Guild Wars 2

- deleted my bwe1 chars to get a chance at rearranging my bank for next bwe. didn’t happen, still the old one. im very disappointed and cant play comfortably now.

- verdant brink events sometimes do not scale accordingly (tons of mobs)

- Rise! – shambling horrors have no hp basically. even if i summon 5, they all die in 5 seconds whenever im in aoe. i bet if i go solo lupi and summon my single shambling horror, he wont even have a chance to defend me. this skill is still trash.

- #RS 2 – travel distance too short. doesn’t feel like mobility skill, feels like im moving at the same distance as running

- verdant brink grass/objects sometimes seen levitating in air.

Ive noticed textures not loading in correctly or late. Usually on vines and rocks. Prob just a beta thing though.

Not sure what’s really going on this section of the map – it lacks the direction part 1 had (ie now we’re fighting Hylek rather than interacting?). Now this could easily be because we’re thrown in “halfway” so to speak, and with no Personal Story, that could explain the lack of direction and the feeling of running around aimlessly in an area which is just a maze of pathways.

It also feels claustrophobic due to it being just pathways. Now this might be intentional as an atmospheric thing, in which case, that has worked.

Some of these will pob work themselves out in the live game when the story, the roots, the canopy and all the masteries gradually unlock and opens the jungle out. That’s something I’m really looking forward to – I can already glimpse possible nooks and crannies I want to explore!

So far, not having much fun running around in circles, do hope thats not the way it will stay. Losing the story, just killing mobs while trying to get to a somewhere. Gliding is difficult, find I die much more than needed, so that makes getting anywhere new real tough.

I noticed that this HoT verticality and deadly enemies will not suit a lot of people. For example, my girlfriend refused to play in HoT map without me. It is just too hard and annoying. I’m not against it. I like the idea of party openworld content. I’m just saying it is not for everyone.

Randulf.7614:

Not sure what’s really going on this section of the map – it lacks the direction part 1 had (ie now we’re fighting Hylek rather than interacting?). Now this could easily be because we’re thrown in “halfway” so to speak, and with no Personal Story, that could explain the lack of direction and the feeling of running around aimlessly in an area which is just a maze of pathways.

Thats what I thought. It helped a lot to have gliding and mushroom jumping unlocked to travel the map, but this maps feels as it there is put “too much effort” in it to make it dense and to make it a maze where you run in circles.

And when I did some events there were so much players that it was totally easy and not challenging at all. Just run with the zerg and try to tag mobs. Not fun for me.

So after a few hours playing in the BW2-verdant brink I have to say the verdant-brink part of BWE1 was much more fun for me (even with the bugged events), than BW2. But I will give it a try again, tomorrow.

My thoughts:-

(a) I did a lot of Zerg Grinding in WvW before they rebalanced things, and that is exactly what high-level PvE is going to be. This is disappointing.

(b) The experience gained from the beta zone appeared nerfed – 2 to 3mins to kill a mob and it drops 358xp on a exp bar that tops at 600K. Really? There was little difference when in Zerg-Mode. As master skills require point + exp this meant I had points but apparently had to spend 8 to 12 hours grinding to use each of them. Really?

© I find the Jungle zones poor. Sure there are plenty of pixels, but is there any wow factor – for me no. To me they are dull and ugly, especially when I compare it to the beautiful GW1 expansions. I think Anet have made a very big mistake to base the expansion or the initial zones on the Jungle.

(d) Most of the time I haven’t a clue what is going on, the fighting is a mess.

(e) I find the complete inability to harvest things extremely annoying.

(f) I doubt people are going to grind out these PvE zones and remain there – I suspect most will be sick of the zones by the time they get all there master abilities which will be completely useless outside these zones. Are people really going to buy into that if they find the graphics dull and ugly?

Beta so far has just been irritating – there has been no pull into the expansion for me. In fact I feel I have been rather foolish in pre-purchasing the expansion when I could have bought a complete new – and unfamiliar – game. I am hard pressed on what the novelty of HoT is for PvE. The Living World had novelty, essentially this expansion is a more irritating – if more complex – Silverwastes.

Early days I know, but it’s looking like PvP + WvW == GW2, PvE == GW1.

BWE2 impressions:
1. Heals still not working very well. This might just be me, but on the revs, berserker and daredevil the heals barely heal for any amount. Are they suppose to be like that?

