What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[Rafaelhades]

Sorry, I have to vehemently disagree with this. Right now ALL we have are mandatory upgrades. How is that any different? It's no longer a case of picking out one benefit over another, it's just "Is this a higher ilvl than my last piece?".

You may prove correct in assuming that some people will choose one bonus over another, but I'll say this much for having unique benefits - it's a lot less boring. And right now, vanilla is about the only flavour this game has offered when it comes to equipment. It's already gotten stupid with item level 200 being bandied around, and who knows where it will end. Are we all going to end up with item level 999 when 5.0 arrives?

Valid points, but as I stated, it will eventually get boring anyway. I`m all for unique upgrades but they`re not unique when everyone is the same. It just presents the same problem in a different way than now. It`s a temporary fix.Why would you take Gordian armguards of Aiming +3 when Belias` armguards of Aiming gives you Barrage +1? Barrage +1 hands become BiS and Gordian becomes useless to the point where people will skip getting those and just farm Belias.Gear progression in this game is pretty set in stone, boring or not. You can't gear swap so sidegrades are pointless by definition. And with current community mentality, BiS is all that matters at 60. You don't pick out the benefits because other people will math it out, determine the best bang for your buck and the sheep will follow.

[Shiki_Lockhart]

I agree with you OP. I also feel they need to change the formula a bit. It is getting to repetitive and you can perfectly stop playing for 1 year and get back and catch up in a matter of days... the only thing you miss is the seasonal events or if you keep subscribing to help them and only do them and each main story quests and new content and wait again.

The only problem I see here is that they are afraid to try change and not get good results and people leave. But people are going to leave anyway, either is by getting tired of repeating same thing and toss away the old gear or by no liking the new direction the game is going. It will be not easy task for them find a good new content that wont feel repetition and that will keep players happy.

You see many games trying new stuff right? What they get? Fail products. Even if they try to innovate people will go back to old stuff >_<

[Elazu]

Fully agree with the Alexander part. Adding normal mode was a huge mistake.

[Airget]

Fully agree with the Alexander part. Adding normal mode was a huge mistake.

People create their own grind, the only person to blame is yourself. There is nothing wrong with Alexander Normal it was better than what they did before which was dumb down coil and add in echo to make it easier for others to complete. Now with the current model they don't have to "nerf" the savage content when the next patches roll around.

You know what I think the real issue with Alexander is, you can't faceroll it like Crystal Tower, it's the exact same format as crystal tower, get one piece of loot "PER" area and then you are done for the week. In Crystal Tower you could only get one piece, in Alexander normal it's 4 tokens, the slight difference is you get 4 loot instead of just one and it's done with 8 people rather than 24 but there in lies the huge difference. You have to work harder to obtain a weekly reward compared to tower, in tower where it's 24 people working together but each group gets their own loot the reward is still 8=4 and guess what, Alexander works like that now, per area 8=4 and sure you might not get what you want but guess what, it's because its more challenging that people don't like it.

In the end it's on you to continue to do ALexander, if you desire that extra IL from the 190 gear that's on you. When you have 170-180(unlimited tomes) gear and 200-210(weekly tomes) you have to start asking yourself, how much do you actually need that 190, if you are calling it a grind then ask yourself is it really worth it to have "IL 191" because you did alexander weekly and got the gear for it when if you didn't and just got the ring you'd currently be standing at "IL 188" with just the esoteric gear and the ring reward from doing Alexander normal?

[zosia]

Fully agree with the Alexander part. Adding normal mode was a huge mistake.

Yup, it took an already underwhelming story and watered it down. It had no mystery about it. It definitely lost it's appeal when you could get the entire story in about an hour on patch day. I miss how coil worked where the story was such a rewarding part of raiding.

[Kaurie]

Personally I am peeved, as I remember reading an interview stating that 2.0 was to set the basics and 3.0 was when they were going to spice things up. This was in regards to gear and traits, as I understood it.

I was expecting 2ndary stats to be more meaningful, gear to have 'fun' stats on them, multiple variations of gear within each tier, and customizable traits/skills.

I either completely misunderstood what I read, they changed their mind or I've gone crazy and this interview never happened (dream?).


In addition to this, I do feel that the 2 new expert dungeons were thrown rather lazily together. There doesn't seem to be much going on and they feel very linear.

[adn]

Newsflash people: Flying IS the new content in Heavensward. That was the "new feature" that was added this xpac.

Is it good new content? No because honestly it didn't add much to the game... yet. If they put something in 3.1 or 3.2 that makes use of flying then maybe it will be better, but right now it feels like kind of a "who cares?" feature. They need to add some kind of interesting and exclusive feature around flying, because like it or not flying is the big "new feature" of the expansion.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

What does join date and post history have to do with anything?

I have a similar date and I enjoy this game :P

[Gextiv]

FLYING MOUNTS!

I CAN NOW SWORE THROUGH THE SKY! HALLELUJAH!

[Gilraen]

I have to disagree with pretty much every thread that pops up on this topic. People have been making this argument since Heavensward launched without understanding exactly what they are looking at. Heavensward, like 2.0 before, has not been fully released. What you're looking at, much like 2.0 before, is the first chapter of many with subsequent chapters being released in a predictable timeframe (every 3 months if I recall). The strategy is every bit a staple of MMOs, to keep you coming back for more. So what if there's only leveling dungeons and 2 level cap dungeons. That was pretty much all we had at 2.0's launch, too. Now look at how many dungeons 2.0 has. So many they actually shunted Heavensward content onto their own Duty pages to keep things decently navigable. I'd honestly reserve judgement until they release the last of Heavensward's story content, then you'd have a better metric of where it measures up against 2.0.