Apparently I'm missing something...

[melodramocracy]

Now for PvP.
First off, what is the point of Mists PvP? I see none.
I've played PvP in WoW, SWToR, and RIFT, I've seen all the imbalances you can imagine. I have still yet to see an MMO properly balance a stealth class, I honestly don't see why games keep having stealth classes. Regardless, balance is not the issue here, not exactly.
I can't move in PvP, at all. Too many snares and etc. I play a Warrior, I'm not that great, but I'm also not that terrible either, I know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm not going to get too much into this since I'm still very new to this aspect, but so far I haven't had much fun.
Next issue, why the fuck are sharks in a PvP match? Why should they swarm players and do more damage than actual players? What purpose do they serve?

You may know what you're doing, but odds are that you aren't reading what other players are doing... possibly you don't realize what certain moves look like from other classes, and it does take a bit to pick up on the animations, especially if it's a class you haven't tried yourself. If you find that you simply cannot move, your tactics may need a re-think.

I'd say sharks are there to keep players from shortcutting in maps or seeking some escape route without a penalty.

[Vespian]

It really must come down to opinion with dungeons because I am not a particularly good or skilled gamer (just stubborn and persistent), and I do not find dungeons hard - or rather, I find them challenging enough to actually make them fun to complete without it being totally faceroll enough to bore me. Some of them are hard, yes you do die a lot, yes there is a LOT of stuff happening, it can be hard to see, it can be a wipe fest, sometimes it can be a zerg fest, but if all I was doing was following some basic instructions of "XXX is casting firebolt, move away!", I would get bored out of my mind.

The one shot mechanics are designed because it's not technically a one shot due to the downed state. You have the chance and opportunity to get back up again,

I keep seeing this mindset, but I can't begin to grasp what drives people to mention this as a plus. The downed state is a last resort, should be a last resort. It should not, ever, be a core mechanic in dungeons. That's most likely why I absolutely detest the dungeons, because I personally do not experience being downed even a single time as fun, or skill related for that matter. I'm entirely with the OP on the matter of all those one-shots, because that's often what they are. Oh I have a burn on me that eats 25% of my hp per second, please dispell me. Oh wait, a cooldown of 45 seconds. What, yours is on CD too? ..and you? also? great. Dodge, ye, CD'd. Wow, where did tha..ouch..OUCH..no..ouch,please...god...gurgle.

It's like I'm constantly in downed. I don't dislike rally persé, it's a nice gimmick, but not as something that is the focus of the entire game play. It's much like the fire elemental. If one guy makes a mistake and dies, if you try to res, you'll most likely be there besides him being dead. I've seen entire groups of over 10 people snowball themselves and each other trying to help getting others up. It's abominable.

[Morogoth]

Simply put, I hate dungeons in this game. I tried real hard, it cost me more than 3 golds in repair but now I'm done. I wont touch dungeons until they work on them. I feel like everything is overtuned in this game. Not because I don't like the challenge, but it's like if they wanted downed state to be a big part of the combat system.

On the other hand, I LOVE sPvP. I play an Elementalist and the only thing I can say is RIDE THE LIGHTNING!!! (but I agree that sharks are retarded)

---------- Post added 2012-09-11 at 02:39 PM ----------

I keep seeing this mindset, but I can't begin to grasp what drives people to mention this as a plus. The downed state is a last resort, should be a last resort. It should not, ever, be a core mechanic in dungeons. That's most likely why I absolutely detest the dungeons, because I personally do not experience being downed even a single time as fun, or skill related for that matter. I'm entirely with the OP on the matter of all those one-shots, because that's often what they are. Oh I have a burn on me that eats 25% of my hp per second, please dispell me. Oh wait, a cooldown of 45 seconds. What, yours is on CD too? ..and you? also? great. Dodge, ye, CD'd. Wow, where did tha..ouch..OUCH..no..ouch,please...god...gurgle.

