What better way to spend a sunny weekend than playing games indoors. If I had a portable generator I would have likely taken my desk outside, but then I’d have only had sun glare on my monitor. Instead, I packed off my family for three days and decided to stay indoors away from the sun’s rays, playing Guild Wars 2 for more than 42 hours (curse the need to sleep!)…
If you haven’t already read my last Beta Impressions of Guild Wars 2, you should head on over and take a read. I won’t be repeating myself here or covering old ground and instead will be picking out the main concerns raised by other players I encountered on my travels.
First and foremost, there really were some strange complaints; baffling complaints. One particular favourite saw an Engineer bemoaning to me the fact he didn’t know which profession had a flamethrower or turrets, while another saw a thief or two asking where the permanent stealth button was. What this really said to me was that as good as ArenaNet’s marketing is, there is a long way to go in informing the masses of the most basic of details. It’s easy to forget that those outside of the Guild Wars 2 bubble don’t follow it as religiously as someone like me.
Let’s begin, shall we?
My Thief is useless in World versus World!
I wasn’t particularly surprised when I heard people saying this in the Mists. Where large open spaces are concerned, there is the expectation that ranged professiones will always dominate. This, in many ways, is true. However, what the individuals I encountered were failing to understand or appreciate was the necessity to change weapon sets where appropriate and adapt to the situation. Like a ranged profession in Battle of Khylo, a map that has narrow streets and few open spaces, ranged professions are forced to adopt a skirmish approach with shortbow or melee weapons. Similarly, a thief has the ability to use dual pistols or shortbow in WvW (the thief’s shortbow has some wonderful area of effect skills) if they want to remain at range. What was also clear was that many thieves were failing to think of clever ways to utilise their skills. Instead they were rigidly sticking to a melee playstyle and wondering why they were being eaten alive from a distance.
Infiltrator’s Arrow, coupled with Steal and Shadowstep, are three methods of quickly closing distance if you wish to maintain a melee playstyle. Using Shadow Refuge, Roll for Initiative, Withdraw or Blinding Powder are also wonderful escape tools after your initial assault. Combing these skills will easily see you enter and exit quickly and is a combination of skills I used them regularly for that purpose with great effect.
It appeared to me that many look upon the thief’s shortbow or pistol/pistol setup with displeasure as they perhaps assume their damage is significantly reduced or it doesn’t fit their preconceived image of the ‘stealth’ profession. All I could say to that is if a thief still insists on only using melee skills without the supporting skills to dip in and out of combat quickly, there is always the option to undertake additional WvW objectives, such as recruiting an ogre camp.
My pet is so dumb, it just doesn’t do anything!
I’ll hold my hands up, pets are frighteningly inconsistent. Tell your pet to attack and it’ll often stay frozen in place; tell it to use its special skill and it will likely ignore you. Some pets work great and some are downright broken. The Bears (Black, Brown and Polar) it seems have all had their batteries removed and are more akin to a plush toy than a fierce fighting machine. In contrast, the Fern Mastiff and Wolf/Artic Wolf work really well, though there are still some issues with them responding to commands, often resulting in you having to press the attack [F1] or special attack button [F2] multiple times to get them to move.
ArenaNet have assured me and beta testers that they are continuing to work on pet AI to ensure it is up to scratch and I have noticed a vast improvement since the last phase. What is strange though is that there was a massive difference in pet responsiveness from Friday and Saturday to the Sunday. On Sunday my pet was behaving just as it should, where as only days before it was relatively useless. Perhaps ArenaNet dropped a sneaky patch on us. Let’s hope they manage to fix it.
Guardians are so overpowered!
It’s quite the statement and I heard it regularly during the beta. I would be lying to suggest that guardians aren’t difficult to kill, because they are. They can take huge amounts of damage and do reasonable damage. Having primarily played the engineer, thief and ranger during this phase I never struggled against any guardians, though some certainly caused more difficulty than others. I found that when fighting them they were, in many ways, the opposite of a warrior (in a good way); the guardian having more survivability and less damage and the warrior providing more damage but less survivability.
