Did PoF succeed or not?

[AliamRationem.5172]

> @Shiyo.3578 said:

> There's more to maps than metas.

> Playing HOT has gotten people confused about how to make gold or have fun or get rewarded unless it's a big meta with commanders telling you exactly where to go at all times.

>

> By the way, bounties are spammable meta bosses.

 

Yeah, HoT has me "confused" alright. Since HoT, I prefer my events to chain together to not only tell me what is going on in the map, but really get me involved as a part of it. And once I'm involved, I want those events to culminate in a big boss battle. In my opinion, HoT was a huge improvement over the core game and therefore PoF as well, because as far as I can tell PoF is simply core Tyria 2.0.

 

The combat is as fun as ever. The graphics and music are awesome. Mounts came out great! But ANet, repeatable hearts and random events and bosses is a huge step backward for this game. Meta events are the way to go. You quite simply nailed it with that in HoT. Consider me very disappointed that you veered completely away from that in PoF. This game is screaming for better replay value. You can't keep your cash shop going if nobody wants to play!

[Nuka Cola.8520]

To me, and just me, it was an epic failure. Truth be told, i don't know why i even purchased it. I mean, i like three new pets for ranger. Love Mirage for mez. But is this $50CAD worth? Hell no. More like a $5 worth.

 

All in all, the expansion is **exactly** as disappointing as the first one. Why? Because it didn't bring any new races, no new dungeons aka a proper endgame, no new pvp modes. Its just like HoT, a messy expansion in my opinion.

[Shikigami.4013]

We know since living story 1 that a map can be modified by adding new mobs/quests/structures and instance areas. I hope that arenanet will listen to feedback and fleshen the PoF maps out some more before releasing any more new maps. There maps are big and there are unused areas which can have new stuff added to them. Some bigger event chains surely would be welcomed by many too.

 

They could even add some griffon-centric content to the higher altitude areas which would not be accessible by other means. It could happen at a time when most of the playerbase already has a griffon, which would encourage the rest of them to finally get that gold together and get one too :)

 

(**Disclaimer**, because without me saying this, there would at least be one person who would not be able to resist the urge to call me out for suggesting things that benefit me but not others: **I don't have a griffon yet**)

[ananda.5946]

-The new human hair and face models were amazing. I loved them.

-The new maps are really nice and I’m happy there is no Tarir meta style map. Thanks for making these types of maps!

-The mounts are well done, the the griffin might be a little too powerful.

-The story introduction and basic concept was good.

-The story writing was shallow and cliche. It was like a story written for and by young people.

-The main story npc dialogue was often eye roll inducing. Oh, listen, Canach is being sarcastic again and Taimi is being “hilarious “. It got old really quickly. Why not have more well rounded characters rather than larger than life caricatures?

-The story pacing became abrupt. It moved at a great pace early on in the first maps and then just blew through the later ones.

-Repeatability? I have no desire to experience the story again because the writing was insipid even though the maps are gorgeous.

-The choya are really fun. I love the little monsters.

-Not many new armour skins added. There should be a lot, lot, lot more after five years. The ones that were added were nice, though.

-Many of the hearts were just annoying to do, let alone repeat if you want to use the vendor.

-The new elites for the classes I like were not exciting (elementalist and mesmer). I didn’t give the other elites much of a try. Still stuck playing chronomancer for raids and fractals because of the buffs, so maybe that’s why the elites were uninteresting.

-I really liked the new masteries were easy to get.

-Thank you for the lack of adventures. I hated those as gatekeepers of mastry points and never even did many of them.

-The bounty system is just a champ train with a board click between each. I would have loved some instanced group content where it scaled and allowed variable participant numbers (like 5 to 25). Conquering a map, Scarlet forces map invasion, a gauntlet, etc. as examples. Rewards could have been on par with fractals.

-I do count all the upcoming living world, etc. stuff as part of the expansion, so plenty more stuff to come. Hopefully, the writing will be way better.

-Two years later and the Mac client is still horrible. I hate having to use Bootcamp and Windows!

 

I currently barely login and my husband doesn’t login at all. I really wanted to love the expansion, but, after doing the story, I was back to standing around in the Lava Lounge.

[Cantatus.4065]

> @Adenin.5973 said:

 

> 3. The gemstore completely destroys the entire reward structure of the game, since MountGate more than ever. There seems to be no hope that this will change in the lifespan of this game. It also hurts the game and its universe if the most flashy and best looking stuff can just be bought via the UI, without any lore or whatever behind it.

 

> Right now the game feels in my opinion simply not rewarding. I have as a "veteran" player no real goal in the game. There's nothing to do for me other than grind gold, so that maybe in the future I can buy something from the gemstore. I could of course also just stay one hour longer at work and just buy whatever I want instantly, which then leaves me again with nothing to do.

