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Posted by: Locce.8405

Locce.8405

Well, well, what can I say about the stress test?
First of all, neither my pc nor the servers appeared to be in any kind of stress. There are some events in the “old world” that take a higher toll on the performance than anything that could be done yesterday in the test area. (Hello, Svanir shaman! Yes, I was just talking about you.)

The story part as well as the events did a good job of conveying the feeling that we were deep in enemy territory and matters are somewhere between urgent and desperate. That was very fun in a masochistic kind of way. Well done!
The only negative thing I can say about this part is that the demo area is a bit too small to not become very repetitive after two hours. It’s really more suited for 15-minute-tests.

The revenant… what I could see and experience was a bit of a mess, but a fun mess. I think (or hope) that Jalis and Mallyx are not the best legacies to combine for a build, but each legacy was interesting to play around with on its own. I am very curious about other legacies and the complete list of available weapon sets, skills and traits.
Even though some of the revenant skills are a bit complicated at first glance I am confident that it can work as soon as we have a more complete look at that profession. The effects are very entertaining visually and game-mechanic-wise, sort of like a mix between guardian and thief with a higher special effects budget and some chaos thrown in for good measure.
I will definitely keep an eye on this profession as it could really become one of my favourites in terms of style.

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Posted by: Jethrayne.8053

Jethrayne.8053

+Visuals and sound were very nice. The renevant armor looks pretty awesome.

+From the last trailer we saw in LS2, I had a pretty fair idea of what was going to happen but that’s not such a bad thing! It felt like that this wasn’t the whole story instance(?) but what we got to see so far was pretty exciting! Our characters talking amidst the action was a pleasant surprise!

+Verdant Brink, while small , was a beautiful area. While I’m not sure how I feel about an area being crammed with dynamic events like this, I like how this cramming of different fights and so close together made it feel a bit more like a battlefield! Chaotic! Certainly provided me with a sense of urgency that seems wholly appropriate considering the events.

+Hang gliding! I didn’t get to try this out as much as I would have liked to and only got to do it when I was fighting the wyvren boss. I’m still very excited for this feature but I’ll have more on this later in this post.

+ Renevents boast a rather unique play style and I really enjoyed trying to figure things out. The animations are pretty cool and I love how you hear the voices of the spirit of each hero when you go to switch a stance. The animations are entertaining to watch. Looking forward to seeing the profession and how it functions in its entirety. Using the chain ability in dwarf stance on that wyvren was pretty cool too!

+ The wyvren boss…some people argue it’s too easy/simple. As someone whom has done a LOT of open world events with other people and seen some of the easiest ones fail quite horribly, I can say that’s not such a bad thing and especially if this is going to be one of the earliest bosses to fight. I feel as though it could have been a bit harder but I also presume it was scaled down since this was a demo version.

+ I didn’t disconnect at all and things got a little laggy after an hour and more people were logging in, but the game didn’t lag so much for me that I couldn’t play effectively!

- and now to my first criticism. Renevant felt kinda like it could be overpowered even if we didn’t have all of our abilities on hand. As it has been mentioned previously, the ability to spam utilities was sorta ridiculous. That stability spam. Oh my word. There were others beside me spamming it too and we never got knocked away by the wyvren because of it. As cool as the ability is, I don’t think this should be allowed to happen. It needs some form of higher cost to use because stuff like this removes any consequence or strategy from a fight. I cannot speak for all gamers, but I do like content that’s at least somewhat challenging.

- Hang gliding was kinda confusing. I figured it out after a few minutes but there were a lot of folks in the same boat as myself who kinda stood around wondering how we were going to get over to the wyvren. I didn’t notice the game message text at the bottom left corner of my screen at first telling me to catch an updraft. Even as I jumped towards an updraft , I fell for quite a while and it seemed like the game had just trolled me and I was about to become a human pancake. I did catch the updrafts MOST of the time though. However, there were also hilarious moments where I jumped towards a draft and it would shoot me so high up into the air (might have been lag !) that I was teleported out of the zone (which put me back to the point where the choppers drop you off.) Maybe this is intentional. I wouldn’t think so but yea. That was pretty funny to me but I could imagine some people becoming pretty frustrated over this.

In conclusion, I had a lot of fun ! Thank you for allowing me to stress test this demo, Anet! I’m very excited to see how the game continues to grow from here!

~Jeth

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Posted by: Lord Hall.7102

Lord Hall.7102

Really enjoyed it. I loved the sniper rifle. I felt like i could snipe all day long!
I didnt understand the gliding.. i was able to make it to the wyvern but felt that was shear luck..
I couldnt even find the mastery system.. assumed it would be in Hero Panel…
Played for only an hour.
Really excited to level a Revanant from lvl 1. Jumping in at 80 was difficult.

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Posted by: Nazer.7301

Nazer.7301

Mastery panel is a bit confusing, especially the fact that you need to lvl the chosen mastery in order for it to work. Maybe not have that giant masterys panel at the bottom,

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Posted by: Manifibel.8420

Manifibel.8420

The point was not to entertain you. It was to test how the content behaves under pressure.

kitten man you are such a White knight. You are too shiny for us.

I repeat stress test or not: the beta was ultra boring.

You see this Anet? Give invites to people who would actually contribute usefull information instead of a personal opinion on if the person finds the content fun or not.

Dungeons being about how fast you clear then compared to being able to clear them makes me sad.

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Posted by: GeeWhiz.6540

GeeWhiz.6540

OK, I’ll add my two-bits.

First of all, I did have to remember that it was Beta Stress Test and not a content release. Once I got past that, it went well.

Obviously there were a lot of Revenants in this test. Most people wanted to try out the new profession. So it’s hard to tell what a good group make up might be for some of the fights.

I never had an issue with lag or disconnects. I played under a variety of conditions in both parts of the test. I was in parties, playing solo, in TS and messing with the different skills.

The area was beautiful, but small. As has been mentioned, the content could be completed pretty quickly. The it was all rinse and repeat, so you had plenty of chances to try out different things. One thing that I did was replace the hammer that I started with when I had a Berzerker hammer drop. It didn’t seem to make a big difference in what I was doing, but I would definitely like a chance to try that out in the future.

Since this was a beta and I never watched the previews, it took a bit to figure out the Mastery system. I managed to get Glide working in the first session. After hearing some Guild discussions, I was able to get the Mushrooms working in the second session. I will say that the Mastery system isn’t intuitive, but you can figure it out in time.

The Wyvern fight was easy once the Revenants figured out their skills to use. The first fight I was in took a long time to finish. By the second time, people had figured out how to keep him down and the fight went much quicker. It will be interesting to see if the other professions will have skills to yank the wyvern down. Otherwise, it might be a longer fight if you don’t have several Revs there to do it.

