Verdict So Far?

[Garal]

So how are you guys feeling about the game now that it's been out for a couple of weeks? Is this game finally the next DAoC we've all been waiting for?

[Graveworm]

There will never be another DAoC, but this is definitely the closest we've had and will probably be the closest we get for a long time. Beyond that, the areas of the game outside of WvW (RvR), i.e. PvE and structured PvP, are both really solid. Guild Wars 2 is hands down the best MMO on the market and it doesn't even have a monthly fee. Just fucking buy it already.

[Andile™]

There will never be another DAoC, but this is definitely the closest we've had and will probably be the closest we get for a long time. Beyond that, the areas of the game outside of WvW (RvR), i.e. PvE and structured PvP, are both really solid. Guild Wars 2 is hands down the best MMO on the market and it doesn't even have a monthly fee. Just fucking buy it already.

This. For all it has got going, so polished at release, and no subscription... I can't bring myself to think about playing other games. MMO or not.

[VKhaun]

Buy it right now.

It is a fantastic collection of the 'they should do stuff like that!' comments we have been making for years. It has excellent maps, but you'll still constantly discover things, be met with tricky terrain, and enjoy moving through the world very close to that 'lost' feeling DAoC had back in the day.

You have character progression then RvR (WvWvW) like DAoC, but at any time you can take any character and warp to an area called 'the mists' where they do BG-like Red vs Blue matches. In this area you get all skills unlocked, free equipment of any kind you want, and count as lv80.

They even did the little things right. Areas auto scale to your level and most XP rewards are % of level based so all content is always relevant. Every different setting saves your build. Going underwater for the first time will take your skills down with you even if they can't be used, but once you set them to something else they save and swap when you go underwater. Same thing in the Red v Blue areas, you can leave and not have to worry about fixing your build when you get back to PvE or come back and go straight to PvP without setting up your lv80 build again. Even the equipment swaps automatically between areas






If I just HAD to bash it, I would say they were really gay with the inventory space. Your bank is small unless you shell out $ for pages and you only have half your bag slots if you don't shell out $ for those as well. Technically you can swap in game currency for cash shop currency, but that's not a solution for a new player. At early levels you are required to spend high amounts of cash on training books, and using the waypoint system costs small amounts of coin, plus standard death=repair bills. You don't even have enough character slots base to play every class, and your slots are shared between servers so no hopping to get more... gotta get gems from the cash shop or trade in-game currency for the gems when you're high enough to afford it.

[Ero Elohim]

Actually put in a request for a refund today. There's been a growing sense of doubt in my mind about the game since BWE2, which I was hoping was my reluctance to spend time on the game when it would be deleted, and it hasn't dispersed. The game is simply not fun to play for me. There's a significant lack of progression in PvE, it lacks many interesting mechanics or skills in combat, and the dynamic events repeat enough that they become more annoying and immersion breaking than quest-chaining in WoW. World V. World generally feels like a clusterfuck, but that's to be expected. I don't enjoy large-scale PvP.

Structured PvP is fun, but it's so far removed from the game (it gives you no XP, no loot, no cosmetics, and nothing that you can show off in the other parts of the game) that it could be shipped as a small stand-alone title. It feels a bit like LoL or DotA in that respect, but both of those games are more fun to play and I have more friends playing them.

In my circle of friends who've been playing, five of us are already feeling blase towards it.

[VKhaun]

I do not agree with Ero.

PvE has marked progression through completing maps to get XP which involves exploration, and completing challenges to get skill points rather than just farming XP and picking up your quest rewards in any other title. Everything on my character is dropped loot or event loot. Then you get huge boss fights right in the lowbie zones. The first human zone has a swamp where a huge zombie dragon thing will rise up and start pwning everyone.

I like the Dynamic events (opinion) but dynamic events are not required for map completion at all. if you don't like them, just move on (fact). They're entirely fluff. Sometimes participating in them helps complete 'aid a person' type map locations MUCH faster by presenting a concentration of mobs that are on the person's kill list, but even then you don't need to repeat them or even stay for the whole event.

