closer to the rifts and in larger groups then it wouldnt have been so annoying to do. anet already did this on jahai bluffs map, where enemies spawn from portals or something in an event. you cant even use necro aoe pull, since the enemies spawn so far away from eachother.
its like anet thought how they could make rifts as annying to do as possible, without time gating it heavily like those meteors in domain of istan.
My thoughts:
1. Maps: Skywatch has a great concept, Amnytas looks stunning & is the best Map for Griffon use in the game. Inner Nayos unfortunately is very boring visually. Overall the males were quite good, but we spent 9 months in the one boring map.
2. Meta Events: Skywatch meta is actually nice - you have to split in different phases (pre-event & main event) & kill enemies at the same time. The collecting orb phase could have been left out though. Amnytas meta is in parts really good (splitting, completing stuff across the map, killing the spire tentacles) but in other parts so so bad (boss is a sponge, we all do yoga for 2 mins). Inner Nayos: Feels disjointed due to the 3 parts. Too long. First 2 metas are actually both good - nothing crazy but nice little fights. The last part starts really nice, then falls off when going to the final boss, who is again just a sponge that does nothing.
3. Convergences & Rifts: Very subjective. I made the legendary armor & did not enjoy rifting - and I only did the weeklies. Convergences are great ideas & I actually like all the CMs. Pugged them, failed a few times, but got the title and made friends along the way. Very reminiscent of Dragon Storm - but with possibility to fail. Great utilization of GW2’s large scale battles from Metas. I’m converging & I enjoy it.
4. Story: nothing to add here. Starts off good, then falls off a cliff & lacks depth completely. Which is unfortunate because we had a good setup. And the story steps that were added are too short.
5. Instanced content: I don’t mind CO normal mode - easy, but you still need to do some mechanics. CO cm was a let down. ToF on the other hand is a great fight in all 3 difficulties & it’s great that going forward they’ll continue with these different modes - FINALLY! The Fractal I’m split about. I’m not a big fan of the mini-game that they force onto us - I want to fight in my dungeons please. Reusing 2 old bosses also seems low effort. The final fight I actually kinda enjoy - admittedly only after they nerfed the health, but hey at least they saw their mistake & did it.
6. Other things: QoL updates were great, wizards vault especially. I don’t care that much about the weapon proficiency - mainly because it barely affected the classes I play - but it’s a welcome addition to get more choice. Relics may be a bit unbalanced but still a great change, gives more freedom.
Overall: The main issue just seems to be that ArenaNet doesn’t have the resources to push out enough content for quarterly releases. And to still push stuff out they have taken some shortcuts here - with the story & with the fractal, also with the monotonous Rifts. And next expac does not look like it will be much more. 1 Raid wing for 1 year & 1 fractal just isn’t that much. But I am looking forward on them expanding on convergences & I hope they’ll nail the fights in the same way they nailed ToF. And as long as they don’t make meta bosses immovable objects that just stand there, and instead look at the great EoD metas, I do have hopes for the meta events and maps.
So did I enjoy the expansion? Yes. But that was because it was hard carried by the 1 good strike mission ToF, Convergences CM’s & the wizards vault - which usually didn’t include much content from SoTO. None of the meta events were outstanding in the way that dragons end was & I will likely not be returning to them anytime soon. Overall, ArenaNet didn’t have enough content to keep me engaged the whole year through.
I didn't even know you could select what you wanted to do in the astral ward. This really need to be clearer to new player.
As a veteran player (started back 2012) it is nice to see Anet creating more expacs after a long break. The combat system is just too enjoyable, but there needs to be nice repeatable end game content to make use of it. And it's fine that CM versions have high hp pools, but normal modes especially in fracs should not have 25 million hp (level 25 Eparch on release) or even more. Just imagine a new player without a proper build/gear etc. dealing with that.
32:24 Poor @WorldofEnders lol
51:32 that statement didn't age well, since they're confirmed convergences as of today and not actually open world events.
Pretty fair review overall. The biggest problem was those comments about lack of fun gameplay for me, and I was cautious to not buy the expansion when they were initially revealing the lower levels of content before it came out. After seeing that you were pretty much done with it on stream just 2 or 3 days in and were looking for things to actually DO after that, I knew I'd made the right personal choice to skip this one. Unfortunately, SoTO was the one that got me to finally give up on GW2, but I still follow along just to see the story and people's reactions to stuff.
You'll be back, and you'll buy the expansion. Let's be real.
@@hardbrocklife You can be real all you like, but I haven't logged in since before SoTO, I don't and won't own that expansion and JW doesn't interest me at all. This isn't some sort of weird brag, I'm just saying maybe don't make assumptions.
They've made Lonely Tower so I have every faith about wing 8! :)
Peitha started out so interesting and threatening and amount to absolutely nothing... They had the opportunity to make such an alien horror society and turned it into a therapy session...
At 7:28 you can see me flying overhead with my blue manticore skyscale! My in game name is Leona27.16 and known as Leantru. I command a nightly reset infusion train every day. We start at ammoon city at reset. Mighty teapot has done a few trains with me in the past and I LOVE TO SEE IT that I am in the video!!!!! LOVE TO SEE IT!!!!!! UNHINGED!!!!! Shoutout to Teapot's editor!!!!!! Great job!
