New Guild Wars 2 info

[LordDon]

Originally Posted by Reverant

What button is that? Regular screenshot? I've taken a bunch so far, but I haven't looked at any yet.

It's under control settings. You have to assign a key to it, and I just switched printscreen over from regular screenshot to super-ultra-mega screenshot.

[Reverant]

Sweet, I'll have to get that.

In other news, I still can't access the forums. I emailed support on the 25th, and they still haven't responded. This is absolutely mind boggling.

[Reverant]

These are before I learned the secret behind awesome screenshots.

Fitty Coin, the pistol-packin' Engineer from the streets.


Screenshots really don't do this game justice. You have to see it in motion.

[bean]

@Reverant -

1. Were there no black facial features to go with your affro/skin choice? It looks kind of creepy, like a white guy dressed in black face the way you have it.

2. The kid in your picture looks like it is using and adult walking animation from the screenshot, but of course it's just a screenshot. Did they not have time to animate children moving?

[Squidbot]

KABOOM

[Reverant]

Originally Posted by bean

@Reverant -

1. Were there no black facial features to go with your affro/skin choice? It looks kind of creepy, like a white guy dressed in black face the way you have it.

2. The kid in your picture looks like it is using and adult walking animation from the screenshot, but of course it's just a screenshot. Did they not have time to animate children moving?

1. That made me laugh. Yeah, I didn't even think about it. Let's pretend his mother was white and never speak of this again.

2. I think she was skipping, but I can't confirm it. Nothing seemed odd about her when I was watching the scenery.

[LordDon]

I love your afro-engineer, Reverant. And holy shit that's a gorgeous screenshot, Squid. Your Char is almost as hardcore as you.

[bean]

Can someone please give a mini-review highlighting the best ans worst.

[Farsight]

Originally Posted by Reverant

In other news, I still can't access the forums. I emailed support on the 25th, and they still haven't responded. This is absolutely mind boggling.

It's a beta, they're likely swamped in support tickets, and it's the weekend. Your mind is easily boggled.

[Reverant]

Originally Posted by bean

Can someone please give a mini-review highlighting the best ans worst.

I don't think I could coherently describe all the best parts of the game without sounding like a frothing lunatic. It's really, really fun, and in my opinion, very different than what we've come to expect from MMOs. This guy has a good outline.

For me, I'd say these were the highlights:
1. Absolutely gorgeous in both art direction and technical trickery.
2. Event questing system is damn exciting. I did the human starter zone (beyond the boss) three times, charr twice, and norn once. I had no problem replaying the same events... and felt a little sad if I missed one the second time around.
3. Social mechanics are also a game-changer for the genre. People wander in and out to help each other as they please, unlike other games that punish you for grouping by cutting exp or fighting another player's mob by not giving you any experience. This game gives you every incentive to be a friendly stranger.
4. Combat is gooood. I haven't played TERA, so I can't compare, but GW2 is very actiony in comparison to other MMOs. I tried 6 of the 8 classes, and they all had great abilities and options, and felt really damn good.
5. Competitive PvP: Everyone has access to all gear, skills, and traits. It's about how well you play your character, not how much time you spent grinding gear.
6. World vs World vs World: Holy mother lickers. The first time I joined, I had to run across the map to find the battle my team was currently fighting. I crested a hill to the sound of war, and what I found below me was a valley of fantastic chaos. Additionally, it's not easy to take down another player- it takes strategy and full use of our abilities - in other words, thinking - to win fights.

My negatives:
1. FPS was not good for me. I was honestly surprised by how low my framerate dropped sometimes.
2. I'm not sure if public events will be as fun when there's not others to play with. They scale dynamically so it's not always a problem if you're flying solo, but I do remember how WAR's public quests lived and died on whether or not other players were in the area. And some events are definitely NOT soloable. There's a boss, a Shaman in the Charr starting zone, that they might as well call the Player Raper. Corpses were stacked three high near that guy.
3. You start off with one weapon skill per weapon, and you have to unlock the other skills by using your weapon. Not a big con, but it's annoying to get a new weapon at level 8 and suddenly go from 5 combat skills to just 1. It also sucks if you want a weapon for its skills, but can't find one appropriate for your level... if you can find one at all. Stupid greatsword. Never found one on my warrior

[Reverant]

Originally Posted by Farsight

It's a beta, they're likely swamped in support tickets, and it's the weekend. Your mind is easily boggled.

Except thousands of players have had their tickets resolved in a far, far shorter time. And I also updated one ticket and got a response instantly. I think my earlier requests were put on hold and then forgotten altogether.

[Grifter]

Originally Posted by bean

Can someone please give a mini-review highlighting the best ans worst.

