Guild Wars 2

Greetings folks. I decided to make this post to give some feedback about the updates from the perspective of my Fiance and I.

And to talk about Golems. But we’ll get to that.

For a quick background, we both have 19 characters each. We decided to make our 19th pair today as something fun to do on her birthday. An Asura duo made from Warrior and Engineer in Metrica Province. We stopped tonight at level 17. We didn’t use anything but what we found or got as level/story rewards. I hope the devs find this feedback helpful!

Leveling Rewards:

This idea is something that seems pretty nifty. The other half loves it, and I think it’s a good idea myself. Since the removal of being able to play around with trait points every level after 11, this does at least make leveling up a little less boring. Suggested improvements would be to spread gear rewards out a bit. I upgraded weapons more than necessary, but still had level 3 blue gloves at level 17 by normal playing. Adding Accessories/Rings as rewards would fill empty slots and make new characters a little stronger for those that do not discover Jewelcrafting early on.

I noticed overall that “loot” or item rewards rather was more interesting, this is good. Uninteresting and boring loot is an issue that plagues this game, especially at high levels. There’s little interest in killing much of anything, as you already know whatever may drop is junk. At low levels it’s fun and charming to get your first green, and then your first rare, but after that it tapers off and starts being 90% salvage/junk/etc. and 10% +1-3 points stat increase. But I digress.

Skills:

This was the big bone of contention for both of us.

1. Level-gated weapon skills is frustrating. Having three buttons to press after the tutorial boss made it more flavorful and interesting back when it was acquired that way. Now it’s Auto-attacking for a while, then having a 2 key for a while, then finally a three key, you know. Honestly it was the 4th and 5th weapon skills that felt like a real drag to get to.

It’s also not equal across the board for weapons. Some weapons are great in keys 1-3 and some only reach their full potential with 4-5. Look at it this way: A Staff Mesmer would have to suffer having nothing but “Winds of Chaos”, the teleport clone that also casts Winds of Chaos, and the long cooldown Illusion that casts a single attack. That sounds dreadfully boring, does it not? Staff Mesmer is hilariously weak, so I honestly feel like that player would die. A lot. Which brings us to point 2…

2. Level-Gated Downed Skills

I was absolutely shocked to find that the only thing I could do was just…use the 1 key and attempt to bandage. Why? I don’t understand how that helps a new player, who no doubt already finds learning the mechanics challenging. This just makes it easier to die. It’s much easier to die now because of Point #3…

3. Level-Gated Utility Skills

This one kind of stings. I know it was done because players level faster. But it weakens the player in that 1-15 timeframe when you’re already at your most squishy. But it also has one other drawback.

Combat feels less interesting at the beginning. When you’re new you’re getting used to your 1-5 abilities and trying out new weapons, but not all classes get that luxury of LOADS-E-WEPPONS. Engineer for instance has Pistol, Shield, and Rifle. So as you might imagine, not having any utility skills to play around with made it get repetitive very quickly. A compounding factor to that is that the enemies largely have no real abilities to speak of. So it’s your default attacks vs basic attack enemies for quite some time. It felt a bit stale.

I remember when we were new, part of the fun was mixing around the utility skills and experimenting. They always were gated, because unless you already knew how to get lots of skill points you had to wait to unlock more of them. Especially those 6-point skills that felt like a risk not knowing if they were really good or not. This really stings for Rangers I might add, who have quite a lot of utility skills that I personally feel are dull.

Pacing:

The pacing is great now. I liked that we reached the renown hearts at a reasonable level, and the zone more or less stayed with us until we did personal story at 10. After that we over-leveled it and steamrolled everything. But new players likely wouldn’t experience that, or might even find it enjoyable to feel like their character is becoming mighty.

Although that being said, the difficulty curve immediately after the newbie zone is a real shock of cold water. We went to Diessa after finishing Metrica Province since you can get a full set of greens there from a heart. The first heart to stop the separatists is bugged, but we instead went to help Crankmane set up the ghost controller machine. That event is a favorite of mine. But it definitely underlines the difference between the 1-15 zone. It’s less sleepily pressing 1-5 keys and a lot more trying desperately to dodge attacks and killing specific enemies first. Since y’know, enemies actually have special attacks now. That and the Veteran enemies blow the 1-15 vets out of the water.

Overall it’s not too bad, I don’t mind it at all and I like the level-up rewards. But the skills bits I mentioned I feel like is shooting your efforts in the foot. Certain parts of that leveling process just weren’t fun, and it felt like it was dragging on forever before I could do something interesting with my character.

Oh, and about those Golems.

What is up with the damage on Gatling Fists? I was getting hit for over 1,000 damage on my newbie character. It’s not much different at other levels either, and the Elite Asura Summon also does insane damage with it. I saw a lot of players in Metrica frustrated about this as well, because as you know Golems are quite common there and as Personal Story bosses. Since players have no means of defending themselves due to the trimming away of skills, you can’t dodge enough to just not get destroyed. I hope this is a bug haha.

Mister Midnight.9837:

What is up with the damage on Gatling Fists? I was getting hit for over 1,000 damage on my newbie character. It’s not much different at other levels either, and the Elite Asura Summon also does insane damage with it. I saw a lot of players in Metrica frustrated about this as well, because as you know Golems are quite common there and as Personal Story bosses. Since players have no means of defending themselves due to the trimming away of skills, you can’t dodge enough to just not get destroyed. I hope this is a bug haha.

I’m pretty sure it’s a ploy by the Inquest for world domination.

Or, it could just be a bug.

