First Impressions

[Lane]

I hate the fact that dragon seem to go everywhere in the games these days (specially MMOs). But I find that at least in Gw2 they manage to suppress it. The first guild wars for instance, had little dragon apparition. Yeah Zhaitan is the big badass dragon but to be honest I never really felt like "Omg more dragons" in the game. Dragons are supposed to be intelligent and few imo, and the whole dragon flight of horde and dragons helping you in WoW is really bad.

Somewhat. Fortunately they don't (as yet) litter the game like they do in others in the form of frequent cameos and lesser dragon beings. Even still, between the whole Destiny's Edge thing and everyone with a 'unity against the dragons' mantra I still feel it heavily saturates everything that's going on in the world. (Understandably so, I guess, but still.) Not to mention that a lot of the baddies (branded, destroyers, risen, etc.) are the direct result of the dragons.

I may be oversensitive to it since I am so very tired of dragons though. :P I will say with the heavy emphasis on centaurs in the human zones, at least, I do tend to forget about it. Sooo many centaurs, everywhere.

[Rukh]

Immersion is not gameplay.

Maybe to you, but I really like immersion, it's important for a good fantasy game. Otherwise I'd go play chess.

[Fencers]

Maybe to you, but I really like immersion, it's important for a good fantasy game. Otherwise I'd go play chess.

Enjoyment has nothing to do with it.

Gameplay relates to play/rule systems. It's not a matter of opinion.

[Ghostpanther]

Maybe to you, but I really like immersion, it's important for a good fantasy game. Otherwise I'd go play chess.

I agree with this. Immersion is very important for me when I play any game and some things in games can be a "immersion killer", while other factors in them can enhance it. I also realize this is a opinion based on how one's attitude, expectations and approach to any game is. This happens to be one reason I enjoy playing GW2, I can really get into the immersive feeling of being in that fantasy world. In my mind, I become that charector. Imagination can be a wonderful thing if used correctly.

[Zilong]

Enjoyment has nothing to do with it.

Gameplay relates to play/rule systems. It's not a matter of opinion.

Hmm, Idk.

"Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game,[1][2] and in particular with video games.[3][4] Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules,[2][5] connection between player and the game,[6] challenges[7] and overcoming them,[8] plot[9] and player's connection with it.[6] Video game gameplay is distinct from graphics,[9][10] and audio elements.[9]"

The bold part being my point. I think it might be a matter of opinion.

I do think Immersion is part of gameplay.

[Fencers]

Hmm, Idk.

"Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game,[1][2] and in particular with video games.[3][4] Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules,[2][5] connection between player and the game,[6] challenges[7] and overcoming them,[8] plot[9] and player's connection with it.[6] Video game gameplay is distinct from graphics,[9][10] and audio elements.[9]"

The bold part being my point. I think it might be a matter of opinion.

I do think Immersion is part of gameplay.

The part you are quoting is a matter of interaction. Interface, control schema, etc. It is expressed within the citation as interaction within the play or rule systems. Not opinion.

The common notion within the video game audience that sees the medium as a vehicle for entertainment primarily is incorrect.

[Maarius]

Functionally they are the same though. Not really concerned about "feeling".

One wave of attacking <centaurs> <bandits> <flame legion> <grawl> chaining into a another series of defending <asura> <lionguard> <pact> <seraph> from <centaurs> <bandits> <flame legion> <grawl> which leads to collect <artifacts> <herbs <rum> <gears> for the nearby <asura> <lionguard> <pact> <seraph> then chaining into a fight with a champion <centaurs> <bandits> <flame legion> <grawl> is all the same stuff.

Immersion is not gameplay.

I agree with you about the fact that there could be a bigger variety of events. You defend an area, you escort npcs, you invade in enemy territory, you kill enemies until their morale is broken, you kill champions,... and maybe a few more. Just to make sure what type of event you are looking for, can you name/describe me some examples of events you would like to see implemented as a new event-type?

Yeah it's mostly about fighting, I get what you're saying. I wonder though, what else you could do in an mmo with enemies everywhere and a war-szenario happening all over the place. How are other games doing this? I don't know too much other mmos besides WoW and LotRO.

[Fencers]

Yeah it's mostly about fighting, I get what you're saying. I wonder though, what else you could do in an mmo with enemies everywhere and a war-szenario happening all over the place. How are other games doing this? I don't know too much other mmos besides WoW and LotRO.

I don't actually dislike the way Guild Wars 2 does things. From a purely personal/entertainment view GW2 is great fun. Only the volume of combat is tiring for me.

The game is largely... relentless. To sum it up succinctly.

