Figured I’d go ahead and leave some feedback and impressions on the beta test. Thank you Anet for the opportunity to play the beta, and for creating this world I love so much.
no TL:DR (sorry)
Overall the Beta was fun. I really like the direction everything is going though, it still needs some tweaking.
- In the Story instance, npc’s need a little tweaking, especially reactions from npc’s (more specifically at the end) could be a done a littler bit better. hard to really give much feedback with out giving out any spoilers.
- I loved seeing my character talk and respond to events in both the open world and story instance, that was probably the first wow experience(open world) in the beta for me. In the open world with all the chaos going on more specifically the area where you’re first ported in. The event where you’re helping the pale reavers give cover fire to your allies blow, my character’s response felt too casual in the tone, when responding to the “Hey the commander is here to help” dialog. even some of the npc’s interacting with each other amidst the chaos felt a little too casual.
- Open world events: The Itzel events were a lot of fun and enjoyable to play. The Pale Reaver escorts were fun, but not as fun as the Itzel and the last event in that chain was a bit too long, with champ the pale reavers were shooting down re spawning too fast, and maybe could use to some scaling adjustments? Also I was really involved in the event chain, there was no exp rewarded after completion. The Wyvern fight was probably the most fun I’ve had fighting any champ/legendary in the open world. The night time events felt a little too repetitive, hold this and escort this npc to this place. it was fun for the first little bit, but too repetitive I gave up and spent the rest of the night time doing more exploring. I also feel the night time cycle might require a bit too much coordination to work out in the open world? The 2 adventures I played, I enjoyed them as well.
- The Revenant: (disclosure: Celestial Gear, will not discuss damage) This class was a lot of fun. I didn’t like the hammer as much as the mace/axe combo. The legends were really fun, I didn’t feel the 2 current legends worked really well with each other. The animations were fun, but sometimes a little distracting to me, especially when out numbered by mordrem, and using the elite skills, however i really wouldn’t want that changed by any means. I didn’t mess with the traits as much, so i cant offer any feedback on how well they work, however my favorite minor trait had to be in invocations (I think it was a GM minor, Switching legends is instant, instead of a short channel), this made the class a lot more fun to play for me, and allowed better on the fly switching of the legends.
- Masteries: A little confusing at first, I probably missed something in the tool tips about how they work, but overall, satisfied with the system once i got it figured out. It was nice to actually think about exp and being able to see the impact gaining exp can do have, besides levels and skill points.
- Gliding and mushrooms: I only have one thing to note about gliding that i feel could use a little more work. If your’e on unlevel ground, or even level ground and hold space bar long enough, the glider would deploy. And it would trigger on wep swap sigils and legend change traits. A couple of times i would go past a mushroom and it would trigger the dialog for press F, I was trying to loot a mob and it sent me flying away when i wasn’t on the mushroom.
A few minor bugs (listed in the bug thread), but nothing game breaking. Overall quite impressed with the direction the map is going. Really looking forward to exploring the new areas and playing the open world of the expansion in the future.