It's like I'm constantly in downed. I don't dislike rally persé, it's a nice gimmick, but not as something that is the focus of the entire game play. It's much like the fire elemental. If one guy makes a mistake and dies, if you try to res, you'll most likely be there besides him being dead. I've seen entire groups of over 10 people snowball themselves and each other trying to help getting others up. It's abominable.

I didn't read your post before writing mine and this is exactly why I hate dungeons so much. Downed state should be a last resort, not a core mechanic of the combat system.

[NightZero88]

I keep seeing this mindset, but I can't begin to grasp what drives people to mention this as a plus. The downed state is a last resort, should be a last resort. It should not, ever, be a core mechanic in dungeons. That's most likely why I absolutely detest the dungeons, because I personally do not experience being downed even a single time as fun, or skill related for that matter. I'm entirely with the OP on the matter of all those one-shots, because that's often what they are. Oh I have a burn on me that eats 25% of my hp per second, please dispell me. Oh wait, a cooldown of 45 seconds. What, yours is on CD too? ..and you? also? great. Dodge, ye, CD'd. Wow, where did tha..ouch..OUCH..no..ouch,please...god...gurgle.

Well that's where you need co-ordination. If everyone uses their condition removal on the same person at the same time while that same person is using their heal well then yeah..you're screwed. Really it's no different than in WoW where dispels will now have a CD. If everyone uses theirs at the same time well..same situation.

I've seen entire groups of over 10 people snowball themselves and each other trying to help getting others up. It's abominable.

Good players versus bad. For me as an engineer I solve this problem by keeping the mobs off during the res. Flamethrower -> Knockback enemy with 3, wait for enemy to come back, blind enemy with 5. Switch to grenade kit, blind enemy with 3. Player is now rezzed, switch to elixer gun and drop the AoE heal+the regen from the F ability. People need to learn that helping doesn't mean just standing with the other guy and rezzing while you die. Also, if you try and rez a person while a mob is beating on you and you die it's your own fault. I know I've done it plenty and smack myself afterwords for being silly.

[Vespian]

Well that's where you need co-ordination. If everyone uses their condition removal on the same person at the same time while that same person is using their heal well then yeah..you're screwed. Really it's no different than in WoW where dispels will now have a CD. If everyone uses theirs at the same time well..same situation.

Good players versus bad. For me as an engineer I solve this problem by keeping the mobs off during the res. Flamethrower -> Knockback enemy with 3, wait for enemy to come back, blind enemy with 5. Switch to grenade kit, blind enemy with 3. Player is now rezzed, switch to elixer gun and drop the AoE heal+the regen from the F ability. People need to learn that helping doesn't mean just standing with the other guy and rezzing while you die. Also, if you try and rez a person while a mob is beating on you and you die it's your own fault. I know I've done it plenty and smack myself afterwords for being silly.

No it's absolutely not the same thing as in WoW. I'm not even going to start mentioning the list of things that WoW has that are lacking in GW2 in terms of visibility of enemy attacks (a cast bar or animation for instance), or in terms of pretty much everything else and that's coming from a player that has left WoW a year back for being too fucking easy. But in WoW, if you make a mistake, you won't have to make it a second time, because it allows you to learn from your mistakes. In GW2 I don't even get to see what hits me, let alone learn from it.

And dear friend, what mobs did you exactly knock back on the fire elemental? I'm really intrigued, since it's not mobs that kill them. Way to go, answering a question when you're completely oblivious.

Just an FYI, never, ever, assume that your skill level lies somewhere on top of mount everest when you are answering forum posts. Always assume other people are not retards and possibly your equal, or imagine this, better than you. This solves entire flamewars about "lulzyousuk" even before they start.

[Tastyfish]

I think they are the way they are because it creates a false sense of acheivment when they are finally completed, which leads to thinking you are ELITE if you down it before nerfs and so on. I think they are working as intended and the Psychology of it is rite on.

I am not a fan of a good plan not working because the intent is to be so hard so you can be like, FUCK YEA WE DID IT, at the end.

[Vespian]

I think they are the way they are because it creates a false sense of acheivment when they are finally completed, which leads to thinking you are ELITE if you down it before nerfs and so on. I think they are working as intended and the Psychology of it is rite on.