 

I really feel like one of their primary problems right now is that they've lost sight of how to make things rewarding. HoT does a great job for the most part. Spend time doing a meta, get rewards. The more you participate, the better the rewards. And, of course, doing them once isn't enough if you're working on a collections, so you're encouraged to keep going back. The original game did pretty well too with dungeon currency and had plenty of gear to find and show off. But with PoF, aside from the griffon, there's really nothing that rises to that level.

 

The balance between what gets put in the game and what get put in the store has shifted too much to the latter. MMO players like shiny things. One of the reasons people do things like raid or farm materials or do events repeatedly isn't always to increase power but because they're driven to get something cool. They want something to show off their effort, some sort of status symbol. I'm sure everyone who plays this game could name one item in an MMO they worked hard to at least partly because of how much it'd make them stand out. Putting stuff in the store and grinding gold for it isn't anywhere nearly the same, because 1) if someone can just spend $10 for the same thing, you're not getting something to show off no matter how much work it took you and 2) the best ways to farm gold are almost always doing monotonous things repeatedly which isn't fun and will easily burn players out.

 

The reason players have already gotten bored with PoF is it lacks the sort of incentives content used to offer. What challenging goals are there for people to work towards? What can they get to show off their dedication? If those don't exist, then of course people are going to go back to older content that does offer that.

[Mea.5491]

I love the story and map completion, like always. And the mounts are super useful to have. But for a massively multiplayer game, it doesn't have enough group content, no fun and rewarding map-wide meta events which made HoT amazing. There is nothing to do in PoF, after all these years I am still doing SW and HoT metas. Also, the new armors in PoF have too many buttcapes, I've been wearing the same stuff since forever... As a mainoholic who only plays core Engi, I am not impressed by the Holosmith and I'm not interested in the other elite specs. I rate PoF 5/10.

[zoomborg.9462]

For newish people PoF is pretty good as they have a huge amount of content to go through (including HoT).This will keep them entertained for a pretty long time as they can explore and progress their accounts to their hearts content. On the other hand, veterans like me are looking for new challenges, new repeatable content in the form of new fractals, hopefully new dungeons and ofc raids so we can go with our friends/guildies and have fun on a daily basis. REPEATABLE CONTENT. Mounts and new specs were refreshing for a while but without new repeatable content there isnt anything to do.Story was nice but short, no big metaevent or rewards makes map not worth running and collection/achievements dont have anything interesting about them. 1 fractal every half a year and 1 raid wing after 9 months is unfortunately very little. At least i hope the new wing is actually challenging as W4 proved to be a joke in terms of challenge while challenge motes are not even repeatable with rewards.

 

 

[LightningWolfTigerBear.672]

> @Cantatus.4065 said:

> The reason players have already gotten bored with PoF is it lacks the sort of incentives content used to offer. What challenging goals are there for people to work towards? What can they get to show off their dedication? If those don't exist, then of course people are going to go back to older content that does offer that.

 

I get the feeling that ANet had intended for the Griffon to be the big carrot dangling at the end of the stick that would keep people playing PoF. If that's the case then they underestimated just how quickly people would tear through the story and the following collection.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @Healix.5819 said:

> For PoF, total sales were 20145 during its launch quarter and by subtracting the sales in the previous quarter (13557), you can estimate PoF's launch sales to be 6588. For HoT, total sales were 37331 during its launch quarter and 20699 during the previous quarter, which makes HoT's first quarter sales 16632, but that's for the entire quarter. By subtracting the next quarter instead (30557), that puts HoT's launch sales at an estimated 6774. Obviously this could be highly inaccurate. Unfortunately, there never will be a true comparison since PoF will be influenced by S4 and mounts likely far more than gliders, but the real test is growing afterwards.

 

Why subtract the next quarter?

37331 - 20699 = 16632 and 30557 - 20699 = 9858 for an estimated total of 26490 of HoT sales during Q3+Q4 of 2015

I really doubt PoF will ever reach that number but we'll see, maybe mounts are really so important in the MMORPG world and I'll be surprised.

 

>

> But like I said, the true test will be in 6 months (2Q18) when box sales are no longer a factor. It doesn't really matter how it sold if they just continue on track as if nothing happened and continue to bleed, but GW3 is realistically the only way to fix that at this point.

>

 

True. As an example, after the launch of PoF, Guild Wars 2 reached the same revenue it had before HoT. Of course there is also the major contributing factor of free to play, that lowered the revenue of the game during HoT launch. We won't have that with PoF so it might be more stable this time.

