As mentioned in the video, no hate to Peon at all. I’ve watched his content for years, but when I saw this review being disingenuous, and at some points saying things that just weren’t true, I had to make a review of his review. As someone with thousands of hours into this game, I hope this video helps clear up any confusion.
Don't let personal feelings get in the way. TH-cam critics have to be held to the same standard that traditional written game journalists are held to. LazyPeon made a similar fault as game journalists who review games without finishing them, thus spreading incomplete, context-free information. He has to be held to a high standard too.
Start off by saying thanks for making this video so we can have a conversation about this. I'd argue calling his review disingenuous without proving he knew he was deceiving his audience IS directly attacking his character weather you meant to or not. His style is very similar to a lot of rage bait content to farm impressions but this alone doesn't prove he is not being genuine. Taken at face value his complaints are valid opinions. While there may be solutions to his problems, the core issue is these solutions are not communicated well by the game itself. The community has done a great job of building resources outside the game like videos, blog posts, and the wiki, but without these resources new players will run into the same problems as him.
To be fair most of his videos are first impressions and he gives a breakdown of his experience not necessarily the whole game and not every new player will understand you can do all these things so maybe it also shows there's an issue with tutorials and such
the thing i find sad is that on his last tier list he basically put gw2 as the best MMO atm yet i feel like he knows nothing about the game.. therefore i cant take anything from him seriously anymore
"Jon me in the GuildWars 3 waiting room" Why, so he can not play that game too and complain there's nothing to do? "I've done nothing and I'm all out of content!"
I feel like most of his criticism stemmed from entitlement. He came back expecting to be served everything on a silver platter, then was annoyed he had to put in effort, or to circumvent that, gold. He didn't bother playing the game. Playing an MMO is a time investment, and GW2 is actually one of the easiest to dip in and out of. But he wasn't willing to do the bare minimum, instead just dipping his toe into the water and saying he doesn't like it. It's ironic, that the GW2 community is always described as hypercasual, yet somehow this person manages to be even less adept at the game than those people. It's shameful coming from someone depicting themselves as an informed content creator on MMOs. Some of his criticisms are valid, but a lot of it is just "I can't be asked to put in time, hand me my rewards". He says it really well: GW2 doesn't cause that same "addiction". It can, if you let it. But it's far less predatory in its' mechanics than other MMOs.
and its really a great thing that it doesnt have the addiction feature i played so many MMO's and a lot of them really are predatory in their mechanics, like you said to take a recent example: lost ark you really didnt want to miss your caps be it daily quests, or daily chaos, etc. etc. you HAD to play, if you wanted to somewhat "compete" (not even compete) GW2 just lets you have some freedom and even almost encourages "taking some days off" for example right now i just play dragons dogma and dont even feel like i miss out when not logging in the game at all for a few days then i can come back after a few days and everything is like it was before and i enjoy it exactly the same without any problems
It's not like wow, where u feel pressured to to play the game or else you are wasting money or falling behind in gear stats, which u only can get from the newest explanation which usually is priced at 50 USD It's insane predatory.
I think it‘s quite funny how he‘s complaining about the game not having a gear progression, meanwhile he doesn‘t even have the best gear equipped yet xD
his review screams „I don‘t play the game, but I wanna do a review anyways since there‘s new content“ to me, so I‘m kinda disappointed, I really like his other videos
funny how he complains about gear so much meanwhile legendary armory fixed all the issues he mentioned and he doesnt even know about it or cared enough to research about it :/
@@pega7550What are the chances that all of his videos are like this, it's just we Guild Wars 2 players only really notice when it's something we know well?
@@hx9801 he mentioned legendary only as skins, so he does not even know armory exist, or the novelty tab what have been on game like 5 years and thinks it came from soto
The fact that he went to MetaBattle alone is proof that his experience does not at all represent a new player's experience. What kind of new player to GW2 even know what "MetaBattle" is?
Yeah, when he said he was dying too fast, and opened the equipment screen, i quickly saw he was full Berserker on an Elementalist, yeah, going to need a few years of experience to make that work, even in Open World lol.
I honestly have enjoyed his content in the past. But this review has made me question the veracity of his reviews for other mmo's that I may not have given a shot because of his verdict... There are so many points on which you can criticise GW2. He just chose the most surface level, non-issues in order to meet his word count for the video. The horizonal progression, and needing multiple sets of gear is literally the opposite of an issue. Gearing a character can be done in 1 or 2 days of farming gold or map currency if all you want is exotics and maybe ascended trinkets. Unless you want to push fractals then this is fine for all content in the game. Gearing a new character/build might be slightly annoying, but that gear is valid FOREVER.... You never have to replace it. You might in some cases just have to swap out runes/sigils every couple months as balance changes. It is literally in his pros, but he clearly does not understand what horizontal means. You obtain gear to widen the scope your character/account's abilities, not to push for increased stats... What he is arguing for is there being NO progression, which literally goes against his other point of there being no clear goals for him to farm/work towards. So what does he want? He wants a MOBA. Final point: He says "gear is nothing more than a barrier to entry". FFS what is it in other MMOs then? Of course it is a barrier to entry, that is literally a fundamental characteristic of most MMOs. You try to obtain gear to allow you to do things you would not be able to do without it...
Your final point is spot on. It's like he was annoyed that the game doesn't have a "Reviewer Mode" that just gives you everything in the game from the jump.
Trust me when I say this, the 20-30 minutes you spend watching Peon review an MMORPG will likely be better spent playing the actual game and deciding for yourself. You'll not only understand half of his points in the same amount of time, but you'll actually be in the game and experiencing a more objective response to it.
I saw that inventory and the first thing that exploded in my mind, before he even said anything, was: HIT THAT DEPOSIT MATERIALS BUTTON!! and sell junk. 🤣 just by opening bags and doing that, without even counting recycling, would have cleared 20 slots...
he basically dialed in that "review" so he could get those GW2 video clicks while the games newest expansion is fresh in people's minds. I did the dagda storyline fight.. solo.. on a catalyst and it was my first time cause my first SotO story clear was my Ele so I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was stupid easy. The difference is I've been playing GW2 since launch, I understand the game, know how to play multiple classes (my mains being Ele and thief), and have them well geared (something he called meaningless) with a proper open world build. Hell I have almost 10,000 more HP on my ele than he does and I'm not a god-tier player like Lord Hizen. Easily 1/2 the video was PVP / WvW so not exactly a Secrets of the Obscure "review". I almost laughed out loud when he decided to play Cata after not playing the game for an extended period of time, I knew how that was going to go... I actually *DID* laugh out loud when I saw him wearing rare gear at level 80. He's talking about wanting GW3 but he barely has a toddler level knowledge of GW2. Maybe he should just stick to games without a real narrative or dialog like Valorant or League and his "Hot Take" is absolute trash. His vid is without question the worst take on GW2 I've ever seen, not just because I out right disagree with his opinions but that video is so flooded with misinformation and things that are flat out wrong it's just absurd.
To be fair, one thing that GW2 does wrong is explaining what is what, "why are there 3 chests in my inventory" (which. 90% of the time, may be a clusterfudge) without needing to read the patch notes and wiki, what are the weapon tier differences and so on
"This is an MMO not a shopping mall" loved that haha! ❤ A huge part of this game revolves around acquiring the gear to do what you want to do. That means rewards, crafting, earning what you need. Peon missed that point entirely.
I'm quickly bored but out of all the MMO's, GW2 is still very fun to me. Love the world, love the mechanics, the variety, the style, the community. Peon just sound bummed out overall.
The issues you describe with Peon share the same theme across most of his negative reviews of MMORPGs. He takes most of an MMORPGs gameplay at face value and requires a lot of hand-holding by the ingames interface to feel like he's making progress or having a good time. Which is exactly the opposite of what an MMORPG is about. Like with the inventory, they're colour coded to know what's what, and if you play MMORPGs regularly you'd already have an idea what that means with a bit of intuition and/or a quick Google. I'm not saying Peon hasn't played a few (a lot) MMORPGS in his time, but he doesn't seem to be in the right headspace to connect the dots, because he's not playing these games to "play" them, he's playing them with his mind on auto polite to make a review. His approach is more reminiscent of how you'd treat a AAA FPS game, where most mechanics have to be familiar and require little time to understand. His video sums it up when he says "I just want to be killing things". Yet isn't an MMORPGs core value about enjoying the journey, rather than the destination? I think he's got to a place with reviewing MMORPGs where he isn't passionate about them any more, yet is reviewing them to keep the TH-cam channel alive. His format for his videos and personality are endearing and engaging, but his headspace for MMORPGs hasn't been in the right place for years. Which probably changed a lot around the time he moved to Thailand and discovered a lot more things he could be doing, with the TH-cam channel as a means to an end for it.
"Mostly useless shit" - Idk maybe sell them??? I understand the confusion with getting too many things and not knowing what to do with them, but after doing a little bit of research, you can clearly understand once and forever what to do with objects. His hot take is also so silly. Like, has he heard of legendaries? People get them for a reason lol
This is the same guy who boosted a character for his FFXIV review and then complained that the game didn't explain everything to you. Ever since he did that, he lost all credibility in my eyes, even though he did eventually head back to FFXIV legit and heavily enjoyed.
I would say Lazy Peon isn't a mmo player he just reviews them non stop. He doesn't really play the games. Just logs in for a few hours and then makes a vid to make some quick $.