They are certainly a formidable opponent, and I recorded one guardian that survived for quite some time with more than 3 people attacking him. But to suggest they are overpowered simply because they have survivability is very subjective. Inevitably, there are many factors that determine a professions balance:
- Your personal skill with X profession
- Your opponent’s skill with X profession
- Your profession composition (traits/weapon sets/skills)
- Your opponent’s composition (traits/weapon sets/skills)
- Your use of your skill cooldowns
- Your opponent’s use of their skill cooldowns
- The map and layout
I’m not suggesting that Guild Wars 2 balance is perfect (its not far from!) but I’ve never once died to a guardian and thought “They are so overpowered!” or “That skill is ridiculous!” as in hindsight I know I could have done X, Y or Z differently and succeeded.
Engineers are too complex!
I found this really surprising and I honestly never thought I would see the day when people publically complain about a profession being too complicated. I’m also really unsure where this stems from, as Guild Wars 2 gently provides you with an introduction to all skills and tools for your chosen profession, as you level. I suspect it is based on people choosing the profession and teleporting instantly to the Mists. At which point their head melts at the abundance of weapons, skills, utility skills, kits, armour and elites.
On the face of it, I would probably agree that the engineer appears quite complex. In reality, it really is rather simple.
- You have one primary weapon set (Rifle, Pistol/Pistol, Pistol/Shield)
- You can equip “kits” that replace your primary weapon set.
- You can equip multiple “kits” and thus achieve multiple weapon sets.
- Equipping any skill or “kit” in slot 7 to 9 provides you with an additional utility skill bound to F keys.
I believe the “it’s too complex” stems from the fact that the game doesn’t explicitly tell you any of this; it simply assumes you as the player will figure it out. Perhaps it might be of value for ArenaNet to add a greater profession description during the profession selection process, to avoid any confusion. Alternatively they could always add a warning message before joining the Mists; “Visiting the Mists will level your character to level 80 and will provide you with all skills, traits and maximum armour. This may blow your mind if you are new to Guild Wars 2.”
Combat is whack-a-mole!
I was literally lost for words when a small handful of people were discussing this. The Reddit post by Mr. I’ll-Break-The-NDA is now relatively famous, but what I find frustrating is the sheer ignorance of what is a remark without foundation. To be blunt, if you whack-a-mole your skills during later stages of PvE (anything after level 11), and during any stage of PvP you are, by default, going to die. Not only will you will be punished time and time again for failing to manage your heals, your stuns, your parries or knockbacks but you will soon realise that blasting through your cooldowns is nothing short of suicidal.
Guild Wars 2 combat, like many MMOGs, comes to life as you begin to level and acquire more skills. In early PvE encounters you can get away with using all your skills without fear of dying, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from starter zones. They are designed to ease players into the game, to allow them to learn mechanics and the basic functioning of their profession.
Having now invested over 80 hours into Guild Wars 2 I have gone from being inconsistent in 1 on 1 encounter > to competent > to winning most > to capable of taking on 2 or 3 players at once. This wasn’t achieved by me whack-a-moleing my skills, but by making effective use of all my cooldowns.
Dodge is pointless!
This couldn’t be further from the truth. In PvE during the early stages it is likely you will rarely need to dodge. However even during the first boss encounter for each race there is the necessity, at times, to use it. During the Duke Barradin boss in the Charr starting zone, to not dodge in certain instances will see your character knocked back regularly and take heavy damage. The necessity to dodge effectively is even more apparent in PvP. Avoiding AOE, heavy strikes, explosives, mines, standard attacks and ranged fire are all possible with effective use of dodge. If you don’t use it, timely and wisely, you will die quickly and will be easy pickings for those that do.
