I am getting frusrated

[Mr.MacaronSama]

So, I finally gave Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns a shot, thinking I’d be diving into an epic expansion… but instead, I got a stress test disguised as a game. Here’s why this DLC made me question my life choices:

1. Map Design: Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?

a) Verticality sounds cool in theory, but in practice? It’s a nightmare. Every map is a maze of cliffs, bridges, and death pits, and good luck figuring out where to go. You think you’re close to your objective? Nope, it’s actually 3 floors above you. 💀

b) The lack of clear paths means you’ll spend more time lost than actually playing the game.

2. Everything Wants to Kill You. Always.

a) I swear, even the plants in this DLC want you dead.

b) The enemies hit like trucks, come in swarms, and have mechanics that punish solo players hard.

c) Some events feel brutally overtuned, like ArenaNet forgot casual players exist.

3. Masteries – A Gated Progression Hell

Oh, you wanna glide? Grind Mastery Points first. Wanna navigate the jungle without suffering? More grinding.
Instead of an exciting new feature, Masteries felt like an annoying roadblock keeping me from actually enjoying the content.

Don't get me wrong I absolutely loved the core game except the final boss fight, I love the open world and the freedom that comes with it. But HOT makes me tired just playing it.

[ItzaLaggin]

you can always find a train and follow for all the mastery points, waypoints, hero points etc, then play there at your liesure and finish the story

[dunnothisguy]

1. The map design in HoT is absolutely freaking brilliant. Yes, can be frustrating at times, but frustration goes, appreciation stays. It's insanely creative, immensely fun to explore, fantastic replayability. The mates who designed (and approved) them deserve a monument erected in their name - because probably never such original and challenging content ever made it into a mainstream online game as public free-for-all maps (and probably won't ever make it again). Amount of casuals enraged by it ("but I can't just farm it all with my right hand, while holding a beer in the other!!1") only proves that point

2. The difficulty of mobs is appropriate, in general. You can even do it in solo, especially with mounts, and it's refreshing to have an OW content where you really think about teaming up with other players. It's a freaking MMOrpg, after all. The design of SOME of the mobs and encounters in story instances sometimes lefts a lot to be desired though. Some mobs spam frustratingly too much AoE skills too fast (fcking shrooms, and snipers in story instances...) resulting in sudden death where you least expect it. Some champs (like champ of Baltazar in the Basin) are simply badly made (as if it ever great idea to give an ability to wipe out everybody around him in 10 seconds if you don't do everything right to a regular map boss; it's not a freaking raid boss..)

3. Here, I can relate. I also felt those masteries take TOO much time to be developed. Like, I'm already in Tangled Depths, but still don't have Nunouch Wallows (or something like that) developed, I focused on gliding and some initial lore masteries, but really have not much of each. Am I supposed to just stay on one map, grinding for days? That's stupid and boring.

[Nico]

Funily enough this higher difficulty is exactly what I like so much about HoT. Core Tyria is way too flat and way too basic and easy. Though I guess back when I did HoT we did not yet have any mounts, so traversing those areas was much harder back then.

And mastery points are everywhere, you don't really need to grind for them. Just the last few mastery points needed for the last few masteries might require some actual work. And for EXP ... it's something you get no matter what you do. As long as you just think that you are just having fun doing things on the map istead of trying to do the most efective strategy to get the EXP as quickly as possible it is also a pretty trivial thing to get. AKA, EXP is best to get without even trying.

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by Mr.MacaronSama:

So, I finally gave Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns a shot, thinking I’d be diving into an epic expansion… but instead, I got a stress test disguised as a game. Here’s why this DLC made me question my life choices:

1. Map Design: Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?

a) Verticality sounds cool in theory, but in practice? It’s a nightmare. Every map is a maze of cliffs, bridges, and death pits, and good luck figuring out where to go. You think you’re close to your objective? Nope, it’s actually 3 floors above you. 💀

b) The lack of clear paths means you’ll spend more time lost than actually playing the game.

2. Everything Wants to Kill You. Always.

a) I swear, even the plants in this DLC want you dead.

b) The enemies hit like trucks, come in swarms, and have mechanics that punish solo players hard.

c) Some events feel brutally overtuned, like ArenaNet forgot casual players exist.

3. Masteries – A Gated Progression Hell

Oh, you wanna glide? Grind Mastery Points first. Wanna navigate the jungle without suffering? More grinding.
Instead of an exciting new feature, Masteries felt like an annoying roadblock keeping me from actually enjoying the content.

Don't get me wrong I absolutely loved the core game except the final boss fight, I love the open world and the freedom that comes with it. But HOT makes me tired just playing it.

You described things that made HoT awesome in my opinion. :)

I liked all the things, the vertical layered huge design, the canopies high above etc.. i like the mobs, champtions, danger, masteries, hero points.. it feels like a dangerous jungle where actually first time i was "lost" often because it felt actually biggest and most layered MMO game map from any mmo i have ever player, that is an actual accomplishment, in a positive way for me.

I go there back still, doing the Wyverns/metas/champs on all HoT maps etc often still just for fun. It was immersive as a massive jungle first time and wish other games would have actual huge maps like that, where the game actually FEELS massive and not some small typical way too one dimensional "jungle" that can just quickly pass by.

