Guild Wars 2

“Final Rest” does exist in the game.

For some unexplainable reason its ‘sole bound on aquire’ therefore can only be tossed into the Mystic Forge, salvaged or destroyed to remove it from your inventory.

All I can recall is “WTF is my ranger going to do with this junk?” and used the later option to free up some inventory space. I was Lvl80 but ‘down scaled’ to I think 76 – (I recall 7x something) another reason for getting rid of it – a down leveled drop besides being unusable by my profession.

During that time I was working on map completion so was all over the place, already have my toon ‘geared up’ (was not really paying attention to ‘drops’) and was mostly ‘spinning my gears’ waiting for 10am today when I drop by Bestbuy to pickup my pre-order of another title.

Kasama.8941:

Jazenn.7526:

Kasama.8941:

Whirling Defense can be pretty devastating if you snare someone first, forcing them to take all the damage. But since main-hand axe is mainly condition damage, you’re going to be better of with an off-hand torch.

By mainly condition damage you mean one skill?

Winter’s Bite deals both chill and weakness, and Ricochet’s damage is very weak on its own, without a combo field like Bonfire. I don’t see how you can justify main-hand axe as a direct damage weapon with the low base damage that its got.

This depends on if you only have 1 target or multiple targets. The axe will land 480-520 per bounce so upto 1560 per toss. A SB might hit faster but for only slightly more – 540 per hit so in the about the same time frame the Axe is dealing more damage over all than the SB.

While you can drop your bonfire and switch to the SB for flaming arrows I think in a mob the Axe works better.

IMHO: Until 5 players can take 5 of any profession or any mixture of professions and complete pre-programmed content (IE: PvE) with in +/- 20% the amount of time (fastest/slowest) this game is horridly unbalanced.

The last few day’s I’ve spun up Crysis2 and HL2 to ready myself for Crysis3 (midnight tonight). Tomorrow I’ll be playing a high tech FPS and GW2 (and its issues) will be but a memory.

Your video card could be installed in the wrong slot (it happens).

Your CPU is throttling itself because of over heating. (check the temp lately?)

I agree with SN, rarely a laptop in that price range can be used for gaming.

I’d keep an eye on this website. “http://www.techbargains.com”

Deep discounts on 1/2way decent models happen all the time and outside of a used or returned/referb unit $1000 is more realistic for something that could sort of run games acceptably.

If we are only talking about the PvE (not including dungeons) the game is very casual friendly. You can slowly wander around and level up as time permits and take part in (or not) in the very short ‘dynamic events’.

The Rare, Exotic and Accended gear tiers are not required to level 1-80.

There are very very few games published that have any appeal to a real ‘hard core’ gamer as 95% of the gaming public are not ‘hard core enough’ to play them, no studio/publisher is stupid enough to limit themselves to only 5% of the market and even fewer of the players could cough up enough ca$h to buy it to cover the costs to develop it.

Ever wonder about the comments about Anets QA department having ‘difficulty’ with different sections of the game? While the general assumption is that they are ‘lame’, my guess is that they use level equal toons/gear (with a mixture of white/blue/green) to assess the content and not Lvl80 toons outfitted with the best gear available in the game.

(facepalm)

Tolmos.8395:

Valento.9852:

Vol.5241:

Legendaries need to be even rarer.

I agree, they need to be even rarer, not even grindier.

Not sure how that would be possible without falling back on the tired and outdated concept of RNG even more.

My thought was to make them 1 per server. Let each one be a rare drop from a known location but once one drops that’s it – sole bound – until destroyed. Say there are 30 servers – only 30 xx in game. Just toss in a ‘catch’ – if the item is not used for 90days then it magically vanishes from your inventory to be a rare drop again.

This would keep them rare and very unique and get rid of all this ‘grind’ and ‘farm’ nonsense some folks are doing. The price of T6 mat’s would go down and could make actual crafting useful.

Folk.2093:

what class isn’t balanced?

All of them.

If they were ‘balanced’ 5 of any class ought to be able to complete the same content in approx the same amount of time (give or take say 20%).

Hellkaiser.6025:

MaRko.3165:

Just another ‘legendary’ whine thread.

If you think those are rare have you found “Final Rest” yet?

There are a number of ‘named exotics’ that have yet to find their way to the TP. There’s a few threads dedicated to “Final Rest” alone.

Long term = greater than 18 months.

Probably bugged… lol

Actually at different points in the game I’ve had a “Lover” and “Final Rest” in my inventory. Not knowing the value/rare ether item was (and were useless for my toon) they got scrapped. (can I blame to much fun in the 60/70’s for not remembering where it dropped?)

