4261

If anything the complaints in this thread are always good for a chuckle - I don’t really understand what people expect from gw2.

4262

I don’t know if you played WoW or not but it really did feel personal playing on a PvP server. I can still hear that dwarf laugh after being ganked. It was a real rivalry. Do you feel anything like that in the WvW? I haven’t. I can’t even tell you name of the rival servers. Does it even matter what server it is? If you played WoW and played on a PvP server you must have felt that rivalry and tension.

I loved to kill Alliance players. Loved it. I didn’t always do it – often we’d wave at one another and go about our PvE business, but there was plenty of open world PvP I engaged in. I even enjoyed killing NPC Alliance. I’d rather do a quest that had me killing poofy elves instead of zombies.

Let me put it another way: wouldn’t it be more interesting if every Asura and Charr you saw you knew immediately was an enemy?

4263

That is a nice thought too bad the reality is roving gank squads corpse camping low level players that run away when ever a suitable challenge shows up.

There is obviously an audience for gank style play unfortunately it involves a second party not enjoying it.

For the record I want revenge on servers that steal stonemist from us - scattering us to the wind and burning our guild banner more than I ever wanted to kill that max level rogue killing my lowbie hunter.

If wow is what you want go play it - that formula has been done so many times - no need to drag a breath of fresh mmo air down that road…again.

4264

Nah, GW2 and ANet should be blasted every bit as much for their failings in this regard. There is much more broken content in GW2 now than there ever was in TSW. As much as I enjoy the game it’s getting old constantly running into content that doesn’t work. Oh, and good luck if you ever need customer service for anything, it’s as bad as I’ve ever experienced in one of these games.

4265

I need some guardian help, because I have to be the squishiest guardian ever. On my mesmer, I run around like a chicken with its head cut off and just toss up illusions all over and survive pretty well (unless all the running around attracts a bigger crowd). If I’m feeling brave, I’ll switch from greatsword over to sword/sword and dive into melee range, but that is MUCH more risky.

On the guardian, diving into melee range is my only option. So I do. And I get tenderized. I’ve been downed more on my guardian pre-lvl 10 than my higher level mesmer. Anyone have good learn2play advice? I’m mostly running with greatsword at the moment, but will switch to anything that’ll help :)

4266

There isn’t much open world PvP in WoW, sadly, so the roving gank squads don’t really exist. You see them more in GW2’s WvW than you do in WoW. It tends to be one on one if you find it all in WoW. It’s something WoW never really got going other than for a brief period of time when honor points were implemented but battlegrounds weren’t yet ready to go. That was a lot of fun if you liked PvP and could put up with being ganked and having trouble questing. I thought it was great but a lot of players hated it.

There even used to be some PvP that would occur near Blackrock as both sides would gather there to group for the instances, but with the dungeon finder now that’s lost. PvP in WoW is the battlegrounds and arena. Still, that’s pretty good. There’s a lot of variety in the battlegrounds, a lot of different game types. I just wish Wintergrasp would be upgraded so players would play it again.

4267

I just expect nightly reboots ;)

4268

TLDR; This SA thead has some great theorycraft and advice: Guardian Discussion: Is it a tank? Is it a healer? No, it’s a Guardian!

You don’t have to melee with the Guardian; in fact, part of the allure is that you are a gorram armored wizard with lightning sticks. Despite the heavy-armor appearance, Guardians have one of the lowest base HP pools of any class. Due to their low HP pool, be sure to target Vitality and then Toughness for stats. That is also where I put the majority of my Guard’s trait points. As a ranged option, I always always always have Staff as my second weapon. It doesn’t hit the hardest but the amount of utility and med-range (600) dmg it has is amazing.
#1 is a very broad front cone AOE;
#2 if you don’t detonate it is a fairly quick refresh higher damage attack;
#3 is a run-speed buff and targeted AoE;
#4 is 12 stacks of might and a wide area heal;
#5 is a blocking wall that makes chokepoints deathtraps and will break up enemy groups.

Scepter also has a longer range (1200) with more focus on single-target dmg. Don’t be afraid to stand back and do ranged damaged, particularly against other ranged groups where you can be easily focused and movement provides less damage reduction.

This bears mentioning; in combat, even as ranged, Never Stop Moving. Its also important as ranged as so many mobs have windup big attacks that can be avoided but it is absolutely critical as a melee and doubly so a a hitpoint-challenged Guardian. Don’t be afraid to (and one should practice doing so) switch back and forth between weapons in combat, and if possible and you are getting shellacked but not owning agro, you can back out and let the virtues regen and active heals bring your HP pool back up a bit. In the bigger fights where I am not “tanking” (the focus of agro), I will often switch between Staff, run through all of the buffs particularly #4, and then switch back to Hammer or Greatsword.