Example: You approach a farm where the farmer is an 'aid person' type location on the map. You can find feed and feed his cows, find water and dump it on his crops, or kick over dirt mounds and kill giant worm mobs, kill bandits, and I'm probably forgetting some. Each thing you do advances a progress bar. You can do all combat, or all gathering, or whatever. Periodically bandits will raid the farm in a dynamic event type thing. All dynamic events reward you with a global currency to spend at all 'aid a person' people that you've completed and each one sells different stuffs. Doing the dynamic event and killing lots of bandits will complete the map location really fast and give you currency to spend immediately.





MMO combat 'depth' is an overstuffed convoluted strawman. Most just boils down to bad controlls or too many buttons being justified by fanbois who insist on associating it with good aspects of the game that didn't need those extra buttons or controls. GW2 gives some real depth through weapon set swaps. The elementalist switches from fire/water/earth/air for new skill bars, the engineer equips kits, the necro goes super saijin lich mode, other classes swap two weapon sets and manage pets or different resources.

Instead of many buttons or complex controls, you have one button that represents a choice to switch between weapon sets for the moment, and depth comes from balancing the benefits of swapping (litterally, on-swap bonus effects) vs the skills you want to use at the time. Not only have I not played an MMO in YEARS that had such a good skill system, that's exactly how I always set up my bars on DAoC. I would bind a key to swap between hotbars and use the sets for different things.

[Ero Elohim]

I like the Dynamic events (opinion) but dynamic events are not required for map completion at all. if you don't like them, just move on (fact). They're entirely fluff. Sometimes participating in them helps complete 'aid a person' type map locations MUCH faster by presenting a concentration of mobs that are on the person's kill list, but even then you don't need to repeat them or even stay for the whole event.

If you don't do the Dynamic Events, you will fall completely behind in level and be unable to progress your personal story or complete higher level Renown Hearts, unless you spend a lot of time gathering materials, crafting, and killing random enemies to make up for it. The other option is to spend time and money travelling from zone to zone in your level range completing their hearts. Dynamic Events are the core of their PvE design, though, as the higher level zones are completely based on them and have no Renown Hearts. Unfortunately, these events also scale hideously to individual players (one event I attempted alone proceeded to spawn a dozen equal level enemies that all jumped me) and rarely challenge large zergs that flood into them, meaning most of the time you're either in a giant mob attacking anything you can target while stifling a yawn, or trying desperately to pull a manageable amount of enemies.

MMO combat 'depth' is an overstuffed convoluted strawman. Most just boils down to bad controlls or too many buttons being justified by fanbois. GW2 gives some real depth through weapon set swaps. The elementalist switches from fire/water/earth/air for new skill bars, the engineer equips kits, the necro goes super saijin lich mode, other classes swap two weapon sets and manage pets or different resources.

Instead of many buttons or complex controls, you have one button that represents a choice to switch between weapon sets for the moment, and depth comes from balancing the benefits of swapping (litterally, on-swap bonus effects) vs the skills you want to use at the time. Not only have I not played an MMO in YEARS that had such a good skill system, that's exactly how I always set up my bars on DAoC. I would bind a key to swap between hotbars and use the sets for different things.

The lack of depth I mention comes from having no resources, few skill interactions, and no substantial proc effects. Resources is the big one. While very organized PvP and some dungeon boss fights require you to think about what abilities you're using, 90% of the content is smashing 1-5 as they come off cooldown with no regards to what you're doing. You don't have to concern yourself with avoiding damage (unless it's one of the few telegraphed BIG-HIT-INCOMING attacks) because you regenerate all your health in seconds out of combat and you have no resource to worry about overspending. It's not surprising that the friends I have still playing are all playing Thieves, the one class with a resource mechanic. Thanks to the lack of said resources, the game is also fairly limited in the debuffs and skill choices it can offer. There's no energy degeneration effects here, no 'mana burn', no Blood is Power, and generally less mechanics to work with. You also don't see many skill interactions like WoW's Shatter (there is one skill I found on the Elementalist that does extra damage to burning enemies and it's on a 45s cooldown.)

