GW2 Janthir Wilds - Discussion Thread

[Edge-]

I started playing the expansion yesterday and i'm having a blast. I'm still on the first map and i'm barely doing the story becuase the zone itself is amazing, they do a lot of things right and embrace a lot of the points that make the game great including the visual beauty of the zone. At this point i don't really care how good or bad the second map, housing or the story itself is, lowlands already won me over. It reminds me a lot of Grothmar valley: packed with events and different things to do with some big event that doesn't force the whole zone into it. And we get to race as a fish.

Second zone might have some whiplash in terms of event design/heart progression, but Lowlands is so fucking good. I'm working on clearing out achievements and despite spending a good chunk of the past two weeks in that zone primarily I'm still discovering new events and things I hadn't done.

Really hoping the post-launch zones are designed more with Lolwands in mind. It has some very good verticality in its design as well, with nice use of updrafts/jumping mushrooms and actually moving rivers to "reward" folks with easier traversial using older masteries. Really liking that they're keeping that around.

I hope they do something more with the Bog Queen event/character. That's such a rad little non-boss that deserves to be a boss.

[PACOX]

Haven't fully explored the 2nd map yet. Im actually constantly going back to the first and exploring it. Did SOTO the same way. I'll log into the game every day but only hit the story like 10 minutes at a time.


I did the meta (well boss encounter) for the 2nd map, enjoyed it. This was before it was fixed or nerfed I guess. It was very mechanic heavy and for a world boss not tired to a traditional meta, I enjoyed it. Has some things I hope show up in the raid/convergence. Bog Queen is really fun, part of the reason I keep getting distracted on the first map.


Anet is a hilarious company. Anyone else would have put out an accolades trailer, post launch press release by now. Looks like a lot of them are taking a break and just playing the game too.

[Edge-]

So...you can't preview housing items in-game until you craft them?

That's such a monumentally enormous oversight I don't know how people are even getting by. Sure you can use a third party site to preview and all but...literally what the fuck? That's just so fucking stupid.

I'm not a big housing person to begin with so I was just going to tinker around and make a few little corners of things to enjoy but if I have to deadass go to a third party website nope, noty I guess my house will largely remain as-is as a functional place where I quickly grab my harvesting materials.

I'm genuinely struggling to process how on earth you design a housing system supported exclusively (?) by crafting and then don't give players the ability to fucking preview items before crafting them.

[Geckoo]

I'm more dissapointed about the obstacles. When i saw them i thought i could build some crazy jumping puzzle with knockbacks, lava floor, vortex... but it turns out that they are meant for the arena in the guildhall, so they are just decorative and have no functionality.

So far it's certainly a better and quicker place to pick up all my stuff (i have a full home, cats included), but in terms of traditional housing i'm having a hard time enjoying it, partially because the kodan theme is too prevalent, wich makes sense storywise, but to me it is a bit limiting.

[PACOX]

So...you can't preview housing items in-game until you craft them?

That's such a monumentally enormous oversight I don't know how people are even getting by. Sure you can use a third party site to preview and all but...literally what the fuck? That's just so fucking stupid.

I'm not a big housing person to begin with so I was just going to tinker around and make a few little corners of things to enjoy but if I have to deadass go to a third party website nope, noty I guess my house will largely remain as-is as a functional place where I quickly grab my harvesting materials.

I'm genuinely struggling to process how on earth you design a housing system supported exclusively (?) by crafting and then don't give players the ability to fucking preview items before crafting them.

Oh thats no oversight, its been like that since HoT when guild halls came out. More like that can't/won't add a preview feature. Anet also designs knowing they a strong wiki. Call it lazy, cutting corners, resourceful, whatever, seen people call it all diffferent things. I'm just used to /wiki everything.

[Edge-]

Oh thats no oversight, its been like that since HoT when guild halls came out. More like that can't/won't add a preview feature. Anet also designs knowing they a strong wiki. Call it lazy, cutting corners, resourceful, whatever, seen people call it all diffferent things. I'm just used to /wiki everything.

The wiki is very, very good, but I just cannot fathom how you can design a housing system supported exclusively by crafting without giving players the option to preview anything before crafting it. Like, it genuinely breaks my fucking brain and should be, IMO, wholly unacceptable. Sure it's a triviality and I fully acknowledge that, but this is just one of those things for me.

Again, I'm not a big housing person! But damnit, I do like spending a bit of time customizing my "house" in any game I play and this is the first time I've ever seen such a nonsensical, backwards-ass setup like this.

Kudos to all the creative folks who are going to the wiki to look at everything, I do not have the fucking patience to wiki every fucking item to see what it looks like before deciding if I want to craft or not.

[PACOX]

Random ass side note because of convo I had in game.

Despite all the faults of SOTO, the expansion actually ended up in positive growth for Anet AFTER the quarter it was released in. After Anet said things could have been better, after the first update where people felt "meh" about the story, SOTO still ended making Anet money. There was a graph from NCSofts quarterly meeting but I dont have it laying around. It correlates with the one NCSoft exec saying there should be a GW3 soon (which Anet has debunked and their continued work on GW2 engine debunks). Anet has been on a decent run for having a 12 (13?) year old game. People fairly shit on SOTO and it still sold units. This expansions numbers are going to be interesting, especially after the raid drops.