Guild Wars 2

Easily worth the box price, yes. Even if I stopped playing tomorrow it would be. As it is, I can see myself playing for a good few months more. (I’ve never played any MMO longer than a few months, except my first.)

Speaking for myself, it relieves me of the psychological compulsion to treat quests like shopping lists that I’ve got to tick off. It also makes me more interested in the backstory of the quests themselves (rather than just clicking through text, then arriving at the quest area and wondering what I’m supposed to be doing).

For me, that’s HUGE.

Basically the virtual world feels much more dynamic and alive than in any MMO I’ve ever played. As I wander around, I have much more of a sense that the NPCs are living their own lives, rather than just being static decoration.

Yeah got it too – it’s partly annoying, partly quite cool

synk.6907:

I am not a fan of Felicia Day,

Heretic! Blasphemer!

Jav.8053:

I just find it disappointing to see that Jeremy Soule uses the same themes in his scores time and time again. The GW2 soundtrack sounds a lot like his scores for Oblivion and Skyrim, and you can even hear similar themes in the Harry Potter video games. They are nice scores that complement the games well, don’t get me wrong, but it does get a bit repetitive.

I think the sameyness may partly be down to him having a “system” – i.e. he’s probably got a nice setup using Nuendo, Logic or ProTools and some huge orchestral sample libraries, and he has some “templates” with orchestration and some sketch of a form ready set up, and he just plugs tunes he comes up with into that. (Then of course he gets someone to make an orchestral score out of the sampler data, or does that himself, and the stuff is played by a full orchestra, say in Abbey Road or someplace like that.)

Can’t blame him for that, he’s obviously a busy composer. But it does mean that with music he’s not been as inspired by, it all sounds great, but the sound of it in a way over-pumps everything to make it sound equally valid (epic). Whereas if he varied his orchestration a bit more, and didn’t make everything sound like Strauss or Mahler, and sometimes had more ethnic sounds (e.g. tavern music), he’d have a bit of a broader pallette. (I suppose the problem is he’s the go-to guy for epic orchestral soundtracks, and isn’t often given a brief to let his hair down.)

Having said that, none of GW2’s music is actually bad, just a few tracks are a bit less inspired than others – but some are great. (I actually think “The Orders Unite” is a fantastic and original piece of music, and should have been the GW2 theme tune.)

Hehe, yeah, TSW got me used to dodging as a tactic too. MMOs without dodging and blocking seem a bit “dry” after you’ve gotten used to those tactics.

Excellent post, I can get behind most of that.

Yeah, chalk me up as someone who finds the female Sylvari running and idling quite endearing.

Yata.8932:

It’s kind of like ‘child throwing a fit because mom didn’t do what they wanted.’ Cadyern want to get revenge on the asura for pretty much torturing and experimenting on Malomedies (although to be fair they didn’t realize he was sentient and they did ask for peace after this) but when he asked the Pale Tree what they should do she said to accept peace, to not exact revenge. Cadyern could not see why his mother would tell him to ignore these natural feelings, why hold a tablet written by some centaur none of them even know in such high regard. He saw this as unnatural, and founded the Nightmare Court in hopes to get his mother to accept that these feelings of anger and malice as normal and necessary. They do seem to have attracted quite a bit of fanatics that are just violent psychopaths though.

Yeah, this is my feeling about the NC – they’re the sylvari equivalent of kids throwing a tantrum, basically. At the lighter end of the scale, they’re like brooding adolescent Goth types, even a kittenarming in that way; at the darker end of the scale, they’re fully evil and corrupted.

I love that they’re there, and I love the way they’re trying to get the Ventari philosophy ditched. That’s quite a deep and properly tragic conflict right there. (The essence of tragedy being that both sides in a conflict have some right on their side.)

I like Trahearne the character. I like Trahearne the handy Necro kitten Warrior NPC companion.

I also like Trahearne’s voice actor. I just think the voice actor was given poor direction (i.e. wasn’t given context for the emotional tone of the voice-overs he was doing).

When I think of Sylvari, I think of cabbage – not the florid dark green kind, but the pale green, tightly-wrapped kind. So whatever cabbage is technically as part of the plant it is (leaves, bud?), I reckon they’re a development of that.

I called my Sylvari Mesmer “Trirl”. It just came to me suddenly and I liked it.

I think the choice of Asian Indian-flavour is perfect for the Sylvari. My Sylvari Mesmer looks so cute doing it, especially with the little grunts and noises she makes, she sounds like she’s really enjoying herself

Excited to be trying out Tower Down tomorrow, hoping that it will be un-bugged

Eveningstar.6940:

This is a huge paradigm shift for me. After six years of hardcore raiding in World of Warcraft, of a model of “endgame” that meant no piece of equipment was ever special, no piece of equipment ever truly meaningful, and every gear slot, every item, every epic was just a stepping stone to the next inevitable upgrade. Where the transience of gear atrophied its own feeling of “specialness.”

