Guild Wars 2

[naednek]

Started up a charr guardian to round out my beta experience. I gotta say, that's the coolest opening area yet. I can easily see myself maintaining 5 alts when the game's released.

I like the charr's environment, just don't like their walking animation.

[Tareeq]

Potential added source of instability for future betas: Presently the game barely uses the video card, and it doesn't make use of dual core processing.

I believe that a lot of people who were running the game on minimum graphic settings will benefit once these issues are addressed by Arena Net.

[hepcat]

Hmmm...I noticed that the graphic's option page listed my renderer as being DirectX 9. I ran it on the highest settings and it ran fine for the most part. I hope they're still working on the graphic settings though, but I'm not sure what adding duo core support would do for this game. I don't believe it's that much of a CPU hog. But it would be a nice benefit that could help with future proofing.

I'm jonesin' today. I so wanted to fire up my thief and work on crafting this morning when I got up.

[skystride]

Maybe it is because I am playing a Norn, but while they may not call it a quest hub, it is just that. The starting zone is level 1-15, and there is a clear progression through that zone based upon the level of the events...which are just quests. This is no different than the level bound planets in SWTOR.

I guess I am one of the gaming morons, and not one of the cool kids, because I just don't "get it", at this point GW2 just isn't grabbing my attention. I have my Norn Ranger at level 9. My level 8 story quest took me 12 deaths to get through, it was ridiculous. I apparantly suffer from horrible lag because dodging and trying to break LOS as done zip for me, I still get hit.

Can you state what you are looking for if this structure is too boring for you? You could even just go to WvW and level there if PvE is not your thing.

Also I think the World Event stuff is sufficiently different from the usual quest hub stuff. I could be walking by an area and all of a sudden run into a reinforced centaur fort that wasn't there before. What other MMO does that?

[hepcat]

Also I think the World Event stuff is sufficiently different from the usual quest hub stuff. I could be walking by an area and all of a sudden run into a reinforced centaur fort that wasn't there before. What other MMO does that?

To be fair, Warhammer had group events similar to GW2's years ago.

[skystride]

Also I think the World Event stuff is sufficiently different from the usual quest hub stuff. I could be walking by an area and all of a sudden run into a reinforced centaur fort that wasn't there before. What other MMO does that?

To be fair, Warhammer had group events similar to GW2's years ago.

If you're talking about PQs, not the same at all.

That centaur fort got created because players didn't react to several events. It's going to remain there until players decide to do something about it. PQs were just mini events that lasted about 15 minutes max (and the world went back to it's previous state). PQs didn't have branching outcomes.

[Teggy]

I decided to play as an engineer the whole weekend rather than jump around classes. Next beta I'll probably try a different class. I quite liked the engineer because it can play a support class, which I like doing. I could drop healing turrets or med packs and there's an even a skill where you use a gun that shoots out all kinds of buffs and debuffs.

I liked using the rifle, but it wound up really only suitable for one to two mobs at a time. See mob, shoot out net to root it, start shooting, let it break the root and close, blunderbuss for a bleed, use the shot that shoots you away from the mob and knocks it down, repeat. Very little AOE, though so I could get in trouble if I was solo. If I do an engineer, I'll probably want to have a different set of weapons and skills for soloing and then a support set.

I hope over time they come up with some more interesting heart quests. There were a few unique ones (one had you catching bugs and feeding them to cows, one had you destroying ogre houses), but the majority were just grabbing stuff in the general area or killing mobs. Could get a little tiresome. They're also not mandatory, but completing them gives you access to some valuable Karma vendors. I also completed everything in the first Charr area and my reward was two green items that weren't for my class. Not much benefit for the completionist. (Also, it's probably time they got with the color coding for rarity that every other game uses).

The area events were fun, but it seems like you're can be kind of penalized for succeeding. For example, in one area I was called to help prevent some guys from building a barricade. A lot of players joined in and stopped them. After that, the NPCs asked us to follow them further in and retrieve their mining equipment. Everyone followed and we completed that. After that the NPCs just headed on out and thanked us. Seems like if there was a chain of 4 or 5 it would be a lot more fun, but by finishing off the early stages of the chain, there's nothing left to do. It certain areas it was just the same one event over and over and over. There's only so many times you want to shoot harpies or save some guy's scout who for some reason keeps getting lost in the woods.

Overall I am positive, though and I'm looking forward to trying more. I love some of the ease of use features, like being able to deposit resources directly to the bank from anywhere or using the auction house anywhere, and seeing all equipable items in one screen separate from all your other junk.

Chat seems a little limited, though. There seems to be a local channel but it's not clear how far it goes. There never seemed to be anyone asking questions, which seemed odd. Of the MMOs I've played, I still think Rift has done it best with channels for the area you are in and then channels for level bands.

[hepcat]

Also I think the World Event stuff is sufficiently different from the usual quest hub stuff. I could be walking by an area and all of a sudden run into a reinforced centaur fort that wasn't there before. What other MMO does that?

To be fair, Warhammer had group events similar to GW2's years ago.

If you're talking about PQs, not the same at all.

That centaur fort got created because players didn't react to several events. It's going to remain there until players decide to do something about it. PQs were just mini events that lasted about 15 minutes max (and the world went back to it's previous state). PQs didn't have branching outcomes.

Yeah, those were what I was talking about. I didn't come across any world events, just the events that would pop up whenever you roamed within range of them. I look forward to encountering a world event if they are that dynamic.

[Jag]

Chat seems a little limited, though. There seems to be a local channel but it's not clear how far it goes. There never seemed to be anyone asking questions, which seemed odd. Of the MMOs I've played, I still think Rift has done it best with channels for the area you are in and then channels for level bands.