After the beta was over, I realized that I hadn’t taken the time to check out the traits for the Rev. Mine worked fine, but I meant to look and see what options there were.

Overall, I enjoyed being part of this test. I’m looking forward to any future test just to see the changes and more of the world (hopefully).

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Posted by: Draconius.9076

Draconius.9076

First let me tell you how honored I felt to have been part of the Heart of Thorns stress test.

I really enjoyed it and am very grateful to have been able to take part in it.
That being said it’s time for my graded opinion.

First lets discuss the story.
I really liked the little story that was woven into the beta and the option to choose wether I’d side with Laranthir or the disgruntled soldiers.
The cutscenes were very well made and gave a feeling of being let loose in a very dangerous place.
I give the story an excellent 9,5/10.

Second the content.
There was allot of things to be seen and certain things were absolutely new and refreshing compared to the original Guild Wars 2. Lots of events were also being played which made it very dynamic.
The lack of lasting progression and relatively small beta map tho were ofcourse a little disappointing.
I can relate however on the progression part. However contentwise I was all played out within half an hour. So with the pro’s and cons all added up I gave it a 7/10.

The new profession: The Revenant.
It was a big adjustement learning to use the skills in a good way but once you get the hang of it it’s a very fun class to play with. The ability to switch between the demon and king jalis skills also gave it an extra dimension. The revenant in my personal gradebook is worth about an 8/10.

So if we add all 3 grades up to an average for the beta we can conclude me giving an 24,5/30 or approx.. 8/10.
A VERY fine score indeed.

I look forward to the launch and would like to thank Arenanet one more time for letting me be part of the beta stress test.

Guild: Order of an Allied Tyria [OAT] ~°~ Co-leader
Server: Underworld

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Posted by: Davy B.9185

Davy B.9185

I’m not sure if its been mentioned by anyone else as I’ve not read the whole tread, but I did notice when activating the hell skill on the Revanent at the Wyvern (I know I shouldn’t have needed to) that at times it took 3 or 4 press of the 6 key to get it to activate as it kept autoattacking.
Another was stability, I was still getting knocked back even when having stacks of stability up.
Apart from that all seemed very stable, yes there was a fps drop at the start but stable apart from that.

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Posted by: ozmaniandevil.6805

ozmaniandevil.6805

I’m not sure if its been mentioned by anyone else as I’ve not read the whole tread, but I did notice when activating the hell skill on the Revanent at the Wyvern (I know I shouldn’t have needed to) that at times it took 3 or 4 press of the 6 key to get it to activate as it kept autoattacking.
Another was stability, I was still getting knocked back even when having stacks of stability up.
Apart from that all seemed very stable, yes there was a fps drop at the start but stable apart from that.

I will second what you’ve said here. I noticed the problem with the heal skill as well but forgot to mention it. Also no stability. I managed to stay upright at the Wyvern once while getting beaten with wings, when I had the chain skill attached to it. Otherwise, no, not once.

I’ll also mention lack of guild panel. Personally, I could not even bring up the panel at all. When I got in I realized I was not in a guild, so just thought I could bring up the panel and represent my guild, but no such luck.

I feel now like I missed out on a lot. Seems like other felt good to roam and found other things I didn’t. I felt like I was in a cycle of doing the same things over and over. Which is ok. Again, I get it’s a stress test and not the actual expansion. I was just happy to participate. But it got pretty boring after an hour.

Isle of Janthir – Knights of the Rose (KoR)

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Posted by: Jenstone.6891

Jenstone.6891

For the most part, I was pretty pleased with the stress test.
And I was fairly impressed by what I (we) went through.
The first time through, sure, was a little clunky, trying to get a grasp of the skills of the new class. But eventually, it seemed that those in game, came to figure it out.
The first wyvern boss, well, took some time to bring down.
Subsequent wyvern’s, went down faster, once the group understood the mechanics.
The only item that I did not like was the glider.
Actually, the gliding was pretty cool.
Who knew you could catch an updraft from a helicopter that is pushing air down?
No, what I did not like was having to fall for a certain length of time before the glider pop up appeared. And then eventually figured out that the space bar opened and closed the wings. But had to be falling to do so.
Missed part of the first wyvern battle because I was not sure what to do.
But, aside from this one aspect, I liked the beta.
Well, that and it was way too short….

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Posted by: Ricolicious.3854

Ricolicious.3854

The Revenant’s new armor and skills were cool! Encounter abit of a lag during the start. A quick tutorial for gliding for new logins will be nice as i literally jump of the cliff a couple of times… >.<
Cant wait for the launch!

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Posted by: X Factor.2641

X Factor.2641

I finally found where to post feedback so here we go…

Regarding the Revenant - Super fun class to play I know what my new driver class is when HoT comes out I will say though that you’re going to have to adjust some of the skills or you’re going to have a lot of people QQ-ing about that stuff in WvW. For example the Stability skill with the paved road essentially can give permanent Stability with it’s 5s CD and 6s Duration. Don’t get me wrong I loved playing the class but I’m just pointing out some things that might scream OP in the future and addressing them now so that, if you decide to make the changes, you can do it without OVER-NERFING the class because people don’t want to get squashed by some ranged hammers. Although with the recent changes to Stability it’s not as OP as it could have been so kudos and I see how the new Stab changes nerf that skill quite a bit.

The PvE - I’m sure people have already said this a lot but there was an FPS drop. Now granted I play on a laptop so my FPS is always lower (hovering between 15-30) but there were times, specifically when the particles were a-flyin’ that the game got kind of choppy on me. Other than that I liked the instances and the interaction (i.e. your character talking outside of cutscenes).

Specialization (lvl 80 xp bar pop-up thing) - I didn’t get to explore that that much because the merchants for the linguistic stuff were not available at the time however that, from what I read was kind of cool and I can see how that can make a different PvE experience for people who trait that differently.

Overall - The Stress Test didn’t have a whole lot to do but that wasn’t that big a deal because I know that it wasn’t supposed to. It was a good test, I enjoyed it, and hope I get asked back for the next one

[TMW] Darkstar
Leader, Driver, Lover
DR

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Posted by: kny.3789

kny.3789

i missed it! i somehow deleted the email giving me the heads up. the only reason i know that i was invited is there is still a beta character slot on my character select screen. i wanted test it so badly it sucks having to envy so many people who didnt enjoy being included in the development process. please oh please tell me that i get into the next one! thats why i still have the beta char slot right?

(edited by kny.3789)

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Posted by: Koloyuki.3940

Koloyuki.3940

For me the stress test was running fine without an fps drop, I really liked the looks of the new Revenant skills but I did find them slow.

