The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Darth Roxor]

Because all the basic quests in Guild Wars were oh so hard and required parties, huh?

Let me think... Pretty much all of them after leaving Ascalon? Yes. I remember being to solo whole post-searing Ascalon and then getting bummed by stone summit. Even if 'parties' meant getting henchmen. And given how dumb they were, you had to take a good amount of care to keep them (and yourself) alive.

And don't even get me started on Factions with its fuckhueg mobs of Am Fah, Afflicted and other assorted Kaineng goods on every step.

 

[markec]

I had no problems playing with henchmen until the end game with any class, only difference were story missions which I always played in groups.

As for dynamic events, they sound like public quests from Warhammer Online, pretty much a quest area where those who enter automatically participate in a quest with any number of people and players are rewarded how much the contributed to the fight.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Playing with henchmen -is- playing with a party. As opposed to playing as per the video, without henchmen or fellow players working together, and therefore -without- a party.

And dynamic quests don't necessarily have to mean no cooperative gameplay. In GW you have things like FA where you'll be thrust into random groups and made to work with what you've got. Even though, in that mission, builds are more often than not made as solo glass-cannons, there's still room for playing around your team's needs as opposed to just running around by yourself. Which is not at all similar to, you know, not even giving you a party member list.

But yeah, it's Guild Wars. Who cares about parties anyway, amirite?

 

[Mangoose]

Playing with henchmen -is- playing with a party.

Nope. Since I asked the question first, I get to define the terms. Playing with henchmen != playing with a party. Get back to me when you can create tactical plans and coordinate with dumb AI.

If you can play a bunch of quests with a "party" of henchmen then that easily suggests that a party of human players would be overkill in terms of difficulty. 3 NPCs does not make up for human planning and adaptability.

And dynamic quests don't necessarily have to mean no cooperative gameplay. In GW you have things like FA where you'll be thrust into random groups and made to work with what you've got. Even though, in that mission, builds are more often than not made as solo glass-cannons, there's still room for playing around your team's needs as opposed to just running around by yourself. Which is not at all similar to, you know, not even giving you a party member list.

Let me guess. You never played Warhammer Online or Guild Wars 2 so you simply assume that in such public/dynamic quests, because there's no party member list, you can just do whatever the fuck you want and win. Because obviously your delusions from imagining playing such games are good enough that you will just rely on your imagined conclusions instead of actual experience.

I bet you can't believe that in WAR public quests, coordination is required, otherwise you'd fail easily. Also I bet you can't believe that WAR has a "public groups" option, so you can easily party up with whoever is participating in a certain Public Quest. No, just stick to your fantasies that Things That Are Done Differently Are Obviously Wrong.

 

[SerratedBiz]

FFS, Mangoose, can we both try to argue like human beings and leave the snazz out of it? I realize it's not codexcool but please.

And no, you don't get to define what a party is. AI is not necessarily dumber if the conditions for which their skills are to be used are simple enough that a human's response would be similar, eg: use your heal when we're wounded, use condition removal when I'm bleeding. I'll concede that getting a henchman to spam attack is not necessarily different than two players not in a party attacking on their own - but neither is a human player spam attacking any different, either. Furthermore, there's builds which henchmen can execute quite similarly to a human player, such as a Searing Flames one where the only condition for synergy is that the target is burning which every (n)PC's skills will invariably do. So yes, I consider henchmen = cooperative play, even if it's a lower degree of what it could be with humans.

And no, I've never played WAR or GW2. I'd guess that neither have you, on the latter. So when I say that the lack of a party list makes me think that people are not conditioning their gameplay to the party, I wonder what it is you know that gets to contradict me. Am I -guessing- that, in this video, self-heals must have been enough to keep the character alive? Yeah, because that was their designed purpose. Does that raise a flag for me? It does. I'd rather have seen something diffferent. I'm not crying BAAA GW2 = WOW, but it certainly didn't look like GW. I liked GW.

As for new stuff, you're wrong. Back when the topic of self-heals was announced in this thread I was among the ones advocating for it, under the impression that innovation on the seemingly stone-written foundations of MMOs was a good thing. Doesn't mean that I don't want GW2 to be based on team gameplay. But if it's meaningless, if it consists of people spamming their attacks on a common enemy and little more then no, -that's- not playing with a party to me.

 

[Mangoose]

Rofl:

(A) So just because there is no party member list, you think people are self-healing the whole time? God forbid they look at health bars and heal each other when necessary. God forbid the armored classes look at the field and watch for enemies attacking squishies. Nope, no party member list = no teamplay.

