Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Biggiej]

I am hopping that since this is all alpha there will be more attack animations later down the road when they put out new previews. The game looks solid so far in terms of spells and music, and the looks. and the structure of things. Maybe what it might even come down to is they will hopefully polish missing pieces and bad animations. I think it is still possible for this to happen. here is to hopping, I know this can be a very good game!

[LeBoucher]

Re: The Shatterer
I watched the 5 minute Shatterer battle and I'm very impressed. I saw the video laying around the forums many times, but I never bothered to watch it. I just kinda thought, "Meh, it's just a boss battle", boy was I wrong. The sheer size of The Shatterer puts every boss in every other MMO ever created to absolute shame. The one thing that bothered me in the beginning of the video was how stationary The Shatterer was, but near the end when he flew away in aggravation is when I realized that he did not have to move. Everyone attacking him were more like wasps than an actual threat. Battles like that can really make a player feel small. It's like, you're battling for you life while this giant dragon is barely making an effort to defend itself.

A Few Questions
-Do you have to have a pet as a hunter, er, I mean Ranger? (c wut i did thar?)
-I'm really big into Role Playing, how will Personal Stories effect the RP aspect of the game? It would be a damn shame for people to just use their Personal Story as a basis for their character biographies rather than make a biography of their own. Let's be real, Personal Stories can't differ too much between characters, right? I'm also pretty sure the class you choose will have very little impact on Personal Story. Correct me if I'm wrong.
-Wait, the Charr were never a playable race in the first game, right? Never mind, I just had a derp moment.

[Sapho]

For the healing, I understand that one person won't be standing back healing (unless they want to) but with everyone being in charge of healing themselves, doesn't that completely kill the risk factor of a fight? It's just dps X 20, heal X 3, repeat until boss special, heal X 3, dps X 20 sort of thing. I don't know. We'll see.

As I understand it, events will be more fluid than that - more need to move, to support other players, and so forth. Admittedly I could be wrong on this though. But if done right, there should be much less by way of rotations than there is in wow (where it's largely dpsx10 repeat )

As for incentives for working together out in the world . . . no there aren't really any that I can see. For me, this is a good thing - you work with people when it's fun, you don't when it isn't. Admittedly this will get frustrating for you if you want to cooperate and no-one else does, but there are still guilds and 5mans and pvp, all of which do require communication and cooperation, so the world is not completely void of socialisation. And in theory, dynamic events should mean more interaction than you generally get while questing in wow. I mean, until you hit the level cap in wow, you can quite easily play entirely solo. I'm always wary of loading too many incentives on to a particular play style, as you risk making it feel compulsory. As I see it, GW2 tries to remove the penalties of either solo or group play, without pushing anyone too hard towards either.

[Miggetmagic]

Ok, I had some free time where I got to devote to watching things on this game tonight. I spent about 3 hours watching video on it. I've wanted to play this game since I first heard Arenanet's bold manifesto. This post will come across as bashing. I honestly don't mean it that way, but am just unimpressed with certain things. My hope is that the GW2 fans can let me know things I may not be seeing correctly, or perhaps wrongly accusing. With that, don't flame me for telling you what I see or how I feel. These are my opinons, and you don't have to agree. I am not romanticizing this game due to the hypnotist ways the devs seem to have. My eyes are open.

My hope is that you will read the entire long post, and tell me where I might be misinformed, but still be openminded enough to see some of these things I am seeing. I'm not an idiot. I see some of these things clear as day, and I think you may too. And they worry me.

*This is not a TOR vs GW post. I am not trying to change your mind, or advocate for TOR in anyway. TOR is just a good reference for me.*

-The world looks amazing. It ranks right up there with Rift, Tera, and TOR. (Btw, most of this will come with these games (TOR in particualr) as a reference point. I played a fair amount of Rift in the Beta, and am closely following TOR obviously. I need a counterweight for my thoughts, and those will be it) The buildings, lanscape, etc are very nice to look upon.

The world of GW2 is basically an overlay of GW1, sure they changed a lot to reflect 250 years happening, and they added/got rid of some places because of this, but they have already showed a ton of familiar places in the videos from the conventions. If you played GW1 you will recognize the world instantly.

