Guild Wars 2

SHM.7628:

Khalisto.5780:

If you watch carefully you’ll see that Colin is very excited talking about the features and things, while Joe just shakes his head in agreement and says “uhum” most of the times, theres only 1 or 2 topics he seem to find decent the whole interview.

^This exactly.

He was just nodding and uhumming disingenuously durring 90% of the interview.

I just think some tougher and more relevant questions could have been asked and answered.

It make it more obvious that he is not taking the interview serious: he even said that he no longer play the game. The way i also see it, the interview include Hot interview did not even excite him to even say that he would try it or even buy it.

There is couple of videos by Angry Joe calling Guild Wars 2 a “Spam game” and he also criticize the downstate, mobility, stealth and stacking in the game as being “horrible design”, “what was Arena net thinking of” and even say “how dull the combat system is” and “how there is practickly no fun element in the game as long you stand in a circle and hit the same keys over and over” + other words i will not put here.. and made fun of it and laughed about it..

Angry Joe is only 1 person and was here before me but serious! is what he is saying a lie? I am not even 1 year in this game and i already witness what he is saying as true. I investigated and found alot of old forums and post saying the same thing.. Are they lying too?

I do not think Angry Joe will even buy Hot when it come out. I have feeling Arena net will give him a free copy instead and pay him to make a good review of Hot expansion. Than he will wait for couple of months than will make another video against it.

Angry Joe is not stupid: strategy- take money, pretend, wait and back to normal.

That is what he always do when he see a game company only care about making money “cash grab” instead of fixing their game. (not saying that is what Arena net is doing but releasing a new expansion soon and making no serious fix to the game problem; will only make other people see it that way"

see
youtube- Battlefield 4 Angry Rant!

If Arena net can fix the majority of problems include our problems before Hot release: there is increase chance many player include new and old player will buy it in conclusion: more increase sale and popularity.

We players already did our job/part for reporting problems.

That is all.

DarkSyze.8627:

If Arena net can fix the majority of problems include our problems before Hot release: there is increase chance many player include new and old player will buy it in conclusion: more increase sale and popularity.

We players already did our job/part for reporting problems.

That is all.

They are not fixing anything before the expansion, and they even have a nice excuse of being too busy with it.

Dont ever watch angry joe reviews, the man’s an idiot to say the least.

Just look at the dates of the last posts here .. i think that says quite something
how active Angry Joe is in any MMOs :

http://www.angryjoeshow.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

The GW2 guild however seems to still exists, at least i saw them searching for
member now and then.

Folk.2093:

Dont ever watch angry joe reviews, the man’s an idiot to say the least.

(Begins to reccommend IGN and Kotaku.)

I don’t get the impression Angry Joe stays long in any game. What he does is play and review new games as they come out and probably any expansions they have. Unless he has a lot of free time, whatever game he is currently playing in order to review is going to be the one he is going to main. This game has it’s good points and it’s bad points, like any game and he reviewed and pointed out what he thought those were. Then he left for the next game, just as he will leave the game he is currently playing to play and review another.

He is a reviewer. He plays, reviews, leaves. It’s kind of silly imo to say, well he hasn’t played in X amount of time so therefore (insert opinion Y).

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t get the impression Angry Joe stays long in any game. What he does is play and review new games as they come out and probably any expansions they have. Unless he has a lot of free time, whatever game he is currently playing in order to review is going to be the one he is going to main. This game has it’s good points and it’s bad points, like any game and he reviewed and pointed out what he thought those were. Then he left for the next game, just as he will leave the game he is currently playing to play and review another.

He is a reviewer. He plays, reviews, leaves. It’s kind of silly imo to say, well he hasn’t played in X amount of time so therefore (insert opinion Y).

Makes sense, really. As far as we know, this IS his sole job, and he has to make the most of his time very often I presume. I can’t imagine shelling out hours of GW2 game time while simultaneously doing the same for games that are released to provide an adequate, all-around, assessment of a game in its various factors. I believe in one of his videos he said he puts around ~60-something hours in a single game. Regularly reading and/or communicating with a said game’s community, all before he begins the actual review. Anyone who says he’s full of smoke, haven’t watched a real in-depth review, or are extremely complacent with 5-10min “impressions”.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

This is by far the best interview regarding Heart of Thorns. I also like how he addressed the complaints of the community regarding the necromancer; he was obviously well informed. I do not like the answers to it that he received though. It doesn’t sound like Anet takes the issues with the necromancer class as serious as I would have hoped. Heart of Thorns will need to be really good to win me over.