Rare/Unique = “ultra scarcity” – I think its WAY cool.

Just another ‘legendary’ whine thread.

If you think those are rare have you found “Final Rest” yet?

There are a number of ‘named exotics’ that have yet to find their way to the TP. There’s a few threads dedicated to “Final Rest” alone.

Long term = greater than 18 months.

Xsorus.2507:

GS blows if you’re condition build, I know that…

It’s great for bursting with pet though (see NN Volume 3 for example)

Maul needs to be a blast finisher I think to make it really viable for Condition builds (this would give it a use for Trap Builds)

I’m sure it’s actually a decent weapon if you’re Knights/Cleric/Magi setup though.

Maul+Torch(bonfire)

“micro stutter” – I’ve heard of it, can’t say that I’ve ever caught more than a glance of it. Its never been an ‘issue’ for me however I’ve only ran dual card rigs.

While I’ve not actually TRIED and USED a 690 or 680SLI configuration with GW2 IMHO such a configuration would not benefit my current rig playing GW2.

(why folks who are not currently using an SLI rig with GW2 are commenting escapes me)

Lynne.8416:

Geotherma.2395:

I am amazed that by playing a few hours a day you managed to get to level 80 in a week. You must be a very skilled player.

I consider a “few” hours to be 2-4 hours. I can only manage 5 levels in 4-5 hours via personal story and completing an area map.

Ditto.

I play a few hours a day and it took me over a month to get one toon to Lvl80 – no PvP, WvW or dungeons just plain PvE. I just don’t understand the thought process here.

“Rush” to Lvl80 and then steam roll all the lower level content when over leveled for it?
(and complain that the game is to ‘easy’)
“Farm” game elements for gold/Exotic gear and then complain the game is to ‘easy’ or ‘grindy’.

No changes that I’ve seen are anti casual (or antianything for that matter).

jubskie.3152:

Interesting results.. pretty much agrees with the consensus that cats are the best offensive pet. What surprised me though is that drakes and birds are pretty close both in F2 and non-F2 categories.

Hope you can expand your tests so we can get more informed choices when picking pets

The thing to consider however is the Drake can hit multiple targets with not only its bite but its tail and the F2 on the River Drake will chain through multiple targets.

In a tightly packed mob the bite might register 400-600 on two targets and the tail swipe +2K on 3 or more.

On a single target a Bird or Cat is useful but if there’s a mob bring out the Drake.

laokoko.7403:

THat’s why I say you guys must be very casual. All you need to do is goof around for 30 minutes a day and wait 2 month and you can get your ring already.

But you are casual yet a serious gamer. those 2-3% stats difference(since there is only 3 piece ascended released) must be very serious if it make that much of a different in pve and pvp for you.

Umm….. I play for 3-4hrs a day and in 2.5mo’s I’ve gotten the daily only a hand full of times. Granted the daily was rarely my ‘focus’ but in most cases I simply ran out of time, The way the game is setup there are some items that might take days/weeks/months/quarters to get, all depending on how much time/skill you can play it.

Gothdir.8953:

Well i can see your point for “rewarding” gameplay but lets be honest how often can you take down a dragon and still think of it as an archivement?

The thing is doing things more then once, twice or maybe third time removes that kind of rewarding gameplay. You dont have higher difficultys to aim at (for the same event or boss), so many players want another kind of motivation wich can be gear or other rare loot (pets or mounts – if GW2 had them as ex.) and here lets be honest GW2 sucks…my 2 cents about this is in my post before.

In MMORPGs you need to put stuff in that rewards players even after playing through content more then once. Anet hasnt adressed that issue yet wich is a big issue for a lot of players.

I’ll agree to disagree then. I don’t see that the problems that GW2 faces are really ‘MMO’ specific as if it were released as a single player game and the TP was simply Anet rather than possibly other players the same problems would exist.

‘content reuse’ for most games is generally done with ‘alts’ or different builds. GW2 does have their ‘dynamic events’ going for it which can/could be used to offer an illusion of a constantly changing world.

I think the real problem lies in the combat mechanics and the lack of any power given to many professions special features and the general lack of mid-high level monsters requiring those features be used.

IMHO: brute force or ‘high DPS’ attacks ought to be the least desirable solution or the last one picked rather than the 1st and only valid method.

‘dodge, spray and pray’ gets old really fast.

