HoT - Pros

HoT - Pros

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Eirdyne.9843

Eirdyne.9843

Last night I went head to head with a Revenant, Mace/Sword and my Warrior Mace/Mace. The Revenant was using Enchanted Daggers and a heal ability of which I am unsure. For about 5 minutes we fought non-stop. It was pretty hectic: a real mess of a fight. He would take me down to about 1.2k health, I would take him down to about a quarter of that, then during cooldowns we’d regenerate enough to go at it another round. A lot of circling took place, a lot of missed attacks or attacks that got blocked, crippled and so missed, or other such little tricks. In the end, we both fell at the same time and threw things at one another until dead.

This sort of fight hasn’t happened for me in a long time. Most fights are just someone doing a meta combo to reach max might and then another meta combo to do max damage instantly. No skill there, just punching kitten in the bottom of the vitality orb.

This fight says to me that Heart of Thorns has really gone a long way to seeing the classes are coming along well.

I was in full Ascended Zerker gear.

I realize this may mean there was a huge downside to this fight… the Revenant definitely wasn’t in full zerker gear, but was always hitting harder than me. It was only because I had sword shield and block from maces that I lived through the fight. One-to-one the Revenant was definitely doing the more damage. Still, as far as combat went the class was flushed out pretty well in terms of what it dos and how it does it.

On top of this we’re getting a new weapon for each new master level. I’m really excited about this. It’s the first time we can actually sit back and say, “This is symbolic of my class.” We’ve really only seen this sort of thing from racial armors/weapons, karma vendors for various regions like the Ebonhawk, and a few accidents of aesthetic parallels.

Combat with Roxx, Brahm, and the others is still horrible. They do they’re own thing and do not try to rez you at all most of the time. That was a problem all through the last Living Story and it hasn’t improved. Nevertheless, the NPC battles show a lot more coordination and planning than “spawn a horde of creatures” as the only tactic displayed: creatures that hit very very hard. The creatures stop, trying different abilities while stopped, and generally have some display of tactical variation. It’s nothing so clear cut as a Burning Crusade or Vanilla WoW raid, but it looks like whoever Anet hired to do design NPC combat is either getting better or improved from what we’ve seen so far in Guild Wars 2. (I speak here while excluding the World Dragon Lieutenant fights, which while boring are sound game design).

As a whole, combat feels smooth for what it is. Ranged weapons still shoot kittens for bullets and have no range worth calling ranged weapons, ranged at all. This needs a vast improvement, but the game itself feels ‘not broken’ and ‘generally improved’. That’s a far cry from how things felt when Silver Wastes came out last year.

Other improvements we’re seeing is actual real and factual communication from Anet. That’s as rare as unicorns for Guild Wars 2, so to see that is a real game changer for sure. If they maintain this level of openness and wherewithal I could see a lot of players sticking with the expansion long enough for Living Story to kick off again.

Aesthetically, Maguuma is ‘busy’. I think that’s the best word for it. There’s a lot going on and probably too many animated sparks and pixels flying from skill abilities everywhere to really comprehend what Maguuma looks like when there isn’t combat: which is to stay, “Impressive”. Creature content hasn’t been great. A few new creatures, a lot too much copy-pasted Hylek. The usual too much use of creatures-as-landmines placed wherever they are mostly likely to statically ‘exist’ ‘unmoving’ until a player gets within agro range inevitably. For veteran players of any game genre that grows old fast and the tiny paths available while climbing around in Maguuma make all such feel very samey. Despite all of this, when the combat clears up and you’re climbing around through the debris of the Pact Fleet there’s a real sense of joy and ‘freshness’ that nearly overcomes the hectic not-fun and frustrating rest of it. That makes this aspect of content come out on a razor’s edge of love-hate. You’re either going to hate Maguuma or love it. I don’t think there will be much give in between.

Master Level abilities, from Gliders to how to get them is rather ambiguous. I, for one, couldn’t figure out how to get the Glider ability. Refusing to look it up online, I take this at face value as wholly negative. Wherever it is, however it is used, I couldn’t determine. Despite this, wherever I saw people using them I could see they got them (which was rare) I could see they were reliable and functional (some people made some really tight coordinated landings).

