Registered Member #345
Joined: 2:28:49 am GMT 11/25/04
Posts: 1954
Just curious if anyone here is still playing GW2. I play occasionally and would love to party up with anyone else around. I'm still on Maguuma, but am willing to change servers if others are active elsewhere.
Registered Member #2039
Joined: 9:50:34 am GMT 07/16/12
Posts: 99
Just wondering if there are any of the players from thain playing on this game still? 'm on tarnished coast and 've been looking for some RP and 'm not having much luck as of yet.
Registered Member #279
Joined: 4:17:59 pm GMT 09/25/04
Posts: 5460
I'm playing the new version of Gw2 quite a lot this last week, and I thought I'd offer some comments. I haven't tried the main content of the expansion (the Maguuma Jungle) as I'm leveling a fresh character up from scratch presently.
I stopped playing originally in late-2012, since they has just released a new load of random dungeon style instance content, and I did not like the direction it was taking the game mechanically; which was towards a gear progression grind off very limited, randomized, content. It's possible the end game zones address this, but I can't say either way, yet. I will comment on a number of things that have changed since I last played, which will cover a few things they've done over the last 2+ years that now stand out to me.
The first, and most substantial improvement is the new "Action Camera Mode" setting. In original Gw2, like many MMO's, the camera locks to your character's direction of movement, and you steer either by using WASD, or mainly, by holding the right mouse button, and moving the mouse to change direction. I have some RSI issues, and the mouse-button mode tires my hand very fast, and limits the length of time I can play a game before needing a rest. Action Camera Mode, when toggled on, locks the direction of motion to the mouse without requiring a button to be held down. It adds a targeting reticle (which can be moved around a bit vertically/horizontally by settings), and auto-targets an enemy under the reticle. There is excellent logic under that so that one need not be a natural born sniper to play effectively, and it's forgiving and fairly accurate when targeting out of a cluster of mobs. This mode is optional, and adds to the flexibility of the interface greatly. There had been fan-made solutions which tricked the game into offering something like this, but the official action-camera support is far superior, and makes the game's combat vastly better imo.
They've also changed the way that gear appearance is done. Previously, to change a piece of gear, you had to get a piece with the desired appearance and a piece with the desired stats, and then meld them together into a new piece. Now, once you have acquired a piece with an appearance, that appearance is unlocked for your entire account. One can change the appearance of any worn piece of gear by spending a transmutation charge (sadly from the cash-shop, though they're cheap) and just picking any of the unlocked appearances as the new look for it. This is a big improvement, and adds a meta-game of collecting as many appearances as you can. On top of this, they've revised the outfits system. In the past, when you bought a specialty outfit, such as a pirate's outfit, you were given a set of pieces you could wear as part of your town-clothes (a separate non-combat set of gear you could arrange and toggle to) and then mix and match. Mix and match is out, sadly. One now wears a full outfit at a time, though you can hide the head pieces, shoulders, and arms, selectively. On the good side, since I've left they've added dozens of new outfits and cosmetic parts. Some of them are quite good, but many look overly-complicated and kitschy/trashy to my eye (I suppose that means most players love them all).
They've also overhauled the magic-find system. In the past, you could get gear with a stat called "Magic Find" which when worn, increased your luck at finding better quality items. Players used to game that mercilessly, finding weird combinations of gear that maximized Magic Find, even to the expense of their combat power. Now, magic find is an account-wide stat which is driven by how much "Luck" you find. One gets Essences of Luck in various grades at random and from certain rewards, and notably, by salvaging the higher grades of gear. You use these essences and they grant luck to your account, and then your account magic find scales with it. I'm not a fan of account-wide anything (banks, costumes, gold, and now luck) but it works well apart from that.
I can't find any specific update notes which address this, but I get the feeling they've tuned the normal game difficulty to smooth out the irregularities. This is not to say everything is a constant level of difficulty, only that the unexpectedly difficult spots in the zones and personal story are now more reasonable and make sense; and some of the parts I thought were trivially easy are now less so. This is part of expected maturation for any game, and I'm glad to see they haven't been ignoring it.
There's also a new dimension to character progression. The game still has a level cap of 80, and I'm not a fan of level cap increases anywhere; since that's just a numbers game that tends to get silly, just like treadmill gear progression. They've added new elite specializations for classes. At the level cap one can continue to progress by accumulating more "Hero Points" which come from various in-game activities; similar to experience, but more controlled and less grind-able. For instance, there are "Challenges" to overcome, and hard to access "Places of Power" to commune with spread around, which if found and completed yield a hero point. As I understand it, the new high level zones have lots of these in many combinations. Another dimension to end-game progression are "Masteries" which are new skill and ability capabilities covering lore, crafting, exploration, fighting, and so on, which are developed through playing the PvE game. I can't comment on how well this works, but I look forward to it.