I found that odd as well. I did ask a few times in chat where the bank was (I wasn't in the major city) and didn't get an answer. So I took a portal to the city and asked the guide who marked it on my map.

[Arkon]

Can you state what you are looking for if this structure is too boring for you? You could even just go to WvW and level there if PvE is not your thing.

Also I think the World Event stuff is sufficiently different from the usual quest hub stuff. I could be walking by an area and all of a sudden run into a reinforced centaur fort that wasn't there before. What other MMO does that?

I am a huge fan of PvE, and in general not much of a fan of traditional PvP, but always enjoyed DAoC, so the WvW stuff has appeal to me. I would have liked to try in this past weekend but the game does an absolutely horrid job of dispensing information to the end user. Yes, I could have gone on to the internet to look up how to get in to WvW, but as a beta event, one of the things I was looking at was the new player experience, and I provided my feedback based off of that.

I am not sure where you get that I found the structure boring. I found the game to be status quo for the most part, it just didn't suck me in the way SWTOR, DAoC, or EQ did, or the way a game like Skyrim had me absolutely absorbed into it. I found the world events to be just a new coat of paint on the same structure I was used to. As I had said earlier, perhaps part of my problem is that any time I was on, all of the players moved through the natural progression of the zone as a giant mass. Any "world event" was generally over very quickly, and not once did I encounter an event that actually altered the world in any way. Usually a boss monster would spawn, and 15 seconds later it was dead. The variety of the events was extremely limited as well, the three types I got to experience were:

1. Defend a location from multiple waves of enemies
2. Escort an NPC while protecting them from multiple waves of enemies
3. Kill a boss monster who is escorted by a small wave of enemies

To me these are just standard MMO quests under a new name.

I am sure that part of my other issue is that I found moving to be useless. Even when I thought I had gotten out of the way of an attack I was still taking damage. Case in point at low levels I was fighting a bunch of river drakes who breathed fire. The attack animation would be playing, while I was behind the drake, yet I was still taking damage from the attack. Perhaps it was just really bad lag, I don't know, but I found the need for constant movement and dodging to be no more exciting than just standing going toe to toe with an enemy in other games, if anything I found it to be less enjoyable because it made the combat too chaotic.

[hepcat]

It does have many of the limitations found in any MMO (to be honest, I'm not sure how one could get around the majority of them and still be and MMO), but the combat and how skills are used make me much, much more interested in GW2 than SWTOR or any other MMORPG. Combined with the fact that I'm not shelling out 15 bucks a month for it and I'm quite happy with my prepurchase.

[Booner]

X-Post from GT :


After spending far too much of my time playing over the weekend...I really like where GW2 is going and I can't wait till it's ready for release.

Awooooooogaaaaaa! Awooooooogaaaaaa! Incoming wall of blabbering text!


Performance was typical early beta for any other MMO I've tested, though the developer statements about how CPU dependent it currently is, is concerning. Changing the graphical settings made very little difference in how well it played. It was definitely playable for me on my (sub) mid-level rig, but during larger encounters it would be a bit too choppy to really get into the groove of the combat.

They need to get the dynamic event scaling correct as it seemed a bit hit or miss over the weekend. There were times when it was perfect, times when there where just too few mobs for the number of players, and times when there were obviously just too many mobs. I heard that they were aware of this issue, so hopefully they can work it out.

Playing with friends was an exercise in frustration the first day. Being in separate overflows from the main server without a way to band together is not good. They absolutely need to keep party's together. Granted, it was far better on days 2 and 3, but there were still a few occasions were we'd lose a member of our group.

More information needs to be given to the player during the first couple of hours on their take on "normal" MMO concepts. There are so many little things that have changed that I believe tool tips could solve, but there would be a ton of tool tips popping up. Examples: No face to face trading, it's done through the mail system which can be accessed through a panel anywhere. You can draw, set waypoints, and ping a spot on the map that is visible on all your party member maps. You can deposit items to your bank directly from your inventory. You can access the auction house from anywhere, but you'll still need to go to one to pick up any items you purchased. There are just so much of these type of changes from standard fare, that it was a bit confusing...not that any of them were bad concepts, they're just not very obvious. Some of these may be explained later in the game (I didn't take anyone past 20), but some would be really handy earlier.

Enough bitching! I'll just try and describe the gameplay for those few who might not know what what to expect.




Combat is an absolute blast! They've definitely breathed some fresh air into the stale MMO mechanics. Sure it may look fairly familiar, but the application is far from it.

The pacing is quite quick and and is reflected in the duration of buffs and debuffs (termed "boons" and "conditions" in GW2). Something that lasts 10 seconds is a long time here....stealth may last 2-5 seconds as a Theif, a Guardians ward maybe 3 seconds, a warriors stun or knockdown maybe 1 second.

Positioning is so important, especially with the number of mobs that will be thrown at you. With the way the mob will somewhat intelligently position itself, melee in front casters in the rear with some flanking....you have to make snap decisions on where you need to be. With the holy trinity biting the dust here, getting caught unprepared in the initial rush guarantees falling in battle regardless of class. As a heavy warrior, sure I may last a couple seconds longer standing there than a light caster, but that's it...seconds, as in very few.

You will fall, it's just a fact of the way the game is built. There's nothing wrong or embarrassing in it....you may get revived on the spot by anyone, or you might be able to fight back to your feet with the abilities you have when on your back. You kill a mob from your back and you rally, no one damages you any further and you use certain skill and you'll rally. If you end up losing the last bit of health and actually "die", you will suffer a death penalty to your total amount of health and damage to your gear. At that point you still may be revived by other players, or you can pay to teleport to any waypoint you've uncovered. Repairs and teleports are fairly inexpensive, so it's not a big issue to die. You want to prevent it, but doing so doesn't mean you lack skill, or the game is too hard for an average player like me.