I think this is a very perceptive comment, and it’s a point that those who decry the absence of “endgame” here seem to miss.

The aspect of “endgame” that’s to do with challenging content requiring high skill from maxed-out characters, and team co-ordination – that’s fine, and GW2 should probably have more of that.

But the aspect of “endgame” that’s about something called “gear progression” has always seemed to me to be a bit strange, in view of the fact that any “ultimate” gear is always invalidated by the next cap rise, or expansion or whatever. Is that really “progression”, or just a treadmill?

Yeah, I rather like the idea of a character at cap being “finished”. Not just from the above point of view, but from the point of view of some kind of semi-“realism”. It just never makes sense, to me, to have some insane pocket in a virtual world where mobs get tougher and players get tougher, constantly, endlessly … it’s just a blatant money-spinner.

IOW, to me, the idea that there’s an end to my character’s progression, and that ultimate weapons and armor really are ultimate, feels quite right.

People did not “forgive” WoW when it started. There were already several strong competitors (ironically, the venerable and wonderful City of Heroes was one of them – for a very brief time before WoW hit its stride it beat EQ and was THE biggest Western MMO), and there were tons of complaints about how “dumbed down” WoW was and how fast and easy it was to get to level cap (i.e. compared to EQ).

But we know how that turned out.

WoW was a huge success for several reasons, but one of the reasons was that Blizz reached out to players who wouldn’t previously have tolerated some of the MMO conventions – i.e. they “streamlined” the EQ style of MMO and thereby opened up the genre to new players.

Anet are doing something similar – with GW and GW2 they are reaching out to players who wouldn’t normally tolerate some of the conventions of MMOs that have set in because of the subscription model.

Of course it remains to be seen whether they will be successful in attracting players new to the genre, like Blizz were. My personal feeling is that they will be, and that this will counterbalance some of the attrition of players used to the older EQ/WoW (DIKU MUD for those who know ) design.

Just checked the patch notes – some good stuff there!

I was actually surprised at how stocky some of the female models were, I thought that was a nice touch by Anet.

Often. In fact, every now and then, especially in a fresh zone, I like to walk and spin camera while I’m walking.

Walking in MMOs is highly under-rated as a means of gaining immersion. After all, we normally walk everywhere, not run helter-skelter. That’s what we’re used to physically and if we do it in the game, the content “hits you” at a more appropriate pace, so the game world feels VAST.

You lose speed, but you gain immersion

Must say I’ve never had this problem. I keep my gear up to date and going to lower level zones, while it’s never a snooze-fest and you still have to be alert, it’s generally much easier.

I disliked GW partly for the system it had. I didn’t like that you had to have a “loadout” before venturing forth. I prefer the GW2 system where both weapon and utilities can be changed on the fly, but you are still limited within Profession. I think the Professions are plenty broad, and I like having the flexibility of being able to switch weapons and utilities to suit context while wandering. I guess GW didn’t have that requirement because it didn’t have a persistent world so much, so loadouts were ok in that context as you knew what quest you were venturing out to do. But when you’re out and about in the world, you need more flexibility.

Yup, this would be nice – as the poster said above, some bits of music that sound ethnic like they might be being produced by local NPCs, rather than a full-on orchestra. Especially in areas of rest, or places like the “moot” in Timberline Falls, etc.

Yeah there seems to be something wonky with their volume – they’re often far too loud and sound really close to your ear, whereas they should sound quieter and a bit more muffled with distance, or echo or something (e.g. if in mountainous region) unless the NPC happens to be right next to you.

BobbyStein.2315:

Vzur.7123:

BobbyStein.2315:

We need to adjust the PC chatter frequency so certain lines play less often. It’s on our to-do list.

While you’re at it, how about adding an option to disable it? No offense, I love the game, but I don’t really appreciate hearing these lines ever.

We’ve talked about either implementing a frequency slider or giving people the option to mute player chatter, but it all comes down to programming and UI resources. A few of us wanted it in for ship, but too many higher priority issues needed attention.

A frequency slider would definitely allay a lot of the complaints. Don’t listen to those people who say the content isn’t right; it mostly is, and it’s mostly very high quality.

There’s just too much of it, i.e. it’s too often (that goes for dancing sounds, some (though not all) local NPC chatter, one’s own buff comments, etc., etc.)

