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Reviewing Guild Wars 2
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Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
I'm a big fan of the angry joe show (and am currently subscribed to his channel) but I disagree on several points in his review.
Don't get me wrong, I still think this is a game worth buying (if nothing else, because it lacks a sub fee, so its very easy to get in and out of it when you're burned out of whatever else you play) but its not as shiny-perfect "nail in the coffin" as Joe said.
Here are my gripes against the game:
NUMBER ONE
No mounts. There's not even flight paths, you move across the world on foot, you unlock waypoints, and when those are unlocked you teleport anywhere in the world at any time. That sucks, it makes it less of a world, and more of a bunch of zones. This was my main gripe in Cataclysm, portals everywhere, that sense of traveling a land of fantasy was lost in the age of portals to every conceivable location; Add to that the fact that there are no mounts and a large LARGE aesthetic appeal of RPGs is immediately lost.
What kind of brave Knight doesn't have a trusty steed at his side to ride into battle? what sort of powerful charr warrior wouldnt' have a sort of worg mount to ride on? A lack of mounts means having to travel everywhere on foot.
NUMBER TWO
, Grind. Yep, this is a grindy game, and OHH LORD IS IT. Its bad enough that 60% of your leveling time will be spend on Dynamic Events (Which is fancy-talk for: "Stand on this spot killing wave after wave of mobs for the next 20 minutes, for no reason and no explanation") but to make matters worse, try to get mats to raise your profession. I dare ye. (more on this later)
NUMBER THREE
Third, Downscaling. I don't like this concept. The whole idea of leveling up and getting better gear is that you feel your character becoming stronger, more powerful, that foes you previously had to struggle to vanquish can now easily be squashed under your great might. Unfortunately that will never happen, because whenever you get to a low level zone, you are downscaled (and your items are downscaled too) to whatever level that zone is, and if at lvl 20 you could not beat that pack of 4 veteran mobs, at level 80 you will STILL not be able to beat that pack of 4 veteran mobs. Remember what I said about mats? try to go from node to node, on foot, having to fight every mob on the way, without EVER being able to 1shot them. Its only hindered further when you remember that in this game, you just can't even fight a group of mobs of your level without getting shredded, anything higher than 3 mobs at the same time and you are dead, regardless of level, regardless of zone, regardless of gear. Not cool.
NUMBER FOUR
: Loading Screens. Say what you will about warcraft, but this is the most seamless game ever, rivaled only by games like Skyrim and Oblivion. There is only one loading screen per continent and that's it, you transition freely and seamlessly from zone to zone in real time with no annoying loading screen. Unlike games like SWTOR and GW2 where every zone is walled in with invisible walls you can't cross, and the only way in and out of each zone is a portal that takes you to the next one, where a loading screen will be there to greet you arms opened. Unless you have a really powerful rig, be prepared to spend from 12 to 30 seconds on loading screens every time you move from zone to zone. EVEN WITHIN THE SAME CITY.
NUMBER FIVE
. Questing. Ya know, I recognize that wow's style of handling quests is very outdated, reading a boring text isn't what it used to be, but at least its there. its a staple of Role Playing Games, you are an adventurer, you go out into the world, and you do quests. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeons and Dragons, go ahead and name any major RPG, and the common denominator is QUESTS.
This is a concept that GW2 has handled the wrong way because other than your own personal story, the quests are COMPLETELY impersonal. At no point you talk to any quest-giver, you just aproach a heart-shaped icon on your map, and out of the clear blue sky, a list of objectives shows up for you to choose to complete from, and once they're completed, you automatically get the rewards without talking to anyone. How is that an improvement? isn't the point of adventures to get you to CARE about what you do in the world?
I think
this video
Illustrates how bad the questing design really is on GW2.
NUMBER SIX
: False advertisement on your personal story. You heard me, after all their boasting on how your personal story is very complex, very customizable, with over 7000 variables that shape and alter it, it turns out SWTOR has a more varied story than GW2.
At least on SWTOR if you create a Dark Side Jedi Knight, and I create a Light Side Imperial Agent, we both will play EXTREMELY DIFFERENT stories that are quite unique from each other.
here? You could create a norn guardian, with the background choices of "Honor the Spirits" "revenge" and "Spirit of the Raven". While I create a Charr warrior, with the background choices of "Blood Legion" "clawspur" and "Loyal Soldier". And indeed during the first 10 levels our stories will be VERY different. At level 20 our stories will be still very different. At 30................ not so much. See, after 30, all the stories, of all the races, of all the classes, regardless of background, and regardless of zone, converge into 3 quest-chains that are mutually exclusive, you either join the Vigil, or the Priory, or The Order of Whispers. And its THIS that determines the rest of your story.
So even though it starts different, eventually everyone experiences the exact same story, with the exact same quests, and the exact same choices. It gets worse at 40, because at least at 30 there's still 3 branches. At 40? only 1. At 50? 1,. at 60? 1, at 70? 1 you get the point.
At least on SWTOR if you made a Jedi Knight, and I made an Imperial Agent our stories, (and therefore our quests) remain different DURING THE ENTIRE GAME.
So yeah, 7000 combinations my ass.
NUMBER SEVEN
How is it possible that they release the game, it has 3 BGs, and all 3 have the exact same objective? they are all Arathi Basin Style. Capture the node.