[Carighan.6758]

> @"Nick Lentz.6982" said:

> And the Mac Daddy of facepalms, repeatable kitten hearts...

 

This is actually such a shame that this caught on. Creative bankruptcy in GW2 was never more visible than in "repeatable hearts as endless content". Sigh. If you cannot think of actual content, you do this instead...

[XenesisII.1540]

Don't see why Anet couldn't develop at least one meta map to keep both sides happy about maps in PoF. Seems kinda dumb to constantly go from one extreme to the next, in vanillla we had regular maps, in HoT all maps had a meta, to PoF it's what's a meta again, here's a bounty for this champ. Should be providing a little bit of everything for content.

[Kapax.3801]

I liked the maps, but after getting all the achievements of PoF, I never stepped on them again, currently I only do the two Meta events to get the Chest of the Desert Specialist, if someday I get it, I do not come back anymore :p :p

[Devata.6589]

> @Cantatus.4065 said:

> The balance between what gets put in the game and what get put in the store has shifted too much to the latter. MMO players like shiny things. One of the reasons people do things like raid or farm materials or do events repeatedly isn't always to increase power but because they're driven to get something cool. They want something to show off their effort, some sort of status symbol. I'm sure everyone who plays this game could name one item in an MMO they worked hard to at least partly because of how much it'd make them stand out. Putting stuff in the store and grinding gold for it isn't anywhere nearly the same, because 1) if someone can just spend $10 for the same thing, you're not getting something to show off no matter how much work it took you and 2) the best ways to farm gold are almost always doing monotonous things repeatedly which isn't fun and will easily burn players out.

>

> The reason players have already gotten bored with PoF is it lacks the sort of incentives content used to offer. What challenging goals are there for people to work towards? What can they get to show off their dedication? If those don't exist, then of course people are going to go back to older content that does offer that.

 

100% agree, while my in my opinion this has been an issue for a long time.

It's what I have been talking about for years on this forum, sadly I think it's to late for GW2 now to still make a change here.

 

I do like that more and more people are suddenly seem to awake and become aware of this issue. And while I expect that most people that get effected by this have left GW2 long by now, I still see more people posting these type of ideas on the forum. I hope most people will soon become aware of this issue with these 'rewarding' practices so the gaming-industry we be forces to change them. For to long people accepted it, then got bored and leaving the game but also resulting in an overall game-industry will less fun games.

[Lahmia.2193]

Short Term: PoF succeeded.

Long term: PoF failed.

I don't have much reason to go back because of the lack of good meta events (like in HoT). After the rewards update, I did SI once and a few legendary bounty trains but that was about it. I will say I enjoyed the initial time on PoF more than HoT however.

[Cynz.9437]

PvE: story was ok. maps are ok.

However i pvp mainly so my view point is from that angle: just like with HoT, they simply made PoF (not all but quite few) specs way stronger than anything else class has to offer to force pvp players to buy xpac. No new maps, no new content beside track rewards. Just more imbalance than ever. 30+ € for that is massive slap in the face. If i didn't care about the story i probably wouldn't have bought the xpac.

[RedSPINE.7845]

Like a lot of people, I miss the awesome meta events of HoT. It truly brings life to the maps, you have this connection between the players you don't find with bounties.

As an engineer player, I'm really disappointed in the elite specs. First the scrapper with the brand new mechanic : function gyro ! Yay ! This is so sad ... I want new ways to play my profession, not a total brand new one. And now the Holosmith, that instead of bringing new things, kill the original mechanics of the profession.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

> @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> > @Adenin.5973 said:

>

> >2. Repeatable heart quests should have serious consequences for whatever person at Anet came up with them.

>

> You can thank the people on the old forum for this idea. There were a few threads pushing the notion that repeatable hearts would be great addition to the game.

>

> /Looksatmysignature

>

 

I personally like the hearts as they are now. Repeatable and very easy to do. Sure its not the most challenging, some may even find it boring.

 

But to say "be careful what you wish for" as if hearts are some evil is not fitting in my opinion.

 

I see hearts as something to provide a better pacing regardless of how mundane and easy they are. To provide contrast to more epic and interesting events. Ofcourse, that is the part that Path of fire is missing a bit now. Most group events dont scale too well with bigger numbers, and with everyone just doing bounties back to back that pacing element gets lost a little.

 

 

[Sethorus.9231]

It did succeed and brought a nice new flavor to the game with the mounts. It could have used better rewards for hunts and metas at release, and to be honest, it felt way too easy.

 

But we're just starting the expansion. Let's see this same question when this expansion is near it's end.

