Enosh
Member
well sold me on Sylvari
and kill any Charr and Asura on sight, ugh look so bad* -.-
hmm either elementalist or guardian.. can't decide, didn't get into any of the betas so pretty much going in blind
*my opinion etc etc
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Guild Wars 2 Launch Date announced: August 28th, 2012
- Thread starter Mr. Luchador
- Start date
and kill any Charr and Asura on sight, ugh look so bad* -.-
hmm either elementalist or guardian.. can't decide, didn't get into any of the betas so pretty much going in blind
*my opinion etc etc
Don't think there's an answer to that, every class has access to lots of aoes. Go to
http://en.gw2codex.com/build/generator/
see what sounds coolest to you.
staff Elementalist is no doubt the king of AoE
With the release just a month away, I find myself not really in the mood to start a game that is a big time sink. I want to game for about an hour a night or so, and 1-2 matches of dota2 is what I've been doing. I didn't play in the last two beta weekends at all either. Maybe I'll just do some pvp here and there until winter, when I'll probably feel like playing more.
Planetside 2 beta.
Warrior_Keoni
Member
Had an awesome time with Retro, Hawkian, Chapel, KosLuftar, and a few others I am unable to remember.
Only one month left and I've already taken a few days of vacation for 3 day headstart. Will probably be doing the unboxing nerding out thing and snuggling with the Charr statue.
Only one month left and I've already taken a few days of vacation for 3 day headstart. Will probably be doing the unboxing nerding out thing and snuggling with the Charr statue.
That is an extremely heartwarming story there. Thanks for the link.
I'm still undecided on my characters. Charr and Norn hold no interest for me. Asura look awesome, but they are too similar to FFXI tarutaru and I'd rather not do that again. Sylvari are quite intriguing but they also creep me out somehow. (I guess they make me think of what Poison Ivy would look like if she took Bane's venom.) Humans are my default choice now. So,
- Male Human Elementalist (staff animation annoys me but I enjoyed the class more than the necromancer)
- Male Human Thief/Engineer (wish shortbow had more range and engy animations annoy me too)
- Female Human Warrior/Guardian (rifle war was fun while guard utility was entertaining)
There's still a lot of research left for me to do it seems.
Well that explains it! Guess this means that the one time a GAF member was trying to rez me during a Queen Bee boss event, he wasn't doing it because of a GAF tag on my name but rather because he was just a good person.
Also, I can't help but feel that the more people on screen, the harder it is to fight a boss. I was up against that Queen Bee boss alone, and managed to get it down to half health alone via proper dodging, snares, knockbacks, etc. As soon as more people showed up, its attack patterns changed up and I died.
Everybody rezzes everybody in this game. You actually get experience for doing it, which encourages the behavior early on. Later, it's more about survival - you might need everyone to take something down.
And yes, events and bosses scale with the number of people present.
Weltall Zero
Member
I don't even know what the Town of Nolan is... and that's good! Sense of discovery is really through the roof in this game.
Whoa, that's eerily similar to my current list, with the only changes being making that guardian human male, and perhaps skipping the thief for some of the other classes. I'll buy three more slots for sure; in fact my current problem is that I'm having trouble thinking of not making a character of every race/gender combination. I was going to skip Male Norn, but after making a Warrior and playing it in Keg Brawl (with his helmet awesomely like a football one), I can't imagine skipping him.
The usual trick is to /sleep then make the camera point upwards (this way you also crop most of the floor, which is usually the ugliest part of the pic as it's the closest texture and therefore blurry).
Whoa, I'm so envious. I was mostly showing the ropes to a friend (which I converted and has gone from "I dislike MMOs" to "buying this at launch for sure", making it two of them this weekend alone). Timezones be damned, I'll try to get together with you guys for some exploration. Soooo looking forward to conquer the WvW dungeon.
Will do, sir. I'll do my best to get over my self-consciousness and awkwardness of speaking English. It's the only way to improve, after all.
Just be patient if I say stuff that's strange-sounding or outright unintelligible. 
It's quite cool that Retro has such a distinctive (and sexy) voice. Looking forward to being able to tell each of you apart by voice.
No, it was actually broken this weekend, for some reason; at least this Sunday was. Hitting the button again ended the shield early with no additional effect. I loved it so much, too, hope they fix it soon.
Anyone realized that both Engineer shield abilities can be used for ranged OR close combat? The electric shield is a melee counter that can be turned to a ranged attack, while the electromagnetic shield is a ranged counter which can be turned to a melee knockdown. This means both are useful in any situation! I have to say that the shield may be my favorite Engineer weapon (weird as it sounds), which is why in my pics you'll almost always see one on my engineer's back.
Just read that aloud to my GF, with a "Sounds familiar?" at the end.
So... I'm the only one assuming Monk is in for sure down the road, with the Cantha expansion? Along with fist weapons (for him, the thief, warrior, and perhaps other classes like possibly necro/claws) and of course they'd use staves as bo sticks.