I couldn't get into how the game seems focused on depowering the player, too. The level-scaling means you'll never feel like you've grown in power, since the game will reduce your stats anytime you get near a low level area. It never downscales you enough to make the content actually challenging, since you'll still have the benefit of better gear and more trait points spent, but it will limit your ability to feel like you've triumphed over the area. This is the same shit that everyone complained about in Oblivion, yet is being worshiped here.

A organized group will probably find the game a blast, though. There's lots of effort put into combo fields and effects between multiple people working in unison. I did have a blast playing in a group of 3-4 people in the Shiverpeak Mountains, doing all the Veteran and Group Events tagged up there, and eventually duoing the Svanir Shaman raid boss. Those moments were just entirely too rare to be worth continuing for. It's not a terrible game, just not one I'm interested in playing.

[VKhaun]

Fuck me, edit != reply...


EDIT--
Fixed.

Not having the kind of depth you like, is not the same as not having depth. Weapon swapping accomplishes plenty, and I don't agree for an instant about spamming 1-5. You don't have to spam 1 because you set it on auto, and three keys in any set are always situational. The game is also very unforgiving about those AoE rings. They come often and then strike quickly. I don't know why you bring up health regen, you don't count as 'out of combat' vs bosses unless you get REALLY far away. Healing has been important at all my fights and I've seen events fail without it even in the starter zones.

[Ero Elohim]

I'm not going to continue the argument. Garal asked for a verdict, I delivered mine. You enjoy the game; Obviously, many do. I'm not one of them. There's no need to get into a nerdy slap-fight over this.

[VKhaun]

If we can do eight pages over nudity on HBO, damnit, we can do two over MMO depth you pussy.

[Ero Elohim]

Oh, I avoided that shitfest. I actually had about a paragraph typed out here before I deleted it with the thought, "Why? Neither of us is going to change the other's mind." I'm trying this new thing, where I don't get in pointless arguments over the internet. All the cool kids aren't doing it.

[VKhaun]

I don't find this pointless.
MMO Depth is something that's not talked about enough IMO.

Basic PvE, killing one mob or something, shouldn't be deep because making trivial events non-trival to deal with just feels like you're being held back. The simple auto attack and basic round of skills suits regular PvE just fine. But then how do you add depth to that when it comes time to do something that's not trivial? I think all the class mechanics and 7-0 skills in GW2 are well chosen for this, but you've ruled out dynamic events and so you're not using any of them except the theif's.

If all I did was flamethrower stuff with my #1 key and my napalm wall I'd probably hate my engineer. It's doing the events with a crowd or PvP with a team and having to place my AoE's support skills, avoid AoE's, and swap weapons around that things get really fun because of depth. At the same time though, being able to just FWOOOSHHH and kill two mobs in my way to a crafting node is very satisfying.

Take TSW for example. That game had loads of depth, but having to deal with all of it's depth for every single stupid trash mob completely ruined it. I spent the whole time, even when I was enjoying myself, trying deperately to avoid aggro. In GW2 I will gladly roast anything that crosses my path and usually finish aiding NPC's entirely with combat out of pure choice.

[Stalis]

The game is okay. The best thing it has going for it is that the gameplay is incredibly refreshing for an mmo.

I really miss being able to play a healer. I heard several people say no healers is a good thing but I don't see it. The only good argument I've heard is that without healers you don't have to wait for one to group up and do things. I've heard it said that healers are boring, and seen the role compared to a game of whack a mole. If healing is a game of whack a mole, then dpsing is just repeatedly smashing a single mole that doesn't even pop up and down.