This is where the dodge mechanic comes into play...use it or die even more often. For one thing, you're invulnerable during the roll, secondly it's a great way to get to an enemy flank. There doesn't seem to be any advantage from hitting someone from the flank or rear, but it does mean that they can't hit you when you're hitting them. Everything hits hard in the game, both the mobs and the players...so it boils down to avoiding hits, getting your damage in where you can, then getting out for a few seconds before jumping back in. It's all very active and constantly puts you on the move.

The beauty in it is that almost every class is fairly self-proficient, depending on your weapon selections...you very likely have the ability to proactively cope with any situation. I spent most of my time as a warrior or thief...as a warrior I found that I really enjoyed a Greatsword/2H Hammer combo. When wielding the hammer, I was capable of many AOE movement impairing effects that coupled with a bit of damage. Cripples, stuns, knockbacks, and knockdowns galore...but most very short range. Then the Greatsword allowed me to close on mobs quickly and do a ton of damage. Of course I had a personal heal skill and a few AOE buffs...so I'm actually fully capable of a wide range of abilities that wouldn't normally be available outside of very specific spec in most MMOs. This combo worked for me, but I could have spent time with so many other combinations. Swords, maces, axes, shields, so on. Even down to the main hand vs. off-hand combinations, where axe/mace is going to be completely different from mace/axe, that's right...nothing on the weapons bar would overlap.

I can say state that the classes seem to play very different from a traditional MMOs version of the same thing once you're past the surface. As a thief, stealth wasn't something you depended on as heavily as you would expect...in fact you can't depend on it because it doesn't last more than just a few seconds. But you are chock full of evasion/damage skills...you jump in, blast away for a few seconds, and get out. The skills include a lot of flanking, but burn up initiative fast (thief version of mana here) so you can't stick around. One neat thief skill with a main hand sword was to tap it to teleport you to a target, do what you need to for a couple seconds, and upon the second tap it teleports back to the spot you initiated it from. The initial spot is marked, so you could use it with the intention of kiting the mob back to that spot as you take a few seconds to recover.

This simple mark brings me to another thing I really like about GW2, the presentation of combat. To me at least, even with the unbelievable amount of things happening on screen it was fairly obvious what was happening to my character. If you are crippled you stagger, you're taking fire damage and you're definitely on fire, stunned and you wobble, poisoned and you turn a shade of green, there are also colors/textures that flash on the edge of the screen that give you cues your condition. Sure, there are icons on screen that you could hover over for additional details about the effects, but everything happens at sure a breakneck speed compared to a traditional MMO...that you'd likely be dead before you had a chance to read it. This also appears to apply to AOE conditions too...Red circles are bad, blue good, white neutral. You see a big blue bubble pop up and arrows bouncing off of it...pretty obvious eh? smile

The audio cues are of the same quality. There are sounds that can give you as much feedback on the situation as the visuals once you realize what they are. A miss sounds like a miss, contact with certain weapons sounds a certain way, same with a block, or a final killing blow. Part of the reason the 2H hammer was such a blast for me was the sound it made, the combo of screen shake and an audio thud/tink made for a really satisfying experience. And yeah, making contact with a mob produced a very different sound than making contact with the ground.



As for questing...

Your personal quest, which is customized to the background choices you make during character creation, guides you to new areas of the world and is the only traditional questing you'll find in the game. Within my group of friends, there were some personal quests that were vastly different and some that would occasionally intersect. So we quickly realized that there are branching paths, but who knows how different they become as you move on. I can't really comment on the quality of the story as I skipped through the dialogue. For one thing, I didn't want to spoil it, secondly...the VO is not nearly as well done as say SWTOR, but it still tries to set the same kind of tone, so it wasn't hitting for me. I gather from word of mouth that there is ongoing work in this area, so I'm hoping the quality improves before release.

Anyways...arriving at a new area you'll speak to a "scout" that will automatically open your world map and give you a brief rundown on the local happenings while scrolling your map around to show you where the local villages are. Even though there are level recommendations to the villages, there is nothing to prevent you from going to any of them.

So you head to a village to participate in the village "quest". These are represented by a open heart on the map. Once you get there, the quest log in the upper corner will give you instruction on how you might help the village in some way...collect/kill/interact, and contribute. Once you've done enough, the heart solidifies on the map and you can assist no more. These just put you into a position to encounter the dynamic events happening in the world. As you're assisting the village, a dynamic event may be occurring nearby. You'll get visual and audio cues to alert you to this, or perhaps an NPC will speak about it in passing. This NPC doesn't stop you, and you don't interact with them, but he'll run by you telling you the situation before running to the next group of folks to tell them as well.

In one moment, I was heading out to a new waypoint that was showing on my map when some chap ran up yelling that a ranch was under attack from bandits. I took off that way and found about 10-15 players defending the ranch from waves of mobs 30-40 thick. When getting close, the quest tracker pops up telling me that we need to defend x amount of waves and that it's on x wave. What entailed was a long scenario where we beat the bandits off and were all credited for our contribution via XP, coin and karma (karma is an additional currency to buy specialty items) and watched the bandits run off toward their camps in the hills above the ranch. As I ran around collecting the massive amount of loot, the ranchers decide they want to take the bandit camps and so begins another event to raid the bandit camps. I've also ran into this area on a different character where the bandits had killed off the ranchers and held the ranch and the players we're task with driving them off...so there are multiple ways that you may initially run into this scenario of ranch vs bandits.

