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Other Games => Guild Wars => Topic started by: Havoco on April 28, 2012, 09:46:27 am

Title: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on April 28, 2012, 09:46:27 am
So, rate your experience of the beta here.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: MR_FISTA on April 28, 2012, 11:51:18 am
Haven't played it but it looks pretty nice, won't hold my attention though only CRPG can atm for some reason.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on April 28, 2012, 12:44:33 pm
The actual game is amazing. Just the constant lag/crashing put it down from a 5 to a 4 for me  :P
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Miwiw on April 28, 2012, 01:34:49 pm
Give a 4. I wasnt able to play for long yesterday as server was laggy and crashed quite often. However I played for some hours and loved the game.
The character creation is amazing, more ways to customize your character and even put a nice background story to it. Graphics are wonderful, even liked them on medium settings.
Servers are sometimes a big laggy, which is fine, considering it is an "open" beta and a lot of people joined server (they probably weren't prepared enough for thousands of players, thats why log in servers were down for some time as well).

I also like that you can start with PvP arenas on level 1, playing a level 80 version of your class is already nice.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Tomas on April 28, 2012, 02:10:19 pm
lag, disconnects, various server problems and the fact you can't play with friends whilst stuck in the queue for an area mean I've rated my Beta experience at just 3.

Without the above problems it would be a 5 though and i expect all these things will be sorted pre launch so i'm happy :D
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: rustyspoon on April 28, 2012, 08:36:41 pm
Overall it's a very fun, well put together game though a bit carebear-ish. Still have to try PVP though, which is where I'm guessing I'll spend most of my time.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Tyrell on April 28, 2012, 10:02:35 pm
5/5 did buy.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: larlek on April 28, 2012, 10:11:08 pm
2.5/5

Not a big fan. Maybe my expectations were too high because of what I had been told about the game but I was rather disappointed. I came expecting something "new" and I did not get it. I will give the game another chance at the next beta though.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on April 28, 2012, 10:30:13 pm
Today 5, no lags or disconnects for me, great fun doing WvW with our guys.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Cyber on April 29, 2012, 03:01:11 am
Game seems pretty good after they work out several huge problems that they currently have but that what beta is for, only thing im very disappointed about is cash shop which is even worse then i expected.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Tennenoth on April 29, 2012, 10:19:34 am
Can you put a "didn't play, want to see result" in please because I don't want to fuddle the result with false inputs! :)
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on April 29, 2012, 02:41:50 pm
We have succesfully put down the Bear-race.

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Banok on April 29, 2012, 04:53:31 pm
my post in darkfall's OT so kind of from a sandbox mmo player perspective:

I've been playing salem and gw2 this weekend.

gw2 seems so far a great game I dont regret buying it, defo £40 worth of content in this game. Its amazing for a themepark, but still a themepark. the dynamic event stuff is epic, but most of your questing will feel pretty generic.

RvR wont reach its potential until servers are balanced vs each other and there are large clans taking things seriously. then you will see alot of organisation and big battles. right now its just a bunch of ungrouped noobs figuring out how to play.

I would like to see some GvG/HA style pvp modes (gw1) added which are alot more competitive than current arena stuff.

But i'm looking forward more to when salem is feature complete than when gw2. Salem makes darkfall/mortal online etc seem like themeparks or at least sandparks.

Also its from a 2 developer team studio, it amuses me when you think how little salem is costing to make vs 300mil swtor etc. and yet will offer so much better gameplay.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Tot. on April 29, 2012, 06:56:11 pm
Rated it 2/5. Would be 3 if not for the shitstorm of technical problems.

Bit of explanation:

I've been really waiting for this game. Original Guild Wars is for me one of the player-character defining games, I loved it, spent several thousand hours in it my best PVP memories come from there.

And two days ago I played Guild Wars 2. I didn't really do that much research about how the game will be like since I didn't want to spoil the positive or negative surprise, I just had the basic knowledge about classes, races, dynamic events and some WvW.

Firstly, what I did like:

+ the idea of dynamic events instead of pick-up quests and the impact it has in the world, even though it's short-termed
+ art style
+ the map and the fluid transitions between
+ lot of polished and convenient mechanics, ie. you don't have to, for example, click on the body you want to loot, you just stand nearby and press F to do it. Comfy.


