Guild Wars 2

This forums right here suddenly stretched all over the screen to the very borders, made it hard to scroll trough on my Surface because I accidently clicked on the titles when swiping down. Now I know why that suddenly happened.

Excelsior.

I also totally dislike this weird mashup of GuildWars, Barbie Fairytopia and cheap iOS minigame stuff. But except for huge, beast-like cats “wearing” gigantic wings I think it’s almost okay. Have you seen what SquareEnix brought into FF14 with this awkward Yokai-Watch event? YoshiP and Yokai dude are best friends, so they added that poor man’s Pokémon into that game. It’s totally out of hands.

Excelsior.

I work in a store and the worst thing is when customers are not sure what to buy and then go like “I don’t really know, I do everything”. I mean, we didn’t move a single bit in helping your decision.

I, for example, do casual PvE 100% on my own, I am a Thief/Daredevil and soon hopefully a Deadeye. But that is totally my personal choice. I don’t even play these classed to their limits, I put aesthetics above damage numbers.

Let’s face it: You gotta figure it out all by yourself

Excelsior.

There are no mini salads because it’s not how Sylvari reproduce.
It’s on the field with a lot of sun and then there is harvest time. Oh wait, that was lettuce..

And we Asura value family very much and would never be so irresponsible to take our children onto the battlefield. The Moas, boars and weird Hylek at Metrica Province are already enough to learn about dangerous fauna.

Excelsior.

Well, I can’t rate it totally yet since the stress test is very simulated gameplay, but after initially not really being interested in Deadeye, I had a showerthought about it again and immediately felt a burning interest. You must understand, I like to hide and lie in wait of someone. As kid, I usually hid in bushes to ambush my friends on whatever dumb games we played and such, nowadays I enjoy Splinter Cell, Dishonored, heck even my last Teemo game in League of Legends consisted of trapping enemy Buffs and easily waiting 2 minutes for their Xin Zhao to get killed by me. Since I am alone in GW2 and enjoying the whole Thief class, I eventually figured out, Deadeye might be THE elite specialization.

I think I’d give it a 7+10, because right now it feels a bit too clunky and odd, but I might get used to it.

Things I like:

• The two layers of the rifle: The “regular” use of the GW2 rifle. Lower damage, lower precision, but still fine for fighting off some annoying foes before able to change weapons (e.g. cooldowns). The kneeling roots me of course, but now I trade in what this profession is good for.

• Thanks to previous updates and expansions – mostly gliding – the levels might be designed with many elevated spots for me to sit on and snipe down from.

• Thief is still a totally awesome profession. Unlike other games, that turn everything into cheesy Naruto ninjas or generic “rogues”, the Thief profession has – surprisingly – many facets.

The sitting and sniping was a part that interested me the most. A game like GW2 with a stationary character shooting enemies from a safe distance with a rifle? Would ArenaNet allow that? As Engineer, I tried to kill a Dolyak 5 meter below me with the mortar. No dice, I was out of range for it, so it gained out-of-combat health regeneration. That was what I was afraid of.

During the stress test, I could shoot the spiders from a far distance without them getting their health reset. Actually, I shot one of them, it survived but wandered out of range. When it came back, I fired 3 rounds at it and finished it off. That made me smile and giggle out of excitement. ^^ Not sure if the malice stacks are kept when they leave my range. Weird thing is that the foe I shot did not bother to come after me, probably I was out of “care” range? That’d be some mad stuff and pretty nasty. But probably just luck or whatever, need more testing.

What I hope would be scenarios, where I could stand in safe distance and slow but steady thin out enemies from above. It worked in the stresstests, but mostly on more or less even places. I guess the range is calculated in an a sphere, so when I am at the center, Z and X/Y axis might be important, not sure. But if it keep working like it did in my brief tests, that’ be super awesome to me. I imagine situations like this:

After the night ends in Verdant Brink, there are those 40 wolves and other guys spawning in the pact camp, and usually people drop like flies there because they get overwhelmed. I usually watched the show from above by gliding one level down until I also could join the fight. Maybe in situations like these, I could snipe down from above and not only participate, but also help downed mates without risking my own death. Or the ledges you can glide on near pact camps. What I expect however is: Out of range, enemy health regeneration or something else like this. Even though I’d like the imagination of killing those Mordem healers and wolves with sniper bullets before joining the fights with cold steel in melee…. Drools

But being alone and getting rid of certain enemies first from a safe distance would be nice, but as said, I wonder if aNet would allow that.

If yes, then Deadeye would probably rate as 9 or 10, since it’s a great addition to my previous melee gameplay.

Things I dislike so far:

• Kneeling feels odd and not responsive (e.g. double-tapping move buttons should get me up)
• That weird and useless kneel stealth. What is that for?
• The sound effects!!
• The new steal mechanic is super dull. Previously, I actually stole something, now it is like I had psy powers or something: “Hgggnnnn…. I just stole… these boons from you!”
• More of this lame “Shadow” excuse. Everything’s shadow: Shadow this, Shadow that. The shadow apparently solves everything for thieves, but isn’t there other motivation, sometimes even just sheer bloodlust when stabbing or shooting with dual-wield pistols/daggers? Nope, “da shadowz”.. Yikes.