I am not a fan of a good plan not working because the intent is to be so hard so you can be like, FUCK YEA WE DID IT, at the end.

Would work if trash mob fights actually had a mechanic to follow ;P

[Sylvanie]

I keep seeing this mindset, but I can't begin to grasp what drives people to mention this as a plus. The downed state is a last resort, should be a last resort. It should not, ever, be a core mechanic in dungeons.

Have you ever played tabletop RPGs? Some sort of "wounded" or "disabled" state is perfectly normal in those and expected to happen in a challenging fight. The system where you function equally well at any point between full health and death has traditionally been the exception, not the rule.

I find it honestly more baffling that players expect that their characters never suffer even a sort of temporary disability from a big hit, but have full clarity of mind and control of body even if with 1 hp they should technically be limping around.

[Vespian]

Have you ever played tabletop RPGs? Some sort of "wounded" or "disabled" state is perfectly normal in those and expected to happen in a challenging fight. The system where you function equally well at any point between full health and death has traditionally been the exception, not the rule.

I find it honestly more baffling that players expect that their characters never suffer even a sort of temporary disability from a big hit, but have full clarity of mind and control of body even if with 1 hp they should technically be limping around.

Yes, I actively play WH40K[scratch that I could swear you said games in stead of rpg]. Apart from that I do not see what your answer has to do with the mechanic.

The downed state is technically a state in which you are virtually already dead. I do not see how you can compare this to inflicted wounds on a table top model...

[Beazy]

I hope they don't make it any easier. Again, I found it to be very doable and enjoyable — and that with a random PUG, no voice communication, my normal leveling dps spec (Guardian) and no particular tactics adjustments. You just have to pay attention to what happens and to your teammates, that's all. And I am FAR from being a hardcore PVE player, as I already said.

Bull FUCKING shit. AC is not doable at level 30 without a constant wipe and zerg fest.

I forgot to add: Anyone who says otherwise, is a fucking liar.

Infracted.

[Vespian]

Bull FUCKING shit. AC is not doable at level 30 without a constant wipe and zerg fest.

I don't always like you, but well said *thumbs up*

I forgot to add: Anyone who says otherwise, is a fucking liar.

Well, to be fair, we got to midway AC without even a single wipe, but we all got downed two or three times each fight. I was fucking sick of it after three trash groups, but a party member thought we were doing fucking fantastic. All I could think was "lulwut?" Apparently different people experience things entirely different.

I see a down as a failure and it's my firm believe that a down should be treated as such. Sadly, game mechanics do not allow you to correct mistakes, since the game hands you no indication of your error. Hence, you learn nothing and go down just the same on the next attempt.

[Pilobolus]

Bull FUCKING shit. AC is not doable at level 30 without a constant wipe and zerg fest.

I did AC at 32, as a warrior, with a group in their mid/low 30s. No graveyard zerg required and the only time we wiped was on the Romeo/Juliet pair (I totally forget their name) because we couldn't get them split up. I'll admit, the trash has a lot of high damage instant abilities but they weren't totally outrageous and I had to stay on my toes to not get rofl'd.

[Beazy]

I did AC at 32, as a warrior, with a group in their mid/low 30s. No graveyard zerg required and the only time we wiped was on the Romeo/Juliet pair (I totally forget their name) because we couldn't get them split up.

No you didnt. Thanks for trying though.

[Pilobolus]

Yes I did, actually. I didn't think to Fraps it at the time to use it as proof in a forum argument.

[Fiddlesnarf]

Well I certainly have never been insulted, been told that I need to L2play, I suck and that I'm bad more times than I can count before. Makes me wish I still had my moderator tag, I never got trolled so hard then. I honestly don't mind being called bad, but I do wish people would give me their opinion and suggestions if they truely think that. Perhaps the mods here should stop finger wagging and actually do something.