And what I didn't like

- skill system
It's beyond belief to be honest how can you can go from Guild Wars 1, which had fully customizable skill-bar, where you could make any character you desired, from an archer-healer to melee elementalist, focus your toon around any elite skill you wanted, mix whichever classes you chose. That's what I loved the most about Guild Wars, the freedom of character creation and usage, so many options, so much variability, nothing set in stone.
In Guild Wars 2 whole left side of your skill bar is locked to your weapon. Longbow has pre-defined 4 attack skills, great sword has pre-defined 4 attack skills, you can't do jack about it, nothing to be changed to suit your style more or alter the general idea of your character build. I played my ranger to like level 14, I'm bored to death already with the skills I'm forced to use. Surely I could just switch to shortbow, but that doesn't change the fact that you don't define your character and his weapon choice, your weapon choice defines your character and your gameplay, two guys using shortbows will have exactly same main skills. I can't imagine the boredom of the next 65 levels of using same 4 skills.
Apart from those pre-defined "main" skills you have your second weapon, ie. melee weapon for ranger, which has another pre-defined 4 skills of it's own, you can, and most people probably do, switch to it in combat, that's one positive. The fifth skill is healing, everyone has it, you can't put anything in that slot apart from a healing spell, you can pick one of three or four.
And then, finally, you have 3 "utility" slots, which you can change. The problem is that there's a total of maybe 15 skills to choose from, for ranger about 5 of them is, from what I could tell, PVE only. On top of that you have traits, which are utility too.
I think by now you're starting to get the picture where this game went from fully customizable 8 slot skillbar and 120-140 skills per profession and you could have two.

- pets
This probably will be fixed - can't imagine what happens to ranger class if it won't - but the pet AI is horrible. Pathfinding generally fails in PVP, it's so bad that I resorted to using ranged pets only, ie. spiders. Mind that each pet has an unique ability which is crucial to play ranger effectively. And most of the time you cant use it because your pet ran off and got stuck or killed.

- the general paradigm of how PVP looks like
Mind this is a completely personal opinion, so some people might take this as a feature.
Everyone has tons of HP, it takes literally forever, or at least a minute, to down anyone who's half-competent and able to heal himself (mash "5" button). And the arenas are pretty small. I don't think I've had a proper 1v1 fight ever in GW2, it always ends up with someone else joining up and it's a gank this way or other way. It simply takes too long, even for burst-damage gank-character like thief. In fact this more reminds me of League of Legends, where too fights are so prolonged and skills do so little damage. This wasn't the case in first Guild Wars, it was way more dynamic and entertaining. I do remember my ranger being able to kill full-hp cloth wearing enemies like mesmers in under 10 seconds if absent proper healing.

Apart from the lenght of fights, I got to say that there are times where I have no idea what the fuck is going on on my screen. The general traffic jam of overlapping skills, effects, explosions and hell knows what else make it simply overwhelming, add to that the fact pretty much everyone keeps rolling on the ground to avoid damage or escape from melee range (who the hell invented this mechanics, jesus), knockdowns and knockbacks are quite common, meaning people are flying back and forth, and in overall you have a one huge indistinguishable Vietnam on your screen.

- PVP modes
WvW is a massive zerg from what I could tell, reminds me much of Isle of Conquest from Warcraft, not my cup of tea, didn't test if further.
Arenas: either I'm blind or there is only one mode available in beta, the conquest, where are three points to be captured and held. Why no team-deathmatch arena? Why no, say, CTF or something innovative instead of this domination mode which is simply Arathi Basin in Tyria?
From what I could tell, so far there's no Hall of Heroes type of mode, though there are tournaments which arent yet available. From the description though its the same conquest-type thing but with premade teams. I simply have nothing to play in here.

- certain animations
Guild Wars 1 veterans will certainly remember that ranger had a very good looking and satisfying to use bow shooting animation. In GW2 it was replaced with blurred, pew-pew kind of thing. Annoying. On the plus side pistol animations and sound are superb.

- some little things
My camera often freaks out, it's a technical issue related to this whole and stupid roll-dodge thing, it looks like it had mouse acceleration on during it.
Game optimization is terrible at this point, but I get that it's a beta and will be drastically fixed.