It still feels very much like an MMO just a bit faster paced as far as combat goes. The quests still feel like normal MMO style quests just without having to talk with people in between most of the time. The world, while beautifully rendered for an MMO still feels like every other MMO world just on a grander scale. If you don't like MMOs the odds this will change your mind are pretty slim. If you are on the fence and $60 isn't a risk you're willing to take I would hold off until you get the chance to play it for your self.

Being a beta there are still a lot of things being worked on so it's hard to give a truly accurate portrayal of what the finished product will be. Right now the open world events are happening every 5 to 10 min so it doesn't feel like you're having any impact on the world around you what so ever. While things will slow down a bit on release I feel there is a bit of a disparity between what the devs were doing on the back end and how it actually feels from a gamers perspective. The things you do may affect the world around you as far as determining what happens next in these events but it doesn't really feel like anything more than rolling quest objectives.

Like I said above the graphics and art look very good, it doesn't quite have as much of that 'painted world" look as I thought it would but it's still nice. The animations are also very good compared to other MMOs. One thing that drives me nuts, and this may be fixed later, but there are now mouth animations in the world when NPCs speak. On all max setting at 1920x1080 I average about 34fps but I've never seen\noticed it drop below 26fps and it maxes at 62. I'm running an i7-950 @3.8GHz, 12GB of DDR3 1600 and an overclocked GTX 680.

As some one who has yet to find an MMO that can hold my interest for more than 3 or 4 months I'm on the fence whether I made a mistake by pre-purchasing this... I may have let the hype get to me and let my expectations raise a bit too high. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it now but as it is I can't see this holding my attention any longer than Skyrim at best.

[LordDon]

I think the no-monthly-recurring-fee makes it an easier pill to swallow.

[Reverant]

Originally Posted by LordDon

I think the no-monthly-recurring-fee makes it an easier pill to swallow.

I keep forgetting about this. It's not really a big deal in the grand scheme of thing, but it's such a nice idea that it warms me up to the game even more.

I agree with Grifter. If you're not enamored with MMOs at all, then GW2 isn't going to do much for you. I like the idea of MMOs a lot, though I've grown tired of WoW and TOR. I'm excited for GW2 because it seems to be bringing all kinds of things that I've always wanted plus things I never knew I wanted... to the genre.

[DiBiddilyBop]

Ok, here's a mini-review. For reference, I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition, so I'm going into this and really want to love this game, which, so far, I do.

Positives:
1) PVP. Holy crap. I love going into the BG PVP. It was really nice trying different skills basically for free to see how I wanted to build my character. Trying different weapon and skill combinations really was one of the highlights of my weekend.
2) PVE is done very, very well. Combat is very actiony (I haven't played TERA which is supposedly better) and I was a little surprised that some of my normal MMO tricks didn't work which I was actually okay with. For example, I couldn't just target a mob and spam abilities while I panned the camera around. I actually had to focus on my target to take it down. This also applies to PVP and I really liked it as it brought me into the action much more than traditional MMOs.
3) As Reverant said, the social aspects of questing was really great. There was no kill-stealing, loot-ninjaing, LFGing to finish a quest... it all just kind of fell into place. Love it.

Negatives:
1) I personally experienced frequent crashes where the screen went white and I had to hard-boot my PC to fix it. Hopefully will be sorted by release.
2) I don't think the questing is all that much different than traditional MMOs, and that's supposed to be one of the huge draws. The dynamic world. For example, I was in an area lvl ~7ish and had the dynamic questing system started the same quest to escort this dude across the battlefield 4 or 5 times. Seriously, if he wants to get across the battlefield, just stay there a while. Maybe there will be more variety in the release, but for now it was pretty repetitive.

I'm really looking forward to more beta weekends so I can try different classes (so far I didn't care for ranger and love thief) and try WvWvW and crafting.

[Cyndair]

I really really really want to like this game but I've logged off three times tonight in frustration after only playing for a little while. The world is beautifully crafted, the UI and game systems are amazing. The map is the best I've ever seen in a game.

The thing is... I just don't like the combat. To me, it's a spaz out spamfest with no weight to it. When I attack, I don't feel like I'm actually hitting anything. When I'm being attacked, I don't feel like I'm taking damage. The game seems to want you to dodge, but it gives you no indication as to when you should. Strafing doesn't seem to do any good. I don't know if it's lag or what is going on but I'll be at full health and then suddenly I'm dead, apparently one shotted by... something.

It also doesn't help that I feel like I'm constantly underleveled for the events going on around me (despite doing every heart quest on the map). It feels like they built the events into the leveling curve but often I'm not in the right place at the right time (or at the right level) to participate.