A recent encounter on my ranger, this phase, saw me survive and kill a warrior and elementalist at the same time thanks to using dodging properly. I was able to keep distance, avoid damage and secure those precious few seconds needed while waiting for my heal to recharge. If I had simply strafed around my opponents I would have died, just on the unfair odds. Instead, I went on to kill them both and another ranger who was nearby.
It’s nothing like Guild Wars!
It really isn’t. This might be stating the obvious , but it’s absolutely nothing like Guild Wars. It was interesting to hear a great deal of people wondering where AI companions were or why it wasn’t instanced. What was also interesting was how strange people find it to have their weapon skills restricted to a weapon; this minor change is clearly something many will have to get used to. Combined with the differences in movement, these are going to be two hurdles for the Guild Wars die hards. Guild Wars 2 does move like a traditional MMOG (It is akin to WoW, Aion or Rift when you hold down the right mouse button) however it must be said that it is massively improved over all of those and I don’t see how anyone can look upon this negatively. Movement is fast, responsive and snappy; exactly what is needed for a game that offers such fun combat. I’m unsure where feelings of the movement being “floaty” come from (I don’t think it could feel any weightier) and I’m also unsure how anyone from Guild Wars can see it as a step backwards. As much as I love the original, the movement did feel clunky and rigid in comparison to newer attempts at the genre.
Besides the above, some complaints ranged from cringe-worthy (“I’ll go healer!”) to the bizarre (“What class do I become as a warrior, if I use rifle?”). The greatest task ArenaNet now have isn’t bringing their product to market; it is probably weeding through the bug reports and forum feedback to find some of the truly excellent suggestions people have made.
It must be said though, that 99% of the people I chatted to during the weekend absolutely adored the game and yet again I can’t wait to see what the next phase brings. Hopefully I’ll see many of you in it.
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Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
Lovely read!
– as always 🙂
Let’s hope they fix the AI pet (or if they didn’t already). Then work slowly towards balancing the best as possible, and then get the game out there!
“Besides the above, some complaints ranged from cringe-worthy (“I’ll go healer!”)”
Minor thing really, but it’s more than possible to play as a healer, particularly in dungeons. There is a highly effective healer build for Elementalists, Rangers and Warriors. While it is not identical to a traditional healer(You’ll still be doing damage in GW!) they certainly fill the role, and they fill it well enough that they’ll almost always be more effective than just grabbing a 5th damage.
@ Ceridiron,
Thank you for the comment but that really isn’t technically true, if at all. Whilst some builds can be more support orientated (Water Elementalist for example or Spirit Ranger) all classes are still very much damage based (as you point out) and need to be so. No class can just heal; there is no ally targeting and cooldowns on support skills are long, meaning individuals have to rely on their own heals 99% of the time to stay alive.
Sure some spells provide splash heals, but even when Traited they heal for so little or heal over time (that is negligible) that to consider oneself a “healer” or to even describe yourself as one would really be stretching the truth a great deal.
GW2 just doesn’t work that way.
Very nice, and an interesting alternative to the beta impressions we’re seeing elsewhere. Responding to the reactions of others is a good way to itemize some of the things that you saw, and some of the counterpoints. And a very interesting read!
Wow, though, that’s twice you’ve packed the family off for a GW2B weekend. You’re going to need to approve some serious shoe shopping to get past this! 😉
Thank you so very much for this post. Brings relief from some of the weird things we’ve been hearing. We need more press like yourself.
Tip top read as always mate. I think this was a good choice of article, those leaked scare-stories will have worried a lot of people, so this kind of reassurance is always welcome, especially when it actually goes into detail about the game instead of just complaining about it without any quantification.
The game still has issues to be sure, but discreetly bringing them to the devs attention is the way beta testers should deal with them, not leaking information just to fuel their own egos.