Imagine if you will if blizzard ever pulled that off, that the next expansion after MoP has 3 new BGs but they are all just capture the flag. The sh**storm that would form at their door would be Katrina levels of destruction. It is pretty lame. Specially when the only other PVP thing you can do in this game (As there are no duels, and no world pvp of any form you will NEVER be able to attack anyone from your server, or anyone at all when outside the designated pvp zones) the other thing you can do asides from the BGs is World vs World. Which in paper sounds incredibly awesome, yet in practice is one giant zerg.
That's all it is, one big fatass zerg. if your server happens to have the larger zerg and your class fights at range, well, have fun. If you are melee (for whatever reasons) then good luck trying to kill anything. if your server doesn't has the larger zerg, ohhh boy, prepare to swear like a sailor.
So............ basically you're stuck doing AB and a bloated version of Wintergrasp for pvp, and that's ALL the pvp you will ever be able to do. No duels, no arena, no world pvp, nada.
NUMBER EIGHT
Graphics. At this point you may think I'm crazy, I mean, the game looks gorgeous. Its stunning, its jaw-dropping, its absolutely breath-taking............................... if you have a PC capable of running it.
There is no middle ground here, you either have a rig capable of running this bad boy at max (in which case better play with some drooling protection because this really is the most gorgeous game I've seen in a long time) or you don't have a rig capable of running this beast at max in which case the graphics will look like CRAP. And I mean UTTER CRAP. I mean Playstation 1 grade of crap. This is unaceptable. There should be a middle ground for graphics in this game, where there's the really really ugly mode for people with outdated PCs, the stunning gorgeous mode for people with potent gaming rigs, and a more intermediate mode for people with average PCs.
Sadly there is none, so you will either have a gorgeous looking game, or a game that looks like it fell out of the ugly tree hitting every branch on the way down.
At least wow even on min settings still has some impressive vistas, character models do look terrible, but dare you deny that zones like the storm peaks, Jade Forest, or Blade's Edge Mountains don't just look stunning?
At this point you may think I hate the game, but surprisingly I do not. I'm only being critical with it because unlike other folks I often am more neutral when analyzing games. This game has an equally longer list of why its so good (its actually longer than the things I hate about it) and its the reason why I'd recommend anyone to buy it, but lets not kid ourselves here, this is not the CYBER-MESSIAH that Joe, and so many others are hyping it to be.
And seriously, some fans of this game are borderline cultists when they say how good it is, and how it will revolutionize the genre. It doesn't. It may indeed put an end to the "pay2play" model (which is getting outdated) but other than that, this is just another MMO. A rather good one too, but not a paragon of perfection.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
OverZealous
I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I think I recall rank playing Lineage 2. With experience like that, I don't think you really look at anything through "wow-colored glasses", haha. But yes, it's fine if games are grindy - but the game devs saying "we want it to be grindy" doesn't make a fundamentally boring process any more entertaining.
That said, I'm watching the review. I'll get to my own points eventually.
Post by
Rankkor
Why would anyone use a mount when there are so many waypoints in each zone that you can teleport to at any time? It's much more convenient than using a mount to get around, as there's always a waypoint convieniently placed near a dynamic event, skill challenge, renown heart, or town. Sure, for aesthetic reasons, a mount is nice, but that's just it, aesthetic reasons, gameplay-wise, they're border-line useless in this game.
You obviously didn't paid enough attention, so I'll repeat my previous statement:
This was my main gripe in Cataclysm, portals everywhere,
that sense of traveling a land of fantasy was lost in the age of portals to every conceivable location
; Add to that the fact that there are no mounts and a large LARGE aesthetic appeal of RPGs is immediately lost.
The entire feeling of exploring a vast fantasy world is lost when there's portals everywhere, this was the thing that ruined Cataclysm for me, and its the reason why I don't like the system used to travel in GW2 (which is identical to Lineage II system of Gatekeepers)
You wanna go somewhere? you teleport there, from every place, at any time. Less of an adventure, more of a monotone game.
You shouldn't look at this game through the wow-perspective (if that's what you're doing) of trying to get to max level as quick as possible
, because that's not what Guild Wars 2 is about.
It's about enjoying the game as soon as you start at level 1
. It's definately untrue that the majority of your leveling will be done on dynamic events, you never have to do those to level, sure, they spawn a lot and give nice exp, but renown hearts basically give the same amount. Most dynamic events are done in like 5 minutes, and lots of them have a boss involved. I personally love the fact that you're mowing down wave after wave of mobs in this game, it's stupidly fun to aoe down legions of enemies, it's epic. I've done certain dynamic events like 10 times now and I'm still not bored of them. In fact, even the ones I've only done 1 or 2 times I could do many times more and not be bored.
@Bolded part: I'm not. Do remember that I've played a significantly large number of MMOs, including Wow, SWTOR, Lineage II, Aion, Silkroad, Mu Online, Cabal Online, Rappelz, LOTRO (Lord of the rings online), Dragon Ball Online, and Runes of Magic.
So yes, I have experience in MMOs (Granted, the only games I played for more than just 4 months were Wow, SWTOR, and Lineage II) and no I'm not looking at this game "with wow-lenses".
