Secrets of the Obscure - Discussion Thread

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Spamming the dragon's roll over and over for a slight speed boost doesn't look cool. If that's the fastest the dragon can go then there is still little reason to use it over going at 2,000 speed on Griffon.

[Edge-]

Anet commissioned a content creator known for her griffon videos to show off the updates to the flying mounts.

This is the best promotional video released for SotO yet. It's funny because at the start I was like, "Oh boy, another trailer where Anet basically records using in-game player tools." until I realized it was actually a person that made it, and then they started flying and yeah this was dope.

Griffon owners gonna be feasting this expansion and I'm gonna have to bind ascend/descend to something more convenient. People decrying the death of gliders since flying mounts can use ley lines and updrafts now and like, yo gliders are still great mounts are just better. Plus jade bot updraft for glider is still a thing if you have the mastery.

[PACOX]

My stupid completely unserious head canon:

Blizzard stole Anets mount for Dragonflight so Anet took it's little budget and took it personal by ripping off Dalaran, the Trading Post (WoW), and parts of dragon riding.

[ryanmahaffe]

https://youtu.be/-ngPTxwCHH8
More map teaser from content creator
these looks gorgeous I am very excited to dive in

[PACOX]

Final video before Tuesday, maybe?

Seems like Anets strat has been, "screw it, we suck at marketing, we'll just pay the community to do it." I'm not mad at the content creators getting some love.


At least two of the mobs in the video use raid boss animations. I think that's cool since only a tiny fraction of the community has done raids in the first place.

[ryanmahaffe]

Yeah this may have been the weirdest marketing campaign I have ever seen for a game. But at least the content creator videos have been good.

Loving the look of those meaty boys they seem very cool and remind me of the Sha from Mists of Pandaria.

Currently debating taking half day from work on Tuesday or not haha we'll seeee.

[Edge-]

Seems like Anets strat has been, "screw it, we suck at marketing, we'll just pay the community to do it." I'm not mad at the content creators getting some love.

I'm still unsure how much of this is Anet marketing (I couldn't even find any staffers in that role on a quick search of their linkedin page the other day) or NCsoft, but either way...yeah.

The few videos put out by the content creators, using purely user-end tools are the best trailers leading into this expansion and shit on everything officially produced.

Excited for tomorrow, just wish it wasn't also a super busy work week + overlap with a fresh PoE league. Damnit, hate when shit overlaps.

[PACOX]

And finally a proper roadmap

[Edge-]

on launch day, heh.

Speaking of, like 10 minutes 'till launch. I'm probably gonna wait until the weekend to play and hope I can avoid spoiler. Into this current PoE league and want to get a bit further into BG3 before I put that on pause.

Already giggled a bit seeing some questions from newbies here for their first expansion asking about downtime which this game doesn't have lol.

[PACOX]

And finally a trailer.

Anet doubling down on "long marketing campaigns are garbage"

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Currently playing through Trails into Reverie. Might hold off until all of the SotO expansion patches are out before playing. Not sure.

[Edge-]

Sounds a bit rough outta the gate, reading about some folks soft-locking progression and some pretty negative feedback on the structuring of the new daily system - it's really limiting. As you get a set number of missions and they're spread out amongst the game modes you choose vs. the old system where you could basically choose how you wanted to complete your daily through any game mode or mixture you chose.

I'll probably give it a few days for them to address some urgent issues, but it seems like even with the scaled down scope of the expansion it's still got plenty of signs that it might have needed a bit more time. New launcher/character select screen are pretty nice, though!

[Huehuecoyotl]

Sounds a bit rough outta the gate, reading about some folks soft-locking progression and some pretty negative feedback on the structuring of the new daily system - it's really limiting. As you get a set number of missions and they're spread out amongst the game modes you choose vs. the old system where you could basically choose how you wanted to complete your daily through any game mode or mixture you chose.

