The RPG genre is heavily based on rules. In the olden times you’d have to read a bookful of rules to even be able to play a game. Guild Wars 2 is the exact opposite. You still have a bunch of stats and effects, but they’re all strangely alien.
I’ll give a concrete example to get the discussion going:
My Ranger has 930 toughness. Mousing over the stat it says “increases armor”. Alright. There we have 1,994 armor. Tooltip for armor says “combines defense and toughness; reduces incoming damage”. What am I supposed to think about this? It doesn’t even say how much the damage is reduced, let alone explain the formula for doing it. I could spend my hard-earned laurels to buy an infusion that graciously add +5 toughness, but I have no way of knowing is that a better deal than 5 vitality infusion. Should I even care about 5 toughness when another consumable could give me 100, or in other words twenty times more. And yet what 5 is to 100, 100 is to 2000. What’s the big idea?
Yeh, GW2 is definitely not for min maxing. As long as you can dodge and ress, the rest of the combat system is entirely optional.
I also prefer games that give you more of a hold on what you are doing. I especially hate it when you have a buff that says it increases your power or armour or whatever, but not by how much. Then I see the same buff on someone else and then it tells me it’s 10% or whatever. I just don’t get that I can’t see that myself.
I think the idea is that they wanted to get away from that type of gameplay. Not really what I would’ve like but I’m sure plenty of people here will tell you that it’s great.
It’s a game forum. The truth is not to be found here.
I think the idea is that they wanted to get away from that type of gameplay. Not really what I would’ve like but I’m sure plenty of people here will tell you that it’s great.
- The contrast is quite hilarious. So much effort and attention to details that hardly matter, yet letting the major picture go as it pleases. I liked how the character creation goes so deep as to lets you customize the width of your character’s jaw, but yet you have no control which armor sets happen to have the stat combination you want. When it comes to looks, armor definitely matters.
I wonder what kind of player this game is really made for. I realize that players have different reasons to play, but what is the thing that this game really does better than its competition?