Unfortunately you'd be wrong in saying that. If you watch all his content he has most if not all his accounts fully decked out, not with dev given progress either, look at his new world or BDO or wow accounts.
@@UsurperOfTheThrone He played SotO story for 1 hour and then attempted to speak about its story or what it did or didn't add. He didn't play the game LOL
@kungfuwerewolf6568 even his mastery points says it all... Peon did this for a quick viral video. He didn't think anything through and his ignorance shows...
@@FriedFx I think my fav part is that he found a power cata build full zerker, face tanks dagda story fight, then complains about how squishy he is and not knowing why. THEN says later in vid that gear is pointless and needs to give a drop down like in pvp LOL
Gold to gems ' for free' is a fallacy. Someone else paid for those gems you are just swapping with them for gold. Without people swapping gems for gold everyone would have to use money to buy gems.
Oh yeah. Spudzie really glosses over it way too quick. He talks about buying the waypoint unlock for only 1600 gems. That's not a small amount, thats a huge amount. You can buy a mount pack with 4 different skins for that much.
he also made it sound like u just go play 10 minutes and u can convert it, meanwhile the conversion rate is far from "good" and it takes quite a lot of time to have enough gold to buy a single cash shop item for "free", in fact, if u just work minimum wage and go work for an hour to buy gems with $$ you're way better off.
When Peon opened his bags and stated 'instantly overwelmed' wasnt about the bag space it was about the amount of junk loot in the game that our bags get filled with making it hard for a new player or returner to tell what is actually useful and what is rubbish.
Anyone who doesn't understand inventory management in gw2 cannot be legit in making any form of real review, unless it's a "new player first impression/experience".
that's called RPG. In RPG, you have to learn a value of item. I think Peon is not RPG player. He is more a competive player. I think he should not review that he don't know about anything.
One of the first thing I learned about the inventory system in GW2 when I first played the game was that you are supposed to sell the junk items and salvage as much as possible. Nobody taught me this. The color coding of the items and their descriptions alone taught me of these information.
He's someone who only knows how to play pay-to-win games. A fanboy of Black Desert Online should not even dare to say one bad word about GW2. GW2 is the only game I can return to and dive into all its contents right away, giving a freedom of choice. If I try to go back to any nowdays MMOs like BDO or Lost Ark, it would take a year or more to prepare for the featured content such as few endgame bosses or dungeons that requires P2W gear. Taking a break from P2W MMOs is not an option, as they treat players like slaves. One single update in P2W games can rob years of progression.
Calm down you make it sound like he punched a baby or something. His review had more positive things to say than negative and If anything his review shows the flaws of GW2 because honestly the game doesn't show you a lot of stuff and requires a wiki so much that Anet has imbedded it into their game. Also his review is going to be biased because he's a PvP player.
Well, according to his thumbnail it should've been a soto first impressions video but he sold me more on PvP and wvw than soto 😂 Half the video was PvP, wvw and rants.
@@UberAwesomeDewd I don't think he hit a baby or anything, but he clearly did the game a disservice by spreading false information or lack of information. It clearly shows less than the minimum commitment to review an MMO that is a game that demands your time. Even the positive parts of what he said didn't go beyond the basics, he literally copied everything from the last video without trying to test the new things that the expansion brought.
Peon made so many videos on GW2 over the years, yet he only has little over 90 mastery ? That alone is dead giveaway he doesn't know what he is talking about.
Astonishingly arrogant for him to walk around with his eyes closed and complain about the view. I'm sure for the minimal effort the monetization played off.
Been playing GW2 since May because of LazyPeon. Got to 216 mastery points so I can tell and feel how disappointed I was after seeing his most recent review.. I know I would not jump into the game as a newbie after seeing that
This is why I hate his "x in 2023" videos. He never gives the games a fair shot he just downloads flies through some of the newest content without giving it a real shot you could literally see where he skipped a lot of the dialogue then he really has the gall to try and say that the new content is bad? Then goes to complain about how he has to spend gold to get better gear when he showed a little before you could get ascended gear just by doing dailies and weeklies. Then he complained about being a glass cannon when he literally made himself a glass cannon build. Everything he complained about in this video was stuff he didn't take the time to actually understand
So agree. It was supposed to be a review on Secrets of the Obscure. I was expecting info on how the new story content, new areas, new maps etc. But nothing.
You are spot on, his review does neither GW2 nor the expansion justice. The expansion is not even finished, we got the first out of 3 or 4 parts right now, there will be new weapons for each class and also a new pve legendary armor etc.
That guy has like 100 hours in the game, spread out over years. Never finished a story esxpansion, maybe not even the Core Story. Plays the hardest Class in the game with shit gear, doesn't even understand gearing. He clearly has absolute no Idea what he is talking about. Gotta say, his name actually checks out.
Honestly... I don't see a reason why they should do a Guild Wars 3. I'm sure if they want to they could just update the models and upgrade the old zones. I don't feel a need for this but it's doable. I think most people sometimes forget nowadays that gameplay should come first most of the time before looks. I would rather play a game that looks like ass and feels amazing to play than a game that's photorealistic and feels like ass to play. (Rereading my comment I have to state it that I like Guild Wars 2's stylized look, I think it looks good still to this day. It was just a simile 😅) I prefer Josh Strife reviews more. He takes more time and gives feedback/review only on the parts that he has seen and experienced.
There is a reason he put lazy in the name, his reviews are rushed, offering very casual opinions, yet hitting some issues of the game. However he has a huge lack of game knowledge. Also, expecting to have everything immediately because of horizontal progression, that's just not how games work in general lol wtf, and calling ascended gear useless when playing rare gear and being annoyed when dying in PvE is quite funny. Anyway, I'm glad he reviewed the game anyway, even if he's spreading misinformation, I'm sure people will try GW2 thanks to him and have their own opinion on the game
Yeah I have to say his video kinda did make me mad. I fume when people talk about GW3, the second game is the home I want to be in forever, if I was robbed of that for a new game I'd just leave... he speaks for everyone factually as if GW3 is what the world needs but no, a lot of us do not in fact want that at all. Also the map completion thing got under my skin too, map completion is one of my favorite things and adds so much replayabiility. He is simply wrong to say it needs to be account bound
He did the same thing with his first review of Gw2 vanilla. He then later re uploaded a new video giving it another chance and spoke very highly of Gw2 as his first review was just like this one, lazy and filled with ignorance.
So speaking to horizontal progression… i have a lot of friends who I have gotten to play GW2 for a while, and of those that had left, they all had horizontal progression as a reason they left. But they all also thought it good. It sounds contradictory, and it is, but what it comes down to is that it is a system that people do generally like in concept, but they don’t get engaged by it in practice. People like seeing numbers go up, and yes, GW2 has progression, but it has very little “numbers go up” progression, which a lot of people like. It’s something a lot of people like in concept, but many of those people don’t actually like it in practice. I think Peon is one of those people. He likes the idea that all content is based on a set level of power, so nothing gets outdated and you never lose power due to power creep, but the system just doesn’t give him that dopamine hit when it gives him a new weapon skin. So he likes the system, but doesn’t like the system.
Vertical progression is just easier to understand and to get hooked on either in the good or the bad way. It gives you an easy to follow line and even if the systems that complement them are addictive/predatory people will be okay with them. GW2 has a lot of content and even get masteries are one of them per se, but for anyone who don't know much about the game they feel the game don't have content or seems bland, because it comes from what you want to do and to go find it.
I remember Lazy peon did a review of some Archeage game that came out a couple years ago. I don’t remember the name of it but I think it was archeage unchained or something like that. It was a sponsored review where he did nothing but praise the game, and said nothing negative about it at all. Lazy peon is a shill! Don’t believe anything he says about any game he’s reviewed.
u need all this gear for wvw? idk man, i just go in with whatever im wearing and just change my build. heck, i saw a streamer go on his naked druid while doing fight guild stuffs. why was he naked? to flex his asuran physique of course.
I also like gw2 a lot and been playing quite a lot lately but some things are very true like not so satisfying progression, getting loads of differrent trash items, gem store taking over a bit too much (too many good outfits etc in there and not in game). Getting different stats/weapons/relics for different game modes and builds is cool but it definitely is kind of a barrier if you want to try out new build/new mode etc after some time and your stuff is outdated. Yes you can always change IF you have the ascended gear of a different stat but it will costs some gold and doing it for all items is kind of expensive. I can actually understand a lot of the things he said, some are the reason my friends dont want to join me in my gw2 adventures :D But yeah there are mostly ways around it and you dontreally play gw to get the best gear. Thats done pretty quickly. After that you mainly play the game cuz you like the game not because you get rewarded through items etc. Drops and stuff were always kinda meh. Except precursors of course but I dindt have 1 drop in 1.6 k hours so i wouldnt count those in. I m jsut half way through soto and its nice but it actually feels like it doesnt add that much to the game. The rifts are just afk mob killing. Weaponmaster is very cool but you speak to an npc once and its done, cannot compare to elite spec. Doesnt have to but yeah also dont add that much to the game or for some builds nothing at all. Just wanted to say some of his points that you adressed seem kinda valid because your workarounds are kinda expensive/very expensive (stat swap ascended gear or getting the legendary to free stat swap). Anyway im going back into Soto story now, have a good one, really like your rev vids :)
@@chiragyadav6816 And not just any high-tier fractal. The specific content that people will casually kick you for not doing enough DPS is Fractal Challenge Modes. That's it. T4 Fractals are still pretty chill and loose with people doing 50% of benchmarked DPS. Any critic of the gear system has to specifically mention Fractal CM for me to even entertain their idea.