GRANTED: I have no actually looked into builds. I simply forgot about it^^
Also, the German game says “Scharfschütze”, “Sharpshooter/Sniper”, so that’s what I take it for.

Excelsior.

As thief, assassin and hopefully will-be sharpshooter, anonymity and being stealthed is a must. No bling bling, no titles, no minis, no mates, no mickey mouse BS.

During combat, it’s the Sneakthief outfit, as it can hide my weapons and leaves enough freedom of movement for any combat and stealing, yet providing defense.

Out of combat and/or in situations when I know what to expect, the Noble set (a.k.a. “The Hitman”) is being worn, because thieves are not necessarily unshaved, bad-smelling thugs from the gossip, but can also be charmin gentlemen.

When I am really in the mood, I am turning into a ghost – quite literally – and blend perfectly with the shadows.

EDIT: Weapons are darksteal pistols and the whisperer’s daggers (because they curl together and can be hidden [clipping into clothes] with both armor sets of my choice). I honestly like it when I am basically just wearing Sneakthief/Noble stuff and when drawing weapons, my Asura suddenly pulls out two guns or blades from his coat. From full unsuspicious to armed.

I think there is also a Winchester-like rifle out there (I had it on my engineer) which would be the next weapon with PoF because it has a dark wood/steel mix. I used the regular pistols before but they were pretty shiny when in certain light settings (duh) so I went darksteel. I love their sound, it’s this cold steel when drawing blades and the dirty sound of gunpowder at the darksteel firearms.

Colours are Shadow Abyss (black) and grey. Sneakthief is supposed to be fully pitch black (yet you can still see the textures on it, luckily this happens to the leather armors) and the Noble set has the white Jabot thingy anyways for contrast.

Also, I really like the Charr in here. We need a bit more cats!

Excelsior.

I am also solo and except for that last mission in Orr that required a party, I have had no trouble so far. The only frustration is the AI, when literally 25 enemies gang up on you while the NPC around are basically just idling. It worked eventually, but still…

tairneanach.8427:

Fallesafe.5932:

You can’t enjoy the game or become immersed in it unless you identify on a fairly deep level with your character.

Maybe you can’t, but this doesn’t go for everyone. And while I know this is an old, old argument, I’ve never seen anyone actually answer this to my satisfaction: How the heck are you able to more easily identify with an Asura, a Charr or a Sylvari than the opposite gender?

Because species have nothing to do with gender?
All playable species have both genders. And both share masculine and feminine aspects: Voice, body builts (does this word exist? Hey, I am German after all^^), clothes. So of course I can immerse with my male Asura wearing male clothes, having a male voice and wearing boxershorts when undressed – that is 100% me in real life as well. At least I can’t remember the last time I had breasts and required a bra when at the public swimming pool and I also may use the right restrooms if I don’t want to get booted by the restaurant manager or sued by the the real ladies that are understandingly not pleased with a guy in the women’s restroom.

Pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Excelsior.

I am very happy with my stealing, stabbing, shooting and soon sniping Thief.
But trying to calm down things is literally impossible. It’s a ragefest in these threads and any sort of de-escalation is like putting one single, unarmed cop into a drug ghetto. You won’t last long.

Especially since every thread revolves around PvP. Even basic threads derail into “But class X is better against us” after 2 posts even though the thread itself was very basically spoken and had loosely to do with comparisions about other professions.

Excelsior.

I have not heard the sound or seen the Mini (nor other players because I rarely are in crowded places) but from what I read in your post, mostly that you get angry at people having that minion activated, makes sense because I have a sickness that makes me getting angry and aggressive within 10 seconds to the person emitting those sounds: Eating/chewing sounds. When the wet food is being chewed and thrown around in the mouth. In the staff break room I can just eat with headphones, because it makes me angry and also call my colleagues bad stuff in my head – I mean, really bad stuff. I don’t want to say it loud, so I always listen to music. When I am at my parents house and we watch TV, suddenly my dad comes with a plate of tomatoes, apples and bread. I immediately have to leave and I am getting angry at him for just being about to eat, let alone the noises. This disease is triggered during random leal life situations and often won’t go away anymore. Maybe it’s the same with your problem with the mini, maybe a different perspective.

So, everyone just disliking the sound effects or people getting triggered the disease called Misophonia like me, a mute option would be really great.

Excelsior.

I also feel a bit strange playing MMORPGs with a different gender.
My Asura twins (Zedekk and Zedexx) as well as my Lalafell in FF14 are all male.

In other games, I have no problem, in Dishonored 2 for example, Emily has 30hrs playtime, Corvo 0 seconds. In LoL I main Ashe and Tristana. But there the lore is built around them. Here I am a guy, and even though I like the evilness of the female Asura, I would not even think about playing something else than a male one. Plus, I avoid MMO games with genderlock for said reasons.

