Guild Wars 2

Saigejo.9832:

Will there finally be actual raids added to the game?

There already are, unless you are speaking of WoW style instanced raids. To that I say oh I hope not never ever.
There is a form of old-school raiding in gw2 though, temple assaults and a couple world bosses. Though… they have re-made them much more easy/casual

I liked the music. I like dark ambient, when I’m not listening to outer-space ambient music hah. A lot better than glittery high-fantasy music x100.

Yeah I saw the teleporting mobs as well. Wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not.
FPS is really good for the amount of objects and polygons in view, Nvidia geforce on their native drivers doing rather well there.

warbignime.4610:

Massive MUTIPLAYER Online Role Playing Game.

Middle-aged Men Online Role-Playing Girls.

Elrey.5472:

Open inventory, you got all weapons.

Inventory bags? No. Like I said in the op, the only thing I got two of were pistols lol which is about the most worthless set for thief that no one uses except for show. 1 Dagger, 2 pistols, 1 sword, 1 SB. You would think anet would know the class enough to drop us 2 daggers, and 1 pistol if not 2 just for kicks. Beta needs a quartermaster if they are not going to bother setting us up with at least the basic weapon combinations. Not so much worried about equipment stats, more about not needing to think about what I’m doing where I have something down natural already, especially in a limited time beta.

Nice zone so far, but hope there is even more harder content in other zones. Diabolical even. I’m glad anet seems to be moving away from what has been making this game die at a steady rate.

Did I miss the npc that gives armor and weapons to beta test the content here? I rolled a thief, looked around the starting area, nothing. So, thief is stuck with celestial armor and two pistols rather than two daggers (among other weapons)? Who uses 2 pistols?!? lol

By the time I got passed the story mode, I had already deleted and grabbed a rev, so didn’t want to waste more time looking too hard for a quartermaster. I’d rather play something to test content that I’m very used to (d/d thief), is there some way to regear that I missed?

They’re testing the zone mechanics, not the classes. So pick whatever you want.

Yeah it’s for 2hrs with 2hr breaks between.

Sell the mats and get your WP silvers back?

imo best place to get exotic gear is from the TP. Armor is actually pretty low, compared to weapons that people buy up to try their luck tossing into the mystic toilet for a precursor. You will want to try different sets before deciding on an ascended set, if you work for a set anyway. That really can depend on the class. My ele it’s no issue, a weapon is good enough. But like my thief, I squeeze every bit out of it I can, so full ascended.

The wvw vendor is a good place too, I’ve gotten some sets there. I’d save karma for what matters, being lots of obsidian shards later on. Dungeon armor is a good goal, but more about the skins more than anything, and takes a lot of work to get.

Oh yeah, that site. The one lots of people complain about regarding the inaccuracy of their linear testing. I have a card close to the one I listed here, on one of my computers, I run GW2 at high settings in most cases. I chose it due to the specific specs it targets, I work with 3D modeling apps, animation software and I program shaders, so apply stuff like this for work. If I were just working with photoshop then it probably wouldn’t matter, an app they probably took into account on their benchmarks. But for a specific application as this, you’ll likely see better performance in comparison to something like that.

I do have a system with Intel HD, but a few years older, so can’t really compare them. But at the time I got it, it was a bit lacking in comparison to other equal or greater value models in regards to performance in such an environment as this. I knew that before I got it though, it was a decision regarding portability and something to just plug my wacom bamboo into for a few select apps. But seriously, you don’t want to take a general test and apply it to everything, it’s always better to target the specific app/environment and test it from there, then you will see what those multipliers I mentioned do.

I say go for it, get something like that, you’ll likely see an increase, especially from dedicated vram. Beh seems to leave no option but to spend more or nothing at all(?), which mrauls didn’t say he was interested in doing in regards to spending more. He’d be better off spending more, yes, but some people gotta eat or whatever, ya know? Some people just put priorities on spending over impulse shopping, then try to be the wise shoppers when time to hold the budget.

