First Impressions

[Severian]

It would be nice if it were a bit more social, that was the good part of grinding, but I don't know how you can force that without idiotic levels of downtime.

One significant aspect of GW2 seems to be how your attitudes towards other players are shaped by the mechanics. In marked contrast to the Good Old Days of kill stealing, spawn camping, and trains, your fellow players are out there regularly ressing you, helping you to get that skill point as you simultaneously help them get it, helping each other with heart quest objectives just by virtue of being in the same area, etc. Having other players around is almost always welcome in PvE and WvW, and your attitude towards them defaults to positive, with the only exception being when the dynamic events scale too big for the melees (which ArenaNet says they are tuning). I think the way res is handled in particular is going to lead to a lot of people with similar play schedules remembering each other and naturally coming together as they play; you can't help feeling good about someone who you res and who later returns the "favor".

[Spiff]

Grouping doesn't necessarily equal zerging here either imo; I did do a few events/group quests with around 5 people and it felt a lot deeper/more involved.

It's an issue that once you get above 5-6 people, fun seems to go down with every person that joins, inching ever closer to the zerg (which I would place around 10 people, if you see 10? Throw tactics out the window, equip a ranged weapon and start blasting!  ).

By 'fun' I mean, depth gets lost, which is unfun to me.
Technically you could blame the players I guess, but there's a bunch of contributing factors in the design I played: such as mobs scaling to a point where their hitpoints and damage seem so out of wack, zerging them down is the best tactic that doesn't take a 15 minute planning session.

[Zetor]

The only problem I've seen with "having more people around" is when you're doing an event (like an escort) solo and someone steps in the event radius, but doesn't participate (they're killing mobs offscreen or what have you). A lot more mobs will spawn and can overwhelm you easily... I also wonder if the same thing happens if someone just passes by (gets in the event radius, then leaves within a few seconds).

[Tyrnan]

The only problem I've seen with "having more people around" is when you're doing an event (like an escort) solo and someone steps in the event radius, but doesn't participate (they're killing mobs offscreen or what have you). A lot more mobs will spawn and can overwhelm you easily... I also wonder if the same thing happens if someone just passes by (gets in the event radius, then leaves within a few seconds).

According to their blogs/articles this shouldn't happen. People who aren't actively contributing to an event aren't supposed to be included by the scaling mechanic so it sounds like it was bugged.

[Zetor]

I think that sounds about right, actually...

[Tyrnan]

It should scale back down again once people stop contributing or leave but I don't know how long it takes for that to kick in. I guess the relative shift in difficulty between one- and two-player scaling probably didn't help either. Plus ogres are just plain nasty 

[Nevermore]

It would be nice if it were a bit more social, that was the good part of grinding, but I don't know how you can force that without idiotic levels of downtime.

One significant aspect of GW2 seems to be how your attitudes towards other players are shaped by the mechanics. In marked contrast to the Good Old Days of kill stealing, spawn camping, and trains, your fellow players are out there regularly ressing you, helping you to get that skill point as you simultaneously help them get it, helping each other with heart quest objectives just by virtue of being in the same area, etc. Having other players around is almost always welcome in PvE and WvW, and your attitude towards them defaults to positive, with the only exception being when the dynamic events scale too big for the melees (which ArenaNet says they are tuning). I think the way res is handled in particular is going to lead to a lot of people with similar play schedules remembering each other and naturally coming together as they play; you can't help feeling good about someone who you res and who later returns the "favor".

While I certainly agree that kill stealing and spawn camping are not an issue at all in GW2, I was the victim of having mobs trained onto me a couple of times.  I don't think it was done maliciously, but that actually makes it worse since that means it's not difficult to accidentally train stuff onto people and it looks like it would be pretty easy to grief people and then claim you didn't mean it.

[Phred]

The only problem I've seen with "having more people around" is when you're doing an event (like an escort) solo and someone steps in the event radius, but doesn't participate (they're killing mobs offscreen or what have you). A lot more mobs will spawn and can overwhelm you easily... I also wonder if the same thing happens if someone just passes by (gets in the event radius, then leaves within a few seconds).