I can see there’s a ‘disconnect’ in that ‘reward’ and ‘rewarding’ means different things to different players.

Lets define rewarding.

I play lots of games. A game that offers challenges to both my physical and mental skills and multiple ways of over coming them and is fun to play to me is a rewarding experience. I filled up some otherwise idle time and hopefully enjoyed a nice distraction from real life issues/problems/stress.

I don’t kill ‘the big thing’ (I hate the term ‘boss’) because I might get something out of it, I kill it because its THERE and presents itself as a challenge. (it may just be there blocking further progress in the game itself)

The reward is knowing I can and did defeat it. The reward is the playtime, distraction and fun involved in fighting it.

It took me nearly 2 months to get on toon to Lvl80. The whole idea behind the ‘power leveling guides’ is beyond me.

Would I ‘inhale’ a 150$ dinner at a fancy resturant? Spend 200$ on a concert ticket to sit in the bar and come out to see only the final act? Just like everyone else, I dropped ~60$ on this title and hoped to get 2w-1mo of play time enjoyment out of it.

Considering most of the content of the game can be played without Rare or Exotic gear (I did not buy any until I reached Lvl70) I often wondered what exactly Gold was really needed for and while Rare and Exotic gear makes the game easier, I think all it represents is a ‘micro transaction’ or chance to ‘grind’ at late or end game.

Actually if I were to find one I’d sell it on the TP for the cost of a Legendary. After all, until where the location/boss of it is generally known there would be only ONE in game.

Currently those looking for it have found ‘0’ of them in game so ‘Final Rest’ is rarer than a Legendary.

Anakin.9765:

You’re not judging ESO a little early on, are you? It seems people are expecting a game like Oblivion or Skyrim, but online with tons of people. This is not what they’re doing. This is not something they can do.

It is an MMO. To make such a series into an MMO, they will have to sacrifice many things. You’ll have the story, you’ll have some Elder Scrolls spice, but you won’t have Skyrim.

This isn’t speculation, this has been brought up many times in news releases. They just recently realized the game would be nice with an optional first person view. I want the game to do well, don’t get me wrong, but it is not going to be what you described.

Also, if you feel GW2 forced you down a linear leveling path, I would find it hard to believe you have ever played another MMO.

Agreed.

The 1st thing I missed was the ‘rewind button’ (load save game) nope – no saving on a MMO, can’t replay that stupid thing you just did. Kill an NPC and they are dead FOREVER? Nope – can’t be done in a MMO. Actually NO changes to the gaming world can be done. Anything that you damage will respawn, story arc’s will replay like a broken record. A war destroyed a town? It will be back as new in a few hours (all respawned) The real heart breaker will be in the combat animations. (has anyone ever emulated good single player game combat animations well in a mmo? Ever?)
Forget having custom patches and a console to change game settings. If it does not have native Gamepad support I’ll steer clear of it.

I wondered what they’d do after Skyrim and its disturbing to think that ESO could be the end of a beloved series.

plasmacutter.2709:

Dead on. ANet should listen to this, it’s the general consensus of everyone who does not have a “lucky account” after the 11/15 patch.

I bought the game over the Thanksgiving weekend. I think I was up to a whole whooping 70s50c by the time I was Lvl70. All my gear was purchased at Karma vendors as the ‘death tax’ + equipment repairs was eating me alive. While I did not experience the ‘golden’ drop rates pre-patch, I’ll have to admit that I’ve played many titles that are as bad or worse than GW2. (and there’s no good reason they had to be that way ether)

I think Anet realizes that if you don’t have a friendly group of people (friends, strangers or guild) to ‘carry’ you through the dungeons and if you don’t ‘farm’ your going to be in a mixture of white/blue/green gear by the time you reach Lvl80. Unless of course you get your debit card out. While its been proven that at least 1 AC path can be done ‘naked’, most of the game (and the players in it) tend to want the best gear.

Leamas.5803:

I have a trivia question for you…what’s the longest running video game tile in history? I’ll give you a hint…it was an adventure game series that started in 1977 and had no graphics at all, it spawned 13 sequels/spin-offs, most recently in 2009, with a short-lived MMO. Good writing and lore is what propels a game that long…not graphics. I can’t speak for the MMO since I didn’t play it, but the other games I played in the series were excellent….and you actually had to think.

