Which expansion do you prefer...?

[Myrdreth.6829]

> @Hanakocz.5697 said:

> There should be "Both were awesome"

 

Yep. I like them both.

[Abakk.9176]

In most MMORPG's that i play i always tend to linger in the 'Vanilla' part of the game. Vanilla is where the gamemakers poured all their initial visions and enthousiasm into and it always shines through. It combines perfectly with my weird urge to make new characters and delete them at around lvl 30-40 :)

 

What i like about both of OP's choices is the landscaping and atmosphere.

 

If i had to choose though i would go for the Desert, as i didn't get lost there right away :)

[CptAurellian.9537]

The options "Both of them are great/bad" are missing. Personally, it's a bit of a draw for me, at least at the moment. HoT has better elite specs and map metas, while PoF easily wins map design (ok, winning against something like TD isn't difficult) and a bunch of small things. Will see whether PoF maps have good replayability in the long term, I'm not yet sure about that.

[ZyniX.3589]

I think it's way too soon for this poll. Of course people will prefer a fresh experience after playing the same events for two years. I don't believe PoF has nearly the same replayability.

[Jong.5937]

Impossible for me to say. Loved both.

 

Never really understood the hate for the HoT maps, even at their roughest, earliest incarnation. The HoT metas (even the first stage 'events') are still huge fun - I ran each one 3 times in the two weeks before PoF after several months break and they were a blast. HoT also brought some interesting new stats (not sure if any of the new stats will replace them), a new class and a lot of UI/Infrastructure changes that were really positive.

 

On the other hand, mounts are great and the joy of exploration is definitely back with PoF. The maps are more 'approachable'. And the quality of writing, storytelling (both in the main story and the open world) and characterisation is fantastic in PoF - head and shoulders above most other stuff in the rest of GW2, indeed most other games, period! It's the first time I've really felt engaged with the story, rather than it being a mere tool to link combat challenges. First rate stuff!

[Aoi.8570]

To be honest I made this poll but I can't decide which one to choose. I love how complicated HoT maps were, I haven't finished Dragon's Stand yet, but I think whole gliding is useless now since we have griffons. Although I don't agree with most of you about meta events, because I didn't like them. They were fun if you did them for the first time, but for me even after 2 times I was annoyed because e.g. I couldn't explore Verdant Brink, I had to wait for meta event end.

 

It's a match for me, but I definitely prefer PoF's story.

[Obsidanse.2048]

No option for Vanilla?

The expansions brought blistering difficulty to the game.

I've been unable to enjoy GW2 since the first expansion.

 

This one is no different...

- uncertain objectives

- unclear requirements to reach locations so never sure if you're banging your head against a wall or not

- crazy hard story instances (via adding too many enemies, not via complicated tactics)

- unnecessarily tough mastery points (such as that flipping chef) that are required to progress (though you're never quite sure if they are) in order to gain mounts in PoF or abilities in HoT

- All the while you're being battered mercilessly by enemies who are a mark up from the standard thoroughfare and teased by other players who seem to have no trouble whatsoever.

 

I've wasted £80+ on expansions for this game.

You wont see another penny. I've learned my lesson.

[Lome.8239]

HoT has far more longevity (at least at the moment) and, more importantly, HoT was tuned far better.

 

PoF is just too damn easy.

[zoomborg.9462]

I really loved PoF, the problem for me is i'm not going back to those maps cause there's zero reason. Got maxed masteries, achievements, griffon, unlocked my specs......thats a week's play pretty much. HoT had way more replayability, PoF is basically as someone said core Tyria 2.0. Too ez enemies, too ez to navigate, to explore, to get HP's,to get mastery points, everything in it is too easy which inevitably leads to boring.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

PoF by a desert mile. I love the gliding in HoT but the frustration in the maps (I see where I need to go but can't get there) basically caused me to give up the game for most of a year. I am NOT sorry I bought HoT because of the gliding, the elite specializations, and many other features, but those multi-level maps where you die and die and die some more were the pits for me.

[Malediktus.9250]

Heart of Thorns. I am already running out of things to do and the expansion is only a week old. HoT kept me busy for months and I still dont have everything

[Dream Shake.8741]

HoT by far. PoF maps are boring after you are done exploring them, hearts are terribly annoying and unrewarding, bounties are just zerg fests with crappy rewards. The HoT map metas were much better.

[Zoltreez.6435]

Pof All the way...

 

that giant PoS maguuma jungle should burn down...... still having nightmares from those damn badly designed zones....

[Disig.7169]

I can't pick. Not yet. I love them both at the moment for different reasons. I feel like more time needs to be spent with PoF out before a real decision can be made.

