Guild Wars 2

I took a wee break from GW2 recently. 200 hours in and I felt burned out, the combat was feeling duller, I was 80 but I didn’t feel there was anything left to do but repeat the same content with an alt, or grind in PVE. WVW was an option but why play that when I have Planetside 2?

I recently came back, however, hankering for some good ol’ PVE. I heard about these new fractal things and the new tier of item, wanting to get one, I excitedly asked if anybody in the guild wanted to run a fractal.

Turns out fractals work on a level system, and I’m level one. Everybody else is like..level 10-24. I cannot run those levels without infused items. Now, the only way to get those infused items or infusable items is to…the fun way…get them in a fractal drop, or grind dalies for weeks until I can afford them.

I was really alarmed to see this. I was under the impression Guild Wars was founded on a philosophy of inclusive content, pick up and play with friends, and no grind. What I found here was the very antithesis of everything I thought Guild Wars was about. A dungeon system I was barred from unless I was willing to grind up fractal levels.

Needless to say, fiding groups for a lvl 1 fractal has been utterly impossible, I’ve yet to find a single other person. Without a LFG system, I find all the fractal content and the new item content barred from me unless I’m willing to grind dalies for at least 30 days. I understand they want these items to be hard to attain and I don’t mind that, since there are players who like to grind for these items and power to them. I don’t care if I don’t have the best infused ring on the block yadda yadda, I’d be happy with a poor one so long as I could still run fractals with it. What I do care about is not having these items is barring me from content, content which I want to be able to enjoy with my guildies.

wow you did that in 70 hours?! What are you -on- mate? XD

I am still seriously considering building my own- however I am still interested perhaps in buying a pre-built for the sake of having the warrenty. If I do decide to buy pre-built, what would be my best option? I’d also like to thank everybody who’s commented so far, I appreciate it.

Sorry I should elaborate. I already have a perfectly good moniter and mouse. I will need a new keyboard but that will be bought without money outside the thousand pound budget for the pc itself.

Oh! Thanks I’ll look into it.

Any other tips anybody has for building fairly portable gaming systems? Or links to guides? I can’t find anything useful. I want to make sure I don’t feck it up or build a machine that only lasts a year.

Okay so, the overwhelming support is to build your own. Anybody have any recommendations for cases that are as small (or smaller) as the x51? I dont care how it looks, it just needs to be small.

Thanks- I understand that building is the cheapest option- but I am reluctant without scoping out other companies. Are there anybody else other than alienware who make anything that might suit me?

Aloha people.

My laptop is….good enough. It does my uni work at least. But it’s also beneath the GW2 minimum requirements. In a testiment to the scalibility of the game I’ve still been able to play- but at an FPS never exceeding 14, and regularly plummiting to 2-3 in large encounters.

I have decided enough is enough! Despite being an impovrished student I have dipped into my savings, and have (at an absolute limit) £1000(about $1600 I think).

This new computer doesn’t need to be a destroyer of worlds- I don’t care if I can’t play on the highest graphics. So long as I can play most new games, particularly Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, Rome Total War 2 (lotta sequels this year I guess)- on reasonable settings I’ll bee happy.

Portability is a big issue- I live a highly mobile lifestyle- but I don’t want a laptop as they cost an arm and a leg for what you get. Power requirements also matter to me- I pay bills and I dont want my pc costing me everything. All in all I thought the Alienware X51 might be a good fit- cheapish, pretty, small and lightweight. However everybody I know tells me alienware is very overpriced- so I come to you on me knees asking for your computer expertise. I could -potentially- build my own pc, but in such a small case I would struggle- plus I’m a nitwit.

The only worry I have is I’m a complete hardware idiot and I don’t know how effectivley I could build a pc.

Thank you very much for all the links, guys! I’ll have a snoop around there.

Frankly Plea I don’t know my own budget yet- I’m going to go have a snoop around at the general prices of pcs these days and formulate one from that. I don’t think I’d ever go over £800 stirling though.

I’d love to hear the specs for your machine Ceallach- so I can buy simular stuff.

Okay thanks for the answers. I wasn’t sure since- as you rightly assumed I didn’t build this pc myself and any talk of pc hardware makes my head spin. Maybe I’ll look into getting a better machine.

Now I’m hardly running the finest pc known to man- far from it, but my internet is fiarly decent, and I’m sure the game should be running…slightly better than this. On the absolute lowest settings I’m getting an FPS of around 12 at good points, down to 2-4 in WvWvW or big events.

My specs:

Dual-Core AMD Athlon II P340 Processor- 2.2GHz
3072MB RAM
AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Agreed- the scores in many ways damage the gameplay.

The war can be seen to be winning/losing by control, by victories- by a player to player basis. The only way for a server to do ‘well’ right now is control keeps. I like to rove the map with 3 friends and fight other small groups in little skirmishes- this doesn’t add to the score, under the score system I feel like I’ wasting time and should be attackign keeps with everybody else. Remove the score and you remove this pressure and obsession with playing in a certain way- and free up a lot of new, much funner playstyles.

I’m having a simular problem- however I don’t have nearly the price range. I need a laptop which can run GW2 reasonably (medium graphics would be nice) but the most important factor is that it holds up in WvW. Currently in any battle with 5+ people I drop to an fps of 3-4 (running the game on lowest settings). MY maximum I could spend would be about 600 pounds stirling. (Just under 1000 American dollars). I play most games on a PS3 however I would be using this laptop for GW2, Planetside and potentially other pc exclusives.