The gliding needs some work by not letting us fall that far before we can use it and animations for steering.

The mastery system itself was clunky, Taking up half the screen was too much, might be better in a window like the traits and skills. However I did like the idea behind it.

The area itself had a nice look to it, I especially liked the part with the greenery.
However, there was too much going on. There were events everywhere and not a clear indication of what you could do. For me it felt too much like silverwastes and dry top which to me are my least favorite part of gw2. I’m more into dungeons, wvw and doing map completion. So i’m wondering if we’re gonna get anything like that in the expension or if it’s gonna be one big silverwastes.

Last but not least I liked that my character now actually spoke instead of constantly having to read the chat bubbles. Made it feel more dynamic. Great work on that.

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Posted by: Geoff.2508

Geoff.2508

first i want to say thanks for the invite to the beta! O.k. well for me it was amazing,i did feel a little like a kid in a sweet shop……oooo revenant,aahhh learning to fly,eerrrmmm mushroom jumping! lol. i got connected with no problems,yes there was a little lag at times,but that has to be expected. i loved the wyvern event. the gliding was sooo cool and had me laughing nervously,trying to glide to a point and running out of energy.
I did find that some of the revenants weapon skills were a little slow on the activation,but again this has to be expected for a first time play.the mastery system is ,in my honest opinion,going to be amazing,that is something i’m really gonna work hard to complete when its released.

i did think i was going to be very critical about the whole thing,but as i’ve loved guild wars 1 and all its expansions,and guild wars 2,i can’t be to critical. this is a first play for a select few,and, for me, some of the views i saw and rolling screen shots took my breath away! i know there are a few changes to be made,little tweeks and allsorts to do, but at the same time i guess you guys know that.

So i just wanted to say thanks again for the invite,keep up the great work,and i hope i get another invite! :-)))

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Posted by: Gian.8296

Gian.8296

Ok, my 2 cents:

The stresstest felt alltogether very smooth to me, I had no fps-issues whatsoever despite alot going on on my screen. The area is beautifull and very detailed. Biggest con: I did not reach the ground. and boy, did I try!!
The events were fun, but the scaling seemed a bit odd, It was too easy with big numbers around. Same for the Wyvern, alltho I expect it to be a challenge with a group of 5.
The gliding system feels a bit scratchy, but that might be me not beeing used to it ( and not having mastery points invested…)
The mastery system looks simple enough, you won’t need a manual.
As i said, overall a very fun experience, no major glitches with the game.

Now my biggest issue, the Revenant: Boy, that thing is wrong!
There is only 6 utility skills and 3 weapons, and allready a third of that is vastly op! I can have all the stability I want while still having no issues firing every single weapon skill on cd without delay on the dwarf legend. I can remove each and every boon whenever i want (including stability)on Jalyix (or whatever it is called. The Hammer, which has really good dmg on 1200 range has 100% leeching chance half the time. And if that isn’t enough I invest some more energy, which I seemed to have in abundance, to get a combo field: dark the other half. 100% leeching uptime or 100% stability uptime. Seriously???
And as if that wasn’t enough, it is bugged. If i switch out a utility skill on one legend, it gets moved on the other aswell. Thats annoying like you don’t know what :-(
Might only be me, but Rev needs to go back to the drawing board. As it is and if that stays I would not allow anything but Revenants in my wvw-raid. That’s how strong I think it is…

long terms short: i really like what little I’ve seen from the game. Seemed to be in good working order. I really hated the Revenant. I hate playing metas that are named like a single class. And I thought condition meta was a bad word…

greetz

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Posted by: Jayjaydee.3827

Jayjaydee.3827

Very quickly, my experience.

It was fun, I was surprised how pleased I was when I got the email.

My in game beta experience was fine. No problems with lag. I played the second hour of the second session. I played revenant. Since I had no idea what I was doing or what to expect, I cant be sure that everything was working properly, but it seemed to be.

I played to bitter end at which point I was kicked to my character select screen. WHen I came back on with my guard, I did have significant lag. I think my guard was sitting outside of the ascalonian catacombs entrance. I switched to my necro, and had no problems, and a bit later I went back to my guard and had no problems.

Only comment I’ll othewise make is that I had no idea how to open up the masteries menu. I really did try. I figured it wasn’t enabled, but reading other posts I guess it was. So I’d advise you make it more noticeable.

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Posted by: Cbomb.4310

Cbomb.4310

I didnt get an email but low and behold I had a beta slot and was able to participate, kinda surprised. Heard some other people got the same deal.

I liked how we didnt have to DL an entire new client, my friends and I just swapped over to Beta after TEQ and kept the same group and everything. Was pretty smooth.

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Posted by: El Gaucho.5278

El Gaucho.5278

I’m sure anything I’ll add in here will already have been mentioned, but as Arenanet gave us an opportunity to be part of their beta it seems only fair to offer reciprocity and share some comments!

Overall the beta was a good experience – performance was good and the environment shows great promise!

Wyvern Fight
I noticed that each time the wyvern took off it kept glitching and reappearing randomly on the arena – I assume that this was happening to most players. The fight itself was moderately entertaining, but, for my part, I still didn’t feel much in the way of risk from it – buffeted off a couple of times at the start, but once you account for that and as long as you have some basic nous to stay out of the fire it was another usual fire – maybe consider adding some additional threats from other NPC’s or mini wyverns that lay down further fire if some players don’t keep the numbers down – maybe they spawn specifically for higher zerg numbers? Or maybe swarming npc’s that render areas of the arena as permanent buffets as the fight progresses, or destroy parts of the arena, providing mobility challenges? I’m sure there’s a million ways to add challenge to it, but most of the 5-10 minute fight was still kitten kitten shoot shoot.

What about letting players vote in a higher difficulty? If x% of players vote, they get a harder version of the fight with marginally better rewards or reward chances? (that’s just me going crazy on ideas! Not sure how practical that would be.)

Revenant
As far as the Revenant is concerned I think the scaling and compact map size made it hard to get a real sense of the impact and power of the revenant, but fighting some siamoth’s from out of the way allowed a slightly better glimpse of what we have to look forward to – congrats on creating something wildly different from what we have. The traits also look very interesting and I can’t wait to get my hands on one in PVP. The swings between legends, the recharge rates and expense offer some real versatile gameplay options with what I expect will be a challenging skill ceiling.

Mastery UI
I thoroughly disliked the Mastery UI – I couldn’t find it at the bottom right (if you’re going to keep it separate from the Hero panel then give us a keyboard shortcut to it), and very unintuitive – I couldn’t really tell what each option offered me, and the mushroom skill progression was really vague. Not sure what clicking the icons on the left did and why I would want to lock a track to the bottom of the screen.