I feel that "Scenarios" is the best way to describe the basics of the dynamic event system. There is a finite number of states the area may be in, but there is a constant ebb and flow of battle.

There are also occurring bosses, which is a ton of fun when you have enough folks around. There were no obvious prerequisites, but they happen often enough that they kept me entertained.

There area also the skill challenges marked on your map, and completing them adds skill points. Skill points are what you spend on the utility skills and where you can start customizing your classes playstyle beyond just weapon combinations. I couldn't even begin to go through all the possibilities, but suffice to say there is enough there to keep things interesting. You never know what to exactly expect from your fellow players. The combinations in weapons alone are so wildly varied that the guy beside you could be a ranged AOE caster in one second and a clone creating, teleporting, melee fighter the next....and they're effective at both.


Quick notes...

The art style is very much to my liking. Fairly detailed with a well done, graphic novel look. ANet wanted concept art in motion and I think they've accomplish it. The effects are informative, but also very pretty and fit right into the overall look of the rest of the world. It's even down to the dodge effect surrounding a thief or mesmer is very much in line with the rest of the classes effects art. Yeah, each class seems to have it's own art style down to the effects, yet still blends in. Very very cool.

Sound, outside of the current VO work, is supurb. As I mentioned, the audio cues are great feedback. The soundtrack is epic. The class sound effects are of the quality of the class art, sure it sounds different than the other classes, but they all seem to fit.

There are no mounts and the distances can be daunting. The pay to teleport waypoints are handy and you need to grab them when you see them. No cooldown here, but you will be spending coin frequently. Run speed seems a bit plodding, but your class will likely have a speed buff somewhere. The Cities are HUGE. There are plenty of NPCs that will grant you a speed buff and several waypoints with each city, but you still have to hump it to a waypoint on foot for it to be available to you. Plan on spending a good bit of time exploring.

I didn't touch crafting as it's not something I spend too much time with. There are some interesting things going on here, but didn't delve into it enough to know if it's good or bad.

I absolutely love the level downscaling to the area you're in. I was able to take a higher level character to anywhere one of my friends may have a new character running, and still be presented a fun challenge.

Set PvP is fun. Like the rest, very fast and active.

Spent around two hours in World PvP, participating in a very intense but also very localized fight. Two hours of fighting is fine, two hours of ebb and flow over the same 200 yards of ground without any real sense accomplishment by either side wasn't so much to my liking. Very curious to how this will play out long term because I can see the possibility of some truly great gaming experiences.

Will it get stale too quickly? I can't say...if the events keep growing in stature or complexity as you level, I think it will be fine. Yet, if it stays the same, I could see folks tiring of it.

Anyways, that's enough thoughts for now.....my brain is hurting trying to cover it all.

[Asharak]

Cross-posted on OO, GT and the Wanderers forums. If you read it over there, it's exactly the same here.

TL;DR version: Guild Wars 2 is the most user-friendly MMO I have ever played, with fantastic art, music and world design, as well as very interesting combat mechanics, but it suffers from poor storytelling and occasionally repetitive game-play.

Preface: These impressions are based on about 15-20 hours of gameplay. I played a Human Ranger to level 14, completing the human starter zone, and about half as much with both a Charr Thief and Norn Warrior, to get a feel for their stories, zones and play-styles. I didn't touch PvP except for my final 45 minutes on Sunday evening, so I won't be talking about that.

Impressions: I'll start with my biggest positive: I have never felt that an MMO developer respects me as a player more than I did while playing GW2. ArenaNet has done a fabulous job cutting out the customary time-wasting, leaving an experience that is much more pure. You can quick-travel from anywhere, at any time, to any of an abundant number of waypoints around the world, so you will never spend more than a minute just running from place to place. You can read your mail, post to the auction house or deposit to your bank directly from the UI, without needing to return to town. Supposedly you will never see a server queue, as they implement "overflow" instances of the main game world to let you play immediately while you wait for space in the main instance to open up (the only downside to this is potential difficulty grouping with people in other instances but, otherwise, the overflow is indistinguishable from the main server). And individually instanced crafting nodes and very generous kill-sharing rules mean you will never have to fight another player for a resource or quest objective. Some of those are just bullet points from the previews, but I've experienced them all now and they work.

Beyond those things, there are also some simpler touches in the game that prove ArenaNet really has been paying attention. You can choose the default dye template for all your armor during character creation. The Friends list sorts by Account name, so you don't have to keep track of everyone's myriad alts. You can be a member of multiple guilds at once and simply toggle which one you're "representing" at any given time. If you know someone who plays on another server, you can hop over there to play with them as a "guest". And the game encourages grouping with lower level characters by automatically scaling your level to the area you're in.

All together, I never once felt like I was "playing the interface" this weekend or fighting against time-sinks designed to force me to extend my subscription (since there isn't one!), which was a remarkable breath of fresh air.

None of the that, though, says anything about the world or the game-play itself, so I'll talk about those next. I found the world quite striking and beautiful (playing on the highest or second-highest graphics settings), the zones are believable as geographic locations (rather than just skins over leveling corridors) and the scale is almost breathtaking at times, particularly in the major cities. I had a couple of "hey, that looks neat, I'll go check it out" moments while wandering around, which I really enjoy. Architecturally, the only MMO area that has ever impressed me more than Divinity's Reach or Lion's Arch is the Mines of Moria in LOTRO. My only complaint about the world is that it's not seamless: there are loading screens between each major zone, although thankfully not between most interior / exterior locations.

