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Topic Starter Topic: Re: Guild Wars 2
Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 04-30-2012 12:22 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Okay, Beta's finished so I'll post some thoughts.

PvE and "Events"? Utterly brilliant.
First, you have to understand that the game actively scales your character level down to whichever area you're in. While this sounds incredibly bad, in practise it's brilliant. I'll explain further later.

Secondly, the hype about seamlessly joining events? All true. The PvE in this actively encourages team play. I mean, saying it like that really doesn't do it justice. Events ping up an announcement if you're near one, then you just check your map or radar and head for the action. Depending on how much you contribute to an encounter, you'll get a reward accordingly. As long as you're actively participating for more than a couple of kills, it's easy to get the top reward for any encounter. I'm not saying that encounters themselves are easy, just that participating is.
Even if you and your fellow players fail an event, you'll still get a reward when it fails, plus you may unlock an even more interesting and rewarding event. My best experience of the whole weekend was when the Underworld had been allowed to encroach a little too far in to the swamp. Demons and portals were getting out of control over a wide area. Pushing them back to where they started, a huge boss spawned; this was obviously one of the major encounters they've been touting. Upon defeating him, he dropped a massive boss chest, the only one I saw all weekend, that dished out lots of nice loot to the participants. I'd dealt with the portals and demons prior to this yet had never had the boss spawn; I'm sure he only occurred because the demons had been allowed to spread so far in the first place.

So why is level scaling in this a good thing?
Basically, it means that no matter where you're playing, you can continue to level. This is great for guilds, as it makes helping lower level guild members through early content less of a chore. They need to tweak the rewards somewhat, as while you get the same experience points while fighting in a lower level area or one more suited to your level, lower level areas don't reward higher level players with the same loot that other areas would. I think the best solution here would be to flatten the Karma reward system.
Karma's a resource you get for completing quests and events, which can be used on its own to buy gear from particular vendors. These Karma vendors are the natural evolution of those guys from the original game that would give you equipment in exchange for items dropped by monsters (such as mossy mandibles). The beauty of this new system is that you now have a unified resource for these vendors, so getting gear appropriate to the area you're questing in just requires playing some events or doing some quests. Because they've left in a scale for the karma system, it basically means that higher level players will quickly realise they're better off playing higher level areas, as while they'll get 50 karma for completing an event in a lower level area, they'll get 1,000 or more for doing the same amount of work in a higher level area. Flattening the karma reward system and the cost of items associated with it would alleviate this issue.

Having played Age of Conan recently, I can see that the GW2 team grabbed some inspiration from there.
The world is organised pretty much identically; the map is divided into areas and each area is a massive instance. Think of 2-3 areas from the original game merged together to create one. This division of instances doesn't really cause any issues, as each is absolutely massive, again much like Conan.

Getting around the world is pretty simple, and the skill of ArenaNet's level designers becomes apparent very quickly. You know those times in an MMO where you were forced to take a 30 minute diversion to get to a place on the map that looks like it's only a few feet away? Even with jumping, climbing and mounts? Yeah, those experiences pretty much don't exist in GW2.
On top of that, the've implemented a waypoint system that emulates the freedom of movement around the world from the original game very nicely. As you explore a map, you'll reveal waypoints. At any time, you can open your map and teleport to any waypoint in the world that you've previously discovered. There's a gold cost associated with doing so however. I'm still trying to work out if attaching a cost to such a system is a good idea. Sure, prices are pretty damn trivial; killing a couple of monsters will get you enough copper to teleport to any of the waypoints you've discovered in your current instance. But it could end up becoming prohibitively expensive at higher levels.

One thing I hate about the game is that they've implemented a gear damage system, something I absolutely detest in every other game it appears in. This is one of the components of their death penalty system. If you've been following the game at all, more than likely you're aware of the whole "Downed" system (which, I might add, is utterly brilliant). If not, I'll explain.
When you reach 0 HP in Guild Wars 2, you enter a "Downed" state, where your character lies on the floor but has a few unique skills available to them. For the Warrior these consisted of throwing rocks, throwing something bigger that knocks an enemy down, an instant revival that counts down a timer at the end of which you enter "Defeated" state (ie, die), and a health regen skill. Any other player can choose to revive you, and it's in their interest to do so, as they get experience for doing it. If you then lose all of your health while in the downed state, you become "Defeated", where you can either wait for someone to revive you or teleport to the nearest waypoint. Every time you enter a "Defeated" state, a piece of armour gets damaged, reducing its effectiveness. If the same piece of armour gets damaged twice, it completely breaks, providing you with no benefit at all. The problems with this system?
Firstly, repairs cost money. A trivial amount, but still annoying.
Secondly, unless you're able to obtain the ridiculously rare repair kits, repairs can only be done by certain vendors. Unfortunately there are only 2-3 of these particular vendors per area, inevitably being miles away from where you died, meaning that if you want to remain effective you have to go out of your way to get repairs, lengthening the time it'll take you to get back in to the fight.
I can somewhat understand ArenaNet attaching a cost to armour repairs; they need money sinks all over the place to help regulate the economy, so I think the best solution here would be to add an armour repair vendor close to every waypoint, or do away with them altogether and make repair kits widely available.