2. Daredevil staff auto attack animation is ….well frankly…lame. The other animations are meh. I think the Daredevil performed about as expected. I kit it out as knight/val armor zerk trinkets.

3. Fire Warrior appears to be more for a condi build instead of a Zerker build. I did kit it out as a full zerk gear and trinkets. I attempted to use the heal for the speciality, but it just wouldn’t heal enough and I kept getting downed. I went back to the healing signet and that worked better. The torch damage was lack lust. I used Axe/Torch. Then swapped to Sword/Torch, that performed better. Maybe a full on condi build with burning sigils and runes would be best for the torch build. The Utility skills were just meh.

4. The new map areas are nice, but I still have a difficult time navigating around. I get lost easy and it’s hard to tell if I need to go up or down.

5. Some mobs still op, I noticed at night they appear to be tougher than in the day time. I do not like running the map by myself.

6. Glider will not descend!!!?? Seriously. The only way I can lose altitude is to disengage the Glider and fall then re-engage. I’m still on the first phase of gliding so maybe that comes later?

Ok that’s all I have for the first day. I might come back and add some more after I test out a condi build on the warrior.

This is my first beta weekend so take my feedback with a grain of salt that being said I think the beta that I experienced today was very clunky. Map seemed overdone with vegetation and mazes that it becomes a burden to get around. I hope they can clean the landscape up some, but I also understand they are going for a jungle look. Maybe just a bit more user friendly map would be nice. Many people on chat were lost and asking for directions with few responses. After a while I just grew tired of the landscape and gave up. I am sure full mastery helps but so far I am not encouraged to continue due to these issues, it is difficult to not jump off a cliff by accident even though I constantly adjust my field of vision ( more so than normal, we all accidentally plummet to our doom sometimes). I think the Silverwastes and Drytop had more to offer and had clearer activities, I love those sandstorms. The night and day thing seemed a bit weak . Not really all that exciting. Maybe a variety of new weather based events ( floods, or downpours?) would spice it up and make it a bit more dynamic?

Also first cut-scene when entering map is all over the place. It flashes every second and it is more distracting and annoying than an exciting opener. Just letting it play without all the change scenes immediately I think would fix it. I am unsure yet if pre-ordering was worth it. So far I have liked GW2 for the past year and loved GW1 , Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North. I am unsure yet if pre-ordering HoT was worth it.
Hopefully things will be better in the final product.

Also on a side note does anyone else feel that the professions are being water downed rather than specialized? The wider the abilities get for each profession seems to diminishes the feeling of it being a new specialization. Sometimes the theme of the new specializations seem too vague, maybe its just me.

I know this is beta and this is just my opinion on the small portion that I experienced today, but hope this feedback helps!

My feedback for this BW (my first):

1) Map:

I did not enjoy the map. It is a mace that feels clunky to move around in. It is often hard to know where you should/could glide and you basically just run in circles doing the same defend-events over and over again.

2) Enemies:

I find there to be two extremes. Either you are alone/in a small group and events scale too high and you basically get stomped. Once we were 2vs20 bronze to gold mobs with lots of aoe, no chance. On the other hand you run in zergs, you basically just dps mobs. But even in zergs you get one-shot, not because it is too hard but because some attacks simply oneshot and because of all the flashy moves all the specialisations have you hardly see what the mob does with his hands.

3) Classes. There I’m quite happy. They seem interesting and look cool. The balance will take time to figure out.

So after this night i fear that PvE will be quite a burden to grind through, but PvP looks interesting.

Condition Warrior – I decided to try out a condi build on the warrior and stay in the beta map to see how well it would work. Had a little trouble with the trinkets as they would not swap from the zerker, except the amulet – used Dire on Armor and weapons and Rune of the Undead. Traits were Arms -3,3,2. Discipline -2,3,3. Berserker- 2,2,2. I used Sword/Torch and Longbow. I didn’t swap sigils so they were sigil of force and sigil of leeching and sigil of force and leeching on Longbow.
For skills I had signet of healing shattering blow and wild blow shake it off and signet of rage. I probably would swap out shattering blow for balanced stance as the mobs love to knock you down.

So I was able to hold my own in the beta map running solo for the most part. Wild Blow is awesome. Maybe Runes of Balthazar would give longer burns but the conditions worked well against the mobs except the riders with the spears. I was able to 1 v 3 of the frog men. I need to test it out in Central Tyria. But as far as Verdant Blink map I was much more able to survive and actually enjoyed playing the Fire warrior. Probably can tweak this build more to get better results.

i like the mobs very much, they aren’t that easy anymore

1. Mobs are pretty hard for a solo traveler and quite easy for zergs. I imagine times when the map will be very empty and it will be a draw back for most solo players.