-The music is great. With the exception of TOR, I think this is an area that MMOs have failed to capitalize on. I hope GW has the high level soundtrack throughout the entire game.

While I cannot vouch for GW2, GW1 had exceptional music all the way though it. They have Jeremy Soule doing the soundtracks for the game, so I expect nothing less than exceptional.

-Character models brings me to my first negative thought. They are not at the level of Rift or TOR. They look very much like Tera. They look like they should belong in some console fighting game. I don't know how to explain it precisely, but they sort of have a haze about them. I'm not talking about the youtube look, but in more of a metaphor sense. The crispness is not there. Perhaps it is the paintover feel artstyle? I don't know. The bodys are not bad. But the faces are horrible. Perhaps I'm spoiled on TOR, which is going into great detail to animate and make faces crisp. These faces are like a blank stare the entire time. It's not visually appealing to me. Hopefully it's just because it's early footage.

I think some of the character models they have shown are quite exceptional, however I do agree with the blank stare, especially on humans. They have great detail on their models if you watch this you an see chest hair, veins, and even boob jiggle!

-Going from the character graphics, the next step is the animations. Origionally, I had thought they were alright. But upon my marathon of paying close attention to them, I'm less than optimistic. Watching the human (or Norn perhaps?) red headed girl attack with her mace, I saw one horrible animation repeated over and over again. I thought, well, maybe she has no energy to use a skill. Then this same character moved on to new mobs. And... Same thing again. I'm watching as archers use the same generic animation over and over again. (Kudos there btw, the fingers recoil a bit after she looses the arrow. I'm a huge fan of subtle things like wrist movement in TOR) Same thing with the Charr. Same animation throughout.
More or less, the animations seemed stale and overdone. Movement was anything but fluid.
Now, coming from me, a person very excited about TOR, and animations being one of my favorite parts from that game, this is disturbing. MANY GW2 fans have come to the TOR boards and told us how shitty the animations look for TOR and how much GW was better. I gotta say, you are off your rockers. lol Overall, I'm highly depressed with character visuals and animations.

I'm have noticed this too, and am still optimistic that it has to do with it still being in development. That said, I don't disagree with you for the most part.

-Another thing that comes up often with TOR, is the voice overs (and I will lump "quests" here as well). We've heard many people say, well yeah, but GW2 has over 60 full length films worth of voice overs. (This will come off as mean, I'm sorry) I can definatley see why there is no subscription fee for this game. Those voiceovers were horrible. Absolutely horrible. But let's face it. Every other game is compared to TOR. The voices reminded me of the other MMOs that half assed the voices of NPCs just to do so. And that's what I hear here. The voices were added solely because they don't want people needing to talk to quest givers. So the NPCs needed to talk about the happenings so the player understood. So, while there were no "quests", that's almost not true. You just don't have to interact with the quest giver to receive a quest. Calling it a Dynamic event does not change the fact that it IS a quest. You run into this scripted event, and you partake to recieve reward. If you succeed or fail, you get a follow up quest. The only real difference is that the NPCs are yelling the quest text out, and you don't need to click accept.
The story mode "cutscenes" really need some work. They look horrible. One person talks, and the text comes over. Then they disapear and it repeats with the next person. There is no emotion. This is a feature that was in older single player games, and the looks haven't improved in this game. The example after the human female starting area shows exactly what I am saying. It was truly bad.

I don't think the voice overs are done yet, I'll try to dig up a CM post stating they were working on voices still during Norn Week. Cut-scenes are horrendous atm, I con only hope they touch them up before they release the game.

-Combat was strange. There are cool concepts going on here, much like Tera, but they seem forced. Actually, it really reminded me of Tera, but Tera looked better, even with their strange over the top boob shaking hip wiggling. Everything happens SO slowly. There is more than enough time to use the new dodge feature. It looked boring. Perhaps it was players who didn't know what they were doing. I know that is the case with almost every TOR video. But there was so much strange positioning movement that it caught my eye. The animations made it look stale. I hope that things will improve in this department, cause that's kinda all you do in the game is fight. We'll see.

