gw2 - What I loved, missed and what I would like to see changed!

[Chrno]

Hello everyone. In this little write up I'll let you know what I experienced in the last beta weekend (d.d. 4-4-2012). I'll try to be as honest as possible when it comes to the stuff I write about below. Also I'm Dutch so if you belong to the spelling police please abandon this post. The post is written after playing the Norn race (elementalist) to level 15 in PvE only. So keep that in mind please, thank you.

Launching up
When I first launched the game up I was pretty surprised to see a nice clean login screen. When you're used to screens with flashy scenery's or roaring dragons in your face this was really a pleasant surprise. Job well done arena net.

Character Creation
The character creation was decent. It's not as spectacular as Aion but what it does it does well. You get some sliders to scale some body parts but in the end every character looks good proportion wise. And that's also one of my minor complaints because some races (namely humans) look a little bit too 'perfect' for my taste. But if that's the way they want it I'm cool with that.

What I would like to see is a button that lets you hear the voice of your character when choosing your race. After making my Norn female character I was a little bit let down by her voice.

Logging in to the game
The introduction of the game is great. I started out inside a house and upon walking outside there was an NPC shouting to come over and your own personal story begins. You receive a few tasks and in the end you kill some huge monster. The entire experience was rather overwhelming I must say.
the NPC actually give you tasks of what is to be expected of you but give you minimal information on how to do it and where to complete those tasks. That being said the information can all be found in your UI and your world map. What I personally would've liked was a explanation of all the various icons on your world map and the UI. I think the entire thing would become a little bit less overwhelming to new players (especially to those new to the genre). PS: I do know some hints and pointers show up on your UI while playing I'm just saying this could be improved.

For example teach people how to use dodge, my friend was level 11 before I asked him why I never saw him do any dodges. His answer was that he didn't know how to do it. He never reads websites or any of that, he's simply there to enjoy the game and so he never knew you could.

Hearts and Dynamic events
Dynamic events on the first beta night were, not so great. Because so many like me logged in the starter area's were so crowded the events turned in massive zerg fests and it got me thinking whether I would like this as I had hoped I would. Anyway the server got toasted (just like my PC) and I was knocked off the server after a while so I choose to hit the beds and try again later.
So the next day with the server being all stable I went out again and I must say I had a great time. Yes they are basically the same 'ol quests but they are presented in a way that's very appealing to me.

What did I learn from my first night ? I learned to avoid DE's with 20+ people zerging it. It's just not fun for me. I noticed I was having the most fun when doing DE's with around 5 people naturally grouping up deep inside a cavern helping each other out. And this system works great for that.

Hearths were nice but I really only did them to spend my Karma. They are basically quests like we know them. Some hearts do take quiet long though and are fun for the first few minutes but after a few minutes I often got bored of them.

Meta events
I did 2 meta events this weekend. The first one was 'The frozen Maw' and the 2nd one was 'Assault on Svanir's Dome'. These were the events I looked forward to the most and ended up being a small let down. The start of both chains are fun and exciting. You either collect stuff or you help a few NPC's capture 2 towers and fend off some bad guys. The build-up is really great. Both events started off with around 5 to 10 other random players but got quickly flocked by 30+ players all helping out and while that sounds pretty cool it's actually quite the opposite. What starts off as amazing turns into the MASSIVE zerg fest when the final opponent arrives.

I realize this has to do with the fact that the game isn't even out yet and the servers were extremely crowded but still. It was a bit of a letdown for me.

Overflow Servers !
The most amazing thing ever, unless you're in a party with your girlfriend. What happened like 10/15 times was that I would get on my home server and my girlfriend in the over flow server ... separated. And thus we were often portal hopping until we were on the same server.
Now what happened was that while we were grouped up we NEVER did a personal story because if we did we'd be separated again. And that's again, quiet annoying. But if arena net can create a solution for this (and I'm sure they will) overflow servers are the WAY TO GO for every future MMORPG if you ask me.

Partying
During the entire weekend as I already said I was grouped up with me girlfriend and a few things I noticed during this:
- Thank you for mini map drawing like we were able to do in GW1;
- Can you please show party members on the world map because I don't think it does yet and it can be really helpful since people will be way pointing all over the map;
- Can you please get an option to follow a player like in GW1 for when I'm fetching a coffee (I really missed this )
- My party member showed up as a light blue dot on my mini map. Maybe it's an idea to make this a different color because my own steps are white and therefore during certain big boss fights it was impossible to locate my dead girlfriend in the mess.
- I also liked that people that go offline don't automatically leave the group as they did in GW1. This is much better.

looks and feel of the world
The world looks absolutely amazing to me. It got me wanting to explore everything of the entire map. The map itself is HUGE and it is packed with stuff to do. Combine that with some really good music and you have yourself some good eye candy.
I only played the Norn starter area but I only found 1 very small/tiny invisible wall which is acceptable for me. You hardly have the feeling your playing in a map. You have the feeling your playing in a part of a world. Amazing job on that!

Combat
Combat to me feels like it's easy to start with but really hard to master. It took quite some time before I got used to switching between the 4 different attunements (and I was far from being good at it but at least I was trying right . My guess is that good players will be able to switch weapons/attunements on the fly during combat and the lesser skilled players will be sticking with 1 preferred weapon/attunement. In a result the skilled players will most likely blow the lesser skilled players out of the water. Those players will most likely be able to solo allot of tough content while the lesser skilled players will have to group up to do those tasks.
The combat felt really FPS like to me for some reason. I never thought I would enjoy an action based MMO this much and it actually got me thinking about trying out Tera at some point in the future.

All in all from the little tip of the iceberg I saw, I can only conclude I liked the combat.

Underwater combat
I absolutely loved the underwater combat of my elementalist and it kept me wanting more. That being said, I was making my companion going crazy, she kept begging me not to use the 'water boiling spell' because it was making her unable to see anything at all.
A simply fix would be to allow you camera to zoom out just a little bit more. It would give people a MUCH better view, especially underwater.

Difficulty
This is one of the best one yet. The game felt challenging from the start! I guess this is where the term 'endgame starts at level 1' came from. And I must say I love it.
I died many, many times during the beginning. Some mobs can hit you for about 30/50% of your health if you don't dodge out of the way. This is something that you either love or hate.
Personally I really needed this. That being said I found a few events that were near impossible to complete and that need a bit of scaling but that is to be expected of a beta test.

Conclusion
Arena net has a rough diamond in their hands with this game and with some tweaks here and there this will turn into one good game. My only advice that if your still in doubts and you love MMORPG's is to give this game a shot. What's the worst that can happen?

[Deleted]

A lot of people seem to be ripping on the "barbie" look of humans.

Humans have been designed to look as idealistic as possible. They're all beautiful/handsome, thin, strong, yadda yadda. I forget where or why, but ANet have stated this.

[Delias]

When I think spectacular character creation, I do not think Aion.
Having choices is good, but

should never be an option.
When I think 'good character creation', I think APB reloaded. (as I have said many times)
Didn't like the game much, but the character creation was amazing imo.



A good character customization should allow you to make your character how you want them to look within reason, and Aion's failed in my mind when it threw that second part out the window.


(Sorry, just felt the need to touch on that section of your post.)

[Edge-]

There are already a number of threads for people to discuss their feedback/reactions to the first beta event. Please keep the discussion to those thread.