The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Angthoron]

Got a better hang of Thief now. A pretty interesting class to play to be sure, and the traps are certainly quite good. Ambush alone gave me a chance to do some of the personal story and skill challenges that would've otherwise possibly killed me.

And speaking of personal story again, I quite like what they've done with Noble personal story, at least. It starts off a bit derpy, but then it actually moves into espionage territory - not yet sure if it's same stakes as with the Ash Legion story, but so far very entertaining - and you get branching mission selection that, if anything, gives mutual exclusivity to what you would be doing - like a choice between breaking in into a corrupt noble's home and going through their stuff, or going to a social event to mingle and talk to people at it to try to learn if anyone has some sort of evidence against the guy. There's nice detail to it, too, as after a certain event with which the evening ends, you can talk to NPCs again and they'll give their opinion on what just happened.

Also ran into a centaur stuck on the roof of a silo or was it a watering machine and a crowd of people desperately trying to kill him or get him down from there.

 

[Helly]

It looks like an enjoyable game to play with some friends, but as all mmos, it looks way too overcrowded and hectic for me.
That's too bad.

 

[Angthoron]

It would even out after release, right now there's just tons of people running through starter zones and the followup zones stand pretty much empty. So it shouldn't be a problem, plus the capitals are all massive enough to have a decent spread of the people. They need a capital-wide Trade channel to spam with stupidity though...

 

[Helly]

Yeah, i guess it would get better with time, but the only reason i'd play it is to join up with some mmo maniacs freaks friends who are on the beta right now. It's not a strong enough reason to pay 55€ to kill the same mobs with a thousand people, at least for now.
Honestly, even though i'm not a big fan of the genre, i'd play the hell out of this one if there were something like a private server or something like that.
Guess it's back to the loneliness of Grimrock

 

[Angthoron]

Well yeah, it'd take a couple of weeks until things would even out, I quite agree about the "Giant crowds running through a zone" isn't fun, especially when people are clueless and have no idea what they're doing (besides bloating out a simple encounter into a slugfest by there being 50 of them). Had that a couple of times yesterday, that quite annoyed us.

However, one huge plus to GW2 over normal MMOs is, your friends would be much more inclined to play with you rather than say "Sorry, busy doing on-level stuff", as the events and personal story rewards scale to level well enough to redo even when your friend is level 3 and you're level 43.

 

[Helly]

Ah, that's good to know !
Yeah, i was kinda expecting it would be hard to join afterwards because of the level gap, but in that case I guess I'll join the party (in like, a month)
I guess it gives me time to solve this silly checkered room
Thank you anyhow !

 

[Angthoron]

Oh yeah, and just to specify the mechanic, your friend would be scaled down to sub-zone levels "approved" for doing events in the area you'd be in, so no one-shot kills and boring crap like that, you'd both be on a similar level, just the other guy would be more effective because of things like new skills they'd purchased, trait lines and also gear scales down at a slightly advantageous rate from what I've understood. So they'd be good, but not so good as to instantly clear an instance or wipe out a Centaur camp.


Also re: instances someone brought up earlier, there definitely are instances, and they're coming in two flavours:
1) Story Mode - kinda like Personal Story but in a dungeon with more people. Difficulty is undertuned (didn't stop Yogscast members from being mercilessly slaughtered though) and you get to learn the history of the place and what's going on with it. There's also traps and puzzles to play with, some actually require thinking and cooperating.
2) Exploration Mode - after you clear Story, you get Exploration, though I'm not sure it's on the same level or 10 higher, didn't quite catch that.In Exploration it looks like you get a choice of which branch of the dungeon to go through (until you reset it of course), and each path is different, though some section of it may intersect naturally (like you might run through the same catacombs square but in a different direction). From what I saw in Yogscast videos, people without tactical thinking will be completely screwed in some of these fights, like the boss pair that buffs each others as long as they're in range (and since there's no tanks, how do you keep them apart? Hint: Bring a knockback, and a lot of Root/knockdowns/crippling). Don't know about raiding, but I ran into placeholder vendors selling "Tier 1", "Tier 2" and "Tier 3" armour in Hoelbrok. As well as Seraph armour/weapons in Divinity's Reach. Prices were insane though, 65K Karma per piece - but then again, at L16 I had 3K Karma without any effort at all and it all goes up, so, not a problem.

Also, this is all obviously scaled to level if you're over-levelling the dungeon, again.

 

[SuicideBunny]

4 races, 8 professions. You gotta finish it at least 32 times before you can judge it.

so, which race do you hate so much that you don't even consider including it in a joke?

 

[Ulminati]

4 races, 8 professions. You gotta finish it at least 32 times before you can judge it.

so, which race do you hate so much that you don't even consider including it in a joke?

Asura, duh.

 

[Zed]

"Karma" is that the purple currency?

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah, it is. You get it from events, forcing the locals to love you, and from personal story. Probably from dungeons and raids, too.

 

[made]

Coming back to GW2: How's the twitchiness? Anybody who doesn't like twitchiness having problems?

 

[Angthoron]

Coming back to GW2: How's the twitchiness? Anybody who doesn't like twitchiness having problems?

Weird enough, no. There were a few people playing that I know that hadn't had much prior exposure to twitchy games (and are horrible at FPS/TPS games, for that matter) and they had no problem at all. Well, besides getting into downed states more times than necessary, maybe, but even they used dodging in reasonable amounts.

