Guild Wars 2

Yesterday I watched old video from Woodenpotatoes from GW2 beta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Wn4wAOZmQ
TL;DR
Watch the video and write Your thoughts about things we had in beta and which we are missing now.
Maybe it was discussed, maybe not. But I actually think that majority of this, let’s call this features, were much better than things we have currently.
I’ll list my thoughts in the same order as in the video.

1. Login screen – well, I don’t really care about cosmetics. I like one in the video and I like current one. You can’t make everyone happy, let’s skip this. (but if there was an option to change between two login screens, why delete it?)
2. This one is not actually tied to this topic, we can just thank Anet that we have only 300 hearts.
3. The idea of spending attribute points by Yourself, not automatically, is interesting. But I like the stats we could choose even better! In that way ranger could actually be a ranger because of maxing ranged damage, scholars could be actual mages because power was divided into MAGIC, ranged and melee damage. Ofc noone forces Your ranger to be an actual ranger <cough>. And there was no healing power which effect is negligible.
4. I’m not sure if sharing energy between skills and dodgeroll was good idea, i’m sure that I always preferred mana, energy, rage system, combined with cooldowns, (pointing at WoW, Rift) to use skills in combat. CDs only have much less impact on active gameplay (the fact that revenant will need to manage energy together with CDs is great imho).
5. I’m not going to say if lore-books are good or no. There is a lot of loremasters, who for sure would love this, and I’m into this even though I’d probably skip 90% of them. But so much work with writing all these stories turned into nothing is painful.
6. If there will be no need to buy traits from trainers they can actually be deleted. I like running to proffesion trainer just to buy my new available skill and check it out! Even the old system with killing mobs was better than current now (I’m not even talking about level restrictions), but system which forces You to run to a profession trainer to learn skill, or even forces You to do some profession related quests in order to learn a skill brings some good memories to me. It’s building up the atmosphere of upcoming op fireballs You will hurl at your enemies. And I would like it much more than current one, even If I had to do all the quests on every alt I have.
   +phoenix on staff #4 <3
7. I have no single thought on this one. Could be interesting though.
8. THIS one should be implemented into the game now. As long as there is no source of unidentified dyes, such way to obtain them (even if this could be complicated or time consuming) is a great idea. And it makes quite a lot of sense. Moa dropping a dye makes defnitely less sense (I know that games are not about sense, but still).
9. My ranger is lvl 30 leveled with scrolls so I have no idea what is WP talking about, but it sounds reasonable to him xD
10. Transmutation charges being able to buy is a thing! I’m not saying that 2.1k karma is a good or bad price, but this item has literally nothing prestigous or powerfull to put it in the place it is now. (fashion wars ftw)
    Secondly, the loading screen. Yes on both. Reasonable text instead of some numbers of waypoints and PoIs, alongside with percentage/bar showing progress is much better thing than spinning circle!

After watching this 12 minutes long video, to conclude this whole wall of text, I’d like to say that (imo) Arenanet ignored a lot of nice things from beta. Number 3 is my main here. Number 6. Number 10 (charges and loading screen). And number 4, but this is controversial.

Post Your thoughts here. Post other funny facts or things that were deleted after beta with no reason.

It might be a more understandable post if you listed what the 10 missing/changed things were….for those reluctant/unable to watch the video.

The only thing I can remember from the Betas I miss are the snakes. =)
I’m happy the acquisition of Dyes was changed. Waiting for Dye Seeds to mature was not fun (to me).

Good luck.

The warrior longbow skill with the fire-field was so great .. but i suspect it would
have killed the FPS simply too much if more players were using it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m happy the acquisition of Dyes was changed. Waiting for Dye Seeds to mature was not fun (to me).

Good luck.

I think that it’s still better than no dyes :P

But you were asking about the changes between Beta and Release. I think many players were asking for Account-wide Dyes; in fact, many were (let’s say) disappointed with the change from the expected Account-wide Dyes to Character-specific Dyes at release.

There are means of obtaining Dyes in-game, still, even without purchase. Not as many as when they dropped from Gathering or off mobs, but that is the price of having each Dye color be unlimited now. And, even if you purchase a dye color (from the TP or Gem Store), it costs sooo much less to use on all your character, especially if it is one of the more ‘valuable’ Dyes.

kuben.9826:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m happy the acquisition of Dyes was changed. Waiting for Dye Seeds to mature was not fun (to me).

Good luck.

I think that it’s still better than no dyes :P

Eh, there are a large number of dyes that are less than 3 silver each. One gold will give you a good number, and the fact that dyes were changed from soulbound to account wide means you only have to buy each one once to have it for all your chars. Even an account with one low level char can get enough gold to buy a good selection for the whole account, just running around and harvesting mats for sale or by doing the PvP dailies.

And I remember that we were told originally that the dyes would be accountbound, then right before launch it was switched to soulbound on the grounds that this allowed for separate character progression. There was a lot of unhappy posts in the gw2guru forum back then (there wasn’t an official forum till later) about that. Definitely not one of their better ideas, imo, and I’m so glad they changed the dyes to account wide.

This is why i try to stay away from beta over all they tend to give you as a player a crazy amount of ideals and possibility that at the end of the day you know cant all be done right or well. So there becomes a bad feeling of lose and you will be disappointing every time.

The problem with betas is they’re always pre grind and nowadays pre cash shop. They rarely resemble the game.