There is a lot of new content I haven't touched.
If anyone else is playing, and wants to /friend me, my account handle in-game is "Ardrea.7045" and I play on the North American server (my old home server is Tarnished Coast). I am also a member of the roleplayers OOC-Mega guild, "Tarnished Coast Role Players [TCRP]".
Registered Member #279
Joined: 4:17:59 pm GMT 09/25/04
Posts: 5460
I've been continuiing to play, and have a few more observations to offer. My character reached level-cap earlier this week, and I was able to get decent gear as well. There's two fairly easily attainable level of gear suitable for end-game, "rare" and "exotic". There's about a 13% difference in the damage/defense and attribute stats between these two levels, and an additional 5% to the final tier, "Ascended", which I don't have (and may not ever get). Rare and exotic grade gear can both be crafted and are commonly available in the trading post, so it's not hard to get within 5% or so of peak performance, stats-wise. This means once one gets to the level cap, most all the end game is open to you.
And "end game" is a bit of a poor name for it. There are end-game level zones, but this game has automatic level scaling in place, at least downward, so you can take a level-capped character and return to lower level zones to complete content and play with others, and the level scaling wil make sure it's not trivial. A fully built out and equipped level-80 character will be stronger when scaled down than another character who is unscaled at the level of a zone, but it's not a huge difference. This is one of the best features of the game. In some cases, levels will scale up too, such as to the event instance zones for the current Halloween event. Last week, I took my level 25-ish character into the Halloween Mad King's Labyrinth zone, and was able to contribute reasonably among a group of level 80's. I understand it does this for World-vs-World pvp too, but I don't do the pvp, and can't offer comment on how well that works.
Since my character is now at the level cap and has gear that doesn't embarrass me, I started the new "Heart of Thorns" story-line. This is pretty simple, there's a story lead to find the first new zone and introduce the lore behind it. After completing that, I began exploring the first zone, and then got caught up in a good sized group following a zone event. That event traversed through the winding paths and cliff-sides into the next zone, and was pretty harrowing at times, and full of confusion. There's a learning curve here in these zones, but it's not impossible, but does demand some patience. I had to turn back when the majority of the group I was with lept off a cliff-side and flew away on their hang gliders -- I haven't unlocked that yet. That's one of the new "Mastery" skills; basically powerful utility skills which one can unlock by accumulating special zone experience. Each of the new zones has a specific set of masteries it can unlock, and they're each very different. I hadn't unlocked the first zone's masteries, but just by tagging along with that group for an hour or two, I was able to unlock 92% of the first level of gliding. I'll be back there soon, I'm sure.
Grouping in Gw2 has always been easy -- you are automatically considered allied with anyone near you, and rewards from kills for both experience and drops are based on contribution, not tagging or kill shots, so there's little to worry about in terms of kill or loot stealing. Buffs are automatically shared, and so in open world, having a formal party structure is unneeded. They've added a new feature, called "Squads". Only a player with a "Commander" tag can create one; a commander is a player achievement that places a moving marker on the map and mini-map wherever that player is, and also allows them to create a squad. They're easy to follow, and getting the achievement is hard enough that most casuals/trolls don't get it.
If you see a commander marker on the map, chances are good that's where some action is. The squad function is pretty basic, but useful. One can right-click on the marker, and bring up the pop-up menu and choose to join that commander's squad; you don't even need their permission. It does give you access to a special squad chat channel and the commander can place way-points representing orders for the squad on the map, such as attack, defend, and rally. When you squad up to a commander, the map icons of other commanders disappear, and it's then easier to stay with your own squad. Squads can be pretty big, and you can be in a party and a squad at the same time.
Back in the first zone, I started trying out the various mobs and opponents. They're strong; tougher than normal level-80 mobs in the core game, and have more special abilities. My character died a few times while I was gauging the level of caution and planning required, but I got the hang of it. I spent a few hours exploring; finding points of interest, viewing vistas, and even got into a heroic challenge with one other player, and the two of us over about half an hour defeated a champion boss designed for a full group.
Heroic challenges give "Hero Points", which you can spend to unlock further skills and traits in one's build, or even use to unlock the new class specializations. For my new character, who is a base class Guardian, the unlockable specialization will be Dragonhunter, which, when unlocked, will allow my character to wield a longbow and gain an entirely different set of attack powers with it. Normally, my character uses a sword for melee, and a scepter for ranged (medium distance). There is a new elite specialization for each base class, and I sense the potential for them to add new ones over time for further expansions. You don't gain additional levels through either masteries or elite specializations, but you do gain additional flexibility and power in modest amounts, along with expanded combat play-style potential.