@Underlined part: you seem to imply that you don't enjoy other MMOs prior to the max level, and that's a big mistake. I happen to enjoy TREMENDOUSLY the story of SWTOR, and I had a really fun time leveling my toon on world of warcraft, nothing still beats the feeling of epicness as I completed Dragonblight for the first time, or faced loken on the storm peaks, so no, this isn't an excuse.
As for the renown hearts, Sold, I've checked the GW2 wikia, there's only 350 on the entire game, that's not enough to reach the cap, and as for personal stories, there's only 1 quest chain (made of at most 8 quests) every 10 levels. So unless you do massive pvp, you WILL need to do Dynamic Events to level up.
And my main gripe with these events is how little (if any) reason you're given to care. You stroll down the countryside, suddenly an army of skeletons you don't know, attack a village you don't know, you either ignore them, or repell them, if you do repel them, villagers say thanks, and you move on. Presto, no info, why where they attacking? who are those villagers? I hope you like enigmas because you're never gonna find out.
Out of all the events i've checked on the wikia, only about a dozen have any sort of background on them, the rest is just "HELP I'M BEING ATTACKED, SAVE ME" with no rime or reason. That's poor storytelling.
At least on wow there's a reason for what we do. Crappy reasons sometimes, but everything we do is justified, and its part of a greater whole, rather than a chaotic, random, inconsequential event.
This game has a skill curve, it's not about getting better gear it's learning how to play better
And yet regardless of how much of a master you are in this game, the same level 15 Veteran mob kicking your ass at level 14 will still kick your ass at level 80. You will NEVER be able to solo that mob, its gonna be there, undefeatable, and nothing you do neither via gear, nor leveling will ever change that.
That is unnaceptable. Maybe this isn't the case for you, but for me, part of the point of playing an RPG (Rather than another genre of gaming) is getting stronger. That if at X level you can't beat an enemy, later on, you will kill it. This is something you will never have on this game. Every mob can AND WILL kick your ass, no matter how good you are. Regardless of level you CANNOT solo a veteran mob AT ANY LEVEL, and you CANNOT solo more than 5 mobs AT ANY LEVEL.
To me, that feels more like I'm getting stronger than getting better gear that gives me no need to learn how to play better.
And to me, that feels like an excuse to not add new content, because hey, lets do content we already did because its still hard. Malo malo malisimo. If I want a challenge, I want it on stronger, newer foes, not old foes that will never ever be weaker than me.
For me, loading screens are like 10 seconds tops, rarely even that much, and my computer is definately not really powerful (
4 gigs of ram and 2.3 gigs of video ram
).
Its a hell of a lot more powerful than mine (2 gigs of ram, half a gig of video ram)
You got a potent rig. I don't. Many people don't. In fact, more people have crappier rigs, than potent rigs. Meaning for the vast majority, this game has a pesky loading screen of over 1 minute long, ON EVERY ZONE, and even WITHIN THE SAME CITY. This goes hand to hand with the first problem, in that it makes Tyria less of a "world" like azeroth is, and more of a bunch of zones interconnected with loading screens. That's an immersion killer right there.
They wouldn't have been advertising that much if it weren't true, and with the 3 different factions for you to join , they each have their own version of your personal storyline, often times having 2 or 3 different options on how to do a personal storyline objective, and there's a part where you get to choose to help one of 3 different races, each one having a different branching story arc.
You're not getting the point man, the storylines CONVERGE. Doesn't matter if you start a norn, and I start a charr, and Adamsm starts an Asura. By level 40 we will be having the same quests, the same story, the same outcome, regardless of background. So thousands of combinations my ass. At the beginning, there may be a few hundred combos, after 20, there's a few dozen, after 60 if you're lucky there's 1 dozen. And at the end EVERYONE has the same ending.
LAME. Wanna see a cool epic story? play SWTOR. (Of course, the bad part is that a good story is the only good thing about swtor =/ go figure)
As for your point in the graphics........... are you kidding me? how can you call those screenshots "stunning"?
How can you call
this
gorgeous? Good god look at the shards on those wings. They do in fact look amazing at max setting but on your screenshot, they look like wrapping paper strips.
Or perhaps this game is just simply not your cup of tea.
/sighs
come on man, didn't you paid attention to my post? I know it was really long, but seriously. Ok I'll requote the last bit since you apparently missed it:
At this point you may think I hate the game, but surprisingly I do not. I'm only being critical with it because unlike other folks I often am more neutral when analyzing games.
This game has an equally longer list of why its so good (
and its actually longer than the things I hate about it
)
and its the reason why I'd recommend anyone to buy it, but lets not kid ourselves here, this is not the CYBER-MESSIAH that Joe, and so many others are hyping it to be.
See that? I like the game, I think its a worthy purchase, I think its a game where fun can be had. I just don't see it as this digital jesuschrist of MMOs as other people have been saying. The game has A METRIC CRAP TON of flaws that need some serious ironing.
It also has some truly great features, which is why I don't really bash this game, but come on........ =/
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
I dunno, the issues you have seem to be pretty big ones
Hey I did said there is a list of things I like that is even bigger than the things I dislike. I could list it up, but chances are you already know them so I'm saving time. Overall there's 9 things I hate about GW2, and 12 things I like. Which means overall the game deserves a purchase IMO.