I’m not saying any of this applies to GW2, as I actually find the writing in GW2 decent for what it is, not a lot of thinking, but it’s not that kind of game. However, to imply games today are any better than the games of old is just plain incorrect, unless all you’re after is graphics. Most games I play today are shallow and lack any real depth to their underlying stories. Unfortunately, this is the game industry of today and options are limited. Luckily, there is a thriving retro gaming industry as well as many great games can be bought for pennies at places like eBay, Value Village and garage sales. I actively collect PS-One, PS2, PS3, Wii and Nintendo Gamecube games as well having a huge collection of 80s-90s PC games.

The first computer game I played was ‘Adventure’ compiled to run on “Reality” by Microdata(Pick OS) in 80-81, my 1st computer purchased at “Toys-r-Us” – A VIC20 which generally fell to the wayside when I picked up a surplus VT131. The VT got used on my 1st ‘real’ computer a PDP11/23 that sits in my garage. I played ZorkI/II/III on that. I finally broke down and bought an AT-Clone in the late 80’s.

The only game I can think of is the “Ultima” series which I played alot of until getting stuck on a ‘Underworld’ spin off somewhere between a rock and lava.

Yes, developers did actually include something more than a ‘pamphlet’ in those days and I can fondly recall some all night dungeon crawls. We’ve come a long way.

Personally I play games for entertainment. I like good looking 1st person 3D graphics and proper 5.1 sound. While I like a good story it won’t save ugly graphics. I’ll play FPS, Action, Adventure and RPG games. I may not finish all the games that I buy. There still are a few duds on the market and some I just don’t like the play.

In the last year I likely logged more hours on Skyrim than any other title. The drop rate (like GW2) sucked but the crafting made up for it. The two features I liked about GW2 is level labeling and the dynamic leveling. Something that the single player market could take hints from. Decent writing and acceptable voice acting coupled with graphics that I could push into a beautiful stereoscopic 3D along with full 5.1 sound it was awe inspiring.

Right before GW2 I’d suffered through Borderlands2. The most Chickenkitten mechanics I’d ever played. Like GW2 areas were labeled and everything would respawn behind you and death cost you in game cash, however they seemingly always tossed in a random ‘one shot kill’ that would pop out of nowhere along with the cruddy drops, the surprisingly decent writing and story behind it (and 1/2 way decent ‘artsy’ graphics) did not save the horrid game play mechanics. I did finish it.

I fondly recall ‘Lydia’ and I spending 6hrs one Friday evening clearing Aftland in Skyrim. Talk about a long crawl. The GW2 dungeons mostly require a team, over leveling and over equipping and multiple attempts unless some members of the team are experienced and ether ‘carry’ or explain how to combat the encounters. Until GW2 I’d never heard of such a thing. Getting a ‘guide book’ or searching a ‘wiki’ for instructions is taboo for this old school player.

While GW2 has some good points, its far from perfect. After some good aging it might be worth picking up again if its still around in a year or two. Until then there are way to many titles that I want to experience.

silvermember.8941:

I play multiple games as well. I don’t believe in dedicating your life to only one game. variety is the spice of life, with so many greats why only play one game.
As a result of guild wars 2 have a backlog of 10 games and after I get over my “dungeon phase” I am going back to other games (right now I am playing fire emblem).

My sig is from years of watching MMO players make that mistake. They get excited about a game, call it the greatest thing since slice bread, once they play it they praise it more then after they play enough of it, they complain how it was disappointing. Now usually, its not a problem until you realize instead of admitting that they dreamed up or hype the game in their minds and move on, they stay and QQ all day long. The worst part is, they don’t learn and will continue the cycle.

:) For years I’ve seen the same thing happen with single player games, lots of marketing hoopla before release, even glowing reviews and 15-30d afterwards the reality sets in – the title is missing some key elements that were hyped and the press simply overlooked countless things that broken in their reviews.

In the early days it was fairly common to get a ‘dud’ The paid reviews that the printed publications put out never really could be trusted and unless you waited for some trusted friends to try the title out 1st (they might be doing the same thing with you) you were left with the choice of taking a gamble or waiting. The internet, forums and open beta’s have helped – if you can wade through the ‘fanboys’ and the seemingly spoiled brats that complain about everything until they are blue in the fingers.

silvermember.8941:

I was there in orr when after the 5 day when people just grind and grind and did orr and CoF for hours straight.

Egads man!! (LOL!!) It took me almost 2 months of 2-4hrs a night to make it to Orr! (man I must play slow….. )

I think that the developers may have under estimated how quickly players can run through content. I think the ever lower drop rates will slow things down as well as if they rework the dungeons there will some delay as while players figure out the new mechanics. The new ‘guild quests’ sound interesting for those players and this title appears to have a dedicated development crew behind it that are devoted to making it better. I still think that crafting ought to be supported more and voice comm while in a dungeon instance would not be a bad thing.