Speaking of events, despite the fact that I'm often working with other people, I feel completely disconnected from them. Yeah, we're all beating on the same boss mob, but there is little team work involved. The lack of traditional party roles is all well and good, but it devolves the gameplay into spamming attack buttons until it's your turn to get agro and die and hope someone notices you laying on the ground to help you up.

It's shiny, pretty, and it feels fresh. For that reason I keep logging on, but within a few minutes I'm annoyed again. I feel like there is something wrong with me.

[DiBiddilyBop]

I get what you mean about being disconnected from the people around you. If there was an upside to having traditional party roles, it was the sense of teamwork you had to develop to accomplish your goals.

However, I attribute a large part of that to this being a beta and we're only experiencing the lower level content. Usually teamwork became more important the higher level you became, and finding a good group became more essential. I think as you progress in Guild Wars, that aspect may improve. At least I'm hopeful it will.

[Squidbot]

You guys don't really need these, as I made them for some friends that are still on the fence, but I'll leave them here anyway.

[Wasson_]

friend downloaded it, was checking it out

they have alot of cool actiony stuff going on, fun to play...mixing and matching weapons for abilities is cool stuff.

But it does have a certain insubstantial spasticness to it. The pace of everything is just so much faster than a game like WoW (and I haven't even played that in over 4 years) I would fear that accomplishing difficult instances wouldn't carry the same feeling of satisfaction than when your playing as a dedicated role that people need and want around. I just don't see much point to being in a party when everyone can do EVERYTHING...you just need someone to help your ass up when you die. I have a feeling that in the long term...this game would have benefited from reducing it's ambitions a bit like limiting classes to certain races

I also think they have some serious problems with scale in this game...The Norn are way too big and the Azura are just way too small. It almost looks to me like the Norn are actual-human size...while humans are more like D&D halflings or something.

[Reverant]

Originally Posted by Cyndair

I really really really want to like this game but I've logged off three times tonight in frustration after only playing for a little while. The world is beautifully crafted, the UI and game systems are amazing. The map is the best I've ever seen in a game.

The thing is... I just don't like the combat. To me, it's a spaz out spamfest with no weight to it. When I attack, I don't feel like I'm actually hitting anything. When I'm being attacked, I don't feel like I'm taking damage. The game seems to want you to dodge, but it gives you no indication as to when you should. Strafing doesn't seem to do any good. I don't know if it's lag or what is going on but I'll be at full health and then suddenly I'm dead, apparently one shotted by... something.

It also doesn't help that I feel like I'm constantly underleveled for the events going on around me (despite doing every heart quest on the map). It feels like they built the events into the leveling curve but often I'm not in the right place at the right time (or at the right level) to participate.

Speaking of events, despite the fact that I'm often working with other people, I feel completely disconnected from them. Yeah, we're all beating on the same boss mob, but there is little team work involved. The lack of traditional party roles is all well and good, but it devolves the gameplay into spamming attack buttons until it's your turn to get agro and die and hope someone notices you laying on the ground to help you up.

It's shiny, pretty, and it feels fresh. For that reason I keep logging on, but within a few minutes I'm annoyed again. I feel like there is something wrong with me.

I personally thought the zerging was great fun, and I really enjoyed the way that total strangers would appear on the horizon and rush to the aid of groups that were having difficulty with quests. It's like in the Two Towers when Gandalf appears with the rest of the Rohirrim.... every few minutes!

But I do see what you're saying, and I have to wonder if perhaps your problems will disappear as time goes on. First, the monstrous swarm of players eradicates the necessity to play strategically, which this game does demand in many circumstances. Many abilities do far more than just damage, and they're essential for debuffing/controlling enemies and helping your allies. In PvE, most people have steamrolled content by numbers alone. By either switching to a lower population server or letting the swarm naturally thin, I think you'll see a more tactical, not to mention tactile experience.

It also may be that you're NOT actually hitting something. I was swinging away at some enemies with my basic attack on my Norn guardian when I realized they were just outside of my sword's reach, and I had to step forward to make contact with them. Other MMOs pointedly remind you that you're out of range, but GW2, being more about action and combat tactics, lets the player decide where to stand. As for dodging, PvE enemies have telegraphing animations that, once you identify them, let you know when to move out of the way.

I think the spammy-ness goes away as you go higher in level, or if you do PvP. The dungeons, especially in adventure mode, are supposedly brutally tough and require players to really think about what they're doing. In PvP, there's just no way spamming works. Players are too resilient for that, and it can be easy to break off a fight and rest up before rejoining the fray. Therefore, it's necessary to take into account your range of abilities and decide when/how to use them (as opposed to other MMOs, where it's about memorizing a rotation).

I wouldn't give up hope just yet that GW2 isn't for you. Let the numbers thin out and the difficulty go up, or try out PvP if you haven't next time.