That's the whole point of the 3 factions I think, it's so that there's more options once the races storylines converge for different branching storylines. I like it.
Except after lvl 60, its the same storyline, regardless of what race you are, and what faction you joined.
/shrugs, it doesn't break my immersion personally.
This is why its called "personal taste". I like it when the world is one seamless continent where you go from zone to zone in real time without loading screens. So many games have that (World of Warcraft, Lineage II, Aion, ect) that I find it unexcusable to still have loading screens these days. Its even more glaring when there's loading screens WITHIN THE SAME CITY. Imagine if you had to go through a 1min loading screen just traveling from the cathedral sector to the trade sector on stormwind........
Actually, you can solo veteran mobs, I do it all the time now. Hell, I've taken on multiple mobs at a time and survived (
3 at most but still
)
See that? I have a problem with that, maybe you don't but again, this is why its called "Personal" taste. I like the feeling of strength that comes with leveling out, its why I hated oblivion's leveling system, because there, no matter your level, unless you're playing on easy, 3 enemies will wipe the floor with your face.
From a story perspective, if I am a lowbie recruit on the adventuring guild, it makes sense that a pack of lowly brigands can kick my ass. But after spending several years on the adventures, after vanquishing dragons, killing elite mercenaries, decimating undead armies, conquering mighty fortresses, destroying Demon Lords, and putting Eldrtich Abominations down, HOW THE HELL DO THOSE FILTHY LOWLY BRIGANDS CAN STILL KICK MY ASS?
That makes as much sense as you getting beated up by bullies in highschool, then you graduate, you join the marines, you train, become a black ops delta force hardcore operative, capable of killing an army of terrorists with a toothpick, and then visit highschool 20 years later, AND THE SAME BULLIES CAN STILL KICK YOUR ASS.
That is just wrong. In so many ways is WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.
And mo matter how skilled you are, pull 5 of those lowly brigands and cutpurses and they will kick your ass. Your ass. The same ass that has killed dragons, undead armies, sieged fortresses, conquered enemies, vanquished demons, and destroyed Eldritch Gods.
Sense, that doesn't make. Try to excuse that as much as you want, I still say that doesn't make one iota of sense. Neither from a narrative point of view, nor from a gameplay one.
Actually, for
some
events, there are npcs that tell you.
keyword: some.
There's hundreds of these, and less than 10% have any sort of background to them, for the most part you're not given a reason to care.
Post by
Tenjen
in real life you can be an elite black ops super spy/soldier/assassin with 30 years of broiling hell of experience and one day a 15 year old kid drops his dad's pistol (which he was going to show his friends) out of his extremely loose pants and it goes off, killing you.
or you're in an elevator with Matt Damon to reveal his identity as a snitch and his partner, who was also a snitch, blows your head open as the doors do the same.
what we do have as high levels going back, is a wider array of tools, traits, abilities and procs to deal with the mobs.
i can kill a large number of creatures using the skill point unlocked abilities i obtain, especially the 2nd tier elite skills combined with some of my fields and summoning abilities.
especially the traits. my cd's for certain types of abilities finish quicker, my abilities set off boons, my dodges set off boons or leave behind gifts for the mobs. The runes on my weapons give me class resources or steal haelth or whatever.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
1012446
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
in real life you can be an elite black ops super spy/soldier/assassin with 30 years of broiling hell of experience and one day a 15 year old kid drops his dad's pistol (which he was going to show his friends) out of his extremely loose pants and it goes off, killing you.
Th-----That's not the same man, that's an accidental death. Accidents happen IRL; in games they don't. In Real Life, an experience soldier in his prime would never get his ass kicked by a drunken mugger .Specially not if its an elite Black Ops Agent.
It annoys me that at any point any enemy can kill you, even those toads you were fighting at level one. Part of the point of playing a Role-Playing game is getting stronger as you level. You can definetly feel your strength on this game, but in a MUCH smaller degree.
And no matter how good your are, and how awesome your new traits and unlocked powers are, a swarm of those level 5 toads can still kick your ass. From a narrative point of view, a vanquisher of dragons, slayer of demons, and besiegers of fortresses getting slapped around by level 5 frogs is very anti-climmatic.
All I'm saying is that SOME enemies shouldn't scale. There's vermin that should remain vermin.
When a game denies me that................ it annoys me.
I suppose for fairness I should list the great features of this game, so I'll do so now. Here's the things I like about GW2.
NUMBER 1
: There are no ranged/Melee Classes. This is a biggie, in just about every RPG imaginable (Specially MMOs) there is this HUGE bias against melee characters, its bad enough that there's a full
Trope
about it. Its bad. And almost every MMO (baring VERY FEW exceptions) have this trope, where ranged fighters have a really unfair advantage over melee. Sure melee can get some gap closers (Such as charge, death grip, shadow-step, ect) but these have cooldowns, and the ranged toons have gap openers (Such as blink, disengage, demonic circle, typhoon, ect) When the gap is opened once again, melee players can do nothing but twiddle their thumbs and be pelted while they wait for their charge to finally get off CD. Ranged however, can still fight just fine and be safe and comfy shooting at you while you're helpless and snared.