Use your Virtues. They may have a long refresh but can be critical in crucial moments. I put this here because I forget them all the time. :)

Mace+shield is a good way to go if you are getting downed often, as the mace has a good mix of dmg/small heal/boon and the shield adds survivability.

In the beginning, the class squishiness is readily apparent. Early on tactically, I would be careful of drawing huge amounts of attention until your stats start to balance out the inherent class weaknesses. My Guard is close to 50 now, though and can do some incredible things. I came upon a couple of downed players in the Hirathi Highlands who were centered in a large Centaur group leaving the last stronghold. I had Staff out for the run-speed buff; I dropped a new one right on top of them, ran through to refresh the buff and get their attention, and started AoE kiting the cents. I dropped the wall in the kite path and popped “Save Yourselves” for the myriad of buffs (including power). After I wore them down a while, I switched to the Greatsword and started mixing in Symbol of Wrath and Whirling Wrath, using healing Signet and “Retreat” as needed. In the end, 10 dead centaurs, two rescued players, one heart won over by the class. :)

4269

Forgive me for pulling just your quote from the pile of the “DE’s aren’t all that”, but that one sentence seems the best jumping off point. Sure, the quests and boss spawns may seem that simple, but I’ve found you have to do things many gamers may find boring to know why the boss spawned.

For example, the video linked up thread about a boy building a strawman army …
Skip this part, if you don’t care for examples of finding boss spawn backstory exposition

[spoiler]In the video linked up thread about a boy building a strawman army that if you follow you see a grawl attack may have looked like “kill the grawl shaman” if you showed up when that boss icon popped on the map. Before he built the army though and before his collect quest for mats for said army, if you followed a limping NPC in from a nearby area to his house you’d have found out that was his father, injured the only survivor of a grawl attack. And, if you talked to EVERY NPC in the house you’d realized the mother forbid the father to do anything but rest since presumably he was on his death bed, and they both forbid the son from anything as he was too young. The boy was out there defying both parents in a bid to do something to save his family. Because the grawl were still coming (!!!) and he was the only one who could save them.

But if you wandered by the house right as the last boss popped, that would be all you saw (and there are two events before that that show on the map). Even the video maker hadn’t seen the initial story set-up, which had no quest associated, just the NPC spawning and limping in. Nor had he talked to all the NPCs in the house at the right moment in the chain to get the exposition dialog. He only picks it up at the first point where a “collect bear asses” type of game content appears, which does show on the map.

Some family and I also ran into another event in an unmarked cave that didn’t spawn unless you read a bunch of gravestones. Then waited, and then the ghost aggressor (a dolyak) that killed the cave’s prior inhabitants reappears, also as a ghost and they reenact the story, eventually spawning a veteran ghost of the leader of the original inhabitants which you can then kill. The only part of that that would have shown on the map would have been the last boss spawn. Crappy loot, btw.[/spoiler]

I actually like that all this is there. But in defense of whach-a-mole treadmill, I’m in poor health right now and some nights that’s all I feel like. And if that’s all you want this game can deliver it. If you do like talking to every NPC for backstory, its there! But yakking (pun intended after Dolyak story) for hours with NPCs, reading every clickable object and randomly following any NPC that moves can get kinda boring too. GW2 does a good job of giving options in how you consume the content that can appeal more than one type. So my initial reaction is kudos. Or even, I’ll blow through this content once, but I promise I’ll come back and read the quest text and talk to NPCs later. Ahem.

The amount of content in those hidden caves, text on clickables in the environment, and NPC dialogs explaining why the boss spawned is a bit staggering to me for both a new release and a game that I thought was at least half e-sport. Oh, but all this story stuff still has crappy loot. =P

Yes please! Three minutes after marveling at some hidden gem of detailed exposition dialog, I’m grumbling about not being able to finish the next broken skill point. :/ As an ex-crunch-timer (non-game), do the reboots. Get some sleep. It will probably be fixed faster that way anyway.

How is it balanced? Once I’m feeling better we want to start tackling those again. I hear, and read, everything from “its too hard” to “its too easy even in explore” to “I get instagibbed on some fights” to “learn to dodge newb”. The last time we did a run with 2 pug members, didn’t seem too bad. No deaths (was CM after last round of changes).

How are you finding that content? Still needs polish/balancing on some fights? or good to go now?

4270

I played WoW from beta until Cata, almost entirely on a PVP server. Nothing in WoW’s “world PVP” was anything better than pointless ganking, and that includes the misty-eyed reminiscing over all those hours in Tarren Mill spent leeroying into the enemy crowd and back again.

