how is guild wars 2/ is it worth getting thread?

[Kyr Knightbane]

Its still good, and its barely in it's infancy which is why the amount of bile towards it is so surprising.

Every MMO ever. Honestly, MMO fanbases might be a cross section of some of the worst people in all humanity. The level and volume of whining about each and every element of each and every game beggars the imagination.

I just don't get it lol. If you like something, how does it hurt someone else? (with the exception of BDSM, cuz that hurts when you like it, or it hurts because you like it... something like that)

I enjoy Guild Wars 2, and i had a good run with World of Warcraft, and Everquest 2 and Aion and DCUO and others that i used to play. But then again, to each his own i suppose.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I just don't get it lol. If you like something, how does it hurt someone else? (with the exception of BDSM, cuz that hurts when you like it, or it hurts because you like it... something like that)

I enjoy Guild Wars 2, and i had a good run with World of Warcraft, and Everquest 2 and Aion and DCUO and others that i used to play. But then again, to each his own i suppose.

MMOs tend to occupy so much time that you see the same kind of tribalism with them as you do with sports franchises. It's not enough that your game of choice is good, but all it's competitors must be RUBBISH! The degree of attitude polarization and bias in the MMO space actually blows away what we see in discussion for single player games, which is bad enough. Anyone who thinks The Escapist can be hard to read in this regard (Phlakes, I am looking in your direction) wouldn't last 10 minutes on a new MMO forum.

 

[purf]

how depended is this game on group play, i ask as a game called guild wars certainly implies the importance of guilds, and i would assume many people who play this are moving from one game to another with there old guild people?

You can absolutely play it own your own. All the open world exploration and the fights coming with it is cool with that. There are those Dynamic Events of varying scale - from, say, a trading caravan needs an escort to the good guys attacking the bad guys' stronghold. Those usually require a combined effort, but the beautiful thing is that there is no whatsoever need for any grouping. Players just hop in and hop out again and normally enough people are doing those events. You may, you will eventually run into situations where you just have to leg it (sooo, I wonder what's in this cave here - aww, spidey spidey, come her.. Oh, hello, MotherOfAllSpiders, I was just... uh... bye!), so.. do something different then and come back later.

(Notice how I left out anything Dungeon related. See comment somewhere above)

 

[ramboondiea]

snip

cheers for the info, and I'm guessing that dungeons require a little bit of co-operation, although that is to be expected ha, i just didn't want to run into a dead end due to lack of contacts but I'm sure I will cross that bridge when I get to it.


also for the record I wouldn't run from the mother of all spiders, I wouldn't have noticed her and would be dead, i feel its important to share that information ha

 

[BloatedGuppy]

cheers for the info, and I'm guessing that dungeons require a little bit of co-operation, although that is to be expected ha, i just didn't want to run into a dead end due to lack of contacts but I'm sure I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

also for the record I wouldn't run from the mother of all spiders, I wouldn't have noticed her and would be dead, i feel its important to share that information ha

Dungeons are a mess, so as the one part of the game that REQUIRES formal grouping they are easily avoided unless you desperately want one of the skins. The ability to cooperate with other people without having to formally join a group is probably THE major revolution GW2 has brought to the genre.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

buckled, ordered it, if I don't like it am coming for you both (<----this is a joke) haha

thank you for answering my questions, i appreciate it, i do have one more question tho, how depended is this game on group play, i ask as a game called guild wars certainly implies the importance of guilds, and i would assume many people who play this are moving from one game to another with there old guild people?

Just a note, but the "Guild Wars" in the title is in reference to something from the lore of the first game. There was guild vs. guild PvP in the first game as well, but the Guild Wars were a story thing and they are no longer going on in GW2.