According to their blogs/articles this shouldn't happen. People who aren't actively contributing to an event aren't supposed to be included by the scaling mechanic so it sounds like it was bugged.

I had my personal quests get a lot more difficult when I was grouped with my friend dispite him not being pulled in to the instance with me.

[KallDrexx]

Finally got to play this.  This is definitely not anything like GW1.  For me, I haven't decided if that's a good thing or not yet, especially the difference in the skill system..

[statisticalfool]

Yeah, this really plays very different class to class.

Engineer seems like basically full on snoresville. Maybe when you starting getting all the kits to replace your primary weapon skills?

Elementalist was definitely more fun, but kind of highlighted (surprise!) MMO combat being not as responsive. I felt like I was fighting uphill to land any combos (which combined with the kind of randomish movement of mobs, meant a lot of misses). Also, AOE targeting from a constantly varying perspective: not that fun!

Thief seemed pretty good, although a lot of the utility skills seem a lot tricksier than is needed, which is I guess, a common fault of trap-style skills.

Story: kind of filler so far, although the human noble one is occasionally amusing.

[HaemishM]

I bitched about this in guild chat all last night, but I have to ask. Is this run speed normal? I FEEL LIKE I'M JOGGING IN WAIST DEEP WATER. I feel so fucking slow. Is there anything I can buy or equip that will make me run faster? I really dig the mechanics of the game, the story isn't bad and the art direction is top notch, but I am SOOOOOOO SLOW.

[ezrast]

They went a little too far on letting strangers be helpful actually - two of the three skill challenges I attempted I bit the dust and then got the skill point a few minutes later anyway, presumably because some wandering random happened upon the challenge mob and killed it for me while I was nowhere near the area.

I'm generally enjoying the experience so far - Charr thief up to 8, mostly pistol+dagger or shortbow, not finding melee as fun for some reason. It's got a new-car-smell that I haven't gotten from an MMO in a long time. I've come to expect a sinking feeling every time I try a new one within the first half hour when the game says "okay, you're done with all the cool scripted introductory shit; deliver this grapefruit and bring me some platypus eggs because you're a quest-giver's bitch now." That that moment keeps failing to come is actually pretty disconcerting.

Likes:
-Getting all your main combat abilities within minutes of picking up your weapon. This is huge to me.
-Naturally running into interesting things based on where I feel like wandering.

Dislikes:
-Having to wait til 30 for the rest of my abilities.
-Run speed seems just a little bit slow (are there mounts later? (ninja'd by Haemish)).
-Mob density can make kiting a pain.
-Mobs seem to scale pretty hard with levels making +2 things near-impossible; that might be me sucking or having poor gear though.

Not-sure-ifs:
-Fighting for your life is sort of convoluted; I'd almost rather just die.
-Mob experience is so low as to be trivial. In other games this would be a strong dislike since quest grinds piss me off, but here instead of making me feel railroaded it's just forcing me to explore and faff about and then randomly get a huge reward for doing so. I think. Still not sure I wouldn't rather have the option to just go full-on moa genocide mode for an evening though.

[Hawkbit]

I bitched about this in guild chat all last night, but I have to ask. Is this run speed normal? I FEEL LIKE I'M JOGGING IN WAIST DEEP WATER. I feel so fucking slow. Is there anything I can buy or equip that will make me run faster? I really dig the mechanics of the game, the story isn't bad and the art direction is top notch, but I am SOOOOOOO SLOW.

I feel as if I'm moving slower than I was in the previous beta.  I'm not sure if something was changed, but it does feel slow to me.  I hope that can be changed at some point. 

TLDR:  My jboots were nerfed.

[ffc]

Echoes of Lockjaw:


I also think running is super slow.  I tried looking up which class has the fastest out of combat run speed because it's driving me nuts but didn't see anything notable.

[Evildrider]

Run speed sucks... I think that's what I bitched about the most all day yesterday. 