Regardless, I can't address everyone here, but I do wish people would have at least skimmed my post before commenting. Its obvious my comments shouldn't be taken as gospel, has anyone ever heard of an opinion? I have only played around 14 or so PvP games, so I know I'm not the expert on it. I stand by my WvW comments though, whether you're actually "supposed" to die or not is beside the issue, you will die eventually, and when you do, it is so soul-crushing to know that you'll have to spend a good 10 mins holding down W to get anywhere again. Transportaion is non-existent. I see why people don't want mounts, you mention anything that WoW has and people begin to foam at the mouth, but at least a handful of new waypoints would go a long way.

Now as far as being bad and needing to L2play in regards to dungeons, I know I'm not bad, so troll, keep trolling. I know the dungeons are designed poorly when trash is harder than half the bosses and when some bosses are very fun (Last boss in CoF) and others are rage inducing (First boss in the same dungeon). People are saying there is no true 0ne-shot mechanic, well I can name one, the first boss in the Citadel of Flame, his Greatsword spin attack, I have been taken to full health to instant death by that, no downed state, just dead, and no, that is not after dying multiple times before with the lesser health in downed state condition.
Way too many times in GW2 I have died and have had no idea why I died. I like hard games, don't get me wrong, but if I fail, I want to know why so I can learn not to do it again, GW2 doesn't make it obvious enough.
I have done about 5 story mode dungeons, I haven't "failed" any of them, i've enjoyed each of them to an extent with the exception of a handful of specific bosses and trap rooms. I've tried Explore mode CMansion and ACatacombs, haven't finished them though.

I have played WoW from 8 months before BC to about 6 month into the Cataclysm expansion, RIFT for 5 months, and SWToR for 4 months, have raided and done max-level dungeons in all of them, successfully. I have never thought any dungeon in any of those games were so hard to the point of not enjoying them, in fact I thought WoW and SWToR dungeons were way too easy, I liked the difficulty of RIFT though. It doesn't make me happy to say that GW2 is too hard, I enjoy this game very much, its free-to-play model is perfect for my busy life style. I hope one of two things happen, if ArenaNet tweeks the game or I find a dungeon group that is organized and realize that my issue has just been disorganized PUGs.
I'm also not a big fan of GW2's endgame being 5mans, it makes SWToR's endgame look strong.

[Deleted]

Are dungeons supposed to be only available to the best players? I've never played harder dungeons in any other game. Expert in RIFT and Heroic in WoW don't even come close to the sheer difficulty of dungeons in GW2.

Newsflash - the t2 5 man "expert" dungeons in Rift are absolutely faceroll, they are in fact easier than the levelling dungeons in many other games (LOTRO for instance).

They aren't even designed to be challenging, they are just plain designed terrible. When the legitimate strategy for a boss is to keep dying over and over and "graveyard" rush him, you know something is wrong. No game should have low level dungeons that have one-shot mechanics. I've beaten plenty of bosses, and I still don't know how you're really supposed to beat some of them.
I'm not even talking about Explorable modes only, Story modes too.
The problem is, there is simply too much shit going on, things aren't obvious enough, and things hit way too hard.
Its like the devs didn't know when to stop when adding mechanics to mobs and bosses, most bosses will have upwards to 4-5 mechanics, a couple of those will most likely insta-kill you.
You might say, "just avoid or dodge out of that stuff." Well the problem is, its hard and sometimes impossible to see what to avoid and when. Not everything you need to avoid appears as a red circle on the ground, which can't be seen in Firey areas anyway, which are aplenty. The things that don't have a circle to dodge out of, you have to pay attention to the bosses animations, which again is sometimes impossible. A lot of bosses are no bigger than player models and partical effects are too flashy so for most of the time you can't see the boss clearly. For all the other things, they simply have no warning, and stupidly enough, these are usually the one-shot mechanics.
Don't even get me started on trap rooms and hallways... a great idea, but terrible execution.

