Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Woah, a Steam launch is jumping the gun. They still need to fix the offputting new player experience (the crappy 2000s MMO tutorial, running around the ugly boring vanilla zones with hardly any abilities, the bifurcated story that you only see 15 minutes of every 10 levels, etc), not to mention that WvW is still a terrible experience going in blind (one of the touted cornerstones of GW2). And if you drop money on the new expansion you find that half of the new specs are borked.

[Edge-]

Woah, a Steam launch is jumping the gun. They still need to fix the offputting new player experience (the crappy 2000s MMO tutorial, running around the ugly boring vanilla zones with hardly any abilities, the bifurcated story that you only see 15 minutes of every 10 levels, etc), not to mention that WvW is still a terrible experience going in blind (one of the touted cornerstones of GW2). And if you drop money on the new expansion you find that half of the new specs are borked.

Those are...not all flaws?

Updating all the OG zones is a massive, monumental undertaking that honestly Anet's not capable of handling while doing LS episodes and working on another expansion. OG zones are still pretty good, and you unlock weapon skills and secondaries pretty quickly in a way that's designed to get you used to the combat system vs. just throwing everything at you at once and expecting you to figure it out. I remember that being one of the initial problems with the game at launch and folks not figuring out the combat system early.

Story is similarly fine, there's no real MMO story that takes place seemlessly without "interruptions" between story beats. SWTOR, SWL, ESO and all the others mix in "main story" and "side stuff" as you progress through the main stories. Not perfect and not to everyone's tastes, but it preps you for how story updates are delivered when you get to current content.

Game's not perfect, sure. But it's never gonna be perfect and there will always be issues. But they're making some meaningful improvements with more planned (like updating some world bosses, the new tutorials they've added for things like dodging etc.). There's never a "perfect" time to launch on Steam, but honestly all things considered this is arguably one of the best times for the game in terms of the health of the game/Anet and its current quality.

WvW...don't ask me about, I haven't bothered with that in forever and basically ignore that PvP exists in this game.

[pahbi]

Woah, a Steam launch is jumping the gun. They still need to fix the offputting new player experience (the crappy 2000s MMO tutorial, running around the ugly boring vanilla zones with hardly any abilities, the bifurcated story that you only see 15 minutes of every 10 levels, etc), not to mention that WvW is still a terrible experience going in blind (one of the touted cornerstones of GW2). And if you drop money on the new expansion you find that half of the new specs are borked.

I am brand new to GW2 and I'm not really enjoying the new player experience, I'm level 30.

So far its just me running around hoping for random things to happen so I can get xp, and some story every 10 levels.

I like the GW2 gameplay more than FF14, but FF14 definitely has a far superior new player experience.

[PACOX]

I don't even play WoW but I feel like it is the only MMORPG in recent memory that actual has a fun and streamlined new player experience.

I think most people know what they are getting into when they start a new MMO. GW2s is neither the worst or the best. Better than FF14s treating you like a toddler for 250 hours. Better than most of the MMOs on Steam. Worst in the sense of most non-MMOs. There's no way I would leave a new gamer to fend for themselves in GW2, they wouldnt make it out of a starter zone. With that said, if people read of have played MMOs before they they'll be fine. At some point it's on the players if they ignore the giant arrows and popups guiding them.

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https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/s...-on-august-23/

Link got cut off so fixed link.

Lame you can't connect accounts, but I can live with that. I'm just glad they've been hearing the feedback on LS episodes and are having both an "all-in-one" purchase with expansions + LS and selling LSS2-IBS as a single bundle that'll eventually be brought to the gem store.

New permanent achievement for an armor set is super nice! And freebie mount skin during the anniversary sale, yay. And a free BL key in the store today, to boot.

I'm glad to see Anet continuing to do well after a very rough few years. Colin and Grouch coming back really seems to have gotten a lot of things back on track overall.

Since you mentioned the armor



I need this.

[Lex Icon]

bit weird that they decided to do the steam release before finishing season 1.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

bit weird that they decided to do the steam release before finishing season 1.

Indeed. They may be under pressure to do so, either to beat the competition from other games during the Christmas season/Spring 2023, or because they are running out of cash.

[Edge-]

bit weird that they decided to do the steam release before finishing season 1.

Steam's been delayed for years at this point, and honestly they don't really benefit from delaying further.

If they delay till S1 is done, that's months and pushes into holiday time, not great timing. Then S5 (I think?) is up and should they hold off until that's out?