IDK, I typically play through a dozen or more titles a year. Its very rare that a game will ‘grab’ me for more than a month. GW2 was one of the few that did.

(BTW: I like your sig….. too true….)

silvermember.8941:

Let me stop you right there. MMOs and single player games only have one real thing in common, they are both games. What works for single player games will not work for an MMO, every few things can translate well from a sp to an MMO.

The goal of any MMO is to stall you for as long as posible, while a single player is actually for you to have fun, not to say MMO are not fall. But MMO are not designed for instant gratification because it will far apart.

I think the ‘goal’ of just about every title I’ve played is to offer some repeatability and ‘value’ for the purchase. (the only ‘stall’ as you’d call it is from subscription based theme parks) I picked up this title for the ‘RPG’ and ‘action’ aspect. No ‘instant gratification’ needed. (after all, thats what ‘Angry Birds’ is for and that genera is not the discussion)

Leamas.5803:

MaRko.3165:

When it comes to ‘loot’, I think there ought to be more raw materials dropped then finished items. This would energize the crafting in the game. ‘Rare’ and ‘Exotic’ items need to be just that – rare and exotic – the drop rates for these things ought to be poor.

This would be a first step in helping crafting, but they also need to bring prices down in the TP so that crafting is worthwhile. Currently for many, or perhaps a majority of craftable items, it’s more profitable to sell the mats and buy the item you want, especially if those mats are one of the required items for legendaries.

With the exception of a handful, most exotics require ecto…where does that ecto come from? Mostly rares since I expect most people sell exotics and just buy ecto with the profit. No rare drops means no ecto, unless you craft rares specifically to salvage (I once heard this might be considered an exploit), or buy them. At 15 T5 mats to make one rare, it can take quite some time to farm with these drop rates. Since it’s been nerfed it’s only a small chance of getting ecto from the rare. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten ecto from a salvaged rare, even before the nerf and I used to salvage lots to recover upgrades. The 7 ecto I have all came from 3 exotics I salvaged to get the upgrades back.

As for exotics that do not require ecto, say the lodestone weapons. Well, lodestones drop so incredibly infrequently that it could take many months of farming, more, if you’re unlucky like me, to get the 30 lodestones required. While I have unsuccessfully tried farming destroyer lodestones, in approximately 600 hours of play, I have never had a lodestone or a core drop of any kind…ever. You’re more likely to gather the ~40G required to buy the mats long before gathering 30 lodestones…which is fine I guess, unless your loot drops are so bad overall that it takes several days to make one gold. Then, unless you have the level 400 crafting skill, you still need to find someone you trust to make it for you.

Thats sad really. I had a blast with the crafting in Skyrim. Not only were mats easy to find but you could make items WAY more powerful than what you could purchase or find in the game. This was the underlying incentive to get into crafting – better gear!

In GW2 its cheaper to just buy what you want rather than make it. There’s no incentive to make it yourself as the items you craft are just as good as drops.

Personally I think they should just remove Legendary weapons from the game or have them be very rare drops like “Final Rest” is. I can’t belief how many people are ‘grinding away’ for the mats/precursor just to have one.

Monday night or Tuesday I’ll be playing Crysis3. While this game was ‘fun’, I’m not quite sure I like the inherent limitations and mechanics that the MMO genera offers and those presently out weigh the positives.

If I look at the current ‘combo fields’ the ones I’ve looked at don’t work with the auto attack. So the non-auto’s were scaled down as they could be used with combo fields.

Granted with attacks and combo-fields having all their own timers and cool downs you can’t always have a combo field so this can only be used for short burst damage and your auto attacks will end up having higher DPM.

So its, lay down combo field – pop special attacks, switch to auto while waiting for special attacks CD or longer for combo field CD (or switch weapon sets) then rinse repeat.

IndigoSundown.5419:

MaRko.3165:

Personally, I blame the ‘farmers’. If everyone were just playing the game ‘normally’ then the DR’s could be adjusted UP so everyone could enjoy. However since there’s a percentage of players abusing content by ‘farming’ it, Anet has no choice but to lower the drop rate for everyone because of the abuse of the few.

I dislike the idea of DR as much as the next person, but seriously… you blame people for playing the way they want? Farming is abusing content? Why is “your” way of playing “normal” and other peoples’ way of playing “abuse?” I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that people can play GW2 “the way they want to.”