What I was suggesting in reply was that the context of the DEs doesn't functionally change the gameplay elements they are based around. Which is mostly non-stop combat. Even if you are to do "non combat" actions in a DE the player is often being shot, swung and poked at to some degree.

[Maarius]

I don't actually dislike the way Guild Wars 2 does things. From a purely personal/entertainment view GW2 is great fun. Only the volume of combat is tiring for me.

The game is largely... relentless. To sum it up succinctly.

What I was suggesting in reply was that the context of the DEs doesn't functionally change the gameplay elements they are based around. Which is mostly non-stop combat. Even if you are to do "non combat" actions in a DE the player is often being shot, swung and poked at to some degree.

Could you specificly say what you would suggest to change this?

When I think of it I find this true for myself in certain areas (not Orr, since I think it should be like this in Orr): the respawn rate. Enemies (for me) respawn too fast and so I get this feeling of stress in areas where I'd like to see a room for rest. For example: I did a jumpingpuzzle where quite a few enemies + veteran-enemies were put in. It gets tiring when enemies spawn faster than you killing enemies. I really loved the missions in GW1 where dead enemies stayed dead for a while, giving me the chance to retreat for a moment or two.

Is this the kind of "relentless" you are talking about or do you mean something different?

[Durzlla]

Could you specificly say what you would suggest to change this?

When I think of it I find this true for myself in certain areas (not Orr, since I think it should be like this in Orr): the respawn rate. Enemies (for me) respawn too fast and so I get this feeling of stress in areas where I'd like to see a room for rest. For example: I did a jumpingpuzzle where quite a few enemies + veteran-enemies were put in. It gets tiring when enemies spawn faster than you killing enemies. I really loved the missions in GW1 where dead enemies stayed dead for a while, giving me the chance to retreat for a moment or two.

Is this the kind of "relentless" you are talking about or do you mean something different?

In areas such as orr, frost gorge (or w/e the place with jormag) southsun, and other such "We are in enemy territory now boys!" sort of zones, there should be nothing OTHER than combat, that's why you go there is to kill shit, it's a war.

However, back on Farmer Bobs farm where there's bandits they should have more events like when you have to chase after the bunnies and capture them and run them back because Farmer Bobs kids LOVE rabbits and as such any rabbits being killed on his farm would completely <insert word i completely blanked on here> his children, however the rabbits are eating all his crops.

Maybe have something like a rush in a tavern and you need to help him deliver drinks? Minor stuff like that with absolutely NO combat in it in appropriate places would only help the game imo. ESPECIALLY because they are going for a whole living breathing world sort of scenario.

[Doozerjun]

Is this the kind of "relentless" you are talking about or do you mean something different?

I imagine she means what you mentioned, in the constant respawns, in addition to the actiony style combat, and for the fact the game is almost all combat (jumping puzzles aside). I can see how someone can get fatigued by it. That's kind of why I think things like mini-games are actually more important than people realize. At the very least they break up the constant fighting.

[Fencers]

Could you specificly say what you would suggest to change this?

- Reduce mob density in zones [non DE]
- Reduce DE mob health by half, speed up wave intervals based on active participants
- Introduce a 'pipsqueak' mechanic ala DDO or Tera
- Enforce the need for multiple roles in complex DEs
- Reduce aggro radius of gen pop mobs

Think that might break up the tedium of non-stop 11111111111111111111111111111111111143 DEs and world travel.

Is this the kind of "relentless" you are talking about or do you mean something different?

Partly.

I do not believe Anet have a respectable QA staff if any. Many of the zones and areas need additional gen pop passes. The game lacks a lot of design polish in that regard.

However, the source of fatigue is quite simply the volume of combat. The game is from the word go wall-to-wall combat. Similar to Tera, which also was fatiguing due to an absolutely relentless thrust to murder every honey bee and mangy wolf.

[Stellan]

If you use aoe, your pet won't attack. They will only attack a specific target (a selected target). Also the F1 attack has been buggy at times. For the most part it has worked for me but on the occasion that it doesn't I'll swap pets and that usually will fix the problem.

I've been meaning to ask. You mention swapping pets. I haven't seen how to get a second pet and then pet box doesn't say anything about it. How do i get another pet?

[Fencers]

Press K [default], brings up pet management window. F4 to swap pets in combat.

[Godavari]

AoE is better

ot: to each his own, i think guild wars 2 is nice and all (i hate gw1), but im not hooked as some people here seem, still only lvl 16 even though i bought it ages ago, i think mmorpgs in general gets boring too fast for me and i need breaks of 1 month+ or in the case of WoW play 2 weeks, 2 weeks break or however long i feel.