This game has so little to do with original Guild Wars that I can't say it's a legitimate sequel with straight face. It probably is, or will be, a somewhat decent game on it's own, but not as a worthy continuation. I surely wouldn't pay a montly fee for this, at this point I'm not even sure if I'm going to buy it.
It's hard for me not to notice how badly this game is trying to challenge World of Warcraft, it lost it's magic to me with this horrible skill system. It just feels more like just another MMO with innovative mechanics in some parts, than Guild Wars. It's not revolutionary.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on April 29, 2012, 07:24:23 pm
Must say you've highlighted all my gripes with the skill system. In already bored with the weapon attacks. Would love it to be as customisable as the first.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on April 29, 2012, 07:33:10 pm
Must say you've highlighted all my gripes with the skill system. In already bored with the weapon attacks. Would love it to be as customisable as the first.

Yep.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on April 29, 2012, 08:16:47 pm
Looking on the forums, supposedly it's because they don't want people to make 'bad builds' as occurred in GW1 after a point. This way it forces people automatically into standardised builds. Kinda lame.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on April 29, 2012, 10:57:48 pm
Bad builds? You mean like op builds? Lame. They should at least make weapon skill variations.

Anyways I rate the pve as 3/5 and pvp 5/5. Te game does need improvement in weapon skills, but i think there is enough utility skills to make a "unique" build. Pve didn't surprise me that much but I was disappointed tht I couldn't have any heroes or henchman.( maybe later in the game?)

Pvp was simply amazing. Pvp arenas were fun but what I loved was the battlegrounds. Group tactics, siege weapons, castles, caravans, all just so good for pvp.

Overall a 4/5

Edit: I only got up to lvl 6 as norn guardian though so I haven't done much pve content.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: marco1391 on April 30, 2012, 12:41:13 am
I agree on almost everything tot said, voted 3.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on April 30, 2012, 12:50:40 am
What I kind of miss is the skill needed to be good at this game. Atleast from my first experience I don't really see player skill dominating the field.. it will be more about who will bring more people (WvW) or who will make the best team compilation (structured PvP).
But I guess in the end it comes down to teamwork.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on April 30, 2012, 01:57:51 am
Heh idk y it was locked, must've pressed it on accident..... Derp
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on April 30, 2012, 02:57:20 am
Bad builds? You mean like op builds? Lame. They should at least make weapon skill variations.

Bad builds as in noobish skill combinations apparently. Like they wanted to make sure that you don't end up running with a bunch of people who are useless (tbh happened a lot in the first). It's the same reason they also don't have true tank/healer classes anymore. They wanted to avoid the 'holy trinity' requirement of monk, warrior and range (necro, elem, ranger ect).

Whilst I appreciate the concept, it just comes across as dumbed down and less dynamic.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on April 30, 2012, 03:41:56 am
O I guess that makes sense, but I always felt that was part of the skill base in gw1. Experienced players with good knowledge could come up with some really good builds on their own.(although I thought some were game breaking.) then you'd have newbies that would run N/R builds using 3 blood magic spells, 2 minion master skills and have charm/comfort animal.( I asked this person if he had a heal for his minions, the response I got was: Doesn't comfort animal heal them?)

Btw: I miss dwarves
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Teeth on April 30, 2012, 10:20:33 am
Was surprised that WvWvW, PvP and PvE were all loads of fun. The combat feels nice and I loved the occasional 1 vs 1 I had with a player. Those situations are rare though. In WvWvW theres mostly a dozen of your players fighting a dozen of theirs, and with all the effects going on there is just no way to tell when to dodge. Same for PvE when fighting 40 ogres with 20 players or most other engagements. It basically all comes down to you using your skills effectively on your own, instead of properly reacting to what your opponent does. There is just no way to see that properly in the bulk of the fights.

The game was also horribly optimized. I have a reasonably decent pc, but I had my settings turned to lowest and still my framerate was somewhere around 20 in fights. Really hope that is going to change.

4/5
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on April 30, 2012, 12:23:43 pm
Me and Mholes were on yesterday midnight 2v6 and we won, had all kind of little battles together and won like 6 of them.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on April 30, 2012, 12:46:23 pm
then you'd have newbies that would run N/R builds using 3 blood magic spells, 2 minion master skills and have charm/comfort animal.