Me and my characters share a lot. I mean, they share my attitude for example, because I am the same as in real life. And unlike many video gamers, my character reflect my style as well in terms of clothing, I am actually wearing (trench) coats and leather gloves, just like my Asura in his “noble” set. And we are both male. It’d be “wrong” somehow if I’d play a female character in this game.

Excelsior.

I made this request already 2 years ago when I innitially started. The engineer brought me into the game after seeing some female Asura Engineer and literally a month before I joined they removed the backpack.

As someone here said, I also liked the medikit backpack. There is a quest in Core Tyria where you got to pick up a medikit and get out and revive NPC, it look really cool and still fit into the fantasy theme. The flamethrower for example looks goofy without the backpart. The liquid of flamethrowers last like 30 seconds with tanks on a back, the huge “stick”-like weapon would last like 3 seconds. Or the medikit has just the weird spray things on your hand, but where are the stimulations and bandages are coming from magically?

I would be so for bringing that back (pack).

In the stress test I was really happy with Deadeye, thankfully it’s a part of my profession anyways. It really fits my gameplay preferences.

Excelsior.

In that weird light setting, my right eye looks really strange. This is simply because it might catch a certain beam of (virtual) light, and this also happens ingame, but then, I just turn. Here, both my test Asura had a strange-looking right eye.

Excelsior One vs. The World,

also, the socket generation (AM4) is just starting while any affordable Intel CPU (which is most likely “just” a Quad Core) uses the 1151 socket – almost obsolete already. I’ve read so deep into the topic it made my head spin.

Yes, Intel CPU revv their cores up to 4.5 GHz (stock core), and yes, GW2 profits from that. Or my favourite freeware PhotoEditor. Also, many games, but that is actually the fault of the developers, and, as said, many already announced future AMD, octacore and Ryzen support.

About future intel CPU, yes, the previous generation i7s are good CPU indeed, but I’d be worried if every new i7 has only synthetic (read as: everday’s life users see no difference) benefits, yet cost twice the amount? For the next good octacore, you pay €1.000. Sorry, no. The c’t magazine I was mentioning before also said the Threadripper rips Intel apart, they even put it as cover story. If it’s “just another CPU from AMD”, they would not do that. Competition has begun again indeed, my last real and beloved AMD was in 1999, the AMD K6-2 (350 MHz) and later an Athlon. Since then, AMD failed a lot, but they did it yet again and raised from the ashes.

Right now it’s like this:
Intel i7 consumer chips:
Gaming: Very good! Programs/Productivity/Workstation: Okay

AMD Ryzen 7 consumer chips:
Gaming: Good! Programs/Productivity/Workstation: Very good!

As said, if you do just gaming, there is no way around an intel CPU (and no need for anything else). For me, as hobby filmer and video editor, there was not even a question.

I love my Ryzen, I can do video rendering, playing GW2, Demuxing a Let’s Play playlist in jDownloader all at the same time. 80% CPU load, no micro stutter, no performance issues. I was almost going for a i7 7700K, but THANK GOD, the store I was about to order it from screwed up and we had no business together. Then THANK GOD again, I read about the Ryzen.

The Ryzen with its 8 cores and (basically any) GTX 1080 are 2 great power houses working together. The NVENC (nVidia encoder) and the sheer power for any graphic/video related tasks and the CPU which is the first time of my life not bottlenecking.

In short: If you like raw power, there is no reason NOT to choose the Ryzen as your CPU. If you want to save a bit of money, you can try the Ryzen 1700 and overclock it to 3.8 GHz. You lose warranty though, that’s why I went for the “official” 3.8 GHz and bought the “X” (1700X).

I can render a full HD video in Magix Video Deluxe, have the browser with flash plugins open, record the whole thing meanwhile in OBS, have League of Legends open and GW2 at the same time (Window mode eats ressources, but usually I just get like 40 fps there, not just 30fps like in Window mode) and still, the CPU is at 55°C and 77.3% usage. And all of those programs just run like they are the only task open.

A turbo mode’d i7 and their 4 cores would already be out of competetion. Yes, there is a 6-core out there which is on par, but the price twice as much for the same result, also way hotter due to TDP issues. Some other guy also said that AMD pushed the (current) possibilities very hard with the Ryzen series, comparably low wattage (and thus heat) while sporting such power.

EDIT: Oh, I wondered why the Charakters often had blurred outfits. I just saw on the screenshot I have High-Res textures unchecked… ^^

Excelsior.

Sorudo above me probably slept the last half year, but with Ryzen, AMD kicks intel’s kitten . People and (trustworthy) magazines are very satisfied with the Ryzen. The previous models (Bulldozer and all the FX chips were indeed terrible). Intel played the monopolist and kept the prices of any hexa- and octacore artificially high. Then Ryzen came, boom. Many compilers also screw over AMD CPUs by leaving out instructions for AMD CPU, which is not a fault. Several companies already announced Ryzen support incoming.