I am also a fan of their weapon skill system and the active, dodging-is-possible combat. The former allows so much flexibility and seems so obvious in retrospect that it needs to become an industry standard. Your first three skills are determined by your main-hand weapon and your fourth and fifth by your off-hand, with every weapon type being different (and main- and off-hand skills are different, so equipping the same two weapons in opposite hands will yield five different skills). The result is that each class has a vast number of choices for basic play-style, based on which weapons you equip, but without the overflowing skill bar that other games use to achieve the same thing.

The more active combat style -- expecting you to move and evade attacks -- is also a net positive, I think, since I actually spent my time fighting watching the fighting and not my cool-downs (and these are reasonably long in general, I suspect primarily to create time to watch the combat). That said, this combat system isn't perfect, as constantly circle-strafing is almost mandatory, especially for melee characters, which just results in a different form of highly repetitive game-play. And this is a traditional MMO in the unfortunate sense that the world is still populated by hundreds of brain-dead creatures just standing around waiting for someone to trip their aggro radius. In terms of group play, the small group content is excellent but ArenaNet still hasn't come up with any innovations to make very large-scale activities, such as a world boss or even just a dynamic event with a couple dozen people participating, any more interesting: with too many people, any event just degenerates into an incomprehensible slideshow of spell effects and overlapping character models.

My biggest complaint, however, is largely subjective: GW2 is quite light on story, which is the thing I value most. The voice acting for your character's main plot varies from mediocre to poor (even Claudia Christian sounded like she was phoning in my female Norn Warrior) and I'm not a fan of the side-by-side cutscene style that they've chosen, which just seems cheap to me. That decision actually baffles me quite a bit, because I thought one of the most popular features of GW1 was its cinematic-style cutscenes.

Worse, however, especially coming off the fully-voiced and cutscened SWTOR, is that there is practically no story beyond your character's plot: the "wander around and help people to gain renown" model seems intriguingly freeform (except, of course, that mob levels mean there's a very definite intended path) but there's no meaningful interaction with the people you're helping and no opportunity to establish or develop your avatar's personality while doing so. The game basically operates on a system of enforced altruism: it assumes that you will want to help these people and that you are happy to do so. And because there are sometimes multi-level jumps between stages of your main plot, you are pretty much forced to help them in order to gain XP (assuming you don't want to do PvP or just grind mobs in the wilderness randomly), even if you'd rather be playing a snarky, selfish SOB who would never in a million years stoop to clearing grubs out of some farmer's orchard.

Conclusion: The result is that I came away from the weekend questioning the longevity of the PvE gameplay, in an inverse fashion to SWTOR: BioWare gives you compelling reasons to slog through very worn out gameplay; ArenaNet offers much more interesting mechanics but little reason to care about using them. Once I've seen the end of the main plot once (and however differently all the races' stories start out, my understanding is that they're all going to end up in the same defeat-the-Elder-Dragons place), am I really going to be interested in playing through all the associated side stuff again?

Somewhat unsurprisingly then, given that the game is called Guild Wars, I feel that my interest in GW2 may live and die, long-term, by it's PvP and WvW gameplay. So I'd better try that side of the game during the next beta weekend.

- Ash

[Asharak]

And damnit, Booner, for hitting most of the same notes as I did but doing it sooner!

- Ash

[YellowKing]

Good write-ups guys; I appreciate you taking the time to post them.

The game's true focus seems to be PvP and WvW, with PvE being only a means to level your character and engage in that content. Nothing wrong with that; folks who want more story can always fall back on SWTOR or WoW. While it would be nice to have the best of both worlds, I'd rather a game excel at one or the other than to do a mediocre job with both.

I am very interested in one aspect of PvE, and that is the dungeons. Dungeon instances were one of the real highlights of Rift for me, and GW2 seems to be going down the same path by making really beautiful dungeon instances that are good enough to warrant multiple play-throughs.

[neofit]

Nice writeups, and the inevitable questions:

1. Combat. I often hear the word "new paradigm" brandied about, which seems a bit excessive. Are people comparing GW2 combat to the one in games like EQ2 or LOTRO for instance, in which you select or 'lock' an opponent and attack him with abilities/spells and auto-attacks even when not looking directly at the target? But then we already have DDO and AOC where one fights without locking and moves around. We had Neocron, Tabula Rasa and SWG post-NGE where we didn't lock the target either, and I am sure I am forgetting many others.

How is GW2 different? Enemies with relatively more HP and more hard-hitting, making constant circle-strafing a necessity? When do you think the novelity will wear out and it will become a drag? Or is it something else entirely? I don't like, in any shooter that is not Arma, to see my targets bunny-hopping or doing it myself and, judging by the descriptions I am reading, the combat in GW2 does not sound too fun. I hope that I am completely off the mark.

2. A few pages back there was a conversation about a Necro who didn't get it and that he had this spell and that that he could have used. But IIRC the hotkey bar has been dumbed down to 8 keys back in GW1 already (which made me quickly lose ineterest in the latter), and in GW2 it is something like 6 slots for weapon skills + 1 utility + 1 epic? I understand if someone got thrown into the EQ2 beta onto a lvl 40+ character (or resubscribed after a year) and had to sift for a couple of hours through dozens of badly sorted skills to put into his four 10-key bars... but as a new toon in GW2, with only 6 combat hotkeys, how can one miss skills central to one's profession?