You might be better off asking on specific cards in your budget, and seeing if anyone has that card and can give you some idea on how it handles FPS in certain situations (e.g. settings + fps while fighting Svanir Shaaman etc).

yw. and imo d/d is fine, I have no issues just running with d/d most of the time. Outside of spvp anyway, and spvp you can just press the win button and do whatever you want so it doesn’t matter (that CnD nerf etc).

They drop in a box, you get a selection menu of which weapon you want, yes.
Like this: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tequatl%27s_Hoard

I took huntsman for short bows (have a bunch now hah). Yes you need 500. You could always hang out at teq with us every day at reset, might get an ascended drop. Get there like 15-30m early.

It takes like 4 days to level now, w/o tomes etc. Zerg @ EotM. You might even realize it IS worth deleting your ranger for

There are three nearby. Have done grenth 100’s of times, some times you just gotta huff it. In the olden days, ancient times, we sometimes had to run through huge multiple zones to get back to our party, no map, in the dark, hungry and thirsty, naked, no weapon, and with orc chasing us the whole way. Here… instant cake walk.

You laid there dead and they yelled at you, didn’t they hehehe

If you are happy with the class then start gearing for ascended. For armor, you will likely need to craft. For weapon, you could craft, but there are some places you could maybe get a drop from. It’ll take a long time, so just start collecting mats and try out different builds to figure out what final armor you will want later on, at least for your primary competitive set. At minimum though, if you cringe at the idea of crafting, at least try for a weapon or two, though drops like from Teq take time.

Behellagh.1468:

The GT 720 is just marginally better than the Intel HD 4600.

Double the core speed. The GPU is significantly better on all marks, double, and GW2 relies heavily on GPU. He said $50, sooo… But can maybe find a deal someplace, even off one of those manufacturers that just license the core for their own cards. I’d never buy a used card, often the fans have a limited life span, and may have been abused you don’t know.

Almost triple the shader processing units (2.5x). 4x the amount of texture mapping units. 8x the texture rate. 4x the amount of rendering output units. 0.8 vs 6.4 pixel rate per sec. Then it manages it’s own internal ddr3. Minimum double the performance, and likely closer to 3x under this application.

Likely you could turn up the resolution to high and it’ll play well. If in zergs, you would probably need to turn it all down to medium or so.

Decrypter.1785:

There should be a separate beta forum for people with access , as this looks like a troll post to all the people who dont have access lol

Is that what your post is? interesting….

anyhoot, regarding the thread topic:
d/d stealth thief assassin build. As in pretty much my daily thing. I expect most will be using rev, but I don’t have or want ascended armor crafting, so whatever. The class will prolly change by release, anyway.

prolly geforce gt 720 2gb ddr3

Probably silverwastes. You’ll see content a bit like that in the new expansion I think, zone mechanics being a bit different and all. For the rest, just depends what you are into.

BattleCat.2098:

McWolfy.5924:

This game is not about soloing open world things. Btw you can solo almost everything with any profession. Open pve is easy and just something what fill the place between boss events and dungeons

Um… what? That’s a rather… weird… thing to say. I mean, isn’t the entire point of the game to have fun? And if you enjoy solo PvE, then that’s what you should do. Why recommend PvP to someone who sated he had very little interest in it?

Because he’s right, it’s just the mechanics of the open world system. Sure you can solo stuff, even meta events and static champs. But open world is primarily about meta events, and those scale up depending on how many players are in the area. It’s the difference between spawning a few trash mobs on up to armies of vets and champs, and “You can never have too much treasure.”.

