Guild Wars 2

For me, there’s no ‘hook’ making me want to pre-order HoT. I’m bored with the original game now that there are no LS updates, don’t want to feel I’m paying that little bit extra for new player’s benefit (whatever they claim) and don’t hear enough info on HoT to enthuse me.

It also seems like I have very little chance of getting into a beta, if it’s pay-to-beta for the most part (and I knew about the portals, but grinding for a random opportunity isn’t appealing either). Sometimes betas have been the selling point that got me into a game when I wasn’t sure it would be worth the money.

I’ll probably buy HoT eventually after release when the price goes down, but right now, I’m just not feeling it. It seems the marketing was initially quite badly handled and they’ve tried to rectify that a little with the account slot for the basic version that should have been there at the beginning, but there’s still no strong ‘hook’.

Wylf.2586:

I’m located in the EU and have been playing on an NA server pretty much from the beginning. Never really had any issues with lag. Very, very rarely I will have a short lag spike, but that happens maybe once every few days and could honestly just be a problem with my connection, not the fact that I’m playing on a server that’s located overseas.

Same here. I joined a NA server from the start and have had the occasional issues during world bosses like Jormag but I suspect that’s the same for many NA players too, judging by the people who call it ‘Jorlag’ in map chat. For most play times, no problems. Oddly when I guested to a EU server I had some severe lag issues. I’ve no idea whether that was temporary or a permanent situation as I was only on there for a day or two but it was offputting at the time.

You kill the imps while still standing in the circle of divine fire – a ranged weapon will do the trick if they’re not close by. Then go light the fire. It’s still a pain either way and the imps will respawn but it makes things easier.

The last time I logged in and actually played any content was the Queen Jennah anniversary content and that was after a few months of being fairly inactive. Since then I’ve really lost interest. The short-term updates aren’t doing it for me. Sure, it’s generous that they update so often without a sub, but filling out the achievement log for the sake of it, and having the occasional short cutscene that will disappear in 2 weeks doesn’t compel me to log in.

What would attract me back to play for a few months or so? A full expansion, with new areas and a substantial, cohesive storyline to go with it. Maybe that’s a tall order, but I would gladly pay for an expansion pack.

First – heroes. I really miss having a choice to go into a mission or dungeon either solo, with one or more guildies or with a full human party, whenever I want, without having to wait or pug.

Second – Signet of Capture. I hope that can come back in some form. It was so satisfying going off somewhere and taking on a difficult opponent but with the long-term payoff of increased build diversity (helped even more by the dual-classing). I’d rather have that than a new title or weapon skin any day.

Third – no regional boundaries.

Fourth – build templates. Brilliant timesaver.

Fifth – more serious atmosphere overall – while I like a bit of silliness GW2 feels like it has the balance somewhat skewed at the moment.

Sixth – Elona, especially Vabbi with its Moroccan style buildings and evocative music. Hated the forced travel on wurms, as that gave me game motion sickness, but apart from that I enjoyed most of Nightfall.

When I first played GW1, I found it quite off-putting when I got around to playing Eye of the North and suddenly we were introduced to the Asura, with their advanced technology. I felt like it was ruining the fantasy atmosphere and didn’t fit at all well. After a while I got used to them being around, and expected some technological elements mixed in with the classic fantasy by the time GW2 came around. So I can understand the OP’s sense of dissonance, but it’s not really unique to GW2.

I enjoy the first half-hour or so of the new updates, then it starts to feel like a zergy grind just to get some new kind of loot bag or whatever. It all seems about getting a new armor or weapon skin rather than some kind of epic overarching plot.

Regular updates seem great in theory. But I would really like to see a significant expansion so I will feel like rolling a new character and really get more deeply involved with the world again. And I’d gladly pay for that.