I'm really not enjoying the PvE leveling too much... it really reminds me of if I was playing WHO and just ran from PQ to PQ.

[Zetor]

I always roll with a weapon set that has a short cooldown/long-ish duration swiftness buff (like elementalist staff, necro warhorn)... failing that, a utility skill that gives swiftness. I think at this point my biggest beef is the 'chancy' nature of melee -- with any kind of latency I need to be really on the ball to hit a moving target (that's not snared / knocked down / rooted / etc), and my skills still go on cooldown if I'm out of range.

Really digging the improvements they've made since the last few betas, btw. There are dudes who run up to you in outposts and point you to nearby dynamic events, etc. Also, they seem to have changed the 'jumping puzzle' type skill challenges to vistas, which is nice for both explorer (more things to do) and achiever (don't have to mess around with jumping puzzles to get those extra skillpoints) types.

[Dark_MadMax]

After TSW guild wars 2 pve does feel super dated. And graphics is even more dated. That said I find it very addicting and there are several things GW2 does well:

- large world with interesting location to explore .
- They did add a lot of variety to wow'esque style quests. They really wanted to spice it up .If it wasnt at the core same old thing it would be totally great. As it is it just good
- skill mechanics are really varied and Id say pretty damn fun
- the dynamic events system is the best I seen


TSW is definitely superior and much more immersive  GAME. But GW2 is a  better MMO by far

[Nevermore]

So far every beta they've 'optimized' the game engine, and every beta it's run worse and worse for me despite my lowering the graphics all the way down to the minimum.  This weekend the game is completely unplayable for me.  The screen blacks out literally every few seconds, and then eventually the game just crashes.  Yes, I have the most recent nvidia drivers.  No, I don't have this problem on any other game.  TOR runs flawlessly on medium-high settings.

Even though I hate the PvE, I at least wanted to see how the PvP was doing since I like the direction they've taken with that (at least in principle, even though I don't like the skill system compared to GW1).  Oh well.

[Modern Angel]

Also, they seem to have changed the 'jumping puzzle' type skill challenges to vistas, which is nice for both explorer (more things to do) and achiever (don't have to mess around with jumping puzzles to get those extra skillpoints) types.

The only problem is that vistas are now on the map completion track and I HATE THAT. I don't like jumping puzzles, even if they're easy (they've kept the vistas deliberately easy) and now they're not optional if you want that yummy chest for zone completion. If something is different than 90% of your game, make it optional. The xp you gain is reward enough.

[Secundo]

So far every beta they've 'optimized' the game engine, and every beta it's run worse and worse for me despite my lowering the graphics all the way down to the minimum. -snip-

I am experiencing the exact opposite. BWE2 had some minor stuttering and at times slowish fps but this build is solid for me.

[Nevermore]

So far every beta they've 'optimized' the game engine, and every beta it's run worse and worse for me despite my lowering the graphics all the way down to the minimum. -snip-

I am experiencing the exact opposite. BWE2 had some minor stuttering and at times slowish fps but this build is solid for me.

Based on the tech forum, I'm definitely not the only on with the issue I'm having.

[Crumbs]

Asura Engineer all the way!

I found the Asura starter area to be the most interesting and fun.  Finally got to see why everyone was talking about underwater combat also.  A whole new set of moves to unlock?  Yes please!

[Chimpy]

I like the look, and the Asura are kinda funny. But I guess it is not having played a previous beat but the mechanics seem inexplicable at times. I also am a little chagrined that rangers are apparently melee/throw melee weapon characters and not use a ranged weapon characters. (I looted a gun and saw not usable by your class) which was odd.

The pink flamingo pet option is awesome though.

[Bungee]

I like the look, and the Asura are kinda funny. But I guess it is not having played a previous beat but the mechanics seem inexplicable at times. I also am a little chagrined that rangers are apparently melee/throw melee weapon characters and not use a ranged weapon characters. (I looted a gun and saw not usable by your class) which was odd.

The pink flamingo pet option is awesome though.

