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.

[PACOX]

Teaser for next patch, which comes out next week



Game got a new trailer too



- - - Updated - - -

Raid teaser



Convergence preview

[PACOX]

The new Convergence and Raid have been getting positive feedback. The addition to the story had been, "good but that's it?" Seems like the story for this patch was basically to introduce the convergence and raid, additions to the maps were for the new legendary. I havent finished the new stuff yet because I want to go into the raid blind probably this weekend.


I wouldn't rush into the new stuff unless you want to do the instances or make the legendary. Of course there's new cosmetic and stuff for housing. Think I saw in reddit that weapon stands have been added.

[Edge-]

Think I saw in reddit that weapon stands have been added.

They're pricey, need lots of rare essence for them.

I'm a few steps in, planning to finish up this weekend and check out the convergence then, probably. I'm still meh on the idea of convergences given the first, but if folks are liking this more that makes me more optimistic.

It does seem like a fairly short story update and like the meat and potatoes is really the legendary spear, which I don't have much interest in really. Guess I'll mostly wrap up the new story, do the convergence a few times to see how it's different with each retelling, and then largely just log in for weekly Wizard's Vault stuff until I've got the rewards I want.

Surprisingly OK with that given that PoE 2 is coming up and that's going to consume my life for a while.

[PACOX]

They're pricey, need lots of rare essence for them.

I'm a few steps in, planning to finish up this weekend and check out the convergence then, probably. I'm still meh on the idea of convergences given the first, but if folks are liking this more that makes me more optimistic.

It does seem like a fairly short story update and like the meat and potatoes is really the legendary spear, which I don't have much interest in really. Guess I'll mostly wrap up the new story, do the convergence a few times to see how it's different with each retelling, and then largely just log in for weekly Wizard's Vault stuff until I've got the rewards I want.

Surprisingly OK with that given that PoE 2 is coming up and that's going to consume my life for a while.

If you want to make some fast money and don't want the spear there's a weekly tradable currency on each heart vendor that spear. Don't know what they are called but know what they are because they are purple and you can only buy 7 per vendor.

[Geckoo]

The raid is surprisingly good. Considering that the story, convergence and raid all happen in the same place i was expecting a rebranded convergence, but the fights are actually good, the mechanics are fun to deal with and the challenge is decent considering that we'll get two more difficulties later on.

About the story being short well... that seems to be their model. I mean, when they say 'map 2' and 'map 3' on the roadmap, do they actually mean 2 new zones or 2 parts of the same one? the same thing happens with the story. To me release and update 1 are the same block of content, just as i expect update 2 and 3 to be the same. I believe this to be the reason why i didn't enjoy Soto when it was current content but i had a lot of fun replaying it a few weeks ago, because i no longer had to deal with breakpoints or unifinished maps.

[Edge-]

The raid is surprisingly good. Considering that the story, convergence and raid all happen in the same place i was expecting a rebranded convergence, but the fights are actually good, the mechanics are fun to deal with and the challenge is decent considering that we'll get two more difficulties later on.

About the story being short well... that seems to be their model. I mean, when they say 'map 2' and 'map 3' on the roadmap, do they actually mean 2 new zones or 2 parts of the same one? the same thing happens with the story. To me release and update 1 are the same block of content, just as i expect update 2 and 3 to be the same. I believe this to be the reason why i didn't enjoy Soto when it was current content but i had a lot of fun replaying it a few weeks ago, because i no longer had to deal with breakpoints or unifinished maps.

Two new maps, it's apparently a response to the strong dislike of the rollout of Inner Nayos and Anet finding ways to build zones better or something.

[Lotus Victoria]

I'm glad we got to finally beat the big spidey-spawns from hell. I can't stand these creatures anymore, they are boring as hell!

[Scyth]

They're pricey, need lots of rare essence for them.

I'm a few steps in, planning to finish up this weekend and check out the convergence then, probably. I'm still meh on the idea of convergences given the first, but if folks are liking this more that makes me more optimistic.

It does seem like a fairly short story update and like the meat and potatoes is really the legendary spear, which I don't have much interest in really. Guess I'll mostly wrap up the new story, do the convergence a few times to see how it's different with each retelling, and then largely just log in for weekly Wizard's Vault stuff until I've got the rewards I want.

Surprisingly OK with that given that PoE 2 is coming up and that's going to consume my life for a while.

The new convergence is much better than the one we got in soto imo. It's a lot more involved and does not feel as much of a chore as the soto one was!