Guild Wars 2

[cidbahamut]

Re: Guild Wars 2

I think they call that a hiatus.

Back on topic: Set sail for Ehmry Bay on launch day.

[Etra]

Re: Guild Wars 2

What class is everyone playing? I get so bored of the classes so fast... There's nothing really in any of them that make me want to stick with one anymore.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Guild Wars 2

So I got to play the beta this weekend.

I have mixed feelings about my experience with it. On the one hand, they did an awesome job of making sure I always had something to do without even trying, which was really nice. On the other hand, a lot of it feels very samey and I even got to see dynamic events repeating and world altering effects fading in less than ten minutes time. Some of that might be attributed to it being beta and them wanting everyone to go through all the content repeatedly to get enough feedback, but it was a jarring experience.

Another thing that irked me was the stark contrast between how well dialog was handled in the story missions and how it was handled everywhere else. Story missions were pretty top notch aside from the fact that I get absolutely no say in how my character sounds or what they say. Fully voiced stuff with subtitles, none of it too terrible to listen to, characters wandering around and talking at the same time.

Then we have the rest of the world. Everything else seems to have fallen into the same awful pit as the rest of the MMO industry: boring text boxes and the option to mindlessly click through them. Coupled with how fast dynamic events crop up, it pushes me further and further away from the world. It creates a sense of urgency so that no I really can't take the time to talk with this person here and learn more about the world because HOLY SHIT CENTAURS ARE ATTACKING OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW!
I think ArenaNet may have bitten off more than they can chew here, but as a prototype for where the industry needs to explore next the game is pretty fantastic.

Stuff that did work well was the 'auto-grouping', or just being able to help other folks by walking up and attacking the same enemies they're attacking. While people aren't terribly social, the way things are does manage to naturally clump people together and have them roving in bands for at least a short time while exploring the map. Once the game goes live and the population spreads out across more zones I can see this leading to some issues though. A lot of teh appeal to the system right now is that there are enough people around that there's always someone in sight who can help you out. If zones start to become less populated it could end up causing problems, as the level design right now seems to assume a certain level of grouping or at least drive-by helping.

Combat is...a mixed bag.
Limiting the number of abilities you have access to so aggressively is nice because you can become familiar with stuff pretty easily. On the other hand...fewer options might make things stale later on. There seems to be a pretty steep learning curve for combat in general, although that might just be a problem for me personally since I'm not used to having to do the keyboard dance to use abilities while constantly moving around and dodging stuff. It's a lot more demanding than FFXI, though that's not saying much. Half the time I feel like I'm flailing to hit an ability and end up either hitting the wrong one or I take my attention away from where I need to be moving and muck that up instead. Some of this is probably due to the fact that I'm just rolling with the default control scheme and most of the really good folks have remapped their entire keyboard in crazy ways, but it's still a bit awkward and frustrating.

Overall I'm looking forward to the game, but I don't think it's going to be the MMO messiah everyone's hoping it will be.

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Oh yeah, my biggest nitpick about combat is actually there's no auto-attack, or at least none that I found. So you're in the middle of a horde of enemies and you finish one off, then you have to hit "1" again to start mauling the next one. With how quickly stuff gets torn down by groups of adventurers, it can get tedious and with everything going on I sometimes don't know if my character is actually attacking or which enemy they're attacking.

[Etra]

Re: Guild Wars 2

Combat is...a mixed bag.
Limiting the number of abilities you have access to so aggressively is nice because you can become familiar with stuff pretty easily. On the other hand...fewer options might make things stale later on. There seems to be a pretty steep learning curve for combat in general, although that might just be a problem for me personally since I'm not used to having to do the keyboard dance to use abilities while constantly moving around and dodging stuff. It's a lot more demanding than FFXI, though that's not saying much. Half the time I feel like I'm flailing to hit an ability and end up either hitting the wrong one or I take my attention away from where I need to be moving and muck that up instead. Some of this is probably due to the fact that I'm just rolling with the default control scheme and most of the really good folks have remapped their entire keyboard in crazy ways, but it's still a bit awkward and frustrating.

Were you playing PvP or PvE content? If you were doing PvP, there were vendors available to sell you weapons for free to test out different builds and what not. One the things I noticed is that all characters were defaulted into a standard equipment spec, which, for me, wasn't my playstyle at all. After buying a few new weapons from the vendors, I was able to totally make my character into the playstyle I prefer. After everything was setup, I found my character to be much easier to control and just deal with in general. (Two handed swords are _not_ for me and I had a Hell of a time playing with them.)

[cidbahamut]

Re: Guild Wars 2

I ran PvE all weekend day, but I did make a point of trying out multiple weapons on some of the jobs I played. How much they change the playstyle seems to vary from job to job, but I still got the sense that I was going to have to take some time to acclimate to how the game handles overall. One day of playing wasn't sufficient, although I was more comfortable towards the end than I was at the start, so that's something.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Guild Wars 2

Also a complaint: Guild Wars 2 ran my PC super hot. During character creation I was getting readings of 80°C. That's batshit crazy and probably bad for my rig. It came down a bit once I was in-game, but that's still pretty insane. Hell, Aion caps out at around 70°C and that thing's engine is supposed to be brutal on hardware, so either ArenaNet needs to optimize their code a bit better or I need to invest in one of those super loud case fans.

[Etra]

Re: Guild Wars 2

Also a complaint: Guild Wars 2 ran my PC super hot. During character creation I was getting readings of 80°C. That's batshit crazy and probably bad for my rig. It came down a bit once I was in-game, but that's still pretty insane. Hell, Aion caps out at around 70°C and that thing's engine is supposed to be brutal on hardware, so either ArenaNet needs to optimize their code a bit better or I need to invest in one of those super loud case fans.

That would explain why my game started to lag at random times while playing. My CPU was over heating and trying to cool down...

Never happened in previous beta versions. Something seems amiss.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Guild Wars 2

Well I guess it's good to know that isn't normal. Means I might not have to make my PC sound like an airplane engine.

[Etra]

Re: Guild Wars 2

I checked the forums. Devs said it's because they did optimization to put some of the load on the GPU. What.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Guild Wars 2

That doesn't make any sense. No game has ever put my case temperatures that high. There's also the fact that I'm pretty sure the game was constantly maxing out at least one of my CPU cores, so either something's off or the game would have melted my processor during the previous iterations I missed.

[Mezlo]

Re: Guild Wars 2

or I need to invest in one of those super loud case fans.

BANISH!

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So was the BETA only for the weekend? I just sent the BETA invite email to my home email address to download tonight, but is it not worth it now?

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Can you change character classes in game? Or are you stuck with whatever class you initially pick?

[Etra]

Re: Guild Wars 2

This was the last beta before launch and it's over now.
Have to make a new character to change class.

[silentsteel]

Re: Guild Wars 2

From all I've seen so far (missed the last BWE) I'm way excited, especially because WvW seems like the rpg version of Planetside. I'm planning on joining a few friends on the 25th

[Mezlo]

Re: Guild Wars 2

BUMP!

Starting this Saturday! Woohoo!

[Etra]

Re: Guild Wars 2

There's a stress test starting in 45 minutes, as well.