I have a Ryzen 7 1700X and a GTX1080. I run the game on high setting, except for anti aliasing, because I enjoy the crisp look. Also, if you want much bang for your buck, go Ryzen 7, no matter which one. You will LOVE it. If you are 100% into gaming, go Intel, because games often use Single core / less threads and the turo boost of the Intel CPU are very good, but then, I rather have slightly slower cores, but twice the amount, because properly programmed programs will profit heavily from the 16 threads. I speak out of own experience. Rendering videos while doing other CPU intensive task with no problems – Ryzen. Also, about “overheating”, no, Surodo, that’s also wrong. The TDP (Thermal Design Power) of a Ryzen is spot-on (Germany’s renowned tech magazine “c’t” even said that, even their Threadripper CPU are great in that department). So please, stop talking nonsense. :-)

Full load (100% CPU usage, 8 cores revved up) on my Ryzen is 65°C (with a beQuiet Dark Rock CPU cooler).

Excelsior.

After getting more and more forum posts removed 2 years ago for no actual reasons, I was so upset I ranted in a ticket and that I did not want an automated response by a computer nor a pre-written text module but a human person. The response was from Gaile and it was like “Hi, I am Gaile, and I am a human” or something like that. Since that I knew this company has actual staff and the freedom of their boss to talk to us customers/humans/asura instead of pushing out meaningless, mind-numbing brackets of what they would probably call a customer “service”.

Have you tried to contact the Square Enix support in FF14? Full with pre-written text, none of them are helpful, it’s all over this “We are super, super, super, super, super, super², super³ sorry, but.. well, f.u. and suck it up” stuff. They never did sort ANY of my 4 problems out, I even had to cancel their SEPA agreement because their “support” would not deactivate debit payment for subscription renewal. Yes, they announced to charge me after quitting while I already played this beautiful game despite I told them to remove me from auto-renewal programs.. Nope, not even that happened.

In general, ArenaNet, the product (GW2) and everything around it is a real balm on the soul of any video gamer. I wish I could spend more money in gems to show my appreciation though, but there is nothing that suits an Asura thief…

A bit off-topic, but…

I am surely not adding anything to the stress test for you, but I tried Deadeye now in an PvE environment and I really like it. It was not my character with my clothes etc. (female Asura are so incredibly mean!) but it was so far exactly what I hoped for me. My showerthought became true. I waited on a ledge and waited for enemies casually coming into my 1.500 range and then shot them one by one from a safe distance, bigger enemies got marked first for some extra damage. For someone playing alone and enjoying this kind of gameplay in many other games (Splinter Cell, Dishonored, THIEF, …), this way of “thinning out” a flock of enemies before entering melee with my daggers was really fun and I also finally really understood the design decisions behind the whole thing. Very nice. I started to look out for ledges to get on immediately xD I can understand this elite might not suit many people, but for me, it does. For a lone wolf like I am, Deadeye is adding so much on many levels (gameplay, immersion, personal preferences.)

Now I wait until 22nd and see how it works out outside of any beta environment and how “easy” it is to achive hero points or whatever. So far I also like the textures and whatnot (could not participate on the first beta test). Very well spent money and quality-wise very well executed. I see many fun hours with this expansion for me :-)

Excelsior.

Gaile Gray.6029:

maekirvilemist.1286:

If the elite specs will indeed be available, that’d be nice so I can actually have a much more accurate test for my main since they will be spending most of their time in PvE anyways.

Also a thought, maybe given the limited time of this test, we should be put directly into Amnoon with the Raptor unlocked and the two masteries that could be unlocked during the preview weekend instantly unlocked for us so we can get straight to the nitty-gritty.

While I appreciate the suggestion, and I can see what motivated it, we really need those who want to participate to go through the process as if it was release day.

That makes sense. The whole FF14 fiasko (login-queues, crashes, bugs, angry players, etc.) happened because Square Enix screwed up with Stormblood and overloaded their duty finder – a requirement to actually start playing the expansion more or less.

(Thank god I quitted that mess 2 years ago and joined this great Krewe.. I mean, company!)

Excelsior.

Wow, I have like one week in 2 years late shift and it’s this week. So I can actually participate. I still want to try out the sharpshooter and hopefully they can enable it, whatever that means. I got into a bit of hype after having some showerthoughts that, unlike predicted at first, the Deadeye might be actually supporting my gameplay style. But then, I have no idea how it’ll work ingame. Getting a little bit of testing would be great.

Let’s see what will actually happen tomorrow.
(Also, please translate the time and date for several placed of this world, e.g. East Coast, West Coast, Europe, Australia, Russia. I know this is kittenA-based company, but this is the EN forums, that literally includes the whole world, else it’d be a NA forums like in League of Legends. Greetings from Germany though)

EDIT: I give up. “United Stated-based company”. Whatever I do, it’s always getting Charr’d. Kitten filter. Meow. Purr…

Watched the map in Verdant Brink to make out which direction the Itzel were and broke my neck because I moved without noticing and fell down a cliff onto a 150m deep ledge. I was in map mode anyways and could pick up a waypoint immediately..

