Guild Wars 2

Like map not over dense with annoying mobs like HoT, don’t have to feel like I’m in constant combat or running for my life. Mounts, didn’t want but neutral for now, they seem to look good at least. First mastery point I find on the start map a timed mini game – do not like. Unidentified loot mechanic no thanks as I understand it now. Didn’t like I could not test new elites in PvE. 100 words or fewer.

Hearts felt grindy. No map meta left me without any focus on the map. Bounty events were okay but felt like any other champ event.

Liked the map. Liked the raptor. Liked the setting. Events been standard, not a bad thing.

Disliked the need to identify items. Why would I identify crap again, oh for the chance to find some jewels in between. Feels like a forced gold sink, a forced time sink and and yet another bloody step in the bloated inventory managment…

The bit of the map we got to play is great, but I felt that the mobs are a bit too easy. I like the bounty concept and they felt challenging enough (small group). The mount animations are great, love it! Music was on point and map looks amazing.

The way mounts control is amazing. It feels like I’m actually riding a beast. The map, especially the night sky, is beautiful. Both of those features are near perfect.

I have one major issue, and that’s with unidentified gear.
1) It feels really bad to pay more than 1.5s per item.
2) If I don’t pay that price, I miss out on potential rares/exotics
Solution: split unidentified gear into masterwork, rare, and exotic versions, giving blues/greens, rares, and exotic respectively. If needed, use this to add more dynamic identification prices.

I liked the new map. But I had a few issues. Hearts were grindy, mounts felt clunky, and it was super laggy. Map (from what I saw) was beautiful.

Liked:

• Raptors
• Map style
• Casino
• Cool monsters to fight
• I didn’t feel forced to attend races or bounties. I am not a racist.

I was skeptical about adding mounts to the game. I am glad to see that the mounts handle differently than players with out pin point turning. They are also beautifully modeled and animated. It would be nice if some emotes were created for mounts or if existing emotes were implemented while riding.

Mounts: At least the Raptors are well done and fun to run around with. Cities could use some mount-less zones around important NPCs, crafting stations, etc though.

Hearts: I’ll have to join Ayrilana on this one. They really felt grindy. In particular returning to the heart where you first get the raptor mount felt like a big grind.

Annoying Areas: The cave next to the forementioned heart is incredibly annoying with rocks falling where you stand every 5 seconds. Killing creatures or rezzing NPCs for the heart was out of question.

Mobs: Now for the positive things: I absolutely LOVE the new mobs! Especially the hydras are fantastic! Though I also like the sand sharks.

Design: GW2 never really had a problem with ugly maps, but the new maps look fantastic.

*Mounts were nice but I felt better control would be needed… ie being able to side step aka strafe. They also seems sluggish in turning at times.
*Doing something other then communing for masteries was different but fun and challenging (my GF wants to cut the chef up and put him in the pot BTW)
*Overall ambience was awesome. Much better then HoT.
*Some of the mobs seemed to be off balance when it comes to fights. Was in a couple areas where a mob of 4 killed me where as a mob of the same things with 6 I survived.

Now waiting on next weekend to preview the elites!

Beautiful Map
Love Amnoon 250 years later.
Updated Djinn are amazing.
Iboga! Love their mechanic.
Hydra!!!! Great GW2 version of their GW1 skills.
Sandsharks are also fun.
Great music.
Nostalgia for GW1: Check
Forged are great Balthazar Minions.
Nice to see the Zaishen.
Was against raptors and my mind has changed.
Enjoyed the raptor race.
+1 for the teleporter.
-1 for the Choya.
Unidentified gear… …um no.
Thanks for returning bounties.
Where are the minotaurs?
Awakened are cool.
You couldn’t have called them Jade Scarabs?
Where are the sand giants?

