First Impressions

[Murgos]

Or I understand it, but it's just not worth the trouble to toggle between four elements depending on healing or debuffing or whatever and firing the abilities seems less efficient than spamming DPS and running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

Try a different class?

[Sky]

I haaaaaaaaate how hard it is to see things you need to get out of in this game. TSW's way is the best method I've seen.

I strongly agree with this, it's easily the weakest part of the game. The player fields are all blazingly highlighted and the mob field (the most important to see!) is a subtle red that fades under everything else.

Ingmar's earlier list of things that mentioned that was pretty spot-on.

[Quinton]

I'm enjoying the game well enough. The world is beautiful. I like the Asura storyline. If I get into a big event, it can be fun. However, I'm very skeptical I'll last long enough for max level. Whatever the idea is to success here, I don't think I'm understanding it. Or I understand it, but it's just not worth the trouble to toggle between four elements depending on healing or debuffing or whatever and firing the abilities seems less efficient than spamming DPS and running around like a chicken with my head cut off. The result is killing stuff is either trivial or impossible and I keep advancing without really feeling like I've learned much along the way other than to mash buttons.

The attunement mechanic for elemental frustrates me at times too.  On the other hand, I kept feeling like I had a very small set of options as engineer.

I'm also not sure if I'm in it for the long haul -- need to explore wvw a bit more.  Mostly the draw is exploration and collecting things for me.

[Modern Angel]

God, fuck Sorrow's Embrace. An otherwise enjoyable instance marred by the second to last boss. He summons golems, three in all. They have more or less unavoidable conditions they shoot at you and each has super, super high hp. No shit, it was like a 20 minute running battle. Not fun at all, way more obnoxious than anything in AC.

[Azaroth]

Pretty much what everyone else has said, I suppose. There are a lot of things I like and a lot of things I don't.

The thing that irks me is that there didn't REALLY seem to be any new and revolutionary plan for replacing the holy trinity in PvE. Everyone kiting and ditching aggro is pretty stupid. Also, the sheer amount of times I've been one-shotted if I'm expected to be doing that is silliness.

... and that success can be won in any scenario by any group of players if they're simply willing to run back from the waypoint enough times. Beating an instance isn't really about being good at anything, necessarily. It can be. But anyone that goes in can win as long as they're willing to eat a big repair bill and bang their head against the wall. Which, I'm sure, was discussed and seen as a good thing. Let the skilled players win and feel skilled because they beat hard content, let the less skilled players win through sheer determination and feel a sense of elation at the end because they beat hard content. So I can see how they went that route. I'm not sure either group is going to buy it.

Also, while their level scaling seems to have good intentions, I feel like they've gone too far with it. It seems like they've gone and done their best to make me wonder why the hell I'm leveling a character. Other than just to see the next zone, which is always pretty. But that's... it seems a little empty in a lot of ways. What with all of the scaling, I begin wondering if even my beautiful yellow dagger means anything - and when I wonder if leveling AND gearing mean anything in your WoW clone, you're probably doing it wrong.

Yes, also, bugs. Bugs. I didn't notice them at the beginning. Now I'm starting to get annoyed. Especially instances.

- Underwater combat doesn't feel too fun to me (even though I get probably the most buttons/options as an elementalist)... not much variance in combat either. Perhaps it's better for other classes?

Oh, fuck no. I had an Elementalist early on. Compared to using a harpoon gun or, asdf, a spear - it's a joyride. I absolutely dread underwater areas/quests/instances.

What baffles me is that AC is/was the most-tested dungeon (and the only one available in BWEs), is that why it's so overtuned?

It's not bad once you have an experienced group. Overall it's way too hard, though.

Also, explorable mode.  

I just did CM Explorable last night. It was ... pretty silly. But the real problem is that the reward was simply not there. I'd never do it again. I'd probably never do an explorable dungeon again.