There's no "perfect" time to launch an MMO on Steam.

or because they are running out of cash.

GW2 saw something like a 40% revenue bump last quarter from a fairly stable $20M per quarter to $27M per quarter, and was NCsoft's highest earning PC game for the quarter (first time ever, though that's in large part a result of revenues for games line Lineage shifting to mobile).

Anet's fine, financially. Based on quarterly numbers alone, this is the healthiest the game has been in years.

[VMSmith]

Lame you can't connect accounts, but I can live with that.

Does this mean that you cannot play on Steam with a currently existing account? That would be a major drawback for me, as I was somewhat interested in playing again with the game on Steam, I prefer all my games in one launcher. If I'd have to start all over from scratch then I'm not certain I'll be interested at all.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Does this mean that you cannot play on Steam with a currently existing account?

That is correct.

[Theangryone]

Even with the double XP buff, grinding the Gift of Battle still takes ages.

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Also, the restructuring didn't solve anything. Guilds figured out how to game the system so you're still going to have uncoordinated solo players being trounced by people in Discord.

Restructuring still hasn’t happened. They are still testing out guild sorting and background systems. We have yet to get a true beta of Alliances

[PACOX]

Does this mean that you cannot play on Steam with a currently existing account? That would be a major drawback for me, as I was somewhat interested in playing again with the game on Steam, I prefer all my games in one launcher. If I'd have to start all over from scratch then I'm not certain I'll be interested at all.

99% of games work like that. Its a Steam feature/limitation. Of the 1% of games where its possible, you usually have to forfeit a portion of your previous account's progress or buy the game again to merge accounts.

I'm not sure why this is a new thought. You can still add GW2 Steam, as was always the case, if you want the ability to launch everything from Steam.

[Edge-]

Does this mean that you cannot play on Steam with a currently existing account? That would be a major drawback for me, as I was somewhat interested in playing again with the game on Steam, I prefer all my games in one launcher. If I'd have to start all over from scratch then I'm not certain I'll be interested at all.

Correct, if you have an account you still need to use the stand-alone launcher. You can still launch the game through Steam if you want as a third party app, and since the launcher saves your login information it should more or less function identically.

[VMSmith]

99% of games work like that. Its a Steam feature/limitation. Of the 1% of games where its possible, you usually have to forfeit a portion of your previous account's progress or buy the game again to merge accounts.

I'm not sure why this is a new thought. You can still add GW2 Steam, as was always the case, if you want the ability to launch everything from Steam.

I'm asking because no game that I played before it was added to Steam has behaved this way ... SWTOR, STO, Champions Online, Neverwinter, DDO, LotRO, this is absolutely a new limitation to my experience with Steam.

Why would I want to buy the game again? I just prefer playing games via Steam and if a game is going to force me to re-purchase it just to play it on my preferred platform then, well, I'm inclined just to not play the game at all. I've not played GW2 in months with the plan on returning when it came to Steam. Now I know that won't happen, so I'm disappointed.

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Correct, if you have an account you still need to use the stand-alone launcher. You can still launch the game through Steam if you want as a third party app, and since the launcher saves your login information it should more or less function identically.

Wait, now I'm confused. There is a way to launch via Steam with a current account? That's all I want.

[Edge-]

Wait, now I'm confused. There is a way to launch via Steam with a current account? That's all I want.

Yes. Steam supports launching third party games (i.e. anything not native to Steam but has a shortcut) through Steam itself.

On the bottom left of the Steam window there the little plus inside the square with "Add a game" next to it, click that, select "add a non-steam game...". That will bring up a menu of programs on your computer you can launch through Steam, and you can either pick from there or click "Browse" to manually find the shortcut/exe for the game. It'll support Steam Overlay (I believe) and launch through your Steam library, but will not support any native Steam functionality.

As for they "why" there's no account linking, probably technical reasons. GW2, for whatever reason, might be using account systems that don't allow that kind of connectivity and adding it may be technically unfeasible. You're not "losing" anything really by not having the native Steam version, especially since you can always just add it to your library (it's F2P technically) once it's released so you can quickly access things like Steam discussion boards or anything else.

Also a possibility they simply didn't want to allow folks to move their accounts to Steam as that pushes all purchases through Steam, meaning Valve is taking that 30% (scaling down as the game makes more money) cut of all sales. Doubt this is a primary reason why, but it may be a factor.