[Kalibri.5861]

Personally, I enjoyed the expansion. Delving into some of the nooks and crannies and finding things I never expected (like the phenomenal Fortune's Vale) was totally thrilling, above and beyond the story instances which I thought were great. Once I got the griffon though, I was sort of at a loss. As has been said, there's a lack of strongly driven group content. Silverwastes, I think, is one of the best examples we have of quality map design in terms of structure, goals, and rewards. It directs players very clearly on how to work together in various roles. They shouldn't all be Silverwastes of course, but having a map or two which follows a similar formula could go a long way.

 

That said, Living World is coming soon for you guys, and it's part of Path of Fire too. Season three was solid....

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I would take Path of Fire over Heart of Thorns any time. I love the maps and story and the mounts I like as well.

I never liked the jungle maps just as I considered the Maguuma Jungle the least interesting part of Guild Wars Prophecies. However, I liked the mastery system of HoT and especially gliding.

 

but fortunately, I did not have to pick one, I just played them both and like them for their own reasons.

[Silmar Alech.4305]

> @Harper.4173 said:

> So what was the situation like for you guys? Did PoF meet your expectations? Do you think it hit the mark it needed to in order to insure another expansion?

For me, PoF is the right thing. For me, it looks like as Arenanet literally took every single HoT criticism topic I mentioned on several forums and changed it in PoF to my liking. Not grindy any more. Maps are open and give the feeling of freedom and feel not cramped. Collections are no mindless layered and tiered dockets to process but things to do that start casually and can be done casually. Mastery points freely available. No meaningless masteries. And so on.

 

I am really happy about PoF. It is fun right from the start, while HoT was non fun at the start and in the middle but only after you reached the endgame with masteries maximized, which was a chore. There are still a few downsides in PoF, of course, but every game has downsides somewhere - no game is perfect.

[Malediktus.9250]

> @"Silmar Alech.4305" said:

> > @Harper.4173 said:

> > So what was the situation like for you guys? Did PoF meet your expectations? Do you think it hit the mark it needed to in order to insure another expansion?

> For me, PoF is the right thing. For me, it looks like as Arenanet literally took every single HoT criticism topic I mentioned on several forums and changed it in PoF to my liking. Not grindy any more. Maps are open and give the feeling of freedom and feel not cramped. Collections are no mindless layered and tiered dockets to process but things to do that start casually and can be done casually. Mastery points freely available. No meaningless masteries. And so on.

>

> I am really happy about PoF. It is fun right from the start, while HoT was non fun at the start and in the middle but only after you reached the endgame with masteries maximized, which was a chore. There are still a few downsides in PoF, of course, but every game has downsides somewhere - no game is perfect.

It looks like people who hated HoT like PoF and people who hate PoF liked HoT.

[calb.3128]

A pleasant side effect, at least for those of us who are a little more sedentary in play style, is that mounts have made mastery point completion elsewhere in Tyria a much less frustrating experience. The griffon in particular in particular is worth the PoF asking price. And yes, I'm sure it's probably an intentional marketing trick to encourage others to buy PoF, but I'm pleased that the expansion has offered me both new content and a freshness to the existing areas.

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

Hmmm, well, I can't speak for sales.

 

On a personal level, I find PoF a mixed bag, mostly good.

 

Love the mounts.

 

Story--Good enough, but seemed short-ish and a bit lacking in depth. And the end did not seem like a good stopping place...kind of cliff-hangy. Like there should have been another entire act. (I guess LWS4 will carry on from there.)

 

Art--Beautiful

 

Maps--Disliked them at first, but as I work in the Griffon quests, I am discovering more and more and more interesting things and places.. I expect I will have some fun just exploring. But, for me, anyway, the joy of exploration is hampered by the fact that every time I stop to look at the map or enjoy the scenery, no matter how peaceful the surroundings seem, a pack of sand sharks or something else highly deadly appears to try and eat me.

 

Events: Hate the bounties, hate that Anet puts them as a Daily so often. If Anet wants to do a desert daily, I think it would be much more rewarding to assign, say, doing a reknown heart on a certain map, or some sort of quest that sends players into areas unexplored by the story (and no, bounties don't do that because the player goes there as fast as possible, kills something, and gets out as fast as possible without experiencing a thing.)

 

PoF's biggest problem is the lack of any large events/metas/treasures that give players reasons to go to all the interesting new places.

 

 

[Harper.4173]

> @Sethorus.9231 said:

> It did succeed and brought a nice new flavor to the game with the mounts. It could have used better rewards for hunts and metas at release, and to be honest, it felt way too easy.

>

> But we're just starting the expansion. Let's see this same question when this expansion is near it's end.

 

Well that's the problem - for me and many others the expansion is already at its end.