I mean, is there any argument against this? The only one I've read is that the old Monk's function makes no sense with GW2's game system. I mean, how can anyone play a Mesmer and still use that argument? They're only taking the profession names and flavor!
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Sorry for double posting my own question, but I'm genuinely interested in the response.
How is the PVE experience if you're just going to play for 'single player' content--and by that, I mean just doing PVE, either grouped or alone. I found that I felt I was running out of things to do and it wasn't intuitive how to find more stuff. I mean, ya, I could just wander until an event popped up, but that feels random rather than proactive.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
It's really weird how, in making player interactions seamless, and making it impossible for players to interfere with other players, this game feels even more lonely than WoW and its clones. There are hundreds of other people running around the newbie zones, but as far as the player is concerned, they may as well all be supporting NPCs. You really have no reason to interact with any of them.
I still plan on picking this up at release for a variety of reasons, but I feel like it's going to be the most solo-oriented MMORPG yet. You'll be playing with other people, but for all intents and purposes, you'll be alone unless you have a group of friends coming from other games/real life.
I still plan on picking this up at release for a variety of reasons, but I feel like it's going to be the most solo-oriented MMORPG yet. You'll be playing with other people, but for all intents and purposes, you'll be alone unless you have a group of friends coming from other games/real life.
Complistic
Member
Ideally you should be using the personal quests to guide you through the different areas. You level up in pve mostly by doing the "heart" quests. They give you the most xp.
LumpOfCole
Member
How were WvWvW queues beyond Friday? I just did PvE Saturday and Sunday.
Is it still likely we are sticking with Gate of Madness for the final release?
Is it still likely we are sticking with Gate of Madness for the final release?
Man, I usually never like magic types.
Hey, we're all GW nerds here right?
PICSOR GTFO!and bewbs
Yeah, I think I will definitely take a few pics of the CE contents.
Actually, on second thought.... Yeah, I'd bet gems that was probably much worse.
Retro, I finished seeing your pics, awesome stuff. I have a couple of questions:
1) The orphanage is in your personal instance? I haven't come across it, I think. Will have to look for it on retail.
2) I had already read your pic/comment about Yogi.
3) The windmill room seriously rocks, another thing I have to search for. Is it a particular mill or can anyone be entered? I think I tried a few of them. For some reason it reminds me a bit of ICO.
4) Aless Bradwyn... alternate spelling of a certain Phantasy Star IV protagonist?
1. Yes. I'm not sure what the requirements are for it to be open, but those shots are from early on in the personal story.
2. If you're coming from Divinity's Reach, it's behind the first windmill you see, just up the stairs on the farm at that first renown heart.
3. Same windmill I just mentioned. And yeah, the interior had all the moving parts you would expect it to.
4. I think you may be the first to have caught that. That's a name I've been using in MMOs for a whiie (actually, it was my first character's name in WoW). I may use out again if some of my first choice names get poached.
Weltall Zero
Member
Sorry, I'm parsing this once and again and don't quite get what it means. What does the ability to represent several guilds have to do with another GAFer rezzing you?
This is not only true, but the Queen Bee is by far the most egregious example; this happened to me right there as well. I thought they would have fixed it for this BWE (didn't do it this weekend), but apparently not, from your experience.
Also, when you make an Asura, be sure to pick a class that can use pistols or staves. Their idle animations are priceless.
(Mesmer almost confirmed as best Asura class... but they can only use pistols as offhand. :/ ).
One thing I love about this game is that downed players appear on the map and ressurecting can be done by all, and gives xp as incentive. I can get killed in the middle of nowhere, walk out of the room, come back and find myself ressurected.
But sometimes people just walk on by, especially if there is an event that just popped up nearby. It's like them rushing to Walmart for Black Friday.
Well if there is a giant bee attacking, killing people left and right, to spend time ressurecting someone who isn't just knocked out, but flat out dead, would kind of be suicide. So I thought the guy was only helping me back up because he saw the GAF tag. But apparently I wasn't representin', yo.
After nearly all of my experience in this last bwe playing as a Guardian, I have to say they definitely improved upon some of the recent complaints.
-Tomes and Whirling Wrath now mobile abilities. (awesome)
-Symbols are still lackluster and small. Unless these change i'm assuming they'll only really be useful as a pre-buff before entering battle since some of the boons stack.
-A lot of their utilities are extremely powerful and some may even be overpowered.
-A lot of the Traits were booned(gonna use this since they don't want to use buff anymore) especially in the wisdom tree. Some traits are still lacking but most have been improved upon greatly.
-Fun factor is about the same as the previous bwe's which isn't a bad thing at all!
-I found that sticking to one type of utility setup isn't an optimal way to play at all. I had 2 signets, 1 shout and a summon and did better than my previous builds only utilizing signets.