[Willias]

I've been meaning to ask. You mention swapping pets. I haven't seen how to get a second pet and then pet box doesn't say anything about it. How do i get another pet?

Go find a "Juvenile <insert animal name here>", get close and hit either F on your keyboard, or click the popup that says Charm.

If you're looking for some quick animals to pick up, there's a bear, bird, cat, and wolf in the Norn newbie area (at their respective shrines).

NO, just no.
Seeing that do dungeons on multiple 80s I must say that inorder of complexity it would be war>ele>ran>mes, if you count managing your pet it wouldbe ran>war>ele>mes (I haven't lvld the other classes to max yet)

Warriors are simple as hell. A lot of them suck though, and decide to wear full DPS gear with no defensive traits into melee without knowing how to dodge. PROTIP: Don't go into melee range without either knowing how and when to dodge, or having some defensive stats in your traits/gear. You don't do good DPS while down.

And I feel that Mesmers are fairly complex because you have to keep track of your phantoms and clones to play the class well. (I've played against bad mesmers and good mesmers. I don't want to fight good mesmers.) Elementalists are damn complex because you need to keep track of 4 different sets of weapon skills and have the reaction time to be able to quickly shift between stances to pick out specific abilities. Again, it's not hard to play, but I've played against good elementalists and bad ones, and the good ones are freaking crazy to see in action.

The only real problem I have with the event system is that all DEs are the same basically. Attack/defend/collect. They are also sorta mindless attrition too.

Gets very tiring if the "action combat" angle isn't too big a selling point for you. The whole game is figtfightfightfightcollectfightfightfightfight.

Exhausting. I prefer DEs in small doses.

I don't mind chains of DEs, especially if they're close together. Sometimes you just want to bash down massive groups of mobs, and DE chains in Orr are pretty good for that.

On the other hand, after 10 or so events in Cursed Shore, you're getting a bit bored with MASSIVE WAVES OF RISEN and want something more interesting. I hope they learn some lessons from Fractals. There's some signs in there that they're quickly picking up on how to make fights more interesting mechanically. I think it's carrying over into other content as well. Did the Gates of Arah event chain recently, and was surprised because the end boss of the chain had some new attacks that definitely weren't there before.

[Maarius]

- Introduce a 'pipsqueak' mechanic ala DDO or Tera
- Reduce aggro radius of gen pop mobs

I do not believe Anet have a respectable QA staff if any. Many of the zones and areas need additional gen pop passes. The game lacks a lot of design polish in that regard.

some interesting ideas, are you posting in the game's forums?

Never heard of those (bold) words, can you explain them to me?

[Meledelion]

1.
Warriors are simple as hell. A lot of them suck though, and decide to wear full DPS gear with no defensive traits into melee without knowing how to dodge. PROTIP: Don't go into melee range without either knowing how and when to dodge, or having some defensive stats in your traits/gear. You don't do good DPS while down.
2.
And I feel that Mesmers are fairly complex because you have to keep track of your phantoms and clones to play the class well. (I've played against bad mesmers and good mesmers. I don't want to fight good mesmers.) Elementalists are damn complex because you need to keep track of 4 different sets of weapon skills and have the reaction time to be able to quickly shift between stances to pick out specific abilities. Again, it's not hard to play, but I've played against good elementalists and bad ones, and the good ones are freaking crazy to see in action.

So in general you're saying that you notice a big difference between good and bad players of the same class, oh my what a marvelous insight you've provided...

1. Your entire idea is flawed. In wow a lot of people learned your beloved phrase "Dead dps is 0dps" sadly this doesn't apply to gw2 for a couple of basic reasons.
First, that reasoning is regarding playing safe and not taking risks when for instance phase transitions are coming so you better run to safety than stay on the boss and do 15k more dps. Continueing on this, there are no designated healers in the game meaning that regardless of if you're good or bad, if you stand in the fire you'll die (and no healer will be able to pick you up since they're simply (close to) non existant)
Second, if you don't know how to dodge you'll die even if you have 4k armor and 40k hp.

2. You're talking about pvp? I wasn't, yet it still applies, the only hard part about mes in pvp is getting 4illu shatters off and oneshotting people...
Keeping track of that (ele) stuff isn't harder than keeping track of other things, good indicators of time are how long your attunements are on cd, most "timing" comes natural if you practise a bit.
Knowing your skills is crucial for all classes, it doesn't matter if an ele can bring 10more skills to the table than another class since all classes need to know all their skills anyway.

Atm both mesmers and eles are one trick ponies. They try to burst you down quickly (just like thieves) if a mesmer fails he's gonna die soon, an ele won't die so fast since they're incredibly mobile and have good base of healing skills to help them pick themselves up after a fight to have another go.