This was my first ever build in GW1  :lol:
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Miwiw on April 30, 2012, 12:53:32 pm
Btw: I miss dwarves

Add-ons. ;P
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Banok on April 30, 2012, 01:07:14 pm
you guys should have realised YEARS ago that the skill system in gw2 would be way worse than gw1, its not like they kept it a secret. check out the secret world because its looking alot like gw1 in its skill bar, although I recon it will be as instanced as gw1.

as for the no healer/tank stuff this is MUCH better than gw1, most people complaining are just bad at the game. no you can't "mash" heal its on cooldown you idiot. you have to play smart to stay alive, no more standing still whacking the enemy while someone else heals you.

gw1 got to the point where you would enter pvp and if you didn't have a monk everyone would /resign, the complete reliance on healers practically ruined the game.

but yeah ofc I will miss gw1 skill system and alot of other things from gw1, I think gw1 skill system was too much effort (ie impossible) for them to balance.

 but gw2 seems a much better game overall, and a damn good sequel. remember most game sequels are just copy and pasting the whole gameplay. gw1 is still there I was playing it recently, its still fun just not enough people for pvp really.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: joespose on April 30, 2012, 02:02:56 pm
Me and Mholes were on yesterday midnight 2v6 and we won, had all kind of little battles together and won like 6 of them.

Mholes is a total beast at PVP. He's a great example of someone with skill dominating, i would often be on the floor admiring him dancing between opponents
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Count_RisArch on April 30, 2012, 03:20:03 pm
Ok. So i did play (a bit) but seeing as my comp is really on its last legs my experience was kinda hampered by various crashes (excluding server issues) which meant my play was kinda rubbish at times, but hey, I expected it! Time to save for a new computer!

Also, sorry people, the Norn race and starting zone are fucking crap, the server issues, zone design and my shitty comp all combined to me going "holy fuck i've wasted £50" and "what an over-hyped pos this is"...Fortunately on sunday i sneakily re-rolled human and...It was great! Despite the processor and gfx crashes every 10-15 mins I managed to get to level 8, fell in love with the Warrior's Rifle, 2h Hammer and GS and generally had a blast shooting,bashing and slashing the crap out of centaurs. The server issues by then had also leveled out so it was laggy but nothing like the launch on friday.

So really I have 2 scores, for the Norn zone and launch on friday 1/5, really even without my hardware issues it was one of the worst beta launches I've ever been in. With a fresh start on a less crowded sunday with a race I actually had some interest in, off TS and taking everything at the shitty slow pace my comp demands i'd give a generous 4/5. While I didn't experience any WvW or PvP the PvE experience made me happy enough to justify pre-purchasing the game.

Looking forward to the next event, where hopefully I'll have a nice new computer to play it on!
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on April 30, 2012, 10:20:32 pm
Also, sorry people, the Norn race and starting zone are fucking crap

This is why I made a Norn in the beta actually. I never liked them in gw1 so I tried Norn just to mess around during the beta (I always make some big mistake with my first character). The Norn storyline didn't appeal to me either. I was also disappointed that they locked the asura and sylvari.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on April 30, 2012, 11:21:32 pm
I actually quite liked the Norn story. :P
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on May 01, 2012, 04:18:47 am
Can you put a "didn't play, want to see result" in please because I don't want to fuddle the result with false inputs! :)

Hmm I put show results to everyone. I was able to see it after logging out.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Count_RisArch on May 01, 2012, 01:51:23 pm
This is why I made a Norn in the beta actually. I never liked them in gw1 so I tried Norn just to mess around during the beta (I always make some big mistake with my first character). The Norn storyline didn't appeal to me either. I was also disappointed that they locked the asura and sylvari.

The story I didn't find too bad, I just really disliked the visuals on the characters and general setting. I've clocked a shit-load of hours on skyrim; maybe I'm just all norsed out!  :P

Next we're all rolling char, which appeal to me a lot more in that they're a deicidal bunch of industrial cat-demons. Maybe i'm just a repressed furry...at least not as repressed as the Norn though, eh  :lol:
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on May 01, 2012, 02:08:57 pm
I tried the char briefly. Their starting heart missions and dynamic events are far harder than norn or human. I gave up pretty quickly and went back to human.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Slamz on May 01, 2012, 11:45:55 pm
PvP.

I don't know why any of you are even talking about anything else.  Heart missions?  You can't make a magic casting monk paladin?  Do you wear your panties on your head or does your mom make you take them off?  How do you even play cRPG with those kinds of complaints?

GW2 is a PvP game.

World vs World has more tactical and strategic depth than I've ever seen in any game remotely close to this genre.  It blows all of the PvP out of the water for every other game.  It's what we all hoped Warhammer would be, which was "a vast improvement over DAOC".


