Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Squirrelbanes]

Lolz Grandpab...we both posted pretty much the same thing xD

[grandpab]

lol, I see your post right above mine now. I saw it after I posted but I didn't look at the name.

[Squirrelbanes]

Yh...I couldn't bear it anymore. Had to make an account.
I hope I don't start replying to every thread now..
Was funny.......had one of those "Come to bed. I can't. Someone is wrong! on the Internet" moment's last night...I showed my wife that meme and she just sighed in knowing defeat and toddled off back to bed.

[grandpab]

He didn't answer the question ><

[Fencers]

Accounting for the unfinished state of the game; I will say I was always hesitant about the depth of the PVE content in GW2. Some of the early feedback (though I take it all with a grain of salt), seems to indicate problems I predicted months and even years ago.

Natch, beta. Also this isn't terrible concern for me- I have no hopes pinned on GW2. Simply find it interesting the degree of similarity early on to my own speculation.

[DrakeWurrum]

I think a lot of the people that are disappointed are people that are accustomed to button-mashing constantly for the whole fight. Now consider what my rotation is like as a Combat Rogue.
111113111124111124111124111124...

Repeat until you need to refresh 3, in which case you again do five 1s.. Sometimes cut back on the number of 1s for CP procs. Push 5 or 6 at good moments to use DPS cooldowns (which are, specifically, when energy is below.. I think it was 30, it's been a few months).

Hey look. I have 6 buttons. Although I did forget Tricks of the Trade and Feint again, so let's make that 8.

My rotation as Enhancement Shaman (Technically has 14 if you count Lightning Shield, both imbues, Searing Totem, Earth Ele Totem, and count Earth and Flame Shock separately) or Sub Rogue (has 12-14 skills, two of which are just self-buffs, 4 of which are long DPS cooldowns, and one of which is just shadow step) is significantly more varied, and I've enjoyed all those playstyles... and I've played as Feral Druid, and as Warlock, and as Ret Pally, and as a Fire Mage and a Frost Mage, but... when you really come down to it? I'm just mindlessly going through a priority list for less than 15 abilities. I'm not actually thinking or caring about what each button does. Okay, I am kinda thinking about what each button does, but not in relation to the fight - in relation to the other abilities, and the buffs/debuffs I have.

To be fair, on top of those basic DPS rotations, I do have other buttons I can use situationally. Self-heal with GHW. Healing Rains. My off-the-GCD interrupt. Earthbind Totem, Tremor Totem. Frost Shock. ShamRage. I didn't even begin to count AoE damage.
I try to be fair, I do.

But none of those buttons are THAT important, not really. I would argue that they're TOO situational.

[Malthurius]

He didn't answer the question ><

I know... the guy is kind of dodging the question of "What Level did you get to".

He also says:

The only problem with your second point is that unlike in WoW, you have 70% of your skills by the time you are level 10 (potentially anyway). Solo combat at 20 isn't probably going to be vastly different from solo combat at 80.

Which seems like a pretty dumb statement to me. Just because you have a complete tool kit early doesn't mean the challenge itself cannot change.

[Squirrelbanes]

He didn't answer the question ><

Yh, he replied to me...but didn't really answer. Just says dungeons should be harder, judging by what happened in press beta dungeons. Not that those are good examples of difficulty. I replied again, hopefully will get a fuller answer.

I also replied to what he said about dodging. He seems to be suggesting that it's not really necessary.

[Fencers]

@ Drake

I would agree for the most part. However, I would also say there is partly as aspect of disappointment by those whom perhaps expected GW2 to be so revolutionary it was to played by mental thought alone & cure cancer in the process. Overestimation in short.

On gameplay specifically, I wish MMOs moved away from superfluous skills so often. This is perhaps a pet peeve of mine but I feel every skill on my bar should be meaningful always. Not occasionally useful or redundant. Which is often the case with 'skill bloat' of other MMOs. I even recall a Blizzard dev once remarking perhaps in a blog or forum, that they wanted to trend toward few but more meaningful skills. Going so far as to even say 4 or 5 primary skills would be ideal. This was quite awhile ago, so forgive me if accuracy is a bit off. Nonetheless, it's a trend I enjoy if it comes to fruition.

[grandpab]

Yh, he replied to me...but didn't really answer. Just says dungeons should be harder, judging by what happened in press beta dungeons. Not that those are good examples of difficulty. I replied again, hopefully will get a fuller answer.