Your way of comparing complexity is weird, you start off with saying "a bad warrior" and then compare that to "a good mes" and "a good ele" yea ofcourse a bad warrior will play in a very dumbed down way in comparison to a good anything else.

[Willias]

So in general you're saying that you notice a big difference between good and bad players of the same class, oh my what a marvelous insight you've provided...

1. Your entire idea is flawed. In wow a lot of people learned your beloved phrase "Dead dps is 0dps" sadly this doesn't apply to gw2 for a couple of basic reasons.
First, that reasoning is regarding playing safe and not taking risks when for instance phase transitions are coming so you better run to safety than stay on the boss and do 15k more dps. Continueing on this, there are no designated healers in the game meaning that regardless of if you're good or bad, if you stand in the fire you'll die (and no healer will be able to pick you up since they're simply (close to) non existant)
Second, if you don't know how to dodge you'll die even if you have 4k armor and 40k hp.

I have no idea what you're trying to say after "First,". In Fractals, there's no waypoint rushing. If you are downed or die, you're nearly worthless unless someone picks you back up or you rally. "Dead dps is 0 dps" doesn't just apply to long multi-phase fights. It applies to any aspect of these games.
Second, if you have decent toughness/vitality, hits that will instantly down low HP/armor characters will not kill you in one hit, giving you room to make mistakes. Yes, you'll still need to dodge. But it becomes possible to back off and recover with decent toughness/vitality.

And warriors are simple, no matter if you're good or bad at playing them. It's just by the nature of their skill sets. There's nothing complex about the mechanics of the character class.

2. You're talking about pvp? I wasn't, yet it still applies, the only hard part about mes in pvp is getting 4illu shatters off and oneshotting people...
Keeping track of that (ele) stuff isn't harder than keeping track of other things, good indicators of time are how long your attunements are on cd, most "timing" comes natural if you practise a bit.
Knowing your skills is crucial for all classes, it doesn't matter if an ele can bring 10more skills to the table than another class since all classes need to know all their skills anyway.

Atm both mesmers and eles are one trick ponies. They try to burst you down quickly (just like thieves) if a mesmer fails he's gonna die soon, an ele won't die so fast since they're incredibly mobile and have good base of healing skills to help them pick themselves up after a fight to have another go.

Your way of comparing complexity is weird, you start off with saying "a bad warrior" and then compare that to "a good mes" and "a good ele" yea ofcourse a bad warrior will play in a very dumbed down way in comparison to a good anything else.

What I said about bad warriors was unimportant and irrelevant, I'll admit. Let me try to address that.

Warriors only seem complicated to play if you suck at dodging, or try to get away with stacking nothing but Berserker gear with no defensive traits. If you force yourself into positions where you're in melee and have to play perfectly to stay alive, you're going to run into trouble and it's going to make the warrior class seem more complex than it actually is.

Perhaps the fights you've been in with mesmers and elementalists are different than the ones I've been in. I've found that Mesmers and Elementalists can be deadly and have high survivability if played right. They're certainly not one-trick ponies.

I'm curious what you feel there is about warriors (and to a lesser extent rangers, though you mentioned pet control already) that makes them more complex than mesmers or elementalists?

[Fencers]

some interesting ideas, are you posting in the game's forums?

Never heard of those (bold) words, can you explain them to me?

Gen pop is short for general population. It's used in game QA to refer to the mundane mobs about the world without any goals attached to them. Typically in MMO development the gen pop of an area are given passes. That is to say a dev will ask QA [or simulate themselves] to identify clusters of mobs, resources, NPCs, etc that are perhaps too dense for a given area, respawn too quickly or not quick enough, react accordingly, etc.

A 'pipsqueak' mechanic is an old dungeons & dragons design trick. The idea being that the big bad guy of your local area has an infinitely disposable supply of hapless, [somewhat] incompetence minions. Otherwise known as cannon fodder or 'pipsqueaks'.

Think if you will of the stereotypical dragon's horde of clumsy goblins, Darth Vader's crosseyed stormtroopers or the thousand doom bots hurried before Victor Von Doom.

Usually the idea is these pipsqueaks are trivial to kill but numerous. Pipsqueaks can overwhelm by numbers alone if not sort of taken out. This has the psychological effect of making players feel like "heroes" as they cut a swath through the minion ranks. The actual design purpose it serves is to inspire action with a minimum of investment by the player.

For example, in Dungeons & Dragons one might fight through a dozen or so skeletons [which shatter satisfyingly after a few hits] to reach the Necromancer threat. Or in Tera where larger creatures typically have a retinue of smaller minions.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pip-squeak