Guild Wars 2

Since there’s no official “plz give your BETA feedback here” post yet, I start my own topic. Feel free to add your very own feedback or may be all the feedback threads will get merged together, idk.

So what I did this weekend myself was testing the Revenant, Necro Elite Spec (Reaper) and ofc a bit of the new map. I also talked to friends and guild mates about their opinions, so some parts reflect only what I was told (since I know they never use the forums).

A Performance
It seems that the system requirements for the HoT map got “stealth increased”. Though this is nothing new, back in GW1 FPS went dropped with every addition to the game (Factions, NF, GW:EN) already, still I hoped for a policy change in GW2. Just for comparison: Playing on high settings, I usually get somewhere between 30 and 60 fps in the open world and in dungeons/fotm, noticeable fps drops only occur in large scale WvW battles and big and crowded world bosses.
On the Beta map however, fps were constantly around 20, often noticeably stuttering.

B Visuals/Design
The map itself (at least what I explored) looks… ok’ish. Jungle settings just aren’t my favorits, but that’s a personal thing. What I really dislike is the mass of tight paths, small cave like places, with green stuff hanging from above etc. Not so much for its esthetics, but for its inconvinience concerning camera handling. Even with the latest camera improvements I was regulary more busy with adjusting the camera than actually paying attention to what was going around me.

C Combat
Didn’t spend too much time fighting, but all in all nothing special. Mobs still melt, but I feel one has to pay a little more attention about tells and enemy boons/specialities, which I consider a good thing. I also enjoyed having the orange area tells for incoming AoE attacks, though a guildy of mine complained about the mix of red circles and orange areas. She felt it just too much bling bling to watch out for, with the red circles sometimes being hard to see when they overlap with the orange areas, Same goes for the orange/red lines from snipers. She suggests an “either or” solution. May be there’s a chance to simply remove all red circles and put in the orange area markers instead just like you did with bloomhunger back in the days?

D Masteries
Can’t say much here, system doesn’t seem very intuitive, I somehow unlocked the first step of glidermastery by accident, no idea what I did to do so. Gliding itself seemed like a nice gimmick, but nothing to spectacular. Future will tell wether it will be a nice feature or an anoying “must have” I guess.

E New Class/Elite Specs
Reaper is visualy quite appealing, though the scythe in reaper shroud is a bit too much for me. That oversized handle just looks stupid imo. Maybe you can lower the handle a bit and increase the blade instead?
Playwise I got along with it quite well, though GS skills feel very sluggish. I guess the masters of theory-crafting can give better input.
What I miss is the possibility to get the old DS while still using the GS. Maybe you can tie the RS to the GS while still granting access to the old DS when using another weapon, so we can switch between RS and DS by switching weapons?
Another thing that was weired- there’s one particular kind of veteran enemies, unfortunatly I forgot the name, which looked like some mix of a rhino/triceratops/stegosaurus/turtle. When I used RS 5 on them, a HUGE ice crystal appeared on them, filling the whole screen and literally blinding everyone around (not the condition blind, more like watching a flashbang in RL). Dunno wether it was the chill or the stun or the combination of both, but that should definetly looked into.

Revenant… I’m a bit torn. I somewhat like the style and the many possibilities offered by the combinations of different weapons and legends, on the other hand, the damage (yes, used zerker everything) felt quite… meh.

Just my 2 cents.

ad performance

I completely agree, sometimes when you stare towards the center of the map fps drop below 30. I think this is a fairly huge concern, since I am running quite a beefy setup, others are not that lucky. Also, lowering graphics to minimal setings didn’t help at all in that situation. Mind, there are places in LA where my fps rise way beyond 100, so there really are problems. this has to get fixed before release, at least to get the game running over 30 at all times. (45-60 would be nicer though)

ad visuals

Oh holy kitten, i love the visuals, the map looks plastic and rich, ambient occlusion, which was recently implemented, added another layer of depth to a great looking environment. The setting itself is a nice one, but whether the person likes it or not depends completely on personal preferences.