3. Leveling. I am hearing that people are gaining an average of 1 level per 1-1.5 hours of play, like getting to level 32 after 34 hours during this week-end. Is this real, is the exp gain increased for the beta, and is this official? I remember in Rift going from a total zero without a clue about the game to level 30-something within two beta week-ends. People were saying left and right that the exp gain was increased for the beta, but it was false and after release I still got to max level and brought 3 crafts to 300 all within the included month, and having zero interest in raiding I quit. About the same happened in SWTOR.

Does GW2 feel like a game where they quickly rush you to max level to then raid or PvP there? Does the game world feel truly big, past the fog that is usually used to hide its true size? In Rift, all of one faction lands didn't feel much bigger than the Trollshaws in LOTRO in comparison. Of course, as a subscription-less game, once you paid for the box the faster they are rid of you the better. But I have a huge backlog of games and certain expectations for an MMOPRG, one of which is spending a few months to vertically develop a character, so I'd like to know the leveling speed beforehand.

Thanks.

[Lagom Lite]

Oy vey. I'll try to answer. Some of your assumptions are pretty off base.

1. Combat. (...) How is GW2 different? Enemies with relatively more HP and more hard-hitting, making constant circle-strafing a necessity? When do you think the novelity will wear out and it will become a drag? Or is it something else entirely? I don't like, in any shooter that is not Arma, to see my targets bunny-hopping or doing it myself and, judging by the descriptions I am reading, the combat in GW2 does not sound too fun. I hope that I am completely off the mark.

It's hard to go back to LOTRO-style combat (haven't really played any of the other games you mentioned to any extent, so I can't compare to those) after having tried GW2-combat. It's not particularly difficult, really, it's more that so many skills are situational and sometimes, it's better to use that standard "1" attack rather than button-mashing whichever other skill you have that isn't on cooldown. It takes some getting used to, but once you grok it it's fun as hell.

Also, movement (and range) plays a part rather than just remain rooted and looking at your skill bar. "Bunny hopping" does nothing to mitigate or avoid damage though, if that's what worries you. Dodging does, but dodging looks like throwing yourself and roll out of the way in a cinematic style. It looks great in a fighting environment.

2. A few pages back there was a conversation about a Necro who didn't get it and that he had this spell and that that he could have used. But IIRC the hotkey bar has been dumbed down to 8 keys back in GW1 already (which made me quickly lose ineterest in the latter), and in GW2 it is something like 6 slots for weapon skills + 1 utility + 1 epic? I understand if someone got thrown into the EQ2 beta onto a lvl 40+ character (or resubscribed after a year) and had to sift for a couple of hours through dozens of badly sorted skills to put into his four 10-key bars... but as a new toon in GW2, with only 6 combat hotkeys, how can one miss skills central to one's profession?

First, I must protest your statement that GW1 is "dumbed down" because it forces you to choose 8 skills rather than (like other games) have 40 or so constantly available. GW1 is about skill builds and synergies. It forces you to plan and think ahead, choose skills based on what synergy they have with other skills and the other players in your party. Choosing a skill set from hundreds and hundreds of skills that do a variety of different things (hexes, enchantments, different kinds of "conditions", different kinds of damage types, dark/holy damage that bypasses armor, armor ratings and runes having different effects, etc. etc. etc.) that interact with each other in different ways is much more complex and hardcore than simply having the same set of 40 skills as everyone else of your same class, and activating a skill whenever it's cooldown is out because skills with high cooldowns are always better than auto-attacks...

In GW1 you won't survive the first wave of mobs in the end game if you haven't carefully constructed your skill set of you and the 7 other players/NPC heroes in your party. It's a strategy/card game, and way more complex than most MMOs.

That said, there are 10 skills on your skill bar in GW2. 1-5 is based on the weapon you wield. 6 is always a Healing skill (you choose one out of three, based on your class), 7-9 are "utility" skills (choose three out of about thirty I think) and 0 is an "Elite" skill (powerful panic skill with a very high cooldown). So it's more controlled than GW1, and it's not as easy to gimp your character because you don't know how to play - which I think is a strength; GW1 could be very unforgiving.

3. Leveling. I am hearing that people are gaining an average of 1 level per 1-1.5 hours of play, like getting to level 32 after 34 hours during this week-end. Is this real, is the exp gain increased for the beta, and is this official? I remember in Rift going from a total zero without a clue about the game to level 30-something within two beta week-ends. People were saying left and right that the exp gain was increased for the beta, but it was false and after release I still got to max level and brought 3 crafts to 300 all within the included month, and having zero interest in raiding I quit. About the same happened in SWTOR.

Does GW2 feel like a game where they quickly rush you to max level to then raid or PvP there? Does the game world feel truly big, past the fog that is usually used to hide its true size? In Rift, all of one faction lands didn't feel much bigger than the Trollshaws in LOTRO in comparison. Of course, as a subscription-less game, once you paid for the box the faster they are rid of you the better. But I have a huge backlog of games and certain expectations for an MMOPRG, one of which is spending a few months to vertically develop a character, so I'd like to know the leveling speed beforehand.

Thanks.

I haven't really seen enough of the game to answer this, but you do level quickly and ArenaNet have stated they don't want people to "grind". As for the size of the world, I can't help you there either since I only leveled to about lvl16 the last beta, but it seemed pretty big.

But GW1 was never about leveling. You got to max level (20) pretty soon, and the road up to max level was rather a tutorial than the whole game. It seems ArenaNet have kept some of that philosophy for GW2. You auto-level down to approriate levels (but keep rewards appropriate for you actual level) when you enter a lowbie area. So the whole world is always open to you and meaningful to explore or revisit, not just the areas appropriate to your max level (which you should reach pretty quickly).

GW1 was about bragging right in PvP, beating the hardest dungeons for cosmetic rewards and titles in PvE, and the glory of your Guild. All these things you did once you reached max level, not before.