Maybe your experience was less than stellar if you joined WvW solo.  It's "Guild Wars", not "Solo Wars", though, so get a guild.  You can contribute solo, in the ways of puggies everywhere, but there's a whole lot more you could be doing as part of a larger team, especially an organized one.

Siege engines... the logistics of supply... keep defenses and attacks... many objectives to go for... ways that small numbers of players can destroy zerg armies... there's a lot of great stuff here.  Combat is fun too but they really struck gold on PvP content.


The PvE looked interesting but I spent the entire weekend in WvW and am pretty sure I could spend the next year in there, at least.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on May 02, 2012, 12:51:10 am
Well I personally always just played SP and ran with friends in parties. I never really touched PVP and so that's where my bias comes from.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Phazey on May 02, 2012, 05:50:16 pm
Hated most of it.

Loved the RvR, although that still needs A LOT of work.

The game has potential. Friend of mine loves the art and such and likes the PvE bits... myself, i really hate that PvE crap though. It bores me to death.

AI is still the same crappy AI that WoW had when it came out.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on May 06, 2012, 10:10:40 am
Anyone know when the next beta weekend is?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on May 06, 2012, 12:44:26 pm
Not sure. But they reckoned we should have one a month until release now.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Zotte on May 06, 2012, 02:34:51 pm
Not sure. But they reckoned we should have one a month until release now.
don't count on that, i'd expect a mid-late summer release at this stage. anything earlier seems unlikely as theres still quite a bit of testing to do and then they need to optimize the game after that.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on May 06, 2012, 02:41:15 pm
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


ArenaNet's office, 28/06/12, YEP.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Overdriven on May 07, 2012, 04:38:12 am
don't count on that, i'd expect a mid-late summer release at this stage. anything earlier seems unlikely as theres still quite a bit of testing to do and then they need to optimize the game after that.

That doesn't mean there can't be a beta weekend once a month  :P
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Zotte on May 07, 2012, 09:19:49 am
ah sorry misread that :p, skipped over the a.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 07, 2012, 09:47:05 am
Yeah, their official statement was "several once-per-month beta weekends after first one at the end of April".
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on May 07, 2012, 01:14:17 pm
Yeah, their official statement was "several once-per-month beta weekends after first one at the end of April".

Lovely.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Belthain on May 08, 2012, 09:23:09 am
I'm anxiously still waiting for their next Beta Weekend Event :( I'm guessing the possibility of the 26th or so.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Kay of Sauvage on May 09, 2012, 08:24:42 pm

- skill system
It's beyond belief to be honest how can you can go from Guild Wars 1, which had fully customizable skill-bar, where you could make any character you desired, from an archer-healer to melee elementalist, focus your toon around any elite skill you wanted, mix whichever classes you chose. That's what I loved the most about Guild Wars, the freedom of character creation and usage, so many options, so much variability, nothing set in stone.
In Guild Wars 2 whole left side of your skill bar is locked to your weapon. Longbow has pre-defined 4 attack skills, great sword has pre-defined 4 attack skills, you can't do jack about it, nothing to be changed to suit your style more or alter the general idea of your character build. I played my ranger to like level 14, I'm bored to death already with the skills I'm forced to use. Surely I could just switch to shortbow, but that doesn't change the fact that you don't define your character and his weapon choice, your weapon choice defines your character and your gameplay, two guys using shortbows will have exactly same main skills. I can't imagine the boredom of the next 65 levels of using same 4 skills.
Apart from those pre-defined "main" skills you have your second weapon, ie. melee weapon for ranger, which has another pre-defined 4 skills of it's own, you can, and most people probably do, switch to it in combat, that's one positive. The fifth skill is healing, everyone has it, you can't put anything in that slot apart from a healing spell, you can pick one of three or four.
And then, finally, you have 3 "utility" slots, which you can change. The problem is that there's a total of maybe 15 skills to choose from, for ranger about 5 of them is, from what I could tell, PVE only. On top of that you have traits, which are utility too.
I think by now you're starting to get the picture where this game went from fully customizable 8 slot skillbar and 120-140 skills per profession and you could have two.


This is what I'm worried about most. I didn't get to play too much in the Beta Weekend, so I was only able to use the various weapon skills (which are basically a small variety of skill presets to choose from) and my heal. From what I can see from the other skills that you can pick and choose (including 1 elite skill), there didn't seem to be much wild variety. Well, not at least at the level of GW1, where you can have 2 classes at once and combine all types of things together in strange ways.