My main comment on the game, apart from what BloatedGuppy has said (I usually agree with him on GW2 stuff), is that the lack of endgame is a great thing for me, and it was an intentional part of the design. They want you to play the game for a while and have a fun time while you're doing it, rather than grind for a long time so that you can reach max level and then start having fun, and then they want you to do one or more of the following things: do the same with another character and have a very different experience from your first playthrough (by choosing a different class, different zones to level in, and different story choices), do PvP and WvW, do the optional grind required for unique armor/weapon appearances, or just stop playing and wait for new content (like the current Halloween events, or the major update they have planned for next month). All those options are perfectly acceptable for this game, since it has no subscription fee.

People don't say "I loved this single-player game until it ended and now I hate it because there's nothing to do," so it weirds me out that they say the same thing about GW2. Just because it's an MMO doesn't mean it has to be a second job.

 

[ramboondiea]

cheers for the info, and I'm guessing that dungeons require a little bit of co-operation, although that is to be expected ha, i just didn't want to run into a dead end due to lack of contacts but I'm sure I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

also for the record I wouldn't run from the mother of all spiders, I wouldn't have noticed her and would be dead, i feel its important to share that information ha

Dungeons are a mess, so as the one part of the game that REQUIRES formal grouping they are easily avoided unless you desperately want one of the skins. The ability to cooperate with other people without having to formally join a group is probably THE major revolution GW2 has brought to the genre.

Cheers,

but out of curiosity in what ways are they 'a mess' they don't work or they just badly made or something? also if the dungeons need avoiding how does that game progress? is it just through those wide open events things?

 

[ramboondiea]

buckled, ordered it, if I don't like it am coming for you both (<----this is a joke) haha

thank you for answering my questions, i appreciate it, i do have one more question tho, how depended is this game on group play, i ask as a game called guild wars certainly implies the importance of guilds, and i would assume many people who play this are moving from one game to another with there old guild people?

Just a note, but the "Guild Wars" in the title is in reference to something from the lore of the first game. There was guild vs. guild PvP in the first game as well, but the Guild Wars were a story thing and they are no longer going on in GW2.

My main comment on the game, apart from what BloatedGuppy has said (I usually agree with him on GW2 stuff), is that the lack of endgame is a great thing for me, and it was an intentional part of the design. They want you to play the game for a while and have a fun time while you're doing it, rather than grind for a long time so that you can reach max level and then start having fun, and then they want you to do one or more of the following things: do the same with another character and have a very different experience from your first playthrough (by choosing a different class, different zones to level in, and different story choices), do PvP and WvW, do the optional grind required for unique armor/weapon appearances, or just stop playing and wait for new content (like the current Halloween events, or the major update they have planned for next month). All those options are perfectly acceptable for this game, since it has no subscription fee.

People don't say "I loved this single-player game until it ended and now I hate it because there's nothing to do," so it weirds me out that they say the same thing about GW2. Just because it's an MMO doesn't mean it has to be a second job.

well if that the case, I have got to say its a pretty misleading name then, in fact it was my belief about the whole guild thing that stopped me getting the game at launch ha.

would you mind telling me where i can find information on that next month update, been googling to find out what it is and cant seem to find anything on it.

and yeah i have seen people complain about that end game thing, but it seems pretty strange to me, mainly because they say this after playing something like 300 hours of the game getting to 80, then saying there is nothing to do, surely they have had plenty to do in those 300 hours?

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

well if that the case, I have got to say its a pretty misleading name then, in fact it was my belief about the whole guild thing that stopped me getting the game at launch ha.

would you mind telling me where i can find information on that next month update, been googling to find out what it is and cant seem to find anything on it.

and yeah i have seen people complain about that end game thing, but it seems pretty strange to me, mainly because they say this after playing something like 300 hours of the game getting to 80, then saying there is nothing to do, surely they have had plenty to do in those 300 hours?

Yep, and I actually think it was a really bad choice to call it "Guild Wars 2." With the handful of former GW1 players they brought onboard just from the title, we also saw: former GW1 players who hated GW2 for being so different from the first game, a bunch of people who didn't like GW1 who then ignored GW2 because they thought it would be more of the same, and a bunch of other people who passed on it because they thought they would have to play GW1 first. I have no proof, but I think their choosing the name "Guild Wars 2" caused them to sell fewer copies than they would have if they'd chosen another name like "Heroes of Tyria" or whatever. (And then people who played the game would be called Hotties. HA. Anyway.)