ad combat

Mobs still melt (well not all of them at least, but trash sure does) – but hey, so do you. Those mordrem snipers just hit like a truck, and if you have to fight against 3 smokeskales at once you might as well just rund and pray. there are still enemies (like spiders) you just delete without even using another skill than an autoattack, which is… well it’s not bad if there are enemies like that, i don’t mind some of those, especially if you clean up the itzel village’s upper terretory with all your experience boosters there are, you can really work towards those masteries (if you are waiting for another event, e.g.) Breakbars are a great addition, i love it, and people already start figuring out what to do, and what’s going to happen when they break the bar

ad masteries

Leveling without rising the level cap is great, and the mastery system is doing that perfectly. i got hold of 6 mastery points and leveled gliding to 3 and itzel lore to 2 – i really played verdant brink a lot, and during guild missions yesterday evening i fell to death multiple times because my glider wouldn’t open. (obviously, because non-beta char and pact-tyria)
You are getting used to that gliding so fast, and it’s really, really useful for skipping running-parts. All I can remember is that I would prefer to glide faster if you hit level 3 there and keep pressing forward. Not just for a small boost but just +33% speed, at the cost of higher endurance degression.
EDIT: Just figured, you are INDEED faster, but this is hardly visible. Maybe a better visual difference?

I have mixed feelings about locking the ability to level behind experiance and mastery points, but fair enough. What made me really disappointed, though, was locking mastery points behind gold-levels of adventures. I really do not think this is necessary, I would add a mastery point – channel within an adventure which can only be activated while playing the adventure. And I would add another mastery point on reaching silver. Gold should be somewhat exclusive but not mandatory to receive.

There are so many feedback threads, so I thought I’ll add my thoughts here! (It’s mostly positive; people will likely argue lol)

Revenant
I’ve probably played this the most over the weekend, and I’m quite impressed. The overall feel of the profession is enjoyable and I personally think it achieves a level of depth and variety that a lot of people feared would be missing. Using a DPS-focused build (Shiro/Mallyx, Sword/Axe & Hammer, Assassin/Zerk gear), I was surprised at how high the damage output was. But having spent a lot of time in the core game I feel that it’s on par with other DPS builds I’ve seen and used.

I’m not overly keen on channelling Ventari. It kind of feels like a one tricky pony as everything centres on the tablet. I’ve seen others using it with a degree of skill, but it’s not something I’d really enjoy investing more time in. That’s not to say I don’t find it an interesting approach to a healing build, and I think it makes good use of the energy mechanic. But it’s simply not for me, I guess.

Two bugs stick out in my mind, however. When using Phase Smash with the hammer, the game thinks I’m falling and prompts me to open my glider. This is fixed by jumping. And the axe skill Temporal Rift doesn’t seem to react well to sloping terrain. It will make the rift straight into the ground or into the air above, depending on the direction of the slope, and have no effect on foes. Makes an uphill battle, well, an uphill battle!

Chronomancer
I’ve played this just a little. I found Continuum Shift a little overwhelming at first, but with practice I can see this being a powerful ability for mesmers. I don’t have much more to say about this for now.

Reaper
I really enjoyed the Reaper. Greatsword and Reaper Shroud attacks are a little sluggish, but are hard hitting to compensate. This works great in PvE, but perhaps makes the specialisation less viable for competitive play. But then again, you don’t have to stick to the new weapons just by taking the elite spec. But in all, the shouts are a fun direction for the necromancer and seem to gear the profession towards tackling large groups of foes (plus the MK reference on the heal made me chuckle).

Tempest
I’ve played the Tempest most out of the 4 elite specialisations, and I find it a real enhancement of the elementalist. The warhorn may even be enough to draw me away from my staff!