I love the work of the GW composer- but I was a little disappointed by the offering of GW2. Beyond ‘Fear Not This Night’- there’s not much new, except the race themes which hardly ever play. I noticed a lot of music recycled from GW- and though that music is excellent- I want something fresh.

But I have hardly any ideas- all I can think off is recycling other game soundtracks like Skyrim, Morrowind, Shadow of the Colossous- and some movie soundtracks too. I’d like to try and avoid that- however (unless it’s a fairly obscure movie) since I don’t want to spoil those soundtracks by hearing them to often.

So, can you guys help me construct a good fantasy soundtrack for GW2? Suggestions would be great.

This this, a thousand times this. Lore for the mist war is utterly lacking in my opinion. It seems utterly pointless for so many warriors to go fight on a never ending battlefield with no aim or purpose- especially when the world is in peril. We’re never told anything about it by npcs- and nobody apart from Mist Warriors even mention it existing. It seems like a massive oversight. There’s no lore within the mists either- no explenation to how the inhabitant races got there for instance.

Thanks a lot Anet- no matter what some people may say you’ve made something really special here.

Yeah I really have to debate this. I do die a lot in dungeons- but thats because my group is testing the boss. We change our build to take on different roles in the group- but it isn’t tank/healer rolls etc- it’d be custom built for the boss we’re fighting. One example is a Necromancer boss in Twilight arbour who spawns many spiders. He wiped our group three times with conventional tactics. Then we changed up. I ( a warrior) went my quick-movement rifle build, that rids me of conditions and imbolise- so that one player could evade the boss until others ressed if need be. A Elementalist and a Guardian went aoe- removal and led his spiders off to the corner of the room so they wouldn’t bother us. Another guardian mitgated boss damage and a thief went sheer single-target damage. It got hairy and by the end only me and one guardian were standing- but the feeling of him falling was glorious. This is a much better system to holy trinity- a system you’re looking at with rose-tinted glasses. I remember dying just as much in other games- if not more, but then not having the ability to radically change up my playstyle- and having to just slog as ‘always the tank’

TL;DR

WvWvW doesn’t fit in with the lore of the game, doesn’t feel like a unique or interesting location, and doesn’t have the persistance that will allow it to compete with other mass-pvp games.

Hey there. First things first I love the game, I’m a long time GW player, bought the first game in the second week of release- so I’m very attached to the franchise. WvWvW was one of the things that most excited me when I started hearing news about gw2- it sounded utterly epic. And it is very fun, however- there are some major issues I feel need to be addressed. This is particularly with other mass-scale pvp games on the horizon that could drain GW2 of a lot of pvpers, Planetside 2 for instance, or Elder Scrolls Online.

1.The lore is lacking.

Okay- so this is the least important of all my points, but as a massive lorehound I think it should be looked at. WvWvW is a huge ongoing war- however there’s no real information about it. We’ve been told Balthazhar opened the way in for the greatest warriors to fight but…why? With dragons taking over the world, why are people going off to fight in some ever-lasting battle with no real aim or objective beyond battle? Also, nobody ever talks about the mist war in game. I mean seriously- this is the last tangible thing the human gods left and no npcs beyond the mist warriors have anything to say about it? No other npc as far as I’m aware ever says “Oh yeah hey- remember that huge war that’s going on, that must be pretty important.’

2.It’s visually disappointing.

When I heard that WvWvW was going to be in the mists I thought it would be more akin to the mists of GW1. A strange, ethereal place were the rules are different, inhabited by strange beings. The loading screen enforces this view- a vision of a mighty army on an awesome battlefield, marching forth as fire churns around them. But WvWvW isn’t anything like that- it’s just like the regular game world. It is inhabited not by unique creatures (at very least re-skinned with a new name)- but by foes we’re used to, skale and such. The npcs we can get on side are things like quaggan (which leads the player to wonder how the heck peaceful quaggan tribes set up in a realm of never ending war). All the three factions are visually the same beyond colour- and their npc allies are not spirits of the mists or anything exciting like that, just regular goons from Tyria, who all wear the same armour and look the same. I know it’s far too late for many changes in this department- but maybe an optional otherworldly mist filter and perhaps a few small additions to the landscape would be cool.

3.There’s no persistence.

This is the most dangerous mistake about the mist war. GW2 does a lot of things different- and it offers a lot of options for players. However, one thing mmo players generally want is the chance to be special- to make their mark on this virtual world, no matter how small. Having sandbox elements is going to become increasingly relevant- and currently GW2 is utterly lacking in comparisons to future rivals like Archage. It is difficult to really enjoy WvW because it’s utterly transient. 2 weeks and the war resets- the dramas, the expenses- the captured fort at a pyrrhic cost- doesn’t matter. WvW could allow players to seize forts, and hold them, but it doesn’t- not really- since you lose it in 2 weeks.

I understand this is to be fair- but WvW isn’t ‘fair’ pvp. Players focused on the ‘fair’ will go to structured pvp. WvW should be a space to let players have that sandbox experience- persistent, relevant. Harsh, yes, but look at the kind of devotion harsh inspires, games like EVE Online- not a huge playerbase, but an utterly loyal one. WvW is Guild wars chance to experiment with these sorts of changes and test how the playerbase reacts- but frankly I think it needs to evolve along the lines of becoming more permanently persistent. I personally feel like this is a major missed opportunity.