Overall though, utterly brilliant, and yes, a much needed evolution of the MMO. And ye gods does it feel good to finally be free of the "Holy Trinity".
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PostPosted: 04-30-2012 01:30 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Ffs i need to stop reading this thread.
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PostPosted: 04-30-2012 01:33 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Pretty much in full agreement with you, Mat. I played a norn and there was a massive boss battle at the end of that area as well, though perhaps not the same type of encounter as we didn't get a chest. There were so many people there working together to kill him though, and he was quite buff due to the high number of players. It took us close to 20 minutes to kill him.

I hadn't really researched much about this game and I was completely blown away by the freshness of the PvE/levelling experience.
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PostPosted: 04-30-2012 06:49 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mat Linnett wrote:
Okay, Beta's finished so I'll post some thoughts.

[snip]

Nice review! I procrastinated pre-purchasing the game last week and now I'm thinking I should snag it before next weekend. :up:



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PostPosted: 04-30-2012 11:22 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


dammit.

What's the system reqs on this?



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PostPosted: 04-30-2012 11:39 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Damnit, that sounds really fun.
My nerdheart aches :/



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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 05-01-2012 01:00 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


They're not too high; there were some people complaining of poor performance over the weekend, but that's because the beta code is currently CPU bound and not optimised for GPUs yet. But neither me nor my friend with a rig 2 years older than mine had any problems running it at ultra quality.

The problem now is that it really has made all other games look dull and lifeless. I've been mainlining the good stuff all weekend and have had my supply yanked away from me :(

That above post was overly technical explaining systems and such, but it's incredibly hard to portray exactly how fucking awesome it is to play. The cities are incredible, being massive, glorious constructions fill with NPCs whittering away to each-other, bringing an incredible feeling of life to surroundings. I've never experienced cities in any game, let alone another MMO, that feel so vividly realised. They're remarkable testaments to the skill of the ArenaNet world-builders.
Sure, they need to work on tutorials for certain things, and being a completely new system (it really has no relation to how the original game worked at all), the stats are all currently rather opaque, but it doesn't matter; they'll fix all this stuff, and it's exactly why they're running betas.
What we're going to end up with is a paradigm shift in modern MMOs, something brave and refreshing.
I just hope more MMO makers follow ArenaNet's lead and realise that there's ways to make MMOs other than from under the shadow of WoW.
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PostPosted: 05-01-2012 08:24 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'm glad to hear cities aren't lifeless. That's always been a complaint of mine with MMOs; aside form the starting town, the other cities are always a bit sparse. It makes the worlds feel empty. :down:



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PostPosted: 05-04-2012 02:17 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


When the hell do the Beta servers go up for the weekend? I wanna play. >:( :tear:



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PostPosted: 05-04-2012 02:46 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


ur kiddin' rite?

It was last weekend and it doesn't happen every weekend. They haven't announced the next one yet.
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PostPosted: 05-04-2012 04:12 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Oh, I thought it was every weekend until release. Oh well, back to ME3. :disgust:



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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 05-10-2012 01:36 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Just in case you miss the announcement, they're hosting a server stress test for pre-orders only on Monday, from 2pm EDT (7pm BST) until 9pm EDT (2am BST).
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PostPosted: 05-10-2012 10:17 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I really need to start paying attention to GW2 news...



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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 05-10-2012 11:09 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'd DL the client and get downloading now if I were you Trans; the install is about 15GB.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 05-10-2012 11:26 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Official blog post regarding the stress test including a link to the beta forums so you can log in and download the client.
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PostPosted: 05-10-2012 06:00 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mat Linnett wrote:
I'd DL the client and get downloading now if I were you Trans; the install is about 15GB.

Are you kidding? Until U4EA informed me of my ignorance, I was clicking the Login button like a fiend last weekend. :o



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PostPosted: 06-01-2012 03:30 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Transient will be happy to know the next beta event has been announced recently.
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PostPosted: 06-01-2012 05:31 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Thanks! I totally forgot all about GW2, I've been so busy. :smirk:



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PostPosted: 06-01-2012 05:33 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


lol massive nerds, etc.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 06-12-2012 07:29 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Another beta gone, and yet again, all the other games have lost their lustre.
They've got this thing so damn right it hurts.
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PostPosted: 06-12-2012 02:28 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I think the levelling curve may need adjustment, although it could just be because of the way I was playing. If you simply follow hearts sequentially in the map [even whilst partaking in any and all random events], you'll soon end up way behind. I was level 20 on the level 24 hearts in my race's 15-25 zone.

I suspect that if you supplement PvE with PvP, crafting etc. it will be better. It's one way to "encourage" participation in all aspects of the game, but seems kind of forced at the moment if all you want to do is PvE without having to grind.
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PostPosted: 06-12-2012 03:33 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I don't think it's quite like WoW in that an area is designed to get you up so many levels before directing you to the next. Consequently, I found myself in lvl 18 territory at 12 and was getting my arse kicked, so I went back and then found another, more managable way out of the previous area. I think if you're also actively working trade skills (which I wasn't) you gain XP through that.
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PostPosted: 06-12-2012 04:04 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Memphis wrote:
I found myself in lvl 18 territory at 12 and was getting my arse kicked, so I went back

That's a problem. If you are playing normally and then find yourself underlevelled and have to go back and repeat something you've already done, it's essentially grinding. Not fun.