Grade: A

Love the setting, it’s pretty and a little nostalgic. Glad the maps don’t have that HoT crowded and totally chaotic feel.
Really loved the mount(s) as they seem very well executed (sad to hear they give some ppl motion sickness, hope that can get a fix that won’t affect how ‘naturally’ the mount movements are.)
Identify stuff should be an ‘extra’ rather than a necessity imho, its too obvious a cash sink now.
Just watch out bounties won’t get like Shining Blade bounties cuz at some point that got very hard to do when people moved on to other places…

Raptors handle well, but ‘posting’ animation looks silly. Zone looks great as usual but the area we saw lacked the ‘NPC personality/culture’ of HoT zones.

Map is beautiful and nice to navigate, the music is amazing as always.
The mount(s) are simply the best implemented mount I’ve ever seen! Looks, controls and animations are amazing – it feels like a mount, not a skinned speedboost.
Enemies looks amazing and are fun to fight.
Did however miss some more (and bigger) events, it often took a long time to come along events as you rode around.

DeShadowWolf.6854:

I have one major issue, and that’s with unidentified gear.
1) It feels really bad to pay more than 1.5s per item.
2) If I don’t pay that price, I miss out on potential rares/exotics
Solution: split unidentified gear into masterwork, rare, and exotic versions, giving blues/greens, rares, and exotic respectively. If needed, use this to add more dynamic identification prices.

^ can’t say it any better.

The mobs are too easy, there is no feeling of danger. Make them much tougher please. Also, the introduction mission was a mess. Giving players comically large guns to put out fires and then res NPCS? That is a terrible introduction to new players. Compared to the first time I entered VB, the new map is very underwhelming.

Happy to see general map story dynamic events coming back more akin core tyria then meta specific like HoT. Didnt see any event chains hope there are later on

PoF seems more solo friendly then HoT but still not too easy which is good. Rapter fells amazing, would say realistic but didnt really ever ride one IRL to say. Didnt like that salvaging unidentified gear without identifying it first doesnt give any luck or Etco as far as I can tell. Map seems to reward truckloads of mats, worried this might lead to more material inflation in future recipes.

Overall it felt great!

Positives
Absolutely adored the Raptor. I fell in love with it to the point of considering it my very own pet.

Thoroughly enjoyed what little there was to explore of the map. It looks fantastic, infinitely better than any of the HoT maps.

Negatives

Unidentified gear as a gold sink. Please God, why? Paying anything more than 20 copper is way too much. There is no profit to be had in loot anymore with this system.

Some kind of over-arching map meta would be nice, though I’m sure that it was disabled for the demo.

Mount was good. Still needs better control (like looking behind without it wealing), and size proportions (to race not just character height).
Map is beautiful, not so creampied with hordes of enemies. We saw about 66% i’d say, and that’s not good, couse i feel it won’t be that big as presented.
Everything else was solid, except i had huge FPS drop, to about 20ish, from 50-60 i usually have, and ping rise to 90+, witch made things a bit off.

Pros:

• Mounts, overall: AWESOME.
• Zone art: GREAT.
• Hydras: GREAT.
• Terrain: GREAT (straight-forward to navigate — no disappearing updrafts, “tangling” maps design, etc.).
• Bounties: GOOD. Like this idea.
• Raptor race: GOOD. Like this idea.

Cons:

• Exit mount while falling: MEH — Would like to pop into glider if mount is in free-fall (just like if not mounted) instead of being forced to land.
• Mount steering with right-mouse: POOR — doesn’t seem as responsive as using keyboard when standing in place.
• Sous Chef Mastery: TERRIBLE. Not fun; simply tedious.

Overall: Looking forward to the expansion.

Love the raptor, can’t wait to get more mounts. Enjoyed exploring the open world again, just riding around, jumping chasms. Awesome setting, ambience, music. Haven’t experienced the unidentified gear. Should I be afraid?

Why did it take so long to start this official thread?

Mount was fun (needs more dye channels though (bottom half scales and horns/spikes?), and better ramp physics/pathing going up one).
Map was nice and open (could use some events in the middleish area?).
Tent heart was fun, raptor one was kinda (though takes more time).
Meta event would be nice.
Bounties are somewhat fun, if you can get a group doing them.
I enjoyed the sous chef and memory mastery points, they were different and were fun/nostalgic.
Make unid items excluded from salvage all? (with no invis bag almost salvaged them all).