Of all time, prolly Bounty Hunter, like as in SWG pre-cu/pre-nge. There’s nothing like hunting Jedii players. Anything assassin like; stealth, high dps with lowish armor, range and melee, tracking/probing, dirty tricks, good payouts, tears.

lordhelmos.7623:

Phantasy Star Online
Guildwars 1
World of Warcraft
Aion
RIFT
TERA
Starwars the Old Republic
Wildstar
Guildwars 2

By far Gw2 has had the most toxic and rude community I’ve ever seen. Wildstar, TOR, and WoW had very vibrant RP communities. RIFT involved alot of theory crafting and PuG raids were generally nice despite the difficulty of the content.

ohh lets see, games played at least a year list… UO, EQ, EQ2, SWG, planetside1, AO, wwii online, EnB (earth and beyond), CoH, SL, EVE Online. GW1 isn’t an mmo. Some of those 5+yrs, couple still active.

GW2 community is like a kitten balancing on a ball of yarn…
I think likely, dungeons and spvp is engrossed by those wow players people complain about in wow, which is fine with me since I don’t bother with dungeon pugs or spvp and focus on wvw, temples and world bosses.

This game is meow meow casual, rubs against your leg and purrs. So really, you just have a wide mix of people coming from other games doing a little here and a little there in GW2. I guess different activities attract different people, so in-game community changes a bit depending on where you are standing.

4mo in wow, it was a toxic community, and I wish the game had never been made for a number of reasons. I don’t think I like most post-wow gen games (which are mostly just wow clones). I think of my list, GW2 community most reminds me of CoH, yeah. Not the greatest, but better than most, which sadly is a long list of wow clones now, sooo…

Lets face it, the most healthy communities are the ones you can kill and loot

I hate my ranger (gw2’s idea of a ranger anyway), while I can solo most any pve content with my thief. I only leveled ranger because I wanted to understand all the classes for wvw. Actually I think I can solo most any openworld pve content with any class… it’s all very casual-ised now. Especially with it all event scaling and all that, this game really isn’t a solo thing in the end, not when you can be with other players and force events to spawn high level mobs that drop good loot. Solo I’ll play skyrim or X3:TC, but here it pays off to try out non-solo stuff and see how it goes, especially since it goes better here than in most games.

I’d say warrior from your choices, the class is forgiving especially to new players, and sounds like you like it which is good for that class. imo thief takes dedication to be good if you like that commitment. Both usually easily get into groups, but rangers are often not wanted. Not uncommon to see them turn on lfg and stand there alone for 10m while others fill groups fast doing the same content.

Really it just comes down to what class you want to play rather than what is good for what content. Like other games for me, I play/played bounty hunter, assassin, ranger, arcane archer, rogue, covert ops, force recon. For me here d/d stealth thief is the obvious choice. Just playing the easiest class for some content, well will prolly just burn you out. But lb ranger is a good choice for that, lots of lazy rangers in this game sitting at their safe spots collecting loot chests as they randomly point blank your hit contribution awayhehe.

Guards and engi’s are nice, most classes are. Just gotta figure out what best fits your play style, then run with it.

I’m actually surprised anyone can “flip” anything on this TP. It’s like so…
I’m prolly just spoiled from other games :P I mean if you can manage it, go for it lol. A single massive TP has gotta be challenging… if not monotonous.

I used to make pretty good gold from the TP early on though. At times I could buy mats to craft things such as sharpening stones and then load them onto the TP, make quite a bit of gold, depending on the fluctuating market. I still see it fluctuate, but not like it use to, and crafting like I did then is pretty bunk compared to just selling the mats now. That started after ascended crafting, and just too many people taking up crafting, saturated it all with the better items. Low level items were always saturated, but ascended crafting killed off the good scores at high level crafting.

Iiiiiii don’t know… it’s just I’ve seen so many people come and go here. Maybe that is a normal thing now? I don’t know, this is about the only themepark mmo I’ve played in years, and I don’t play f2p’s, but I’ve played a lot of classic themeparks before the wow era.