Much as I love how you guys reinvented the MMO genre, you might want to consider looking at something like the talent trees from WoW (ugh I said it!) or even just mirror the wvw progression model and descriptions – that makes a lot of sense to me compared to what I saw yesterday. If I can’t undo my selections then it needs to be REALLY clear what I’m spending my points in or I’ll just hoard them until i’m sure or get some guidance from peer research.

Gliding
Love the idea, but I didn’t find it entirely intuitive – the deploy message always felt like it showed up slightly later than I wanted it to which prevented me from going where I wanted to at the height I wanted to – I concede that it could just be an acclimatisation issue on my part though.

The adventure was fun – I’m looking forward to more of these!

And your beta design is genius – no download of a copy of the client? No separate login? All concurrent with my main game client? AND I can talk to folks on the main game? You’re all architectural geniuses!

Victurus te Salutant!

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Posted by: Black para goner.7612

Black para goner.7612

Great Stress test, I love the new style of events, the champions were really fun to fight.
I love the revanant style of play, reminds me a lot of gw1. Although it does seem really strong with its elites, and some of the other skills, I’m sure the changes and additions to other professions will balance things out.
I spent the whole 4 hours doing the events over and over, and viewing masteries and testing the glide system. I was also commanding (Nova Rev Bushido) on the Wyvern boss fight haha, I had a great time.

I only had lag for around 6 or so minutes in the first two hours. While fighting the Wyvern everything was slow. Also even when not lagging I was taking dmg from his fire, while not standing in it. Me and my friend had this problem many times, on his screen I was in the fire, yet on mine I wasn’t.

Overall Great work Anet, very Impressed.

Nova Bushido Top Charr Engineer, AG IRQ.
Predator | Quip | Flameseeker | Juggernaut

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

I’ve seen a lot of comments about Rev Hammer 3 reorienting the camera. I don’t recall that happening to me (though as a Thief in SW, I have so many camera turns that it’s pure habit to correct). I was able to #3 the wyvern repeatedly and watch the arc of my ghost self go to and return from the boss, with my camera remaining rock steady.

I’ve been playing with camera→char height, displaced vertically up, and FoV nearly max, if that makes a difference to the effect.

Now, hammer 3 -did_ frequently cause me to emit a falling scream, which seemed hilarious but not quite appropriate.

I agree with everyone who is calling for a substantial Mastery UI rework, though I didn’t have any problem finding the panel. One of those tool-tip hints came up when I unlocked my first MP and it said to click on the xp bar. That only works for those who read the hints, however, and I confess I tend not to when leveling in the base game, especially if they pop up while I’m in combat.

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Posted by: Millereveur.3759

Millereveur.3759

I did both 2-hour stress test on March 24 (3-5PM and 8-10PM EDT). I used a revenant both times. I was really impressed with the design of the class and the area. The only “bug” I noted was that, during the living story portion of the test, Kasmeer was standing in mid-air as the party assembled – she was about 10 ft up (if my char is/was 6 ft).
During the second two hours during a wyvern fight, I disconnected twice and both times sent in the automatic crash report to anet. I don’t think I was doing anything special other than attempting to kill the wyvern when I crashed – and the crashes were on consecutive attempts – but that’s all I have. In both cases, I logged back in and found myself on the platform above the wyvern platform. The second re-log I was able to complete the fight without additional disconnects.
I really enjoyed the experience and look forward to helping out in any way I can.

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

Oh, come to think of it, Scruffy was at one point levitating the way you describe Kasmeer doing. It may have something to do with zoning in at the top of a steep slope (I must say I’m pleased they fixed the 45 degree killer slope bug before planting us there for the demo).

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Posted by: Sarie.1630

Sarie.1630

Mastery Window

When using 3 monitors (5760 × 1080) the window extends across all 3 monitors and makes it difficult to see. Suggest confining it to the center window.

First world problems, eh? XD

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Posted by: Bwembo.8531

Bwembo.8531

wow, did everything in a whole hour in a beta….

worse xpac evah

If I understand correctly, this was mainly a stress test. It’s kind of hard to understand your opinion of this expansion when you have not seen much but I guess you will not be buying this when it comes out.

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Posted by: Just a flesh wound.3589

Just a flesh wound.3589

I also would prefer a WvW like system for Mastery points in that you earn “generic” points then allot them to the mastery line you choose. The current system, it’s possible to play for extended periods of time on no Mastery line (and is that exp wasted then?) or on the “wrong” line. For example, let’s say I have the gliding mastery getting exp towards getting a point, but it’s mushroom jumping I need to advance towards the next area.

At least with a WvW like system that won’t matter. When I get enough points, I can put them on the line I need right then.

Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.

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Posted by: RoyHarmon.5398

RoyHarmon.5398

I loved the way our characters have voices again. It’s even better than before, too— an NPC told me to burn some tendrils, and I heard myself reply (something to the effect of) “I’ll get right on it!” And this wasn’t even in a cinematic!

I didn’t make a revenant, so I didn’t experience all that the stress test had to offer. I did like the gliding (though I spent some time trying to make the glider go higher with only one rank in the mastery), and I loved the Pale Reaver rifles. I want a stack of them in consumable form. But then, I guess that would be overpowered against a ton of bosses…

“It is the stupidest children who are the most childish
and the stupidest grown-ups who are the most grown-up.”
- C. S. Lewis

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Posted by: Falkor.7932

Falkor.7932

Here we go!

Masteries: I would much rather have a window open up than hide half my screen. You often point out how much beauty there is in this game, let us see it. In it’s current form, you have to click on a specific icon to spend points, which was very difficult for me to figure out at a glance, clicking anywhere on the track should bring up the prompt. All in All I would design it more like the pvp track window, with a lock on each mastery that you click when it gets to that point to spend a mastery point to unlock it. Having to train the first mastery also feels really clunky.

The Wyvern: This fight was engaging as a melee player, as I played most of the test as a mace/axe revenant. There didn’t seem to be enough warning to me that he was about to fly, so I was often late with the chain. This fight also seemed fairly tailored to Jalis’ skills (stability, Taunt), so I wonder how it will do in the live game.

Adventure: I had some trouble with this, I often couldn’t tell if I had hit a vine or not, due to the death animation?