One of the things i have learned to value (besides loving sPVP & WvW modes) is the cool map designs and many original locations of GW2, the open world of this game is IMHO what others should take notes from. Every other mmo games open world does not come even close to how cool designs there are in GW2. Just facts. Of course not everyone likes, some just want FFXIV type of "talk to 3 npc in this map and done, swap to next map" where maps are just a quick background.. but here the maps are biggest part of the content. And them being huge and layered are nice. There are enough simple maps also with not many layers, but still nice geographic designs and locations to explore with normal mounts and flying ones.

"Every map is a maze of cliffs, bridges, and death pits, and good luck figuring out where to go"

That is why i love the maps, and that is why i play GW2 for. If i want to play flat one dimensional maps that are there only to quickly progress story by talking to 3 npc and moving to next map, i can login to FFXIV, that has good instanced content, but maps are snooze fest and pointless and open world there feels static and "dead" (and very flat).

tldr: I love HoT and it's maps, it feels like actual GAMING and exploring, because had to find routes and places, navigating it and winning the dangers (i like the slightly more dangerous mobs/champs etc), gliding to the right places etc felt rewarding and FUN for me.

[RotherHans]

Ah, goode ole times.
Always puts a smile on my face when recomending getting HoT to newbies complaining why the game is easy...

Shall we tell him about the poison mastery?

[Kand]

Skip HoT and LS3. Play POF and LS4, get all the mounts before going back to HOT. Thank me later.

[Nibbie]

One of the biggest criticisms of the base game was how easy, simple, and safe the open world was, so they made their first expansion a lot harder. Plenty of people thought it was too hard though, and they dialed it back a bit for releases afterward.

[~T~D~]

Originally posted by Kand:

Skip HoT and LS3. Play POF and LS4, get all the mounts before going back to HOT. Thank me later.

+1

[Dslim]

Im new as well, i only got the glider and skipped to path of fire for the mounts to make life easier. Of course you get the same 5 people on these forums to tell you youre wrong. Overall, all your points are valid. I havent even made it past the first map yet. Most people had years playing the game before this even came out. So they were desperate for new content and seasoned players.

[dunnothisguy]

Originally posted by Dslim:

Im new as well, i only got the glider and skipped to path of fire for the mounts to make life easier. Of course you get the same 5 people on these forums to tell you youre wrong. Overall, all your points are valid. I havent even made it past the first map yet. Most people had years playing the game before this even came out. So they were desperate for new content and seasoned players.

It seems more like you'll have the same 5 people on these forums that say HoT maps' designs are bad lol. Also, nobody said topic starter is "wrong", they just shared their perspective. It's not surprising as a lot of people (me included) genuinely love HoT content, and its higher challenge level. Ofc if you don't feel that way you should skip or make your life easier. Like, using mounts, or remembering it's a MMO rpg and teaming up with other players. Nobody should play what they don't enjoy.

[SinisterSlay]

Originally posted by Dslim:

Im new as well, i only got the glider and skipped to path of fire for the mounts to make life easier. Of course you get the same 5 people on these forums to tell you youre wrong. Overall, all your points are valid. I havent even made it past the first map yet. Most people had years playing the game before this even came out. So they were desperate for new content and seasoned players.

I walked into HoT and died to pocket raptors same as everyone else.
Got used to it, changed my build, adapted.
Had the exact same problem in PoF. Didn't die, but my build was very tanky, not much DPS (because I adapted to HoT). So I had to learn and adapt again, and I finally started looking up builds instead of making my own. And now PoF seems easy.
Went to Cantha, and although enemies have absurd health, my main and favourite alts have no trouble there.

Now tangled depths, I still hate that map. But the rest of HoT grew to be my favourite.

HoT was a bit funny though that all my friends kept asking me to carry them through HoT because my tanky necro seemed so powerful to them. Sure I was slow to kill bosses, but they couldn't kill me.

[Q]

tangled depths and draconis mons are amazing maps, so many layers, a vertical labyrinth filled with surprises everywhere.

imo people are way too impatient, they want to devour content, finish maps in a day etc

[Dslim]

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

Originally posted by Dslim:

Im new as well, i only got the glider and skipped to path of fire for the mounts to make life easier. Of course you get the same 5 people on these forums to tell you youre wrong. Overall, all your points are valid. I havent even made it past the first map yet. Most people had years playing the game before this even came out. So they were desperate for new content and seasoned players.

I walked into HoT and died to pocket raptors same as everyone else.
Got used to it, changed my build, adapted.
Had the exact same problem in PoF. Didn't die, but my build was very tanky, not much DPS (because I adapted to HoT). So I had to learn and adapt again, and I finally started looking up builds instead of making my own. And now PoF seems easy.
Went to Cantha, and although enemies have absurd health, my main and favourite alts have no trouble there.

Now tangled depths, I still hate that map. But the rest of HoT grew to be my favourite.

HoT was a bit funny though that all my friends kept asking me to carry them through HoT because my tanky necro seemed so powerful to them. Sure I was slow to kill bosses, but they couldn't kill me.

For me my first class i was playing was a warrior, i just got nuked until i went to berserker. But elementlist so far has been my favorite. Granted ive only played like 4 classes..

[Angrypillow]

I'm sure this is why the HOT zones are still some of the most populated areas in the game.

[Pip]

I solo'd HoT.
If account wide mastery progression is too much for you, than mmorpgs might not be your thing.