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in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Specializations
I played a bit of Daredevil (though it didn’t “click” with me enough to carry on with it for long) and fought one in WvW. The WvW experience was absolutely infuriating … in a good way. I didn’t have the build to counter that amount of mobility and stealth (though not perma-stealth which made the fight much more interesting for me) but neither could the Daredevil land enough damage on me to stop me; so it was a stalemate but an okay rock-meets-rock sort of stalemate.

Berserker I played a bit more and had a blast. My main has long been a condi-warrior and the Berserker just felt an incredibly natural fit for that. The sheer number of conditions I could land on one mob in a tiny amount of time was staggering but it didn’t feel particularly OP (I wasn’t just charging through the jungle laying waste to everything with auto-attack) but it did feel like the condi build I’d been wanting since release. One criticism is that the explosion at the end of torch #5 didn’t deliver much visual feedback, it would be nice if there were a more obvious explosive animation just at the end.

Dragonhunter remains a lot of fun, I wasn’t particularly conscious of any changes but then I enjoyed it at BWE1 too so I wasn’t looking for anything massive. Ranged damage felt solid, though either (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) making the traps ground targeted by default or with a trait would be nice; it felt odd dropping traps at my feet just in case something came into melee range.

Played a bit of Reaper and it felt less frustrating than at BWE1, was playing around with builds though so moving away from familiar territory meant that I didn’t feel as though I dominated as much as I did last time when using dagger/warhorn.

Creatures
The new mobs are fun and pitched quite well I think, though the adolescent beetles seem to have an unexpectedly long range on their MASSIVE knockback. I think reducing the range on that to melee would be great … or give a decent indicator of the range of their ability.

Further to knockbacks, some of the mobs had a VERY annoying combination of stun/knockdown immediately followed by a powerful attack that meant instant death. I can’t help but feel that it’s a bit harsh to defeat a character for missing one dodge. Mind you, the sniper’s lines also seem way too punishing. Admittedly I am old and my reactions are slow but it just felt that even running across one of those lines would down me when on a non-Vitality build. I really don’t want to have to slot PTV gear with Dolyak Runes every time I venture into the jungle! It should be noted here that it didn’t seem to matter if I was running a lot of toughness or not, the attacks that would kill me would drop my toughness tanks as easily as my glass cannons. Mind you, perhaps the mobs don’t need to change, perhaps just the density needs to … but more on that later.

World
The new event chains felt really fun and engaging, my only real criticism is in scaling. Fending off waves of frogs felt really wearisome when in a small group of people, the waves were really quite challenging but they just never seemed to end! On the other hand when in a zerg, they just felt faceroll easy and over in the blink of an eye. Although this makes sense, I’m not sure it makes for good game. Similarly (though sort of in reverse) the wyvern fight was an absolute blast with a small group, saving CCs for when the break-bar came up, keeping mobile, trying to squeeze out every last ounce of dps … great fun. With a zerg, there was no real effort to do anything, there was some skill use and mobility but nothing like the edge-of-your-seat experience I had in a smaller group and the fight was, again, over in the blink of an eye. Please don’t scale the damage it does but maybe increase its health and break-bar as active player numbers increase?

Another problem with the wyvern fight was very much highlighted by the event to recover scrap metal from the mushroom cave. It seems that in an awful lot of cases missile users have a massive advantage over melee characters when it comes to receiving damage. I realise this is nothing new but with the explode-on-death mushrooms it was particularly exaggerated. There was one point (on the low-pop map with only a few of us on the chain) when all the melees were defeated, and the fight was won by a ranger shooting the mushrooms from a distance, while her bear face-tanked them … and did a kitten sight better than I did, despite my deliberately tanky build. Similarly during the wyvern fight, melees have a much harder time of it than ranged. Maybe cut the melees a little slack and stop punishing them quite so hard? Maybe cut down on the one-shot kills? I understand that you want challenging content but maybe have the mushrooms behave rather more like the bomb golems in CoE, so melee characters have a chance (and a cue) to dodge out of the way before the things explode.

One major problem with the world was mob density. It may be fine for groups of players but for solo characters, some spots can be ridiculous. Now I think I’m a player of average skill, I use all my attacks and try to do so when it’s sensible to use them rather than just whenever they come off cooldown, I try to stay mobile, and I know how to dodge; I’m under no illusions that I’m a highly-skilled player but equally I’m not someone who just hits auto-attack in zerker gear, doesn’t move at all, and wonders why they die all the time. One veteran I can pretty much confidently handle, even if that one veteran is a mordrem cavalier! I have a reasonable chance of beating a veteran even with one or two regular adds. However all over the place there are clusters of veterans, there was one spot (on a main road) where I tried to get past a veteran, only to find that there were two other veterans in the vicinity, not to mention the regular mobs that were also pounding on me; in the words of Trahearne, it didn’t end well. So it’s become apparent that the only way I can move around the map, if I don’t latch onto a zerg or a decent-sized group, is to do so at a constant run bypassing literally all of the content, until I reach my destination. This isn’t fun. A major problem with having such concentrated packs of high-powered mobs is that each of them seems to have an ability that will one-shot kill you if you fail to dodge it; with 5 mobs and one player … well, the maths doesn’t really add up does it? Clusters of veterans are literally nothing more than the tiniest speed-bump to a zerg, quite fun for a 5-person group, but an absolute road-block for solo characters. Maybe move the clusters off the beaten track a bit? Away from the main thoroughfares through the jungle, so groups can still go hunt them but zergs and individuals won’t run into them (the zerg would destroy great group content, and an average individual couldn’t get past) so moving around becomes easier but content, when you go looking for it, is still challenging.

Although the event chains are fun at the moment, I wonder what they will be like when the maps are emptier.

Mastery System
The mastery system this time seemed much more fun than it was at BWE1, with the sense that mastery points ranged from the relatively easy to the genuinely challenging, it was also nice to get points through event completion (this may have been true of BWE1 too but I was never encountered one of the chains that hadn’t stalled prior to the climactic battle … I saw it happening on the map occasionally, I just was really unlucky). On the whole, much more satisfying and engaging this time around.

In terms of using the various masteries, my biggest bugbear is that we only have one map level to play with so gliding, if you miss your target, leaves you with nowhere to go but a waypoint. Maybe next time around (presumably the final beta) you can unlock all three layers of a small part of the jungle so we can truly get a sense of how they are interconnected and how we move between them.

While I’m on the subject of gliding, admittedly this is probably just me being daft but I couldn’t see how to access updrafts, maybe a short tutorial when you first get the mastery would be useful? Or maybe have tutorials for gliding in your home instance?

As for the jumping mushrooms, although these are an interesting mechanic, I found that too often I was bounced straight into aggro range of one or more grumpy (veteran) hylek. Now if there’s going to be a mechanic to earn reputation with hylek tribes to make them non-aggressive (I really hope this is the case) then this is absolutely not a problem; however if they are permanently aggressive then it would be nice if the landing zones themselves were always safe … even if they were surrounded by peril.

Footnote
If your response to these observations is along the lines of “learn to play” then please don’t bother. I’m quite happy with my current level of skill, and I’m happy to keep improving every day but I play this game to relax, it’s not my job, and I don’t want to feel locked out of it if I don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by people much younger than me who complain that League of Legends isn’t as hardcore as it used to be (actual conversation in map chat today). Of course your money is as good as mine and you deserve the game you want; but conversely, my money is as good as yours and I shouldn’t be forced to play your game at the expense of the game I want.

Glad to be [Grey] – http://thegrey.enjin.com/home
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