I also love these little “flavour” sounds. My Sylvari is as cute as a button when she’s doing her Banghra dancing and making those sounds.

I just think a frequency slider would be nice. Rather like with the music, it would be nice to control how often “flavour” audio is triggered.

In contrast, I NEVER turn music off in games, and the quality of music is a big decider for me on whether I like a game, as immersion and atmosphere mean a lot to me, and immersion for me includes appropriate music (like in a film).

e.g. when I think of “moments” in a game like GW2, it’s things like cresting a ridge and coming across a new vista just as a particularly strong piece of music hits – little moments like that mean a lot to me while I’m heavily into the “role”.

The music in GW2 is perhaps not Soule’s best work, but it’s certainly fitting and usually atmospherically proper.

Yeah I agree that the sound of his voice is wonderful, but I get the feeling he hasn’t really been given good direction. e.g. in the whole Claw Island sequence and Forging the Pact, there are many occasions where the context would seem to indicate a more urgent delivery, but he’s still reading the phone book (albeit with a lovely, rich voice).

BobbyStein.2315:

I think part of the issue some people have with cinematic conversation VO is the presentation. There are some folks who can’t get past the two-shot, stage play view, so that ruins it for them. Also, some of the actors would have benefited from better contextual notes, which is why some of their lines sound “off.”

Yes, I think that’s probably the real problem here rather than the quality of the voice actors per se. I’ve noticed several occasions where lines just aren’t delivered in a context-appropriate manner, or where one line has a different emotional tone from the line following.

I think the cutscene delivery method thing is a real matter of taste. I actually think it’s very good bang for buck (considering it’s a “cheap” way of doing it).

Some of the tracks are amazing (particularly “The Orders Unite”, and some of the weirder atmosphere pieces like the one used in Sparkfly Fen), but overall it’s a bit samey – a bit “Soule paste”.

However, for those who don’t like the music so often, there is a solution – under audio you can “lengthen interval” to the far right, which means the tracks will play way less often, so you don’t get bored of them so quickly.

Funniest I’ve seen so far was a little dialogue between an Ettin being experimented on and the Asura experimenting on him (I think it may have been an Asura place in Timberline Falls, either that or Mount Maelstrom). The Ettin is amusingly articulate and chides the Asura on getting the experiment wrong, then warns the Asura that because of her error something bad is about to happen. Then he turns into a Champion Ettin and suddenly it’s an Event. I can’t remember the dialogue but it was hilarious.

DEFINITELY NOT REMOVE. I love all the grunts and humming, it’s spot on.

The only problem with all this “flavour” audio is that it’s just too frequent. It all just needs to be thinned out a bit.

It’s the interval betwen tracks, so the setting you want is far to the left, that means the tracks will play with only short gaps between them,

dandamanno.4136:

At first I thought staff was a ranged weapon but the more I played with it the more I realized what a great melee weapon it was.

First, to get the “bounces” from the Winds of chaos you need to be closer than 1200 range (about 600 I think).

Second, staff 4 only works if you are being actively hit, so playing keep away from a melee mob makes no sense if you are planning to use chaos armour.

Third, Chaos storm is at it’s full potentiall only if you and the mob are inside of it.

Traiting heavily down the Chaos line and the Inspiration line (for protection from the regeneration proc from the chaos line) will give you virtually endless Chaos armour if you combine your Glamour skills (and Chaos storm) with staff 2 for the chaos armour combo (using the traits reduced staff CD, and reduced Glamour skills CD) and it adds toughness and vitality to boot.

Your dps will be pretty low this way but you can easily pull 4-5 mobs (including veterans) and slowly whittle away at them all the while safe behind chaos armour and all the boons from WoC and Chaos storm.

This build also seems to meld well with a sword/OH combo as you will be in melee range most of the time.

Yeah this is what I’ve found. For average PvE for me Staff 1 is good as a distance opener/puller, but mostly thereafter I’m nearly constantly in melee range, constantly alternating between Staff and Sword/Focus (rather than Sword/Pistol, which I think is better for bossy or 1v1 PvP type fights), and using Null Field alternating with Chaos Storm for that Chaos Armor buff.

It’s a high risk/high reward playstle. You have to time your Sword 2 and Distortion Shatter to get you out of trouble (my char is a Sylvari, so I also often use the “Take Root” ability also when I get in trouble solo – 4s invulnerability and setup for extra AoE damage).

I think Focus is a bit better for general use than Pistol, because in PvE you’re often drawn into sitautions with multiple mobs, and the Warden is just a great AoE, especially when you have the Light Field from Focus 4 on him (and also when you can use Sword 3 to leap through the field yourself).