Neutral with mounts.

Excess ways of getting low tir mats. I did not like that at all. I think it will tank the economy big time cause i was also getting tons of ingots out of them.

Have to agree with many with the unidentified items. Its to expensive for it. Also having weapons in them that is rng its not grate. The weapons being rewarded from the events i found that to be nice.

Maps was beautifully designed, but felt a little like Queensdale 2.0 and was empty – not a lot to do. Raptor was mostly ok, but was stuck on terrain too often and could have strafe left/right, but it was not such a big and good thing like gliding. Sous-chef was horrible (dont put mastery points behind time and RNG based mini-games)

Overall: It was mostly a nice experience .. but it was “only nice” and it was a little bit boring. My experience during the HoT-beta was much better and it felt much more engaging.

IDENTIFICATION OF GEAR:
Remove it or allow us to just open bags and see whats in there. The cost currently makes players operate at a loss. There is no ROI. Please see the other 2342 posts about this for more info.

Raptor was fun and handled well
Map was nice, though I wouldn’t mind a few more events going on

Would like to see unidentified gear split by rarity or, at least, cost to identify greatly reduced.

Afraid bounties will be too hard once the initial wave of players in a map settles down.

Map was gorgeaus.
Mount is awesome.
Mobs are new and fresh.

Sometimes fps problems.
Money sink in identify armors.
No heart specific armor types(we need more armors).
No mount riding music(love those in ff14)
Too much condi oriented expansion.

Map looks great. Raptor mount performed well enough. Could use some tweaking on the attack so it leaps directly onto a target. Not sure if the walk function works on mounts, couldn’t get it to.

Hearts were grindy. Unsure about unidentified gear. Bounties are a nice. Could be expanded on like provide a larger and more difficult bounty after completing a certain amount.

Did not enjoy the sub-boss in the story. Becoming immune at x thresholds and running away, summoning adds, then repeating quickly became a nuisance and constantly halted the pacing and momentum.

Great map, fantastic music, bounties are fun and so were the events. Mounts are awesome and I miss my Raptor already. :P

Slight cons, I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw of the VIP area and it didn’t really match the description on the store page in my opinion and, more importantly I think Unidentified Items need to be excluded from Salvage All somehow. Overall I’m hyped and ready.

I’d like to add that I LOVE the unidentified loot system. It was fantastic and I had zero inventory issues during the beta while running from event to event. Please keep it as it’s one of the best additions to the game.

Love it!

My husband and I played the demo all weekend and can’t wait till launch. With this Elona map we finally feel like it is 250 years later. Different, yet it seems very familiar thanks to all the reminders subtle and not to Guild Wars…Awesome!

The concept of starting in a town and utilizing new skills (mounts) to travel is great. Less waypoints is fine with us.

Hearts are a bit of a grind.

Like the bounties, but will require joining a tag or you will miss them? Don’t like that.

+ Raptor mount needs strafing ability, though otherwise I love the controls.
+ Zone was beautiful and full of vibrancy
+ Liked the new enemies, loved the Hydras and sand snakes in particular
+ Sky box was gorgeous, especially the night sky
+ Optimistic about traveling using mounts, looks like it could be fun
+ No more ridiculous vertical in maps is appreciated, a little variety is nice.

- Identification system – separate into tiers; green, yellow, orange – 1.5 silver just to see what you got ruins the purpose of loot.
- Story, was boring – being a pact commander should mean something, just felt like an ordinary merc entering a new land
- Mobs had too much health in story mode – not playing meta build made it tough and took too long to kill – friends (who don’t play the game) were bored quicker than I was, which is a shame because I wanted to introduce them to the game
- Sous Chef Quest was tedious and a pain – needs to be reworked.

TLDR;
Gameplay – 7
Art – 10
Sound – 10
Overall – 8

Loved the feel of the mount. Movement was very smooth. The story beginning was not very engaging and the forced heart was tedious. I wanted to run around with the new mount, but was locked behind a rather dull event. The unidentified loot really makes me not want to bother.

I like it all; would not change a thing.