I did play wow for four months some years ago, that was a pretty bad-bad player-base. GW2 is better than that, yeah… but most people I liked left, and most bad players I blocked are still around. I see quite a bit of pretty bad trolling in game now, compared to early in the game. Not like attitudes, but trying to intentionally wreck events for other people etc. But I guess as long as they can hide behind a non-aggression system, I suppose that’s just how it’ll be.

Firelysm.4967:

What does this story tell you?

Cool story, Bro. Tells me that there are people in this game that hate it when someone else wants to play the game some other way rather than their own narrow way. Oh and that the sky is falling..

mrauls.6519:

How do I increase Dedicated Video RAM internally or externally?

To add more VRAM, you would need to buy a newer video card. VRAM doesn’t plug in independently.

If it’s a laptop, the best you could probably do is make sure you have plenty of system RAM (~4GB), and use an SSD hard drive so windows can manage virtual memory faster (if it can handle SSD).

256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better
I don’t see where it says “dedicated”. Likely you are using shared ram to play at all if only 64mb of vram… which my laptop over 10yrs ago had more But if you are on a desktop computer, you’re in luck, easily upgradable from 64MB vram.

I just want anet to cycle the maps, maybe even add another more simplistic map with almost no npc’s. For this map, after seeing it on ready up last month (looks good), I’ve been thinking of higher population caps too. Of course that doesn’t do anything for those servers where most of the wvw players transferred out of already. Only solution there would seem to be w+w vs w+w vs w+w hah

You could mention buying mystic coins off the TP. Oddly enough, some people don’t realize that even after playing this game for a long time haha.

Anyway, this is one of the things I’ve mentioned a lot of times in-game to do with their obs shards rather than wasting it on temple armor.

Katalos.5038:

“Last gen” MMORPGs I used to played take months, if not years, to reach the level cap and level was very valuable. Only a handful of players in the server actually reach the level cap. Low level gameplay is fun and “end game contents” can be accessed by not-so-low-level players. Players generally do not own many characters and even they do, the sub characters only act as a bank or something. Therefore, choosing a class to main is a much more intense process.

Fast leveling is nothing new, not even for first gen mmo’s. Themeparks did take time, usually months. But sandbox mmo’s you could generally cap a character in a couple weeks, depending on the characters skill selection (skill based etc).

Of course the difference was that sandbox games are more end-game centric while themeparks are all about progression. GW2 is a progression themepark, but seems to try to meld in some sandbox style elements. So yeah you don’t have the leveling commitment like in EQ1 (or it’s clones such as WoW), yet while leveling you are able to scale as if you were in a more skill based sandbox style environment (like UO or SWG etc).

So what do you do when you level so fast? Gear grind. I mean if you are traditionally a themepark player, that is pretty much what they have given you to do rather than level grinding. Or of course, you can do as some have done and level 25 character slots. So I can see how the more dedicated traditional themepark players can get all confusicalled here.

Centurion.7296:

The game is devided into 3 parts; PvP, WvW and PvE and I would expect them to actually give a few kittens about PvP and WvW.

Well I don’t give a crud about spvp, I usually do faction wars in the mmo’s I play. However, wvw which is the closest thing to faction wars (well technically server wars here) is getting a new map set. You can see previews of it in a recent Ready Up program, I think from last month… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoYrN3E1ExU

Dav.9152:

Amarr Victor?

Raise the flag!

PorceleinEve.2973:

See the problem?

No, because wvw on my server has at least one map que in the evening, most maps full or close to it. wvw is far from known as being a loot faucet. Not counting EotM, which many utilize now for leveling, though still not just loot as you claim.

The game was harder/challenging early on, but they remade most stuff easy for easy casual players (risk they took), most of the rest left; really large population decrease though some hang around for things such as wvw and a few content areas of the game. This easy casual formula didn’t work, along with it’s temporary content and no effort for an expansion, obvious to them by the population decrease numbers.

