Guild Wars 2

Hi,

This is my first weekend where I’ve been able to play Heart of Thorns Beta IN Maguuma. My general impressions are, “Not good”.

I find the content flat. I remember when Dark Age of Camelot came out with Shrouded Isles it was just 5 maps. They were Domnann, Caillte Garran, Vale of Balor, Vigilant Rock, Cothrom Gorge, and World’s End.

Each maps was a unique piece of the world’s mythology, right down to the town names.

Heart of Thorns is a copy-and-paste fest. Do you really think people aren’t going to notice you’ve scaled up Hylek and pasted some rock-dog, beetles, and spiders before calling it a day?

The creatures you’ve made are really no-effort creatures. Here’s a single creature from DAoC:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/b01/h-tangle-weed.jpg

There’s more effort put into that level 1 creature than anything ‘new’ I’ve seen in Heart of Thorns.

Here’s another exciting creature:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/Ancient-Treant.jpg

Another:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Maps/zpics/screens/h-Shannon-Estuary02.jpg

Still more:
http://images.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/072004/inline/1826.jpg

… All of the stuff from DAoC is exciting. Fresh. Original.

This is a genetic accident.
http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Itzel-1.jpg

It’s not even funny. Here’s an example of making something kitten y that’s hysterical:
http://dustmeat.deviantart.com/art/Troll-Mount-Commission-64095546

It’s completely clear two very different era’s of technology, not even remotely parallel have collided. To us, as a player, it’s “haha, funny”. To the story-character is, “Dees glasses be da boom, mon!”: no conscious awareness anything is wrong.

The Hylek are like trying to make a whole game out of laziness and bad humor. We’ve got teleporting rock dogs, mushrooms with legs that fall over to attack, and such gratuitous use of copy-and-paste with the Hylek it’s a wonder no one has yet to sit the devs down for a serious chat about what happened to Stargate Universe:

That echo of the gun shot you hear at the last few seconds of the video, that eerie feeling that it gives a moment later… that’s the same feeling your players give you when they say, "Well, this is another copy-paste feste by Anet. How’s that Blizzard game going? Or Destiny? Or, what’s that new thing coming out… oh ya, Star Wars! I’ll get back to this when they make some real new content.

Classes wise, I like where things are going. It looks as though you’ve gone a long ways to see they are working. I’m pretty sure the content side of the game is a bloated dead horse, though.

Here are some ideas for what “good content” looks like. “Guild Wars 1 style diversity in creatures. Take a look at creatures from everything 1999 MMOs to 2006. No one’s using that content anymore. Take a serious tone into your art instead of Barnie-the-Hylek style art.” It didn’t work for Warcraft, Aion, Wildstar, or any other big title.

If you force your players into a world of neoteny they will assume it is you who are the child and abandon you. Bottom line: What costs more? Developing a product with some actually flushed out content or risking that your consumers will make you enough of a profit back before your checks bounce?

Final review:
Creature design in Heart of Thorns is horrid.

I actually couldn’t agree less. The GW2 base game has a large range of diversity in creatures. However this expansion is a journey deeper into a specific ecosystem of that world. There should be some added diversity(wyverns fit the bill) as well as some things quite similar to what we have already scene in the area(hyleks and mordremoth based creature).

I really don’t understand you complaint about the itzel. There are basically just a personification of big eyed tree frogs.

Here are my impressions of the beta weekend following the suggested sample form.

1. Specializations.

I am a ranger so…

Feedback on new specializations as well as any changes to the old.

PLEASE BRING BACK THROW TRAPS FOR RANGERS! DELETING THIS ABILITY WAS A BIG MISTAKE.

2. Creatures.

I like all the new creatures. The mob difficulty we have faced so far I would categorize as medium, which is good. They are interesting and I like their dialogs.

3. World

I thought the events in the last beta were more entertaining than the ones in this beta. I’m sure things seem a little unwieldy to me right now because I’m not used to the new mechanics, i.e., jumping mushrooms and the verticality of the landscape. I love, love, love hang gliding and can’t wait to completely master it in October (or November, however long it takes). I do think the events pull you into the world of the jungle and the relentless nature of the elder dragon lurking there. He’s going all out and we will have to as well.

One gripe I have is with the scenery. I know it’s the jungle, but gosh, there are plants everywhere. The scenery seems to be extremely busy, much busier than that of regular GW2. Swinging your camera around during fights or when trying to get to mastery points is pretty much not worth it. All you ever see is bushes. Plus, there’s fog everywhere all the time. It’s hard to see through. Maybe it’s because we’re up in the canopy and I’ve been climbing very high to find the mastery points. Maybe I’ll get used to it eventually, or maybe my eyes just aren’t as good as they used to be.