Revenant: I tried to play what I didn’t see much of in streams and videos before: Mace/Axe Mallyx focused play. I didn’t have much grasp of what Mallyx even did prior to this test, and there’s a good reason: Jalis was just better for this test. There weren’t many incoming conditions, and the ones we had available to ourselves (via utilities) were blind, vuln, weakness, and cripple, not the best for damage. Aside from this I had a lot of fun with the Mallyx channel, the leap (9) was fun to watch and felt most impactful of the utilities, the elite looks great, and hearing Mallyx talk to me was awesome.
As for Mace, the fire field felt good, but the other two skills I have issues with. Auto attack chain 3: I could not tell the difference between cleave and the chaining effect of this skill, it felt underwhelming to me. The triple blast looks great, but it seems to take some time to activate. On to Axe: The 4 skill feels AMAZING. The 5, on the other hand, seemed to be placed in the ground a lot, making it visually less impressive, it should probably just spawn at a fixed height.

That’s about all I have to say, thanks for the opportunity to play this class, I definitely hope to make offhand Axe a part of my Revenant’s repertoire.

“One time! I slightly blew some of us up one time, and you won’t let it go.”
- Explorer Bekk

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Posted by: Zagerus.8675

Zagerus.8675

I’ll drop my two cents in here as well. First, thank you for offering us the chance to experience the content in HoT with this stress test!

My initial impression was “Oh my gosh this is beautiful and our characters have voices. Wait.. our characters have voices! Holy kittenmeowmeow!” I think this is a huge highlight of the beta for me. It was totally unexpected that you guys would spoil us with fully voiced character dialogue, which I have to say was spot on. The way that Chief Aviator (can’t remember her name now), Laranthir, and even our own characters (crazy!!!) deliver their lines feels absolutely great for the atmosphere that we are in.

Another thing that I love is how intricately detailed everything is. You guys pointed out in a blog post how you’ve detailed the Legendary Wyvern to show when he’s getting ready to breath fire – you can see it move up it’s neck. To be honest I was to busy dodging flickering lines of fire to focus in on the effects of the Wyvern, but it’s brilliant to know that you guys have fleshed things out that much. Even the UI for our Masteries feels slick and robust to this degree.

I only got a bit of time on the Revenant and even though I didn’t play it much I could already tell that the class felt unique. Like others have pointed out there’s just something about building a brick road that feels satisfying. I spammed that skill on recharge. The energy mechanic feels like it will take some time to master and I can’t wait to see people play it in high tier PvP. Again thanks for lettin us play and can’t wait for releaseee

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Posted by: CrystalFlower.4890

CrystalFlower.4890

Have to say, the beta was pretty good. There’s only one thing that I found problematic.

The Masteries Tab takes up more than half of the screen and obstructs most of the UI. I was looking at it in an area I thought was safe and heard a creature attacking closeby and couldn’t tell if it was targeting me until I closed it. It also blocks the chatbox completely yet you’re still able to accidentally access it while the tab is open. I also found that the tab will stay open if you enter the map screen.

Other than that, I enjoyed the demo and am looking forward to what the expansion brings.

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Posted by: Hamfast.8719

Hamfast.8719

My character for the Stress Test was Beta MAX. I played an Elementalist (my favorite) in order to get a feel for the new content while using a character I was comfortable with. I figured everyone and their brother would be trying and reporting on the Revenant. So here is the Beta MAX record of my experience for those of you who weren’t selected this time around.

Heart of Thorns picks up with the cinematic of the Pact fleet being devastated, and you are called upon to help in the aftermath.

The small area we were able to access (in the treetop section where the fleet came down) was dark and full of wreckage. It felt like just a continuation of the Living Story, which or course it is. But I also got a twinge of the feeling I got when I left Pre-Searing Ascalon in GW1 and found myself in a whole new world. Not so much “cool!” as “uh, oh… what have I gotten myself into?”

As with any new experience, it took a bit of fumbling around to figure out what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to go. But it didn’t seem any more complex than any other LS update. In fact, the Mordrem seemed to drop a little easier than I’ve become accustomed to.

We got an opportunity to take some baby steps with the hang gliders. The updrafts were a little hard for me to see, so it took a little nerve to jump off a cliff the first time. If you miss the updraft, you fall and fall and fall and POOF; back to the start. (You are too high up to go splat). It might be different as you improve, but from what I can see at this point they will not act as parachutes in spots with no updraft.

The “finale” of the Stress Test was a boss battle against our first Wyvern. Overall, I liked this for several reasons. First, it wasn’t too crowded. I despise zergs, but I was able to feel that my contribution might have had a little impact here. Second, the guy moves fairly often – sometimes seemingly in response to my AoE attacks. This is refreshing in a boss. Lastly, he makes you move a lot. Not just to chase him around, but also to avoid his devastating fire strafing attacks. All in all, this made the fight feel far less “scripted” than many I’ve experienced in the past.

Being a “Stress Test”, I expected lag and bugs. But as I said, the Wyvern fight wasn’t overly crowded when I was there, so maybe they are controlling the populations better. (It is sort of instanced I think… we had to take a helicopter to the area, and they could manage our population that way I suppose). My Internet connection isn’t particularly fast, and lots of fire/bright lights can tend to bog down a graphics card. But I chugged along far better than I do at MAW or Jormag after reset. I ran across zero bugs.

We had a brief peek at the Mastery system. Once again, only the beginning levels. My hope here is that we aren’t locked in to the masteries we pick. Even if it costs gold to change them, I would not like putting points into something and discovering later through play that I would have been better off having chosen a different path.

We really didn’t see all that much new in our brief two hours, so I hope they have more chances for other folk to get a preview of different areas and features. I came away without any great “Ooh! Ahh! Gotta have it now!” feelings. But I liked the boss fight mechanics, and look forward to getting better at hang gliding. The rest was same-ol’, same-ol’, and I trust that there will be some prettier locales as we delve deeper into the Maguuma.

P.S. – A big thanks to ANet from Max for the first-person camera!

Attachments:

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm all day.
Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm the rest of his life.
– Unknown Fire Elementalist

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Posted by: velvetbat.9073

velvetbat.9073

First of all I want to thank Arenanet for letting me participate in the beta stress test! I enjoyed it a lot.

I did crash several times, mostly when fighting the wyvern. I didn’t see a connection between the crashes, but sent a crash report each time so hopefully those will be of some use.

I was really looking forward to experience the gameplay of the Revenant. I enjoyed both weapon sets, though the mace/axe combination I did enjoy a little better. It felt more fast paced / engaging to me. When I was reading about the Revenant legends only affecting the 6-0 skills instead of the weapon skills I was afraid that would feel very unnatural (being used to the Elementalist). But it flowed well with the class. That there were no other utility options to select did feel weird. I hope that it’ll get more utility options in the future, otherwise it would feel that the Revenant gameplay is a bit limited I’m afraid.
As for the legends themselves, I liked the idea/theme of the Demon stance more but in the end I felt the Dwarf stance was stronger with the utilities and elite skill.