Unfortunately, they simply cant flip a switch and make content more challenging at this point. Some in the industry, at least some and at some point, have learned that you cant just retool your game in mid-stream to target an entirely different type of player without loosing many of your existing players that don’t fit into that demographic you already retained. As many of the other players have already left, you are left with a lot of easy casual players in this instance, and you may want to retain them lest you wind up retaining no one as the others are already gone.

That is the current status though, yet they have ended doing the casual temp content and went to work on an expansion, which is a change in the works, and a point where they can flip that switch. The expansion wasn’t put into the works just to please the casual players, they already have them and are happy in most cases with existing content and quick farming events.

The expansion will likely be aimed primarily at the non-casual players that left, becoming visible to the wayward players with an invitation to come back and try the new and improved content, which will likely be unlike the casual play that already exists in the rest of the game. Otherwise I don’t think they would have bothered with an expansion, as it’s what a lot of the players that left were complaining about not seeing, while only seeing casual temp content month after month with no end in sight.

I would imagine that there will be a “come back to GW2” campaign at or soon after the launch. They may even allow returning players to demo the new content before buying. It’s all about the numbers. Sure there will be new loot there, but likely harder to get at, taking more focus, determination and group coordination. Not entirely hard-mode or nightmare-mode, but quite a bit more than easy casual play which has seemed to fail them.

You guys got it all wrong! The most widely accepted definition of trollin gis:
“Anyone that does not agree with my point of view, especially of those that include references from peer reviews, industry standard journals, and heavily circulated print encyclopedias.
If you disagree with that, you’re prolly a troll! …and and eat baby seals!! O.o

But I don’t like WoW…

DarkWasp.7291:

Yeah it IS a stress test. There really isn’t going to be a lot of time or space to find and report bugs.

The way I read it, we’re just adding numbers to something they can monitor on their side.

er stress tests are open beta at peak times, usually extended times. These two hour spurts during week-day office hours with limited testers is so to give you time to report your findings between each test block as they look for recreatable/repeatable bug errors. This is typical of an early/closed beta cycle, not of stress tests. We will see a number of these short tests, eventually building to an actual stress test.

I imagine they will open a closed beta forum here in the future, so we can collaborate and retest the findings.

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

if you want hard content then go play another MMO!

I don’t know if you noticed (were you here first year?) but most already did. And many of those saying the same thing on the way out that they made-remade the content too easy, too casual.

I would imaging that most that still play gw2 already have some other game they mainly play, then just come here when they get a little bored there and then spend money here in the gem shop. The whole retooling to casual play, temporary content, gem store tickets/passes and no expansions for over three years, well this is intentional. They want those wow players, but to just come here, spend some money and then go back to their main game until next time.

I don’t consider this my main mmo, I’m not a casual player, not hard-core either, just a core player for nearly 20 years of mmo’s. My other game is one of the hardest mmo on the market and I’ll prolly still have my sub there in ten+ years…. likely long after gw2 closes down once the fickle casual players find a new fad game to RMT between acceptable wow expansions. So yeah, keep it up there, it’ll eventually be a lonely place for you here at this rate.

edit: though maybe I’m being a bit too critical. I will give them this though, they have made some development changes that may be on the right track. They have shifted from the temp content to an actual expansion.

They use to but they removed it for whatever reason. Same as with daily costume brawl. I guess negative feedback, possibly.

NINJAWARRIOR.2376:

players who dont have time

Why not just put achievement points on sale in the gem store?!? :P
Pirates > Ninjas
Ok back to mylittleponymmo with ya, m8e.
Arrrrr…

zenleto.6179:

MegumiAzusa.2918:

You should have the slot already (last one on the left, did the screens some hours ago).

This is interesting. I don’t have one yet. I wonder if its a slow roll out or something else since I got my email.

Uh-oh! Didn’t sign up for the newsletter, did ya?!
Or you didn’t scroll the slot selection if you have more than 7. Mine is here on slot 9.
j/k about the news letter, I don’t think it matters… don’t think… But yeah you should see the slot marked beta.

