First Impressions

[Zetor]

This is probably a pretty obvious thing, but a good way to make precision jumps (like those planks in the first sylvari area) is to stand near the edge of the thing you're trying to jump off, hold down the right mouse button, zoom in as far as you can, face the next jumping target, and press the left mouse button + space at the same time. This avoids overshooting and 'twitching off teh ledge' type moments, since you're not moving during the jump. Thankfully, the vistas are pretty forgiving -- at least they didn't frustrate me as much as some of the jump puzzles in SWTOR (screw you, Balmorra) and Rift.

(For those who played TSW, this is also the only way to do tier 4 of 'The Cost of Magic' without going completely insane )


It also goes without saying that the more movement abilities you have, the better. Stuff like Swiftness is obvious, but - for example - Elementalists should keep a dagger/dagger in the inventory for on-demand swiftness + ride the lightning, and Engineers should have a rifle for Jump Shot. Mesmers should unlock a teleport skill and swap it in when needed. Etc etc.

[Amaron]

Why the FUCK am I being downleveled to 17 and being forced to fight 21 mobs?  Challenge is one thing but with 4 levels the mobs basically one shot you.

[Der Helm]

Oh God, they're even in PvP? 

Well, they are in some hidden, out of the way, places, so PvP there is possible, but not very likely. The one I found for example makes you jump off a cliff INTO a waterfall where you land on an invisible (from the outside) ledge that leads you to the real jumping puzzle.

[Chimpy]

Green quality is above blue quality for items in this game 

Overall I am liking it. Just plunking around with PvE at the moment and learning mechanics as I go.

[Nebu]

Green quality is above blue quality for items in this game 

I love it.  It's like giving WoW the finger!

I just want to mention that I FUCKING HATE JUMPING PUZZLES. 

Thanks. I'm better now.

[schild]

The jumping puzzles would be fine if they weren't so poorly designed. Or are they well-designed because they want you to abuse the shoddy collision in the game?

[Kageru]

The really funny part is that the jumping puzzles generally give you nothing but a scenic view, not much XP and a +1 to your count of views seen. But as long as the number is less than the maximum number it can be the drive to complete it is palpable. It's an impressive piece of player motivation without any power inflation. And given every achievement generates points I can see that approach continuing.

Their back-end systems are hurting though, going to be interesting whether they can apply enough sticky tape before retail release and pre-orders hit.

[Tmon]

AH is still down it seems.  I finally broke down and gave one of my guys tailoring just to make some 8 slot bags since I had a giant stack of jute scraps I couldn't sell.  One benefit of crafting, even if you don't ever craft anything is that it gives you bank access from the crafting stations so you can do banking from out in the wilds.

[KallDrexx]

That benefit goes away, as I haven't seen any crafting stations in the 15-24 zones.

[Nebu]

That benefit goes away, as I haven't seen any crafting stations in the 15-24 zones.

Why do you need them?  You can instantly teleport to about any part of your capital city.

[KallDrexx]

Well technically you can port to a town and use a banker too.  I'm just saying that the main benefit of using crafting tables as a bank isn't a huge deal because you still have to port out of the zone at later levels.

[tazelbain]

I wish you could retrieve items from BLTC at the crafting station.

[kildorn]

The really funny part is that the jumping puzzles generally give you nothing but a scenic view, not much XP and a +1 to your count of views seen. But as long as the number is less than the maximum number it can be the drive to complete it is palpable. It's an impressive piece of player motivation without any power inflation. And given every achievement generates points I can see that approach continuing.

Their back-end systems are hurting though, going to be interesting whether they can apply enough sticky tape before retail release and pre-orders hit.

The zone completion counter on the loading screen is insidious, and drives me to do the damned tings even if I hate the vistas. The rewards aren't half bad either (they almost always give you transmute stones for cosmetic armor changes)

I preferred when Vistas weren't part of the complete score, and were just treasure chests at the end of odd jumping puzzles. I also think it's cruel that the sylvari zone has a brutal jumping puzzle that everyone thinks is part of a skill point, but is really just to get a ranger pet.

[Genev]

Ranger pet? Where?!

[kildorn]

Ranger pet? Where?!

The really tall spiral in the sylvari starter zone. That wide open plain with the skill point flower at the bottom?

If you go all the way up it, there's a tamable spider of some flavor.

[Genev]

Ranger pet? Where?!

The really tall spiral in the sylvari starter zone. That wide open plain with the skill point flower at the bottom?

If you go all the way up it, there's a tamable spider of some flavor.

Thanks! Currently working on the Norn starter zone, but i'll go Sylvari soon :)

[tazelbain]

There is also a chest and you advance the treasure hunter achievement by 1.  If you are a non-ranger, you can stop at chest.  So it's not worthless.

[proudft]

One trick I've found is several classes can get +10% speed.  For a lot of jumps this provides a sort of margin of error that makes them much easier.  Quickness is good for some jumps where you don't have to worry about about overjumping.

And for other jumps it is a horrible mistake.  I like to run around with horn off-hand on my warrior for the runspeed, and I was ascending one of those long turning jump-step puzzles, and there was some guy about two steps in front of me and I wasn't really thinking when I blew that horn and he then jumped and totally overshot and wheeee he plummeted to his doom.