If you want to play a ‘farming’ game there’s “Farmville”, otherwise the term has no place in a video game play ‘style’.

Its simple really, unless players wish to deal with uncontrolled inflation there needs to be a limit to how much gold is ‘in the game’. Gold going into (drops) the game needs to be less than or equal to Gold taken out of the game.

Those that focus their game play ‘style’ on extracting as much riches out of the game as possible just shift those riches out of the hands of the many into the hands of the few. This limits the amount of riches available to other players.

I could understand that this is more of a ‘style of play’ rather than abuse if Anet has not constantly ‘nerfed’ the DR of popular ‘farming’ events and locations.

I may be one of the ‘unlucky’ ones but by simply playing the game I may net a few silver a day. I don’t ‘farm’.

This game has two aspects that encourage Anet to keep the DR down. The 1st is inflation – if everyone were ‘rich’ prices would go up. Second is the GEM Store. If earning Gold in game is difficult/frustrating it encourages you to spend real money for in game cash.

Personally, I blame the ‘farmers’. If everyone were just playing the game ‘normally’ then the DR’s could be adjusted UP so everyone could enjoy. However since there’s a percentage of players abusing content by ‘farming’ it, Anet has no choice but to lower the drop rate for everyone because of the abuse of the few.

While they’ve attempted to put in place mechanics that discourage ‘BOTS’ it is difficult for them to target farming without effecting ‘normal’ human activity playing the game.

There is a very good chance that “Last Rest” (and other items) have dropped many times and the players (not knowing that it was rare/special) tossed it in the MF, vendored or destroyed it.

Given that not all professions would have any use for it AND when/if dropped nothing in game points out that its especially ‘rare’ or ‘unique’, I think this is likely the case.

(I tossed a ‘Lover’ back in the MF once for this very reason)

As far as MMO’s go I think GW2 will fair well, there are enough ‘innovative features’ to keep players interested, until of course something better comes out (it is 2013 after all).

When it comes to ‘loot’, I think there ought to be more raw materials dropped then finished items. This would energize the crafting in the game. ‘Rare’ and ‘Exotic’ items need to be just that – rare and exotic – the drop rates for these things ought to be poor.

The long term playability boils down to the competitive modes or how much fun you had leveling a toon in PvE mode.

Here’s where the ‘split’ comes, if the #1 reason your playing GW2 is because its a MMO and you enjoy playing with/against others then you might stick around until something better comes out. If however the #1 reason you purchased GW2 is because of the ‘RPG’ or ‘Action’ nature (and the mmo aspect is ignored or idk) there is a constant stream of new single player titles in which GW2 would have difficulty competing with for your game play time.

Since I’m a member of the later camp, come Tuesday Feb 19th I know what game I’ll be playing.

Hummm…. this gives me an idea (or two)…… if repair costs+wp is 1s50c-3s after defeat from a Risen Monster I wonder how much ‘death by Spiky Fruit’ might cost?

“I can also confirm that it has a very low drop rate, so running the event 5 times or 10 times proves nothing.”

So its very likely that whatever chest that has it is not played very often or often enough to have dropped it. “very low” < 100, 500, 1000, 10000 openings?

Whoever finds one I bet could sell it for 2x a Legendary. It being ‘one of a kind’ after all.

Simply put – after you have enough GPU power to handle your screen resolution the limiting factor for GW2 becomes your CPU.

There are players which have very fast CPU’s and a single GTX460 cards getting what they might consider ‘acceptable performance’ with the rigs. GW2 requires good CPU ‘single thread performance’.

While Nvidia’s SLI supports more titles than I’ve played, at my current rate of 2wk-2mo a title I’ve gone through a few dozen titles in the last few years, all of which were ran in SLI/3DVision mode.

I will however mention that I’ve steered clear of upgrading to Kepler GPU boards because of issues some driver versions/games have sometimes had with SLI setups.

In my personal experience, using 2 570’s in SLI enhances my 3DVision frame rate over using a single card alone.

VOLKON.1290:

azazil.9541:

Yes i can admit GW2 is not bad mmo with some serious issues like any other new/beta software but still can playable.

Anyway we’ll see when the Elder Scrolls Online hit the market, tbh i’m waiting it very solicitously.

It’s funny… I enjoyed Skyrim quite a bit, but I’m leery of ESO. It’ll be so easy to screw that up in an MMO environment that even if I felt like playing another game I’d still wait a few months for a shaking out period first.