Definitely going to stick with players not knowing what the hell to do. Animations definitely need some work, in the 10 minutes of combat video, the NPC Charr has the same animation when he gets hit... for 6 strait minutes!

-No trinity system, or a veil over the eyes. Hmm.. I don't know about this one tbh. They say they don't want you to "play a healer" cause you need to. Yet, they talk about people switching between aspects to use abilities that heal those around you. Now, obviously healing IS needed. People do get hit, and they do go to a fallen state, and then slip into unconciousness. Am I seeing offensive spells that have a secondary ability to heal those around you? Are you sure this is the way to take the game? Are you sure that's better than a trinity system? It makes the need for healing turn into an automatic thing. Like, "you just dps. I, the god in the sky will heal you. You don't need to worry about it. I got it. You just play your dps game." Bosses don't focus on one target, but instead use aoe abilities. Everyone around takes damage. But, everyone can heal, and it looked that it was sometimes tied into their offensive skills, or it was simply, place your totem here. You don't heal your tank, you just heal all around you. That does NOT sound interesting, I'm sorry. It negates the need for the mechanic, which some of you see as a good thing. I feel it trivializes the whole combat system.

Everyone is responsible for healing themselves, and yes some skills do heal while you do damage, but nothing that will save you based on what I've seen. There are also some skills that will AoE heal party members, but this game has no friendly-targeting-to-heal mechanic and still applies to the whole "this won't save your life if you're being stupid" healing. They took this route so you don't have to bring that player you really don't want to, instead with this system you can bring just your friends and still go though all the content. This may or may not trivialize the combat system, I would really like to get my hands on the demo to test it out though.

-Single player, or MMO... Are you sure about that? "GW is a persistant world that defines what an MMO is all about" "I'm not saying this is the best way, but I think other developers should take note on what it really means to make a massive multiplayer experience" (those are parphrased from memory, and are not word for word quotes) Initially, I was captivated by the concept of players joing events and working together to get shit done. When I looked deeper into it, I saw many contradictions to this. They said, "We don't want you to feel like you have to talk to any other players" "We don't want a player to need to group with other players to play the game" What does this mean? Well, from what I can tell, it is exclusively a single player game through and through. "But Trolls, wtf are you talking about? There were 50 other people there fighting the same dude!?!" In the events and in the developers talking about them, the same thing kept coming up. No interaction at all with other players. There was no need to because you just hop in, it scales a bit, and you leave. (Much like rifts in Rift. You simply go there, join public group, kill bad guys, get loot. Go seperate ways. No talk.) There was no need because we don't feel like we should ever make you have to talk to the other players. I can fight these ogres by myself and still move on. Or, a player can come in, and we can both kill them and move on. Or, 50 players may come and we kill them, and move on. There is no difference at all, and you never once need to care AT ALL what the other players are doing. You simply do your thing, then move on.
The difference between this and other MMos is that this acts as your leveling system AND your endgame. You roam the world in search of dynamic scripted events that are taking place, you help the little NPC, and get your rewards, and move on. In other MMOS, you do your quests, and move on. You ultimately get to max level and get to play the end game. What is going to keep me playing GW2? More "leveling" events? More time not caring about what ANYONE else is doing? This just doesn't click with me. It doesn't seem to encourage working together at all. You have no need to whatsoever. Do it alone, or do it with 50. It's the same. Do it and move on. Am I really off the mark here?

I am a bit worried about how this will play out in GW2, I did play the Rift beta and it was quite worrisome that people just split after Rifts, and hardly talked at all during them. However, I think GW2's setup is a bit better - the fact that there will ONLY be Dynamic Events in the open world (aside from Personal Story) may end up bringing people into parties for a great amount of time. Communication is going to be necessary for people to know whats going on and where, and I think this will help people stay in groups, and maybe eventually meet some new friends.

I was always skeptical after the manifesto. It seemed like it just wouldn't work, but I hoped that wasn't the case, cause they have some GREAT ideas and passion to go along with it.
So GW2 fans, change my mind. Or don't. Call me a TOR fanboy and tell me I suck. W/e.
I was really onboard with GW2 until I spent time delving deeper into it. Now, I'm not even sure if I want to play it unless they change things a LOT from this alpha build to the final product.