I'll probably give it a few days for them to address some urgent issues, but it seems like even with the scaled down scope of the expansion it's still got plenty of signs that it might have needed a bit more time. New launcher/character select screen are pretty nice, though!

The daily system is fucking appalling. Any company capable of allowing that to get out of the door in that state has lost any trust I have in their ability to design games. 4 mandatory dailies that you have to do? No option if one of them is difficult or painful to do? That should have been kicked out at the first design meeting. Making it live is unforgivable. The rune/relic thing is proving to be just as poor as people feared.

This looks like the bulk of it has been put together by a bunch of interns with literally no game design experience. They are going to have to fix a lot, quickly, and make some pretty grovelling apologies to get the players back on their side.

[PACOX]

IDK, I looking on the discords and people are having a blast. Only reddit is it's usual salt mine, which goes away as soon as people playing decide to post 2 days later.

[PACOX]

Got to the third map playing slowly. I'm digging the style of it all so far. Some of the story elements are missed if you skipped parts of the story. The maps look amazing. Lots of clever reuse of assets that I was worried about in the content creator previews, stuff works a lot better in game. They did this thing where the colors are super saturated (if you turn on post-processing) that I don't care for. They took the "grand cosmos" theme in a very Anet/GW2 way that works nicely for the game. If I had to go doom and gloom, Anet always starts strong, its when they have to iterate on the story with a followup patch that they get sloppy. Feel like they were afraid to scale rifts harder, the mobs have potential but they don't scale all, for now. I say for now because we know higher tiers of rifts are coming. Solo they are a well enough challenge for the average character but become stupid easy once others join in.

What else? There's some QoL stuff they didn't document in the patch notes or anywhere that are nice, ie legendary crafting requires less standing over wiki pages with crafting steps highlighted in game. Relics need to be made account bound, hopefully that changes. Looking forward to finishing the story when I get a chance.

Finally get to settle the argument that elementalists are not mages/wizards!

[Edge-]

BTW Twitch Drops are live all week. Kinda annoying to get time to "count" for it even when you have a stream open and that whole window active, and that you have to redeem your reward before progressing towards the next one but at the same time...it's still free stuff!

[PACOX]

BTW Twitch Drops are live all week. Kinda annoying to get time to "count" for it even when you have a stream open and that whole window active, and that you have to redeem your reward before progressing towards the next one but at the same time...it's still free stuff!

They fixed that. Or maybe I have an extension I forgot about?

[Edge-]

They fixed that. Or maybe I have an extension I forgot about?

No clue, apparently muting the stream may have caused some issues. I'm just hoping between streamers each time I get a reward to share the love and all, onto the final two rewards so should only be bout 3 hours of ignoring livetreams left, lol.

Rewards are worth it IMO. 10 transmute charges, white wings backpack, total makeover chit, and a free outfit of your choice or something.

- - - Updated - - -

Excited to finally dig in, I've just logged in to get a few of the new dailies knocked out so far and that's it. Now to just hope work doesn't keep me late so I can start actually seeing the new expansion. I'm at least hearing many good things about the new characters for the story which is nice!

[Scyth]

No clue, apparently muting the stream may have caused some issues. I'm just hoping between streamers each time I get a reward to share the love and all, onto the final two rewards so should only be bout 3 hours of ignoring livetreams left, lol.

Rewards are worth it IMO. 10 transmute charges, white wings backpack, total makeover chit, and a free outfit of your choice or something.

- - - Updated - - -

Excited to finally dig in, I've just logged in to get a few of the new dailies knocked out so far and that's it. Now to just hope work doesn't keep me late so I can start actually seeing the new expansion. I'm at least hearing many good things about the new characters for the story which is nice!

I haven't finished the story yet, think I have 1 chapter left, but so far it has been really refreshing. I like it a lot.

[PACOX]

Did the last meta and omg Anet out did themselves. Went from a standard thing to "these guys really showed out".