I went down and did CPR on him, and I don't THINK he knew that's why he flew over (he didn't say anything, anyway), but I'm pretty sure it was my fault.  

[KallDrexx]

I got to cheat on the Asura Thaumonova reactor jump puzzzle quest.  A guildmate did the whole jump puzzle, key,etc.. part and invited me in to jump down for the final boss fight.  Said it took him 2 hours to do everything.

The funny part is the first attempt at fighting the boss we both wiped, and he was raging at the thought of having to do it all over again.  Luckily he was still there and more people dropped down with us, so we were able to finish it and get the chest.

[Riggswolfe]

I did the jump puzzles in Lion's Arch last night. The pirate one was crazy. There were probably around 20 or 30 people doing it. At one point you end up in a pitch black room where you can't see the platforms at all. But the elementalists and some rangers used various fire skills to light the room for us and we quickly got into a pattern.

Fire spell/arrows go off.
Jump.
Fire spell/arrows go off.
Jump.

Etc. It was kind of cool. The other 2 jump puzzles in Lion's Arch were much easier and less interesting.

[Sjofn]

One trick I've found is several classes can get +10% speed.  For a lot of jumps this provides a sort of margin of error that makes them much easier.  Quickness is good for some jumps where you don't have to worry about about overjumping.

And for other jumps it is a horrible mistake.  I like to run around with horn off-hand on my warrior for the runspeed, and I was ascending one of those long turning jump-step puzzles, and there was some guy about two steps in front of me and I wasn't really thinking when I blew that horn and he then jumped and totally overshot and wheeee he plummeted to his doom.

I went down and did CPR on him, and I don't THINK he knew that's why he flew over (he didn't say anything, anyway), but I'm pretty sure it was my fault.  

MURDERER

[Amaron]

I like to run around with horn off-hand on my warrior for the runspeed, and I was ascending one of those long turning jump-step puzzles, and there was some guy about two steps in front of me and I wasn't really thinking when I blew that horn and he then jumped and totally overshot and wheeee he plummeted to his doom.

The birth of a new griefing tactic.

[Spiff]

I did the jump puzzles in Lion's Arch last night. The pirate one was crazy.

That is the mother of all jumping puzzles  (as I've seen so far), even if you don't make any big mistakes it'll take 15-20 minutes easy I think.

I don't think I'm spoilering anything by saying there is a also a weapon vendor at the end of that one selling level 40 pirate weapons for over 9k merit thingamajigs a pop, so unless you have that much, you may have to do it twice.

[Ingmar]

Does a torch offhand help at all there?

[tazelbain]

[Abelian75]

I think I'm just being a curmudgeon with this game.  Today I realized that seeing "Korea has earned the favor of the gods" (or whatever the message said) back when I first played GW1 may be the noxious little shard of brand damage that makes me tend to see anything in a guild wars game as just a curtain covering up the mechanics.  The amount of detail in the world is slowly wearing away at this.  But holy crap, it's amazing how much seeing references to real world countries in a game message hurts my impression of a game.

[Kageru]

The weapons still feel a little bit like random collections of powers to me, rather than a coherent identity, but I'm still working it out.

Spent a couple of hours full exploring the human main city. It's really well done. Lots of good scenery, chatty characters and sky-boxes to make it look even bigger than it is. And if you go hunting there's a lot of places with a sense of character.

I still don't entirely get why it's there though. It's so huge and detailed but once you've got the various points of interest most of it has no function what so ever. Either they have plans for the cities or they just couldn't help themselves building it up to match the scale they envisioned.

[Amaron]

I still don't entirely get why it's there though. It's so huge and detailed but once you've got the various points of interest most of it has no function what so ever. Either they have plans for the cities or they just couldn't help themselves building it up to match the scale they envisioned.

In the Asura city they have various quests in the different spots.   Wait till you get to the exploration stuff though.  The amount of level design they put into some stuff a lot of people will never see is mind boggling.

[murdoc]

Over a million pre-purchases and 400k concurrent users during headstart

Not a bad start imo. I didn't get a ton of playtime in (level 20), but other than a couple of guild issues - it went fairly smoothly for me.

[Sky]

Second impression; I love the way you can just run around an area with no pressure to do anything, but tons of stuff to do.

[Lantyssa]

I'm catching up from my marathon weekend of GW2 and first vacation in a year.  Pardon if I start answering questions already answered:

Also, am I missing something or is there nothing in the UI that tells you when you target is out of range for an ability?

There is a slim red bar underneath skills if they are out of range.

[Threash]

"I'm an achiever! i achieve things!" never gets old.

[Lantyssa]

If you go all the way up it, there's a tamable spider of some flavor.

Those spiders are also available along the middle-north of the zone.

Hmmm.  I need to look up Juntao and see about us making a GW2 Creatures...

[Lantyssa]

Does a torch offhand help at all there?

Yes, and if you're a Ranger, the area bonfire skill helps even more.  For those with HoM points, make yourself a Dragon Sword or two.  Just use a junk blade.

[Amaron]

Speaking of HoM one of my characters got a teleporter token thing and the other didn't.  Anyone know what's up with that?