That, combined with traited and geared Condition damage and lots of Shattering (with Confusion trait for all Shatters), I find optimal for my playstyle. There’s a little bit of burst in this type of build from the shatters, but mostly it’s a hell of a lot of DoT, and good protection.

Yeah, I’ve never taken class forums very seriously, they’re basically troll-fests and only worth entertainment value. I’ve been highly amused by the fact that as I’ve gotten into each Prof, and checked out the Prof forums, every Prof is apparently both UP and OP.

Having said that, there are usually a handful of players who are extremely smart and do number-crunching who are worth taking seriously and usually well worth reading.

But it takes time for their voices to be heard above the rabble so that players start heeding them. (I’m not sure I’ve identified any of those types of posters on my Prof forums yet.)

“Endgame” is whatever you do once you’ve reached cap on a character. In a sense, the term is meaningless for an MMO, which is supposed to be a virtual world, not a game with a beginning, middle and end. But unless a game is a sandbox or otherwise invests heavily in potentially infinite player-generated content, all developer-designed content is going to run out sooner or later. And for me, once I’ve done a thing a few times, it’s “dead” to me.

Personally, I’ve never bothered with “endgame” content in MMOs much. I do like challenging content, so 5-mans and that sort of thing I like. I like the idea of “raids” in theory, but in practice I’ve always found them too time-consuming and commitment-intensive to do.

Usually I just roll another alt, or bring one of my other alts up. To me, the best parts of an MMO are a) exploring the virtual world and b) mastering the various classes, pondering builds, etc.

I think PvP is good as an endgame concept, because it’s potentially infinite – i.e. people are more interesting to play against than AIs, so the “content” there (at least the combat content per se) is much richer and more challenging than anything developers can do at the moment.

Just came to this quest and it still seems to be bugged, for me.

I’m left at the third beach with the “clear the beach” objective complete but no cutscene, Tonn not saying anything, and the pack animal standing back up the hill.

I did notice that while the green star for the second tower disappeared after some fighting there, the actual tower graphic didn’t change to a downed state; nor did I get Tonn saying anything about blowing up the tower (as he did with the first tower).

There was an NPC stuck in the rubbish pile of the first tower, but I had thought that one of my NPC party killed it (he was fighting inside the rubbish pile and later came out with a berserker spin), but maybe he didn’t.

It’s pretty standard for developers to take a bit of time and attention before they ban bots. Obviously, they want to avoid false positives as much as possible, and they want to try and get as much info as possible about how the bots operate. (Better to cut a weed off at the root than the stems.)

EVE Online has periodical “purges” – people see bots, report, complain and whine, and it seems like CCP are doing nothing about it, then WHAM, huge swathes of them are cleared out in one go.

I think the DR complaints have some validity to them, I don’t agree with people who say “you aren’t playing right”. Sometimes people like to min-max their time efficiency, or just like a relaxing, trance-inducing playstyle to wind down after work with, and they shouldn’t be punished. That’s true.

But I strongly doubt such players are in a majority (especially in a game that’s been advertised from the beginning as non-grind-centric, which it is), and if there’s a cost/benefit calculation to be made between bots ruining the economy, and some players being upset for a while, I know where I’d come down on that.

However, to speak for the other side again, I’d be very suspicious if DR wasn’t a temporary measure – i.e. if Anet keep it in the game for more than a few months (i.e. after they do a purge on the current bot plague, which I think is undoubtedly going to come), that, to me, might be a sign that they are trying to manipulate people into buying gems, and I wouldn’t like that attitude, and would probably leave.

Still, thankfully, I’ve had easily more than $60 worth of fun out of the game already. Anything else is gravy.

Another lover of underwater combat here.

Thread title should be: “underwater combat: do you want ME to hate it?”

Name/gender/appearance change
More appearance armors
Townie clothes
More dances
More emotes
“Fluff” for explorers and rp-ers like backpacks, portable campsites, portable kegs, pack mules, etc.

Apos.5184:

Got to love the “I don’t get affected by the DR, thus everything is ok” joke.

Is it any worse than the “I hate DR therefore everyone must hate it (plus there are lots of threads on the forums about people hating it) therefore everyone is going to leave the game d0000mz0r” joke?

I’m always popping in and out of melee, and I’m constantly switching weapons. Staff has the jump back thing on 2, and Sword has a gap closer on 3. The vulnerabilitiy bump from Sword 1 is not to be underestimated.

I think if you’re going for a Condition build, Sword+Focus is a bit better than Sword+Pistol. Sword+Pistol is probably a bit better for 1 v 1.