Currently my reasons for leaving the game are:

-The necromancer (my favorite class) is broken and neglected (Joe brought this up)
-Classes are completely unbalanced in PVE in general
-Control and support are undeveloped and neglected, in favor of DPS
-Stacking and zerker/DPS dominate the game (Glad Joe addressed this)
-Missing character development, very little depth in character builds
-Bad, over-simplified combat system, which also lacks depth
-The game has no actual dungeons, just long corridors where you don’t explore
-The game has no rewards, just merchant fodder. Nothing that you’d want to equip on your character, or would look forward to when you open a chest.
-The US/EU server split, means not being able to play with dozens of my GW1 friends.
-Defiant

I agree with the issues except the bolded part.

Control and support are useful. Its the reason why Zerker and DPS dominate the game. The problem is that toughness, vitality, healing power, and condi damage is useless in high-end play. You don’t need toughness or vitality to make control skills last longer. You don’t need healing power to make boons stronger.

I don’t want dungeons to be explorable because it is a waste of dev time. Players will always look for the path of least resistance and none of the other parts of the dungeons will be explored for newer players because it is all about that loot. The exploration should be reserved for open world or for personal story. It should not be used in group content. I don’t want to be hurried around to get to the end because the pug just want that loot.

Geneaux.9547:

Folk.2093:

Dont ever watch angry joe reviews, the man’s an idiot to say the least.

(Begins to reccommend IGN and Kotaku.)

Totalbiscuit. I also watch this guy called DarksydePhil on Youtube who does playthroughs and reviews.

Totalbiscuit covers a lot of (PC) games including indies but does not have the time to go in depth into most of them. DSP covers console games as well and does full playthroughs but only of major titles. If you are looking for unidiotic game reviewers on Youtube, I would suggest both of them.

Perhaps many gamers nowadays are of PewPewDie’s demographics however ….

Khal Drogo.9631:

DSP covers console games as well and does full playthroughs but only of major titles. If you are looking for unidiotic game reviewers on Youtube, I would suggest both of them.

Perhaps many gamers nowadays are of PewPewDie’s demographics however ….

Even a “full playthrough” wouldn’t say much for MMOs since people always want
that miracle called “endless endgame”, even if most don’r really know what that
should be beside maybe an endless itemgrind.

In the end personal i think the game itself has not really so much to do with the
longtime fun you have with a game than the people you play it with.
If you play alone the fun is mostly gone after a playthrough , if i have fun in TS3
with my friends i can farm the whole day with no problems.

Image an MMO more like a virtual pub where you go to have fun with some friends
and play cards or darts or whatever. I soubt many people play darts and await it
to be “challenging” or that it changes every day and must be rebalanced or whatever.
Its just something you do while hanging around and have fun. Now if you play darts
alone for months … yeah than it could get maybe boring much faster.

Felt embarrassed for him at 8:00-8:10. (and angry Joe was right, no escaping that, no matter how he wriggled)

Tigaseye.2047:

Can’t say I blame him, TBH.

Colin seems like a nice enough guy, but I get the feeling he either doesn’t get, or doesn’t want to face, the deep-seated issues the game has.

Issues that adding a few extra layers of pretty stuff, on top, won’t help.

This game is like a beautiful looking cake.

It’s so promising on the surface.

Problem is, when you cut into it, you quickly find out it’s mostly just an icing shell and the part of it that is supposed to be cake is mostly hollow.

I think Joe discovered that for himself, which is why he gave the game a 10/10 to begin with and then fairly quickly stopped playing.

Hearing a bunch of stuff about more decoration for the still more-or-less non-existent cake is not going to make anyone feel like coming back.

Unless all they ever cared about was the icing, to begin with.

I like the icing more then cake… but even so… too much icing makes you sick and you need regular breaks from it. =/

Saint.5647:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

“No one uses CC in dungeons”

Cbomb.4310:

Gives Example

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

“I don’t like your example”

RIP in peace logic.