[Amaron]

Did AC my second time today and this time with people in vent.   In general we just felt like we couldn't understand what was going on or how we we're supposed to beat it "properly".   I think we did pretty good considering we didn't have to death zerg but there was absolutely no feeling of playing well.   The game has a lot of things I like but I start to feel like not even playing because I've no idea how to get to that point where I feel like I'm dominating the content.   It's more like they designed it so you can never get to that point which baffles me.

[Maledict]

Has anyone been able to use a transmutation stone recently? They just don't seem to work for me at all for the last few days, the option to transmute is always greyed out no matter what items I wear.

[Rasix]

The graphics issues (driver stopped responding, bsod) I'm having with this game are getting to the point where I'm just about done.  I'm not sure if it's my recently RMA'd card, something else on my system or the similar issues others are reporting.  I can't seem to play this game for more than half an hour without having something go very wrong.   Usually when I idle or port somewhere I run into problems.  If go shark mode and never stop moving, I seem to be ok. 

[Azaroth]

GW2 is absolutely stunning on my BRAND NEW 7970M.

Thanks for reading.

[Rasix]

Well, looks fine on mine too, just crashes a ton.

[Azaroth]

You can definitely get to the point where you're dominating content. Story mode, anyway.

I think explorable mode is meant to be an infinite shitfest or something.

Wait until you run CM Storymode. It's actually kinda fun.

[Sjofn]

Funny that some people hate the underwater bits, because I think they might actually be my favorite part of the game. 

[Rasix]

There were no underwater activities in the starting Norn area.  That was fine with me.

[Tannhauser]

You must have missed the underwater tunnel then.  I really love the underwater stuff, just wish there was more down there than ore and fish.  I mean POI not necessarily events.

[Sjofn]

There are some, depending on the zone. I know I've found some on my treedude guardian.

And yeah, there's an underwater tunnel in the starter norn area, by the bear shrine. Surfaces in a cave and there's a skill point in there!

[Ingmar]

I like the underwater, yeah. Probably the best implementation of that sort of thing I've seen in an MMO. I still have a hard time juding distance and relative position down there though.

[Cadaverine]

Has anyone been able to use a transmutation stone recently? They just don't seem to work for me at all for the last few days, the option to transmute is always greyed out no matter what items I wear.

Yeah, I used one just a couple of hours ago on a new short bow I picked up, and it worked just fine.

[Tannhauser]

My favorite fight so far was the Blood Witch in Kessex Foothills.  She hides in her citadel under the lake guarded by veteran mobs and baracudas who have the ability to, wait for it, summon more barracuda!  Add in fighting in three dimensions and you have the recipe for awesome!

Poster not responsible for you punching your monitor.

[Azaroth]

Well, looks fine on mine too, just crashes a ton.

I understood your post. I just had to find a reason to mention my shiny graphics card.

[Rasix]

There are some, depending on the zone. I know I've found some on my treedude guardian.

And yeah, there's an underwater tunnel in the starter norn area, by the bear shrine. Surfaces in a cave and there's a skill point in there!

That doesn't count.  At least the smurf area had an event.

[Ingmar]

Has anyone been able to use a transmutation stone recently? They just don't seem to work for me at all for the last few days, the option to transmute is always greyed out no matter what items I wear.

Yeah, I used one just a couple of hours ago on a new short bow I picked up, and it worked just fine.

It is possible they broke something with the transmutation stones when they turned off salvaging/selling items bought with karma - maybe Maledict's items are all karma items?

[EWSpider]

Make sure you have the appropriate Transmutation Stone for the quality level of the item you are trying to transmute.

[Kageru]

I like the underwater. It's scenic and the movement works differently to make it interesting. Not drowning is brilliant, that was always what made getting spatially confused underwater so punishing. They need to turn the bloom down on my harpoon though.

The guardian clicks for me. It's like a "group tanking booster" the way I have it built. Most of my abilities will enhance whoever is tanking, including myself, so it basically makes the group tougher as a whole. The healing is weak but that's because it's scaled on the assumption that there will be overlapping effects from other people. Really look forward to trying it in a dungeon but not going to rush for that. The Norn areas are stunning, I love winter environments.

