The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Berekän]

There was a Q&A roundup on Reddit yesterday with Mike O’Brien and a few more people from ArenaNet. Here are all the questions and their answers, and below all the info condensed:

About traits

About the release date


General

• It should be easier to group up with friends in overflow servers.
• A number of performance optimizations have been made since BWE1, but it may still be laggy as they are not done optimizing yet.
• They have made improvements to skill queueing since the last BWE and there are still more to come before release.
• Skill rooting is being fixed. They have fixed a few of the skills but there are still some out there that need fixing. They also said that "skills should stop you if they feel like they should stop you, otherwise, they shouldn't."
• You still can't rebind left or right click.
• Pet AI has been worked on but may still be buggy.
• First person view is something they want to add post release and camera swing will be disabled.
• They will be taking a closer look at downed skills as some professions have it better than others.
• In regards to the sliding effect people feel when walking, what you see now is mostly what you will get on release.
• Dueling will be out some time after release. They are still figuring out how it will work.
• They have improved the "sense of hitting". This phrase is used for all visceral combat improvements which includes audio, effects, animations, timing of skills, camera shakes, and a number of other things.
• They have added an effect LOD system.
• They have identified some noisy effects and made them less noisy.
• New weapons like two-handed axes might be in expansions.
• Two-handed weapons will most likely be getting two sigil slots, they ran out of time to add this in BWE2 though.
• They want to work on a template which allows you to easily swap weapon sets, traits, skills etc after launch.
• There will be new content in the maps that were already available in BWE1.
• There is an item previewer in the works that did not make it for BWE2, but the game will ship with it.
• You can now see what major traits are available in a tree without spending points.
• They may look into your character causing bigger splashes when you jump into water from a high height.
• Apparently Guardian is proving to be the hardest class to develop, balance etc.
• In the human storyline, there is now more room for you to fight in (no more insanely narrow corridors)
• The carnival skill point guy in Beetletun should no longer die.
• When moving from map to map you will now retain your party.
• They are investigating some options to help out colorblind folks.
• When you are out of coins, resurrecting at a waypoint is free.
• Servers won't go down when they need to patch the game. You will just need to restart your client, much like in GW1.
• They are working on an API which allows you to get data out of the game (eg web services)
• They would like to work on a MAC version after launch.
• It won't be on Steam. Apparently Valve has some new business terms that Anet say will keep almost all new MMOs off Steam. Interesting.

Beta Specific

• Definitely no Asura/Sylvari for BWE2. No new info on whether they will be available in other beta events but they didn't rule them out.
• There is still no level cap like last beta.
• Skill points will be refunded when you log in on Friday.
• There is currently only one dungeon in the BWE and it is level 30. It can be found in the Charr map Ashford.
• You will not be carrying over unspent gems from BWE1 to BWE2 but you will be able to claim another 2000 free gems anyway.
• World transfers will be free until 6pm PDT Saturday. After that point they will cost 1800 gems as they want to test the system. If this is your first beta, you will be able to select the server you want to play on when you log in for the first time.
• They are working on making patch notes for BWE2, but the list of changes is so large some stuff may get accidentally left out.
• Beta characters will definitely not transfer into the game when it goes live.
• Mike Zadorojny (Content Designer) was the man responsible for last beta's finale.
• There is an exciting new finale for this event! With multiple staff working on it this time.
• Apparently the Black Moas from the last finale got a higher kill:death ratio than the players. Despite the sheer number of players the Moas definitely rose to the challenge.
• There will be at least one more beta after this one.

Professions

• The Necromancer Death Shroud skill Dark Cloud now causes blind as well as chill. Minions have some AI bugs but they should attack what you attack and run where you run, they want them to feel uncontrolled but not broken.
• Engineer re-work is still in progress. They want their kits to inherit some of the benefits that you get from collecting and customizing weapons. They're also getting more weapons and kits in the future. Engineer kits may also get their own sigils.
• Mesmer illusions will now have class icons. Apparently they were not aware of this bug until the AMA!
• Guardian scepters now have a longer range. You can now cast Bow of Truth while running (not in BWE2 though). Guardian hammer skill 3 is a line immobilize now.
• Ranger - the third chain in the sword "1" skill that leaps to the enemy has been changed a bit (don't know how). They also plan on updating Throw Torch and Hunter's Call to be more interesting in the future.
• Thief - They have done a big balancing pass on the thief. Death Blossom is also an evasive attack now. A bug involving Black Powder and not attacking has been fixed.
• Numerous other weapon skills have changed considerably.