I would agree that Logan is portrayed as a lovesick idiot who is in great need of some character development, but I completely disagree that this somehow makes Queen Jennah ‘look good’. She is completely bland. The voice acting is wooden. We have no idea how she feels about Logan or indeed anything beyond speeches which sound about as exciting as some of Trahearne’s. I suspect this is Anet’s apparent difficulty in developing characters beyond their initial concept, and that applies to several prominent characters. I think it’s bad writing, not gender bias.

I had characters in every race, before I deleted my Charr Engineer. I found the Charr storylines, a bit better than human/norn but I was past that point anyway, and still had a character who was hunched over with an annoying bouncy run and whose class I didn’t much enjoy either. I’m simply more comfortable with looking at a two-legged humanoid on screen when they’re running around and the run speed seems most natural on the human and Sylvari.

It wasn’t buffed in the recent patch. It’s been at 25% for a while now – maybe 2 patches ago?

lordkrall.7241:

So, how living would the world be if you could do anything at anytime?
The whole point with the living world is that things change.
If you miss a festival or a war in the real world it is not like you can go back and replay said war whenever you want.

We can go back and replay the story of Destiny’s Edge via the dungeons or the explorable mode stories any time we feel like it. Granted there isn’t much motivation to do story mode dungeons more than once, but the precedent is there.

There is also a precedent in GW1 where you could replay missions or play through earlier mission content with a character who didn’t come from that continent. Which was useful, say, if that character was now your main and you wanted it to have all the achievements.

I see no harm in keeping the dungeon with some kind of framing that you’re replaying events that happened in the past.

Not interested in race change personally, but I don’t think Asuran technology would be a good excuse for making it happen anyway. It seems to me that they make their inventions out of self-interest, and what Asura would ever want to become an overgrown, less intellectual bookah? :P

I have a female charr, but I may delete her as I don’t really enjoy the class (engineer). I’m not sure ‘ll make another charr if I do. The main reason is aesthetic but it’s not her face. I dislike the bounciness of the 4-legged run and I think the 2 legged one looks worse because the charr looks like she is facing sideways. Armour doesn’t look good either, at least medium: perhaps a heavy armour class would be the answer.

Yet I’ve enjoyed some of the charr stories I’ve seen more than I have for some of the others. I think the Black Citadel looks amazing and some of the best music is around the charr starting area. But that won’t be what I spend most of the time doing, so the appearance does count in the long term. I would not be any more likely to make a male charr as I normally create female characters.

I’m in agreement with those who would like their GW1 ranger back. I didn’t find the GW1 ranger particularly powerful but I preferred it in terms of gameplay. It felt more interesting to play, interrupts were great and the spirits were actually worth using. I liked the fact that if I used different bows I’d get different speed/trajectory – recurve for interrupts, flatbow on hills or with favourable winds for barrage spam, shortbow for quick fast damage.

I played BM sometimes out of choice, but when it wasn’t appropriate or useful I could get rid of the pet.

The one thing I didn’t like was that traps had a cast time and I prefer the way they are now.

Game Over

It’s a brilliant tribute to the NES years and I love the nostalgia aspect, but I’d rather see it as content that returns with one or two new surprises at a later date, in which case it stays fresh.

I don’t want to see it disappear forever though. We could have done with an extra option for the poll.

Amazing!

Okay, it was nostalgic for me, but it was also well done and entertaining in its own right.

Absconditus.6804:

Checkpoint switches will scale based on the amount of party members, as do the chest key requirements.

Ah, I was wondering about those checkpoint switches. I went in a group of 4 last night and it seemed slow but we always got through.

Moto=Miyamoto from Nintendo.

The scene with the baddie going HAHAHAHA and kidnapping a princess totally reminds me of Ganondorf. I see more Legend of Zelda influences than Mario, with the completely rubbish sword you are expected to somehow save the world with (a pointy stick) the pots you can break, the shield and the nonsense language (Tyrian or Hyrulian?) Another Zelda reference was the dark woods.

The clouds, bouncy toadstools etc remind me more of Mario.

