Disclaimer: I haven’t played it. So speaking strictly as a prospective purchaser, the feedback from the community so far has not inspired confidence. I was hoping this expansion would bring me back to the game, but by most accounts it’s hard not to get the feeling that the new devs have lost the thread. They don’t seem to understand what was good about the previous systems–namely, that they gave players choices. Sure, people could funnel to the path of least resistance with the old dailies, but at least that meant you could get them done if you didn’t have a lot of time. As someone who burned out hard on PVP, I liked the idea of being able to play a match or two, and then if I got frustrated I could switch to PVE and still finish dailies. I could make the decision on the fly instead of being committed to something that didn’t incorporate how my actual gameplay experience might go. My understanding of the new system leads me to conclude that if I were to decide I want PVP, the choice is then to either finish all of the PVP dailies or bail for the day, no matter how the matches went. Also, some of the old dailies were clunkers. Having the option to do the easier ones meant that no one was stuck doing content they despised. Finally, jumping puzzle portal conga was a defining feature of the community. I hope it’s still around.

Sure, there were optimal rune sets, but it sounds like those options have basically been removed altogether. Yeah, you’d have been a fool not to take Torment on your Renegade, but at least you could. Trapper sucked for the guy on the receiving end, but it enabled a whole new style of play. I feel like everyone predicted the rune/relic change would be garbage. Are there any relics anyone is actually excited by?

I also read this morning that armor weights are basically gone for the new expansion-defining sets. For people who might not have been around at the time: In Guild Wars 1, every class had its own armor styles. They switched to the weight system in the sequel to cut down on the design overhead, and now we’re abandoning even that. Looking at the quarterlies I didn’t get the impression that things were quite that dire, but doing away with basic content like class fantasy expression is not a good look.

The only good feedback I’ve read seems to be that the rewards themselves are better, at least on a reward-by-reward basis (if not in aggregate over time–mathematically it seems like just playing ordinary content is economically less valuable than it used to be). And apparently the maps and stories are pretty good?

The thing is, I liked Dragonfall. By which I mean: a new meta to run isn’t necessarily a selling point aside from just more variety. The systems are the thing that make the game fun to play moment to moment. If the systems feel shitty, then the game feels shitty, and it doesn’t matter whether the thing I’m swinging at is a spiky purple blob with red circles on the ground or a crooked green blob with red circles on the ground instead. I’d still kind of rather be playing my ritualist.

All of that said, to reiterate: this isn’t speaking from experience. It’s just my expectations based on what I’ve read and watched so far. I’m currently holding off on pulling the trigger in the hopes that someone will convince me it’s a good investment of time and money. As it stands, I’m not convinced that it isn’t really a step backwards with a view towards better monetization and cut development costs.