As a whole I think HoT is not ready to go. It has a lot that needs done. A lot. Nevertheless, if it were to be released today it would sell. People would complain and rightfully, but it would work as well as anything else in Guild Wars 2 in 2013. Classes are flushed out, the aestheticism is realized, and there are enough bips-and-bops for the die-hard fans to stay. New players may be a bit lost to it all though. There’s a lot going on that isn’t intuitive and NPC combat/creature variety is very shallow. I’d say Heart of Thorns is maybe pushing into a 68% complete range as whole, 43% of that being class-completeness and 25% being NPC combat/creature variety. The remaining 32% may be in all the new armor/weaponskins coming out, jumping puzzles(s), coding, and stuff we don’t tend to think about as players right now (or even ever). That means we may be looking at a nigh-completed project. I’d give my experience of it a grudging D, but am encouraged. It’s better quality work than we’ve seen from Anet in a long time.

HoT - Pros

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: mercury ranique.2170

mercury ranique.2170

A few remarks to what you are saying.

1: I personally didn’t have issues with too many sparks.

2: The hylek are not copy paste. They are different type of breeds created just for HoT. I’m not sure if you played BW1 in the othe rpart, but there the hylek are non-hostile. So it really is concentrated at this part of the map as the place of the “evil” hylek. Keep those things in mind when judging it as a whole. You are only seeing a small portion

3: Many things where there to block content. So anything that you see when you fall down is just a placeholder hiding the real (unknown) content.

4: gliding is the best way to see the map. It makes it a lot bigger and ease up transportation a lot. I didn’t had to look up how to work it nor had any help. for future reference.
a: press “H”
b: go to the bottom icon for masteries
c: select the line for “gliding” and then the top bar.
d: the bar now starts filling up while you gather xp. once full you also get a pop-up message that it is ready.
e: go back there when it is ready and select the icon behind the line. It asks you if you want to spent a mastery point, confirm and you can glide (and choose another mastery to level, either within gliding to master updrafts, or another line).
I’m not sure if the masteries are available from level 1 or for level 80 only. In any case, it can have a tutorial (either within the level up bonuses, or with an ingame mail). Shouldnt take long to implement though.

5: I really don’t know how the other maps look. We know it got the same biotopes, but if they have the same look and feel?? In the core game, most maps have differing and unique landscapes (within a regional theme). Only Orr is a bit of the same. in all three. I guess this is impossible to judge. I do believe that the crashed airships is just something for verdant brinks. I am pretty hopefull therefore the other maps have different themes to it.

6: it is allready said above, but in more direct tones. Do not judge the expansion on just this beta. It is a small part of the expansion and the main purpose is to test certain elements without giving away too much of the content. so the percentages you are posting are based on the limited beta and not on the entire thing. We jsut don’t know that.

My conclusion is that we can not know or judge if it is ready. They have kept the same release filosophy as with the core game. Meaning they did not give a release date ages before release (and like other games often had to postpone it) but told us a long time “when it is ready” and posted a release date short before the release itself. It means to me that they feel ready. Off course they are still polishing, but they are not working on many factors now and it is near completion (to their own standards).
Wether or not they are correct with that decision is not something we can judge on a very limited beta.

Arise, ye farmers of all nations
Arise, opressed of Tyria!

HoT - Pros

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

About not figuring out the Mastery UI without third party info: Yes, it is a bit complex the very first time you look at it. I had several occasions of explaining it to others in Map Chat, but it could be explained in two or three sentences when I went into full detail.

The thing is, in BWE1 when the Masteries first opened up I got a whole bunch of Hint popups that pointed out exactly what to do in the UI. Did you not get those this time, or did you reflexively close them without reading as is easy to do as a veteran player if you forget there may actually be new info coming? They are definitely in-game information with no need to go look it up anywhere.

I suppose it would be nice to have a way to cycle through Hints again, maybe have a UI one could bring up to click through the “lore” of Hints previously received instead of having to memorize them on first reading.