One thing I noticed in the new zones was much more varied mob-dropped loot. First, there was a lot of it, but perhaps that was due to the scale of the fighting there. Secondly, there are a lot of distributed loot points on the map, and these are locked chests or locked objects. In these cases, you need keys (or suchlike) to open them, and keys and key fragments are found from normal loot drops and local achievements. One such key is a "crowbar" and it's used to salvage special components dropped from fallen airships -- the story explains this.
I found that it enhances the game play a fair amount; there's more to do and look for inorder to get to the bulk of the loot, not just blindly zerg and vacuum up drops. Some of the keys can be purchased from vendors who want special zone or faction currencies for them, and some are made from dropped fragments one finds from loot vacuuming. I also suspect this is there to drive cash-shop sales of inventory bag slots; my inventory was getting jammed full a lot, and it crossed my mind that I need more space a time or twenty. We'll see, and I plan to keep playing a while longer yet -- it's fun.
Registered Member #279
Joined: 4:17:59 pm GMT 09/25/04
Posts: 5460
I will now share some frustration I feel with Gw2. This may sound kind of ranty, which it is, but I'll also state I'm still playing it as of today.
I like playing "iconic" characters. One such classic iconic build is the sword/shield fighter. In Gw2, you can do this, but it cripples the character, since shield pretty much sucks on both the classes that use it. Equipment doesn't have preferred statistics, so a shield in Gw2 does not even potentially grant you any more defensive statistics than any other off-hand weapon or item. You could hold a tiny shrunken head, or a fistful of leaves, or a voodoo doll, and they'd have the same statistics. In Gw2, the off hand item equipped determines the powers you get for your #4 and #5 power slots. On a Guardian, one of those powers for a shield is a weak outgoing woosh that slightly damages opponents, grants you a few seconds time window where you might block 1/3 of the damage from one incoming attack, and maybe helps a couple of allies nearby similarly. The other power creates a dome of absorption which can absorb projectiles, but which also does a large AoE knock-back (universally despised in group combat) and leaves you in a crouch where all you can do is wait for the power to end. Supposedly, if you end it on purpose, it will heal allies, but this seems to have been broken for the last three years.
In an action combat game, I minimally expect a shield to passively increase my defense, and give me an active ability to block an attack if I can time it well. And extra ability to use the shield to defend close-by allies or to push-back/stun opponents would fit too. But no, this is not what shield does for Guardians in Gw2. What about Warriors? They too, can use shields, but again, there's no passive increase in defense that any other off-hand item couldn't equally grant, but at least the active powers look more promising. There's a bash attack, which can stun your foe. The animation on it looks terrible though. I'm playing an iconic character for the look and feel, and this is flat stupid looking; like a sprinter jumping off the mark and then getting caught on a leash. The opponent doesn't respond in an impactful manner or even well synchronized in time, and ends up with me feeling embarrassed for having tried to use it. So, on to the block ability. Yes! A Block! Hallelujah! Oh wait... Now, for some context, I have played two MMOs with very effective and well designed shield blocking systems; Tera and Neverwinter Online. In each of those, blocking is reaction based, directional, and consumes a slowly regenerating blocking resource to make it impossible to just block forever. Not Gw2. Blocking is an omni-directional power that lasts a fixed three-second duration and then has a fixed recharge rate of twenty seconds. In Tera and NWO, if you can judge your opponents actions by their animation tell-tales, one can sparingly use the limited blocking resource to block frequently for fractions of a second. The better the player's skill, the more effective it is. It's all or nothing in Gw2, and while blocking you can't do anything else. In NWO, there's several options for blocking-attacking combinations, which allows for more player judgment and choice to come into play. In Tera, a successful block can be followed up with a powerful shield bashing counterattack combo, and also shields those behind the blocker from many attacks. Both of those allow for the utility of blocking to be more than occasionally delaying the fight for three seconds.
My gripes with the specifics of the classes in Gw2 are not limited just to shields and those two professions; it's all over the place. The mechanics to me feel like a good idea executed very badly. It's like a beautifully decorated cake where the icing tastes like sour milk and the cake itself like baking soda; or a hamburger that's all condiments and no burger. They've tried so hard to get superficial nuance and complexity that they've missed the basic foundations. The powers don't do the core functions I expect, do too much other stuff that too often doesn't make sense to me, and the equipment model boils down to interchangeable graphics with the same mixes of stats attached, only really differing in a few quirky, non-iconic, and overly complicated powers.
[ The Island of Thain ]
Guild Wars 2