While many hard core RPG’ers would say that TES games get more ‘watered down’ with each iteration I enjoyed the fact I was not creating spreadsheets while deciding on gear and abilities. I actually simply played the game as I wanted to and got +400hrs of entertainment out of it.

Imagine being able to craft armor and weapons orders of magnitude more powerful than what could be bought or found as drops in the game, having targets that give a SPECIFIC type of damage that you could gear up to negate, being able to deal specific damage that some targets were especially sensitive to or even MAKING a target sensitive to the type of damage you have equipped?

Marry a TES game with ‘dynamic leveling’ (IMHO: the ONLY enduring feature of GW2 brings to the table) and then you’ve got something.

Over the years just about everyone has gotten the let down from the marketing hype of one title or another. When it comes to TESO I’m not holding my breath.

Most would agree ‘choice’ is a good thing however unless its simply an illusion of choice.

Given the CHOICE between trying to kill something with a wet noodle or sword most folks would pick the sword. See – there was a ‘choice’ but in reality there was no choice.

‘Depth’ in combat means there is more than one way to beat a target. In GW2 there is direct damage and condition damage. Unless condition damage alone could bring down a target in the same (or less) time then direct damage there is no depth as its simply a matter of melee or ranged direct damage.

I like where someone above eluded to ‘all OP’ choices.

When configuring my player, at any given tier I may be presented with 5 ‘choices’. However, much like many political elections in the US my ‘choice’ boils down to ‘which of these traits suck LESS’ rather than ‘I really want ALL of these but have to decide on ONE’.

I’ve never played PvP or PvW so my experience is strictly in PvE where ‘depth’ comes down to 1-3 professions spamming DPS.

What we are missing is not ‘roles’ but ‘team work’ options.

The ‘L2P’ has boiled down to everyone (outside of noobs) knowing that most (if not all) of their ‘special abilities’ are fairly to mostly useless in PvE and completely useless in dungeons. Mechanics are nothing more than ‘learn to dodge’ and ‘deal high DPS’.

If my professions abilities could make a difference or if when combined with 1-3 other players/professions abilities we together could make a difference don’t you think those of us playing the ‘less popular’ or ‘weaker’ professions would be teaming up and using them?

Anything outside of pure DPS is ‘nerfed’ in PvE to maintain ‘balance’ in PvP/PvW.

IMHO: All classes abilities should be balanced so that any PvE Dungeon path that a good Warrior can solo can also be soloed by a good player of any other class.

Then we’d have real depth.

The team – after a special combination of hits (made from multiple professions) knocks the boss down then one or more professions lay down combo fields for them all to blast 1/4 of the boss’s health away before retreating into a ‘dodge until skills recharge’ tactic and doing it again. (this sounds like fun)

Instead we get – spam DPS until boss drops.

So if all party members only had access to ONE knockdown on a 30sec timer – hit once – wait 30sec – hit 5 times – wait…. how long does the effect last? < 5sec?

‘Illusion of depth’

Coming from a ‘single player game’ perspective I almost fall out of my chair each time I hear that there are games that actually expect players to ‘compete’ for resource nodes! OMG! Really? (like I’m going to rush out and buy THAT… (NOT!) laughs uncontrollably…)

I would not of even considered installing GW2 had it not been for the many innovations and non-subscription nature of it. I’ve since installed PS2 and TSW as GW2 has fostered an idea that the MMO genera might be kinda fun after all.

Back on topic – at this point I could not imagine playing any of the ‘old school’ MMO’s and while some of the ‘yucky’ game play mechanics might be buried in reviews and user comments and there fore hard to find and make a purchasing decision on we all have GW2 to thank for pushing the industry in a positive direction.

Games are designed to cater to the majority of the player base, not the bottom 20% and not the top 20%.

They COULD of created something so darn hard and challenging that only 0.5% of the player base could possibly have the skills and knowledge to execute it. Someone would eventually figure it out. Of course to prove their accomplishment, they’d publish a youtube video of the feat.

Shortly afterwards others would attempt to repeat the feat using the same or similar techniques. Before long maybe the top 5% of the player population has accomplished the feat.

While 95% of the population still has not (or is able to) accomplish this ‘goal’ what does the 5% that did do now?

When your finished with the game as designed you ether design your own personal challenges or find another game.

Asglarek.8976:

Midnightjade.3520:

Agree with the OP strongly. I can’t log in to FFXI anymore after 8 years of play, because all I can see is the old fashioned gameplay. After GW2 I just can’t stand it – the gameplay is much too restrictive.