[JayMack.8295]

I can't really choose - I like them both for very different reasons. I enjoy the HoT map metas and how urgent it felt but I also the exploration and sense of scale PoF has and how much more polished it is in general.

[zeldara.4127]

PoF. For the simple reason this is way better suited to have fun with for a woman in my situation then HoT. My situation being a working mom of a pretty intensive preschooler (bit under 3 years). HoT sure had it's good things for me, but PoF wins easily (though i love Reaper and Gliding, can;t imagine gw2 without it anymore).

 

HoT is on a timer a lot, hard to navigate, takes ages to get somewhere if you are not very good at remembering the right paths (my spacial awareness is awefull, lets say i am glad i don't get lost in my backyard ;) ), When I finally get somewhere or close to somewhere I fell off of something or got chewed on by a big angry mob of veterans in the only passable place, and I could start all over again. Not helped by the fact I am an ok, but not good player (HoT mobs in the often narrow unforgiving HoT enviroments give me problems. I don't die that often but it takes forever.) HoT often needs you to commit larger amounts of time to even get something done or reap the rewards for your work (changes to the map/meta reward payout system helped a lot though). Time which I don't have often. And when most of time is spend trying to get somewhere instead of being there it gets frustrating if playtime is limited/unsure. It also makes group content way harder for me. Not because i don't like grouping up, but because I don't want to inconvenience people being pretty unreliable due to real life commitments/planning insecurities (and getting a group together also takes precious time, sometimes to much). My attention is always divided, even if the little one is in bed. And HoT is way more group oriented, often demanding groups. That's not bad in itself, and when I was still at school and had plenty of time to fully devote to a game I am sure I would have liked it a lot more.

 

PoF is way friendlier for me this way and the opposite off all the above. I can play in short burst. play where I want to play. And I can take a break pretty much anytime without being a bother to others, and without having to start over because i am dead as a doornail on return, even if away for only 10 second. I can relax playing and have fun, little to no frustration. The difficulty is just right for me (feels somewhere between core (to easy) and HoT (ok in half the places and to hard to enjoy fully in the rest). The only things I now have to plan for are the story quests as they often take a fair amount of uninterrupted time and attention. And that is totally fine.

[Etienne.3049]

I find both to be flawed in their own way.

 

Heart of Thorns was small (4 maps) and at parts a bit overtuned difficulty-wise (and also too much CC).

The story was okay although it felt rushed at the end (at some point you figure out every dragon has a weakness and instead of discovering it the player sort of decides near the end it's got to be his mind without, as far as I could see, any indication of that being it).

All 4 of its maps are time locked, 2-hour meta events, which was a bit overdoing it in my opinion.

 

Path of Fire has a more maps, but they feel rather empty, presumably big open spaces were placed between content for mounts to serve a purpose.

I find it quite a bit too easy, a middle ground between HoT and what PoF has turned out to be would have been better, probably a bit closer to HoT than PoF.

The maps seem almost completely forgettable (besides a few GW1 related things) while for HoT I can at least remember some things I found awesome on the first 3 maps. The story was much the same.

 

The adventures in HoT had some interesting ones and some not so much, PoF seems to only have a bunch of race style ones, which I find so uninteresting I tried the one during the preview and never even bothered with them since release.

 

Gliders were a fun addition, especially with updrafts and the like, and could, with a couple of no gliding zones, easily be allowed in core without breaking anything.

Mounts are definitely fun to use, however I'm afraid they were a big mistake in terms of content that can't really be made anymore: for anything vertical just use springer, enemies on the map mean little anymore as you can usually bypass them with the raptor, the skimmer mostly allows you to bypass water combat (to which I can't find any downsides), on land it seems like a poor raptor substitute, as does the jackal whose real ability seems to be the portals, which can't break anything.

 

In terms of masteries I feel HoT requires a bit too much experience to fill them completely and PoF requires far too little (I have so far played through the story, completed the maps and gathered a couple of griffon eggs and I have 2 tracks completed and 2 more all but completed, I'm afraid the 5th, "you don't need this anyway" track isn't going to help much.

 

PoF seems to greatly lack replayability, I've played it for, I'd guess, 20ish hours so far and besides finishing a couple of achievements and maybe play through the story again I can't really find any reason to go back. HoT I must have played a lot more and I could go do a meta-event, or play through the, in my opinion better, story again, or do (mountless) map completion again and still somewhat enjoy myself.

 

Conclusion: While both were flawed, sometimes for the same reason (amount of content) and sometimes for the opposite (difficulty), I find HoT to have some good parts whereas PoF is largely forgettable.

 

I really hope the next living story bits are gonna be more interesting than PoF.

[Tiny Doom.4380]

Far too early to say. PoF is more accessible and hence more fun out the gate but I wonder how much replayabilty it has? HoT had a lot.

