First Impressions

[kildorn]

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

A bug. You can get one for free in Hooligan's whatever in Lion's Arch.

If you go to your HoM and it's empty, try logging into GW1 again, then back into GW2.

[PalmTrees]

Story missions (sylvari) are horribly balanced. Those are the only places I die. A huge group spawns, ignores the npc allies and focuses on the cloth armor caster (me). I die and restart from a checkpoint.

[Trippy]

The auto-scaling feature makes any quest that's challenging for your character a huge chore cause you can never level up and then go back and do it more easily (modulo some improvements from extra skills you might have gained and item improvements). Fortunately there's a checkpoint feature in the instanced story quests so on my super squishy Elementalist I just keep dying over and over and over again to advance the checkpoint until I can finish it.

[Ingmar]

I think they went a little overboard with the level scaling. I don't mind getting scaled down to 15 when I go back to a starter zone, but its pretty annoying getting scaled granularly in every little area inside a zone. At this point I am pretty sure I have no idea what my actual HP total is.

[Trippy]

Yes it's hugely annoying. You never feel like you are getting stronger (again modulo new skills and items) cause even low level monsters can kill you if you aren't careful cause you are scaled down while traveling through lower level areas.

[Evildrider]

Sooo I did the first dungeon, Ascalon something, and I see that instead of having actual "tanks" in the game they just put rally points near the boss so if you die you just run back in.   

[kildorn]

Sooo I did the first dungeon, Ascalon something, and I see that instead of having actual "tanks" in the game they just put rally points near the boss so if you die you just run back in.   

Yes, death zerging is entirely possible, if expensive. Their intent with it was that the cost would keep you from actually thinking that's the tactic.

I'm still of the opinion that Catacombs starts the difficulty off way too high for being the first dungeon anyone's put in, and having a pretty limited trait selection. Doable, but even the trash packs will fuck you the hell up. Fuck those rangers so much.

[01101010]

I think they went a little overboard with the level scaling. I don't mind getting scaled down to 15 when I go back to a starter zone, but its pretty annoying getting scaled granularly in every little area inside a zone. At this point I am pretty sure I have no idea what my actual HP total is.

Amen. The only way I know is when I went to the next zone and found same level mobs... and ran away. However, running around finishing the Norn starting zone - my hp was all over the place at almost every heart I finished. Very unsettling... but at least no one was out there whitewashing the place.

Story missions (sylvari) are horribly balanced. Those are the only places I die. A huge group spawns, ignores the npc allies and focuses on the cloth armor caster (me). I die and restart from a checkpoint.

Holy shit last night I was finishing the Norn starting area storyline and I actually had to alt-tab and look up if I was missing something. Scaled to lvl 11 (real 18) and 2 groups of lvl 12 imps (4 each). Then right after the last dies, 2 frost elementals - same configuration. Then more imps with a veteran imp. Wondering if that was not meant for a group... because it took forever and about 5 silver in repairs to get past; and even then, I had to buy vendor trash weapons as the hammer and sword/board wasn't getting by... actually needed a GSword and mace/board to make it to the vet. I get that it should be tough, but clearly that is not balanced in the least.

[Ingmar]

Sounds like Rumors of Trouble. That quest is obnoxiously overtuned, but only norns who picked "I gambled away my heirloom horn" get stuck with it I think.

[Nebu]

Sounds like Rumors of Trouble. That quest is obnoxiously overtuned, but only norns who picked "I gambled away my heirloom horn" get stuck with it I think.

I found a way to handle it.  I just died over and over and over and over until I finally finished the mobs off.  WTF is up with spawning 8 level 12 mobs that all do ground effects that hit for 300+ when you have like 1000 hp?  That mission had me screaming at my monitor.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I think that's how we all did it. I luckily had a scepter in my inventory from unlocking the weapon skills so I had something to kite with - if I'd been stuck with just my melee (Guardian) I think I would have had to give up. By the end I was running around in my man panties and nothing else because all my armor was broken.

[Nebu]

On the bright side, that mission gave me the will to destroy my fucking artifact when the choice presented itself.   

