I enjoy mounts. Why? Because there are specific areas for specific levels. And, seeing as each area for each level obviously can't be too close, they have to be spread out. And how do we get there quicker? Mounts. Just comes down to the overall design of how they want their game to work, again.
Which harkens back to the point I made earlier: impatience. If you simply can't wait to get from one spot to the other, and simply REFUSE to use waypoints or other such methods, then you will see value in mounts. Otherwise, they're rather useless except as status symbols.
You don't need to buy character slots in Tera. Or more accurately, I am pretty sure you can't. For each server, you can have 8 character slots I think. Which is enough for 1 character of each class. His argument wasn't that Tera is cheaper. It is that when you buy it, you feel like you get the game as a whole.
With his character slot example. With Tera, you buy the game, and you get 8 character slots for each server, which is 1 for each class. With GW2 (I am assuming) you probably get around 4? Which isn't even enough for each class. So, In order to have a character for each class, you have to dish out $10 for each additional character you want past your 4 standard ones. Tera feels more like a full game, because you can have 1 of each class and not have to buy anything else, where as with GW2, if you want one of each class, that is an additional $40. (Of course, all that is under the assumption that, if I remember correctly, there is only 4 character slots and 8 classes).
You get five slots in GW2. That's one for each race, but yes, not one per profession. That's $30 for the extra slots, assuming you HAVE to have one of every profession. But that's not a required cost, nor does it make GW2 "less of a game", so the argument is still absurd no matter how you twist it, really.
major_chaos said:
I realize that my statement came off as snark but I was genuinely asking a question, I would love it if you could link me a video of someone playing GW2 and moving and dodging about and making the combat look interesting, my point was just that *from what I saw* GW2's combat was boring WoW style tab-target, I would love to see something prove me wrong becuse I would like an MMO with combat even better than TERA
Seeing as someone else has already covered this, I'll leave it to that as it's a good video archive.
Also worth watching are some of GW2's actual boss fights.
Tequatl the Sunless (a "small" dragon)
Shadow Behemoth (the boss I spoke of in a previous post)
The Shatterer (another "minor" dragon)
It can be difficult to see in some of them, but they're generally dropping AoE all over the map and summoning minions to attack you. The way boss fights are designed, there are multiple roles to fulfill during combat that MUST all be fulfilled for the group to survive. For example, in the Shadow Behemoth fight, portals open throughout the fight that allow countless minions to pour out and slaughter people while they try to pound away at the boss, so some players have to focus on killing those minions and closing up the portals. Other times you'll find that some players got caught in an AoE blast and need to be revived or are close to being downed, so you'll have to hurry over to their defense.
While that does sound interesting I was also referring to cities and how they are supposedly massive as well but there isn't going to be anything going on but lots of walking. The primary thing that got me worried about this is when I saw someone GUSHING about how they got lost in a large city for fifteen minutes and still hadn't found whatever it was they were looking for and how that alone was PROOF that GW2 was the best MMO ever, when that just sounds painful to me
Cities ARE massive. Absurdly so, actually. I remember being impressed at the sheer size of their cities, and how realistic they feel as a result. The travel problem isn't a pain honestly, for a couple reasons:
1) You gain experience for locating "points of interest" or waypoints anywhere on the map, including cities.
2) Once you have visited a waypoint once, you can travel back to any point in the town using the waypoint system. As long as you're inside the town itself, going from one waypoint to another is entirely free. Waypoints in the outside world cost a small amount of copper to travel to (the amount is pretty trivial though, I never found myself strained for cash and I used waypoints generously).
So traveling around in a city is actually pretty painless if you want it to be. But it's also enjoyable to just wander around and soak it all in, too. It's really quite beautiful.
The thing about "enjoying the world" is that if I want to look at scenery there is this place called "outside" if a big world in a game is going to be enjoyable there either needs to be a way to get from point A to point B quickly(mounts or waypoints), or things need to happen between the two points and GW2 seems to be one of the first to try the later.
Er, no. I understand that this is a matter of personal taste, but I happen to hold strongly to the belief that your taste is just wrong.
A game world should feel as genuine as the real one. It SHOULD immerse the player, it SHOULD keep you interested, and it SHOULD look good because you're going to be looking at that world for hours and hours and hours. When you start saying that game worlds shouldn't be realistic because "that's what the outdoors is for", I have to just dismiss your point entirely out of hand. Putting no effort into a game world's LOOKS is just lazy and sloppy game design in an age when players should not have to choose between fun combat, engaging story, and a game that looks beautiful. If a player must wander between Point A and B at all, the experience between those points had better be enjoyable, or at least look pretty, or your game will feel like a grind and you won't retain players forever that way. When people complain about bad textures or how stupid something looks, that's not accidental, it's because they want their game to feel authentic enough that they can get lost in it and devote hours of their time into it. When you submit the notion that game worlds don't have to provide immersion, you're basically saying that MMOs should feel like a grind to get from A to B all the time, and that's basically throwing in the towel on the notion of a GAME. Games are for fun, they're not supposed to be a second job.