Memphis wrote:
and then found another, more managable way out of the previous area.

What did you do? I ended up moving from my race's 15-25 to a different race's zone to find new content.

The fact is, doing all the hearts [and POIs, skill points and waypoints] in my zone didn't get me enough XP to be able to keep going. My options were: go back and grind mobs closer to my level and repeat random events until I gained a few levels. PvP. Crafting. Anything else?

Forcing alternate methods of levelling on players is bad design. Having optional alternate methods of levelling is great and adds to variety.

Memphis wrote:
I think if you're also actively working trade skills (which I wasn't) you gain XP through that.

Yep, a friend of mine gained almost a whole level using all the materials he had gathered. I didn't bother with crafting as I saw it as a waste of the limited time during which the beta was open.
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PostPosted: 06-12-2012 08:13 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I managed to play for a whopping 2 hours while not at work. It was fun while it lasted. Can't wait for release! :up:



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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 06-13-2012 12:18 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I had no problems being the level I should have been when moving on to new areas, which is weird. Did you guys do many of the events that popped up?
Also, I didn't really seriously look at crafting until the last day of this beta. I went up 2-3 levels crafting alone, but I was already over 40 by the time I looked into it.
I honestly think I'm going to be able to hit top level in a week, maybe a little over.
By the end of the beta, I was 45.

Of course, there's a lot of people coming to Guild Wars 2 having never played the first, and I think their WoW-oriented sensibilities are going to be somewhat offended by that fact that levelling doesn't take months, and end game won't be about grinding out gear with better stats, just more aesthetic differences.

Personally, I absolutely love that :)
I spent ages arguing with people in AoC that as long as PvP was more reliant on gear than player skill, it couldn't be considered anywhere near fair, yet they always, ALWAYS argued that getting said gear, even if it took months, was the sign of a better player.

It's another variant of Stockholm Syndrome; companies in traditional MMOs abuse their userbase so badly that eventually, any sign of compassion is seen as a massive display of generosity from the point of view of the abused.
They're also paying a monthly subscription, and if they're paying for it, they're going to defend it any way they can, even if it's plainly complete shit.

Every now and then I forget that this is how traditional MMOs work and I log back in to either AoC or DCUO, only to be confronted by the expectation that I should be happy grinding the same old, limited content over and over again in the hopes that one piece of slightly better gear.

Guild Wars 2 breaks this HARD.
At top level, I'll be able to go ANYWHERE in Tyria and have a rewarding experience, be that open world or dungeon.
And the Karma system means I won't be constrained to repeating the same content in order to get interesting rewards; Karma earned anywhere can be spent on any reward available from any Karma vendor.
Brilliant.

Edit:
Oh, and once you get into it, the crafting is brilliant.
I hit the cooking tree hard on Sunday, and had a great time with it. It's intuitive and the Experimentation side is really rewarding. Putting different ingredients together and getting a result is really cool.
And while you can only have 2 crafting professions active at a time, if you decide to disable one in order to experiment with another, you don't lose the levels or recipes in the disabled profession.
I always thought that taking away your experience in a crafting skill if you wanted to try another was a particularly vicious way of punishing players, so I'm really happy with this little change.
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PostPosted: 06-13-2012 01:41 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Do I understand correctly that Guild Wars 2 plays out roughly in the same geographical area as the original Guild Wars Prophecies?



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PostPosted: 06-13-2012 02:03 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yes.
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 06-13-2012 02:09 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yup, and there's really cool moments of recognition as you come across scenery from the original game that's been affected by 200 years of history.
Lion's Arch for example; the city itself is barely recognisable, until you go for a swim. That's when you realise the original LA has been submerged because of the rising sea level, and you can swim around amongst the ruins.
Similarly, the Temple of the Ages is now underwater in the swamp, yet portals from the Underworld regularly appear on the surface, leading to Aatxe invasions, and the Shadow Behemoth I posted about from last beta.
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PostPosted: 06-13-2012 03:05 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Sounds good. I'm wondering if I should invest in this, considering there's a good chance none of my friends will be playing this at a normal pace (with which I mean they're not playing it 20 hours a day, storming through the entire game in less than a week)



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PostPosted: 06-13-2012 05:34 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mat Linnett secretly works for ArenaNet.



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PostPosted: 06-14-2012 07:32 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Will there be another beta before release?
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Mat Linnett
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PostPosted: 06-14-2012 07:48 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Apparently, yes. ArenaNet have said they intend to have at least one more beta weekend before release. Can't remember where I read it for the life of me however.
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PostPosted: 06-14-2012 09:05 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


So how do I get in on that?
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PostPosted: 06-14-2012 09:52 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Pre-purchase the game directly from ArenaNet. Pre-orders don't get in.



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PostPosted: 06-14-2012 10:44 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Um, some places are sending out physical pre-order boxes with access keys.
Here ya go, Amazon link.
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