#i need to release everything I've felt when i played the expac | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

icebrooding · 3 days

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Honestly even though I didn’t have the same negative reaction that much of the online gw2 community did, I do kinda appreciate some of the learnings for story they outlined in the retrospective 😅

I agree completely. I personally loved Secrets of the Obscure, I rate it very highly while acknowledging that it definitely had flaws. Handling as many new characters and lore topics was going to be difficult, and I understand the frustration of people who felt that things felt a bit underwhelming or glossed over, I really do. I feel it myself.

Personally, however, I think those things affected me less because I've always been rather focused towards story, and digging as much out of it as I can in a rather aggressive way, in almost everything I enjoy, and that allows me a different (not necessarily deeper) level of enjoyment. Sometimes I may come to conclusions or thoughts that may not be there actually, or may not have been the intent, but the enjoyable thing is that art is subjective, and if nothing comes out to specifically say 'this reading is wrong', I can satisfy myself with those interpretations.

Why else do you think I can sit here and write essays on 'here's why X character makes me think they're like Y based on one throwaway line or an implication in a piece of lore in a book I found on the overworld' :P

This is definitely how SotO appealed to me, because there was a lot there that I could dig into personally and get my mental cogs ticking. But on the same note, I get why people want more concrete answers, more time spent on developing new threads. I would have loved SotO to be longer, myself, because I truly enjoyed the world and characters it brought to the table. That's what Wildflowers will be for--

Gameplay, I think could have definitely been improved. While I wasn't particularly fussed with the first or last Nayos release, the middle one is where I felt the impact hardest. But I do enjoy things like Rift Hunting, Convergences, etc, I just pace my time. I know that's easier for me though since I only started playing in '22.

I appreciate the transparency on this front, in all honesty. I've only dabbled into game dev myself in times long past (I feel old, but I'm really not), and can understand the need to push out an excuse for why x or y didn't turn out as expected, but I can respect flat-out saying 'we tried to do too much, and we failed to achieve what we set out to'.

And with the certain extreme-level volatile reactions in other sections of this player base, I think recognising that treating the places where SotO tripped over itself as something not done maliciously is important. Not saying that criticism isn't deserved, but I have seen some genuinely horrific things said that make me feel ashamed to be part of this community.

All in all, I'm going to hold my faith in the next expansion and am greatly looking forward to it, and seeing how these lessons take. I've stuck through way worse in other MMOs, so one expac that struggled to handle everything it set out to do is barely a blip on my radar.

And I feel this is the best moment to bring up my general blog's attitude: it's no secret how horribly negative this playerbase can be, to the point I've had to turn off map chat a number of times because the negativity is so constant it is genuinely bad for my mental health. I have fairly severe depression, I do not need to sit here and wallow in even more negativity. I think too much of the world as it is right now thrives off of negativity and hating things and not being happy, so when I talk about story beats or characters, etc, I always try to do so in a positive way. I'm just here to enjoy something that's come to mean a lot to me, not to sit here and hear for the eightieth time about why X is a shit character or Y is the worst thing that ever happened or Z blah blah blah.

#text #ask #anon #long post #sorry i had a Lot of things to say hahaha

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