The Revenant’s armor was looking amazing, but I am already looking forward to that since I saw the teaser image with Rytlock wearing it. (And with charrs being my favourite race I am even more excited for a heavy armor set that looks good on charr.)
I also liked the skins for the hammer (Mistbreaker), mace (Mistrender) and axe (Mistcleaver). I like the idea of hybrid builds and I would be happy to see if the celestial armor would be viable in the new HoT maps in the future. The traits also looked interesting and makes me curious to the future ones.

Masteries… The UI looked really bulky to me and initially I was looking around my herospanel to see a masteries tab there, before I found it by clicking the xp bar. I don’t know if it was explained in the mastery hint message, because I clicked that away too fast by accident. -__-
I spend a point at the gliders and equipped that. I could not make the mushroom line work.
The experience bar at the bottom stayed at 0 with the gliding line equipped. I didn’t get any progress there after doing many events.

The flamethrower challenge had a few issues. When I started the challenge and the cutscene of the nearby event came up, the UI of the flamethrower challenge at the right side of the screen disappeared, thus leaving me without knowing how much vines I burned down and how much time I had left. I also had issues with the flamethrower going in the direction I tried to aim it. When facing and walking forward, it suddenly blasted to one of the sides. So the aiming was difficult at times.

Gliding was not for me I guess. When I was knocked off the wyvern platform I glided through/over the chopper updrafts, but somehow I couldn’t fly up again. I don’t know if this is because I am bad at it or if it isn’t working correctly, but I only managed to get up 1 time. The other times I flew through the updrafts nothing happened.

I did experience skill lag during the beta quite often, especially at the wyvern fight and with deploying my glider around it – pressing a button without something happening, or with the skill happening in a delayed a few seconds. This was especially annoying with the gliding, since I hit the space bar a second time trying to deploy it and then suddenly it deploys and gets put away right after.

Overall I really enjoyed the Revenant and the new things and I am looking forward to the expansion even more! Not sure if Revenant will be my new main after the expansion, but I’ll certainly create a few of them. And it was just a lot of fun running around on a map with almost all of the other people playing Revenant too.

Altoholic – 24 and counting (21 at lvl 80)

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Posted by: Dr Zoidberg.2046

Dr Zoidberg.2046

The mastery UI could definitely use some changes. It is entirely too big and we can’t close it with escape. I also couldn’t figure out the mushroom mastery thing, I spent a point on it and couldn’t use the mushrooms. For hang gliding, it feels really clunky having such a huge delay on deploying it. I suggest prompting us for deploying it early and put the actual deployment on a delay if you’re for whatever reason insistant on having it deployable on large jumps only.

As for the Revenant, most of the skills were on a very short cooldown, so they had a short duration and few of them felt very impactful because of that (aside from the 0 second CD stun break and such). It doesn’t feel like engineer where you are constantly changing kits and watching cooldowns in order to play well to the point where you feel very involved, it felt more like it was encouraging spamming your skills for the sake of spamming skills.

Also, please address the hammer 3 skill resetting your camera behind your character. It is really jarring losing control of your camera mid combat.

J Zoidberg

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Posted by: Aliciente.1640

Aliciente.1640

I enjoyed the beta. There wasn’t much to do but I liked that because it wasn’t overwhelming with too much to fit into the 2 hour slots. A few events and then plenty of time to explore and try out the revenant without feeling rushed.

Performance was fine – it seemed stable and there was no noticeable drop in fps. It felt no different from other maps in the main game in terms of performance.

It’s hard to judge the revenant as we didn’t have the full range of skills and weapons available but my initial impression was that it felt quite slow with quite a few of the skills having long channels. Perhaps if there were some quicker ways of stacking swiftness this might help. I did however like how unique it was and from what I’ve seen of the skills so far I think the revenant will bring some interesting mechanics in pvp. The armour set we got to wear was lovely and the revenant skill effects looked nice. I especially liked the different colour auras on the arms for each legend. I did have issues with the camera moving round when using the hammer.

The mastery UI was very obtrusive and this was my only real issue with the beta. A couple of times I was trying to click on the chat box and ended up clicking slightly too low and the window that pops up is huge. I’m glad I use keybinds for my skills as for people who click their skills I imagine this could be an even worse issue. I think this part of the UI would fit naturally into the existing Hero panel, either under Skills and Traits or as its own section. As well as avoiding the huge pop up appearing when you accidentally click the xp bar, I would imagine this will be more intuitive to most people. I found myself explaining to a few people how to find the masteries so they could unlock their glider.

Overall a very positive experience.

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

For those talking about not getting mushrooms to work, hopefully a UI redesign will help with that. I figured it out at last thanks to people on forums and map chat and thanks to just clicking on anything I could see in the Masteries panel.

The (fairly clumsy so far) way to do it is to open the mastery by spending a point, then click the box on the left side to make it active (or as the parlance seems to be, to “equip” it), then gain a level of XP. Once you’ve done all that, the tier of mastery works. There was only one mushroom I could find but it bounced me up quite well, requiring mouse steering to move forward onto the plateau.

As others have noted there needs to be a lot of changes to the UI to make it easier to track what you’ve done in that regard, and that’s not even bringing into play a possible redesign of the unlocking method if grinding out a level proves too onerous. For this latter I’m hoping that things will flow much better with greater access to all game areas and systems.

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Posted by: technonewt.2907

technonewt.2907

Thanks for the invite to the stress test. Was enjoyable to be able to get a taste of the new stuff. I like the revenant, glad it doesn’t feel like any of the other classes play style. My only miner qualm about it was that the field of the mist skill on the hammer, it feels a bit loose, like it needs tightening up, felt a little loose when turning your character to adjust the direction.

The wyvern boss was fun, I think I’m going to really like the new defiance system, much easier to understand. Also noticed how there was no crazy boss glow Not sure if its because the wyvern is so big its not an issue, or maybe because we didn’t have a full zerg with the wide gambit of all classes fighting. In any case it was nice being able to see what the boss was doing.

Would like to see the mastery window maybe being a little smaller and not take up 80% of the screen.

gliding felt good and responsive. I was gonna make a minor complaint about how descending was taking too long when your flight bar was running out leaving you with a long fall if you were not close to the ground. Instead though I realized this will be taken care of with longer flight or one of the other masteries, also I think it might make the fall damage traits more useful now (including my fall damage armor set)

Would really like to see a continuation of more enemy telegraphs, makes it easier to see what the enemy is going to do.

Loved everything I saw involving the story, keep up the good work!