That is not what happened. I said CC is not useful in dungeons (because DPS is faster). He gave an example of Icebow, and I remarked that Icebow is simply used for the DPS, not for the CC. So that doesn’t count for a very good reason.

runeblade.7514:

I don’t want dungeons to be explorable because it is a waste of dev time. Players will always look for the path of least resistance and none of the other parts of the dungeons will be explored for newer players because it is all about that loot. The exploration should be reserved for open world or for personal story. It should not be used in group content. I don’t want to be hurried around to get to the end because the pug just want that loot.

And this is where you are wrong. Plenty of other MMO’s simply place the loot in rooms all around the dungeon, thus encouraging other paths to be explored, and speed running to be discouraged. It’s that simple. Simply give players a reason to explore.

GW2’s main problem with dungeons, is that it is a long corridor where you go from A to B, encountering some bosses along the way, and a boss at the end. This does not encourage other roads to be explored, if there were other roads to speak of.

Many other MMO’s have already solved this issue. They feature none-linear dungeons where there are multiple objectives. See the example below.

Hopefully there are dungeons in HoT and not just open world and story instances. And preferably >3.

DarkSyze.8627:

There is couple of videos by Angry Joe calling Guild Wars 2 a “Spam game” and he also criticize the downstate, mobility, stealth and stacking in the game as being “horrible design”, “what was Arena net thinking of” and even say “how dull the combat system is” and “how there is practically no fun element in the game as long you stand in a circle and hit the same keys over and over” + other words i will not put here.. and made fun of it and laughed about it..

That is valid criticism. That’s exactly what the game is. I have noticed it too, which is why I stopped playing.

Angry Joe was very enthusiastic about GW2 when it came out, which I think we all were. But his enthusiasm waned, as did mine, as we figured that indeed the cake was hollow. It’s also important to realize that Angry Joe has to play a lot of different games, in order to review them. But he does put a lot of time and effort into the reviews. He doesn’t just skim over it, but really makes sure he plays it quite a bit.

SHM.7628:

^This exactly.

He was just nodding and uhumming disingenuously durring 90% of the interview.

I just think some tougher and more relevant questions could have been asked and answered.

You have to understand that the interview is mainly for Anet to get some exposure for HOT. So any critical questions Angry Joe manages to get in, are a bonus. As a games journalist, you have to walk a fine line between asking hard questions, and talking about what the developer wants to talk about. It is not an interrogation after all. The fact that Joe asked some difficult questions that no other reviewer dares to ask, earns him a lot of credit in my opinion. Its a shame that they weren’t willing to answer every question, but as an interviewer you can’t really force them to answer anyway if they are unwilling. It has to remain a friendly interview, because no company is waiting to do an interview with someone who is downright hostile to their game. I think Joe did a really good job, and his interview skills have clearly improved over the years.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

DarkSyze.8627:

There is couple of videos by Angry Joe calling Guild Wars 2 a “Spam game” and he also criticize the downstate, mobility, stealth and stacking in the game as being “horrible design”, “what was Arena net thinking of” and even say “how dull the combat system is” and “how there is practically no fun element in the game as long you stand in a circle and hit the same keys over and over” + other words i will not put here.. and made fun of it and laughed about it..

That is valid criticism. That’s exactly what the game is. I have noticed it too, which is why I stopped playing.

Angry Joe was very enthusiastic about GW2 when it came out, which I think we all were. But his enthusiasm waned, as did mine, as we figured that indeed the cake was hollow. It’s also important to realize that Angry Joe has to play a lot of different games, in order to review them. But he does put a lot of time and effort into the reviews. He doesn’t just skim over it, but really makes sure he plays it quite a bit.

SHM.7628:

^This exactly.

He was just nodding and uhumming disingenuously durring 90% of the interview.

I just think some tougher and more relevant questions could have been asked and answered.