GW2 at least did a partial solution. The game is still biased towards ranged characters both in PVE and PVP, but at least every single class is equally proficient in melee and range. A thief dualwielding pistols is every bit as good as an elementalist with a staff. A necromancer dualwielding daggers is every bit as good as a warrior dualwielding axes. Neither class HAS to fight from range or melee, you choose your playstyle and they're all viable. In this game I could easily use a 2handed sword when i'm soloing, and stick to Rifle for pvp and dungeons. I wish other games did this.
NUMBER 2
: Shared mobs. I swear to god, this has got to be THE BEST feature of this game. The salt in the wound is that blizzard has already the technology to do this (as proven by Sethria's Roost's daily quest mobs) but for some reason refuses to. You should be glad to see other players, not grit your teeth and growl as they steal your kills.
On GW2 there is never any competition for mobs, if I see this bear, and kill it by myself, I get 100xp, and 10 copper. If I see another bear, and suddenly soldrethar shows up and starts attacking my bear, it doesn't matters, none of us "tagged it", when the bear dies, both of us still get 100xp and 10 copper as well as credit for any quest. Regardless of whether or not either of us was in a party. To me, that's innovation, and just as point 1, I wish other MMOs had this feature. This is an online game, you're supposed to play WITH others, not AGAINST others. Sadly, in most games we kinda tend to be sad when we see other players, because it means less loot, less kills, less nodes, ect.
NUMBER 3
: Skills based off your weapons. Cool concept that has the double-benefit of having more animations per class.
I always found it kinda lame, that in every RPG (lets use wow for example) you only get a small set of "core" abilities, and these are the ones you're gonna be using forever. I'm a DK; which means forever my arsenal will consist of Obliterate+Howling Blast+Frost Strike if I'm playing frost, or Fester Strike+Scourge Strike+Death Coil if I'm playing unholy. That's it, the end. And they all have the same animation, which only variates by race and gender. So a blood elf female will still have the same animations for obliterate, frost strike, scourge strike, fester strike, blood strike, heart strike, death strike, rune strike, plague strike, and necrotic strike.
Look at all those many skills, and yet they all share THE SAME ANIMATION. And they're all the same regardless of weapon.
On GW2, if you are a necromancer, then using dual daggers gives you a set of skills, and using a staff will provide a completely different set of skills. I love that. Not only it provides more variety, in that you never have a single set of "core" abilities, they also have different animations. So a Charr Male Warrior, dualwielding axes will have a completely unique set of animations, and a Norn Female Thief dualwielding swords will have an entirely different set of skills with different animations.
Unlike most games like wow, where if I'm a female blood elf Unholy DK using a 2hand sword, my animations for Scourge Strike and Fester strike will be identical to that female blood elf arms warrior using a 2handed axe. Those slams, mortal strikes, and overpowers will have the exact same animation as my skills. Even though we're different classes, using different weapons.
Also (and I'd need your help sold to confirm this, but I suspect its true) I've heard that skill animation is different even between same races. If I'm a Norn Male ranger dualwielding axes, and you are a norn male warrior dualwielding axes, even though we're of the same race, and gender, using the same weapon combination, we STILL have different animations for every one of our skills (need confirmation for this)
NUMBER 4
: Epicz stuff isn't reserved for the level cap. This is a sad side-effect on most RPGs, you often can and will be fighting truly awesome foes, dragons, demon lords, arch-liches, cave trolls, and more. At the higher levels that is. At the start you will be lucky if you get to fight rats, at most. Crappy foes like brigands, rats, toads, and in some games RABBITS, are your cannon fodder at the start.
Not here.
this is a level 2 boss.
LOOK AT THAT THING. And that's at level motherfrikking
TWO
. Ya know, whereas in wow, for 5 years the "boss" of the human starting area was a kobold with a melted candle on his head. This is a big change, on GW2 bosses feel like bosses no matter your level, if you are lvl 5, 15, 25, or 80, bosses will still feel large, epic, powerful, and imposing. You dont' get to fight an over-glorified rat and call that a "boss"
NUMBER 5
: No Sub Fees. Nuff said. This game isn't gonna make me quit wow, HOWEVER, wow does has that nasty tendency of having downtime. Either because of maintenance, or patch day, or simply because you consumed all the content and thus have litteraly nothing better to do till the next patch is released. What can be done during those days? I usually take a break from wow to play something else, I just haven't found a fitting "else" to play. GW2 is a very very very fitting game to play on the side. Its incredibly fun (despite its many flaws) and its completely free, you can enter and leave at any time, and because its not focused on gear, you never have to play continuously to "stay in the loop"
I'm sure GW2 will have its downtime too (if its not due to maintenance, I hear Anet rarely does them) once you consume all content and have nothing to do till patches arive, but hey, that's the beuty of playing 2 games, play the content of one, then of another, by the time you consume the content of the second game, the first will have new stuff, by the time you consume that new stuff, the second has new stuff, rinse & Repeat.
ITS PERFECT.