The game also needs more crowd control. This would help alleviate not having healers a little bit. If grouping isn't going to require team work from healing, then it should at least be the case that you should have to CC an enemy or two to defeat a pack of mobs, or win in pvp. As it is, the game is filled with 2 second roots on 20 second cooldowns that hardly root the enemy for as long as it took you to cast it. The game does have decent snares, but I would like to see more CC that takes enemies out of the fight for a few seconds. I know a lot of people HATE CC because they can't stand not being able to play their characters for portions of the game, but I personally think CC adds a ton of strategy to games so long as it has appropriate durations, diminishing returns, and ways to remove it.

I would like to see more procs and synergy between abilities and stuff to make dealing damage more exciting. It's like Ero was saying, I would love to see mechanics like WoW's shatter. I would also like to see things like ability A has an X% chance to make your next B do Y% more damage. Or if A crits it resets the cooldown on B. Something that makes dealing damage a little unpredictable and consequently more fun.

I haven't really pvped much, but the little bit of WvW I did do was an appalling zerg fest. Maybe the battleground things might be more fun, but I wasn't a fan of WoW's battlegrounds so I doubt I'll really like them either.

To me, guild wars is an interesting change of pace from other mmos. I give it a lot of props for not being a wow clone and it is without a doubt a lot more fun than any wow clone i have ever played. I will probably play the game for a little bit, enjoy the uniqueness of the game and the classes but I don't see myself sticking around for long.

Edit: The game might have some of the stuff I mentioned and I just don't know, because I've barely even played the game since I got it between work, school, and being banned.

[VKhaun]

I really miss being able to play a healer.

Water elemental atunement = Healer.
Especially Staff + Water. Spammable AoE DD+Heal.


This week I'm also going to try a warrior build in Red v Blue using Banner of Wisdom. With boon duration + heal gear and the trait to reduce recharge, It looks like you can spam the regen from Compassionate Banner pretty hard. I tested the first available banner skill and once you summon it it lasts in the world (regardless of if you hold it or place it) almost as long as it's cooldown so the trait to reduce cooldown should make it permanently available to carry around and beat things with while shouting (shouts heal trait) and spamming regen. Have to see how the numbers look though, it might not be enough healing to be worthwhile.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fIUQ...qbM3Iuxej7G5NA

[Zavon]

The first weekend I played it, I felt kind of like Ero does. A large part of that is from having been "conditioned" by nearly a decade of previous MMO's. I had this mentality of I need a new weapon, a new level, a new ability, a new talent point; and I need it now now now. Ironically, when I played it next I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to fuck off. Then I discovered the beauty of Guild wars 2. It's a game that you play to experience the world they created.

If we use the metaphor for Theme Park's to describe most games. Then the metaphor I would use to describe Guild Wars 2 is not a theme park, but rather a beach resort. There are still tons of things to do (swim, parasail, surf, etc.) however they are more integrated and there aren't "separate lines" for which ride you want. And, the overall objective is to just have a good time and bond with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/family/dog.

[Boxy Brown]

If you don't do the Dynamic Events, you will fall completely behind in level and be unable to progress your personal story or complete higher level Renown Hearts, unless you spend a lot of time gathering materials, crafting, and killing random enemies to make up for it. The other option is to spend time and money travelling from zone to zone in your level range completing their hearts. Dynamic Events are the core of their PvE design, though, as the higher level zones are completely based on them and have no Renown Hearts. Unfortunately, these events also scale hideously to individual players (one event I attempted alone proceeded to spawn a dozen equal level enemies that all jumped me) and rarely challenge large zergs that flood into them, meaning most of the time you're either in a giant mob attacking anything you can target while stifling a yawn, or trying desperately to pull a manageable amount of enemies.