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

Well stated. I think you missed something on the gliders, though. The updrafts are to go higher. Apparently hitting them auto-deploys your glider, so maybe you were using that as the only way to make it work, but I could jump off anything and if I fell far enough to trigger the “OMG HELP GRAVITY IS ABOUT TO EAT ME” scream, a tap of the space bar opened the glider.

Having the same little gold interact plaque pop up as for everything that wants you to hit F might have been confusing, because who has time when falling to their doom to read the button and notice it says “space bar” not “F?” I think I only realized because I’d watched a number of demo streams and everyone mentioning gliding said it was space bar to deploy.

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Posted by: Lociaz.4027

Lociaz.4027

First of all i would like to thanks for the beta stress test invite

I will take this in short words.
Postivie: the new class, new graphics, envoirment, abilities that you could do, like gliding etc. Everything was nice.

Negative: Only 1 Thing that i think many peoples have seen thoo… is that some times it was like spike laag or that the FPS suddenly dropped like 40%

But it was a Beat Sress Test som i hope it will be much much more better after release of Gw2 HoT

Thanks once again!

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Posted by: Vrava.6937

Vrava.6937

For the sake of brevity, I will just add that the Stress Test was a lot of fun, but the UI for the mastery system is completely baffling. It feels like it should just be part of the hero screen. Took us a lot of poking around to finally figure it out as it didn’t match any other system in the game. Thanks for letting us enjoy the demo!

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Posted by: TexZero.7910

TexZero.7910

I’m going to stay away from judging the product on this one. That said i’ll offer my insight into the stress test and how it could have been handled slightly better.

To me the restrictions on just about everything, prevented an actual stress test. You may have resource tested a few items here and there (condi caps / people on map etc) but with only 2/3 area’s (story/wyvern/part of a map) it felt that there was less emphasis on actually player load.

Now i get the idea was to roll out small at first then ramp up, so here’s hoping there’s more ramping up. But it would have been nice if nothing else to do a full load test just open it up to everyone who has gw2. This would have allowed for a more launch like state in which you could have tested both load size and limitations for a more accurate approach.

The other pseudo flaw i came across is, what was there really for players to stress test. This wasn’t an issue for me personally, but i could tell that just after 30 minutes into the first beta wave many people left (judging by my friendslist) and that is because there wasn’t much to hold them in the zone to test.

Anyway i hope to be part of the experience going forward as i enjoyed the stress, mostly because i didn’t go into it with as much reservations. I do hope going forward we get some Stronghold and WvW beta test as well with the same emphasis on play testing and stress testing.

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Posted by: shav elven.3891

shav elven.3891

I thought the stress test went very well. Frame rates stayed good….no lag as I seen. The jumping mushrooms did not work. I enjoyed it thoroughly though. Gliding The revenant Also had some guildies in there (THAT made it so much better). Everyone had a good time and no-one had any game related issues. Im not gonna complain as some others have as I was happy to be chosen to help. Wanna thank all for the great experience and I cant wait for release. For those that did whine and grumble that’s your right but since some of you were bored to tears my other guildies will happily take your place and give good honest reviews.

Have fun and Be safe.

(edited by shav elven.3891)

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Posted by: Rifled Yolks.2097

Rifled Yolks.2097

Loved it! i didn’t experience any real lag or disconnecting. (although my PC doesnt normally lag or disconnect) Was able to learn mastering points/skills no problem. had a great time with Reverent. Looking forward to release!

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Posted by: Theia.4830

Theia.4830

Ok! Stress test review! Thanks for giving that opportunity. It was fun.

First things first, love the Revenant was absolutely psyched to be able to play it. (as was everyone else as mostly everyone rolled that. Skills were good, there was some skill lag, hopefully that’ll be sorted out. Storyline was mostly interesting. I can see that this profession will really be overpowered for the first little bit with the block, all the buffs and long range with the hammer. Literally was long bow range.

Hopefully the storyline gets more interesting! Aware that it was the beta, however, after an hour there wasn’t much to do. Everything was simple enough, mastery system, learning to play the character. All great fun.

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Posted by: Sir Ulrich The Wise.1597

Sir Ulrich The Wise.1597

I’ll be brief, I know there’s plenty of text for Anet to sift through from this event.

Technical Issues
Biggest issue that I saw was concerning a few UI issues with (quick) tweaks that I hope may be implemented. I run GW2 across a triple display setup, so I know these only affect a tiny amount of the player base:
~The glider UI was showing up on the far right monitor, rather than the center one, like the rest of the UI does by default. This included the ‘Deploy glider’ action pop-up, AND the glider endurance bar. If I had not previously known/seen the glider in action, I surely would have missed seeing it the first time.
~The mastery UI. There have been many comments on it, which I agree on. It takes up so much screen real estate, and accessing it was not what most players might expect. Clicking on the bottom bar to pull up masteries is a good idea, but I would suggest merging it in the hero panel near ‘Traits’. As a long time player, that just makes the most sense to me, and that’s where I would go to look for it first.
~~The (potentially) new comment on the current mastery UI concerns the triple display users, again. I click on the bar, and it covers the bottom portion of ALL three displays. This makes it so I have to look on the left monitor for the equipping masteries, and looking at the right monitor to find out information on masteries I haven’t unlocked and want to look into for more information. As an occasional Twitch streamer, that means these things are omitted from my stream video, as well as making it an involved head moving exercise just to accomplish what I want from it.

Overall Thoughts/Comments
I only d/ced from the stress test twice, and I was there for the duration of both events. I only noticed lag a few times, and my FPS was very good, only becoming noticeable/poor a couple times (I do play on a Max settings, with a recently built rig).
Overall, it was a great experience, and I did not notice/encounter anything that may be considered a bug at this point. Thanks for the opportunity!

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Posted by: Skullmarked.8705

Skullmarked.8705

I want to say thank you for including me in the stress test. I enjoyed what I experienced. I did feel like there was a but of lag with the skills (the Jalis elite visual kicked in about 5-8 seconds after I activated it). I did enjoy that there wasn’t must of a cut scene/cinematic with characters talking in the beginning. It made the player character more alive and involved with the story without the silly facial expressions.i unfortunately logged on in the last half hour of the test and was unable to try all the other fun things that the Revenant could do. Hope I’m considered for another test you guys do, until then keep up the good work.

Dwayna gave you life, and Grenth can take it from you.

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Posted by: rhael.6317

rhael.6317

Wow, at least one person had a great solution for the poor Mastery UI design – the WvW Ability interface is a perfect fit! Scrolls, clean list, can be ranked higher, cost is obvious, committing points has a confirmation dialogue.

Leafy Lemon of Unrepentant [Uey]
Stormbluff Isle Megaserver, PvX, US
www.unrepentantgaming.com

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Posted by: mathion.8549

mathion.8549

Having had time to review things, I thought I’d post my thoughts on the stress test overall.