But the elite shout ‘Rebound’ feels underwhelming. A 25% cooldown reduction on a single skill for yourself and five others feels like a waste of an elite. I have no doubt that it is a useful skill, but as far as elites go it just feels lacking. It also appears bugged at the moment, as it doesn’t reduce the cooldown of every skill.

I also feel that the Overloads would benefit from a larger range, particularly if you prefer a ranged ele build.

Dragonhunter
I’m not a big guardian player, so I gave this a miss for now.

Verdant Brink
The map delivers something of a new experience in GW2. Firstly it’s beautiful to look at and run across and fly across and die across. Secondly, the terrain and events work so well together to bring about some fun moments, like a push/pull battle with the mordrem for a narrow bridge, or the collecting of eggs up and down a canyon wall. The events themselves are imaginative and novel, with new mechanics that require teamwork to overcome. I hope this kind of variety in content is the norm for HoT, especially with the day/night cycle to throw new things into the mix. And although the cycle is still in its early stages, it already has an impact on how the map feels. When night falls, areas of the map come alive with mordrem and it really does feel more dangerous. And that’s great!

Of course there are some major bugs preventing some of the events from being completed, which resulted in frustration as players attempted to ‘unbug’ the events. I’m sure they’ve been reported in detail enough by now though.

Foes
I’m very impressed by the foes in Verdant Brink. There’s a whole range of builds being used by the various creatures and the mordrem, from slow and durable stoneheads to the glass cannon mordrem guard stalkers. Even the smaller creatures, such as the pocket raptors and the various annoying, bothersome, irritating little…mushrooms, are dangerous and can easily overwhelm you if you’re not prepared for them. Regardless of what build you use as a player, these foes test you and keep you on your toes.

I’ve already seen other players complaining about mob density and how difficult these enemies are, but I personally feel that this is what the game needs. And not to mention that Verdant Brink is supposed to be completely hostile enemy territory. We are supposed to feel vulnerable and as if we’re fighting an uphill battle. If the enemies were weaker or the map more sparsely populated, it would have felt like another wander through a tamer map from the core game. We need more challenging content (and I don’t mean a super hard mode!) and I think that this is a step in the right direction. A few more steps in that direction would be great! It’s a game of combat, and here we are forced into combat, especially during the night. I’m hoping that when the day/night cycle is complete we’ll have all hell breaking loose when the sun goes down.

Having said all that, I can see how it is difficult for players to traverse this area by themselves. But I found that it’s just a case of learning how to evade particular enemy movements and using your skills to avoid prolonged combat as much as to fight.

Mastery Progression
I think the rate at which masteries are unlocked is pretty much okay. It did feel a little grindy, but that was simply because of the size of the beta map. With a full map to explore it will be a nice passive goal to achieve whilst exploring and taking part in events. And with the full expansion, it won’t be a problem at all.

I have two minor concerns though. Depending on the number of masteries and how long it takes to fully master them all, I’m worried that it could end up being too fast, leaving eager players with no masteries left to work towards. And during the beta it was possible to earn chests in the core game that reward experience (such as map completion chests) and jump back into VB and open them for a boost on the mastery bar. I’m not sure how big a problem this could be, but it’s probably best to encourage exploration for mastery progress instead.

Bouncy Shrooms o’ Death
Uh oh! At first I didn’t like the idea of bouncing on mushrooms. As Guild Wars has always had something of a serious fantasy feel, the thought of fungus-based acrobatics annoyed me a little. And even now, I think it looks a little ridiculous. But that aside, it is nice to have these little shortcuts as a result of the mastery. I just wish they wouldn’t land me flat on my face and on the brink of death! I quickly learnt that using a mushroom whilst still moving had dire consequences. Still, the fall damage from correct trajectories is still a nightmare in such a hostile land.

I hope there are going to be areas that require these masteries, whether for the mushrooms or the gliding. I also hope something can be done to prevent mesmer portals from bypassing masteries, but that really does depend on whether content is missed by portalling in or not. That’s a concern for another day, perhaps.