Stick your engi into celestial gear, respec on the fly.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If it’s like the last beta you’ll get another character slot beforehand and at the time of the beta you’ll be able to make a level 80 Revenant and then appear in the beta testing area.

So it’ll be like 9,999 Revenant’s and 1 d/d stealth thief :P

But yeah, if you have teh portal, you have teh access, when there is teh access. If not, your second chance at teh access is win teh newsletter RNG beta access thingy.

Behellagh.1468:

Not necessarily. Someone with an old gaming rig may not be able to toss $100s into improving it due to their situation but tossing $10 for a game on sale on Steam or for gems, no problem.

I’d suggest go dig around sites like gamasutra and GDC promoted sites where they talk about this stuff, you’ll become better informed in time. If it were just about a little here and there, the industry would still mostly be subscription based, and the target would be a wider spectrum of system performances. But it’s not. All this stuff is no secret.

POTDOG.1765:

I CAME INTO THIS GAME TO ENJOY AND HAVE FUN /AFTER 4 MONTHS OF PLAYING . time is best spent on REAL LIFE .

Well you can do both. But if you are going to “grind”, yeah grind RL. If someone is getting “bored” then either something if flawed with the game or that person just plays too much. Well, at some point in an mmo gaming career, most figure that out.

GW2 is… kinda casual. Most mmo’s seem to be nowadays. It’s not about holding your solid interest any longer, but just to see you keep coming back.

But the OP has not leveled to 80 yet, and all I can say to that is just to get rid of your ranger and try a different class. May not be the game that is boring to you, just that class. I understand that, it was painful for me to level a ranger here (leveled all the classes). Most fun to level was warrior and ele. There was a huge difference, at least for me. As for once you are leveled, lots of different content to try. I like Temple assaults, wvw and some world bosses (the harder ones), but other people like other things and there are plenty of other things to do.

Liquified.7153:

Thanks everyone Which class is the most fun in you guys’ opinion for a newbie?

For me, d/d stealth thief. But that is hard mode, not for everyone, takes time to be good. Then I like my kit engi, dust him off now and then, like to use him as a wall defender in wvw. The rest rot – overflow for my bank. But if I ever decide to uninstall and forget this game, my last little joy in this game will be to delete my ranger (leaving the rest) …again.

Tigaseye.2047:

So, it’s actually a false assumption to assume that, just because someone can afford one thing they can, automatically, afford everything else.

Nah doesn’t work like that etc. Certainly someone with a 3gen old putter is less likely to spend money in the cash shop compared to potentially those that have the latest and greatest, at least the potential cash cows among them. It’s about being “invested” in that the guy with the new system is going to be willing to spend more to get everything he can get out of his hobby he is already invested in. Cash shops don’t target everyone (notice the prices are not low), not even everyone with the best computer systems, but certainly those in that bracket that are % wise potentially the big fish.

That’s why you have most sub based games (that are left) that are not just surviving off cash shops, they have gentler system demands. In those cases, they want the largest pool of players to all support the game and company by the month with that sub (the old traditional approach), rather than fishing for the few big spenders to dump $1000’s into the high priced cash shops, and they do make money at that. It’s all down to a science.

So, best to just spend the cash for the top-end card here. My pick is Nvidia, they have far better dev tools if you are into that stuff. But does it matter which? no not really, not at top end as gw2 is likely well tested and optimized for both those manufacturers regarding their current leading cards.

Donari.5237:

Anyway, using an SSD is exactly why people might run out of space and have to consider the size of the expansion.

Well typically you have room for four drives. Primary and slave, secondary and slave. 128’s are under $100, which is all I actually use since I only play a few games that take advantage of the 10x+ access times. Just what is most important is to have windows on the SSD, especially including the windows virtual memory. But even just having two HD’s is a performance boost, even if one is mechanical.