I won’t go into specific glitches, even if the wyvern fire moving in a curve to the left was interesting, but for the most part, they were both minor and rare. Frankly, I don’t think that was the point of the Beta.

My feeling was that this was an instanced demo designed to test server loads, environment scaling and other aspects of game play under relatively controlled conditions (numbers-wise). It was also used to help figure out any glitches in the user-side that they hadn’t anticipated likely using folks who have submitted more detailed than most crash reports in the past. (the who they selected part is a guess).

Toward that end, on my side, I had acceptable frame rates at all times, load times were faster than average, and I only had one crash about half an hour into the first round during the first wyvern fight in which I was involved.

Audio was lower than in the regular game, I noticed, especially in the cines. I had to turn my volume up to hear what was being said clearly, then had to turn it back down when I logged back into my normal game side. I almost missed that it was my character who was talking.

I’m always running multiple programs (Typically Firefox, Thunderbird and Clemintine) in the background and had no issues with anything other than that first crash. I did upgrade my RAM the day of the Beta from 8 to 20 gigs, however, I didn’t otherwise have any noticeable effects in the Beta that didn’t happen on the normal game side.

Whatever caused the game client to crash while I was on the first round wasn’t replicated, and I didn’t restart the computer or close any programs between either of the rounds. I’m inclined to think it was something on the ANet server side since all environmental variables on my side remained the same and it didn’t happen again.

I did a lot of other things like minimizing the game client, trying different key combinations (some of them do odd things to the normal game) and didn’t see any differences between them.

My system sometimes doesn’t like to display a (F) key dialogue, so I know that the deploy glider action is available before the prompt appears, but how to adjust when it appears is tricky. I was hopping down in a few places and it popped up when it didn’t need to. I assume it’s programmed to prompt after a certain distance of falling and mastery may let you deploy it sooner.

The (F) key prompt issues are the same for me in the regular game, though, so I didn’t see it as a glitch or problem.

In any event, overall, the experience was what I’d expect for a test of server loads, balance and multiple users on unpredictably configured systems. Folks complaining about the repetition don’t quite get it that it’s hard to make predictive data analysis based on multiple variables, so the same episodes were repeated multiple times to get more consistent data.

I had a great time and am glad to have been part of it. I’m looking forward to hearing more about what’s in the new pack and, with any luck, participating in the Betas for it like I was fortunate enough to do with GW2.

Thank you very much!

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Posted by: reignsdown.3452

reignsdown.3452

The stress test functioned admirably for my computer and connection. There were some frame rate lags during the initial story scene and I noticed skill activation lag — not casting time, but a delay between pressing the skill and the system registering that I had activated it. This is not a delay I run into on the live servers. I recorded and streamed it; playback thus far has been smooth sailing.

The Mastery UI lagged and could be optimised. It was hard to tell what was being activated and how to proceed. Positionally (yes, verging into content comments here), I despised it popping up when I clicked the experience bar. This is a bar I click on accident with some frequency. I’d prefer to see it under the Hero window.

I did not DC during the test, nor did anyone I know. My client did not stall or crash. Pretty much everything behaved the way I understood it was supposed to. Mainly, lag on the Mastery UI interactions.

Hopefully your server/data captures for this test prove fruitful. Looking forward to further stress testing and perhaps a content beta in the future!

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Posted by: ClanAncaria.7310

ClanAncaria.7310

Thank you for inviting me to the Stress Test, I enjoyed getting a peek at what you have in store for us. I was able to login for the 2nd test window and wrote down few notes, mixed-bag style:

  • Noticed a few times throughout both the story instance, and open world where the player character head tracking would lock onto other NPCs. Seemed to only break lock once a certain distance was met.
  • 1st person view is going to be spectacular while exploring the new maps. Thanks for prioritizing that. Even with just that 1/8 or 1/4 of a map, everything looked great. To describe it in words, “Chaotic Beauty” was the first thing that came to mind.
  • Loved the interactive dialogue between the PC, and the NPCs. Really puts a nice polish on the overall immersion.
  • Spent about the first 30-40 minutes on the Revenant, and just played it through the story instance, and the Meta until the Wyvern was defeated. In the short time, I concentrated mostly on Jalis/Hammer skills, and walked away impressed, looking forward to putting some time into my own. As others have said, there’s a lot to read and test out with the new skills and the power meter, and between that, and new map/events/timer ticking down, it was a little much, so I re-rolled the beta slot to a profession I was much more familiar with – So thanks for making all professions available. Also – The Rev armor/weapon skins are phenomenal, so big props to all who had a hand in that.
  • While, it’s certainly possible we weren’t playing on the most recent build, the UI for the Mastery system needed/needs a major overhaul, to put it mildly. Clicking the XP bar can be “a” way to get into it, but not the only way. I get that you were trying to tie to the fact that after level 80 the XP bar, becomes the Mastery XP bar, but that window belongs on the Hero tab, right below Traits, with a condensed footprint, not covering over 60% of the screen. I felt the “active” Mastery line also needed to be more prominently identified. I recall hearing a Dev recently state that you really can’t make a mistake when spending Mastery points, because eventually, you’ll unlock it all, but I feel like there still needs to be some forgiveness there with some sort of Mastery Refund, whether it’s a mini gold sink or not.
  • The gliders are a fun mechanic, and seemed to work just fine for me. I know there’s Mastery unlocks that allow us to deploy them faster, and for longer distances, so I can’t say I had any issues with the initial delay or the duration. I can just imagine the hellish, glider-centric, table-flip inducing jumping puzzles that you’re crafting for us… Bring. It. On.
  • Technically speaking, it went off without a hitch on this end. I had zero crashes, and no game-breaking glitches. FPS was good, lag was all but non-existent. I guess I was expecting worse for such an early build.
  • On a final note – Small sample size I know, but IMHO, Canach has always been the missing link in Destiny’s Edge 2.0

Feedback on HoT Stress Test [merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Ra Ra.9423

Ra Ra.9423

Everyone’s covered whatever I had to add.
I enjoyed every minute, and the rev was fun to play. The map is beautiful, as are all the areas of GW2.
Notes:
1) Had no real lag issues, and fps remained a steady 60
2) Deployment of glider needs to be faster. It took a second or so to deploy after I hit space.
3) Never did figure out the mushroom.
4) agree that the masteries display needs to be smaller, easier to use.
All in all, it went well, and I’m looking forward to playing the whole expansion.

Ra ~ Asuran Gaters[ZPM]- Darkhaven
You only live once. But once is enough, if you do it right! …. Mae West