Hope this post help shed some light on some of the issues.

[Trollsbane]

Hope this post help shed some light on some of the issues.

For sure. Thanks. And thanks for not only quoting things that make me look like a dick. Many people will not bother to look at the origional post, and will only answer based off quotes. I appreciate it. =)

[Anthoren]

For sure. Thanks. And thanks for not only quoting things that make me look like a dick. Many people will not bother to look at the origional post, and will only answer based off quotes. I appreciate it. =)

I like that you are bringing up some interesting points but again this game is not that near done seeing as how there are still more classes to be shown and no release date or window mentioned. Also a lot of the demo's are relatively old builds. probably in july is when we will see the next big and finally new build. As of now I am highly optimistic about this game

[Miggetmagic]

Re: The Shatterer
I watched the 5 minute Shatterer battle and I'm very impressed. I saw the video laying around the forums many times, but I never bothered to watch it. I just kinda thought, "Meh, it's just a boss battle", boy was I wrong. The sheer size of The Shatterer puts every boss in every other MMO ever created to absolute shame. The one thing that bothered me in the beginning of the video was how stationary The Shatterer was, but near the end when he flew away in aggravation is when I realized that he did not have to move. Everyone attacking him were more like wasps than an actual threat. Battles like that can really make a player feel small. It's like, you're battling for you life while this giant dragon is barely making an effort to defend itself.

A Few Questions
-Do you have to have a pet as a hunter, er, I mean Ranger? (c wut i did thar?)
-I'm really big into Role Playing, how will Personal Stories effect the RP aspect of the game? It would be a damn shame for people to just use their Personal Story as a basis for their character biographies rather than make a biography of their own. Let's be real, Personal Stories can't differ too much between characters, right? I'm also pretty sure the class you choose will have very little impact on Personal Story. Correct me if I'm wrong.
-Wait, the Charr were never a playable race in the first game, right? Never mind, I just had a derp moment.

Yes, you HAVE to have a pet as a Ranger - atm the pet system is horrible, but they are "working on it". Also, by you HAVE to have a pet, I mean this more as in WoW terms. In the original GW, you could choose not to have a pet by not bringing the skills for one, but in GW2 you get a pet along with your 10 skills. Whether you want to use it or not is up to you.

Personal story will vary quit a bit, depending on race and whatnot. Say you start as a Charr, right there your entire personal story is different than any of the other races, up until a certain point (speculation). I see you getting to about level 40 based on dungeons and your races personal story, but then you get to a point in the story where you join one of three different organizations, all with different viewpoints on how to deal with the Elder Dragons. Then you start to focus on this part of the story (saving the world) more than your own races problems. All the while, you can decide different paths to get to these points.

P.S. Lawl at Blznsmri v

[Blznsmri]

A Few Questions
-Do you have to have a pet as a hunter, er, I mean Ranger? (c wut i did thar?)
-I'm really big into Role Playing, how will Personal Stories effect the RP aspect of the game? It would be a damn shame for people to just use their Personal Story as a basis for their character biographies rather than make a biography of their own. Let's be real, Personal Stories can't differ too much between characters, right? I'm also pretty sure the class you choose will have very little impact on Personal Story. Correct me if I'm wrong.
-Wait, the Charr were never a playable race in the first game, right? Never mind, I just had a derp moment.

(That damn asura elementalist (sarcasm) beat me too it and I was mostly contradicted so I axed them, I'm leaving the charr thing cause I fucking can.)

Charr were never a playable race in the first game. The only race you could be was human, however, you could have a Tengu (bird-man) henchman in Cantha, and Norn, Dwarf, Charr, Asura, Centaur and Spirit type thing (It's model was human but it wasn't really human) heroes (personal, costumizable NPC that can join your party) in EoTN and Nightfall.