Guilds

• Guilds will be able to increase their member cap. (how and the max number is unknown)
• An account may be in many guilds and each character can represent different guilds.

sPvP

• Automated tournaments are not cross-region.
• The game mode in automatic tournaments will be 8 team single elimination.
• Tournaments are meant to be the equivilent of GvG from GW1.
• There will be more amulets in BWE2.
• At some point in the future they may consider adding more game types.
• Spectator mode will not be available at launch but they plan to add it at some time after release if the demand is big enough.

World vs World

• The new WvW mini dungeon is part of the eternal battlegrounds map, not a separate instance. It will mostly be about PvP and evading traps. They may add PvE elements like bosses in the future.
• You should now be able to unlock skills in WvW easier. Not unlocking them in BWE1 was a due to a bug where players were not getting the proper credit from player kills. This should make getting reward bags easier too.
• There will be a Commander UI that shows you the members of your squad. Squad size is only limited to 50 but there are discussions about raising it.
• There will be no player ranks in WvW.
• You will never be able to see your enemies name in WvW, only their guild tag.
• Combat markers show when a group of 6 or more people are fighting. You will never be able to see everyone on the map as the bandwidth requirements are too high.
• They may have shorter battles for the first few weeks of launch to help balance servers faster.
• If you get disconnected while in WvW your character won't be locked out of the game if the WvW map is full. I'm guessing it will return you to the mists.
• What you'll be playing this weekend is pretty close to how they intend to ship WvW. They still have a bunch more polish to do, but don't expect any more areas or expansions any time soon.
• They don't plan on adding movement to any of the stationary siege weapons.
• There are no current plans on making the borderland maps different in the future.

 

[Mangoose]

They have added an effect LOD system.

Thank you god

 

[Excidium]

There's some 5 GB patch to download, by the way.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's heartening to see that Guild Wars 2 will continue to have near-perfect uptime while Blizzard still can't launch a game without it being down several hours a day during primetime just to patch the servers.

 

[Shannow]

You might like the dedicated role system, I might be tired as fuck of it by now - I've a couple of friends that are like "BUT I LIKE TO TANK/HEAL" and no amount of explaining benefits of a different system will persuade them otherwise, same might be the case for you in some other ways.

Sry, but GW1 had no dedicated role system. Not every class could do everything but most could be effective in various different roles. You could have nuking primary monks and healing primary necroes, fighters who tanked, dealt spike dmg, suppression dmg, buffed or debuffed and lots of other stuff. And at least in PvE you could get away with jack-of-all-trades builds.

 

[Angthoron]

You might like the dedicated role system, I might be tired as fuck of it by now - I've a couple of friends that are like "BUT I LIKE TO TANK/HEAL" and no amount of explaining benefits of a different system will persuade them otherwise, same might be the case for you in some other ways.

Sry, but GW1 had no dedicated role system. Not every class could do everything but most could be effective in various different roles. You could have nuking primary monks and healing primary necroes, fighters who tanked, dealt spike dmg, suppression dmg, buffed or debuffed and lots of other stuff. And at least in PvE you could get away with jack-of-all-trades builds.

Dedicated role system = holy trinity in my books. AFAIK in group play it's still present in GW1, then again, maybe it isn't, the levelling bored the fuck out of me every time.

 

[Ulminati]

Looks like I'll be too busy to play GW2 this weekend

Oh well. continue bringing the incline to Desolation BROs. Remember we haz a vent server if you feel a sudden urge to yell Leroy Jenkins.

 

[SuicideBunny]

it's up now.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Dedicated role system = holy trinity in my books.

All kinds of R-spike/bloodspike/portable swamp teams disagree.

 

[Mangoose]

Mein gott, WvW is fun. It's the DAOC experience I missed. And what WAR should have been.

PVE is fun too, for the reasons mentioned many times already. But they added a few new events this time, and I realized (and remembered reading) that they have the architecture to add in dynamic events whenever they want. Not the heart quests, but constant new dynamic events are a pretty nice touch.

 

[Angthoron]

What new stuff did you find?

 

[Kane]

You might like the dedicated role system, I might be tired as fuck of it by now - I've a couple of friends that are like "BUT I LIKE TO TANK/HEAL" and no amount of explaining benefits of a different system will persuade them otherwise, same might be the case for you in some other ways.