nah fam kinda disagree with ascended gear take,its expensive if you keep changing stats but the thing is why you keep changing stats?just farm another set,daily strike and fractal literaly shower you with ascended gear not to mention now soto selectable reward and trinket can be done by just running around map collecting stuff + 2 equipment template to use,as for now gearing is literaly at its easiest and cheapest state. i do agree tho as someone who growup playing vertical progression MMO for about 15 years the downside of horizontal progression is you reach the "peak" too fast that theres not much to it,6 months since i play this game,a little bit more hours than yours and 8 legendary items in my charr just there to fill the convinience not making him stronger,but at the end of the day just like you said,i still playing this game because i like the game,its not perfect but heck its fun
Yeah I agree except for the ascended thing. I want to have a lot of multiple ascended set for different builds etc so i dont have to switch but its also very expensive/time consuming.I dont play raids/Strikes (yet, Im finally getting into it) only fractals. Yeah you get ascended here and there in t4 but its not enough if you want to try different stuff on multiple chars. Farming the legendary is even more expensive/time consuming. Its fine as it is but for a non raid pve player that doesnt play daily ascended gear is still kinda expensive to get. I mean it should be its the best armor. Just saying i dont thinks its thaaaat ez to get in huge quantitiy. Its like 20-30 g per piece.@@joyboy6067
What no one is mentioning is that he is sitting on a full material storage. At mastery rank 96. I am willing to bet he never opened it to empty it out so he can just press the magic 'depost all mats' button. Assuming he's aware of that button.
Tbh while the game really does have not only trash, but you can easily fill it with trophies and things that give gear... most are easily recognizable, most materials if your bank is full you know you should just sell them and so on. If you stop playing any mmo for a year the feeling is the same.
Man, people says that horizontal progression is bad are probably way too used to the gear treadmill from MMOs like WoW where they don't know what else should they do as soon as they get their gear
i came back to gw2 after leaving for a year recently, and i sort of get what lazypeon means when he says the bag inventory is overwhelming. the issue with the returning player experience is that i didn't remember what any of the items did. like it literally feels like you picked up a game you only remember from a fever dream and there are a million items in your bag. what i did was just start a new character and play through core tyria, and after a week i finally felt comfortable enough to look through the items in my bag and know which ones i can delete safely. i think peon was stuck between a rock and a hard place because he didn't have the time to play through core tyria to remind himself of how to play in the first place. because he probably felt pressed for time to review SoTo. but yeah i agree his review was not accurate at all, and he should not have had a "hot take" when really it was just him reacting to his own confusion
Type "/wiki" in chat and shift click on an item in your bags (while the chat is still open). Hit Enter and voila the GW2 wiki page opens and you can refresh your memory on how/why/what everything is. Every time I meet a new player in-game this is literally the first thing I tell them about the game (along with other wiki commands like "/wiki et" ).
It's not bad that he came at it from angle of inexperienced player because that's exactly the angle any new player will see GW2 from. The point is that "It gets better" argument really isn't valid in this decade when there is just too much entertainment competing for people's attention. The inventory is a great example. Regardless of if you are new or experienced player, you just want to enjoy the game. You don't want to waste your mental energy on inventory chores every time you start the game. Anet's terrible quantity over quality approach to inventory items in GW2 has no reasonable excuse.
What kind of inexperienced player go to "MetaBattle" to get a glass cannon build from instead of sticking with the celestial gears that the level boost gives you? Really? "MetaBattle" is the site that an inexperienced player will even know about?
I agree with you, it could be more nooby friendly, but every game suffers from the same problem, i have not seen a game that explains every mecanic and progression. the good thing is that there have been made videos about everything in this game, so you can have tutorials about bags, most efficient, and everything. But i agree with you, him having no idea about the systems is not directly his fault.
He did the same thing for Final Fantasy XIV and stirred up the community as well. Then later deleted the video and much later did a "re-review". I wonder if it is a stunt to get attention.
15:39 Massive understatement here. Legendary armor has a huge grind to it. And from what I heard, the newest PVE set of legendary armor has the biggest grind tied to it. Which is a fair point, because its most likely going to the easiest to get. Even with the new legendary starter kit legendaries can still take ages to finish.
Appreciate you doing this video. Love Peon but this "review" was very half assed. Ive been playing a little over a month and have 110 mastery and he had 96. Clearly he has hardly touched it beyond face value. And nearly all his cons/ and the hot take are addressed in the game. Shame cause if you look at the Pros list its nearly a perfect mmo experience, which in terms of respecting your time and money it totally is there. SotO got me hooked and there is such much rewarding content to do all over Tyria and so many players are in every zone.
Bag menagement is a part of MMORPGs, a bad part? Maybe, but WoW, GW2, FF14, ESO or any other MMO has it, so feels dumb and unfair to criticize it in Gw2 just because he does not understand. In general, was a bad review and just exposed Peon as a bad reviwer, a bad or q false MMO player unable to give basic information about the expansion or systems of the game. And the proof is just how few AP and MP he has in the account (3k achivments and 97 Mastery) you can easily surpass this number in less then 10h game-time total(without effort)…I’m not even touching the leggy subject or exploration bc…ridiculous, he hasan’t even played 10% of the game.
He didnt review the game tho... He just recorded his first impressions. Ive been playing guildwars for 1000+ hours and I agree with the map completion and inventory issues... It just sucks to jump back in to the game and your first worry is having 5 free inventory slots and also having to play story you have already done like 3 times to unlock a waypoint. The "Hot Take" tho, is really an uninformed and completely wrong opinion.
As someone with several thousand hours in GW2, a large collection of legendaries, over 30 alts, and several alt accounts, I have to say that I agree with Peon's criticisms. The *VAST* majority of players will have an experience much more similar to his than yours. They won't have hundreds of masteries. They won't have thousands of gold. In the first 3 minutes of this video, you had already countered the "but it's pay to win" argument with "but you can spend ingame gold". What you don't account for is the tens or hundreds or even thousands of hours a new (or newish) player would need to spend performing unfun, repetitive tasks like meta farming or alt parking in order to circumvent these inconveniences. When he complained about bag space and you said "well he can get bigger bags", you didn't mention that he already has 20 slot bags and 5 slots. Sure, he could spend thousands of gold buying bag slots and upgrading to 32 slot bags, but even THAT was recently significantly nerfed by Anet's decision to restrict Supreme Rune of Holding generation, which nearly doubled the cost of 32 slot bags. It's very apparent that they design the game in such a way that it's frustrating to play unless you keep spending spending spending on microtransactions. The fact that ARCDPS had a built in gear templates option for *FREE* but Anet forced him to remove it, then sold it back to us in the form of NON-ACCOUNT-WIDE equipment tabs is evidence enough of this. The direction they're going is bad. SoTo isnt an expansion, it's a glorified living world story - they just can't call it that because they've historically given those out for free to active players. AND they nerfed runes specifically to target players that only buy the expansions they care about, but still do endgame pve content like raids and fractals. I have several friends that bought the $100 "complete" (LOL) Elder Dragon Saga version of the game, just to find out that they STILL have to buy more (soto) in order to play almost ANY endgame condi build (because they all use SOTO-only relics that cant be traded). All the things I liked about guild wars 2 are slowly going away in favor of pushing players to spend more on POWER instead of COSMETICS. Guild Wars 2 has always had some annoying systems that could be mitigated with spending (such as the bags item Peon mentioned), but they just KEEP PILING THEM ON. Build slots, equipment slots, bank slots, storage expansions, bag slots, straight up buying gold with gems to get bigger bags, it's becoming too much. One of the best things about guild wars 2 is the lack of a gear treadmill, but now they keep pushing more and more power creep in the form of expansions, which I wouldnt mind if they were full expansions, but after 18 months? This is guild wars, not call of duty. We don't need a half-assed, unfinished living world story with a 25 dollar price tag whose primary benefit to most players is just GETTING BACK THE POWER THAT WAS TAKEN FROM THE RUNES THEY ALREADY HAD. Anyway, that's the end of my rant for now. I appreciate that there are content creators like you that defend the game in hopes of making it more appealing to new players, since those players are the only good additions this game has had lately, but unfortunately I just don't think it's worth it. Guild Wars 2 is a sinking ship. I thought the lack of vertical progression would keep it relevant nearly indefinitely, but the recent shift toward sucking players' wallets dry makes it apparent that they're just trying to milk the remaining player base until they inevitably leave and the game shuts down. I, for one, won't be buying into it anymore. I'm still playing casually, in hopes that they change their minds and go back to adding new, fun content to generate sales instead of artificial power creep, but if they don't, the game is doomed, and Peon's review of it is justifiably critical.
I stopped watching videos from him a long time ago just because his views didn’t match what mine are. after seeing 2 different reviews on him for this video/take, he wanted to hit that quota gw2 is generating right now with the new expac.