I also note that LOTRO and other MMOs are taking up ideas from GW2 piecemeal, and the trend is even starting to bleed into single player RPGs.

Hats off to the developers – paradigm shift in the genre. Well done!

Shift was with the launch of Age of Conan, aoc’s combat system is far superior to GW2, their art detail is far superior aswell not to mention The Secret World although not my type of mmo it too pushes the boundaries alot further imo than does gw2.

I installed TSW after I started getting bored here. A bit darker visually and story wise. There actually IS a story, everything seems to ‘mesh’ much more completely. I have not made it out of the ‘start area’ quite yet, still trying to milk my $$ worth out of GW2.

I likely loose $15 simply falling out of my pocket a month. Up until recently I had a Netfix account that I never used – was playing games not watching movies.

The point here is not the cost – its what your getting for it.

Graphics – I like the artwork in this game. I’m more of an adventurer so I might spend more time just looking around and taking 3D screen shots then most.

Combat – Where on earth did they get this from? Old arcade games? Coming from single player games the combat has ALOT to be desired but I understand the limits of the animation and online environment.

Depth – Outside of food items, there really is no use for crafting in this game. Other games would allow you to craft weapons/armor/potions orders of magnitude more powerful than anything that could be bought/found in the game.

Sure, many games will have targets with high resistance to direct damage and high health bars, the idea here is that you need to make smart use of your skills. The problem is that direct DPS is the only valid skill in this game. We have professions that can set up combo fields and others that can make use of them but the duration and combined result is laughable compared to other professions direct damage DPS. So much for team work.

Speaking of team work – just about every FPS game I own has a ‘multiplayer’ mode also has in game voice comm. Your team having difficulty? Everyone says to ‘communicate’ and ‘work out a plan’ however without the in game tools to do that – not so much.

GW2 got great reviews and lots of awards for ‘pushing the envelope’ of mmo games. If this is ‘state of the art’ I shudder to think what the other mmo games are like and will likely stick to single player games in the future.

No, not worth the money that naturally falls out of my pocket each month.

I’m currently playing PvE with Owl/River Drake. The ‘quickening screech’ is fairly useful and even without F2 the Drake can solo most mobs. (lay out a bonfire and let him use his blast finisher… enough said)

A well designed game will give the player at least 1 if not multiple ways to mitigate damage. While GW2 only has ‘dodge’ other games might give you race traits, profession skills or utilities that could be learned or simply specialized armor.

It is very rare that game designers can or will create game play mechanics that appeal to the top 5-10% of the gaming community as once a solution is learned they will undoubtedly want something else even harder. Creating a never ending black hole of difficulty.

As the ‘naked AC path x’ video shows, its always been easy enough to gimp yourself and your team to make encounters more challenging and there are plenty of professions that are deemed weak or underpowered that can provide limitless challenge to gifted players.

With countless methods to reach a goal there will undoubtedly always be an ‘easy’ way. Complaints of it can’t be cured with a software patch as the underlying problem is on the other side of the keyboard.

Exposing issues here or elsewhere won’t fix the broken underlying mindset that if the classes are ‘balanced’ in PvP or WvW they are also balanced in PvE.

Current popular thinking in PvE boils down to only three professions are remotely useful (one high DPS profession is most valued) and the rest (including Ranger) are fairly useless and more of a liability than an asset to any team.

Unspecified.9142:

Sorean.5379:

@Unspecified

Why Drakes are broken? Broken as in OP or broken because some skill just don’t work?
I’m glad I don’t like them,they are clumsy and have 0 cool looking factor. :P

Drakes currently don’t use any attacks other than their auto-attack. No blast finisher, no bite to self heal. I meant broken as in buggy broken obviously. If they actually used their skills they might be better but it’s hard to say.

Their F2 abilities also have some serious issues hitting but that can be overcome in various ways.

Umm… Drakes were fixed in the last patch. They will now regularly cycle through their skills on auto attack. (INCLUDING their ‘Tail Swipe’ which is indeed a Blast finisher)

They are awesome on mobs – that Tail Swipe alone can damage multiple targets for more damage than any of the birds do on a single target.

Hey, sounds great – count me in.

We have trenchcoats and then we have trenchcoats. Which would you prefer? LOL

I actually had my toon go around pant/shoeless for a while to remind myself it actually had legs under there somewhere.

The designers of the medium armor must have an anti-leg fetish.

Try the Axe. It has the uncanny ability to bounce from a visible to an invisible target.
(both targets need to be within range of its bounce)