The majority of companies aren’t confident in their games anymore… so they instead put in these time/grind gating things to try and guarantee players… but it’s a mixed bag. You might push away more players than you guarantee.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

kuben.9826:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m happy the acquisition of Dyes was changed. Waiting for Dye Seeds to mature was not fun (to me).

Good luck.

I think that it’s still better than no dyes :P

Eh, there are a large number of dyes that are less than 3 silver each. One gold will give you a good number, and the fact that dyes were changed from soulbound to account wide means you only have to buy each one once to have it for all your chars. Even an account with one low level char can get enough gold to buy a good selection for the whole account, just running around and harvesting mats for sale or by doing the PvP dailies.

I’ve got most of blue and green dyes, and probably more than 20 yellows. I’m just pointing the issue with unidentified dyes

Ohh energy bar. The game could have been so less spammy than it is now. <3

I liked the story books as well. Seemed like a fun feature.

The old launcher looked sexy. I’ve always thought the current character selection screen and intro music is kinda meh, also.

kuben.9826:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

kuben.9826:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m happy the acquisition of Dyes was changed. Waiting for Dye Seeds to mature was not fun (to me).

Good luck.

I think that it’s still better than no dyes :P

Eh, there are a large number of dyes that are less than 3 silver each. One gold will give you a good number, and the fact that dyes were changed from soulbound to account wide means you only have to buy each one once to have it for all your chars. Even an account with one low level char can get enough gold to buy a good selection for the whole account, just running around and harvesting mats for sale or by doing the PvP dailies.

I’ve got most of blue and green dyes, and probably more than 20 yellows. I’m just pointing the issue with unidentified dyes

Well, unidentified has always been an issue if you are going for bifrost. They may have been cheaper earlier, but you needed more of them, 250 wasn’t it and 100 now? So, the actual cost is about the same for those buying. Of course there used to be the possibility of getting them through play, so, yeah, that is a downgrade.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Well, unidentified has always been an issue if you are going for bifrost. They may have been cheaper earlier, but you needed more of them, 250 wasn’t it and 100 now? So, the actual cost is about the same for those buying. Of course there used to be the possibility of getting them through play, so, yeah, that is a downgrade.

You also used to be able to get 10 dyes for 1 laurel; now it’s 5 laurels for 1 dye. So that, plus the fact that they removed dyes as drops (except ones that come from the personal story/living story reward bags) makes it a fair bit harder to get even 100 for the Gift of Color.

the end of beta with the shatterer taking over plains of ashford, corrupting waypoints and players, and the destiny’s edge crew running around to try to stop it was way cooler and more fun than any event in the real game has ever been

RoseofGilead.8907:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Well, unidentified has always been an issue if you are going for bifrost. They may have been cheaper earlier, but you needed more of them, 250 wasn’t it and 100 now? So, the actual cost is about the same for those buying. Of course there used to be the possibility of getting them through play, so, yeah, that is a downgrade.

You also used to be able to get 10 dyes for 1 laurel; now it’s 5 laurels for 1 dye. So that, plus the fact that they removed dyes as drops (except ones that come from the personal story/living story reward bags) makes it a fair bit harder to get even 100 for the Gift of Color.

True, true. I never looked into buying dyes with laurels, too busy outfitting 8 chars with ascended trinkets and weapons. The dye changes did hit the bifrost crafters hard, while benefiting most other players.

kuben.9826:

Post Your thoughts here. Post other funny facts or things that were deleted after beta with no reason.

Considering the things that were added after release, it’s rather obvious that the game has only become worse. In beta:

1. There was no ascended gear.

2. There was no Fractals to grind Agony resistance for.

3. There was no kind of time gate for crafting.

4. You could actually get dyes as a drop.

5. ArenaNet didn’t hold content in order to release it in the Gem Store, which is pretty much what they have been doing with weapon skins these last few years.

6. The Personal Storyline made sense, instead of the broken mess we have right now (which ArenaNet has promised to fix, but no one knows when).

7. Trait acquisition was simple and fast, unlike the mess it is today, and unlike the mess it will become soon.

8. We unlocked weapon skills by using them, instead of through levelling, so you could easily end the tutorial having fully unlocked a weapon, which doesn’t happen today.

9. No matter if you were a new player or not, you could see everything in the map – skill points, vistas, etc. After the NPE, ArenaNet decided those things are just “too confusing” and has kept them hidden from new players.

10. Scarlet didn’t exist.

11. Players could use bundle items in the starting areas. I remember an interview in which Colin mentioned how he had a lot of fun with a player in Queensdale, after both of them spent a lot of time with buckets just throwing water on each other. Now that – which made even the developer have fun – has been removed from the game, and new characters cannot pick up buckets or similar things in the earlier maps.

And so on, and so on.

GW2 has been changing for the worst since right after release. HoT appears to be just one more step downards.

I’ve been enjoying playing another title with a real stamina bar, and one in which certain bosses can wear themselves out as well if you handle them properly while dealing damage. Accepting that you’re going to get your skull cracked in this game unless you have energy sigils, and even then if you have a thief turning the boss over and over, just doesn’t add excitement for me.

The biggest thing that’s missing to me is a game that continues to be story driven, to keep players interested in Tyria. Once you take down Zhaitan there’s nothing really pulling you in. You can buy LS2, but why? There’s nothing that leads my characters towards it, there’s nothing that I feel that they’re missing by just hopping into the Wastes for the grind. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything by playing another game at the moment.