It seems like bunch of separate random thoughts nothing is connected in this video and nothing makes sense together. Its like playing the racing game while driving backwards for half of the lap not even finishing the race and then saying that devs should remove cars from the game and add ability to shift gears because he cant find the second gear driving backwards. I can see that he is not playing the game its very frustrating review is 2/10
i have the feeling Peon lost his sponsorship or anet didnt want to sponsor him again so he purposly lowered the graphics settings and complained about the most minuscule things he could find
I watched Peons whole video thinking "Ok, let him cook" at the end I was more like "I think the GW2 kitchen isn't for you buddy". Plus I am realy sad for him, he's gonna be in the GW3 waiting room a looooong time. PS. the mall comment had me rolling on the floor XD PPS. My english is not great. Please grammar police don't hurt me :)
Most MMOs give you a bunch of shit in your bags that seem useless when you first start, because you don't know what all these items do... GW2 might give you more than a lot of them but its the same thing. Learn what the things do and you can keep your bag tidy
people complaining about invetory, its your character and your job to keep it clean, if you leave on mess and log out its there when you come back, its not arenanet work to cclean your inventory. think about your own home, if you leave it messy when you leave home, you CANT complain the mess when you get back to home, it was your decission to leave it like that. every mmo have this same problem
Increasing your inventory size wont fix your inventory issues... you need to learn inventory management. Waypoints NEED TO BE ACCOUNT WIDE. Everything else in map completion; no. I think id spent maybe 20 gold on like perfect gear when I hit 80 on a new character yesterday
It's so obvious he's only in it for the money now, he managed to change his lifestyle but keeps projecting his own insecurities about his former self on people who are like him and things he used to enjoy.
It would be stupid to have map completion straight across the board for your characters. What's the point in having a personal story for your characters? What he should do is to delete all of his characters, start from scratch , and actually take the time to play the game, rather than saying to his audience" yeah I haven't played it for about a year, and I'm just going to pick up where I left off. Log some real hours in, explore the maps thoroughly, try out different builds, then come back and do a review. It's like buying a new car, you just don't open the door, sit in it and say right away,"yeah I don't like how the car drives".
Saying that something is not a problem (like inventory space and other things throughout the video) because you can convert gold to gems, is not a valid point: the fact that you can pay gold to buy gems doesn't mean that the game is not p2w or has easy solutions: in order to buy gems with your gold, other players had to sell they gems bought with real money. You may save your money, but some other player has to pay.
coming from lotro mainly , wow vanilla (2005/2010), i gave a try to gw 2. i played one week, and i quit. Not the feeling to play a mmo. gw 2 has no specific personnality, it s flashy, pvp is terrible designed, story is stupid and childish (i m the hero...), races are ugly. i don t have the feeling to be in heroic fantasy game. i waisted my time
Yet another lazy, superficial opinion from a lazy person %P. GW2 is just insanely deep game that even after playing for years still has something new for me.
tbh, he sounded like a guy who was nagged a lot over one thing and, when he got up to do it, he did it in the most terrible way possible so that ppl never ask him to do it anymore
On point, I've seen his video when he released it and I cringed at some points.. like half of his inventory was 'clogged' with junk/stashable items (he didn't even use the "deposit materials" button).
He should of played something more forgiving i main power untamed full leggie scripted death killed me but second boss floored me once. Aside from i wrecked her ass. His "suggestion" would piss me off given i grinded my ass off for full leggie on my main but under water weapons and under water sigils. Hell im still not all the way into new relic system given it effected my leggie runes.
I laughed when Peon made comment about gear. I commented on his video that you can get legendary gear and it usable on all characters. Also he talked about GW3. He clearly didn't do any research. Arenanet has already confirmed that they are working fifth expansion and using same methods as they did for Secrets of the Obscure. So it is not likely that GW3 isn't around the corner for few years even if they would be working on it. Also what comes to graphics, he is talking about 11 years old game. It is bound to be outdated. It goes without saying. You can't just upgrade graphics willy nilly. Would mean upgrading whole game engine or even switching on different one which at that point would be same to make next version of the game. While I would love game all nice and shiny, shiny graphics doesn't make the game. And I find it odd that person makes review video of the game and has only so little game time on it, zero research how certain aspects of the game works and so on. That being said, I have seen also good reviews from Peon, but this was bad. It felt like you see reviews on Steam from game and people are saying this game is crap, don't buy it and have bunch of nonsense written and they have literally played game under 1 hour. Anyway good analysis of the video.
I liked this game, but I have to agree with the lazy peon video, criticisms are valid. Yeah some things are interesting, but when the gearing for each spec, difficulty in trying other builds, unintuitive combat and many others come together, it's just a crappy game overall with bad implementations of good ideas. Most of the community is too much on copium.
With amount of influence he have, he really should prepare things better, this video was half of miss information, and it does very bad for the gw2 community who knows the game, and even more bad for the players who dont play the game, because they receive lies from the gamestate. I really lost my respect for him with this, he really should just delete the video and make new1 with correct information, like this is just pathentic to listen as gw2 player since launch
I don't think any of his takes are "disingenuous"; they're more like uninformed. They're opinions formed on lack of knowledge/info, rather than an argument made for something he doesn't actually believe.
I'll be honest, his review was made with the viewpoint of a complete noob in the game. He barely has any masteries, doesn't know how to equip himself, doesn't know what's the purpose of his own build (it's a glass cannon meant for group play with a healer), doesn't know HOW to play his chosen elite spec (his 10mins combining a dummy are not enough to learn how to play the most difficult class/spec), he reviewed the expansion by playing badly less than 1h of the story, then playing older content that has nothing to do with the expansion (spvp and wvw). The dude didnt know about relics even though he received AND OPENED the mail about the relics that gave him the 3 relics chests on his inventory. And please, don't complain about inventory size when you are more disorganised than a toddler, if you were organised you would have plenty of space for anything.
Nice to see another real player of the community of GW2 expose Peon 😂 I mean, nothing against him, but yea. The dude just slipped too much this time around
Honestly, to me, it seems Lazypeanon has simply gotten bored of MMOs overall. In all his new videos he lacks the energy he had in the past, as if he's forcing himself to play.
I kinda agree with Peon here. The map completion should be account wide for player friendliness. A new or casual player won't know how to farm gold for 8 other new toons to buy gems to unlock waypoint. I come from FF14 background where literally everything and every accomplishment is shared and I love it. Feels like I'm not wasting my time and I just do it and I have it and that's that. I also got bored and my main is a Vindicator with like 195 mastery points thingy. After the whole story msq I started doing world completion but just got bored real quick and I'm not a pvp type of person. Every time I try to do fractals it's always dead and empty in the party maker section and no one is doing them. I also hated playing the same story msq over and over on all my alts but that's just a me thing.
FF14 is one of the mmos with the least "shared" things across alts, unless you are talking about jobs. GW2 map completion is crucial for the way the game is made because of their rewards and also the fav activity for a lot of the players.
@@ZanesZygot Yea I just find it dumb to do map completion if you have like 8 or 10 characters. I get it that it gets easier every time you do them but it's just like a chore. Yes it has rewards but it's boring in my opinion.
Lazy peon is just way too casual about gw. And as far as i know he mostly played it for wvw. Gw is not a classic mmo. And that's the problem, lazy peon loves the classic mmos like wow and such, he wants the grind he wants the vertical progress. Gw is just too relaxed for players like him. And he said it in the video as well. That it is "too different for many payers to get into it"...
As mentioned in the video, no hate to Peon at all. I’ve watched his content for years, but when I saw this review being disingenuous, and at some points saying things that just weren’t true, I had to make a review of his review. As someone with thousands of hours into this game, I hope this video helps clear up any confusion.
Don't let personal feelings get in the way. TH-cam critics have to be held to the same standard that traditional written game journalists are held to. LazyPeon made a similar fault as game journalists who review games without finishing them, thus spreading incomplete, context-free information. He has to be held to a high standard too.
Start off by saying thanks for making this video so we can have a conversation about this.
I'd argue calling his review disingenuous without proving he knew he was deceiving his audience IS directly attacking his character weather you meant to or not. His style is very similar to a lot of rage bait content to farm impressions but this alone doesn't prove he is not being genuine. Taken at face value his complaints are valid opinions.
While there may be solutions to his problems, the core issue is these solutions are not communicated well by the game itself. The community has done a great job of building resources outside the game like videos, blog posts, and the wiki, but without these resources new players will run into the same problems as him.
im gonna go hate on him now
To be fair most of his videos are first impressions and he gives a breakdown of his experience not necessarily the whole game and not every new player will understand you can do all these things so maybe it also shows there's an issue with tutorials and such
the thing i find sad is that on his last tier list he basically put gw2 as the best MMO atm yet i feel like he knows nothing about the game.. therefore i cant take anything from him seriously anymore
"Jon me in the GuildWars 3 waiting room" Why, so he can not play that game too and complain there's nothing to do? "I've done nothing and I'm all out of content!"
He literally has rare gear and says there is no progression 😂😂😂
@@kriggo1that's what happens if you have really low goals 😅
I feel like most of his criticism stemmed from entitlement. He came back expecting to be served everything on a silver platter, then was annoyed he had to put in effort, or to circumvent that, gold. He didn't bother playing the game. Playing an MMO is a time investment, and GW2 is actually one of the easiest to dip in and out of. But he wasn't willing to do the bare minimum, instead just dipping his toe into the water and saying he doesn't like it. It's ironic, that the GW2 community is always described as hypercasual, yet somehow this person manages to be even less adept at the game than those people. It's shameful coming from someone depicting themselves as an informed content creator on MMOs.
Some of his criticisms are valid, but a lot of it is just "I can't be asked to put in time, hand me my rewards".