A lot of this is down to bad players frankly, yes you do have to move more than other MMORPGs, you shouldn't have to dodge every single attack, there are classes that can interupt, put shields up, etc, that peolpe aren't doing those things, just means you are playing with too many who think it is WoW/Rift faceroll where they can stand still spamming their DPS rotation over and over, onl moving when a puddle o fsomething appears or the boss says something, with very little awareness of what is going on, because the healer or tank or (support in games like LOTRO) will save them.

It doesn't help that they've made games likw WoW so easy through addons, that they bascially play the game for you - e.g - addons that warn you when you are standing in somethign you shouldn't, that show your cooldowns, that even warn you about boss attacks, really it has created a bunch of players who can't actually play.

-RIFT
PvP - pretty meh. Slightly unbalanced, a little boring, queues were way too long. Other than that, I had some fun.
Dungeons - pretty fun, nice balanced challenges, good rewards, but every dungeons was either a dark cave, dark crypt, dark canyon, there were only a couple bright shiny dungeons, and those were very fun.
I give both PvP a 2.5/5 and Dungeons a 3/5

Rift PvP was terribly unbalanced at launch, in fact it is a game which has been nearly in a state of permanent unbalance (even in PvE), I guess balancing all those soul trees isn't easy. It also has some core issues in class design when it comes to PvP, in that melee can too easily counter range, hence nearly every rogue plays rs/**, nearly every warriro plays rb/**, it is als o full of cheese mechanics like passively applied healing debuffs, which take a GCD to cleanse( if you have a cleanse), but are then pretty much immediatley reapplied at no effort to the person applying them, worst mechanic in any game I have ever played.

Then on top of that in Rift you have had the gear issues where at various points in the games life a fully ranked player woudl bascially need to go AFK to be beaten by a low rank, skill was irrlevant when you had twice the health, more mitigation and could hit three times as hard.

As much as you may dislike wvwvw is is ten times better than conquest, there is no map in GW2 as crappy as port of scion with people running straight to the boss.

Rift is bascially the worst, most unbalanced PvP I have ever played in an MMORPG, which is saying something I've played LOTRO.

[Beazy]

Yes I did, actually. I didn't think to Fraps it at the time to use it as proof in a forum argument.

... If you did AC @ level 30, you did in fact kill bosses by dying and running back. Period. Thats called a GY Zerg.

[Vespian]

... If you did AC @ level 30, you did in fact kill bosses by dying and running back. Period. Thats called a GY Zerg.

Beazy, read my response a few posts up. I think we cleared two or three bosses without wiping or zerging. It's just that I've seen more people go downed in AC than I see people die in Rambo 4. And of course, the occasionally inevitable death that follows.

@ Zurgs, the RIFT instances are faceroll now, they never used to be untill they nerfed them. Before that, me and two friends actually ran them together and got paid by others to do so (ingame currency obviously and more a gesture than selling runs). Imagine that :P

[Veyne]

From what I can gather, from an outsider's perspective:

"I'm bad at this game, so this game is bad."

Thought it was pretty clear from the start that if you plan to play Guild Wars 2 expecting it to play like other MMO's you're familiar with, you're going to have a bad time.

[Pilobolus]

... If you did AC @ level 30, you did in fact kill bosses by dying and running back. Period. Thats called a GY Zerg.

Except that didn't happen in my group. However, I don't have proof and I think even if I did you probably wouldn't believe it anyways. AC is pretty rough but not impossible in the 30s.

Rift PvP was terribly unbalanced at launch, in fact it is a game which has been nearly in a state of permanent unbalance (even in PvE), I guess balancing all those soul trees isn't easy. It also has some core issues in class design when it comes to PvP, in that melee can too easily counter range, hence nearly every rogue plays rs/**, nearly every warriro plays rb/**, it is als o full of cheese mechanics like passively applied healing debuffs, which take a GCD to cleanse( if you have a cleanse), but are then pretty much immediatley reapplied at no effort to the person applying them, worst mechanic in any game I have ever played.

Ugh, that game's PvP... The only ranged class that I remember being able to counter melee in the early stages of the game were Pyromancer Mages. But that's not really a counter so much as they killed you almost instantly in that rune that made them un CC'able.