A reviewer said it was influenced by Mario/Zelda/Metroid but I can’t see the Metroid influence at all. Can anyone else?

Grezko.7950:

One “HUGE PROBLEM” The bloody music is stuck in my head!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha, that was always the problem with all of those old games!

This has been the best event so far though, I’d totally agree with that. So much fun.

Rytlock in shades playing air guitar, Rytlock with glowing eyes – so very wrong but right at the same time.

Do you craft at all? That nets you a ton of XP. Also you don’t have to just do content in your race’s levelling zone, so if you’re a bit behind see where else you can go for your level.

You had me going there, OP. I was expecting a whinefest. Good one.

GW1 had lore-breaking events too – how does a commando fit into the lore there? Don’t be such a grump. It won’t be there forever. Ignore it if you wish, while the rest of us have fun with it.

I love it. Reminds me of both Mario and Zelda. 8-bit fun!

I was in a lousy mood today before I logged in. Cheered me right up.

I’ve got both at 80 and I enjoy ranger more than thief. I actually find thief combat boring because the choice of weapons are so limited and although there are issues, I enjoy playing pet classes. Rangers are more fun in open world pve than thieves IMO. But if you wvw a lot, thief will be considered stronger.

If they’re going to introduce more house cat options, please consider offering more typical domestic cat colours/patterns – not to take any existing stuff away but as an extra. I say this because I originally wanted to create a charr with fur like my own cat (black/white tuxedo cat) and no patterns really gave that effect. I know it’s just fluff, but just putting that idea out there.

Fur colour aside I like them fierce looking though.

Just bear in mind that maybe not everyone’s finished the quest, though they probably have. It might be worth putting in a spoiler tag.

Tybalt and Dinky were atypical in certain ways for charr because they were quite whimsical and not doing the tough-guy act, but fans tended to like them for it. So while the pet devourer thing was a bit cutesy, it’s not as if there’s no precedent at all.

I am a little concerned they’re going to retcon the appearance of charr in order to make them more popular as a class, because I hate it when games decide to inflict sudden, drastic plastic surgery on races (hello, dragon age 2 elves). It’s worse when existing characters change appearance though, and that isn’t the case.

I think a bishonen Rytlock would break my brain… heh heh.

It’s probably best not to jump to any hasty conclusions based on just one model.

Paradox.5498:

Do we even know who this guy’s father is? Someone in my guild suggested it’s probably Rytlock :P Now that would be a nice plot change…

If you talk to Braham at the end of the quest before leaving the instance, he names the guy.

Spoiler about the father’s current circumstances ahead.

Braham also tells you why he’s motivated to help with the next upcoming stage.

I often try to click on NPCs at the end of cutscenes as I would have missed quite a few snippets overwise. They could be signposted a bit better as it’s too easy to miss the chance.

There’s a danger of that kind of plot seeming terribly contrived but I didn’t mind it in this case. We’re being drip-fed the info slowly and that makes me curious to find out what made Eir leave her son behind, or what the father was like.

I’ve thought for a while that all of DE need a bit more development (as with many GW2 characters) as all we know about them (bar reading the books, which I haven’t) is the past fiasco involving Snaff and a teensy bit about Caithe and Logan’s love lives. I think there’s room for a little more and while it’s not wildly original, I can live with that. Otherwise it’s endless rehashes of the same old bickering between them.

Mind you, I take all that back if Rox turns out to be related to Rytlock…

If Rox’s voice had matched the huge eyes and childlike look, it would have been overkill. I actually liked her voice because I was concerned they’d make it high pitched and squeaky after seeing her picture. Made her seem less silly than she appeared.

I have whinged and moaned made constructive criticism before on the Personal Story forums, about cutscene animation, voice acting, cohesion and all sorts. I have also been critical about the slow build up for the Living Story previously. So I’d like to say I enjoyed the way these quests were designed and the cutscene style worked. I thought they were effective. It left me curious to know more which is a good thing.