[jakonovski]

Been playing for a few hours with my human engineer (she has a faux hawk, which is awesome). I love the exploration/platforming angle, about time someone included some legit noncombat mechanics to their MMO.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, my biggest complaint is also how fucking stupid hard some of the story quests are. It's especially annoying when you get scaled down below the level of the mobs the mission spawns. And they zerg you way too often with mobs.

[March]

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.

Yes...for the first time since about 2002 I am enjoying the exploring and character building experience...the crafting, POI, non-quested dailies, DE's and the world in general are making this the most fun I've had in years.  May hit a wall at some point, but not there yet.

[Sky]

I forget if I gambled away my horn or not (hey, it was some good ale!). If I did and that's not patched before I hit it....looks like I'll be playing another character. Me no likely frustrating bullshit.

[Sjofn]

MY Norn got SUPER DRUNK at the last moot, so far it hasn't been TOO bad.

[Kageru]

It's broken at the moment I think, but if you have friends or a guild you can party up for the story quests where Anet's balance has failed.

[Bann]

Having way to much fun on my thief in session based PvP. I take the trap that lets me spawn an NPC thief every 45 seconds, and the elite skills that lets me summon 2 more every every 180. when everything is up, its nearly an auto kill. makes taking or defending a point much more likely.

[KallDrexx]

As someone who played with a lot of top guilds in GW1, I'm not a fan of SPvP.  I just played it for a few hours and damn, they upped the pace wayy too much for my liking.   Between the 50 million knockbacks and interrupts that everyone but me has, the fucking speed buff that it seems 75% of the people have, people going invisible all the damn time, etc... it's just way too FPSsy for me. 

I didn't get this feeling in WvW at least though, maybe because it's more spread out (or the people that actually know what they are doing are focusing more on SPvP and tournys.

[bhodi]

Elementalist is the ultimate 'gotta go fast' chatacter. Dual daggers, 10% passive speed buff, 25% speed trait, 33% boost on heal for 10s, 120 range teleport, and your 4 ability is this super long lightning charge. It's almost like instant travel.

It's actually really fun to go through the lower zones with it.

[Fordel]

My very first impression is the UI is very foreign to me.

[Nebu]

Ok... this is going to piss me off. 

Group gets to the level 30 dungeon.  We find that we can't get into the dungeon unless we are all on the main server.  So, we wait for 30 mins while each of us gets through the queue from the overflow server to the main server.  After 45 mins, we FINALLY get to start running the dungeon and one of us gets booted from the server after the first pull.  Well, that person not only gets booted out of the instance, they also get booted to an overflow server.  So... we all get to wait for them to get through the queue, back to the main server, and finally back into the dungeon. 

They REALLY need to fix this. 

[kildorn]

Ok... this is going to piss me off. 

Group gets to the level 30 dungeon.  We find that we can't get into the dungeon unless we are all on the main server.  So, we wait for 30 mins while each of us gets through the queue from the overflow server to the main server.  After 45 mins, we FINALLY get to start running the dungeon and one of us gets booted from the server after the first pull.  Well, that person not only gets booted out of the instance, they also get booted to an overflow server.  So... we all get to wait for them to get through the queue, back to the main server, and finally back into the dungeon. 

They REALLY need to fix this. 

Can the person on the main server not use right click/join to get to the same overflow as the others? I've done a few dungeons with overflow folks, but not directly trying to coordinate with friends yet.

Part of the issue is that overflow is per zone, and the first dungeon is in the charr newbie zone.

[Sky]

Even without Nebu's awful grouping issues (and btw holy crap, level 30? Oh, Nebu...this is why we don't group! :)) the overflow thing is an intrusive annoyance as a mechanic. Every time I zone I have to click through the popup that I've been put in the overflow, and the popup to go to the regular instance always comes at the most inconvenient times, so I end up staying in the overflow for the most part.

[Nebu]

Can the person on the main server not use right click/join to get to the same overflow as the others? I've done a few dungeons with overflow folks, but not directly trying to coordinate with friends yet.

Part of the issue is that overflow is per zone, and the first dungeon is in the charr newbie zone.