He says it really well: GW2 doesn't cause that same "addiction". It can, if you let it. But it's far less predatory in its' mechanics than other MMOs.
and its really a great thing that it doesnt have the addiction feature
i played so many MMO's and a lot of them really are predatory in their mechanics, like you said
to take a recent example: lost ark
you really didnt want to miss your caps
be it daily quests, or daily chaos, etc. etc.
you HAD to play, if you wanted to somewhat "compete" (not even compete)
GW2 just lets you have some freedom and even almost encourages "taking some days off"
for example right now i just play dragons dogma and dont even feel like i miss out when not logging in the game at all for a few days
then i can come back after a few days and everything is like it was before and i enjoy it exactly the same without any problems
It's not like wow, where u feel pressured to to play the game or else you are wasting money or falling behind in gear stats, which u only can get from the newest explanation which usually is priced at 50 USD It's insane predatory.
I think it‘s quite funny how he‘s complaining about the game not having a gear progression, meanwhile he doesn‘t even have the best gear equipped yet xD
his review screams „I don‘t play the game, but I wanna do a review anyways since there‘s new content“ to me, so I‘m kinda disappointed, I really like his other videos
funny how he complains about gear so much meanwhile legendary armory fixed all the issues he mentioned and he doesnt even know about it or cared enough to research about it :/
@@pega7550What are the chances that all of his videos are like this, it's just we Guild Wars 2 players only really notice when it's something we know well?
@@daydev2599 you're probably right.
@@hx9801 he mentioned legendary only as skins, so he does not even know armory exist, or the novelty tab what have been on game like 5 years and thinks it came from soto
Lazy Peon used s build from Meta Battle that was for Raids/Fractals. That is not ideal generally for openworld unless you know what you are doing.
The fact that he went to MetaBattle alone is proof that his experience does not at all represent a new player's experience. What kind of new player to GW2 even know what "MetaBattle" is?
Yeah, when he said he was dying too fast, and opened the equipment screen, i quickly saw he was full Berserker on an Elementalist, yeah, going to need a few years of experience to make that work, even in Open World lol.
@@brandonuzumakiand not just elementalist but the most difficult spec of ele (cata)
He was doomed to fail from the start.... and please, rare accessories? Come on
the fact that he went to metabattle couldn't see the build section is different for fractal raids & openworld/story builds
I honestly have enjoyed his content in the past. But this review has made me question the veracity of his reviews for other mmo's that I may not have given a shot because of his verdict...
There are so many points on which you can criticise GW2. He just chose the most surface level, non-issues in order to meet his word count for the video. The horizonal progression, and needing multiple sets of gear is literally the opposite of an issue. Gearing a character can be done in 1 or 2 days of farming gold or map currency if all you want is exotics and maybe ascended trinkets. Unless you want to push fractals then this is fine for all content in the game.
Gearing a new character/build might be slightly annoying, but that gear is valid FOREVER.... You never have to replace it. You might in some cases just have to swap out runes/sigils every couple months as balance changes. It is literally in his pros, but he clearly does not understand what horizontal means. You obtain gear to widen the scope your character/account's abilities, not to push for increased stats... What he is arguing for is there being NO progression, which literally goes against his other point of there being no clear goals for him to farm/work towards. So what does he want? He wants a MOBA.
Final point: He says "gear is nothing more than a barrier to entry". FFS what is it in other MMOs then? Of course it is a barrier to entry, that is literally a fundamental characteristic of most MMOs. You try to obtain gear to allow you to do things you would not be able to do without it...
Your final point is spot on. It's like he was annoyed that the game doesn't have a "Reviewer Mode" that just gives you everything in the game from the jump.
Trust me when I say this, the 20-30 minutes you spend watching Peon review an MMORPG will likely be better spent playing the actual game and deciding for yourself. You'll not only understand half of his points in the same amount of time, but you'll actually be in the game and experiencing a more objective response to it.
I saw that inventory and the first thing that exploded in my mind, before he even said anything, was: HIT THAT DEPOSIT MATERIALS BUTTON!! and sell junk. 🤣 just by opening bags and doing that, without even counting recycling, would have cleared 20 slots...
he does not probably even know the deposit button exist
he basically dialed in that "review" so he could get those GW2 video clicks while the games newest expansion is fresh in people's minds.
I did the dagda storyline fight.. solo.. on a catalyst and it was my first time cause my first SotO story clear was my Ele so I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was stupid easy. The difference is I've been playing GW2 since launch, I understand the game, know how to play multiple classes (my mains being Ele and thief), and have them well geared (something he called meaningless) with a proper open world build. Hell I have almost 10,000 more HP on my ele than he does and I'm not a god-tier player like Lord Hizen. Easily 1/2 the video was PVP / WvW so not exactly a Secrets of the Obscure "review".
I almost laughed out loud when he decided to play Cata after not playing the game for an extended period of time, I knew how that was going to go... I actually *DID* laugh out loud when I saw him wearing rare gear at level 80. He's talking about wanting GW3 but he barely has a toddler level knowledge of GW2. Maybe he should just stick to games without a real narrative or dialog like Valorant or League and his "Hot Take" is absolute trash.
His vid is without question the worst take on GW2 I've ever seen, not just because I out right disagree with his opinions but that video is so flooded with misinformation and things that are flat out wrong it's just absurd.
To be fair, one thing that GW2 does wrong is explaining what is what, "why are there 3 chests in my inventory" (which. 90% of the time, may be a clusterfudge) without needing to read the patch notes and wiki, what are the weapon tier differences and so on
"This is an MMO not a shopping mall" loved that haha! ❤ A huge part of this game revolves around acquiring the gear to do what you want to do. That means rewards, crafting, earning what you need. Peon missed that point entirely.
I’m glad someone Appreciated that one
I'm quickly bored but out of all the MMO's, GW2 is still very fun to me. Love the world, love the mechanics, the variety, the style, the community. Peon just sound bummed out overall.
Peon certainly lived DOWN to his name, alright.
The issues you describe with Peon share the same theme across most of his negative reviews of MMORPGs. He takes most of an MMORPGs gameplay at face value and requires a lot of hand-holding by the ingames interface to feel like he's making progress or having a good time. Which is exactly the opposite of what an MMORPG is about. Like with the inventory, they're colour coded to know what's what, and if you play MMORPGs regularly you'd already have an idea what that means with a bit of intuition and/or a quick Google. I'm not saying Peon hasn't played a few (a lot) MMORPGS in his time, but he doesn't seem to be in the right headspace to connect the dots, because he's not playing these games to "play" them, he's playing them with his mind on auto polite to make a review.
His approach is more reminiscent of how you'd treat a AAA FPS game, where most mechanics have to be familiar and require little time to understand. His video sums it up when he says "I just want to be killing things". Yet isn't an MMORPGs core value about enjoying the journey, rather than the destination?
I think he's got to a place with reviewing MMORPGs where he isn't passionate about them any more, yet is reviewing them to keep the TH-cam channel alive. His format for his videos and personality are endearing and engaging, but his headspace for MMORPGs hasn't been in the right place for years. Which probably changed a lot around the time he moved to Thailand and discovered a lot more things he could be doing, with the TH-cam channel as a means to an end for it.
"Mostly useless shit" - Idk maybe sell them??? I understand the confusion with getting too many things and not knowing what to do with them, but after doing a little bit of research, you can clearly understand once and forever what to do with objects.
His hot take is also so silly. Like, has he heard of legendaries? People get them for a reason lol
This is the same guy who boosted a character for his FFXIV review and then complained that the game didn't explain everything to you.
Ever since he did that, he lost all credibility in my eyes, even though he did eventually head back to FFXIV legit and heavily enjoyed.
I would say Lazy Peon isn't a mmo player he just reviews them non stop. He doesn't really play the games. Just logs in for a few hours and then makes a vid to make some quick $.
Unfortunately you'd be wrong in saying that. If you watch all his content he has most if not all his accounts fully decked out, not with dev given progress either, look at his new world or BDO or wow accounts.
@@UsurperOfTheThrone He played SotO story for 1 hour and then attempted to speak about its story or what it did or didn't add. He didn't play the game LOL
@kungfuwerewolf6568 even his mastery points says it all... Peon did this for a quick viral video. He didn't think anything through and his ignorance shows...
@@FriedFx I think my fav part is that he found a power cata build full zerker, face tanks dagda story fight, then complains about how squishy he is and not knowing why.
THEN says later in vid that gear is pointless and needs to give a drop down like in pvp LOL
@@kungfuwerewolf6568 Clearly didn't watch his stream. That's okay just remember having context is important.
Gold to gems ' for free' is a fallacy. Someone else paid for those gems you are just swapping with them for gold. Without people swapping gems for gold everyone would have to use money to buy gems.
Oh yeah. Spudzie really glosses over it way too quick. He talks about buying the waypoint unlock for only 1600 gems.
That's not a small amount, thats a huge amount. You can buy a mount pack with 4 different skins for that much.
he also made it sound like u just go play 10 minutes and u can convert it, meanwhile the conversion rate is far from "good" and it takes quite a lot of time to have enough gold to buy a single cash shop item for "free", in fact, if u just work minimum wage and go work for an hour to buy gems with $$ you're way better off.
When Peon opened his bags and stated 'instantly overwelmed' wasnt about the bag space it was about the amount of junk loot in the game that our bags get filled with making it hard for a new player or returner to tell what is actually useful and what is rubbish.