Roll on April, hopefully your Ranger will be working fully by then 🙂
Y’know, I’ve always thought MMOs could use more tutorial-ness than they actually have. It took me some time to figure out how to use the chat channels on my first MMO. And I didn’t spend my any of my talent points until ten levels after I started getting them, due to some combination of commitment-phobia and not knowing they were REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT to my continued survival. And it was really weird when I finally noticed that I couldn’t dodge arrows, because they were all secretly homing missiles. Just a few of the things that didn’t come through in the actual tutorial.
Maybe this could be partially remedied by having, oh, teacher NPCs for each profession in each city. They don’t give you character upgrades like traditional trainer NPCs, but they describe to you how to use your character and walk you through practice exercises. They could even give you feedback about what you’re doing wrong, perhaps. They probably shouldn’t be required in any way, but they could send your character mail as you reach certain checkpoints of complexity, offering their mentorship.
Another nice article Lewis!
Like Asterai said, I think the solution to a lot of the misunderstanding problems would be a profession-specific NPC to guide new players along. Maybe even have the NPC actually provide a short ‘profession introductory’ video that shows the specific profession mechanics in action with a developers (or voice actor) describing what is happening.
Thanks for a bit of perspective Lewis. Admittedly, I’ve been stalking your Yogscast youtube channel and got a similar summation from TotalBiscuit last night [thanks for the link to that on your video by the way]. As I’ve avoided all “news” about this latest beta that did not come out after Monday, I missed most of the blather about/by those who broke the NDA.
It seems that a lot of the complaints you and TotalBiscuit bring up stem from players’ unfamiliarity with the new systems and their own unwillingness to embrace change. Those who “believe the world is flat” should stay locked in their unchanging, comfortable, conservative homes and let the rest of us get on with the fun business of embracing newness and adapting to it.
Unlike Asterai and Geikamir, I don’t think a hint dropping NPC is really necessary (or desirable). As Amanda pointed out here on Tap (in an article sometime before GDC I remember, but can’t site precisely at the moment, something about Sony’s Tester show) good games used to excel at incrementally teaching players how to play them, rather than relying on wiki spoilers, help NPCs or elaborate hint menues. What I’ve seen in GW2 videos seems to place the game with a lean in that general direction. Unfortunately, it does seem to lack the hand-holding approach prevalent in modern games that panders to attention deficient folks who are seeking immediate “1337” gratification (a rather vocal, inarticulate lot, usually).
Obviously, my bias is showing — and once again, I’ve rambled on too long.
Loved your work Lewis. Keep it up!
Pretty sure that is a different Lewis who does the Yogscast Brown Fang. ~^ Lewis B’s videos are much more PvP orientated & intense in nature . . . or at least I would have a seriously difficult time believing they were the same person.
Lovely article as always Mr. B, I think a discussion about common misconceptions over heard while playing in beta is probably some of the most valuable feedback ANET can get at this stage of the game. Preconceptions can be a real bugger to overcome so ANET is going to need all the help they can get there.
I am not sure NPC training would be the way to ween MMO players away from their bad habits and assumptions based on past game experience as it would just be another thing that did not fit into their expectation mold of what an MMO is. ANET has a very difficult task ahead of them in many respects being ground breakers on their quest for next gen gaming. I think some sort of mentor/advice channel deal might be a better way to get more answers in game combined with their already awesome use of wikis. It might be one of those things that is more up to the community to provide or at least a willingness of the community to participate in educating away confusion. We already see a great deal of that from fans on youtube but maybe ANET could sanction something a little bit more official. Something like a Public Relations Test Crewe in and out of game maybe?
@Xylla You’re probably right. I have no real way of knowing for sure and have some dissidence of the tones.
LEWIS!!!
How do you feel about the particle effects? I’ve been hearing from a few press guys that the particle effects can make it hard to see and understand what’s going on, especially in dungeons. Do you think it’s partly because nobody has had enough time with the game to understand the skills of each profession to understand what’s going on (like with any game that someone just jumps into for the first time) or does it really need to be toned down?