Hope I didn't seem to ranty here, I'm a fanboi.

[YellowKing]

Wanted to add a couple of things:

1 Re: combat - I have played AoC, Tabula Rasa, DDO, etc. and while those games had elements of "active" combat, I think GW2 implements it to a higher degree than those games did. It's not just about the ability to move around in combat, but the fact that dodges are meaningful, timing is critical, and some thought has to be put behind what attacks to use and when. This is particularly the case in group combat where skills from different classes combo with each other. Combat in GW2 to me feels much more frantic and dangerous than it does in any of those other games because enemies hit really hard.

3 Re: leveling - Keep in mind that GW2 places less emphasis on your level than most other MMOs, because level in and of itself does not determine your skill set. Skills are unlocked via skill points which must in part be earned. While this does not make leveling completely unnecessary, it does give players more flexibility on how and when they obtain certain skills.

Also, max level doesn't really mean "all you have left is end game." As pointed out, you can scale down to visit lower level areas, and you'll want to do this because of the tons of achievements and rewards available for clearing areas/completing challenges.

[Tareeq]

No one seems to have pointed this out, so I will: Your character isn't the only thing that scales depending on the level of the zone you enter; the loot rewards scale as well.

If you complete the level 30 dungeon at level 80, you will walk out with level 80 loot.

[Asharak]

the inevitable questions:

Lagom got a lot of these, but I'll add my own answers (and I'm in a hurry, so I may overlap a bit):

Are people comparing GW2 combat to the one in games like EQ2 or LOTRO for instance, in which you select or 'lock' an opponent and attack him with abilities/spells and auto-attacks even when not looking directly at the target?

I'm coming from SWTOR and LOTRO primarily, yes, and I have never played most of the other games you mentioned. The primary difference in the combat between the games I've played before and GW2 is that positioning and dodging attacks are things you have to actively think about. For instance, Longbows do more damage the farther away you are, so constantly maintaining range is important. And even basic mobs have "telegraphed" attacks that you're expected to dodge. In SWTOR and LOTRO, you more or less just stood toe to toe with most mobs until one of you was dead; where these sorts of mechanics (dodging, blocking, etc.) existed at all, they were abstracted into chance-to-hit systems that you couldn't affect during a fight.

When do you think the novelity will wear out and it will become a drag?

I think I mentioned in my impressions post that I was already getting tired of the repetitive circle-strafing of a melee character in the beta. Of course, this was offset by the fact that hammers (with AOE damage even on your basic auto-attack and a wicked sound effect) are so much fun. Also, if you don't like that style, even the Warrior doesn't have to be melee: you can switch to a rifle, or pistols, etc. for a different style of play.

I don't like, in any shooter that is not Arma, to see my targets bunny-hopping or doing it myself

Hmm. I actually don't think I saw anyone try jumping to avoid attacks this weekend. I'm not sure if that's because we didn't think of it or if the dodge conditions are two-dimensional. Either way, PvE enemies definitely don't do it. I'll try to remember to try that / look out for it in the next weekend.

how can one miss skills central to one's profession?

To clarify: you have ten skills at a time: five are determined by (and are entirely different based on) your equipped weapons (three from your main hand, two from your off hand), three utility skills (unlocked as you level, so most of us only had one this weekend), a healing skill and an Elite skill (unlocked at Level 30 so, again, most of us didn't see these in PvE this weekend).

It's the weapon skills that can make things easy to miss. I didn't play a Necro this weekend but I did play a Thief, so I'll give you a example from that class: With a pistol/dagger equipped, the thief has a skill that stabs with the dagger, then teleports you away and shoots with the pistol. It's an excellent get-out-of-harm's-way skill. If you switch those weapons around (main-hand the dagger, off-hand the pistol) the skill reverses: you shoot with the pistol, teleport in and stab with the dagger. It becomes a great close-the-gap skill. And if you don't use daggers or pistols at all, you don't have either of those skills but get other, completely different skills appropriate to whatever weapon you're using.

So until you've experimented with a bunch of different weapon types, you don't really know what all the possibilities are. And because the weapon skills unlock with a moderate amount of use, you do have to play a bit (i.e., spend some time) with each combo before you know what it's capable of.

Leveling. I am hearing that people are gaining an average of 1 level per 1-1.5 hours of play, like getting to level 32 after 34 hours during this week-end. Is this real, is the exp gain increased for the beta, and is this official?

It's real and official. One of the touted features of GW2 is a "flattened" leveling curve (well, leveling line, I guess). 60-90 minutes per level is the expected time all the way to the level cap, which is why the level cap is so high (Level 80): it should take a similar amount of time to reach the cap that it does in other games, but that time is apportioned to smaller, more equal levels, rather than back-loading it into a smaller number of levels at the end of the game. In this case, 80 levels at that time per level suggests 80-120 hours to reach the cap.

Does the game world feel truly big, past the fog that is usually used to hide its true size?

I'll give a very tentative "yes" to this, with the significant caveat that I haven't explored any more than the three starter zones and their associated cities. That said, the zones seemed plenty big for starter zones and the cities are massive: without question, they are the largest and most-convincingly-realized cities I have ever seen in any game not called SimCity. The world map certainly suggests there is a ton more to explore in the world but, as you say, it's all hidden by fog for me right now, so I don't really know what percentage of the map is explorable territory. I will mention that the game tracks your "percentage of world complete" (which I think is based more on unlocking waypoints and visiting points of interest than strict physical-ground-uncovered, but the two correlate reasonably well) and the character that I got farthest with (Level 14, finished the human starter zone) was only at 5% after probably 8-10 hours of gameplay.