I think he doesn't know about the sell junk button
Agree, problem is his reviews never compliment any thing he covers, so why talk or play mmos at all..
Anyone who doesn't understand inventory management in gw2 cannot be legit in making any form of real review, unless it's a "new player first impression/experience".
that's called RPG. In RPG, you have to learn a value of item. I think Peon is not RPG player. He is more a competive player. I think he should not review that he don't know about anything.
One of the first thing I learned about the inventory system in GW2 when I first played the game was that you are supposed to sell the junk items and salvage as much as possible. Nobody taught me this. The color coding of the items and their descriptions alone taught me of these information.
He's someone who only knows how to play pay-to-win games.
A fanboy of Black Desert Online should not even dare to say one bad word about GW2.
GW2 is the only game I can return to and dive into all its contents right away, giving a freedom of choice.
If I try to go back to any nowdays MMOs like BDO or Lost Ark, it would take a year or more to prepare for the featured content such as few endgame bosses or dungeons that requires P2W gear.
Taking a break from P2W MMOs is not an option, as they treat players like slaves. One single update in P2W games can rob years of progression.
he exposed himself for being an incompetent's gw2 player, or a fraud slandering the game, or terrible at his job
Calm down you make it sound like he punched a baby or something. His review had more positive things to say than negative and If anything his review shows the flaws of GW2 because honestly the game doesn't show you a lot of stuff and requires a wiki so much that Anet has imbedded it into their game. Also his review is going to be biased because he's a PvP player.
Well, according to his thumbnail it should've been a soto first impressions video but he sold me more on PvP and wvw than soto 😂
Half the video was PvP, wvw and rants.
@@UberAwesomeDewd I don't think he hit a baby or anything, but he clearly did the game a disservice by spreading false information or lack of information. It clearly shows less than the minimum commitment to review an MMO that is a game that demands your time. Even the positive parts of what he said didn't go beyond the basics, he literally copied everything from the last video without trying to test the new things that the expansion brought.
Is he going to delete his review again and claim to receive "death threats"?
Peon made so many videos on GW2 over the years, yet he only has little over 90 mastery ? That alone is dead giveaway he doesn't know what he is talking about.
Astonishingly arrogant for him to walk around with his eyes closed and complain about the view. I'm sure for the minimal effort the monetization played off.
Been playing GW2 since May because of LazyPeon. Got to 216 mastery points so I can tell and feel how disappointed I was after seeing his most recent review.. I know I would not jump into the game as a newbie after seeing that
This is why I hate his "x in 2023" videos. He never gives the games a fair shot he just downloads flies through some of the newest content without giving it a real shot you could literally see where he skipped a lot of the dialogue then he really has the gall to try and say that the new content is bad? Then goes to complain about how he has to spend gold to get better gear when he showed a little before you could get ascended gear just by doing dailies and weeklies. Then he complained about being a glass cannon when he literally made himself a glass cannon build. Everything he complained about in this video was stuff he didn't take the time to actually understand
So agree. It was supposed to be a review on Secrets of the Obscure. I was expecting info on how the new story content, new areas, new maps etc. But nothing.
You are spot on, his review does neither GW2 nor the expansion justice. The expansion is not even finished, we got the first out of 3 or 4 parts right now, there will be new weapons for each class and also a new pve legendary armor etc.
That guy has like 100 hours in the game, spread out over years. Never finished a story esxpansion, maybe not even the Core Story. Plays the hardest Class in the game with shit gear, doesn't even understand gearing. He clearly has absolute no Idea what he is talking about. Gotta say, his name actually checks out.
Your name checks out always taking things at face value clearly your to inmature.
Honestly... I don't see a reason why they should do a Guild Wars 3. I'm sure if they want to they could just update the models and upgrade the old zones. I don't feel a need for this but it's doable. I think most people sometimes forget nowadays that gameplay should come first most of the time before looks. I would rather play a game that looks like ass and feels amazing to play than a game that's photorealistic and feels like ass to play. (Rereading my comment I have to state it that I like Guild Wars 2's stylized look, I think it looks good still to this day. It was just a simile 😅)
I prefer Josh Strife reviews more. He takes more time and gives feedback/review only on the parts that he has seen and experienced.
There is a reason he put lazy in the name, his reviews are rushed, offering very casual opinions, yet hitting some issues of the game.
However he has a huge lack of game knowledge. Also, expecting to have everything immediately because of horizontal progression, that's just not how games work in general lol wtf, and calling ascended gear useless when playing rare gear and being annoyed when dying in PvE is quite funny. Anyway, I'm glad he reviewed the game anyway, even if he's spreading misinformation, I'm sure people will try GW2 thanks to him and have their own opinion on the game
He never acted like he played it in depth you people need to get over it.
@@frequencyoftruth2303 ho no worries we know lmao
@@rektyu7035 Yes I know your a bunch of whiny entitled anet babies everytime there is one criticism here comes the shills.
don't worry mate he did it to us in ff14 as well
Yeah I have to say his video kinda did make me mad. I fume when people talk about GW3, the second game is the home I want to be in forever, if I was robbed of that for a new game I'd just leave... he speaks for everyone factually as if GW3 is what the world needs but no, a lot of us do not in fact want that at all. Also the map completion thing got under my skin too, map completion is one of my favorite things and adds so much replayabiility. He is simply wrong to say it needs to be account bound
lmao "this is an mmo, not a shopping mall"
I had a good chuckle
He did the same thing with his first review of Gw2 vanilla. He then later re uploaded a new video giving it another chance and spoke very highly of Gw2 as his first review was just like this one, lazy and filled with ignorance.
He comes off to me as someone who's mind was already made up before he even logged in.
Peon's entire video sounded like he was forced to make a video and it was a chore to do. It was a total turn off watching his video.
So speaking to horizontal progression… i have a lot of friends who I have gotten to play GW2 for a while, and of those that had left, they all had horizontal progression as a reason they left. But they all also thought it good. It sounds contradictory, and it is, but what it comes down to is that it is a system that people do generally like in concept, but they don’t get engaged by it in practice. People like seeing numbers go up, and yes, GW2 has progression, but it has very little “numbers go up” progression, which a lot of people like. It’s something a lot of people like in concept, but many of those people don’t actually like it in practice. I think Peon is one of those people. He likes the idea that all content is based on a set level of power, so nothing gets outdated and you never lose power due to power creep, but the system just doesn’t give him that dopamine hit when it gives him a new weapon skin. So he likes the system, but doesn’t like the system.
Vertical progression is just easier to understand and to get hooked on either in the good or the bad way. It gives you an easy to follow line and even if the systems that complement them are addictive/predatory people will be okay with them. GW2 has a lot of content and even get masteries are one of them per se, but for anyone who don't know much about the game they feel the game don't have content or seems bland, because it comes from what you want to do and to go find it.
People have been trained by more traditional MMOs to think: number go up=good / number no go up=you wasted time.
This is what happens when u do little to no reaearch.
At least he is true to his name
I remember Lazy peon did a review of some Archeage game that came out a couple years ago. I don’t remember the name of it but I think it was archeage unchained or something like that. It was a sponsored review where he did nothing but praise the game, and said nothing negative about it at all. Lazy peon is a shill! Don’t believe anything he says about any game he’s reviewed.
u need all this gear for wvw? idk man, i just go in with whatever im wearing and just change my build. heck, i saw a streamer go on his naked druid while doing fight guild stuffs. why was he naked? to flex his asuran physique of course.
I also like gw2 a lot and been playing quite a lot lately but some things are very true like not so satisfying progression, getting loads of differrent trash items, gem store taking over a bit too much (too many good outfits etc in there and not in game). Getting different stats/weapons/relics for different game modes and builds is cool but it definitely is kind of a barrier if you want to try out new build/new mode etc after some time and your stuff is outdated. Yes you can always change IF you have the ascended gear of a different stat but it will costs some gold and doing it for all items is kind of expensive. I can actually understand a lot of the things he said, some are the reason my friends dont want to join me in my gw2 adventures :D But yeah there are mostly ways around it and you dontreally play gw to get the best gear. Thats done pretty quickly. After that you mainly play the game cuz you like the game not because you get rewarded through items etc. Drops and stuff were always kinda meh. Except precursors of course but I dindt have 1 drop in 1.6 k hours so i wouldnt count those in. I m jsut half way through soto and its nice but it actually feels like it doesnt add that much to the game. The rifts are just afk mob killing. Weaponmaster is very cool but you speak to an npc once and its done, cannot compare to elite spec. Doesnt have to but yeah also dont add that much to the game or for some builds nothing at all. Just wanted to say some of his points that you adressed seem kinda valid because your workarounds are kinda expensive/very expensive (stat swap ascended gear or getting the legendary to free stat swap). Anyway im going back into Soto story now, have a good one, really like your rev vids :)
Ascended gear is given a lot more importance than it deserves imo. Exotic gear is awesome everywhere except higher tier fractals.