You have to understand that the interview is mainly for Anet to get some exposure for HOT. So any critical questions Angry Joe manages to get in, are a bonus. As a games journalist, you have to walk a fine line between asking hard questions, and talking about what the developer wants to talk about. It is not an interrogation after all. The fact that Joe asked some difficult questions that no other reviewer dares to ask, earns him a lot of credit in my opinion. Its a shame that they weren’t willing to answer every question, but as an interviewer you can’t really force them to answer anyway if they are unwilling. It has to remain a friendly interview, because no company is waiting to do an interview with someone who is downright hostile to their game. I think Joe did a really good job, and his interview skills have clearly improved over the years.

I haven’t played WoW before but you are telling me combat in WoW isnt pressing the same buttons over and over for each individual player even if it is using the trinity system instead of DPSing and self heals?

People start stacking etc once they figured out this is the most optimum way of speedclearing dungeons to out DPS mobs and the optimum way is always going to be most boring way regardless of what it is, especially when it also involves minimizing risk to players. Then again not every dungeon allows you do this – if I am not mistaken Aetherblades dungeon boss does not allow you to stack, neither does some HoTW dungeon bosses. The problem is the ability of players to outDPS bosses rather than the combat system itself.

I actually find the combat system to be interesting, fast-paced and fluid (when it doesn’t lag – a technical issue), unlike NWO and ESO. In fact it is the one reason I prefer to play GW2 instead of the above-mentioned. I am glad you get to dodge and move around quickly and have not too many skills at the same time.

If you ever played in a Pug before with noob/nub players which I spent at least hundreds (if not thousands) of hours doing, the game becomes infinitely more challenging and variable because non min-max builds and professions would be chosen. Some might even call this fun yet frustrating. But of course there is no reward for doing so – another inherent problems imo with dungeons. No one would want to clear the most challenging path of any dungeon more than once or twice because the rewards do not scale and there is no incentive for doing so.

If I were the devs, I would get creative and make dailies for clearing xyz dungeon with 5 necros for example or introduce random modifiers into dungeons to make things more interesting like a fighting game. But of course nothing beats having more content/dungeons in the first place.

Khal Drogo.9631:

I haven’t played WoW before but you are telling me combat in WoW isnt pressing the same buttons over and over for each individual player even if it is using the trinity system instead of DPSing and self heals?

I don’t know, I haven’t played WoW either. But I know GW1 wasn’t like that, and DDO isn’t like that either.

For example, I am playing a Palemaster in DDO (a necromancer who can turn into undead forms), which means my character counts as an undead most of the time. So that means you play the game in a totally different way. I am only healed by negative energy, and light spells can instantly kill me if I’m not careful. I do however receive resistance to death spells.

Last night me and some friends ventured into a dungeon that featured a Beholder. Fighting beholders is always a tricky thing, because just like in classic D&D they dispel all magic in a cone in front of them, and they have eyes that shoot deadly spells in all directions. This means that you have to be really careful not to be targeted by the Beholder, and that it matters if you flank him (because each eye shoots different spells). So my Palemaster and her undead minion went up front, while the rest of the party tried to stay out of direct sight of the Beholder.

So that’s just one example of what combat can be like in an MMO that requires more than just mashing buttons. Positioning, buffing, flanking, height advantage, aggro control.

Khal Drogo.9631:

I actually find the combat system to be interesting, fast-paced and fluid (when it doesn’t lag – a technical issue), unlike NWO and ESO. In fact it is the one reason I prefer to play GW2 instead of the above-mentioned. I am glad you get to dodge and move around quickly and have not too many skills at the same time.

I do admire the game for its speed and mobility. I do agree here. But the combat itself feels lacking in depth.

Khal Drogo.9631:

If I were the devs, I would get creative and make dailies for clearing xyz dungeon with 5 necros for example or introduce random modifiers into dungeons to make things more interesting like a fighting game.

Randomized content in the dungeons would certainly be welcome. But I’m sick of dailies. They should just make all professions equally viable, and make sure the game is not unfairly biased against certain core game mechanics.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I don’t know, I haven’t played WoW either. But I know GW1 wasn’t like that, and DDO isn’t like that either.

For example, I am playing a Palemaster in DDO (a necromancer who can turn into undead forms), which means my character counts as an undead most of the time. So that means you play the game in a totally different way. I am only healed by negative energy, and light spells can instantly kill me if I’m not careful. I do however receive resistance to death spells.