 

[Zed]

I don't like the Witcher cuz of the twitchy combat.

I think GW2 is fine. It's basically like WoW or SWToR or whatever, except you have fewer skills at a time and you can shoot and swing shit without being in range.

 

[Black]

. It's basically like WoW or SWToR or whatever

Ewwww!!

 

[Excidium]

Ulminati and other people that played engineer:

Is it just me or turrets are a waste of skill points? They don't do great dps to compensate for being stationary (and the flame one is usually destroyed in 5 seconds). I wish you could at least carry them around, or the cooldown was reduced to 5 seconds or something when you pick them up.

Also the rifle is a really shitty weapon for the engineers. Has a lot less dps and utility than the other weapons and kits, and can't decide if it wants to be long or short range.

4 races, 8 professions. You gotta finish it at least 32 times before you can judge it.

so, which race do you hate so much that you don't even consider including it in a joke?

Asura, duh.

Screw ya, midget races are the best to humiliate your opponents. Should have left out the teen plant people.

 

[SuicideBunny]

It's basically like WoW or SWToR or whatever, except you have fewer skills at a time and you can shoot and swing shit without being in range.

'cept it plays completely different due to how attacks work and how important positioning is. single attack in wow or tor will just hit the target and that's it. look at something as basic as water attunement dagger basic attack for eles. it's a rotating blade being shot out in a straight line which returns. it will hit everything it travels through, and if it is not blocked by an obstacle at the end it will return and hit everything again, and it's similar for all the other skills. they all have positioning complexity, combo field interaction or little area effects when done right, and imo it completely changes how you play the game and experience combat.

haven't had this much fun in an mmo since planetside.

 

[Zed]

SWToR and WoW has positioning with backstabbing and all that

Yeah but you got a point, there's a whole lot more of it in GW2. AND you got double-tap rolling - useful vs. certain enemies.

Should have left out the teen plant people.

I'm gonna play a plant person. I changed my mind about nords. They weren't kvlt enough. Might as well go full hippie in that case.

 

[Ulminati]

Ulminati and other people that played engineer:

Is it just me or turrets are a waste of skill points? They don't do great dps to compensate for being stationary (and the flame one is usually destroyed in 5 seconds). I wish you could at least carry them around, or the cooldown was reduced to 5 seconds or something when you pick them up.

Also the rifle is a really shitty weapon for the engineers. Has a lot less dps and utility than the other weapons and kits, and can't decide if it wants to be long or short range.

The first turret is usually a pretty solid investment at level 6. I use it as a pocket tank to draw aggro away from me. Beyond that, I usually sink my skill points into gadgets.

I kinda like my musket. Again, I usually use a weapon kit to deal most of my damage, but the musket has a lovely "GTFO COMBO!" for when something invades your personal space. Scatter shot->Net shot->knockback shot

I'm gonna play a plant person. I changed my mind about nords. They weren't kvlt enough. Might as well go full hippie in that case.

Since Kristen Perry is a TRU BRO of mine (and she did the graphics for the plantfaggotry) I'm obliged to like them BY LAW. My EU char will be Charr on desolation, but my amerikwanzanian one will be a treehugger in the most literal sense of the word. Probably mesmer/necro/elementalist, since the plantpeople seem to avoid the Slut Wear 2000™/Faggot Finery that is favoured by human/nord casters

 

[SuicideBunny]

do plant boobs bounce as much as norn/human ones do?...

what? it's an important question...

 

[Ulminati]

:mystary:

Plantpeople haven't been playable to us outsiders yet

 

[Excidium]

Ulminati and other people that played engineer:

Is it just me or turrets are a waste of skill points? They don't do great dps to compensate for being stationary (and the flame one is usually destroyed in 5 seconds). I wish you could at least carry them around, or the cooldown was reduced to 5 seconds or something when you pick them up.

Also the rifle is a really shitty weapon for the engineers. Has a lot less dps and utility than the other weapons and kits, and can't decide if it wants to be long or short range.

The first turret is usually a pretty solid investment at level 6. I use it as a pocket tank to draw aggro away from me. Beyond that, I usually sink my skill points into gadgets.

I kinda like my musket. Again, I usually use a weapon kit to deal most of my damage, but the musket has a lovely "GTFO COMBO!" for when something invades your personal space. Scatter shot->Net shot->knockback shot

Yeah, it has its uses but the only toolkit I had is Flamethrower which is for aoe DPS so I needed something for soloing and the rifle just kinda sucks at that.

 

[Ulminati]

I found the rifle pretty good for soloing actually. Scattershot + net + knockback shot, then kite with basic attacks until the skills come off cooldown and repeat.

Beats glue shot by a fair margin for keeping Hurt™ out fo your face.

 

[Excidium]

Yeah, I dunno, maybe I just suck with it but I had a lot better results with pistol + shield. Gonna try the rifle more the next time I get a chance.

 

[Ulminati]

You can build a LOT of distance with knockback shot + rokkit jump. wouldn't reccomend it for groups of baddies though. (That's where grenade kit/flamethrower comes in...)

That said, I've mostly been playing Enginseer. I'll probably roll something else (people were masturbating furiously over 2h-sword + war this weekend I think) for the next round. Anyone know of a decent site to grok some theorycrafting/cookie cutter builds for min-maxing?