@@chiragyadav6816 And not just any high-tier fractal. The specific content that people will casually kick you for not doing enough DPS is Fractal Challenge Modes. That's it. T4 Fractals are still pretty chill and loose with people doing 50% of benchmarked DPS. Any critic of the gear system has to specifically mention Fractal CM for me to even entertain their idea.
nah fam kinda disagree with ascended gear take,its expensive if you keep changing stats but the thing is why you keep changing stats?just farm another set,daily strike and fractal literaly shower you with ascended gear not to mention now soto selectable reward and trinket can be done by just running around map collecting stuff + 2 equipment template to use,as for now gearing is literaly at its easiest and cheapest state.
i do agree tho as someone who growup playing vertical progression MMO for about 15 years the downside of horizontal progression is you reach the "peak" too fast that theres not much to it,6 months since i play this game,a little bit more hours than yours and 8 legendary items in my charr just there to fill the convinience not making him stronger,but at the end of the day just like you said,i still playing this game because i like the game,its not perfect but heck its fun
Yeah I agree except for the ascended thing. I want to have a lot of multiple ascended set for different builds etc so i dont have to switch but its also very expensive/time consuming.I dont play raids/Strikes (yet, Im finally getting into it) only fractals. Yeah you get ascended here and there in t4 but its not enough if you want to try different stuff on multiple chars. Farming the legendary is even more expensive/time consuming. Its fine as it is but for a non raid pve player that doesnt play daily ascended gear is still kinda expensive to get. I mean it should be its the best armor. Just saying i dont thinks its thaaaat ez to get in huge quantitiy. Its like 20-30 g per piece.@@joyboy6067
@@oOKenduOo your opinion will surely change when you get into strikes trust me 🤠
Also.. don't forget about crafting 😉
What no one is mentioning is that he is sitting on a full material storage. At mastery rank 96. I am willing to bet he never opened it to empty it out so he can just press the magic 'depost all mats' button. Assuming he's aware of that button.
non-content complaint but i can't watch anything lazy makes because he sounds like he's trying to do an ASMR thing the whole time.
I agree with one of his points... and that's the overwhelming inventory. We are given so much trash constantly.
Tbh while the game really does have not only trash, but you can easily fill it with trophies and things that give gear... most are easily recognizable, most materials if your bank is full you know you should just sell them and so on. If you stop playing any mmo for a year the feeling is the same.
Man, people says that horizontal progression is bad are probably way too used to the gear treadmill from MMOs like WoW where they don't know what else should they do as soon as they get their gear
Bag space does not solve the inventory problem
i came back to gw2 after leaving for a year recently, and i sort of get what lazypeon means when he says the bag inventory is overwhelming. the issue with the returning player experience is that i didn't remember what any of the items did. like it literally feels like you picked up a game you only remember from a fever dream and there are a million items in your bag.
what i did was just start a new character and play through core tyria, and after a week i finally felt comfortable enough to look through the items in my bag and know which ones i can delete safely.
i think peon was stuck between a rock and a hard place because he didn't have the time to play through core tyria to remind himself of how to play in the first place. because he probably felt pressed for time to review SoTo.
but yeah i agree his review was not accurate at all, and he should not have had a "hot take" when really it was just him reacting to his own confusion
Type "/wiki" in chat and shift click on an item in your bags (while the chat is still open). Hit Enter and voila the GW2 wiki page opens and you can refresh your memory on how/why/what everything is.
Every time I meet a new player in-game this is literally the first thing I tell them about the game (along with other wiki commands like "/wiki et" ).
*Lazypeon is lazy.*
*He mostly makes "First Impression" videos and jumping into conclusions without really learning the Games that he plays at all.*
It's not bad that he came at it from angle of inexperienced player because that's exactly the angle any new player will see GW2 from. The point is that "It gets better" argument really isn't valid in this decade when there is just too much entertainment competing for people's attention. The inventory is a great example. Regardless of if you are new or experienced player, you just want to enjoy the game. You don't want to waste your mental energy on inventory chores every time you start the game. Anet's terrible quantity over quality approach to inventory items in GW2 has no reasonable excuse.
What kind of inexperienced player go to "MetaBattle" to get a glass cannon build from instead of sticking with the celestial gears that the level boost gives you? Really? "MetaBattle" is the site that an inexperienced player will even know about?
Actually based comment
name me an MMO that doesnt have a learning curve.
I agree with you, it could be more nooby friendly, but every game suffers from the same problem, i have not seen a game that explains every mecanic and progression. the good thing is that there have been made videos about everything in this game, so you can have tutorials about bags, most efficient, and everything. But i agree with you, him having no idea about the systems is not directly his fault.
This is a very good counter-counter argument.
Imagine be a mid-maxer and not just going with a build for awhile...
He did the same thing for Final Fantasy XIV and stirred up the community as well. Then later deleted the video and much later did a "re-review". I wonder if it is a stunt to get attention.
15:39 Massive understatement here. Legendary armor has a huge grind to it. And from what I heard, the newest PVE set of legendary armor has the biggest grind tied to it.
Which is a fair point, because its most likely going to the easiest to get.
Even with the new legendary starter kit legendaries can still take ages to finish.
one armor set takes months to get for literally no real gain, so peon has a point.
lmao i have 800 achievement and I feel like I barely understand the game... this guy has less than 100 and made a whole video review?!
Bruh he even criticized his inventory being full of shit, but he is the one not cleaning it up. I was like wtf is this argument even for lol
Appreciate you doing this video. Love Peon but this "review" was very half assed. Ive been playing a little over a month and have 110 mastery and he had 96. Clearly he has hardly touched it beyond face value. And nearly all his cons/ and the hot take are addressed in the game. Shame cause if you look at the Pros list its nearly a perfect mmo experience, which in terms of respecting your time and money it totally is there. SotO got me hooked and there is such much rewarding content to do all over Tyria and so many players are in every zone.
Bag menagement is a part of MMORPGs, a bad part? Maybe, but WoW, GW2, FF14, ESO or any other MMO has it, so feels dumb and unfair to criticize it in Gw2 just because he does not understand. In general, was a bad review and just exposed Peon as a bad reviwer, a bad or q false MMO player unable to give basic information about the expansion or systems of the game. And the proof is just how few AP and MP he has in the account (3k achivments and 97 Mastery) you can easily surpass this number in less then 10h game-time total(without effort)…I’m not even touching the leggy subject or exploration bc…ridiculous, he hasan’t even played 10% of the game.
He didnt review the game tho... He just recorded his first impressions. Ive been playing guildwars for 1000+ hours and I agree with the map completion and inventory issues... It just sucks to jump back in to the game and your first worry is having 5 free inventory slots and also having to play story you have already done like 3 times to unlock a waypoint. The "Hot Take" tho, is really an uninformed and completely wrong opinion.
What cosmetics are you using on your character?
Most of his "New Reviews" are wash up and most of his word are empty.
As someone with several thousand hours in GW2, a large collection of legendaries, over 30 alts, and several alt accounts, I have to say that I agree with Peon's criticisms. The *VAST* majority of players will have an experience much more similar to his than yours. They won't have hundreds of masteries. They won't have thousands of gold. In the first 3 minutes of this video, you had already countered the "but it's pay to win" argument with "but you can spend ingame gold". What you don't account for is the tens or hundreds or even thousands of hours a new (or newish) player would need to spend performing unfun, repetitive tasks like meta farming or alt parking in order to circumvent these inconveniences. When he complained about bag space and you said "well he can get bigger bags", you didn't mention that he already has 20 slot bags and 5 slots. Sure, he could spend thousands of gold buying bag slots and upgrading to 32 slot bags, but even THAT was recently significantly nerfed by Anet's decision to restrict Supreme Rune of Holding generation, which nearly doubled the cost of 32 slot bags. It's very apparent that they design the game in such a way that it's frustrating to play unless you keep spending spending spending on microtransactions. The fact that ARCDPS had a built in gear templates option for *FREE* but Anet forced him to remove it, then sold it back to us in the form of NON-ACCOUNT-WIDE equipment tabs is evidence enough of this. The direction they're going is bad. SoTo isnt an expansion, it's a glorified living world story - they just can't call it that because they've historically given those out for free to active players. AND they nerfed runes specifically to target players that only buy the expansions they care about, but still do endgame pve content like raids and fractals. I have several friends that bought the $100 "complete" (LOL) Elder Dragon Saga version of the game, just to find out that they STILL have to buy more (soto) in order to play almost ANY endgame condi build (because they all use SOTO-only relics that cant be traded). All the things I liked about guild wars 2 are slowly going away in favor of pushing players to spend more on POWER instead of COSMETICS. Guild Wars 2 has always had some annoying systems that could be mitigated with spending (such as the bags item Peon mentioned), but they just KEEP PILING THEM ON. Build slots, equipment slots, bank slots, storage expansions, bag slots, straight up buying gold with gems to get bigger bags, it's becoming too much. One of the best things about guild wars 2 is the lack of a gear treadmill, but now they keep pushing more and more power creep in the form of expansions, which I wouldnt mind if they were full expansions, but after 18 months? This is guild wars, not call of duty. We don't need a half-assed, unfinished living world story with a 25 dollar price tag whose primary benefit to most players is just GETTING BACK THE POWER THAT WAS TAKEN FROM THE RUNES THEY ALREADY HAD.
Anyway, that's the end of my rant for now. I appreciate that there are content creators like you that defend the game in hopes of making it more appealing to new players, since those players are the only good additions this game has had lately, but unfortunately I just don't think it's worth it. Guild Wars 2 is a sinking ship. I thought the lack of vertical progression would keep it relevant nearly indefinitely, but the recent shift toward sucking players' wallets dry makes it apparent that they're just trying to milk the remaining player base until they inevitably leave and the game shuts down. I, for one, won't be buying into it anymore. I'm still playing casually, in hopes that they change their minds and go back to adding new, fun content to generate sales instead of artificial power creep, but if they don't, the game is doomed, and Peon's review of it is justifiably critical.