Great article, Lewis. It was nice of you to address some of the beta concerns that appeared over the weekend.
I wanted to comment about what I believe people mean when they complain about the floaty animations. There are 2 things in particular I have noticed. First is that sometimes when your character is standing on a flat surface, if you look closely you’ll notice that the shadow doesn’t connect to your character’s feet. It looks like the character is stepping on an invisible plane a few inches over the actual ground (this is also visible in GW1).
However, I think the second thing is what most people complain about – when your character runs, the surrounding environment flies past you much faster than the movement animation’s speed of your character suggests it should. It looks as if they are running on a moving walkway and not stationary ground. That’s what gives it the feeling of gliding/floating.
I didn’t even notice until a friend started complaining about it to me, but obviously a lot of people are bothered by it. 🙂
If you watch this video of some theif gameplay, I can see what might be meant by the “sloaty” movement comments. Most of the time it looks like the pc is sliding across the ground rather than actually walking/running/strafing. It might be specific races and it might be related to personal hardware. Hard to say. But watching that, I definitely got the “floaty” movement feeling.
Not anything enough to make stop foaming at the mouth for this game!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSNQAf9Oi04&hd=1
forgot to link the video
I never noticed anything “floaty” about movement…
Thanks for sharing the oddities other people thought. Totally interesting. Hope to hear (read) more like this later!
80 hours! Yeesh, got an extra one you wouldn’t need haha. I’m really itching to try this game after these long 5 years. I’m really hoping that I’ll get into one. Otherwise the pre-purchase of the CE is going to be my entry.
Nice write-up lewis!
[…] Guild Wars 2: Separating Wheat From Chaff [03-29] […]
I dont think I should!!!!
I didn’t find any particle effects an issue. You soon learn what is what and what is ignorable. It is sometimes busy-yes. Nothing overly distracting though. I think it sometimes looks worse on videos than actually playing it.
How adorable they allowed bunch of kids with no clue about Guild Wars or life in general to play beta while thousands of die hard fans got a short end of the stick.
Thank-you for yet another outstanding article on the GW2 beta.
I would be surprised by the seemingly inexplicable attitudes of folks approaching a brand new game without any apparent inclination to “learn,” however, I have served in the U.S. military and such rigidly plodding thought processes in my fellow man no longer surprise me.
We should expect more from “gamers” … just a little bit of imagination and inquisitiveness at the very least, but sadly, if it’s not spoon-fed to them, many MMO gamers no longer consider it worth the effort. Atrophy is ugly no matter what, but atrophy of the brain is particularly so…
[…] Tap Repeatedly — Guild Wars 2: Separating Wheat From Chaff. “What better way to spend a sunny weekend than playing games indoors. If I had a portable generator I would have likely taken my desk outside, but then I’d have only had sun glare on my monitor. Instead, I packed off my family for three days and decided to stay indoors away from the sun’s rays, playing Guild Wars 2 for more than 42 hours (curse the need to sleep!)” […]
‘It’s nothing like Guild Wars!’
I can only say I am honestly grateful for that.
[…] Guild Wars 2: Separating Wheat from Chaff by Lewis B | Tap Repeatedly – An Outsider’s Look Inside Guild Wars 2 by Jef […]
Hey Lewis my friends and I just recently saw your vids and we are really grateful there is someone in the beta who seems to actually put a semblance of thought into their gameplay and have it recorded to boot!
Your feedback here makes sense especially concerning the aforementioned reddit post. When I read that and saw people commenting on how everything he says changes post level 10 (which a lot of people called the introductory levels) it really blew a hole in everything he was saying. He obviously didn’t play past the ‘easy’ levels of the game (like many reviewers do) and judged the game solely on that merit. After I watched a few vids on the exploration dungeons it was quite clear what he was saying was FOS, and your feedback on the post also reinforces that.
We are greatly anticipating the release of this game.
Thanks a lot!
-SH