You simply can’t compare GW2’s World vs World with WoW’s world PVP. The latter is a complete joke. Sure, it adds ‘tension’ (usually just irritation in truth, unless you were one of the classes suited to ruining someone else’s day), and yes it was slightly more personal on a per-character basis, but it wasn’t anything you could genuinely give a shit about. As for how it worked mechanically, I don’t think even you could say WoW did it better. Every time they tried to make it meaningful, tried to add objectives and tried to make their PVE-game-with-PVP-bolted-on into something that people might play primarily for the PVP, they fucked it.

Let me put it another way: wouldn’t it be more interesting if every Asura and Charr you saw you knew immediately was an enemy?

No?

4271

Well, that was a fun story mission. Level 64, I think.

First thing, NPC pal does almost no damage and holds no aggro, so a veteran-type mid-boss foe + 2 high-damage minions + random adds from patrols are too much for me underwater where my options are very limited. Call in a friend, we handle it.

Next swim up to a krait boat, and immediately get trapped in geometry, can’t move, tumble out or anything. Waypoint out and try again.

Next, have to kill all the krait on the boat, except one keeps respawning and turning invulnerable. Finally it goes permanently invulnerable to me and friend, but is able to fight with the NPC, who does about 1/10 as much damage as it does. Krait kills NPC. We revive her. NPC heals too, but not quite to full. We do this over and over again and eventually the NPC manages to kill the last krait.

On to final boss who is a regular veteran who I could have defeated straight up myself. Sigh. But it’s done now :)

4272

I finished the story yesterday and had a fair amount of frustrations along the way as well for what was really just a mediocre experience. I liked the myriad of choices it let you make, but I didn’t really feel any attachment or unique qualities in any of the characters. And I could have lived with the so-so voice acting if the story was actually interesting; sadly it largely was not.

The story is definitely NOT GW2’s strong suit. The Secret World and, to a lesser extent, SWTOR, was much more engaging in that regard.

That said, I’m still loving the hell out of GW2 after a month of solid play. I dread to even look at my total minutes played at this point.

4273

Yeah, there’s no way I’d look at how much time I’ve put into this game at this point. Still going strong as well.

4274

That’s no longer true. Ever since Blizzard instated cross-realm zones, world PvP has become very common. I’m as happy as a pig in mud over this fact!!!

4275

As far as typical grind based mmorpgs go (ie every mmorpg except SWTOR and TSW), i think guild wars 2 probably has the best story from what i’ve seen.

4276

How was SWTOR any less grindy than the others? I thought it was worse, given all the undisguised time sinks (travel time, etc).

4277

Well, it wasn’t really. I was mainly looking for a way to separate more typical progress quest type mmorpgs where you just kill tons of boars or do tons of quests with the sole purpose of leveling up in some fashion vs those that try to make experiencing the story part of the mix as well.

If you try to compare story heavy mmorpgs with progress quest mmorpgs, of course the story in all progress quest ones will look horrible.

4278

I find the way GW2 interweaves the class stories with exploration, events, and normal questing/grinding actually superior to SWTOR’s story mode. SWTOR did a good job, especially the integration of in-engine cutscenes and quality voice acting, but GW2 makes me feel like the intervals between the story missions are organic; I’m getting from here to there, and along the way I’m generally saving the world, etc. so that by the time I get to where I need to be, I’m ready for the story interlude.

4279

Yes, but it hits the same problem all open world’ish games hit.

I’m walking to my quest to rescue my friend from being killed by the jealous husband of the woman she was having an affair with. On the way, some guy runs up to me and says there is a giant wasp is killing everyone and i need to go save the day. I run to the location and, along with 10 other people, we zerg this wasp until it drops loot. After that i go rescue my friend and then i go to the next heart location.

The problem is this isn’t epic at all and i’d hardly even call it a “story.”

This kind of makes me want to resub to swtor actually. In swtor i was on the run from the empire after they backstabbed me after a particularly nasty job. All formerly friendly imperials were out to get me. In gw2 i’m just wandering looking for hte circle.

4280

Brilliant. Yeah, although I’ve enjoyed SWTOR, TSW and GW2 with their stronger emphasis on story, still at the end of the day there’s always something jarring about being sidetracked into what are essentially side-quests, while you’re on your way to the main quest.

The “flow” is almost always broken in some way.

But having said that, if you take a “walking” approach and really make the exploration a whole thing you take relatively slowly, suspend disbelief and get into the illusion of the virtual world, the Hearts and DEs do a pretty good job of simulating stuff you might encounter in the way of doing a main quest that involves you travelling around.

What would be nice would be to have the orange alert stuff more controllable, so you can have a bit more of a “fog of war” if you want it.

That way, too, you’d be less disturbed by the information about quests over thataway that you’re not going to be doing (making you feel some discomfort and regret).