Except…I will have to get used to sitting on my Mount, pointing the camera one direction, hitting ‘Leap’, and having the Mount leap the direction he/she happens to be facing. Lol, splatted more than once.

The first thing that struck me was a much more wide open feeling and lower density of mobs. Loved that so much. I don’t agree at all w/ a couple other posters that the mobs should be tougher. Don’t want to play HoT Redux.

Loved the mount and the way it handled. Hated MP, or anything of importance, locked behind timed event/adventure.

I have but one major disdain;
The warforged were way too weak. I cut down big groups like a warm knife in butter. And i wasn’t even in my raiding dps level, i was playing on casual level.
If you want a level challenge, i recommend cutting their numbers by 3 and making them five times as deadly.
They’re supposed to be war machines forged Balthazar. Ultimate instruments of war and destruction. At this stage i wonder why the Elonians didn’t just throw a bucket of water over the warforged. Seems just as deadly to them.
I’m being serious here, if the mobs are did weak they can’t represent their purpose, why should i feel threatened by them, or even take Balthazar seriously?

Music 9/10
Terrain 7/10
Difficulty of regular mobs 6.5/10
Difficulty of warforged 2/10
architecture 7.5/10
Easter eggs 11/10 (lion king, come on)

Hearts a bit grindy. Recommend 20% faster.
Raptor sticks on small hitches in terrain.
Raptor Engage skill should not be dependent on movement.
Unidentified Gear is a concern item for now. Might have potential if cheaper.

List of items:
Mob diversity!
Raptor!
Contracts! (more below)

tl;dr
Interesting interplay between trade keys, contracts, identification loot and karma.
The contracts as a limited resource but still giving mid-tier loot might very well help keep prices under control, and it uses Karma, which needed consistent sinks like this (instead of 300k vanity items). I’m hoping this works out in the long run.

*Map looks nice

*Exploring looks like it will be fun and rewarding

*Let us buy a Kit to id items so we don’t have to keep running to heart vendors. Also remove unidentified gear from “Salvage all”.

*Lower the amount of materials we get from chests and heart vendors, it was way too much

*Camera action need major fixing with mounts, zooming was way too slow, it felt sluggish, and I dont like that it seems to use Free camera mode by default

*Too many things cause dismounting, talking to npc’s, or interacting with something, this should be changed to allow us to interact with non-hostiles without having to dismount every time

I for one liked the unidentified gear. It saves inventory space until you felt like IDing them. It felt like I got more rares from that, than a regular drop. Perhaps add ID kits at some merchants and not just from renown hearts?

Mounts seem fun, great animation to give them character. Would like more dye channels though.

Enjoyed the chief mastery point.
I also liked the dialogue from the raptor renown heart guy; he speaks when you try to feed the same raptor, and tells you what you can do aloud. Nice touch.

Looking forward to seeing how the desert and Elona has changed in 250 years.

Mini games are not fun.
Please add more waypoints. Mounts may be needed to accomplish things, but travelling is a waste of time on them and will be tedious very quickly.
Unidentified items is a step backwards. I didn’t like it in GW1 and I was very happy when it wasn’t part of GW2.
And, another Rytloc not telling us anything. This has gone deep into eye rolling bad story telling.

I did prepurchase and I am not second guessing my decision, but I was quickly bored after a couple hours while the HOT preview was an engaging event. I’m considering this a gamble and the full release will be worth the money.

Bug riding mounts. Mount up, mount doesn’t appear. Move and watch me ride off, on the ground until I’m out of sight. Then the camera snaps to me on the mount. Very silly.

Dodnt play very much mot to spoil too much för myself… but:
+ The raptor Mount was awesome! In all thinkable was!
+ Amazing Environment/place! It really felt like a different continent.
+ Amazing creatures.

- Masteries locked behind adventures? Not again!
- plant pets for ranger a bit boring… real ANIMALS would have been better, the place was crawling with (imo) suitable, cool pets.