Sokia.3710:

Mister Midnight.9837:

What is up with the damage on Gatling Fists? I was getting hit for over 1,000 damage on my newbie character. It’s not much different at other levels either, and the Elite Asura Summon also does insane damage with it. I saw a lot of players in Metrica frustrated about this as well, because as you know Golems are quite common there and as Personal Story bosses. Since players have no means of defending themselves due to the trimming away of skills, you can’t dodge enough to just not get destroyed. I hope this is a bug haha.

I’m pretty sure it’s a ploy by the Inquest for world domination.

Or, it could just be a bug.

It’s working! That attack has always done considerable damage, so much so that I always prefer to encounter them with a reflect ability ready but good grief haha the first time I didn’t even have time to react!

Surely, they must be powering their Golems with something new. I’m betting on Dr. Bleent’s Ooze Booze, which was mysteriously missing from his vendor wares.

Oh, and one other feedback bit I forgot:

Why did you guys lock-out Skill Challenges until a certain level? I personally found that irritating to have to backtrack for them. It would have been nice to be able to do them, and use those skill points on alternate healing skills. It’s not like you can hide them, if someone high enough level triggers them you can participate anyway. Or in the case of those that aren’t fights, it’s kind of lame to have that held out of reach because reasons.

I suppose people would question not being able to use their skill points, but you know there are the healing skills to try out…

Mister Midnight.9837:

Surely, they must be powering their Golems with something new. I’m betting on Dr. Bleent’s Ooze Booze, which was mysteriously missing from his vendor wares.

After years of painstaking and morally questionable research, the Inquest have discovered the secret of the Eternal Alchemy. Golems run much more efficiently when you power them with Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper is the new fuel source for Mark II golems.

I was surprised to know that being downed was gated.

It was quite a shock to instantly die as soon as I reached 0 health because the down mechanic is an integral part of the game. It actually helps balance the fact that squishy people are squishy and to alleviate the stress of playing perfectly while learning how to play perfectly.

Then again, it is only for a few levels so I guess it’s not a big deal, but my main problem is that gating is not the same as introducing.

What I feel Arenanet should have done is kept everything ingame as it was before the change and instead added things to introduce things to us. The dodging tutorial is great, because it’s hands on and you can do it before or after that and you don’t have to do it at all. It really made me remember the Elona training ground where you could talk to NPC’s to get an idea of ranges and skills and all sorts of other things if you cared to read.

Instead of adding ways of explaining how things are done, they prevented players from using them and decided that ungating them one at a time would make it easier for new players.

Why not just have new players have access to everything and also introduce it every level? The level-up bonuses are great (bar the stats), but they also make it seem like the next level rewards are things you can’t do when really they’re things that you sometimes can do but they haven’t told you that you can do.

It shouldn’t be a focus on what is and is not gated and a focus on what is in the game and describing an integral part of the game every level, slowly.

You don’t teach someone how to ride a bicycle by giving them a chair and then adding some pedals and then allowing them to move the pedals, and then giving them a handlebar, etc, etc. You teach them how to ride a bicycle by pushing them on it (while also holding it to keep them from falling) or using training wheels to prevent them from falling. You give them access to the whole package, but you hold them up.

Stop holding players hands and instead teach them all the things they can do. We don’t want to give new players fish. We want to teach them how to fish.

Esplen.3940:

What I feel Arenanet should have done is kept everything ingame as it was before the change and instead added things to introduce things to us. The dodging tutorial is great, because it’s hands on and you can do it before or after that and you don’t have to do it at all. It really made me remember the Elona training ground where you could talk to NPC’s to get an idea of ranges and skills and all sorts of other things if you cared to read.

BRING BACK THE ELONA TRAINING GROUND. In fact, keep the Pink Flamingo in it, as well. All of my heroes had Flamingo pets, and it was fun running with heroes and seeing other player’s reactions to pink flamingo’s running around everywhere.

I’m glad someone read through my wall.

Esplen.3940:

I’m glad someone read through my wall.

Thanks. And, I did think that the Elona training ground was useful. I cannot fathom why Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have something like it.

Most of my characters were Elonian (other than Pre-searing, god bless Ascalon). However, I would always find myself going back there and learning something. I would usually skip some text or not realize the exact wording/range meant there when it said “nearby”.

I definitely agree on the topic of less hand holding. One of the things about this game that my other half and I fell in love with about it was how open it was. The encouragement to explore and figure it out reminded us of some of our favorite games from back in the N64 days when we were kids.

I’ve always told people in other online arenas that the exploration and figuring it out aspects were a strong point of this game, and I still think so. Figuring out how everything worked reminded me of how it felt to play MMOs for the very first time, a fleeting feeling you can give MMO players that is like reaching for the stars.

I sincerely do believe Anet when they say that their ability to bring in new players is in dire straits and I do want them to do something about it.

I just hope for it to be something that makes the game more fun and varied, not rigid and restricted.

But then I’m that MMO player that likes to go places and do things my character shouldn’t be doing yet, even though that makes it needlessly difficult or gets me killed.

The whole gating process is beyond ridiculous. I mean seriously, players don’t even die now and stay at 0 health. Anet went too extreme with this NPE. Add to the fact, there are so many bugs, it’s beyond belief this ever went through.

I think the jarring transition from the edges-rounded-off changed starter areas and the rest of the game is going to be a issue in the future. I think what everyone has feared from the release of this patch is that in an attempt to make that transition less jarring, they’re going to keep rounding off edges and removing content.
I hope not, but it seems like the next step since they’re dedicated to this idea of “no small parts to choke on”.

eyestrain.3056:

I think the jarring transition from the edges-rounded-off changed starter areas and the rest of the game is going to be a issue in the future.

Especially with no traits or utility skills to help tackle the mid-level zones.