4. Mastery System

As I said above, I love hang gliding. It has changed the game for me. It’s that good. I also have trained up the jumping mushrooms and I think they are helpful in getting around the vertical landscape. I just started to train the exalted lore so I don’t have any experience with it yet or with the two frog languages. Hey, I’ve been gliding! I fully intend to train up all the masteries I possibly can beginning in October. I enjoy that kind of thing and also exploring the world. If you are considering adding more masteries later I say bring them on.

5. Stronghold.

I have not ventured into Stronghold.

6. Bugs.

The only bugs I’ve encountered so far are the jumping mushroom hangup that has happened to me a couple of times. However, it seems that after you roll around like a roly poly for a couple of minutes it corrects itself. I also encountered one of the mastery points not lighting up after I achieved it. Also, I have noticed several times the sound effects seem to cut in and out, especially during big battle scenes.

Overall, I have really enjoyed these two beta weekends and look forward to a third one if there is one. Two things to remember: Masteries are great so far and BRING BACK THROW TRAPS FOR RANGERS!!! Thank you.

Eirdyne.9843:

Heart of Thorns is a copy-and-paste fest. Do you really think people aren’t going to notice you’ve scaled up Hylek and pasted some rock-dog, beetles, and spiders before calling it a day?

I will cover that “copy-and-paste” part below.

Eirdyne.9843:

The creatures you’ve made are really no-effort creatures. Here’s a single creature from DAoC:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/b01/h-tangle-weed.jpg

There’s more effort put into that level 1 creature than anything ‘new’ I’ve seen in Heart of Thorns.

To me, THAT is a genetic accident. I don’t see the effort you are talking about.

Eirdyne.9843:

Here’s another exciting creature:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/Ancient-Treant.jpg

Wow! A walking tree/Ent from LotR. Never seen anything like that before. cough copy-paste cough

Eirdyne.9843:

Another:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Maps/zpics/screens/h-Shannon-Estuary02.jpg

Looks like a mix between a Murloc and a standard sea monster taken from old horror movies. Copy-paste much?

Eirdyne.9843:

Still more:
http://images.mmorpg.com/images/screenshots/072004/inline/1826.jpg

Oh, an angry walking tree. Now that changes everything

Eirdyne.9843:

… All of the stuff from DAoC is exciting. Fresh. Original.

See above.

Eirdyne.9843:

This is a genetic accident.
http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Itzel-1.jpg

OK… I wouldn’t call a tree frog a genetic accident – even though you could argue that evolution is based on “genetic accidents” (kinda, it’s not that simple though)…

It seems clear to me, that you prefer the enemy design in other games over the one ANet came up with. That’s all fair and good – to each his/her own.

However, talking about original design where there is none, is kinda unfair – especially considering there is much more innovation in the few mobs ANet added in HoT than in any of your examples.

i agree with you man
+1

My impressions of the beta :::

Everything looks good Anet. My favorite professions plays how it should, and the elite spec is awesome, and truly makes everything I loved about this class even better!….well, that’s what I would say if Rangers had access to theirs. Oh well, since not one of the elite specs revealed so far really interest me that much, I’ll keep running around with a Ranger, along with the couple dozen…hundred…thousand players that do the same thing (seriously, I saw more Rangers during the last beta weekend than everything except Revenants. Didn’t see as much this weekend from my limited play time, but there’s still enough to wonder….Why The heck are we still running with that and not something “new” and “cool”?!? I hope the Druid Elite Spec is good Anet, seems people still like their Rangers.)

On the map….meh. Claustrophobic, cramped, busy, no Aesthetic quality whatsoever, too many vines, no landmarks to speak of that help with navigation, and since the map is normally useless in this game…I don’t like this section of the map any better than the last section.

Enemies….Its interesting that we brought down several champion frogs before the Veteran was killed during an event. Other than that….business as usual.

I disagree with you. Treants are just as generic as elves and dwarves. Large anthropomorphic tree frogs? I haven’t seen that before. And you make savage, teleporting wolf-dog-dinosaurs sound like that isn’t the most metal thing I’ve heard all year.

I liked everything in the beta.

Still wondering why Faren thought it was a good idea to follow the Pact into a highly dangerous jungle. It’s common knowledge that Mordremoth makes it’s nest there.

Seems like the section of the jungle we were in is mostly throwing callbacks to old Personal Story characters at us. I don’t particularly mind, it was just an observation.

It seems as though many people have answered honestly, but some have also misunderstood what I mean by copy-paste-feste.

Copy-Paste-Feste is the same Hylek every ten feet. This IS the essence of Guild Wars 2 creature encounters. Instead of having variation it’s Hylek… Hylek… and oh look! … Hylek.
Every regurgitates its models. You have to and there is rarely reason not to in any case. The issue with Guild Wars 2, especially with Heart of Thorns is that most creatures are static. They just stand there until you must walk by them and produce agro. That’s encounter sufficiently enough of an ‘encounter’ for this game. In reality, it’s boring, lazy, and bothersome.
Teleporting Rock-dogs are interesting, but get clumped into the copy-paste-feste because that’s all they are. They’re just another rock (static creature) plopped into the middle of where we must walk through.