There's no information out about next month's update yet, apart from the fact that it's going to be big. They like keeping quiet about stuff until they have all the details worked out, and then they're quiet about it some more so they can surprise us.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Cheers,

but out of curiosity in what ways are they 'a mess' they don't work or they just badly made or something? also if the dungeons need avoiding how does that game progress? is it just through those wide open events things?

Well, keeping in mind this is my opinion (although the dungeons were generally ill received) they're just not well designed. Part of this is laziness (mobs just hit harder and have a ton of hit-points, which is a cheesy way to implement difficulty), part of it is that the very concept of tuned 5 man content does not play well with a classless game that employs generous level scaling in every other aspect of its design. The word "clusterfuck" is one that leaps most immediately to mind. If you're in a very skilled, well geared group who know one another well and cooperate with great coordination, you can do clean clears. If you're just nutsing around with PUGs and doing them as they become available, you can expect to die. A lot. Since the game standardizes loot, there are no purples or whopping upgrades to be had, you're really just in it for armor skins, which take many runs of the same dungeon to acquire. So your risk/reward curve is blown.

They're not horrible...we're not talking early Warhammer Online "dungeons" or anything here, but they're a pretty hard step down from the careful design seen in more PvE focused games like the paradigmatic WoW.

 

[ramboondiea]

messy dungeons

So I'm guessing the game also suffers from sub-par grouping mechanics then? i thought this game strives on clusterfuck fighting, at least that how all the PvP stuff looked, but can these problems be contributed to teething problems of a new game? especially a pretty expansive game? also you are comparing the dungeons to those in a game that has about ten years under its belt (i should point out i know very little about wow, so hat game could have been perfect from launch and I wouldn't have a clue so correct me if i am wrong with that) are those dungeons a fundamentally flawed system, are or they likely up for future fixes?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So I'm guessing the game also suffers from sub-par grouping mechanics then? i thought this game strives on clusterfuck fighting, at least that how all the PvP stuff looked, but can these problems be contributed to teething problems of a new game? especially a pretty expansive game? also you are comparing the dungeons to those in a game that has about ten years under its belt (i should point out i know very little about wow, so hat game could have been perfect from launch and I wouldn't have a clue so correct me if i am wrong with that) are those dungeons a fundamentally flawed system, are or they likely up for future fixes?

I don't think the design of the game lends itself to an optimal tuned experience, no. It's built ENTIRELY around a very flexible scaling system, so this is hardly a surprise. It it possible the game could get tighter as time goes by? Yes. Do I expect it to ever be a top tier dungeoneering experience? No.

The question of "group mechanics" is also a question of content. If you're doing a level scaled boss, or putzing around with a friend, the group mechanics work perfectly fine. If you're trying to tune an encounter so 5 and only 5 people can do it, and maximize the challenge for them, then being unable to account for things like aggro mechanics, healing, resource management, etc, makes that incredibly difficult. The result is a bunch of fights that are either extremely over tuned or under tuned, and everything feels messy as a result. I killed one boss by circle strafing him for 10 minutes with everyone else dead. The pinnacle of encounter design this is not.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The story is also pretty weak in all honesty, with the post-50 game being frustrating as Trahearne hogs all the glory.

Fucking Trahearne.

I hate him more than Zhaitan. Zhaitan never did anything but roar occasionally and sound cool and look good in concept art. Trahearne ruined the whole story.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

would you mind telling me where i can find information on that next month update, been googling to find out what it is and cant seem to find anything on it.

If you haven't seen it yet, they just teased what the November content update will be: a one-time event that opens up a new zone [https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/november-2012/].