I also replied to what he said about dodging. He seems to be suggesting that it's not really necessary.

It seems like he just wants to be rewarded for doing an action, but somebody just brought up a good point in a new post. You don't really have very many traits when you're only lvl 20, that's only 10 trait points so you can only have 1 major trait and 1 minor trait by then. There's traits that seem to offer what he says is missing.

It'd be very interesting to see what a lot of these people say after playing a level 80 with a full set of traits, and going up against an elite event.

Maybe the 'end game' isn't as they say it is. I mean, when I hear that the end game starts at lvl 1 I basically assume that the challenge should begin pretty early in the game, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it doesn't truly start til lvl 20-30, and before that it's more of a tutorial.

I know what they really mean by end game, just that you have access to everything and what you're doing at lvl 1 is what you're also doing at lvl 80. I'm just saying that by being so easy in the early levels, the game won't truly begin for me until the game gets a little challenging.

[DrakeWurrum]

Well I was mostly talking about the people who have been saying things like...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/c..._state_of_gw2/

the difference is that in those other games there are resources to manage, procs to be on the lookout for, spells to be on the lookout to interrupt, etc. Sure, you can absolutely ignore all these things in those other games and still steamroll the content, but at least it's there; it's something to focus on--something to optimize and become better at.

Because it's becoming a very common complaint.

He does, to a certain degree, have a point. But after playing Enhancement Shaman as my raiding toon since I first touched raiding back in TBC, all the way up to Firelands... I don't find the rotation engaging. Having 10 different buttons for doing damage isn't really that amazing to me. Trying out other toons allowed me to have fun, but only in the sense that they were somewhat new/different.

And even then, I found myself approaching everything with the same mindset. I no longer saw different mechanics. I was pushing the same buttons in a different order.

I've been playing CoH a bunch lately since no WoW means I have a lot more free time than before. My Blaster has about 8 different abilities that do damage, but I don't really care which one I use at what time. I cast that completely at random, (except for opening up with my Sniper attack, and getting into range for the melee ones), and my enemies die.
I have situational cooldowns that do this or that, but primarily I have a ridiculous amount of buttons for blowing shit up. I can say the same about the Stalkers, Brutes, and Scrappers I have.
Dominators, Controllers, Defenders, even Corruptors, they're all much less straight-forward than that, but again, ALL of the buttons they have seem to be best used just mindlessly spammed non-stop. Maybe it's because I've yet to see the challenging end-game content, I will admit, but I do not find the fact that I have a large number of abilities for doing damage... engaging, at all.


By comparison, when I jump into LoL, I can play the same champion for hours on end, and not get bored, despite having primarily situational abilities.
Although I will add that Akali is still one of my favorite... even if I am much better as Cho'gath.

I feel it's worth saying... it's not so much that I'm finding the setup for WoW or CoH... boring per se, so much as I do not find it particularly important to have a large number of damaging abilities. It's certainly not impacting how much I enjoy any of the games.

[Squirrelbanes]

Maybe the 'end game' isn't as they say it is. I mean, when I hear that the end game starts at lvl 1 I basically assume that the challenge should begin pretty early in the game, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it doesn't truly start til lvl 20-30, and before that it's more of a tutorial.

Personally, I think Arenanet's meaning has gotten lost with the whole "endgame starts at level one" thing.
What they mean is that the epic feeling of bosses should be present at early levels and that you don't have to go through 80 grind heavy levels to see something that feels, and makes you feel, epic. The statue boss in the charr starting area shows this pretty well.
I think it's about aestetics, rather than just difficulty, and that fans have generally confused the two so that many believe endgame starts at level one means everything is hard and top end gaming happens across the board.
It's mostly abaout having amazing looking fights. They can be intricate sure, but mostly it's just about making things not boring.
That's what I think anyway.

But yh...that poster needs to add a big disclaimer saying "so far". It's very much a report on early levels. To be fair, his replies have said that alot. It's a good read, better than most that have come up on reddit.

[Fencers]

Oh, I don't know about that totally. Certainly, the rampant parroting among GW2 observers dilutes the 'endgame begins @ L1' thing. Though I think an informed reading of Anet's statements in this regard are meant to distinguish the fact there is no bimodal endgame just as it was in GW1.

[Squirrelbanes]

Oh, I don't know about that totally. Certainly, the rampant parroting among GW2 observers dilutes the 'endgame begins @ L1' thing. Though I think an informed reading of Anet's statements in this regard are meant to distinguish the fact there is no bimodal endgame just as it was in GW1.