We tried that and it didn't seem to work.  The entrance to the dungeon was jammed with people on both the regular and overflow server, so that may have been part of the issue.  I'm wondering why they decided to put the dungeons in a newbie zone... perhaps because it will be no big deal once the initial release has passed.  

[Zetor]

I have no idea why they don't let you just use the old GW1 'district' method for PVE zones (also see any other game with instanced pve zones: coh, aoc, ...). They clearly have the tech for it, and then you could just say "OK, meet in instance 42", right-click on the map, select '42' from the drop-down, and presto! Maybe they don't want people 'exploiting' resource nodes? Meh.

Also, a few months / year(s) from now when lowbie zones are not very populated, they are going to use the same tech to funnel people from all servers towards a single copy of each zone -- kinda like a reverse overflow (and what WOW of all games is doing with MOP). Calling it now!

[Kageru]

The overflow mechanic is superior to waiting in a queue. Or would be if it worked properly.

[tazelbain]

Overflows were less than minute on Maguuma last night. The great goon flood never happened.  How is TC's overflows in primetime?

[01101010]

Instead of a god damn popup every time I zone that places me in overflow (which happens each time), just put a notification similar to the area event message. Clicking that is pointless. Then allow the option to enter the main as is - considering you need it if you are in the middle of an event.

[KallDrexx]

The overflow mechanic is superior to waiting in a queue. Or would be if it worked properly.

And GW1's solution was even more superior.  Also they could make the plethora of popups less annoying.  If my whole group is in an overflow don't fucking ask me to go to the main server. 

And if you ask me make a message in the top right hand corner, not in the middle of my screen when I'm fighting a boss.

[kildorn]

Can the person on the main server not use right click/join to get to the same overflow as the others? I've done a few dungeons with overflow folks, but not directly trying to coordinate with friends yet.

Part of the issue is that overflow is per zone, and the first dungeon is in the charr newbie zone.

We tried that and it didn't seem to work.  The entrance to the dungeon was jammed with people on both the regular and overflow server, so that may have been part of the issue.  I'm wondering why they decided to put the dungeons in a newbie zone... perhaps because it will be no big deal once the initial release has passed.  

They're in places they make sense, lore wise. The level 40 is in the human newbie zone, so expect similar issues for a week :(

[kildorn]

The overflow mechanic is superior to waiting in a queue. Or would be if it worked properly.

And GW1's solution was even more superior.  Also they could make the plethora of popups less annoying.  If my whole group is in an overflow don't fucking ask me to go to the main server. 

And if you ask me make a message in the top right hand corner, not in the middle of my screen when I'm fighting a boss.

Districts did not deal with pve zones, it dealt with cities. I like the overflow concept, I just need the popups to not be annoying and the Join functionality to work a bit better. I haven't had issues with it, but everyone else appears to. I suspect overflows can get full, and you can't join someone who is in a full overflow.

[KallDrexx]

Districts did not deal with pve zones, it dealt with cities. I like the overflow concept, I just need the popups to not be annoying and the Join functionality to work a bit better. I haven't had issues with it, but everyone else appears to. I suspect overflows can get full, and you can't join someone who is in a full overflow.

Err, districts were the only place where they had an issue where they needed overflow instances, thus my point.  Districts didn't deal with PvE zones because you never had population issues.

I'm just saying they could have used the districting system in GW2 and this whole situation would be absolved.  GW1 only created new districts when other districts were full and it made it MUCH easier to find people you were looking for.  Right now overflow is bullshit, because not only does it make grouping harder, it also messes up a ton of other shit (like you can't see WvW zones properly, you can't enter dungeons from an overflow server as Nebu said, etc...). 

There are a lot of gameplay consequences to this issue when they had a workable solution with the GW1 technology.

[sachiel]

Yes it's hugely annoying. You never feel like you are getting stronger (again modulo new skills and items) cause even low level monsters can kill you if you aren't careful cause you are scaled down while traveling through lower level areas.

I actually love this.  Everything is still fun and a challenge especially considering I've outleveled my wife. I don't want her to feel useless on her character or that she's just an extra wheel and I'm bored smearing mobs for her.  I'm glad there is no place where you can walk in and oneshot everything. 

I feel improvements through traiting, new skills and equipment upgrades.