If they intend to up creature difficulty they ought to go back to the group-encounter and group-exploration model. The model where a single character encountering a single mob should make the player pause and test whether or not they can kill it. Veterans, Champs, and that sort of thing could then be understood as ‘for certain’ difficult encounters.

Further, the placement of creatures is entirely predictable. It’s the distance of one to three maximum camera distances. Usually spaced out just enough for a player to not encounter more than 2 at a time and never as a camp. That means never truly a stand-and-fight group encounter.

In summery, this design just wastes huge swaths of HoT because it all becomes a samey-same experience. Kill this, move on, kill that, move on, kill this other thing, move on. You never stop to smell the roses. Or… in this case, take anything in.

Why waste all of that effort to make an expansion just to rush and make people feel rushed through it? It’s bad design. There’s no reason to do it. They should make more creatures, assemble them as barriers in different ways and in different combinations to form a world that feels more than Hylek copy-pasting and creatures, encounter scenarios, and long-stays in particular locations that are more fitting to an epic story. If I wanted to ride the tram to the end I’d just ask to be allowed to pay for mastery points with RL money and avoid the trouble of doing HoT repeat-a-feste-experience.

Eirdyne.9843:

It seems as though many people have answered honestly, but some have also misunderstood what I mean by copy-paste-feste.

Copy-Paste-Feste is the same Hylek every ten feet. This IS the essence of Guild Wars 2 creature encounters. Instead of having variation it’s Hylek… Hylek… and oh look! … Hylek.
Every regurgitates its models. You have to and there is rarely reason not to in any case. The issue with Guild Wars 2, especially with Heart of Thorns is that most creatures are static. They just stand there until you must walk by them and produce agro. That’s encounter sufficiently enough of an ‘encounter’ for this game. In reality, it’s boring, lazy, and bothersome.
Teleporting Rock-dogs are interesting, but get clumped into the copy-paste-feste because that’s all they are. They’re just another rock (static creature) plopped into the middle of where we must walk through.

If they intend to up creature difficulty they ought to go back to the group-encounter and group-exploration model. The model where a single character encountering a single mob should make the player pause and test whether or not they can kill it. Veterans, Champs, and that sort of thing could then be understood as ‘for certain’ difficult encounters.

Further, the placement of creatures is entirely predictable. It’s the distance of one to three maximum camera distances. Usually spaced out just enough for a player to not encounter more than 2 at a time and never as a camp. That means never truly a stand-and-fight group encounter.

In summery, this design just wastes huge swaths of HoT because it all becomes a samey-same experience. Kill this, move on, kill that, move on, kill this other thing, move on. You never stop to smell the roses. Or… in this case, take anything in.

Why waste all of that effort to make an expansion just to rush and make people feel rushed through it? It’s bad design. There’s no reason to do it. They should make more creatures, assemble them as barriers in different ways and in different combinations to form a world that feels more than Hylek copy-pasting and creatures, encounter scenarios, and long-stays in particular locations that are more fitting to an epic story. If I wanted to ride the tram to the end I’d just ask to be allowed to pay for mastery points with RL money and avoid the trouble of doing HoT repeat-a-feste-experience.

Except that the hylek are different. It’s like saying everyone has a dog. But there are different breeds of dogs. Furthermore, you’re judging an expansion by a very small area. We know for a fact three are two different types of hylek in the expansion, one of which is more like a bull frog, one of which is more like a tree frog and they’re tempermentally different. They have different lore you can train up. Having different look and lore, means they’re different creatures. Saying they’re the same is a bit disingenuous.

I’m thinking that you see a hylek and you think, well all hylek are the same. That’s like saying all sylvari are the same, and saying nightmare court are just sylvari. Or Soundless. They’re different…if you’re paying attention.

And in the case of the hylek there are two new races, of which we’ve seen only one. Why judge the entire expansion on part of one zone?

I have enjoyed just about everything in the beta. There area a couple of the specializations I won’t be using, and that’s a preference thing. The only thing that bugged me was the defiance bar on the Wyvern fight. I think that we were able to burn it down too fast.

- Living root
- Treant
- Aquatic monster # 532 (similar to a GW Skale)
- Dark Treant

fresh ? original ? really ? when you have Smokescales, Chak, Saurians with creative designs, etc. in HoT ?
And Itzels are great and unique looking.

I almost feel like this is a troll thread. Pretty sure the design of of say smokescales completely outclasses those generic DAoC creatures you clearly haven’t seen anywhere else…except any fantasy MMO ever. Heck SWTOR has more originality in monster design than the examples you just showed.

Hyleks are an uncommon mob-type, I run into them more in D&D sessions (Frogkin) than anywhere else. But hey you keep rooting for that ‘Tangle Weed’ which looks like it came from the N64 era.