Sry, but GW1 had no dedicated role system. Not every class could do everything but most could be effective in various different roles. You could have nuking primary monks and healing primary necroes, fighters who tanked, dealt spike dmg, suppression dmg, buffed or debuffed and lots of other stuff. And at least in PvE you could get away with jack-of-all-trades builds.

well, you had at least a healer-role. and that one was mandatory in groups, too. there wasn't a tank and DPS-glascannon though, as HP was pretty much equalized. there existed some differences in armor, that made you not want to be on the front-line as elementalist for example, but it wasn't as night and day as in those rock paper scissor games.

generally speaking, rock paper scissor designs are the same as two weapons in shooters. devs just being lazy with balance and in the process nuking everything that would make your brain not evaporate.

Btw, someone playing on Kolesh?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Team Arena at the peak of its popularity probably used to be the best ground for creativity in all of Guild Wars because of how compact everything had to be, removing the 'dedicated roles' almost completely. Portable Swamp really was just a total marvel of theorycraft, and probably my favourite team build concept that I've ever seen in the game. Shame it was nerfed

 

[Kane]

Team Arena at the peak of its popularity probably used to be the best ground for creativity

GvG was pretty creative until anet decided to rape it in the butt.

 

[catfood]

So is the game any good? I haven't really followed the development, but there seems to be a lot of hype surrounding it. What is the hivemind's stance on it?

 

[Angthoron]

It's good.

 

[Angthoron]

Bros, how do I travel to other races' capital cities?

Edit: Got it, nevermind.

 

[Berekän]

Use the portals to Lion's Arch to travel between them. There should be one in every capital city.

 

[Kane]

So is the game any good? I haven't really followed the development, but there seems to be a lot of hype surrounding it. What is the hivemind's stance on it?

It's pretty good I'd say. The dodge mechanic adds a little action to what otherwise is still the usual tab 1,2,3. Build GW2 reminded me once again how much I loathe tab-targetting. Also, the mouse behaves very weird on quick actions like rotating your character. What's definitely missing is toggle mouselook.


sPvP so far is quite fun, WvWvW is a borefest.

Character building is quite good, lots of space for creativity. I feared they slaughtered the "8 card deck" from GW1 but attaching skills to to weapons works well, actually. There are also trait points.

Also, lot's of kitten/bear/etc cubs running around that you can also pet. A.net really driving home their target group of teenage girls.

 

[catfood]

So is the game any good? I haven't really followed the development, but there seems to be a lot of hype surrounding it. What is the hivemind's stance on it?

It's pretty good I'd say. The dodge mechanic adds a little action to what otherwise is still the usual tab 1,2,3. Build GW2 reminded me once again how much I loathe tab-targetting. Also, the mouse behaves very weird on quick actions like rotating your character. What's definitely missing is toggle mouselook.

Yeah, the fact that fighting requires a bit more than just pressing the number buttons waiting for the cooldown is what intrigued me in the first place.

I hope this thing is going to have a demo, though.

 

[made]

Is decent game. I like the exploration, discovering new stuff, messing around with different weapons and skills. Played warrior and ele, both were good fun. Public events encourage teamwork and group play from lvl 1, but in its essence gameplay is still very much the same gather x/kill y grind as in every other MMO. Charr are fucking badass, their story and starter area pretty cool. Norn/humans are super boring in comparison. UI is well designed, except inventory/crafting management. Combat not as twitchy as I had feared thanks to auto-face and auto-attack. My one major complaint: camera/controls. Unless they fix that I don't see how anyone can PvP competitively in this game.

Will likely buy some time after initial release rush just for the leveling experience/exploration aspect.

 

[Data4]

Lot of combat talk and that's fine, but is there anything for a flaming story/lorefag to get wet about?

 

[Mangoose]

Lot of combat talk and that's fine, but is there anything for a flaming story/lorefag to get wet about?

Oh, plenty. From 1-20, three different personal storylines per race (basically you have a personal instance quest almost every level, 15 minutes long or so?). And from 1-20, I think you have one or two choices with consequences. Written by Annie might I add.

 

[Angthoron]

Well to be fair I don't think that it's only Annie working on the stories! But yeah, I've enjoyed the stories I've seen so far. The Charr Ash legion was a nice counter-espionage story as far as I played, human noble was quite nice with the politics aspect and a few completely non-combat quests available, and the Norn something, while being closest of what I tired to a "High Fantasy Vikings" thing, was still nicely done, with some decent injections of both lore and humour (and Eir's sideboob \o/)

Oh yeah, and the writing felt for the most part to be fairly light-hearted and overall, positive in tone.

 

[made]

Norn and human storylines were as bland as their respective starter areas, didn't play past lvl 5. Charr are cliche but at least somewhat interesting and with decent VA. Black Citadel looks amazing.