(B) Even if they are self-healing, you think that a publicly presented demo is indicative of actual difficulty after release?

(C) You really consider GW's henchmen gameplay to be more cooperative than WAR's public quests.

 

[SerratedBiz]

(A) Well, yeah. I don't know how many health bars you saw on that screen, because they only pop up when your cursor is on a character. I can see how that's designed for efficient healing, just wave your cursor about and hope you catch whoever's wounded in time. I even checked the skills and was about to post how team-based they were oriented, but it's a Ranger so meh.

(B) Which is better and why: judging a game you've never played or judging its gameplay not on the content you're currently seeing, but on what you guess -might- be there later.

(C) I said I haven't played WAR. -But-, my point stands: solo play (including FFAs where everyone is playing for themselves) > playing with henchmen > playing with a human party. Most of the time. There's actually some builds which run better with henchies.

In any case, arguing in circles FTW.

 

[Mangoose]

(A) Well, yeah. I don't know how many health bars you saw on that screen, because they only pop up when your cursor is on a character. I can see how that's designed for efficient healing, just wave your cursor about and hope you catch whoever's wounded in time.

You do realize that in all games you have the option of turning on or off healthbars, right? So are we discussing how retarded people are in that video, or are we discussin

(B) Which is better and why: judging a game you've never played or judging its gameplay not on the content you're currently seeing, but on what you guess -might- be there later.

Best choice: Not making a judgment either way. Notice how I simply posted a video, and then you jumped in with retarded observations? Yeah, if you posted something retarded in favor of GW2 I'd respond in the same way.

Second best choice: Judging gameplay based on experience with the obvious inspiration, WAR public quests.

(C) I said I haven't played WAR. -But-, my point stands: solo play (including FFAs where everyone is playing for themselves) > playing with
henchmen > playing with a human party. Most of the time. There's actually some builds which run better with henchies.

Solo play > Playing with Henchmen > Participating in a public quest in WAR> Playing a mission designed for a specific small number of human players.

 

[markec]

About Public Quests, in Warhammer PQ were on every map and were available to all player levels. There is no limit to how many players can participate but to finish it you need to have usually between 5-10 players. The thing is that on first few maps (low levels) there were large number of active players so PQ-s were often played by twice as many gamers that are needed to finish it, which made things very easy and allowed players to play leisurely. But on later maps when players were scarce people needed to form groups and since you had bare minimum of players you needed to use team work to win.

 

[Black]

http://www.arena.net/blog/dragon

We recently finished our first closed beta test, and we’re now ready to hold progressively larger events. In February we’ll invite select press to participate in beta testing, and in March and April we’ll aggressively ramp up the size of our beta test events so that many of you will have a chance to participate. And of course, this all leads to the release of Guild Wars 2 later this year.

TOR 2 ahoy.

 

[Angthoron]

Huh?

Also, fucking finally, AND not a Christmas release.

 

[Mangoose]

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/2012/01/guild-wars-2-pvp-roundtable/2/

GWI: Do you have an idea of how many people are in a WvWvW?
Jonathan: We’re estimating right now that we’ll be able to get about 500 people into each map.
Matt: Since there about 4 WvWvW maps, that’s about 2,000 players in total. So we have a pretty large capacity but we still haven’t done a whole lot of optimization passes either so we’re hoping we can get that number a little higher. We’re just estimating 500 as our cap right now.


GWI: I’m not too sure how much you can say about WvWvW, but what can you tell us a little about Keeps?
Mike: The keeps are a much larger space in comparison to the Kylo PvP map, and they all have unique terrain features. One keep climbs up the side of a mountain while another is based around a lake; so you have some underwater entrances you’ll need to defend.
We have towers, which are basically like smaller versions of keeps. They’ll have a couple of walls and a door you can bash in so you can try and take over.
We’ll have resource camps, which are more of an “open field” style of battle. They’ll have a capture point in them so you can fight for control of the resources.


GWI: In maps like Kylo, the environment plays a big part of it. Anything else from a WvW standpoint where you can just knock something down, take out a bridge even?
Mike: All the keeps and towers, we talked about, have walls that can get treb’ed down or you can break those down. You’re bashing through doors all the time. We’ll try to add more of that stuff but we definitely want to have the environment play a big part.
Matt: We’ve seen it a lot too. In closed beta there’s been countless times where keeps are getting attacked and you roll up on this keep that you anticipate that’s going to be this awesome epic defense, but your just a little too late. Now you have your keep’s gate down, you pushed them back, but then they get on the Trebuchets. Now there’s holes in every wall and they are just pouring in in.
It gets to the point where you slowly go “Ok, what are we really defending here?” At this point its completely destroyed. So, things can break down fast and change the course of action.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

How is the lack of cooperative gameplay not part of the game mechanics? Unless you're saying that the lack of a party stems from the fact that the players didn't actually form them, as opposed to them not being a part / impotant to gameplay from design.