Now that the patch has somewhat buffed GS, any thoughts on the differences now?

The banner buffs are positive, but they’ll still be clunky to use, and that’s the main reason I use shouts instead.

I’m really pleased with the QZ stun break. I enjoy using it and sometimes I’ve felt obliged to take it off my bar for the signet or LR. Now I won’t have to.

Shame about the general quickness nerf but at least it’s global.

I’m glad there’s a white raven fix (although I’m mystified why it took this long) and the cat crit improvement. I avoided white raven because of the poor vitality and now I don’t have to.

Good to hear that pet AR is now included even if it didn’t make it into the notes.

Maybe Lick Wounds won’t seem almost useless now.

I’ll see what I think about the GS changes when I play. It’s not a weapon I currently use but that may change. And I’m still wishing for some kind of improvement to LB. I don’t mind playing melee as a ranger, but I’m still not feeling like the ‘ranged specialist’ that the class design philosophy states.

Yeah, I’m a bit over the Commando stuff. I want something that’s a surprise.

Cowrex.9564:

Plus his face totally reminds me of someone!

As soon as I saw the screenshot (not the artwork) I thought of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. Based on facial features, not haircut. It’s just one screenshot though and the angle might distort it a bit.

Kharegim.2846:

I agree with everything that has been said here and that is why it disturbs me anet has plans to bring him back in future storylines, please for the sake of everyone here just do it for one mission where we can watch him die and lets be done with the credit mooching cabbage.

Dropping him without any kind of conclusion would be kind of jarring, since they’ve already done that far too much with some of the other characters in the game. Then again, I agree that any conclusion to his story should be fairly brief. Maybe he dies, maybe he just goes away and continues his studies elsewhere – but I don’t think it’s a great idea to spend too much time on such a boring character when many players are already sick of the sight of him.

Changing his personality too radically, or his voice actor would be a bad idea too (see Anders in Dragon Age 2 as an example – it was way too far fetched although a formerly popular character became more widely disliked, in that case.) I think it’s time they accepted that the concept wasn’t as effective as they hoped in its execution, phase him out and then move on to more compelling ones.

zerath.5729:

i really dont want to play this game like you know the name game dont want to argue about looting, roles(healing, tanking etc.) so in short it can be or not?

I’m not sure quite what you are asking at this point. The game mechanics encourage cooperation in PVE rather than competition. You won’t have loot rolls and there is no kill or node stealing.

Oh, and if you want to RP with other players, I believe Tarnished Coast is the unofficial server. I haven’t guested on there so I don’t know how common it is.

You get quest choices, (which narrow later on) but you get few opportunities to really roleplay at all. There are three persistent ‘voices’ you can choose from and you would probably prefer the dignified one, from what you’ve said. What you don’t get is dialogue choices in terms of the way you answer requests for help, (you will get some either/or choices in branching questlines, but no roleplaying flavour). There are no alignments. It’s all pretty goody-goody so your character concept is unlikely to feel in real conflict with that.

In terms of race choice you are probably most likely to enjoy human or Sylvari if you wish to play a lawful good type character. Asura are too cynical, Norn too boastful and individualistic, Charr too bloodthirsty (although they are very loyal to their warbands). I could suggest a choice for level 30, but I think that’s too spoilerish and you will probably find it quite obvious which choice you will prefer by the time you reach that stage as the quests from level 21 onwards help you make your mind up.

Shagaz.6209:

3. Our choices should matter more. Orders too. Get rid of the Pact.

Yes, one thing I didn’t like is that choices later in the game felt very shallow – kill this monster or that one with a cast of random short-term NPCs – and the end was the same for everyone. I’m okay with killing the dragon ultimately but I would have liked to see a Vigil member’s ending, a Priory ending and a Whispers one. That would only be possible if Victory or Death was solo content like the others, but many people have complained about the forced grouping at the end, so that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

I wouldn’t get too enthusiastic about that.