Excelsior.

The game is badly optimized and outdated somewhat, it’s clear and simple.
Many people brought the core aspects up already and there is no point in beating the horse all over, but GW2 is the only game that did not get any benefits of my recent €2.400 PC upgrade… Which is somewhat a shame because it’s a big share of my PC gaming.

As video editor, I upgraded to a Ryzen, an Octacore. An incredible powermachine with awesome performance. Video rendering, using jDownloader (ressource hogging Java!) to Demux a Let’s Play playlist from Youtube, watch Videos on Youtube or playing a game meanwhile all at the same time: No problem, thanks to 8 cores – or better: 16 threads. GW2 however has zero improvements, because my Ryzen’s cores are 3.6 GHz average. Loading takes ages but when I look at my ressources, the game takes barely any ressources at all and I ask where’s that loading time going to. League of Legends for example loads for me in 15 seconds but uses 1.35 GByte of RAM. Too much, but reasonable for that loading time. RAM and VRAM in GW2 are not a problem. The only benefits I got compared to my i7-3770 I had before come from my GTX1080. It is sucking up some performance downgrades due to weaker (but more) cores I have now..

The network however is as stable as it can get. I had a few disconnects over the past years but all these lost their packets in a scandinavian node. Neither my ISP nor ArenaNets fault. There is so far not a single “maintenance” that I noticed unlike FF14 for example. Download speed reaches maximum of my 50 MBit connection (6 MByte/s) unlike FF14 which has often below 1 MByte/s.

So yes, the engine works, I can play the game fine, but it feels “bad” to me as well, like a beat down car that can’t handle everyday’s business and for what it’s made for.

Excelsior.

Man, I fully agree. I often feel like Hasbro has a merchandise contract to promote some Barby Fairytopia spin-offs in GW2. What I have “problems” with is mostly that it either collides with the style (Militant Charr with huge wings…) and that there are no gliders that fit a thief. The default glider, even dyed to black, looks like a purple (?!) beach tent with confetti sprinkled on it. Ugh…

I always disliked too much ridiculously-looking stuff in Asian MMO, when the super duper warrior lady wears a witch hat, slippers with cat faces on it, wings, and a bikini. FF14 has had several cross-events that introduced hideous BS to a game that does not fit it at all. Seriously hoping GW2 goes back a bit more to the “militant”, “cool” style this franchise often had in the past.

jokke.6239:

It’s also really great that our characters actually speaks, it made me much more immersed into the story.

This. So much this. I also like that our character is not as one-dimensional as in other games, basically any other MMORPG. I GW2, you are often the center. In FF14, it revolves around other guys and you are just some dumb stooge for the actual NPC protagonists. I just like how my Asura commands around a squad of totally different personalities. And yet, I really liked how it turned out. There were no cringy moments about “my” decisions like in other games. ArenaNet really manages to get a very well balance done.

Also, thank you, ArenaNet, to hire a certain translation studio which in return hired Patrick Bach to voice the male German Asura NPC. I love that dude’s voice!

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

Just as said by others (also in a different thread), or by quoting Xegrilt above me, the game would probably run smooth by a single core CPU with 30 GHz rather than any multicore. I turned off Anti Alias because I enjoy the crispness, also, on my GTX970, disabling certain reflections boosted my performance somehwat, I just forgot the exact setting. It also can help a lot if you play with certain “lower” settings and find out you won’t realize the missing effects much. If you switch back and forth on a static situation and you get a clean 1:1 comparison, you often feel the desire to stay with the “better” setting but sacrifice FPS. For example: I use just environmental mapping instead of real reflections on water. That saved me in Core Tyria easily 15 frames when in Orr or places with water (duh). Now I do not even realize it anymore and the looks are still decent.

I am running a GTX1080 and Ryzen 7 1700X – an Octacore CPU with a comparable lower core clock than the average intel CPU. While literally everything outside of GW2 profits from the 8 cores (or 16 threads to be more precise), GW2 shows really what Xegrilt said: I gained no real performance compared to my previous i7-3770 (same clock, but “only” 4 cores). I know the Ryzen is more tilting towards “work than gaming”, but as said, every other game is fine, just GW2 loves to punish my poor, slower CPU cores, no matter how many I got ^^

Excelsior.
Pifil is right. I just upgraded my system to a powerful workhorse in all departments, because I am video enthusiast and built a system according to my needs. The CPU is as important as the GPU in GW2. Now I have a GTX 1080 and the FPS are not quite better compared to my GTX970 – Because I use a Ryzen 7 1700X. An Octacore, which is bombastic and probably the greatest purchase for my needs, but due to bad multicore optimization and a comparibly low core clock, I have gained almost zero performance boosts.

It really feels like the GPU is like: “Hey, c’mon, let’s render this game” and the CPU is split into two halves: Core 0 to 3 are like “Cough, Cough, man, gimme a break” and core 4-7 are idling: “Polishes nails Whats all the fuzz about, man?”