However, where I think GW2 might make up the difference here is in the traits. The traits you can choose from can alter all your skills in certain ways. In a way, these are skills that are "always on" and actually are the most wild and interesting. I think whenever I get the chance to make a build, I'll be looking at the traits first to see what styles of play they would allow, and then choose the skills that best complement those chosen traits.

For example, here are the mesmer traits:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_mesmer_traits
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on May 12, 2012, 09:37:11 pm
traits? was there a way to see those in-game?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on May 12, 2012, 09:47:40 pm
yes, :P
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Havoco on May 13, 2012, 04:46:09 am
lol well i just missed a big part of the game then. hopefully ill find it in the stress test.

Edit: oh wait, i think i remember that. just cant remember what i chose for my guardian from it.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 13, 2012, 04:03:01 pm
I loved the story of the char, that was cool. I didn't make a human because i want to play that when it's out.

The skills were pretty awesome, but i didn't really like the PvP arena. Probally nothing for me.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Slamz on May 14, 2012, 02:27:51 am
I loved the story of the char, that was cool. I didn't make a human because i want to play that when it's out.

The skills were pretty awesome, but i didn't really like the PvP arena. Probally nothing for me.

By PvP arena you mean WvW or the instanced battleground type stuff?

I'll probably skip the instanced stuff, myself.  Looks amusing but after years of WOW, WAR, Rift, SWTOR, etc, I'm just basically sick and tired of these PvP minigames.  WvW has some real meat to it, though.  I played nothing but that all weekend and still have so many things I need to test and play with.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 14, 2012, 08:10:02 am
By PvP arena you mean WvW or the instanced battleground type stuff?

I'll probably skip the instanced stuff, myself.  Looks amusing but after years of WOW, WAR, Rift, SWTOR, etc, I'm just basically sick and tired of these PvP minigames.  WvW has some real meat to it, though.  I played nothing but that all weekend and still have so many things I need to test and play with.

I mean the arena. Haven't tried the WvW, but didn't know it was that cool. Gonna try it during the stress test.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on May 14, 2012, 01:58:28 pm
I wanted to play lots of PvE but ended up with 80% WvW yeah.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 14, 2012, 04:44:44 pm
I mean the arena. Haven't tried the WvW, but didn't know it was that cool. Gonna try it during the stress test.

I thought the whole point of GvG is the WvW :P
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: SeQuel on May 15, 2012, 03:58:02 am
Just played in the stress test so here are my thoughts.

First Impressions - Every day for the past week I tried would start up the game to check for updates so I'd be ready for this test. Upon the day for it I would start it up and get a black screen (wouldn't even get to  the login screen). I was forced to reinstall the game and lost about 2-3 hours of play time but at least it ended up working afterwards.

I get into game and took about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get in the same instance as my friends which was rather difficult and annoying. I also tried to continue the personal story and the load screen would get stuck at 95% and freeze up completely. Had to restart the game because of this, and never tried it again (found out later that this was a problem for everyone via the forums).

Core Gameplay - All of the bad aside I finally got in with my friend and we went off and learned the whole questing system and dynamic events, I rather enjoyed them and had a lot more fun in them opposed to kill x this or collect x that. I got to about level 5 and then went straight too PvP WvWvW. The FPS lag was atrocious  but this was expected as the game was not optimized. I spent about 3 hours PVP'in in there and had LOADS of fun when it came to smaller sieges or skirmishes but with the larger it battles not so much but mainly because of the performance issue.

Overall it was a Ok experience, the WvWvW met my standards which is what I was most excited for.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Slamz on May 15, 2012, 06:18:27 am
Yeah this stress test was causing issues with groups and guilds (half the time it would say the person was already in a group when he definitely wasn't).

I turned down my graphics settings for beta.  Even in PvE it gets nuts when you end up in some big quest chain that results in 50 people trying to kill some monster.  Hopefully I can turn graphics settings back up in release but it still looks fine.  (I just don't get the omgawesome everything-reflects-in-water and super-realistic shadows, mainly.)