I would like to convert karma jugs into laurels if I wish. I don’t need the stuff from karma vendors any more, and I don’t have a strong desire to create a legendary. What I’m missing is ascended items and I have a stack of unused karma jugs clogging up my bank. And that’s before I even get to the piles of unused dungeon tokens…

I liked Sieran but Tybalt was my favourite. Love them or hate them, all the mentors were more memorable than the vast majority of other characters in this game. It would have been better to see their stories unfold gradually (although it felt like both Forgal and Tybalt had a past to tell, Sieran less so as a Sylvari) rather than having them cut off so abruptly. It was a missed opportunity.

I would change the cutscenes, making them more like in GW1. The current animation style is stiff and pulls you out of the world. If that means more limitation about where cutscenes may happen, then so be it. You are directed to specific places for your personal story anyway.

I would get a better voice actor for Trahearne, feature him less often and make your character feel more like the hero, but not too early. You are built up way too fast in some stories, particularly Norn.

A cast of fewer recurring characters but make them matter more and make sure they interweave with your story in a cohesive manner. People who were supposed to be important to the player character in the personal story don’t count after a certain stage and aren’t mentioned again. You could have the occasional message from home giving a sidequest to visit them for a specific reason, or if a character is capable of combat, they could join the Pact later.

I would give the player more choice in answers to add more RP potential and flavour. Even if it led to the same quest conclusion I’d rather see a small range of answer choices than three persistent tones. A charming person might be having an off-day, or an aggressive person might have moments where they tone it down for an individual.

I’d keep the mentors on and see how their own stories and relationship to the player evolve within the Pact. I would allow for interpersonal conflict with some NPCs with the player able to choose to go down that path.

Yes, gw2lfg should help. It’s not impossible to find a group even if it isn’t as easy as it was close to launch. There’s always someone around with alts who wants to be completionist, and there are still new people coming into the game. I did it for the 3rd time the other day with an alt in a guild group and for the others, it was their first run through.

I don’t think it’s a female thing or a guy thing, but I haven’t played pvp much in other games so I was originally a bit intimidated by WvW. I got over that when my guild started running newbie events, just in small roaming groups. I had a blast and it completely changed my mind about WvW. So if you’ve got good people to team with, she’ll probably have good fun whatever her prefession.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Hints that we could use to deduce the position of the artifacts would have been much more engaging. A simple example: “The place where we were attacked: to the east was a mountain that looked like the head of a lion” — this also encourages people to stop and look at the scenery!

even better: a chain of hints, one leading to the next.

That would be a big improvement. The Secret World did this quite well, from the little I played in beta To give one example I needed code numbers for one quest, and when I got a hint to go in the church, I suddenly noticed the board with the list of hymn numbers. That was much more fun than finding an answer via running around an area with the control key held down or looking it up on a wiki.

Sure you still had a few people asking for answers in map chat but it wasn’t the fun way to do it and you just needed to think about the hint for a second or two to figure it out, so it wasn’t going to elude most people either. Given that some of the Living Story takes part around the Norn lands, the writers could have used some riddles, as they did for the Raven quest in the starting area.

Chessrook.8643:

To quote a line I think said by Ogden in GW1 (Although I could be wrong with where the line came from…)

“How do ya KNOW you’ve never met a female dwarf, eh?”

I’m pretty sure you’re right about the source.

Scepter is a very viable weapon for necros as long as you go for a conditionmancer playstyle. I hate scepter on ele compared with the staff or double daggers, because I find the hover from above on some attacks annoying and the playstyle feels less fluid. I also suspect that in pvp/wvw most people aren’t going to stand under your big glowing rock of fire unless they’re on siege and can’t disengage fast enough.

Why not try out the different classes on the combat NPCs in the Mists though, since you’ll get all weapons and skills unlocked and can mess around with different builds? You’ll get a better feel for what you personally like then.