[Snowy]

Re: The Shatterer
I watched the 5 minute Shatterer battle and I'm very impressed. I saw the video laying around the forums many times, but I never bothered to watch it. I just kinda thought, "Meh, it's just a boss battle", boy was I wrong. The sheer size of The Shatterer puts every boss in every other MMO ever created to absolute shame. The one thing that bothered me in the beginning of the video was how stationary The Shatterer was, but near the end when he flew away in aggravation is when I realized that he did not have to move. Everyone attacking him were more like wasps than an actual threat. Battles like that can really make a player feel small. It's like, you're battling for you life while this giant dragon is barely making an effort to defend itself.

A Few Questions
-Do you have to have a pet as a hunter, er, I mean Ranger? (c wut i did thar?)
-I'm really big into Role Playing, how will Personal Stories effect the RP aspect of the game? It would be a damn shame for people to just use their Personal Story as a basis for their character biographies rather than make a biography of their own. Let's be real, Personal Stories can't differ too much between characters, right? I'm also pretty sure the class you choose will have very little impact on Personal Story. Correct me if I'm wrong.
-Wait, the Charr were never a playable race in the first game, right? Never mind, I just had a derp moment.

The Shatterer fight was toned down for the demo because players for the demo were new to the game. So it's unknown by those not from ArenaNet what the real fight will be like at this point. Also, the Shatterer is only a mid-level boss.

As for your questions:
- Yes, you have a pet and currently the Rangers have a Downed skill that lets the pet slowly try to revive them. It is currently called "Lick Wounds" and yes, people have mad many jokes about using it with a Charr Ranger.
- Your Personal Story starts the moment you start making your character. Your characters race and the choices to character customization questions affect your personal story. The way you interact with NPCs and the choices you make during your personal story affect it. In an interview ArenaNet made mention that you can have a fierce character little children run from when you approach.
- In Guild Wars, you could only play as a human. You had henchmen and heroes of different races that could join your party though.

For sure. Thanks. And thanks for not only quoting things that make me look like a dick. Many people will not bother to look at the original post, and will only answer based off quotes. I appreciate it. =)

You have quite the long post so I'll try to respond to your post tomorrow when I have more time. You bring up a lot of concerns that people may have from watching the videos and I want to be able to give the best answers that I can. Just remember though, the game is still deep in development so animations aren't being worked on that heavily. Those are usually done closer to release of a game.

[Castia]

For sure. Thanks. And thanks for not only quoting things that make me look like a dick. Many people will not bother to look at the origional post, and will only answer based off quotes. I appreciate it. =)

I read your original post..you had some good points but jeez dude are we both looking at the same game when we look at TOR? I mean seriously its Star Wars,Bioware and a MMO! it should be fukin awesome...but from what Iv seen so far it looks terrible,for everything you said about GW2 I can pretty much fire back at TOR I think the actual TOR engine looks really bad.

Also don't get me wrong the voice overs for TOR will be epic there's no doubt in that but from what I seen at PAX it makes the game look so slow,for example I watched some guys running the flashpoint instance and it took them almost 8 mins of just watching 2-3 npc's talk before they could retake control of their character and enter the instance....If it was 8 mins of awesome information/story it would have blown me away but seriously it was so dull and boring I was ready to turn off the video.

Meh I dunno I have prolly got my GW fanyboy hat on but as a fan of the movies and Bioware in general I'm disappointed with what Iv seen so far

[Miggetmagic]

Sort of relevant to your post Trollsbane - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXVqa675BSI

[Trollsbane]

Sort of relevant to your post Trollsbane - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXVqa675BSI

I was more refering to the "quest givers" and NPCs that interact with you in the story. As far as the ones in that video, yeah, they are good as they better be. lol

[tehmark]

Been following this game for a few months and it looks great so far. I only wish I could see a video of some of their "dungeons" just to see how that aspect of the game plays out.

[Trollsbane]

I read your original post..you had some good points but jeez dude are we both looking at the same game when we look at TOR? I mean seriously its Star Wars,Bioware and a MMO! it should be fukin awesome...but from what Iv seen so far it looks terrible,for everything you said about GW2 I can pretty much fire back at TOR I think the actual TOR engine looks really bad.

Also don't get me wrong the voice overs for TOR will be epic there's no doubt in that but from what I seen at PAX it makes the game look so slow,for example I watched some guys running the flashpoint instance and it took them almost 8 mins of just watching 2-3 npc's talk before they could retake control of their character and enter the instance....If it was 8 mins of awesome information/story it would have blown me away but seriously it was so dull and boring I was ready to turn off the video.