The necro.... not so much. I can see they want it to be manipulating conditions but the conditions are so short and slow they're underpowered when it's just me and nearly invisible when in a large group. Maybe they need some more levels, traits and 5 people but it really lacks punch and character.

Warrior is pretty vanilla. Group boosts and hurting people. Thief is stylish as hell, lots of mobility abilities, and fragile so story quests have been much more challenging than they have for my guardian. But this could also be because you have to focus on some type of defence regardless of class. A glass cannon build will be smashed at some point.

But at the end of the day the first game since WoW that really challenged basics of the genre and showed their is another way of doing things. With it's own set of balance issues.

Also, while their level scaling seems to have good intentions, I feel like they've gone too far with it. It seems like they've gone and done their best to make me wonder why the hell I'm leveling a character. Other than just to see the next zone, which is always pretty. But that's... it seems a little empty in a lot of ways. What with all of the scaling, I begin wondering if even my beautiful yellow dagger means anything - and when I wonder if leveling AND gearing mean anything in your WoW clone, you're probably doing it wrong.

(snip)

I just did CM Explorable last night. It was ... pretty silly. But the real problem is that the reward was simply not there. I'd never do it again. I'd probably never do an explorable dungeon again.

Scaling is brilliant because it keeps content alive. And viable content (plus no farming of lower level zones and events, and being able to group) is always the weak point of MMO's. That said the scaling isn't perfect. A higher level character with more skills unlocked, traits and gear still seems substantially tougher than a zone native.

The lack of reward in dungeons has been known for a while. They've been set up effectively as optional challenges with cosmetic rewards. So they can be tuned to be very challenging because you don't need anything from their and get only acknowledgement you've beaten it. It's pretty ballsy, MMO players tend to optimise around things that don't enhance their character, but on the other hand beating a challenge and being able to visibly flaunt that fact motivates the achievers too without nuking the power balance.

[Kageru]

There are some, depending on the zone. I know I've found some on my treedude guardian.

And yeah, there's an underwater tunnel in the starter norn area, by the bear shrine. Surfaces in a cave and there's a skill point in there!

That doesn't count.  At least the smurf area had an event.

On the other side of the river there's another passage leading to the next zone which has an event in it (gather underwater stink weed, defend the fire).

[Maledict]

Has anyone been able to use a transmutation stone recently? They just don't seem to work for me at all for the last few days, the option to transmute is always greyed out no matter what items I wear.

Yeah, I used one just a couple of hours ago on a new short bow I picked up, and it worked just fine.

It is possible they broke something with the transmutation stones when they turned off salvaging/selling items bought with karma - maybe Maledict's items are all karma items?

I thought that might be it but then remembered I was unable to transmute the kryton great sword graphic onto my new weapon earlier and neither of those is karma bought. It *used* to work fine for me, and all of my gear is well under level 80.

Will stick a ticket in and see if I get a response.

[KallDrexx]

Fuck gathering tools.  

Ok I understand the need for gold sinks and I'm ok with that, but at least don't make shit needlessly confusing.  Up to Iron everything made since, you are in one zone and you need one set of gathering tools (copper or iron).  Then you start getting to the next zones where you need iron picks and iron sickle but steel axes.  Then the next zone you need steel axes but darksteel fucking sickles.  And unlike metal nodes the trees aren't very well name coordinated to make it easy to figure out which one you need until you go "oh hey why do I have 50 ruined axe logs in my inventory", and the memory of names needed for vegetable nodes arae even worse.

They could have just made it simple, 1 zone requires 1 type of tool.

[Chimpy]

I have had zero issues with graphics or stability. But I also have an ATI/AMD card and everyone who has had problems seems to have nVidia?

[Azaroth]

Scaling is brilliant because it keeps content alive. And viable content (plus no farming of lower level zones and events, and being able to group) is always the weak point of MMO's. That said the scaling isn't perfect. A higher level character with more skills unlocked, traits and gear still seems substantially tougher than a zone native.