NUMBER 6
: Scaling up. I hate being scaled down, if I busted my ass getting stronger I'd rather remain strong, instead of being gimped whenever visiting the old days to reminisce. But scaling up? I have no problem with that ;)
And GW2 does exactly that. For pvp that is. All pvp in this game is done at lvl 80, if you enter the pvp zones, your level is bumped from whatever it used to be, to the level cap (currently 80) this means no higher level players ganking lowbies who just started pvping. Also, your gear from PVE? yeah you can't use it here. On pvp areas, all players are issued the same gear, meaning nobody has any unfair advantage over the others, victory will come either with luck (who has the biggest zerg) or skill (on equal numbers). It pisses me off to no end when I see in wow a rogue with the legendary daggers, vial of the shadows, and full cataclysmic gladiator ranked gear, go against NINE PEOPLE geared in pvp gear from the previous season, and just wipe the floor with them
its not even fair to call that a "fight", thats more of a Rhino stepping on an ant. This isn't seen on GW2, everyone has the same level, and the same gear, so unless one side has a massive numerical advantage over the other, the fights are pretty fair. And since everyone is lvl 80, if you only care about pvp, you dont' have to waste your time leveling up, and there are no twinks to ruin your fun.
NUMBER 7
: Cross-class combos. I love this feature, LOOOOVE it, I know they're hard to pull off, but my god, how awesome do they look. Other games have very little synergy between classes, other than buffs and heals every class is more or less on their own. Here? you can go captain planet and "by our powers combined" devastate the enemy. A mage can drop a circle of fire, while a ranger shoots a volley of arrows. As the arrows pass through the circle of fire, they become ignited and deal fire daamge. That fosters team work, rather than go "Every man for himself" on each raid, and basically measure dìcks about who can do the biggest DPS.
NUMBER 8
: No Trinity. No tanks, no healers. Everyone is responsible for their own survival, and everyone must contribute to help the others survive.
NUMBER 9
: Nice production values. This isn't like one of those B-games with a story that is both full of holes and clishes galore. This is a game with superb voice acting, a really nice backstory (In my own taste is not as good as warcraft's but its close enough, and if blizzard continues to screw up their lore, GW2's backstory may actually surpass warcraft's) impressive cutscenes, gorgeous art style, Music done by none other than JEREMY SOULE (The genius behind the music of the elder scrolls games like Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim) and I can't believe I'm actually gonna say this but........... ARMORS THAT DON'T LOOK LIKE CRAP.
Seriously I've played dozens of MMOs, and in just about all of them (except Lineage II) the armors look terrible. There may be the occasional nice looking set, but for the most part, armors look terrible. Warcraft, SWTOR, Silkroad, all of these games are guilty of this. The ones that aren't and actually have good looking armor, will have it as unbelievably hard to get, requiring years of investment in the game. Not here. Armor looks gorgeous even the lowbie stuff, and the higher level armor, while requiring some work to obtain, are not on the same league as Lineage II in order to actually look good. (If you wanna know the meaning of suffering, you had to get the Majestic or Imperial Crusader set on Lineage II back during the "Scions of Destiny" Expansion. NOW THAT is what I call dementia. Armor looks gorgeous, but the work required to get it is unresonable, it took me
2 YEARS
to complete that set.)
NUMBER 10:
No necesity for gear. I'm on GW2's side on this one, what's with everyone's obsession over gear? its like RPGs have become nothing but a gear race since ever. What happened to the adventure? On skyrim I didn't cared if I was fighting on a set of customized daedric armor, or just a set of furs, I cared about exploring a fantasy land. On wow, I play it for the lore, and for the story, and couldn't care less if my gear is sub-par. In fact, my motivation to run raids is just so I can see the story behind them, not the gear. I got zero gear when I killed Algalon for the first tme, and I still had the fun of my life.
GW2 removes the necesity for gear. All the rewards for dungeons and pvp are cosmetic, your stats are determined by craftable armor, or armor you get via your quest progression. If you play the game, is to have an actual adventure, not to get a piece of armor that will go obsolete in 3 months.
NUMBER 11
: Aquatic combat. This is the first game that has done it right, with unique underwater spells and weapons for all the classes, and unique mechanics, no drowning risk, and actually 30% of the game's content is under the seas. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed the Atlantica levels of Kingdom Hearts, this is a big plus.
NUMBER 12
: Everything you can buy on the cash shop can be bought with real money, OR INGAME MONEY. As someone who can't access dollars (long story, the short version is our government SUCKS) this is such a blessing. There's so much stuff on the wow's store that I wanna buy (cough*golddragon mount*cough) and I can't due to lack of dollars. In GW2 I can just pay it up with gold, no problem, so all those nifty cosmetic stuff like aviator glasses, or armor skins? yeah I could pay up with real cash, or with in-game gold. Anet has put a pretty big hammer to the face to gold-sellers by allowing you to exchange real money for gold, and gold for in-game products.
Bravo. Honestly.
So there you have it, the 12 reasons I liek this game. As you can see I don't hate GW2. I'm just more realistic when it comes to it, and see it as a great game, worth every penny, but not quite the farcry OMG REVOLUTION CYBER MESSIAH WOW-KILLER GENRE-BUSTER that some cultists advertise it for.
Game has several solid points, and several weak points. Time will tell if they improve the game's weaknessses, and add even more strenghts.
/salute.
Post by
1012446
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
And no matter how good your are, and how awesome your new traits and unlocked powers are, a swarm of those level 5 toads can still kick your ass. From a narrative point of view, a vanquisher of dragons, slayer of demons, and besiegers of fortresses getting slapped around by level 5 frogs is very anti-climmatic.