[PACOX]

I'm asking because no game that I played before it was added to Steam has behaved this way ... SWTOR, STO, Champions Online, Neverwinter, DDO, LotRO, this is absolutely a new limitation to my experience with Steam.

Why would I want to buy the game again? I just prefer playing games via Steam and if a game is going to force me to re-purchase it just to play it on my preferred platform then, well, I'm inclined just to not play the game at all. I've not played GW2 in months with the plan on returning when it came to Steam. Now I know that won't happen, so I'm disappointed.

What you're talking about aren't full Steam integrations. You're just using Steam to launch the launcher for the game, which you can already do for GW2.

1. Add game to Steam
2. Run game from Steam
3. Game launcher pops up, enter your non-Steam account details, MTX are handled by the game dev.

There are a bunch of technical details you may or may not care about. Like what MTX can be done from the Steam storefront or a separate one.

Full Steam integration:

1. Add game to Steam
2. Run game from Steam
3. Use Steam account details on the game launcher or better yet, completely skip launcher and get directly into the game. MTX are handled by Steam.

GW2 will have full Steam integration, which means you need a Steam account. Merge Steam accounts with existing accounts is hard, so most devs don't do it when they're adding Steam to their game post launch.

Just because you brought up SWTOR, maybe they fixed it because attempting to use Steam to login into multiple SWTOR accounts and why most devs make you choose Steam or a separate launcher.

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Also a possibility they simply didn't want to allow folks to move their accounts to Steam as that pushes all purchases through Steam, meaning Valve is taking that 30% (scaling down as the game makes more money) cut of all sales. Doubt this is a primary reason why, but it may be a factor.

Anet would have have Valve, NCSoft, and their current payment processor in their pocket.

[Edge-]

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topi...omment-1735098

More updates on the balance updates, they're nixing a bunch of the mirage nerfs.

I don't pretend to be fully informed on all this but it seems like players were right in thinking Anet was nerfing in part based off of golem test results that aren't remotely realistic for the vast majority of players to achieve during an actual fight. Seen a lot of chatter about that topic and this seems to confirm it.

So...Anet's gonna stop doing that except for super extreme cases that shift the meta in a huge way. Supposedly they'll review other classes/recent changes based off this new "philosophy" in later updates.

This is overall good news! It's a bit bittersweet in that like...bros...it's been 10 years and this shit should have been figured out internally ages ago, but it's good that it's happening and that Anet is doing (from what i can tell) pretty darned good job actually reading and responding to feedback - at least on this topic. I'm glad Colin and Josh came back, they seem like they're actually getting the studio to properly address some long-running problems/suspected problems with the game.

[PACOX]

Steam launches tomorrow. I womt be playing from Steam. Canr really play at all this week, but I am excited.


There will be Teitch drops, om Twitch obviously, so you can now link your GW2 and Twitch account. Hopefully thats meabs they plan to do more in the future. I know Might Teapot (GW2 content creator) will be featured on Twitch's front page tomorrow or Wednesday. Maybe others as well? IDK. I knew they will sponsorshops like they did with EOD.


Sizeable balance patch tomorrow as well. Steam players are going to be amazed at how streamlined GW2s download and patch process is.


Great time to try the game if you haven't done so already.

[Lex Icon]

since you can't attach your old account to steam it'll be interesting to see how many new players this launch will get.
hopefully it goes well.

[VMSmith]

since you can't attach your old account to steam it'll be interesting to see how many new players this launch will get.
hopefully it goes well.

I saw in the reviews on Steam someone said if you add "-provider Portal" to the Launch options you can play with your arenanet account. I'm downloading on Steam and plan on trying this and seeing what happens. If it doesn't pan out, I just start the game over and lose everything I've accrued over the years with my sporadic play. Anniversary gifts, basically. I just prefer playing from Steam that much, I don't play any games outside of Steam any longer. Except when I'm rarely in the mood for Fortnite.

[Edge-]

I saw in the reviews on Steam someone said if you add "-provider Portal" to the Launch options you can play with your arenanet account. I'm downloading on Steam and plan on trying this and seeing what happens. If it doesn't pan out, I just start the game over and lose everything I've accrued over the years with my sporadic play. Anniversary gifts, basically. I just prefer playing from Steam that much, I don't play any games outside of Steam any longer. Except when I'm rarely in the mood for Fortnite.

You can always just launch GW2 as a third party app through Steam, too. Doesn't have all the native Steam functionality, but still launches through Steam and gives you access to the overlay and whatnot.