Why does gw1 look better to me then gw2 does;/

[Deleted]

Certain things diappointed me with GW 2. Such as no heroes/ henchmen, lack of killing a boss to capture elite skills, instanced missions, vanquishes (I imagine) etc etc.

Granted I have just been playing the past month or so of GW 1 to get my 29 (30) points, but still. It says a lot if an old game that starts off very hard, off putting and clunky actually gets very playable despite its faults. Add to that the fact that, say, playing through even the oldest parts of the campaigns in Tyria the game looks amazing still. I've been finishing off HotN (bleh...) and even though I'd just gone through Aurora Glade etc a few weeks ago I got that nostalgic "wow this is beautiful" feeling.

It almost makes me wish I'd given the game a chance a few years ago. As good as GW 2 looks, I just get the feeling I'd have preferred it if they'd kept the GW 1 formula even if it is clunky/ frustrating at times/ essentially an online rpg at times. But we'll see, partially I refuse to prepurchase until a release date is announced so when I play it I'll love it /shrug

[Naughts Skyway]

Just think of it like skill challenges vs elite capture. I think they're a lot more involved and fun (most of them, anyway--but they still reward you for exploration! :]). Skill captures pretty much just meant: find your boss on the wiki, map-travel to the area, then: reset a map until your boss spawned, or rerun an instance you've already done to get a skill. I know I'm biased, but I never considered skill captures to be something innovative. Skill hunter titles were extremely grindy.

[Apoptosis99]

Certain things diappointed me with GW 2. Such as no heroes/ henchmen, lack of killing a boss to capture elite skills, instanced missions, vanquishes (I imagine) etc etc.

No Heroes: Yeah, that's not in. Though, I could see developers shy away from this since programming a sophisticated AI would be difficult and resource consuming (not a programmer, so I'm guessing).
Killing a boss to capture elite skills: There are skill challenges all over the world in GW2 (I think there are over 250 challenges). Sometimes you have to kill an elite mob to get the skill point.
Instanced missions: While dynamic events are all open, there is the personal story missions which are instanced. You can bring friends along with you if you party up, but you don't have to.
Vanquishes: I don't know what that is, since i haven't played GW1.

[Valeron]

Vanquishes: I don't know what that is, since i haven't played GW1.

You kill every enemy in a single zone in hardmode.

[DrakeWurrum]

Certain things diappointed me with GW 2. Such as no heroes/ henchmen, lack of killing a boss to capture elite skills, instanced missions, vanquishes (I imagine) etc etc.

Funny, those things not being present made me happy. :<

[Deleted]

U can still play GW1 for the hardcore parts and GvG , while playing GW2 casually for the minigames-explore (and waste some money on the long run , for 2 games , instead of 1)

[DrakeWurrum]

No Heroes: Yeah, that's not in. Though, I could see developers shy away from this since programming a sophisticated AI would be difficult and resource consuming (not a programmer, so I'm guessing).
Killing a boss to capture elite skills: There are skill challenges all over the world in GW2 (I think there are over 250 challenges). Sometimes you have to kill an elite mob to get the skill point.
Instanced missions: While dynamic events are all open, there is the personal story missions which are instanced. You can bring friends along with you if you party up, but you don't have to.
Vanquishes: I don't know what that is, since i haven't played GW1.

To expand on this.

Personal Story missions often have NPC companions going along with you, and when doing dungeons you also have NPCs following along with your group. They're not so much mindless minions that are there to allow you to solo, however, as they are guiding elements of the story. Sometimes DEs do as well, depending on what the goal is.
You do not have Heroes to group with you, but you also don't NEED heroes to group with you, since all content specifically scales to a power level appropriate to the people participating in the event. (and people already scale to a level appropriate for that area)
The only content that is impossible to solo are dungeons, and Elite DEs. Frankly, I'm glad for this.

