Mr.Duck on 23/2/2012 at 01:40

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Man, personally I can't wait for it to arrive. w00t!

Who wants to form a guild with me?

:D

I promise no shenanigans.

:cool:

Mr.Duck on 24/2/2012 at 23:22

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\:D/

Tomi on 13/4/2012 at 19:07

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Koki mentioned GW2 in another thread, so I thought I would resurrect this one...

So, GW2 has apparently hit the beta stage by now, there's no official release date yet as far as I know, but the hype up campaign has really kicked off now, so I suppose it won't take too long. You can pre-purchase the game now too, the price of the Standard Edition in most places is around $50, and the Collector's Edition costs... erm... around $150. :erg: That sounds like a total rip-off to me, but some people that I've played the original GW with are actually willing to pay that much for it, so oh well.

Anyway, is anyone still looking forward to this game? As a big fan of the original GW, I'd love to say that I can't wait to play GW2, but I don't know anymore. I used to follow the GW news on Facebook and Twitter when they were still sharing something interesting, like revealing the different classes and races in the game, the skill system, the first in-game footage, that sort of stuff... But I unsubscribed from the GW2 feeds when all they did was to praise everything about the game and trying to convince me that GW2 will revolutionise everything about computer gaming. Sure, I understand that the developers may actually be proud of their work and that they just try to get the fans excited, but all that praising had the opposite effect on me - it reminded me of a friend of mine who kept telling me how Oblivion will be more realistic than real life itself and that it'll be the greatest game ever... then he bought the game and it didn't turn out to be the same game that he was expecting.

None of the things that I've read or seen so far have really caught my interest. Well, the game does look very pretty, I got to admit that. Some of the architecture that I've seen looks really impressive too. But I'm not sure if I like the visual effects (I didn't really like them in GW1 either) - when I hit a bad guy with a sword, I want to see a splash of blood, not some neon flash explosion with all the colours of the rainbow.

In some in-game video clip I saw bits of some underwater action - yes, apparently there'll be "a whole new world for the player to explore under the water" and you can fight with the sea creatures and stuff. I saw a video of some guy with a ridiculously big sword fighting against a huge Cthulhu-like creature and a small army of mini-Cthulhus underwater. Some people seemed to be really excited about that.

In another video I saw the most terrible thing of them all - I saw an assassin-sort of a character with dual-wielding pistols, running in slow-motion, then diving and shooting at the bad guys whilst in mid-air. I felt like crying, while other people were like "OMG that's so freakin' cool!!!"

In some other videos I've seen a guy shoot a rain of explosive arrows with his bow faster than you could shoot with a Tommy-gun, other "cool" skills like that and, of course, epic battles. Why does everything have to be so goddamn epic these days? Epicness is overrated.

Alright, I may be exaggerating a little here, I'm fairly sure that GW2 will be a decent game at least, they just can't mess things up that badly. And who knows, it might actually even have some truly original ideas that will bring some new life to the MMORPG scene too.

However, I'm not sure if it's the game for me anymore. First of all, just about every MMORPG out there needs a lot of time and devotion (and I'm not sure if I have or even want to spend that much time on playing anymore), and no matter what they say, I don't think that GW2 will be an exception. Also, unlike GW1, the world in GW2 will be persistent, so you will have to play with other random people, and my experiences of that in GW1 are mostly bad. Of course I've bumped into some awesome people along the way too, so it's not only a bad thing. We'll see...

Despite of everything that I've just said, I still think that GW2 will turn out alright, and it's almost a definite purchase for me. I've played the original game to death over the last few years, so I want to know what happens next. I doubt that it'll hook me in like GW1 did, but I hope that I'll be positively surprised...


Coming next: My rant on how the micro-transactions will probably ruin the whole game.

Malf on 6/5/2012 at 10:48

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Having played in the beta last weekend, the one thing GW2 has done is ruin every other MMO for me.

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". There really are no dedicated tanking, healing or damage classes. Better, there's no need for such roles.

By the way, there are dialogue choices to be made at certain points, which I'm sure will affect your Personal Story, but for me, that whole conceit was one of the weaker parts of the game. The Personal Story for my character was quite flat and uninteresting, with my character voiced by Nolan North in bored mode. Not the strongest part of the game, and not very "Personal" either; more like a single player RPG contained within an MMO. TO be honest, I'll just be paying lip service to the Personal Story when the game proper comes out. For me, it's all about exploring the world and helping others out.
I think that next beta I'll give the PvP a go.

Malf on 6/5/2012 at 15:33

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Initially, as you're getting used to the way things work, yes, visually it's seemingly a clusterfuck, but you gradually work out what's going on. It's just a case of becoming more familiar with the game. They do need to balance ranged versus melee somewhat mind you. I played a warrior and did very well in melee, but those with less experience found themselves constantly using ranged attacks so that they could stay out of range of the most damaging attacks.

As for microtransactions, ANet gave all beta testers 2,000 "Gems" for this event. Gems are used for currency in the store, and they're what you buy with cash. Turns out, as well as being able to trade Gems for Gold, it also works the other way round, say if you've got a lot of in-game gold, you can trade it for gems and buy stuff from the store. This means that in theory, you should be able to buy character slots or bank / bag space with in-game currency.
But even so, nothing that you could buy from the store was game-breaking. It was mostly stuff like XP boosters or aesthetic crap like outfits and minipets. I think that they're honestly sticking to their guns and making it so that at its core, the experience is the same for those who do or do not choose to spend money