Meh I dunno I have prolly got my GW fanyboy hat on but as a fan of the movies and Bioware in general I'm disappointed with what Iv seen so far

I know, and a lot of people do. It definately boils down to personal preference. For instance, I think Tera's character models and animations, and subsequently GW2 because they are very similar in looks, look very bad. I think Rift and TOR look far better. Without the fact that I am a Bioware and Star Wars fan in general, I think that game looks beautiful and the animations are solid. Like I said, the subtle things really do it for me, and that game is chalked full of em. And the other thing is, I understand that GW2 is still in development. But so is TOR. Both are still able to be judged by it though. But enough on TOR, I answer posts on that game all the time. lol

[iidesu]

Well done, thanks.

[Relente]

I'm gonna go ahead and expand on this a bit. The Personal Story isn't completely instanced, It takes place in your Home District - A fraction of your races city - that is instanced. It also occurs though dungeons and possibly the open world, unfortunately we do not have enough information about that at this time. However, if you watched the PAX East videos, they showed the Vigil Academy/Keep (whatever the hell it goes by, I'm tired) - which is probably part of the zone, or has a portal like cities - where a major part of your personal story will take place.

Edit:

To clarify, not everyones personal story will take place in the Vigil Academy, you have the option, at a certain point in your personal story, to choose between The Vigil, the Order of Whispers, or the Durmand Priory - which will change your personal story significantly as these 3 groups have different views on how to deal with the Elder Dragons.

This is from the Wiki "The personal story is told through character specific instances and is personalized by decisions made before and during gameplay" - I haven't see any open world personal storyline yet, so we will have to wait and see. In the developer walk through they show the Home District which is the instanced personal story of your races main city and dungeons are instanced, so as far as I can see the personal story is mostly instanced. When I say instanced, I mean you can't see other players within your personal story unless they are grouped with you, which the devs have talked about in the PAX panel.

[Miggetmagic]

This is from the Wiki "The personal story is told through character specific instances and is personalized by decisions made before and during gameplay" - I haven't see any open world personal storyline yet, so we will have to wait and see. In the developer walk through they show the Home District which is the instanced personal story of your races main city and dungeons are instanced, so as far as I can see the personal story is mostly instanced. When I say instanced, I mean you can't see other players within your personal story unless they are grouped with you, which the devs have talked about in the PAX panel.

But we know one of the three organizations will play a big role in your personal story (Vigil, Order of Whispers, Durmand Priory), and after seeing the size of just one of those, I can be sure they aren't instanced for every person. Who knows though, they might have a personal district inside them as well. Also, don't they state somewhere that your Personal Story is supposed to direct you around the world so you know where to go next? Unless they do this by having dungeons in every zone, I can't see it not taking place in the open world.

[ManiaCCC]

This is from the Wiki "The personal story is told through character specific instances and is personalized by decisions made before and during gameplay" - I haven't see any open world personal storyline yet, so we will have to wait and see. In the developer walk through they show the Home District which is the instanced personal story of your races main city and dungeons are instanced, so as far as I can see the personal story is mostly instanced. When I say instanced, I mean you can't see other players within your personal story unless they are grouped with you, which the devs have talked about in the PAX panel.

Big part of personal story is also choosing one of the 3 major factions in the game which will change how you will contribute in dynamic events later in the game and also should change (according one interview) experience in Dungeons. I don't know if the whole "choose one faction NOW" will be instanced or not..but you definitely have to meet these leaders in open world..and also, your choice will impact your experience in open world too.

[Relente]

As far as I know, the personal story is fully instanced based off the interviews and what I have read on the Wiki. Every action you choose in your personal story affects it, so I don't know how that would work if it was in open world. Maybe depending on what you choose for an order you will see changes in the open world when you finish it, but I am not sure. We will have to wait and see when they release more information about the personal story.

[georgevonfranken]

Another point to note for the shatterer is he is not a high level event boss. Hes level 40 or 45 while the level cap is 80