Well yh, I don't really do totalities
But I certainly think general community understanding has been pushed further towards thinking it means difficulty rather than it just being plain more interesting in terms of whatever sliding scale Anet are working on. Anet's intention is prob somewhere along the lines of challenging and making you feel like an epic hero early on though and throughout.

[Zeek Daniels]

my ele shaman rotation in wow was spam 1 button (lightning bolt), keep a dot up (Flame shock), and use another button on CD (lava burst), and use another button when u gained enough stacks (Earthshock)

Really a 1 button rotation with lava burst and fulmination rng. Comparing it to GW2 Lightning bolt would be my 1 skill, flame shock would be come condition i threw up on a mob, lava burst would be a skill on a long cd that worked well when a certain condition is on a mob and earthshock would be another skill on a long cd.

I still dont see what people are complaining about with rotations vs using skills on CD. Also people complaining about spamming their "1" skill. Its an auto attack guys. Lots of classes in all games take my shaman for example spam one skill over and over again waiting for other skills to come off cd. This game is no different.

[DrakeWurrum]

my ele shaman rotation in wow was spam 1 button (lightning bolt), keep a dot up (Flame shock), and use another button on CD (lava burst), and use another button when u gained enough stacks (Earthshock)

Really a 1 button rotation with lava burst and fulmination rng. Comparing it to GW2 Lightning bolt would be my 1 skill, flame shock would be come condition i threw up on a mob, lava burst would be a skill on a long cd that worked well when a certain condition is on a mob and earthshock would be another skill on a long cd.

I still dont see what people are complaining about with rotations vs using skills on CD. Also people complaining about spamming their "1" skill. Its an auto attack guys. Lots of classes in all games take my shaman for example spam one skill over and over again waiting for other skills to come off cd. This game is no different.

Precisely what I was getting at.

An Elementalist, with his four attunements, has 20 weapon-related skills, and then there's the skills he manually slots, adding up to 25, plus the 4 Attunement swaps, adding up to 29.
An Engineer can slot full out on kits, and thus have 30 weapon-related skills (I'm counting the mortar), plus his 4 toolbelt skills, adding up to 34.
If people really thrive on having a fuckton of buttons, they can play those two professions. The irony being that no class in WoW has to rely on using THAT many buttons in a HM raiding encounter.

(Even the other professions, with two weapon sets, will have 15 in a single fight, which isn't counting their profession-specific bar, and we have yet to delve into the fact that every profession can switch to other weapons from their bags outside of combat at any time. The Warrior has a RIDICULOUS number of skills when you consider this)

[Valeron]

Well it's a case of low level pve combined with not all of your skills in addition to all of it being a learning process

I mean I think my wow mage used fireball exclusively until level 12 or something. Then I used frostbolt forever. The issue in what people are saying is that they compare max level characters and content with low level characters and content. Notice how everyone is saying the pvp is great? Well maybe because you have everything available to you when you pvp.

The one thing maybe ANet could do would be to have more instructional situations at the low levels.

[Larynx]

Precisely what I was getting at.

An Elementalist, with his four attunements, has 20 weapon-related skills, and then there's the skills he manually slots, adding up to 25, plus the 4 Attunement swaps, adding up to 29.
An Engineer can slot full out on kits, and thus have 30 weapon-related skills (I'm counting the mortar), plus his 4 toolbelt skills, adding up to 34.
If people really thrive on having a fuckton of buttons, they can play those two professions. The irony being that no class in WoW has to rely on using THAT many buttons in a HM raiding encounter.

(Even the other professions, with two weapon sets, will have 15 in a single fight, which isn't counting their profession-specific bar, and we have yet to delve into the fact that every profession can switch to other weapons from their bags outside of combat at any time. The Warrior has a RIDICULOUS number of skills when you consider this)

An elementalist can have 4 weapons as their utility skills, bringing the number up to 46. =P

Or 50 if you count the summoning the weapons as a skill.

[DrakeWurrum]

An elementalist can have 4 weapons as their utility skills, bringing the number up to 46. =P

Or 50 if you count the summoning the weapons as a skill.

I had forgotten about the conjuring weapons part, despite the fact that I am absolutely giddy about the lightning hammer.

This means, of course, that Guardians also have more.

[Larynx]

I had forgotten about the conjuring weapons part, despite the fact that I am absolutely giddy about the lightning hammer.

You can be like Thor. =D