To add up: 6Really looking forward to PoF

The demo map seems new player friendly with mobs that are not too op and a layout that was fairly easy to navigate. I like how the mounts were implemented as exploration aids rather than convenience vanity items. The choyo stampede was hilarious. Only thing I didn’t really care for was the unidentified gear system: the concept is good for inventory management, but we shouldn’t have to essentially pay twice to salvage.

Positives:

- The map looked gorgeous. It’s great that the map was easy to navigate again (several maps in HoT & Living Story were a hell to explore – even tho I liked the idea of updrafts and bounce mushrooms), which is something I really missed. Of course we don’t know what the other maps will look like, but so far I’m impressed.

- It could be that a big meta chain was shut off for the beta, but I like the fact that you can explore the map without getting involved in a big meta chain. I love doing events, but sometimes I just want to explore. I’m happiest with the regular champion/legendary events, or a normal event chain (like core Tyria).

- Mounts. Do. Not. Change. A. Thing. Don’t give in to complains please. After having played MMO’s for years mounts finally feel organic, fresh and just…well..right! It would be nice to see some skins to make your mount look more original, but dyes is a good start. Again: Do not change a thing. Perfect just the way it is.

Negatives:

- The only thing I can think of: unidentified gear. My husband and I often use the option to salvage all green items, or lower….but by doing so it also salvages the unidentified armor boxes…which is far from handy. I get it’s supposed to be a time safer (you don’t have to sell as much, since they stack), but salvaging every item one by one in order to avoid salvaging unidentified gear boxes…is far from a time safer.

- On the subject of unidentifed gear boxes….an official explanation would be nice to have. Will we get those boxes in every zone, or just the new expansion zones? Do they boxes replace the normal gear we get from bosses/random minions, or is it something extra? What about ascended armor/weapon chests? I assume we will still get them seperately…..? I’m really confused. Not against the idea, but please explain it further.

- Not a fan of mini-games and mastery points hidden behind mini-games.

I had a blast on the new map and the mounts! both are absolutely amazing! I Spent the most of the time exploring the maps with friends and completing bounties. bounties are awesome! the only thing to make them better would be a timer when you pick one up so players don’t get to a boss too late.
now that the beta is over, I keep finding myself missing my raptor XD

Good:

• Mount (raptor at least) far better than I expected.
• Zone is fun.
• Can solo hero points again.

Could use work:

• Mount keyboard steering.
• Need 1-2 more waypoints (probably per map).
• Unidentified gear seems to be a partial solution/ not fully fleshed out.

Mount- Not gonna lie I was wicked apprehensive about mounts being added to the game, due to past experiences with other games. So my hats off to you for making me legitimately enjoy the raptor, the animation felt spot on for a raptor and it was a blast parkoring over sand dunes and dopey forged.

Map- Beautiful map I like that it wasn’t just a boring pile of sand like it could have been, instead its very dynamic. May I suggest adding a meta event like in other living world maps, I feel it would make it much more lively

Mobs- Mobs are creative with interesting new fight mechanics it seems, my only real complaint is it feels a bit to easy compared to the mobs in HoT. I can understand the random creatures being easier to fight, but I was expecting a meatier challenge from the forged who are the god of war’s minions. I literally just threw together a random squish mesmer build and rolled though them like a lawnmower though mom’s flowerbed. I dunno maybe I just got good at fighting the mobs in HoT.
(why do I feel like I’m going to eat these words later)

Overall- pretty solid, with a few tweaks we could have something great here if you ask me

I didn’t pre-order, and glad I didn’t. I’ll wait to see if ID’ing drops stays, and masterys locked behind timed mini games stays. if they do, not gonna get the Xpak.
Loved the mounts, loved the map, loved that the mobs werent like HoT.

I liked most of what I saw.

Unidentified equipment should be broken out by rarity. Or exotic and above should drop separately. Identifying should be cheaper or even free.

Mounts are cool, but some people are getting sick from them – some option to adjust/toggle for those people is really important.

No elite specs in PvE was bad for a preview window.

The D3 (Diablo 3) “Elites” (Bounties) were cool, except when….certain combos appeared. Like Shadowstepping & Melee only. (Fix this)