If it isn't clear, my concern is with the latter . Going back to the "no healers" approach discussed earlier I would think it's a valid one.

I would not worry about it. They tend to only throw you up against some of the easier bosses and nerf them at conventions. YOU can't have them be full power because instant wiping a group of players so they cant see some of the content will not make for good word of mouth.

 

[Angthoron]

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/2012/01/guild-wars-2-pvp-roundtable/2/

GWI: Do you have an idea of how many people are in a WvWvW?
Jonathan: We’re estimating right now that we’ll be able to get about 500 people into each map.
Matt: Since there about 4 WvWvW maps, that’s about 2,000 players in total. So we have a pretty large capacity but we still haven’t done a whole lot of optimization passes either so we’re hoping we can get that number a little higher. We’re just estimating 500 as our cap right now.

Holy fuck. Do want.

 

[Mangoose]

Destructible walls, 3 way combat, 500 players, different territorial nodes (resource camps, towers, keeps). DAOC IS COMING BACK

 

[markec]

I'm a big fan of GW1 but haven't followed anything about the sequel. Really happy to see that the Mesmer will return, it's by far my favorite GW1 class and one of the best classes I've seen in any RPG, very interesting type of character.

Anyway, I just like to know if any of you guys know something about the skill system of GW2, if it's gonna have lots of skills for each class or if they're going the ordinary MMO path with only 20 or so skills for each. Also, I'd like to know about the type of skills they're doing, if it will have lots of those "harmful but not direct damage" skills like GW1 or if they went full "fireball/sword strike/arrow storm". This is extremely important and probably will make or break GW2 for me. Just keep the hundreds of well thought and varied skills and I'm in, easily.

Oh and I hated the new values for HP, damage and so on. Why such gigantic numbers?

Everything you need to know about skills:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skill


Nice description of skill combos:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216828p1.html


As for HP/damage numbers, its probably because GW2 will have level cap of 80 and be more focused on gear then the first game.

 

[Average Manatee]

Everything you need to know about skills:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skill/

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skill_bar

Serious though. All but 3 or (arguably) 4 skills on the bar is limited to a preset skill or small group of skills, compared to GW1 where every slot could take any skill.

Nice description of skill combos:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216828p1.html

All I can think of when I read this is:

 

[Mangoose]

Look at this instead (skill builder): http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en

 

[Black]

I also hate the huge numbers. I think they said it's "easier to balance" huge numbers than what GW1 had but frankly I think it's all bullshit. The truth is, kids fucking love huge numbers and they were already whining in GW1 that it only had 20 levels (boo-hoo), now they get 80, 600-ish max health wasn't enough, so now they can have it in THOUSANDS.

 

[Angthoron]

Press Beta time starts this weekend according to Total Biscuit:

Video itself includes the old favourite from GW1, that is, huge packs of trashmobs that will rape your ass if you are a) alone b) clueless or c) don't know how basic aggro range mechanics work. Guy pulls one mob, chainpulls five instead, gets killed in about two seconds. That's that worry out of the way.

Also, more info on 3-way PvP: http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-on-guild-wars-2-world-vs-world

 

[SerratedBiz]

Strangely enough, there's no aggro circle in your radar. How are we supposed to know what's near, what's in the area, within earshot? Also, CoD mechanic of shooting your enemies while you're incapacitated to get back to life... is that still not individualizing gameplay?

Anyways, looking forward to see more of this. Not necessarily the vignettes for each of the starting backgrounds, but more of actual gameplay and (hopefully) a party.

 

[Angthoron]

Strangely enough, there's no aggro circle in your radar. How are we supposed to know what's near, what's in the area, within earshot?

Not sure if serious?

 

[made]

Latest TB beta video, featuring a bunch of guys running around grinding boars by spamming AOE attacks with epilepsy-inducing gfx. It all looks worrisomely Asian.

 

[garren]

latest stuff here http://www.gw2camp.com/headlines/161-the-floodgates-have-opened-over-50-videos.html

here's a bit better video of someone who seems to know how to play games.
http://www.jeuxonline.info/video/4967/beta-test-press-exploration-cote-humain

 

[Shannow]

Meh, gameplay looks even twitchier than I'd feared, enemies respawn every 20 seconds and the particle effects make NWN2 look playable...
*sigh*