2. Events are too similar with Silverwastes and Dry Top. Only the foes are sometimes different

3. Map design is awesome. The paths are not very easy to spot out, Gliding to other paths and mushroom jumping is a new way of traveling.
But the bad thing the scenery is not something really amazing. The jungle theme may appeal to some but for the most part it will be annoying and monotonous.

4. WP are few and un-usable due to events and it becomes frustrating to travel if you get killed many times and you are forced to teleport because there is no one around to resurect you.

5. The map events rotation will get boring quite fast and it will not drag the people used to farming from Silverwastes and it will not have more population then dry top nowadays.

6. If this map will be the beginning of the new Living story, it will just be a pass-through map and nothing more. It feels too big for being an action packed coordinated map like Silverwastes

My feedback for BWE (first)

1) New HoT area is too much similar than Dry Top event cycle. Night time events are like Sandstorm events and Daybreake events are like clear time events in Dry Top. This kind of event cycle will get very fast boring. I for example played couple hours in new HoT area and it really start felt BORING. This kind of copying another area’s event cycle is not very good idea. I know that Dry Top is mostly unpopulated map areas in the game and when the dailies are happening in there, then there are players around.

2) I truly hope, that we are not forced to do those events in new HoT area to gain our masteries. If it is like that, it will be such a pain. I hope core game events are giving us also masterypoint, so we can do those masteries in more interesting maps.

3) Mobs are not too strong, they feel to have same power as Silverwastes mobs have. That is good point. If those mobs would be harder it really makes player frustrated, because so few waypoints in the map.

4) Map itself is very interesting. It has been made really fancy way. You don’t find roads too easily and sometimes it feels that you don’t know where to go, but behind of the corner there is a path to follow. I like this kind of maps what are more than one static flat area.

5) Gliding is awesome sensation. It is good that you can stop to glide middle of the fly and start it again for safe landing. This was awesome invention. It gives to players free movement feeling.

6) Mushroom jumping, it’s idea is same kind as zephyrites wind skill. It can be little tricky to understand how to aim and where to jump, but players will learn it

Summary:
- Events themselves will be start feeling boring very fast.
- Masterypoints hopefully are gathered from core game events too.
- Mobs power is perfect
- Gliding gives special free feeling in the game
- Daybreak / Night cycle is too similar with Dry Top clear / sandstorm cycle, it start to be too boring in long term playing.

Silver Wastes Dry Top meets Edge of the Mist mash up, add in some frustration of constant death and running back or trying to run back from that Waypoint way over………………….THERE!!!. All the while dodging those annoying poison spitting jungle vines. Challenging content for players like me…wooohooo!!!

The legendary wyvern at the end of the Faren event chain should have some kind of sweep attack with his tail. Right now you can stand behind him and take no damage whatsoever.

Hiya- first time poster but been on game the whole 3. Casual /eternal newb player. Mostly solo..some duo…occasional group/guild stuff
~Artwork in GW2 is always amazing and immersive.
~ Big map difference between “normal” maps & HoT, in both betas….is I pretty much don’t know where the hell I am or how to get anywhere most of the time. Pure blind luck somehow gets me around. Not bad…but it would be nice to have a couple more “safe havens” besides the opening WP.
~ Not a big stats/build player (exotic is fine thx) – but the specializations seems to be coming along nicely. Berserker’s been lotsa fun and the animations are cool. ( I like to watch fire!! lol) Still not quite “getting” the Revenent but time and much button mashing will tell.
~ Masteries—-They’re cool and stuff but I’m never sure what I can train and what I can’t ..i.e. what’s locked for beta and what’s not. Got my gliding up to 2nd level and can’t unlock the stealth…..so went to mushrooms…..just doesn’t seem to be a way of knowing for sure what I can train and what I can’t. ( admittedly this could be due to limited brains on my part)
At any rate————-all in all pretty enjoyable and having a good time running around.
Thx!!
cheers,
Sut

My first Beta test as well, so I didn’t know what to expect. But so far I have to join the choir about the state of the map. It is very confusing, and the relatively small size of it, on each level, makes it feel claustrophobic and very stressful. This might be mended by carefully adding some kind of pointers, hints or waypoints to suggest where to go next.