I turned off Anti Alias because I recently started to enjoy the crisp look and yet I can’t hold 60fps in 1080p. So slapping a powerful GPU at at is not enough, really. It’s a bit annoying because overall the Ryzen handles everything while staying cool, but GW2 really shows that a not-so-great optimized engine can cause stupid bottlenecks.

Excelsior.

No, this is not and will never be an excuse. They are paid developers to develop, right? If paid developers won’t develop anymore because everything is requiring time and staff (ressources, money – you name it), then they – ironically – unemployed soon. Feedback from customers is mandatory and I often do listen to my customers and spend a few hours at something even though my bosses don’t like that I am doing that. (Or writing a handy real-worklife guide for my trainee – oh boy, don’t get caught sitting on the PC writing stuff in Word because “daz not reel workz, not wurth it!”, but when my both bosses read it, they copied for further references it because it was helpful – WTF…Ambivalence much?) But in the end, the customers, my colleagues and even the supervisor liked it. Yes, video game industry works different than my profession, but this “forbidden time” was worth it, that’s what I want to say. If you never try and come up with “no time”, why do you even get up in the morning?

It does not matter if the developers of whatever kind themselves say that or their bosses and people that plan the budgets/funds – the excuse is cheap in any form, like a big chicken-and-egg problem in its core.

All the other stuff people will talk in this thread basically revolves around those two basic statements I did.

EDIT: I am talking about the very basic idea of employment/work motivation, not about stupid “QoL” suggestions that pop up here and there. It often reads just like people – not necessarily linked to this thread – never do more than the very least because they claim it’s not worth any time, but then, why do they get up in the morning?

Excelsior.

Since I create collages of my characters as wallpaper for my computers, I know the pain. The simple answer: No.

There are some sliders which could help you on the lower picture (I think it’s about the character’s height) but there is onfurtunately no such option like a free camera (FF14 has one AFAIK). Funny enough, there is a weird “move your head” way to pan the camera (right mouse button – your char then really looks into the direction of the camera instead of just doing the 1000-mile-stare) but no such thing as free camera.

Also, note that the lighting is ALWAYS the same; the light comes ALWAYS from top right, no matter when time of the virtual day it is or how you turn… I gotta say, this and the fact we turn bald when putting on hats are the two gripes I have with the game.

To be fair, as Asura I have it a bit easier, but you are playing a beanpole, and that’s like taking a picture of a giraffe with a cellphone low-angle lens in 4:3.

Jimmus.2083:

Come on, let us choose our own launcher images. The new purple raptor rider graphic is awful. It looks like it has a color palette of about 8 colors, maximum.

OMG, YOU JUST SAID WHAT I WAS THINKING…
I mean, Excelsior.

You are so right. When I played DOS games on Win95 (“Dosbox”) and hit the windows key, the palette would screw up and it was all either bright lime-green or purple/pink and yellow/orange (and the game got stuck and the last note played from the soundcard sustained forever). I knew that particular colour composition from somewhere, and it really looks like some EGA game!

Excelsior.

I was quite shocked when I mouse-over’d a skill and my screen literally has been blocked with tooltips because everything does 50 boons, 30 CCs, 5 “if”-cases and 26 combos.

Why can’t a sniper just be a sniper – quick and dirty? It feels like a dump truck being driven in Venice: Tourists everywhere, the canals, buildings, the dashboar has 150 lights blinking and accoustic signals give you the rest.

But the more I think about it, I might actually really love deadeye in PvE, even though the SFX are so bad.

I wrote like a Bookah and it was fun!

Asur.9178:

As I said before, they spent all their time, effort, and creativity on the classes they have favoured since GW1 and just smacked on rifle, to please the vocal minority open world PvEers, and called it a day.

Haha, what the heck?
Gimme a break. Are you really just saying that, as reverse conclusion, the majority of the players of GW2 play PvP content? I heavilly doubt that both statements are right. Neither are the PvP players a majority, nor are they silent. When it’s about class balance, you read about PvP like in 99% the cases, sometimes I even check if I am in the general thief forums or the PvP forums.

Until yesterday, I’ve been very ambivalent over Deadeye, but then I realized it could boost my playstyle as solo PvE into perspectives I have never thought of. I just have to see how the engine works when it’s actually shipped. . . .

Excelsior.

I also briefly played around with it and first it took me a while to figure out what these burning dots are over my dashes, maybe a bit better explaination would appreciated, but once figured out, it’s alright.

So far, I don’t know this works in the actual PvE game. Can’t imagine this in the Jungle. I liked it, but everything’s so overloaded with attributes, I mean, when I mouse-over over Skill 1 I have the full screen with tooltips and instead of playing swiftly* it feels more like driving a huge dump truck trough Venice. So much to care for, to watch for, and nothing is really visibile for me as player, but for the enemy. WTF.

Also, the sound effects are so goofy. Many video game studios were afraid of putting in “real” sound effects, probably to make the game sound and look less, uh, “violent” (imagine CounterStrike SFX here) but those weird Phaser sounds and cartoonish animations are not my thing, really. Something called “Deadeye” needs a more serious tone, not a “Oh, this is a fantasy setting, so we make it a bit funnier – for the kids you know, else it’s rated 18+”.