I stopped watching videos from him a long time ago just because his views didn’t match what mine are. after seeing 2 different reviews on him for this video/take, he wanted to hit that quota gw2 is generating right now with the new expac.
He chose to play literally one of the hardest builds 😅
It seems like bunch of separate random thoughts nothing is connected in this video and nothing makes sense together.
Its like playing the racing game while driving backwards for half of the lap not even finishing the race and then saying that devs should remove cars from the game and add ability to shift gears because he cant find the second gear driving backwards.
I can see that he is not playing the game its very frustrating review is 2/10
i have the feeling Peon lost his sponsorship or anet didnt want to sponsor him again so he purposly lowered the graphics settings and complained about the most minuscule things he could find
I watched Peons whole video thinking "Ok, let him cook" at the end I was more like "I think the GW2 kitchen isn't for you buddy". Plus I am realy sad for him, he's gonna be in the GW3 waiting room a looooong time.
PS. the mall comment had me rolling on the floor XD
PPS. My english is not great. Please grammar police don't hurt me :)
Your English was great 👍
Most MMOs give you a bunch of shit in your bags that seem useless when you first start, because you don't know what all these items do... GW2 might give you more than a lot of them but its the same thing. Learn what the things do and you can keep your bag tidy
people complaining about invetory, its your character and your job to keep it clean, if you leave on mess and log out its there when you come back, its not arenanet work to cclean your inventory. think about your own home, if you leave it messy when you leave home, you CANT complain the mess when you get back to home, it was your decission to leave it like that. every mmo have this same problem
Increasing your inventory size wont fix your inventory issues... you need to learn inventory management.
Waypoints NEED TO BE ACCOUNT WIDE. Everything else in map completion; no. I think id spent maybe 20 gold on like perfect gear when I hit 80 on a new character yesterday
It's so obvious he's only in it for the money now, he managed to change his lifestyle but keeps projecting his own insecurities about his former self on people who are like him and things he used to enjoy.
“Game journalist cries about game journalist” fixed your title for you.
I’m not a game journalist tho ¿
It would be stupid to have map completion straight across the board for your characters. What's the point in having a personal story for your characters? What he should do is to delete all of his characters, start from scratch , and actually take the time to play the game, rather than saying to his audience" yeah I haven't played it for about a year, and I'm just going to pick up where I left off. Log some real hours in, explore the maps thoroughly, try out different builds, then come back and do a review. It's like buying a new car, you just don't open the door, sit in it and say right away,"yeah I don't like how the car drives".
how is personal story in any way relevant when talking about having teleports on the map account-wide?
Saying that something is not a problem (like inventory space and other things throughout the video) because you can convert gold to gems, is not a valid point: the fact that you can pay gold to buy gems doesn't mean that the game is not p2w or has easy solutions: in order to buy gems with your gold, other players had to sell they gems bought with real money. You may save your money, but some other player has to pay.
so his biggest problem with gw2 is that hes shit at inventory management 😭😭😭💀💀💀
Bruh you can even so how little he progressed of the previous expansion. He didn't even get past the first map.
coming from lotro mainly , wow vanilla (2005/2010), i gave a try to gw 2. i played one week, and i quit. Not the feeling to play a mmo. gw 2 has no specific personnality, it s flashy, pvp is terrible designed, story is stupid and childish (i m the hero...), races are ugly. i don t have the feeling to be in heroic fantasy game. i waisted my time
Yet another lazy, superficial opinion from a lazy person %P. GW2 is just insanely deep game that even after playing for years still has something new for me.
No it's not
I love Lazy Peon's reviews, but boy he did miss the mark with this one.
tbh, he sounded like a guy who was nagged a lot over one thing and, when he got up to do it, he did it in the most terrible way possible so that ppl never ask him to do it anymore
Then you don't watch his videos
On point, I've seen his video when he released it and I cringed at some points.. like half of his inventory was 'clogged' with junk/stashable items (he didn't even use the "deposit materials" button).
He should of played something more forgiving i main power untamed full leggie scripted death killed me but second boss floored me once. Aside from i wrecked her ass. His "suggestion" would piss me off given i grinded my ass off for full leggie on my main but under water weapons and under water sigils. Hell im still not all the way into new relic system given it effected my leggie runes.
I laughed when Peon made comment about gear. I commented on his video that you can get legendary gear and it usable on all characters. Also he talked about GW3. He clearly didn't do any research. Arenanet has already confirmed that they are working fifth expansion and using same methods as they did for Secrets of the Obscure. So it is not likely that GW3 isn't around the corner for few years even if they would be working on it.
Also what comes to graphics, he is talking about 11 years old game. It is bound to be outdated. It goes without saying. You can't just upgrade graphics willy nilly. Would mean upgrading whole game engine or even switching on different one which at that point would be same to make next version of the game. While I would love game all nice and shiny, shiny graphics doesn't make the game.
And I find it odd that person makes review video of the game and has only so little game time on it, zero research how certain aspects of the game works and so on. That being said, I have seen also good reviews from Peon, but this was bad. It felt like you see reviews on Steam from game and people are saying this game is crap, don't buy it and have bunch of nonsense written and they have literally played game under 1 hour. Anyway good analysis of the video.
he did a lazy review
"Game Journalist Plays Guild Wars 2"
OH MY GOD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
*APPLY COLD WATER TO BURN*
I liked this game, but I have to agree with the lazy peon video, criticisms are valid. Yeah some things are interesting, but when the gearing for each spec, difficulty in trying other builds, unintuitive combat and many others come together, it's just a crappy game overall with bad implementations of good ideas.
Most of the community is too much on copium.
Honestly, for a reviewer hes very misinformed.
He barely plays a game to review for a quick buck in youtube.
With amount of influence he have, he really should prepare things better, this video was half of miss information, and it does very bad for the gw2 community who knows the game, and even more bad for the players who dont play the game, because they receive lies from the gamestate. I really lost my respect for him with this, he really should just delete the video and make new1 with correct information, like this is just pathentic to listen as gw2 player since launch
LazyPeaBrain. I don't think he even reached the part on weapon mastery, he stop after Dagda or somewhere there.
weapon mastery is before the dagda fight tho
I don't think any of his takes are "disingenuous"; they're more like uninformed. They're opinions formed on lack of knowledge/info, rather than an argument made for something he doesn't actually believe.
I'll be honest, his review was made with the viewpoint of a complete noob in the game. He barely has any masteries, doesn't know how to equip himself, doesn't know what's the purpose of his own build (it's a glass cannon meant for group play with a healer), doesn't know HOW to play his chosen elite spec (his 10mins combining a dummy are not enough to learn how to play the most difficult class/spec), he reviewed the expansion by playing badly less than 1h of the story, then playing older content that has nothing to do with the expansion (spvp and wvw). The dude didnt know about relics even though he received AND OPENED the mail about the relics that gave him the 3 relics chests on his inventory. And please, don't complain about inventory size when you are more disorganised than a toddler, if you were organised you would have plenty of space for anything.
Nice to see another real player of the community of GW2 expose Peon 😂 I mean, nothing against him, but yea. The dude just slipped too much this time around
Honestly, to me, it seems Lazypeanon has simply gotten bored of MMOs overall. In all his new videos he lacks the energy he had in the past, as if he's forcing himself to play.
I kinda agree with Peon here. The map completion should be account wide for player friendliness. A new or casual player won't know how to farm gold for 8 other new toons to buy gems to unlock waypoint. I come from FF14 background where literally everything and every accomplishment is shared and I love it. Feels like I'm not wasting my time and I just do it and I have it and that's that. I also got bored and my main is a Vindicator with like 195 mastery points thingy. After the whole story msq I started doing world completion but just got bored real quick and I'm not a pvp type of person. Every time I try to do fractals it's always dead and empty in the party maker section and no one is doing them. I also hated playing the same story msq over and over on all my alts but that's just a me thing.
FF14 is one of the mmos with the least "shared" things across alts, unless you are talking about jobs. GW2 map completion is crucial for the way the game is made because of their rewards and also the fav activity for a lot of the players.
@@ZanesZygot Yea I just find it dumb to do map completion if you have like 8 or 10 characters. I get it that it gets easier every time you do them but it's just like a chore. Yes it has rewards but it's boring in my opinion.
I have to agree. TLP’s review on GW2 was absolute crp. He might be reviewing thinking it was his bad mmo series. 😅
His name is literally LAZYPEON lol
No effort into making a review lol
His review just screams 'tourist'.
He has an extremely surface level knowledge of the game yet he thinks he is the authority on how it should be.
This video and his Phantasy Star video were complete failures.
Lazy peon is just way too casual about gw. And as far as i know he mostly played it for wvw. Gw is not a classic mmo. And that's the problem, lazy peon loves the classic mmos like wow and such, he wants the grind he wants the vertical progress. Gw is just too relaxed for players like him. And he said it in the video as well. That it is "too different for many payers to get into it"...
He doesn't stick to an MMO long enough to fully understand it then writes garbage reviews. No idea why he has a large following.
the map point is soo true
He even worse than me when I try GW2 again after 10yrs :))
p/s: I play when the game just released but quit after that.