Skill challenges were truly quite fun, way better than simply marking an elite monster with a signet, and then killing it like you'd kill anything else. They weren't always easy to find or complete, although some were. There was one skill challenge in Godslost where I had to swim underwater and attune myself to some power source, but doing so caused a Veteran drake to spawn or something - not an easy fight, despite being scaled for a level 15 player.

Again, if you're into instanced content, there's the Personal Story (which can be done grouped or solo, and should scale appropriately), and then there's the dungeons, which you have to do in groups of 5. I guess in this case it kinda sucks that you can't just grab 4 heroes and go solo dungeons, but where's the fun in that? You can solo the rest of the game anyways, and I really don't want to see dungeons turned into content that everybody solos without interacting with other players. GW2 is an MMORPG in ever sense of the term, whereas GW1 had more similarities to Diablo than WoW.

Vanquishes: While you cannot clear an ENTIRE zone of all monsters on your own, nor should you bother to accomplish that, I noticed in the achievements pane that there was something called "daily achievements" which seemed to be about performing various things over the course of the day.
Some of them were about getting a certain number of killing blows with specific weapon types, some of them were about getting a certain number of monster kills... one of them was even about killing enough different monster types.

[vilhelm1992]

i HATED having henchmen and heroes, i HATED feeling useless on my own to the point where i needed a group of NPCs backing me up to kill something

[Lady Jane]

i HATED having henchmen and heroes, i HATED feeling useless on my own to the point where i needed a group of NPCs backing me up to kill something

I loved that. Simply for the fact that you could make all sorts and sorts of builds, and then customize them to suit you more depending on the situation.
I had an assassin running around with soh/splinter/mark of pain supporters, and heh, crazy numbers

[DrakeWurrum]

I loved that. Simply for the fact that you could make all sorts and sorts of builds, and then customize them to suit you more depending on the situation.
I had an assassin running around with soh/splinter/mark of pain supporters, and heh, crazy numbers

You can still make any build you want and make it work in GW2, so henchmen aren't needed for that. ^_^

[Tashabunny]

Certain things diappointed me with GW 2. Such as no heroes/ henchmen, lack of killing a boss to capture elite skills, instanced missions, vanquishes (I imagine) etc etc.

Yeah these are all things I hate about GW1 lol. I hate the heroes/henchmen not by idea... but by difficulty to control. I constantly have issues with the AI not doing what I tell it to do, heroes/henchies running off wildly even when flagged not to etc. Those issues completely ruin the idea.

To me the skill captures were boring and nothing but a giant time sink... like many other things in the game. I feel that GW2 respects your time MUCH more than GW1 did.

Personal story was fun, but they will also have 5-man dungeons too as far as instanced content goes.

Beta performance:
For me the beta was great and smooth... until I got around too many other players. My PC isn't top of the line and it just couldn't take it. I found some work-arounds though. In WvW I went up and manned a cannon instead of being down in the fray which helped with my frame rate a lot. The farewell event actually killed my comp! LOL. It hung in there like a champ until SEVEN MINUTES till midnight... then the screen went wonky and everything locked up lol. That was the end of beta for me! Beta was indeed CPU locked though so it wasn't anywhere near what we can expect at launch... optimization is usually the final step in the refinement process.

The beauty of the World:
I agree that GW1 is actually quite stunning for how old the game is and it looks better than WoW imo. However... it does not hold a candle to the radiant beauty that is GW2. At time I caught myself just running around staring at the world for how beautiful it was. Bravo ANet, bravo.

[DrakeWurrum]

At time I caught myself just running around staring at the world for how beautiful it was. Bravo ANet, bravo.

Yeah, I kept running into enemies when doing that... and had to make them leave me to my zen trance. :S

[Conscious]

Game isn't optimized yet.

I think this would definitely be the answer towards most of the OPs concerns.

[Tashabunny]

Yeah, I kept running into enemies when doing that... and had to make them leave me to my zen trance. :S

LOL. I luckily did not manage that one, although I am certain I came close a few times.