Rangers only get Bows. Can't handle rifles because of the nature flick in their backstory.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, rangers get long and short bows, both of which are distinct weapons with different ranges and moves. Also, their axe shit is short ranged.

Messing with a warrior this beta event and I'm really enjoying it more than I did before.

[Tmon]

One thing I noticed is that you can now access your bank when you are on a crafting station.  Also thanks to collectible storage I haven't filled my starter pack and bag yet.  I just have to remember to go through and send the collectibles to the bank every now and then.

[kildorn]

To save you some time experimenting: you can hit H (hero panel), then skills, and Weapon Skills to see what all of your available weapon types and skills with them are.

[Sky]

I bitched about this in guild chat all last night, but I have to ask. Is this run speed normal? I FEEL LIKE I'M JOGGING IN WAIST DEEP WATER. I feel so fucking slow. Is there anything I can buy or equip that will make me run faster? I really dig the mechanics of the game, the story isn't bad and the art direction is top notch, but I am SOOOOOOO SLOW.

I don't remember it bugging me at all last BWE...but since then I've been playing TSW with mobility upgrades...yeah. Seems wicked slow now.

[kildorn]

The in combat run speed is pretty slow. Out of combat is a bit slow.

Most classes seem to have a signet passive or a trait later on for speed increases.

[Modern Angel]

Well, at least after you have a few unlocked, they want you teleporting from spot to spot.

[01101010]

I gotta say, I really like the way they did the synergies in this game. Haven't played a game since FFXI where I actually thought to position my shots behind a fire wall or inside a rune circle. I even saw other ranged moving into a new position as time went on today.

And this is also drawing me to caster class... I am fascinated with Mesmer. I feel an MMO pull in that you are better with other people.

[Arinon]

First time playing the game this weekend.  So far I've taken Thief, Necro, and Warrior to level 10.  Thief could be fun but most of his game seems to be short range ports and is a bit too spazzy for me.  Necro was fun once I got my hands on a staff.  The pet AI and the class's potential dependence on pets is a bit worrisome though.  Warrior was a blast all around and seemed really strong compared to the other two.  Going to try Hunter and some WvW tomorrow and attempt to nail down a main for release.

Getting used to the slower runspeed took a bit but, given how a lot of skills operate, having people zipping around any faster would be super frustrating in PvP.   

[Zetor]

Also, they seem to have changed the 'jumping puzzle' type skill challenges to vistas, which is nice for both explorer (more things to do) and achiever (don't have to mess around with jumping puzzles to get those extra skillpoints) types.

The only problem is that vistas are now on the map completion track and I HATE THAT. I don't like jumping puzzles, even if they're easy (they've kept the vistas deliberately easy) and now they're not optional if you want that yummy chest for zone completion. If something is different than 90% of your game, make it optional. The xp you gain is reward enough.

Oh yeah, I definitely agree with that. Putting them on a separate track would make things better[er]. As it is, I wasn't able to complete the sylvari area because the thorn wolf skill challenge is broken, sad face.

Re out-of-combat movement, I really haven't found it that big of a problem (yet). I just use waypoints to zip around on the map (unlocking a nearby waypoint should be priority #1 no matter what), and kill stuff / look for dynamic events otherwise. This may change after 30-40 levels, though. 

[Dark_MadMax]

First time playing the game this weekend.  So far I've taken Thief, Necro, and Warrior to level 10.

If you didnt do  it yet  -dont bother leveling at all. Just jump straight into mists right after intro and you get to experience  fully unlocked  profession with any gear you like. Run a few dozen spvp with each class to get a good feel of it.

My conclusions so far
-warrior - solid durable damage dealer. kinda bland, but well ....its warrior
-mesmer  -pretty damn fun and has a lot of tricks.  (mesmer actually has better stealth than thief  :) )
-necro - 3 health bars. great sustained damage. Only problem I didnt like my world going green all time
-ranger -same deal as a warrior . solid but bland run of the mill ranger .
-thief - only good for stomping newbs. But its fun class

[Sky]

Just not feeling the fantasy setting right now, been playing TSW this weekend...