LET'S GOOOOO
"asset reuse criticism is unwarranted" huge disagree, they do it way too much and the whole idea of it being another reality is just an excuse to reuse the assets, it's extremely cringe.
It’s a fine line but I agree that they’ve gone overboard with it. EoD slapping a Void texture over existing enemies was meh. Making everything in Soto Kryptis all day every day was excessive.
It's a little sad but one of my favorite things about the expansion is the new Wizard gobbler giving me a way to use some of my trash materials.
I loved SoTo! It kept me fed with good game to play all year, and I am so excited for more next expansion!
Copium
I agree with most of this but yikes were you rough about Cosmic observatory. It was definitely disconnected but not that bad.
Cone
Come
I liked doing a bunch of map completions to make a set of obsidian armor only to do it again for those suffused credits when you could've had it overlap and progress at the same time had they just released both systems at the same time
Good video
I don't very often agree with anything you say an don't think your narrative of the game represents much of the community but Hat off to you Mr Teapot that was a very well written and critical look at the expansion an very much enjoyed the video. Your voice over was excellent too (from mobile)
It's a fun backhanded compliment but I do want to make one thing clear; I have never claimed to represent anyone but myself.
@@MightyTeapot it wasn't ment to be back handed. I just wanted to say the content was very good in the absence of me being a fan. I've rage quit teatime a fair few times 😏
This expan was for "Veteran" players, and I don't mean the 10% who have everything, I mean the people who have played for years who have already started their legendary journey.. Which is great! But the average player doesn't have the funds/time to do a lot of this stuff.. Like I get its not a sprint, but even the new Skyscale isn't cheap to an average player. If someone asks me about Soto I'd likely reccomend it last just due to progression wise.. The content is for later down the line. It's why I'm glad to see the new expan looks like its for everyone.
i wasn't really a fan of the sound track, the only time the sound track peaked my attention was at the end of the wizards tower meta in skywatch it plays the main theme of gw1 eye of the north
awesome video
This vid should not be on auto play. Was taking a shit on the toilet when this played trough the speakers.
Now i got the whole story spoiled to me before i got to clean my ass. FML
Good Retro!
I enjoyed EoD, even thou it slapped me in the face with DEI crap all the time. But Soto just felt like a slog to go through. I like bosses and fights in EoD, great music, story was really nice and my only complaint would be lazy approach to npc armors. They were just recycled, old armors looking nothing like the Cantha from GW1. The Soto was painful to play through. I didn't like the writing at all.. And while I almost always explore npcs backgrounds and stories, this one just made skip most of dialogues. The only thing I really enjoyed in Soto was the music. Damn it is nice. Well, new world looks great but the story writing, killed my interest. In comparison, demons in GW1 were unique, interesting, with nice visuals and animations. You knew they were different, evil and alien. Soto demons are just fleshy reskins that feel hollow and lazy.
I'm amazed anet moved away from the dialogue in the personal story (where you have the black bars and you can skip dialogue line by line). And instead we have this terrible dialogue where you're just standing there as they say their lines... very slowly... with no option to skip if you accidentally hit the wrong chat option.
Man, if Janthir Wilds is gonna be another flop, I'm gonna forget the existence of this game and come back in a decade or two.
SOTO REVIEW CLEANSING NUKE
I had the music off and heard until now the sountrack
One thing I want to point out is how horrendous the performance was on the first 2 maps -- they clearly pushed the engine too far and didn't spend enough time optimizing. I'm really hoping Janthir Wilds isn't in a similar spot, because it's honestly unacceptable.
yes
good video
i'm leaving this comment to tell you how unbelievably right you are about everything.
This feels to me like wow dragon mount is way better than gw2 ones
I pressed like, ZAZA.
That's why i rarely leave wvw and pvp. I have never finished story.
big and true
So the main good thing was the weapons as the story makes no sense and the scope of the threat dont feel threatening at all, none of the main characters are interesting or not in tune with the world shown heck the reason they destroy memory dont hold up at all .
And the inability of your character to question what the wizards are doing is just grating there is so many times any thinking character would go no wait hold up why !?
And boy do closing rifts get boring fast .. Metas are fine , not great but fine.
The reused assets are so heavy that it looks copy-pasted into each other at times down to how the "Demons" only look like they got a store skin.
Personally did not enjoy SOTO all that much compared to the other releases. Mostly because the maps were not fun to explore and the meta events became boring to complete very quickly, although they were a cool spectacle the first time through. Most of all I did not enjoy ANY of the Skyscale content or mid-air combat. I don’t regret buying or playing it, but I hope Janthir is a lot different
this is my comment about how un believably right about everything you are.
(no really I agree with everything wholeheartedly.)
This xpack ruined the game for me. The intro stealth quest just ruined the whole game for me as I didn't want to pull a single other character through that BS to enter that xpack's area. I haven't played GW2 since about a week after this xpack's launch.
I don’t know if you’re trolling, but there’s a scroll that will teleport you to the wizard’s tower that you can use for alt characters. Same as the living world zones’ scrolls.
Collect orbs to agree with the video
Does anyone else have problems downloading the video to your device?
Words cannot describe how glad I am to be rid of Kryptis encounters.
SoTo is the reason why I now wait for the release, check in streams if the game is somewhat interesting, NOT FULL OF BUGS ( I know you can't have 0 bugs), and if the game is not a disappointment, then I will give it a try, if not, I will not waste my money in a work in progress game like SoTo was.