Can't wait for the game to come out for real.  Our server roflstomped the other two servers for like 5 hours in WvW.  It wasn't until towards the end that the other servers actually decided to come out and play.  Everyone always starts off futzing around in PvE... once we get proper 2-week battles rolling I think it'll be a ton of fun.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 15, 2012, 07:23:53 am
I did some PvE and class testing this time. I actually like that even the normal mobs are a constant challenge and that if you're careless about which skill buttons you press you're gonna die. The world lacks MMOs that are atleast somewhat difficult. I quite struggled on a lvl 3 story quest on my Guardian (I did only have a mace + focus, not the best solo setup), until I figured out the exact rotation I need to pull off to get through.

As for classes, I thought I would hate the Hunter but I actually love it. It has some sick damage at long range with the Longbow. And I think your pet can revive you which is just double lol.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 15, 2012, 10:04:31 am
I did some WvW, it is a nice concept, but i think you really need to be in a group to enjoy it.
It's the same for PvP for me, just pressing random buttons and hoping the enemy bar will go down ( which somehow didn't).

I guess PvP is just not made for me. Looking at all the traits and skills are kind of a spoiler for me, so i don't want to 'learn' them yet for effective use. The thing with PvP is, you got all those skills and traits unlocked, and you'll need to know them and effectively use them if you want to survive.

I REALLY enjoy the PvE though, loving the story, the traits, dialogue. I have yet to use crafting, but kinda no point in the beta. The weapon skills are a minus, just 5 to live with.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Digglez on May 15, 2012, 11:17:12 am
The weapon skills are a minus, just 5 to live with.

Weapon swap.

Plus if you are elementalist you have 20 abilities with 1 weapon
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 15, 2012, 11:22:51 am
Weapon swap.

Plus if you are elementalist you have 20 abilities with 1 weapon

Yeah, it's 5 skills per weapon per element right? That's a load of skills to be honest.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 15, 2012, 04:54:58 pm
Weapon swap.

Plus if you are elementalist you have 20 abilities with 1 weapon

Yeah, i know. But who's gonna change their weapons alot in PvP? "Oh, my dual pistols are out of range, let me get my rifle. *5 seconds later* Alright, they're in my range again, let's switch back."
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 15, 2012, 06:27:01 pm
Yeah, i know. But who's gonna change their weapons alot in PvP? "Oh, my dual pistols are out of range, let me get my rifle. *5 seconds later* Alright, they're in my range again, let's switch back."

Uh I think that's exactly how good players will use it.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Slamz on May 15, 2012, 08:54:49 pm
Yeah, i know. But who's gonna change their weapons alot in PvP? "Oh, my dual pistols are out of range, let me get my rifle. *5 seconds later* Alright, they're in my range again, let's switch back."

"Weapon swap" in GW2 terms means you equip two sets of weapons and you have a button to swap between them instantly.

Really if you aren't swapping weapons in battle, you're probably doing something wrong.

Elementalist and engineers don't get weapon swaps but get some different mechanics that actually gives them more options.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on May 15, 2012, 09:02:30 pm
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Sheeps? o_O
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 15, 2012, 09:06:09 pm
"Weapon swap" in GW2 terms means you equip two sets of weapons and you have a button to swap between them instantly.

Really if you aren't swapping weapons in battle, you're probably doing something wrong.

Elementalist and engineers don't get weapon swaps but get some different mechanics that actually gives them more options.

I guess that's the reason why i failed then.

Also, yeah, we get alot of mechanics.

F.e. we get an 'aid kit' as healing option (number 6.), which gives us 3 times a skill of dropping a bandage, 1 skill that cures ailments, and 1 that is a more powerfull heal, and cures ailments. However, you can't use your main weapon then.


By the way, do the warrior and guardian have a higher survivability in PvP than other classes? Maybe i should choose those for easier PvP?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Kay of Sauvage on May 15, 2012, 10:08:56 pm
Yeah, i know. But who's gonna change their weapons alot in PvP? "Oh, my dual pistols are out of range, let me get my rifle. *5 seconds later* Alright, they're in my range again, let's switch back."

I haven't gotten around to the PvP yet, but I do weapon swaps in PvE on my mesmer. The staff I have is long range with some skills that have a considerable recharge (the AOE chaos field or whatever). The sword pair is melee. So I could use a bunch of the staff skills, then go in with the swords and soak up a bit of damage for the group and make my heal useful. It seems a lot more effective to use all those skills available, rather than just sticking with one if the range is appropriate.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Slamz on May 16, 2012, 10:46:38 pm
Saw a video of a thief swapping between shortbow and daggers.  Apparently one of the shortbow abilities will teleport you to wherever the arrow hits.  So he'd shoot the bow at someone, which would teleport him there, then he'd switch to daggers and slice them up.