Am I a sniper or some funny clown that amuses my enemy?

This concept might work in an ego shooter, but here it was very clunky and for all the time it takes to set up the spot (which is, in fact, very sniper-like!) it’s not really worth.

*I know, Sniper, hurr durr.

Excelsior.

Since the game lacks easy cash grabs (supressed pistol with correct sound effect) and I can’t and don’t want to use many cash shop items (either they hide/cover my pretty Asura ears or are too bright, fancy and colourful – nothing that goes well with my midget thief) it’s a way to show some appreciation. So you nay-sayers can whine in the next “Quarterly report” that this game is dying. Which will happen anyways. Because my €55 won’t do much.

Miasmus.2364:

Range

Neither 1200 nor 1500 range is enough for Deadeye. If this should be sniper spec, range must be unique to Deadeye. 1200 is typical long range weapon range for any proffession and ranger longbow also has 1500 range without any disadvantage.

Indeed. A sniper is by definition attacking from a higher range than their opponents. It’s weird that being on par with other classes is called a sniper. What’s the difference of an Engineer that fires a rifle or a Deadeye range-wise?

Excelsior.

As one of the hyper casuals here (→ “Has Anet Remembered the Casuals?”) I am glad they have this surplus. I could unlock my Daredevil by doing certain hero points (mostly exploring) while I had to ditch group content ones (since I am 100% solo). If aNet introduced a way both playerbases can access hero points this way without other intentions behind, then I have to give them some props. If people that don’t have a dislike for the average gamer like I do and thus access to group content, you basically took both paths of obtaining hero points and of course have more than I will ever have.

So I hope there is no further use. Not to nullify your work, but that would mean I’d have to do tasks I don’t wanna do, and kill GW2’s casual friendly gameplay – one of the advertised core features after all.

I could understand PvP (because it’s a closed environment). And that might be the reason; the damage caused by any problems and bugs might not affect and impact as many players in those two modes.

PvE would create problems on a larger scale. I am just guessing, but it seems plausible. Also, they can get immediately some balancing data and feedback. There is a difference of you shooting some random NPC occasionally or when teams of players use the skills against each other in a high-stress environment.

Excelsior.

Excelsior!

I am not sure what exactly “casual” means, but there are some things and adjectives being thrown around when debating the term “casual” I think I can say that I am EXTREMELY casual.

I have no friends, no guild, no-one to talk to. I log in, do random stuff, log out. I don’t strive for anything shiny, I am not rich (nor poor), I don’t craft, don’t farm. I literally just go step by step, clocking in for some Maguuma night shifts and eventually learn new abilities. Right now I am at 21 of these, uh, “HoT levels” (you know, those sun things, I even forgot their name!). And I am enjoying it so much! Maybe it is exactly the mix of full indepence and mixing it with other games that keeps me cool. My Asura is character #1 and I would put GW2 very high on my enjoy-to-play list, even though I don’t log on (due to aformentioned reasons, I simply have no real “igniter” for the GW2-flame inside me) for days sometimes, I enjoy playing GW2 core and HoT.

Maybe it is because my character is perfect to me (visuals, lore-wise, race-wise, profession-wise), but I feel very well catered from this game. I am coming from FF14 though, where EVERYTHING is either catastrophically bland or gated behind forced group content (ugh!).

So, I am 300% casual, and I am very fine. I unlocked my Daredevil on my own, and I hope ArenaNet stick(ed) to that possibility in PoF as well.

Excelsior.

The HUD itself is nice, the menus and the objects are in splatter art; each window, each part is a little piece of art.

But what I really dislike is the ugly health orb. It’s just a bland circle with a number in it. I can draw that in MS paint in 20 seconds. No drop shadow or some basic eye candy.
I’d like to have just a bar / two bars for health and initiative – and not centered as if this is 1993 (DooM) again. Health as red bar in the corner, skills on CD are fully visible, skills are shown with 30% visibility, so you can see what button 8 does but not right in your face like right now.

What I also would like is some sort of hidden UI that shows only skills on CD for example and my health is represented by the red tinted screen border. I usually turn off the HUD in almost every game. (Playing Dishonored without crosshair is tough, but it works :-))

Excelsior.
The answer is clear and simple: Asura are the perfect thieves (and most probably Deadeyes).

I’d like to drive the Deathstar. One day, I will…

At least it’s a cat.

Excelsior.

Excelsior!

I am sure they use better textures in those videos, but also ingame. As Asura, my camera is very, very low, because I mostly look over my Asura’s shoulder, and thus I see a lot of stretched (read as: Blurred) textures, sometimes the map developers screwed up (assigning one texture to a rock e.g. but instead of looping, it is used one time but stretched over 50m²), but mostly the textures look way, way better in HoT.