All I'm saying is that SOME enemies shouldn't scale. There's vermin that should remain vermin.
When a game denies me that................ it annoys me.
This is very true, I did not even think of that. The fact that NPC's scale would make grinding for materials harder as well?
As a matter of fact, it does. Leveling any form of profession is a pain precisely because with no mounts, and no way to 1shot anything, its always an annoynig task to get mats. Ohh well, at least on this game there are no gathering professions, you get 2 crafting professions of your choice, and you can gather any material if you have the right tools. So there's that I guess.
I had my fun with aggroing all of Stockades to one shot them.
So did I. That's one of the joys of playing an RPG, that you get stronger, and thus, enemies that used to turn you into pulp eventually become simple cannon fodder. I can appreciate a game being challenging, and I'd definetly welcome that GW2 has enemies OF YOUR LEVEL that are hard to kill, that the game doesn't hold your hand. But I want any challenges to remain on current content, Old content shouldn't be just as hard as the recent one.
But I won't judge the game before I tried it :)
Good call. Look, as far as I'm concerned, the game is worth the purchase, it does has its flaws, but its still a very enjoyable game, and pretty innovative on several areas.
I doubt I'll be able to wait a month though, I'll try to pick it up this weekend.
=/ Wish I was this lucky, I gotta wait till mid-november to pick it up. Probably longer. A shame really because I really wanna give it a try.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
Personally I think it's not only boring, but immersion-breakingly silly that one guy can take on hundreds of other guys at the same time, and win, while barely being hurt himself. You might be able to justify it as a spellcaster, but as a warrior? Come on, that's just stupid. I like feeling powerful (which I do in this game at times), but, IMO, theres a point when you become too powerful. If it wasn't for downscaling in this game I'd have no desire to go back at a higher level and do older zones, because I could just breath on my enemies and they'd fall over. I'd feel like a grown man who's a black belt in karate versus a 3 year old girl.
Meh, that's what they're called personal opinions. Yours is as valid as mine, I just had to express the gripes I had with the game. What do you think of my review of the good features of the game? did I missed any? (I don't think I did)
However, as valid as your opinion is, it does raises some questions. If its so "immersion-breaking silly that one guy can take on hundreds of other guys at the same time" why were you cheering for Darius Crowley when he did the same on the worgen starting zone? or for varian when he did the same on wolfheart? this is High Fantasy bro, the laws of physics flew out the window the moment that elementalist started shooting fire from her hands.
And as for animations, while every class has abilities with unique animations, certain abilities share the same animation depending on your race and gender, like 2 hander sword as a warrior or guardian, the 3-chain strike ability animates the same.
ahh. Pity, but still, the point stands, the game DOES has more varying animations than your average game. I mean come on, on wow Obliterate looks exactly the same if you do it with a 2hand sword, or an axe, or a mace. I doubt that's the case here.
Also, ArenaNet released a new trailer for their game. While I loved their previous trailers (personal favorite is the Races trailer, as it does a wonderful job at capturing the essence of each race) this one is really a piece of crap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4R5Q0ZOTa8
Feels like the ad of a cult rather than the ad of a game. Furthermore it encourages segregation and superiority. The use of cheap bimbos doesn't help either.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skithus
NUMBER SEVEN How is it possible that they release the game, it has 3 BGs, and all 3 have the exact same objective? they are all Arathi Basin Style. Capture the node.
Imagine if you will if blizzard ever pulled that off, that the next expansion after MoP has 3 new BGs but they are all just capture the flag. The sh**storm that would form at their door would be Katrina levels of destruction. It is pretty lame. Specially when the only other PVP thing you can do in this game (As there are no duels, and no world pvp of any form you will NEVER be able to attack anyone from your server, or anyone at all when outside the designated pvp zones) the other thing you can do asides from the BGs is World vs World. Which in paper sounds incredibly awesome, yet in practice is one giant zerg.
That's all it is, one big fatass zerg. if your server happens to have the larger zerg and your class fights at range, well, have fun. If you are melee (for whatever reasons) then good luck trying to kill anything. if your server doesn't has the larger zerg, ohhh boy, prepare to swear like a sailor.
So............ basically you're stuck doing AB and a bloated version of Wintergrasp for pvp, and that's ALL the pvp you will ever be able to do. No duels, no arena, no world pvp, nada.
Ok lets address some things here. First of all, Imagine if you will if blizzard ever pulled that off
Wow launched with zero (0) battlegrounds, In fact, it didn't even have an established pvp system at all. Once they managed to get that working all it led to was one big fatass zerg
Yep, the good old Southshore Vs Tarren Mill 24 hour zergfest. And Lets ignore the fact that when AV was released, it was basicaly a 40v40 zerg fest that lasted upwards of 9 hours (This btw is the best AV has ever been)
World vs World. Which in paper sounds incredibly awesome
No its not on paper, its nearly identical to the system used in DAoC, arguably the greatest large scale pvp mmo ever made. Hell even the people who made DAoC couldn't manage to make another PvP game as good as DAoC (Warhammer missed the key need for 3 factions)
If you are melee (for whatever reasons) then good luck trying to kill anything.