As engineer you can do things like switch to the flamethrower kit, drop a firewall, then switch back to your pistols or rifle and shoot through your own firewall to add fire damage to your bullets.  Or you could use dual pistols to drop a sticky glue and then switch to the bomb kit to bomb people.  Or maybe use the grenade kit to freeze people, then the bomb kit to blow them up...

Anyway, there's a lot of combos that are meant to be for two people to work together with for maximum effect, but weapon swapping gives you some combo abilities that you can do on your own.


It's interesting because I think the goal is "easy to learn, difficult to master".  You don't HAVE to switch weapons.  You could just stand there and shoot people or whack them with a hammer or whatever, but there's probably something good to be gained if you look for ways to combine your own abilities.


Incidentally, weapon swapping has no delay to it but engineer kit swapping does -- unless you pick up the trait to make it instant.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 17, 2012, 07:37:41 am
Saw a video of a thief swapping between shortbow and daggers.  Apparently one of the shortbow abilities will teleport you to wherever the arrow hits.  So he'd shoot the bow at someone, which would teleport him there, then he'd switch to daggers and slice them up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_ZPKPFlw-k this one?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 21, 2012, 08:42:32 am
Looks like leaked patch notes
http://i.imgur.com/mYBht.png
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 22, 2012, 08:39:38 am
Didn't read it all, but,

You can get skill challenges in WvW, you can get rewards for map completion,

and

- Missiles now fire in the direction of the camera when the player has no target and is holding down the right mouse button (Side note: This is awesome.)


It actually stands like that in the changelog ^. To me, it does sound very awesome :D. Manual aiming, i guess? Like Tera?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 22, 2012, 08:47:20 am
It actually stands like that in the changelog ^. To me, it does sound very awesome :D. Manual aiming, i guess? Like Tera?

No, it's a cosmetic fix more or less. It says they go in the direction you look if you have no target.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Polobow on May 22, 2012, 05:28:16 pm
No, it's a cosmetic fix more or less. It says they go in the direction you look if you have no target.

Don't they mean a target by clicking on it, or going on him with tab?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Thovex on May 22, 2012, 10:40:22 pm
They mean, if you have no target selected that you will cast your missiles to the way your camera is facing and not somewhere random like it used to be.
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 23, 2012, 09:04:51 am
Quote
Many of you have been asking about when we will have our second Beta Weekend Event. As we are approaching a long weekend in many parts of the world, we understand that some of you want to make plans for that. To help you with that we can confirm that we will NOT be running BWE2 this coming weekend.

Our BWE1 was super successful, we exceeded our expectations. As some of you might have experienced first hand, this lead to some technical issues. To make sure we are not running into the same situation for BWE2, we recently had a stress test, and we are currently deploying a lot of additional hardware in our datacenters.

We will be able to tell you exactly when BWE2 will take place as soon as all the hardware has been deployed. We are not withholding a date intentionally, we want to make sure that BWE2 will be a really great experience for all of you.

I hope this helps a bit in understanding where we are standing – you all have a really relaxing long weekend! ~MK
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Miwiw on May 23, 2012, 11:50:41 am
Meh, sad. I hope they'll start another one next month. Probably after they fixed some bugs and maybe some lag.
At least they say something. :)
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Kay of Sauvage on May 25, 2012, 06:41:31 am
No, it's a cosmetic fix more or less. It says they go in the direction you look if you have no target.

It wouldn't be just cosmetic if you can use this feature to your advantage. For example, the skill mentioned early teleports you to where you last fired an arrow. Wouldn't this allow you to pick a spot by looking there and firing?
Title: Re: Rate your beta experience
Post by: Vibe on May 25, 2012, 07:40:22 am
It wouldn't be just cosmetic if you can use this feature to your advantage. For example, the skill mentioned early teleports you to where you last fired an arrow. Wouldn't this allow you to pick a spot by looking there and firing?

If you're talking about the thief shortbow teleport skill, it works like a normal AoE, you click the skill, get the green circle effect on your mouse cursor and then you click again where you want to teleport.

This guy uses it all the time so you can see how it works - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IogrJbCsUE4

The change has no effect on it.