Reflecting on GUILD WARS 2: SECRETS OF THE DARKNESS and discussing the team’s reflection

ArenaNet recently launched the latest quarterly update for Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Dark (SotO). This update added a few things and concluded the story of Nayos and Kryptis. Most recently, Game Director Josh Davis shared a blog post reflecting a bit on what the team has learned and what we as players can expect from the next expansion coming out later this year.

I wanted to go over some key points from Davis’ post and share some of my thoughts on them SotO now that it’s over.

Before we get started, I’ll reveal that I’m typically a Guild Wars 2 fanboy. I am absolutely in love with this game. Sometimes because of its flaws, but many times despite its flaws. Yes, my opinion is very influenced by this, so take it for what you will.

Additionally, this was the first expansion under the team’s new model of releasing yearly expansion content with quarterly updates. This restructuring was to ensure that new content was released more consistently.

First, what happened SotO Add to Guild Wars 2? Here’s a short list: Weapon Master Training which allows all specializations within a profession to use all weapons available to the profession, Mage’s Vault as a rework of daily and weekly objectives, Convergences, a new weapon for each profession, legendary relics, two levels of the new legendary armor, a new fractal (haven’t tried it yet), some quality of life updates like rework for converters/devourers, three new maps (Skywatch Archipelago, Amnytas, Inner Nayos), a new hub (The Tower of the Mages), the new story and a new way to obtain the celestial ladder mount. There have been a lot of things that have transpired between the launch of SotO and now.

How did all this get to the players? Well, in my experience and looking online, it’s a mixed bag. Personally I loved it SotO at launch. I think everything started very well with two new maps, the new sky scaling method, the opening story chapters were great and I personally love the Wizard’s Crypt. Unfortunately, with each release, I was less and less enthusiastic SotO.

It felt like the story quickly devolved into a much more generic and bland experience that mirrored almost every story before it. A new threat arises, so we must assemble a team of allies to fight an epic war that we don’t actually see, and finally defeat the new big evil boss.

I barely spent any time in the new one SotO the maps after the first quarterly update and rift hunting became exhausting after a while. The progress bar based story chapters were boring and pointless more than anything else. I’m sorry, but Convergences are so boring to me that I’ve only done them two, maybe three times.

Here are some things I’d like to see addressed in the future. First, it’s too late to save the file SotO story, but make the next expansion’s story more unique than previous stories. Don’t just create an army to fight great evil. We’ve done this countless times Guild Wars 2. Let’s think of something new. Also, delete the progress bar sections. That’s what meta events are for.

Second, make the Convergences feel better. I think my biggest issue with Convergences is how long they take and how little I feel rewarded for completing them. It also doesn’t help that public instances only occur every 3 hours and there is only a 10 minute window to participate.

I think my solution for Convergences would be to make them happen more often, have a larger window to participate in, and make them faster or improve the rewards. Third, I’d like to see Rift Hunting expanded to all maps. At the moment, it’s only on select maps and so you have to be more proactive in hunting the Rift.

I’d like it to be available on all maps at all times, so as I’m running around completing whatever my objective is for the day, I might see that a rift is just out of my path and so I take a little detour and help by moving on first.

For me, this is a more fun way to do splits and when it happens in the current system I enjoy it. You could maybe include bigger rewards or something for select maps, but being able to do that map-wide would be awesome.

Enough of my complaining though. Let’s explore what Davis said in his reflection on SotO. I appreciate the admission of this SotO‘s story wasn’t what they were hoping for. Davis admits that the team had far more ambition than it could actually achieve, which led to lackluster results.

He also admits that the way they developed the Inner Nayos map wasn’t as good as it could have been and pledged to handle things a little differently for the next expansion.

Briefly talk about how Guild Wars 2 Lately the team has been focusing more on tackling current game systems rather than implementing new ones (a mentality I personally like) and anticipates some new systems coming with the next expansion.

I personally hope that in the next couple of expansions they continue to go back and rework different things to reduce bloat, like the 20 gajillion currencies we have to juggle (the research notes are terrible!).

Davis shares that the team will be “a little more ambitious with our next expansion” when it comes to new features, and I’m cautiously optimistic about that. I love Wizards’ Vault, but the new feature can’t just be about more masteries and currencies.

Davis closes the blog with a preview of the next expansion. The tease shows a character swimming with a spear and then walking on land with a spear in hand. Does it look like we’ll have a chance to get the spears ashore? Many are currently speculating on what this might mean.

Some say it’s just a stick skin, others that we’re getting a completely new weapon that is a spear or polearm of some kind and the character in the trailer simply had the same skin applied to aquatic and land weapons, still others think that the system is being reworked where your aquatic weapons (or at least the spear) will become usable both on land and in water, which would represent a major rework of the systems.

I guess we’ll just have to wait until June 4th when more information about the next expansion will be revealed.

What did you think about? SotO overall? What do you hope? Guild Wars 2 Did the team learn from this expansion? I personally don’t hate the new content model and understand that there will be growing pains. I just wish the growing pains didn’t hurt so much and I hope they will lessen significantly with the next expansion.