Sorry, but I feel strongly about this one. You can't possibly try to argue that a game should include mounts because you're supposed to just rush from point to point, and grind it out like you're working the 8-to-5 shift. I happen to like it when my game decides to let me explore and faff around for a few hours if I want to. A game that's linear won't hold my attention for long.
not to me they aren't, as my standard practice in RPGS is to level one of every class to an early milestone and then decide what I like most.
This is a personal problem, though. It's not the game's fault you have an inherent need to play every profession and/or race. Not to mention, I'll note that TERA doesn't provide enough slots to play every class and race combination (since that would be ridiculous) yet you don't seem to feel like this makes it less of a game. This seems entirely like a personal issue, not something that "ruins" or even remotely damages the quality of the game. 3-5 save slots is very common in video games, and I don't think 5 slots with the option to expand that limit indefinitely is outrageously low in a game with 8 total professions.
Plus, the cost of storing extra character data ain't exactly cheap. Does it cost 10 bucks? Eh, I doubt it, but it's their call how much they decide it's worth. Most MMOs won't give you the option at all.
I have one of every class on one sever and one other on a PvP server and the game hasn't given me any trouble so if there are limits they are very high, while I assume the the defualt limit in GW2 is going to be two or three, otherwise no one would feel the need to pay ten buck for more.
Again, it's five with the option to expand that pretty much indefinitely, so long as you buy the extra slots in the cash shop. It helps to go look for information about the game rather than guessing.
TERA is limited to eight (one per profession) per server, with no option to expand that.
I'm not trying to say that what I am trying to say is that A. I dislike my game being sold to me in pieces, that's one reason why I'm done with CoD is i'm sick of the inevitable three or four map packs and B. for *me personally* TERA is actually looking like the smaller initial investment at $50 for the game and at most $100 for the sub (and that' a full year)as compared to GW2's $60 for the game $30-$60 depending on how many you start with for enough character slots to try all the classes, and on top of that IIRC armor is purely cosmetic and bought from the cash shop, with stats being determined by dropped items that don't make any visual difference, and while I don't care what other people think its going to start bothering me when I hit 30 and still look like I just waltzed off the starting platform, so that's another $20 to not look retarded, and suddenly I realize that at least the sub fee spreads it out over time. (the part about the armor is based off something I heard from a friend and may be total bullshit so feel free to correct me on that one)
Except that, as another user mentioned, TERA also has a cash shop in the States. So much for that point.
As for the costs, assuming you live in the States: TERA costs $50 to buy and then $107.40 if you choose to buy a one-year subscription during the inaugural period (prior to May 31st, 2012), if you buy later than that then you're paying $119.40 per year. That makes for a total initial cost of $157.40 (or $169.40 after the 31st) for exactly one year of play.
This, of course, assumes you purchase in yearly quantities, otherwise it's $14.99 per month, meaning an upfront cost of only $64.99, with an overall cost of about $229.88 after one year of play.
Guild Wars 2 costs $60 to purchase, and has no subscription fees. Assuming you MUST have your extra three character slots ($30 for that, assuming you indeed pay with real money....though as explained below, that may not be necessary), that's still an overall cost of $90 after one year of play, and you can keep playing the game after that first year because of the lack of a subscription, meaning the differences in cost will only get more and more massive as the years pass.
Furthermore, your point about armors is uninformed. Armor is purchase-able in the game every five levels for in-game gold or craftable with the crafting system, and it also drops from random monsters, AND special sets of armor are available from the game's dungeons. The statistics of an armor can be matched up with the cosmetic appearance of an armor that you think "looks cooler" using an item called a transmutation stone, and those are indeed sold in the cash shop. However, prices on those are not 100% set in stone yet. Also, the game's micro-transaction shop runs on a different system of money called "gems". Gems are obtainable within the game from other players for gold, meaning that with enough gold (and enough gem supply), one could potentially purchase micro-transaction currency in the game without paying real money for any of it, and could then spend that money as they wish. This is part of GW2's effort to introduce a player-driven market economy and to reward players for their in-game effort by giving them a way to turn hours of gameplay (and piles of gold) into benefits that they could only buy with real cash in other games.
So, sorry, but you're not going to win the "cheaper" argument. Not only is TERA significantly more expensive after only one year of play, but GW2's cash shop allows players to potentially purchase micro-transaction stuff entirely for free, provided they are willing to invest their time and effort into actually playing the game. Will this model work out? I hope so, honestly, because it seems like the RIGHT way to do a cash shop rather than the "screw the customer" way to do a cash shop.