Every single class in the game has ranged weapons, if you're defending a keep, Yeah you should probably be standing on the walls shooting someone with your gun. If you're attacking the keep, the big tough warriors with the tons of HP are the guys who are manning the Ram's that are knocking down the doors because they stand the best chance of surviving the GIANT GODDAMN CAULDRONS OF BOILING OIL
Lets review that for a second,
YOU CAN POOR COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF BOILING OIL ON PEOPLE
Moving on.
I'll say this, a lot of your complaints are valid, most of them are relativity minor (Although I agree 100% that Automatic (as opposed to optional) Down-Leveling is a goddamn retarded idea). Yeah the way-points make the world seem smaller then it really is but you're not forced to use them. But all of this, that whole game you're playing where you level from 1-80 is mostly irrelevant, Because just like the original Guild Wars this game is at its core a PvP game. If you don't want to PvP, you're going to have a bad time.
I will say this, and I think its one of their biggest Missteps. I think the Public semi-dynamic quest system they have is great, I think its a fantastic change of pace from reading / listening to quest givers, but sweet jesus if they didn't decided to take an amazing quest system and then have you do the most unheroic, tedious, degrading busywork like 60-75% of the time. I'm level 42 and I still am regularly coming across stuff like "Help collect crabs from our crab traps" or "Go pick up 20 of said item" And its really really sad, because I've also been involved in a number of really awesome quests like go storm these towers and capture them from an NPC army, and now withstand their counter attack or Go fight this giant swamp demon the size of deathwing while closing gateways to the underworld that he keeps opening.
Also the graphics are fine, you can't blame a game because it looks great but you can't run it. If it looked like crap and ran like crap you could blame it, or if you had an amazing computer, and it looked great but ran like crap you could blame it. But I have a 5 year old computer now, the only thing I've upgraded being the videocard and it runs it with everything on Max with the exception of shadows which are one tic down from max. In beta I had like 20fps, on release it was like 30, they recommended i get new nvidia drivers which bumped me up to 50, A week later they patched something which dropped me down to like 15 but then they patched again and it bumped me up to 50-59 fairly consistently (giant WvW battles aside) They're obviously working with Nvidia on getting it running as smooth as possible for the largest number of people.
Post by
Rankkor
I think you summed up everything about the game that we both like better than I could've :)
What can I say? its a gift :P I should had been a game reporter like Angry Joe.
Every single class in the game has ranged weapons, if you're defending a keep, Yeah you should probably be standing on the walls shooting someone with your gun.
Hey that's why I added in parenthesis "For whatever reason". Mercifully every class in this game can fight at range. Problem is, if you happen to prefer melee over ranged, you have 2 options: Play melee and be squashed like a bug, or play ranged in order to be efficient but not enjoy yourself as much.
I wholeheartedly agree that this approach is still MUCH better than the alternative, because at least here they give melee the option to go ranged and be every bit as good as the more traditional ranged classes (cough*archersandcasters*cough).
I just wish melee was as viable as ranged in pvp. It is not.
I'll say this, a lot of your complaints are valid, most of them are relativity minor
Yeah, which is why I fully recommend this game to anyone, Even though I haven't actually played it yet, from all the info I've gleamed about it from dozens of hours of watching in-game footage, and reading A LOT of info about it, the pro's vastly outweight the con's.
However, I'm far more realistic when evaluating this game because honestly I've seen far too many people gleefuly ignore the flaws of the game and praise it as a genre-busting juggernaught that is a paragon of perfection. It is not.
If I had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give it a solid 8.5 out of 10.
a 9 out of 10 if only it had mounts and no downleveling (the 2 issues I hate the most)
(Although I agree 100% that Automatic (as opposed to optional) Down-Leveling is a goddamn retarded idea)
=D finally someone who understands me.
:P
I don't want games to hold my hand, I want actual challenges, HOWEVER I want those challenges to be in the things I'll be doing in the future, not the past. I still remember with great joy when I was able to solo for the first time Karazhan on my Dk. That's one of the joys I'll never get to know on GW2 because of that damned downscale crap.
but sweet jesus if they didn't decided to take an amazing quest system and then have you do the most unheroic, tedious, degrading busywork like 60-75% of the time.
I KNOW RITE?
I understand what they were trying to do: To be as different as possible from every other MMO. But sometimes they go to truly ridiculous lengths to acomplish that. I know the old tired "Kill x, Gather y, Talk to z" formula to quest objectives is overused, but come on, asking me to milk 6 cows, water 10 sunflowers, plow 9 crops, and drink 7 mugs of beer isn't what I'd call an exciting adventure.
I'm a warrior, not a farmer.
Post by
Kristopher
I agree that the forced down-leveling is annoying, but, I don't think it's that bad. At level 80, I definitely notice an improvement in the speed at which I kill mobs at lower levels. So, while you can't go around one-shotting the whole zone, it isn't a complete disadvantage.
Post by
Skithus
I agree that the forced down-leveling is annoying, but, I don't think it's that bad. At level 80, I definitely notice an improvement in the speed at which I kill mobs at lower levels. So, while you can't go around one-shotting the whole zone, it isn't a complete disadvantage.
Practically, I just hate it because I don't want to be jumped by level 20 mobs, and have a chance of death, when I'm trying to gather crafting materials which you always seem to need significantly more of then what you would reasonably come across during your regular adventure.
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