I wonder what the limits are for the engine. As former GTX970 owner, I had to watch the VRAM usage to avoid the bad 3.5 GByte limit, and we never came anywhere close to 50%. Now I have 8 GByte VRAM and I wonder for what exactly… Switching texture quality back and forth doesn’t really impact anything..

I am sure they could and would use better textures, but let’s be honest: Nobody really cares that much about those, even though I agree that we should/could a step forward in that matter.

Excelsior.
Just check out for seasonal events as well.

The Ghostly Outfit (which is incredibly beautiful and totally my taste, bought it on the instant and it’s today still my one and only outfit I own) will most likely come back in roughly 2 months and 3 weeks.

Excelsior.

When I started FF14, there was the super long, un-skippable cutscene with random stuff I don’t care much about. A guy in a coach and drunk Moogles and such. After like 15 minutes (which feel like an eternity), I could move. But no, no other players visible, I could not even leave the place. I’ve been hold hostage until I clicked all the buttons the tutorial wanted me to lick. “Left mouse button does this and that. Click it. NAO or else you get stuck”.

In GW2 I was so pleased I could go on my adventure myself. Messing with my guy. Being in the Asura tutorial mission with other newbies, new to mechanics like dodging and actual combat, we were all bouncing all over the place and it was so much fun. Then I just did what I am still doing 2 years later: I wander into unknown areas and do whatever I please. THIS is how an adventure is supposed to play like.

The structure is there, but it takes you to actually see it. I did not use the Wiki and I am still using my freestyle build. I am also playing 100% solo, no-one to ask, no-one that judges me. And I LOVE that. The game is NOT pointing me toward a dungeon and gate it (and blocks me when Duty Finder is broken, hello FF14!), no, I can decide whether I go participate in that even, or helping cleaning cows, or chopping Trees for those Charr, or watch the Inquest roast Skritt.

Not sure why people want streamline games nowadays, with games that feel more like a compilation of quicktime events until you are seeing the credits.

I personally think you should level-up your character (not as slow though) and then get your skills.

For people that play 100% solo, like me, I was pleased I could unlock Daredevil on my own. I would hate it to be massively gated.

Excelsior.
I have mastered Daredevil but I am just Level 21 (Hot Level sort things, whatevery they are called right now. The green sun thingy-level things) and I can glide, eat tasty speed-up mushrooms and talk to the other guys, but e.g. I can’t walk trough poison yet.

I hope I just can switch to PoF and start, then switch back to HoT.
The story is a bit messed up then, but I don’t mind. I mean, I don’t mind switching between Splinter Cell 3 and 1 despite some guys are dead in 3 etc.

I was also tempted by the 75€ version but I went for the 55€ instead because unfortunately none of the cash shop items fit a thief. Everything is so overloaded, bright and stuff. As single person roaming the jungle, I can’t have bling bling with and on me. I’d spent 10€ on an instant for a supressed pistol (with the right SFX of course), but those Barbie Fairytopia wings are not my thing. And since I want to support aNet I went for the middle-priced package..

Excelsior!

Oh, great, maybe I can shove my questions into this thread aswell.

Do you think the new content is gated?
I am not super duper interested in the new stuff right off the bat, but I am so slowly progressing, it’d be like I’d be able to play the new stuff in 2021 if it e.g. requires me to play through HOT first.

Luckily I am very pleased with Daredevil, but having it heavilly gated like in FF14 would screw me over a bit :S

I haven’t completed the first story because it requires me a premade team for that one dungeon (which I won’t get, I hate PuGs), so I basically jumped right into HoT back then and I am fine with that.

Excelsior.

The only big grape I had with the GW2 franchise was the “Dragon Killer” setting. It is so uninspired… In my appartment I have dragons sitting in every corner, and they are designed to be more or less friendly (at least not histole until you bother them), and in every game they are target #1 for entire worlds, races, makind. Just like in “How to train your dragon”, why not having them in a more friendly setup?

I’d be glad to move the elder dragon topic out of the focus a bit.

I am fine with Daredevil, I really love it so far (except for the staff. Such a stupid decision to go for a broomstick as weapon for a sneaky person that steals and should be fast and efficient, so Fist Flurry and such made sense instead of waving around with a huge and heavy stick).

But as a fan of Splinter Cell (1-3), THIEF, Dishonored 1-2, I always missed the fact to stay on a ledge (i.e. right now in the jungle), looking down to a foe (e.g. A patroulling Mordem guy) and just snipe it from the shadows. In all the games above I can do it somehow, the F2000 in Splinter Cell, the bow in THIEF, the crossbow in Dishonored, as well as the pistol. Here I always had to go face to face and then let the dagger bounce – or expose myself and pump ’em full of lead with both pistols.

While generally enjoying it, the whole Thief classes in GW2 are a pure joy for a type of player like me, especially since it’s really mean and kitten… unlike other games that go for “ninjas” and such BS. So the deadeye is just more of a cool and refreshing take on the “guy in the dark picking on a few single guys”.

I am not interested so much in the other jobs, even though it seems the majority in this game enjoys magic classes, which is fine. I enjoy cold steel and bare fists :-)

Excelsior.