Cerpin.7839:

This game has the least complicated ability system I’ve ever played. I think it’s cute that so many people are trying to argue that their class is hard. News flash: they’re all easy. It’s sad. I don’t even have to use half the buttons on my mouse for this game. It’s thoughtless. What you are experiencing is denial.

The classes are as deep as you want them to be. You can play them with 1 or 2 keys, or you can play them with the full compliment of (at minimum) 15 – that was part of Anet’s promise. And if you play them to the full, they’re more effective.

Of course “hard” is always relative. What’s hard at first can become easy with practice, or if you just have a knack for it in the first place.

Kimbald.2697:

gurugeorge.9857:

Kimbald.2697:

I would like to ,put a few points clear about the insults here:

if all the ‘wowtards’ leave GW2 than this game dies… it really will.
That has nothing to do with the fact which game is better, but it has everything to do with the simple fact that most MMO’ers play (or played) both.

Let me explain. You have WoW players, and then you have a small but vocal subset of WoW players we professional WoWtard observers call “WoWtards”. Most WoW players are perfectly normal and sane, WoWtards on the other hand are the sort of player that any MMO would be better off without.

Unfortunately they are usually over-represented on new MMO forums.

How to recognize them? Principally by the fact that they’re unable to play a new game on its own terms, and constantly compare this or that aspect of any new game to WoW.

If it’s similar to WoW, it’s copying WoW, if it’s different from WoW, it’s also fail. The enunciation of that peculiar double bind is the primary distinguishing mark of WoWtard-ery.

I understand fully what you mean by this, I really do.

My argument is that the terms ‘wowtard’ is mostly used by people defending their own game (in this case GW2) against anyone who critises it. Very often without anything in the critised post actually doing what you describe as a Wowtards behaviour.

And I’m not saying you do that…

If someone writes a post about him wanting to grind without the DR system,another pops up saying he’s a wowtard simply because grinding is a big (unavoidable) deal in WoW.
But that has nothing to do with the one writing the post about wanting to grind in GW2…

That is why I am going against the term, simply because it’s misused more as an random insult than it is against actual wowtards revealing themselves

Oh gotcha, I agree with you – yeah people do sometimes jump too quickly down critics’ throats, and it’s unpleasant to see.

I think some fans have felt a bit under attack, but there’s no need. It’s pretty clear that substantial numbers of people even on the forums express that they like the game. The game’s not in any sort of trouble at all, really. Just bugs and other problems that will probably mostly be sorted out (judging by other MMOs and by the rate at which Anet have been fixing problems concurrently).

I think SWTOR delivers its story better, but the content of the stories in GW2 is surprisingly good. Some SWTOR stories are better, but not all.

Yeah, wouldn’t say I’m spoiled for other MMOs quite, but GW2 is by far my favourite at the moment.

At the moment, what’s in front of you in a vertical line is automatically highlighted.

It would be nice if one could have that off so that you’d only highlight something if you hovered your mouse over it.

Jordan.6157:

gurugeorge.9857:

Anyone who complains that Mesmer is OP is implicitly admitting that they are a n00b.

Lucky I didn’t say there are OP then. I only said they are unskilled. (Large dmg output for little effort. 1 wep set pressing 5 keys is little effort)

That’s odd, I seem to be using 10 keys, plus 1 key, plus 3 keys, plus 1 key, for a total of 15 keys, the latter 5 switchable out of combat. Trust me, when people know your tricks as a Mesmer, you have to fight for your virtual life.

I can assure you, the “classic” Mesmer, using Staff/Sword+Pistol (or Focus) is quite a busy little bee.

zityz.6089:

Mesmer Elite Skill: Mass Chaos Armour
for 5 seconds all Allies in the area have Chaos Armour (same properties as normal chaos armour)
Recharge 210seconds

Make it so.
:)

Isn’t something like that already possible with any Ethereal Field + Torch 4 (IIRC – my memory might be playing tricks on me)?

Anyone who complains that Mesmer is OP is implicitly admitting that they are a n00b.

Kimbald.2697:

As a sidenote:

I can’t understand the attitude of GW2 being for people who are ‘better than WoW’.
Can’t you guys see that both games are fishing in the same pool here?

GW2 can not survive if all the wowplayers would leave for good.
How many MMO players do you think there are to fill these games up?

Ha, people used to think that before WoW came out – they thought the MMO market was saturated. WoW proved that to be hugely wrong.

These days, it’s not worth developers’ time trying to muscle in on WoW players. Sure, some will come and it’s great if they do, but really developers have to try to reach out to new players, with mechanics that are less stuck in old ways, and more appealing to the average gamer.

Just like Blizzard did.

Anet have said it’s ok to take the copper to delete the mail, just report the gold spammer.