The lack of reward in dungeons has been known for a while. They've been set up effectively as optional challenges with cosmetic rewards. So they can be tuned to be very challenging because you don't need anything from their and get only acknowledgement you've beaten it. It's pretty ballsy, MMO players tend to optimise around things that don't enhance their character, but on the other hand beating a challenge and being able to visibly flaunt that fact motivates the achievers too without nuking the power balance.

Yeah, I mean, like I say, there are certainly benefits and it's an interesting choice. I just end up left feeling a little lost as to why I'm chasing levels and gear sometimes after all of the scaling stuff they've done. It might be "brilliant" - but in the end, is it smart?

[Nightblade]

This is pretty much the MMO I've been waiting for, a game that stands on it's own merits of BEING A GAME, not a gear treadmill. PVP rewards are cosmetic.

There's no raid prep list, there's stifling pvp gear advantages, the game is about the adventure.

[Ingmar]

I have had zero issues with graphics or stability. But I also have an ATI/AMD card and everyone who has had problems seems to have nVidia?

I've had zero problems with an nVidia card, so the problem seems to be narrower than the manufacturer level.

What I *have* had problems with, is sound. Occasionally my headset just freaks the fuck out when there's a lot of sound going on all at once and I have to reboot to fix it.

[Sjofn]

Fuck gathering tools.  

Ok I understand the need for gold sinks and I'm ok with that, but at least don't make shit needlessly confusing.  Up to Iron everything made since, you are in one zone and you need one set of gathering tools (copper or iron).  Then you start getting to the next zones where you need iron picks and iron sickle but steel axes.  Then the next zone you need steel axes but darksteel fucking sickles.  And unlike metal nodes the trees aren't very well name coordinated to make it easy to figure out which one you need until you go "oh hey why do I have 50 ruined axe logs in my inventory", and the memory of names needed for vegetable nodes arae even worse.

They could have just made it simple, 1 zone requires 1 type of tool.

God yes, everything you just said. And it's not even "confusion" for me, but "holy shit is this annoying to keep track of." ><

[Kageru]

Game has been rock solid on my Nvidia card.

Yeah, I mean, like I say, there are certainly benefits and it's an interesting choice. I just end up left feeling a little lost as to why I'm chasing levels sometimes after all of the scaling stuff they've done. It might be "brilliant" - but in the end, is it smart?

Yeah, widening the content is worth it in the long term. Without the revenue of Blizzard they won't be rolling out new zones as fast so keeping the old viable, and being able to extend them and it be valid content for everyone, is a well thought out move. And levelling progresses your story and the width of zones you can access so you still make progress.

https://twitter.com/SpaceDrakeCF/status/242046608261382144

Although it sounds like Guild Wars 2 is a disaster waiting to happen. $150 million to make it? 6 million sales to break even?

I don't know if this is true... but if it is the back-end problems look even worse. It's one thing to be surprised by unexpected demand. But being unable to handle the required demand to make a profit is terrible.

[Quinton]

Has anyone been able to use a transmutation stone recently? They just don't seem to work for me at all for the last few days, the option to transmute is always greyed out no matter what items I wear.

You need to pick which attributes from which item you want to keep -- there's a selection for the appearance, the base stats, and for bonus stats (if a sigil, etc is applied).  Took me a minute to figure out what was up there.  Or are you saying that you've selected all the selectable stuff in the dialog box and the button's still grayed out?

[Rasix]

I think I might have fixed my issue in a somewhat strange way.  Apparently the driver crash can happen when the PC isn't supplying enough power to the card when it thinks the card is idle.  There's some advanced power saving setting (that Windows hides from you) that will reduce power to the PCIE slot when it thinks the card is idle.  THE CARD DOES NOT LIKE THIS.  I set it to never, ever do this dumb thing again.  Didn't crash once in over 2 hours of play.  

[kildorn]

GW2 does something wonky in the graphics department it seems. It freaks if anything causes a card to run outside some really specific factory specs that don't seem grounded in reality. I don't know who to blame for it since this doesn't happen normally in gaming, but all the fixes seem to be "make your card behave the way it's supposed to behave"

It's like someone read all the RFCs to write their engine, but never actually saw cards in use in the wild to know the specs were bullshit.