Rate your beta experience

[Thovex]

Yeah, their official statement was "several once-per-month beta weekends after first one at the end of April".

Lovely.

[Belthain]

I'm anxiously still waiting for their next Beta Weekend Event I'm guessing the possibility of the 26th or so.

[Kay of Sauvage]

- 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

[Havoco]

traits? was there a way to see those in-game?

[Thovex]

yes,

[Havoco]

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.

[Polobow]

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.

[Slamz]

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.

[Polobow]

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.

[Thovex]

I wanted to play lots of PvE but ended up with 80% WvW yeah.

[Vibe]

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

[SeQuel]

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.

[Slamz]

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.

[Vibe]

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.

[Polobow]

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.