Last night me and some friends ventured into a dungeon that featured a Beholder. Fighting beholders is always a tricky thing, because just like in classic D&D they dispel all magic in a cone in front of them, and they have eyes that shoot deadly spells in all directions. This means that you have to be really careful not to be targeted by the Beholder, and that it matters if you flank him (because each eye shoots different spells). So my Palemaster and her undead minion went up front, while the rest of the party tried to stay out of direct sight of the Beholder.

So that’s just one example of what combat can be like in an MMO that requires more than just mashing buttons. Positioning, buffing, flanking, height advantage, aggro control.

Actually we had height advantage and cheezed the hell of out of encounters lol – fun times. They got rightly shut down in due time of course because it really trivialized encounters.

Could have been handled a different way though, SE P3 involves killing a dredge machine. You can either take the no-risk but longer option of ranging it down from height or you could YOLO melee. After 3 years, I guess most players’ skills have progressed to the point of not dying like chumps despite not stacking and not having reflect skills. It helps when teammates switch to support util/elite skills instead of just DPS ones.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t get the impression Angry Joe stays long in any game. What he does is play and review new games as they come out and probably any expansions they have. Unless he has a lot of free time, whatever game he is currently playing in order to review is going to be the one he is going to main. This game has it’s good points and it’s bad points, like any game and he reviewed and pointed out what he thought those were. Then he left for the next game, just as he will leave the game he is currently playing to play and review another.

He is a reviewer. He plays, reviews, leaves. It’s kind of silly imo to say, well he hasn’t played in X amount of time so therefore (insert opinion Y).

He said he left after a year.

Obviously, he won’t have been playing GW2 solidly (or anywhere near solidly) for that year, as he will have been playing/trying other games, to do reviews on them.

However, it would appear that this isn’t a game he only played for the most minimal amount of time required to review it.

Especially as people have said that he did further reviews, after the initial one, mentioning known problems with the game.

Tigaseye.2047:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t get the impression Angry Joe stays long in any game. What he does is play and review new games as they come out and probably any expansions they have. Unless he has a lot of free time, whatever game he is currently playing in order to review is going to be the one he is going to main. This game has it’s good points and it’s bad points, like any game and he reviewed and pointed out what he thought those were. Then he left for the next game, just as he will leave the game he is currently playing to play and review another.

He is a reviewer. He plays, reviews, leaves. It’s kind of silly imo to say, well he hasn’t played in X amount of time so therefore (insert opinion Y).

He said he left after a year.

Obviously, he won’t have been playing GW2 solidly (or anywhere near solidly) for that year, as he will have been playing/trying other games, to do reviews on them.

However, it would appear that this isn’t a game he only played for the most minimal amount of time required to review it.

Especially as people have said that he did further reviews, after the initial one, mentioning known problems with the game.

/shrug

He played for a year then. That’s a good, solid amount to play any mmo. I’ve seen numerous posts in this forum and other forums where people play a week, a month, 6 months, a year, then leave. Some come back, others don’t. I suspect large numbers of players of most games don’t play forever and ever but only for a while. Then the drawbacks of the game get to them or they get bored and a newer, shinier game arrives and they are gone. Even WoW, the king of the mmo hill, has had millions quit after playing for X amount of time and never go back.

So, he reviewed and mentioned known problems. All games have known problems and it would be exceedingly strange if a professional reviewer who played for a year hadn’t encountered them. He did a review about them, that’s his job after all.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Actually we had height advantage and cheezed the hell of out of encounters lol – fun times. They got rightly shut down in due time of course because it really trivialized encounters.

Its weird how cheesing with height difference doesn’t seem to be such a problem in other MMO’s. In GW1, monsters tried to path to the player to the best of their capabilities, if you were on higher ground (their ai wasn’t all that impressive either). Sometimes they would fail to reach you, but this was never really an issue. In DDO there are dozens of encounters where you can shoot down at enemies, and only those with ranged attacks are able to defend themselves from it.

But this a matter of setting up proper encounters I guess. If you know a room in a dungeon has an obvious cheese spot, make sure the enemies have some ranged weapons.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Could have been handled a different way though, SE P3 involves killing a dredge machine. You can either take the no-risk but longer option of ranging it down from height or you could YOLO melee. After 3 years, I guess most players’ skills have progressed to the point of not dying like chumps despite not stacking and not having reflect skills. It helps when teammates switch to support util/elite skills instead of just DPS ones.