I hope that helps.

- Ash

[Jag]

If I recall in GW2 you could pay to unlock all your skills which I actually did because I came to the game a little later and at that point had no patience for skill unlocking since I wanted to PvP right away. I wonder if GW2 will allow it as well. I also read that you can buy item shop gems with in game gold, but I can't confirm that.

[Vorret]

The world does feel huge, took me a long time to finish the human starting zone, which I think is the equivalent of Elwynn Forest + Westfall. It felt alot bigger and I didn't feel that leveling was too fast.

Then again, I had so much fun that I'm now a complete fanboy

[Vorret]

If I recall in GW2 you could pay to unlock all your skills which I actually did because I came to the game a little later and at that point had no patience for skill unlocking since I wanted to PvP right away. I wonder if GW2 will allow it as well. I also read that you can buy item shop gems with in game gold, but I can't confirm that.

You can, and there's a market. If people sell alot of gems the price will go down and vice versa.

You can also buy Gems with a credit card, if you like. In the beta they gave you 2000 gems for free to experiment with.

[Lagom Lite]

Another thing about the skill bar: Most classes (except Engineer and Elementalist, see below) may swap weapon sets in combat. Swapping changes all your skills 1-5. So in that way, you really have 15 Skills + whatever bonus abilities your class gives you (for example, the Necromancer's Death Shroud uses another 4 skills when I switch into it, giving me 19 Skills in total at any one time).

Engineers and Elementalists have several "kits" and "elements" as special abilities that changes their full weapon bar as they switch. These classes have so much variation in these mechanics that they aren't allowed regular weapon swapping.

[Booner]

For those wondering about the combat....you really should throw the traditional MMO way you'd fight out the window, especially as a melee player. It may look like MMO combat on the surface, but the actual fighting is more akin to something like Batman: Arkham City to me.

[Tareeq]

If I recall in GW2 you could pay to unlock all your skills which I actually did because I came to the game a little later and at that point had no patience for skill unlocking since I wanted to PvP right away. I wonder if GW2 will allow it as well. I also read that you can buy item shop gems with in game gold, but I can't confirm that.

You can, and there's a market. If people sell alot of gems the price will go down and vice versa.

To be clear, this means that you can buy item shop gems with gold, not that you can unlock all of your skills by paying for it. I doubt that's ever going to happen.

In the March beta every player got 2000 gems and the item shop was open. Everything available was either cosmetic (mini-pets), or something that gave convenience without increasing character power (like the banker golem, or experience boosts). I can see experience boosts being useful for people who level alts, but given that in pvp, the only area of the game where level could really matter, you're already boosted to 80 with all skills unlocked, I can imagine leveling all of my alts without ever buying a boost.

[Jag]

If I recall in GW2 you could pay to unlock all your skills which I actually did because I came to the game a little later and at that point had no patience for skill unlocking since I wanted to PvP right away. I wonder if GW2 will allow it as well. I also read that you can buy item shop gems with in game gold, but I can't confirm that.

You can, and there's a market. If people sell alot of gems the price will go down and vice versa.

To be clear, this means that you can buy item shop gems with gold, not that you can unlock all of your skills by paying for it. I doubt that's ever going to happen.

I meant to say the GW1 Core Skills Unlock pack. I agree that I doubt they would do something similar in GW2.

If you own any full Guild Wars® campaign (the original Guild Wars®, Factions, or Nightfall), you will receive:

Immediate access to these unlocked skills for your Heroes and PvP characters
Ability to acquire the unlocked non-elite skills for PvE characters through a Skill Trainer or tome, and the ability to acquire unlocked elite skills with an elite tome

[hepcat]

I'm sure the answer is no, but i have to double check. the characters we created this past weekend are not going to be available after the game launches, right?

[Lagom Lite]

I'm sure the answer is no, but i have to double check. the characters we created this past weekend are not going to be available after the game launches, right?

Correct, beta weekend characters are wiped.

[Asharak]

That said, beta weekend characters are supposed to persist from one beta weekend to the next (since there are an indefinite number of these to go...). Of course, this being a beta, all things are subject to change.

- Ash

[hepcat]

Cool. I really dug my thief and would love to see how he performs at later levels.

[Jag]

Wowhead style database up by Curse. For those that don't know, Wowhead was and remains the essential database for WoW info.

http://www.gw2db.com/

[Vorret]

Isn't Wowhead on the zam network?

[Jag]

Isn't Wowhead on the zam network?

You are correct. It just looked so much like WoWhead.

[Gryndyl]

The world map certainly suggests there is a ton more to explore in the world but, as you say, it's all hidden by fog for me right now, so I don't really know what percentage of the map is explorable territory.

Here's a link to a pannable/zoomable map of the complete explorable game world: http://www.gw2db.com/map

It's pretty huge. Only about a quarter of it was available in beta.

[gwartok]

It looks like there sneaking in another test next Monday. Probably a good thing it's not Tuesday or people would be making fun of me for playing a GW2 beta instead of a released D3.

[Vorret]

It looks like there sneaking in another test next Monday. Probably a good thing it's not Tuesday or people would be making fun of me for playing a GW2 beta instead of a released D3.

lol
they sure like to put them in the middle of the day for some reason.
I'll log in a bit to get my "fix" I honestly have not been able to enjoy a game since I played the beta

[miltonite]

Friendly reminder that you will be able to get a small GW2 fix tonight if you are having withdrawals.

[Covenant72]

Beta event is now online

[hepcat]

whoo hoo, beer and gw2, here i come.