The lack of depth I mention comes from having no resources, few skill interactions, and no substantial proc effects. Resources is the big one. While very organized PvP and some dungeon boss fights require you to think about what abilities you're using, 90% of the content is smashing 1-5 as they come off cooldown with no regards to what you're doing. You don't have to concern yourself with avoiding damage (unless it's one of the few telegraphed BIG-HIT-INCOMING attacks) because you regenerate all your health in seconds out of combat and you have no resource to worry about overspending. It's not surprising that the friends I have still playing are all playing Thieves, the one class with a resource mechanic. Thanks to the lack of said resources, the game is also fairly limited in the debuffs and skill choices it can offer. There's no energy degeneration effects here, no 'mana burn', no Blood is Power, and generally less mechanics to work with. You also don't see many skill interactions like WoW's Shatter (there is one skill I found on the Elementalist that does extra damage to burning enemies and it's on a 45s cooldown.)

I couldn't get into how the game seems focused on depowering the player, too. The level-scaling means you'll never feel like you've grown in power, since the game will reduce your stats anytime you get near a low level area. It never downscales you enough to make the content actually challenging, since you'll still have the benefit of better gear and more trait points spent, but it will limit your ability to feel like you've triumphed over the area. This is the same shit that everyone complained about in Oblivion, yet is being worshiped here.

A organized group will probably find the game a blast, though. There's lots of effort put into combo fields and effects between multiple people working in unison. I did have a blast playing in a group of 3-4 people in the Shiverpeak Mountains, doing all the Veteran and Group Events tagged up there, and eventually duoing the Svanir Shaman raid boss. Those moments were just entirely too rare to be worth continuing for. It's not a terrible game, just not one I'm interested in playing.

There are classes with ability resource pools, but tbh I've always found ability resources are way more frustrating than anything. I'm way more into the whole cooldown management thing that GW2 has.

I don't know what you mean by few skill interactions. Literally every single one of my skills shares some kind of synergy with the others. I stack conditions on enemies and I have a skill that does more damage per condition. That's just one example. I also have a skill that does more damage the more Mantras I have up, and one that does more damage the more illusions I have out.

Likewise, I don't know what you're getting at with the no substantial proc effects. I'm pretty sure every single one of my skills procs some sort of condition or boon, and two of my weapons have damage procs on them.

But hey, the game's not for everyone, and if you don't like it, you don't like it. I'm just saying that I haven't seen a problem with pretty much any of the things you were talking about.

[Pyrrhus]

The first weekend I played it, I felt kind of like Ero does. A large part of that is from having been "conditioned" by nearly a decade of previous MMO's. I had this mentality of I need a new weapon, a new level, a new ability, a new talent point; and I need it now now now. Ironically, when I played it next I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to fuck off. Then I discovered the beauty of Guild wars 2. It's a game that you play to experience the world they created.

If we use the metaphor for Theme Park's to describe most games. Then the metaphor I would use to describe Guild Wars 2 is not a theme park, but rather a beach resort. There are still tons of things to do (swim, parasail, surf, etc.) however they are more integrated and there aren't "separate lines" for which ride you want. And, the overall objective is to just have a good time and bond with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/family/dog.

Honestly this is what I enjoy most about the game. I love that I can just hop on, run around a map for a while doing hearts/events and doing map completion and then take a break and try to craft some stuff or try something different. I pretty much do 2 levels a day without even trying even into my 30s. I will say the game takes a little while to get invested in the character and build. Like I was really starting to get tired of my engi and thought he was bland until around level 20 when I got my first trait to level 10 and had another utility slot. Then I had way more options in build and utility skills and saw some very interesting combo's. Now I'm 33(or something) and I love it. The maps are all very alive and fresh.

As far as skills, combos, and whatnot I feel some classes are more "closers" in skill combos, while others have a lot of "openers" with a few "closers" which makes for some bland solo combat sometimes. But even solo at this point in the game there's usually a few others around. I HATE that my engi cannot weapon swap with `... which makes me think i should bind one of my 7-0 to ` and use it for weapon packs... -_-' gotta go do that now.

If I had to give some cons they would be a lot like what vkhaun said with inventory and character space.