 

[Zeren]

I played it up until I was forced to grind just so I could be strong enough to do the story. There are no quests other than the story quests so it felt empty and unfulfilling.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I played it up until I was forced to grind just so I could be strong enough to do the story. There are no quests other than the story quests so it felt empty and unfulfilling.

"Grind" as in killing random enemies for experience points? And no quests? Did you miss all the heart quests and dynamic events or something?

I'm confused.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

"Grind" as in killing random enemies for experience points? And no quests? Did you miss all the heart quests and dynamic events or something?

I'm confused.

Grind is a colloquialism now.

It just means "doing things".

You're talking about a freshly released MMO. Of course it's going to be buggy a month after release, it's an MMO.

I'm aware of what genre the game is in. It was unacceptably buggy through most of September. It has been improving, albeit slower than I would like, since then.

Perhaps you were happy with getting to Orr and finding 70% of the events broken. Perhaps you were delighted when week after week they were "fixed" only to be immediately broken again mere hours after the patch went live. This isn't 1998, the standards for release in this genre have changed.

Getting defensive about it and claiming me coming across bugs is somehow a "user problem" as though my ineptitude at games is breaking events or causing skill point NPCs to disappear is a confounding ad hominem.

 

[Zeren]

I played it up until I was forced to grind just so I could be strong enough to do the story. There are no quests other than the story quests so it felt empty and unfulfilling.

"Grind" as in killing random enemies for experience points? And no quests? Did you miss all the heart quests and dynamic events or something?

I'm confused.

I don't see those as valid quests. There is little to no story behind that, just stumbling upon something and killing it. If they were more like the story quests I would be happy.

 

[Gennadios]

...

Part of this is laziness (mobs just hit harder and have a ton of hit-points, which is a cheesy way to implement difficulty)

...

The word "clusterfuck" is one that leaps most immediately to mind.

...

They're not horrible...we're not talking early Warhammer Online "dungeons" or anything here, but they're a pretty hard step down from the careful design seen in more PvE focused games like the paradigmatic WoW.

I second the sentiment.

The saving grace is that the lack of defined class roles leaves plenty of room open for individual heroism. If you're really good at what you do, you won't need to compromise it to fit a group's needs in most cases, if everyone's really good at what they do, the dungeon will be a steamroll.

If everyone sucks at what they do, it's usually completable regardless, it'll just cost alot in armor repair and will lead to respawn relays where people make a beeline from the spawn point to get to the boss before their health starts regenerating.

They're not terribad, with a group of guildies or friends looking for something to do they can be quite fun, but you can see the missed opportunities plastered wall-to-wall.

Regardless, they're an extremely small part of the game. I've done the story modes and a few exploration runs and each of them and felt no need to go back, there's a ton of other stuff to take your attention and nearly everything is attainable without doing them.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I played it up until I was forced to grind just so I could be strong enough to do the story. There are no quests other than the story quests so it felt empty and unfulfilling.

"Grind" as in killing random enemies for experience points? And no quests? Did you miss all the heart quests and dynamic events or something?

I'm confused.

I don't see those as valid quests. There is little to no story behind that, just stumbling upon something and killing it. If they were more like the story quests I would be happy.

There's plenty of story behind them, if you stay and watch. Many of the events chain, if not most of them, and the chain always has a definite story. For example, there's an ogre village in one zone that has some merchants that aren't available to you unless the village has enough water stored up. There are two ogres whose job it is to gather water. You can help them do that by first killing off the harpies around the pond (the first event), then protecting the ogres as they gather water (the second event), and then escorting them back to the village (the third event). When you talk to the NPCs in the village and do its heart quest, you learn about the village and its inhabitants.

There's another one where you meet an asura who wants to do an experiment with raptor eggs, so you bring him the eggs. When that event ends, he performs his experiment and it goes horribly wrong, so you have to kill the giant raptor he created.

You have to look for the story, which most gamers aren't trained to do, but it's definitely there. It's not as simple as "click the NPC with the ! over their head and wait for exposition dump."