I never understood why both approaches would not be allowed. It leads to awkward situations as well, where one player might be in melee and the rest in ranged combat. So one of either things can happen at this point:

• The monster goes invulnerable, despite one player being in close combat with it. (I’ve seen this happen plenty of times)
• The monster can be harmed, despite players attacking it from a height that would normally turn it invulnerable.

And this is just extremely inconsistent and illogical. Neither of these two makes sense.

Hope Anet took notes from the (re)making of FF 14 Online Mk 2. And we still dont know when HoT will drop.

Tigaseye.2047:

SHM.7628:

Khalisto.5780:

If you watch carefully you’ll see that Colin is very excited talking about the features and things, while Joe just shakes his head in agreement and says “uhum” most of the times, theres only 1 or 2 topics he seem to find decent the whole interview.

^This exactly.

He was just nodding and uhumming disingenuously durring 90% of the interview.

I just think some tougher and more relevant questions could have been asked and answered.

Can’t say I blame him, TBH.

Colin seems like a nice enough guy, but I get the feeling he either doesn’t get, or doesn’t want to face, the deep-seated issues the game has.

Issues that adding a few extra layers of pretty stuff, on top, won’t help.

This game is like a beautiful looking cake.

It’s so promising on the surface.

Problem is, when you cut into it, you quickly find out it’s mostly just an icing shell and the part of it that is supposed to be cake is mostly hollow.

I think Joe discovered that for himself, which is why he gave the game a 10/10 to begin with and then fairly quickly stopped playing.

Hearing a bunch of stuff about more decoration for the still more-or-less non-existent cake is not going to make anyone feel like coming back.

Unless all they ever cared about was the icing, to begin with.

LOL, it seems more like a prop cake where they beautifully iced cardboard. It’s phenomenal to look at. Just don’t try and cut into the masterpiece.

runeblade.7514:

Control and support are useful. Its the reason why Zerker and DPS dominate the game. The problem is that toughness, vitality, healing power, and condi damage is useless in high-end play. You don’t need toughness or vitality to make control skills last longer. You don’t need healing power to make boons stronger.

I kinda agree with this, as most of the classes run all their AoE buffs in dungeon rushes, control may sometimes be useful but it’s nowhere near needed.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

And this is where you are wrong. Plenty of other MMO’s simply place the loot in rooms all around the dungeon, thus encouraging other paths to be explored, and speed running to be discouraged. It’s that simple. Simply give players a reason to explore.

GW2’s main problem with dungeons, is that it is a long corridor where you go from A to B, encountering some bosses along the way, and a boss at the end. This does not encourage other roads to be explored, if there were other roads to speak of.

Many other MMO’s have already solved this issue. They feature none-linear dungeons where there are multiple objectives. See the example below.

This is one of the main problems with GW2 , the loot is so bad that doesn’t matter how much loot you spread through the dungeons, ppl run the dungeons solely for the gold reward in the end. And honestly I don’t see this changing with their “journey is the reward” policy.

Khal Drogo.9631:

No one would want to clear the most challenging path of any dungeon more than once or twice because the rewards do not scale and there is no incentive for doing so.

This is crazy on point, as I said before IMO PvE is just a gold farming tool for most of the players, and if the final reward isn’t good enough for the time you put on playing a content ppl just don’t play it, that’s why finding a party for CoF p1, 2 is much easier to find than one for p3, p3 has some tricky parts and if you mess up it can easily turn into a 30+ mins run, 30 mins for 1.5g, ppl just look at it and say no thanks. Like an year ago you were able to skip HotW p2 and the dungeon was largely played, once they patched it nobody else plays it.

With the crafting precursors this issue can be easily addressed, they just have to spread the collections needed throughout the dungeons, world bosses and other specific events, and then I think I will finally feel rewarded for my time spent on PvE content. And even tho I already can see ppl complaining that they are forced to play some kittenty content, rofl, I think I’ll be fine with that, unless collections droprate is like 00,1%.