 

Also mounts are annoying and I avoid using them unless absolutely unavoidable while it's worth buying HoT for gliding alone (as I indeed did do on my second account and will probably do on my third). On that basis alone I would tend to say HoT is a more valuable purchase than PoF if you had to choose just one.

[kurfu.5623]

PoF without a doubt... I absolutely *hated* pretty much everything in HoT.

[Evil.1580]

> @Etienne.3049 said:

> I find both to be flawed in their own way.

>

> Heart of Thorns was small (4 maps) and at parts a bit overtuned difficulty-wise (and also too much CC).

> The story was okay although it felt rushed at the end (at some point you figure out every dragon has a weakness and instead of discovering it the player sort of decides near the end it's got to be his mind without, as far as I could see, any indication of that being it).

> All 4 of its maps are time locked, 2-hour meta events, which was a bit overdoing it in my opinion.

>

> Path of Fire has a more maps, but they feel rather empty, presumably big open spaces were placed between content for mounts to serve a purpose.

> I find it quite a bit too easy, a middle ground between HoT and what PoF has turned out to be would have been better, probably a bit closer to HoT than PoF.

> The maps seem almost completely forgettable (besides a few GW1 related things) while for HoT I can at least remember some things I found awesome on the first 3 maps. The story was much the same.

>

> The adventures in HoT had some interesting ones and some not so much, PoF seems to only have a bunch of race style ones, which I find so uninteresting I tried the one during the preview and never even bothered with them since release.

>

> Gliders were a fun addition, especially with updrafts and the like, and could, with a couple of no gliding zones, easily be allowed in core without breaking anything.

> Mounts are definitely fun to use, however I'm afraid they were a big mistake in terms of content that can't really be made anymore: for anything vertical just use springer, enemies on the map mean little anymore as you can usually bypass them with the raptor, the skimmer mostly allows you to bypass water combat (to which I can't find any downsides), on land it seems like a poor raptor substitute, as does the jackal whose real ability seems to be the portals, which can't break anything.

>

> In terms of masteries I feel HoT requires a bit too much experience to fill them completely and PoF requires far too little (I have so far played through the story, completed the maps and gathered a couple of griffon eggs and I have 2 tracks completed and 2 more all but completed, I'm afraid the 5th, "you don't need this anyway" track isn't going to help much.

>

> PoF seems to greatly lack replayability, I've played it for, I'd guess, 20ish hours so far and besides finishing a couple of achievements and maybe play through the story again I can't really find any reason to go back. HoT I must have played a lot more and I could go do a meta-event, or play through the, in my opinion better, story again, or do (mountless) map completion again and still somewhat enjoy myself.

>

> Conclusion: While both were flawed, sometimes for the same reason (amount of content) and sometimes for the opposite (difficulty), I find HoT to have some good parts whereas PoF is largely forgettable.

>

> I really hope the next living story bits are gonna be more interesting than PoF.

 

Very nice review! I like PoF but there is nothing to do on the maps once you finish the story, mounts, collections. Which we know some people are doing for 24 hours. Not to mention that the whole expansion is solo/small group oriented.

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

HoT:

Not fun to explore.

Annoying to get around unless you get upgrades that are useless everywhere that isn't HoT.

Too many annoying enemies.

Tangled Depth/Basin's map is a ball of yarn that has been knotted to hell and back.

Only good thing is glider.

 

PoF:

Maps feel like it's part of the core game.

More than 1 master that can be used outside of the expansion.

No maps like Tangled Depths/Basin.

Only bad thing is Vabbi's Branded area.

Vabbi's one of the best areas that had me laughing all the way.... up until the branded area and so much fun out of it... compared to Dragon's Stand.

 

PoF. No contest.

If it wasn't for the glider and wanting the hero points, I would've never really been to HoT so much (that and needing certain items in there for collections for obvious reasons).

Fighting the Forged seems like the usual fair battle compared to Mordrem as well.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Prefer to wait 3 months to see. Mounts are as much fun as gliding, open all as useful as true autolooting, but the long-term playability... too soon to tell.

[bearawr.9847]

pof because of story, you can do hot in a few hours, cant do that with pof. i do prefer meta maps though, i rushed through story i admit, and now i feel like i have nothing to do, metas or at least one meta, would have been nice.

[mnpksage.4290]

I'm glad PoF isn't winning by a landslide. It's good that some people still appreciate HoT for what it was/is.

[Oglaf.1074]

HoT - by miles. The HoT content will outlive the PoF content, just you see. PoF is just as "dead" as Tyria open world. No meta events or anything to make them feel alive. You 100% them and never ever go back. Waste, really.

 

The only thing I liked more in Pof was mounts > gliders.