The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[SuicideBunny]

The game looks stunning, but since I'm not a graphic whore, and the other parts of the game don't seem that awesome to me, I don't know what's the big deal about GW2.

gw1 is quite possibly the best mmorpgish (alongside planetside) game i've ever played, and from a purely pve perspective, gw2 is an improvement over gw1 in nearly all areas.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Try going out of town solo in GW1 and see what happens. You will get bumrushed by a mob of 6-10 enemies of mixed classes and die in 5 seconds.

h/hing is still a form of soloing.

True, but in My Days (TM), when you could use only henchmen, it was rather challenging to do everything just with them. And even later when heroes + flagging came in, you had to give heroes proper skillz and flagging them well was key to victory. Then there was also the thing about monsters complementing each other, which meant you had to choose targets well to disrupt their offensive qualities spectacularly, something I doubt will be present in gw2 when you get attacked by three samey drakes.

 

[Mystary!]

That elemental video makes combat look extremely boring, the only way you could tell those creatures was actually attacking was some red numbers above her head, no sense of impact, no knockdowns or anything. 2 creatures were whacking on her but if you covered them up with black squares you wouldn't guess there was anything behind them.
In GW1 you had to avoid certain creatures, focusing on killing the ones with the worst cc effects so you wouldn't get raped. This was just spamming a couple of damaging spells, nothing exciting.

 

[Excidium]

I assume you're talking about hard mode quests? If that's so I don't know why you're comparing it to some random leveling footage. Same for Roxor.

Most of the time in solo normal quests (read with henchmen) I'd just rock monsters with AoE effects, nuke with armor ignoring blood magic or watch my minions rape everything. I only needed to pay attention to complete the bonus objectives for the title (Which makes it a lot more fun, and some are really hard to get with henchmen). The only maps that gave me trouble were the ones filled with undead...

And it didn't look any more exciting than that, probably even more static as you can't use skills while moving in GW1.

I never did stuff on hard mode, though. Really regret not getting this game when it was new.

 

[Shannow]

No. Normal quests and normal opponents were dangerous enough if you made bad targeting choices. You played either very little GW or most of it with experienced players who knew what they were doing. Simply "attack nearest" in all later regions (not only hard mode or elite regions) will usually get you killed.

 

[Excidium]

I completed all the three campaigns in order including a bunch of side quests (mainly Prophecies side quests for the skills) and mostly with henchmen and ill-equipped heroes with horrible builds in Nightfall. I grouped with many experienced players on the main quest, but that's expected as most people playing Guild Wars these days are veterans working on their HoM. Felt like an ass watching a cutscene while everyone wanted to skip, though.

Of course I didn't just steamroll through content pressing awesome buttons (I think my post made it sound like that).

I did basic stuff like interrupting casters, killing soft targets first, walking out of aoe, buffing, dispelling or spreading conditions, using skills in the right order, etc. But that's just natural to me as I've played MMOs before.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Also, on a related note, there's new content in Cantha that has you working for the nazis

 

[SuicideBunny]

No. Normal quests and normal opponents were dangerous enough if you made bad targeting choices. You played either very little GW or most of it with experienced players who knew what they were doing. Simply "attack nearest" in all later regions (not only hard mode or elite regions) will usually get you killed.

that was only true before nightfall and heroes came out. now you not only have full hero parties but also a ton of different *-way builds that cut through nm and hm like a hot knife through butter.

 

[Shannow]

No. Normal quests and normal opponents were dangerous enough if you made bad targeting choices. You played either very little GW or most of it with experienced players who knew what they were doing. Simply "attack nearest" in all later regions (not only hard mode or elite regions) will usually get you killed.

that was only true before nightfall and heroes came out. now you not only have full hero parties but also a ton of different *-way builds that cut through nm and hm like a hot knife through butter.

You cut through Mirror of Lyssa in HM like a hot knife through butter? *g*

 

[SuicideBunny]

You cut through Mirror of Lyssa in HM like a hot knife through butter? *g*

there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the mirror in hm. did you perhaps mistake the explorable area for the grand court mission?

what i didn't cut through like butter was eternal grove. tried two times with a friend, both times we failed master by a narrow margin, then they released the hom calculator and i never tried again since i saw that i don't need to bother with triple vanquisher and guardian anymore.

 

[Black]

Found this on gwguru yt channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy-S0LkA4Bo

 

[Angthoron]

Isn't that the same vid I linked? *disappoint*

Anyway, I hope that the magic shield shown will be less powerful in the final version as it seems to absorb way too much damage. The game is clearly approaching completion though - animations are much smoother, spell animations seem to be getting to the point of "that's what we want it to be" and so forth - it just feels like it's getting to the final stages of production judging by the video.

 

[Mangoose]

Actually I'm finding the regular GW leveling missions and quests to be super repetitive. There are some interesting enemy party compositions, yes, but then they copy and paste it all over so that I have to fight the same enemy group like a dozen times trying to get any where.

I'm sure HM is better but I'm struggling my way to 20 so I can get to those.

 

[Black]

Isn't that the same vid I linked? *disappoint*

Anyway, I hope that the magic shield shown will be less powerful in the final version as it seems to absorb way too much damage. The game is clearly approaching completion though - animations are much smoother, spell animations seem to be getting to the point of "that's what we want it to be" and so forth - it just feels like it's getting to the final stages of production judging by the video.

I don't read posts of people who joined after me B)

What campaign are you playing Mangoose? Factions has the fastest 20 level while Prophecies the slowest.

 

[Angthoron]

I don't read posts of people who joined after me B)

Mangoose joined even later!


I'm sort of with Mangoose on this though, tried to get into GW, but got bored both in OC and in Prophecies rather quickly, and the fact that gf decided she doesn't like GW after all doesn't help me dive too much into it.

 

[Mangoose]

I joined in 2005

I tried Prophecies, definitely too slow. Currently my character is from Nightfall, but the storyline got really boring so I hoofed it to Eye of the North and I'm actually having fun. ~16 now, but it took a while of off and on gaming to get there.

 

[Shannow]

You cut through Mirror of Lyssa in HM like a hot knife through butter? *g*

there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the mirror in hm. did you perhaps mistake the explorable area for the grand court mission?

Nope. I find hordes of elementals that nuke me with AoEs difficult with heroes. I "vanquished" the area, but it wasn't easy and involved quite a few deaths.
The basic criticism was "GW2: looks like you only go from one enemy to the next, dealing damage instead of careful targeting, positioning, skill choice and timing."

Of course I didn't just steamroll through content pressing awesome buttons (I think my post made it sound like that).

The whole discussion was (should have been) over for me with this. *shrug*

 

[SuicideBunny]

Nope. I find hordes of elementals that nuke me with AoEs difficult with heroes. I "vanquished" the area, but it wasn't easy and involved quite a few deaths.

from what i recall i vanquished mirror with a modified sabway and the only trouble i had was the roaring ether mesmer boss where some of my peeps died a few times but still wihout wipe. don't think any caster group with nukes should pose a problem now that you can supplement any build you ran before with two mesmer heroes...

 

[Black]

Nope. I find hordes of elementals that nuke me with AoEs difficult with heroes.

Are you using Panic hero mesmer(s)? If not, you should.

 

[Shannow]

Nope. I find hordes of elementals that nuke me with AoEs difficult with heroes.

Are you using Panic hero mesmer(s)? If not, you should.

Haven't been playing for a few months. The only reason would be to get more legacy stuff. But that's just like grinding... Perhaps shortly before GW2 is released I'll get some more.
And no: Didn't use mesmers or any area specialized builds. Just left the minion master/bomber home.

 

[oscar]

Mangoose my man, any chance of a reply to my PM?

 

[made]

Cba to check if this was posted yet. Some 20 mins of underwater gameplay with the necromancer:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwar ... Btitle%3B1

Still on the fence about the limited skill loadout. There's what, 5 or 6 attack abilities available at a time, 2 weapon sets? Can see it getting boring pretty fast. At least there won't be a problem finding hotkeys for all of them.

 

[Excidium]

I don't mind it, at least it seems much easier to balance.

Using different weapons underwater is something I didn't know, pretty cool. I wish necros could use scythes in GW2...

 

[Angthoron]

Hm, thanks for the link. Looking good there, gives me hope to have played at least a little bit of the game before the world ends.

As for the limited amount of skills, I can't say I mind. In general, a regular player in an MMO will be using a regular rotation of 6-ish skills, and 4-ish emergency cooldowns, so their skillbars reflect that really well. Sure, I would like to have more skills, but I just have to admit that I would use anything outside my usual scope pretty rarely and for the most part they'll just be cluttering my UI.

Having said that, many of the vids that I've seen (game show demo recordings, and even the latest link) shows how many players actually play the game - spam ONE reliable button, then use the rest for a bit of CEWL and to save your stupid ass. If you think this is an exception to the rule, try running a few random dungeons in WoW with a completely random team and watch what they're doing.

 

[Excidium]

True, almost every video I've seen people don't even stop for 5 seconds to look at the skills. Except when the person playing is recording stuff for the wiki.