-I know this is for all the professions but I really believe the traits to reduce cool down need to be removed. Guardian has three healing abilities, 2 on a 30 second cooldown and 1 on a 45 with one of them being a signet. Now if I slot a signet cool down reduction it then turns into 24 seconds which makes the 45 second healing completely unnecessary.
-Tomes and Whirling Wrath now mobile abilities. (awesome)
-Symbols are still lackluster and small. Unless these change i'm assuming they'll only really be useful as a pre-buff before entering battle since some of the boons stack.
-A lot of their utilities are extremely powerful and some may even be overpowered.
-A lot of the Traits were booned(gonna use this since they don't want to use buff anymore) especially in the wisdom tree. Some traits are still lacking but most have been improved upon greatly.
-Fun factor is about the same as the previous bwe's which isn't a bad thing at all!
-I found that sticking to one type of utility setup isn't an optimal way to play at all. I had 2 signets, 1 shout and a summon and did better than my previous builds only utilizing signets.
-I know this is for all the professions but I really believe the traits to reduce cool down need to be removed. Guardian has three healing abilities, 2 on a 30 second cooldown and 1 on a 45 with one of them being a signet. Now if I slot a signet cool down reduction it then turns into 24 seconds which makes the 45 second healing completely unnecessary.
heh, I barely managed to reach level 12 when I completed the Norn starting zone, and I was fighting level 19 enemies at the end. Someone who managed to get to level 40 in this BWE posted here earlier saying that crafting gives you lots of experience points (I did zero crafting). Another way to quickly level up is to do participate in all events you come across, and repeat earlier events, as they tend to give you a lot more experience than for example hearts.
Look for hearts, go to hearts.
A lot of the game seems to be geared towards self discovery. Explore the world and stumble upon the neat things. I stumbled upon the Sylvari jumping puzzle by accident and spent about 4 hours there.
But my wife ran into a similar problem as you, she ran out of stuff to do in the zone she was in and lost interest... but I hadn't shown her Keg Brawl yet.
Like the example of grouping I gave earlier, you have to be proactive. If you're just sitting back and running DEs with the masses, then yes, you'll be lonely but it will have been your choice.
Just explore I suppose. If that's not working, seek scouts and look for something marked nearby or off in the distance. The Personal Story will level you and give you some nice rewards though. Also, crafting and gathering will level you.
I pretty much did all there was to do and didn't have trouble leveling.
-Hearts
-Dynamic Events
-Gathering
-Crafting
-Skill Point Challenges
-Vistas
-Exploration (landmark XP, Waypoint XP, point of interest XP)
-Personal Story
-WvWvW
I should note that I did join in on my friends personal story quests and that added good XP.
One issue the game may have is it feels like I get way more XP with more people around than I do when I'm mostly alone. More people in your vicinity seems to trigger DEs more often and trigger more mobs which add to your XP gains. When I was in the new 16+ zone for the Sylvari and Asura, it was pretty quiet and I started a DE with only myself around. I asked Map Chat for help and some people came, but then the next part of the chain occured and I was alone again. (People still don't follow the NPCs to see what happens.)
Then don't make a magic profession. You're under no obligation to make any character beyond what you like.
Wow I felt totally opposite in this regard, I have never seen more people work together randomly then I have in this game. In Other games the other players were just in my way making my quests take longer unless I needed them, but here everything helps so there was impromptu groups all over doing events, exploring,etc. I honestly don't think I have had this much player interactions since EQ and FF XI where you were forced to group.
These next 30 days are going to feel like forever
I can't wait to get back in and start exploring again.razgriz417
Member
Wasn't able to play this bwe, has the optimization improved? Still CPU bound?
I know, I'll just have to see what I like when I end up playing it.
OK, I lied, I did take some Queensdale night pics, just hadn't uploaded them yet. Feast your eyes on this:
Ultra-high HD version here.
Retro, I finished seeing your pics, awesome stuff. I have a couple of questions:
1) The orphanage is in your personal instance? I haven't come across it, I think. Will have to look for it on retail.
2) I had already read your pic/comment about Yogi.
3) The windmill room seriously rocks, another thing I have to search for. Is it a particular mill or can anyone be entered? I think I tried a few of them. For some reason it reminds me a bit of ICO.
4) Aless Bradwyn... alternate spelling of a certain Phantasy Star IV protagonist?
So are you using the highest game settings to achieve this or are you using your own GPU settings?
I was on my old pc.
Core 2 duo
HD 4870
4gb memory
It ran very well even in WvWvW. Surprisingly enough, it ran better than last time. =)
For me it was. I run an old Quad core Q6600 and a radeon 6870 and was getting from mid 20's in towns to 60 (by sync and FAA enabled along with most settings on high except reflections off and shadows on medium) and on average I would say it was about 40fps most times.
Did you ever interact with others for questing before? I haven't had to do that for many years.
It's true that I don't talk to others in PVE much when playing GW2. I normally say thanks for a rez, but not much else. I do play with them more than I do other games in that I help other players with fights and rez them. When I was fighting the Wurm raid boss in the Sylvari swamp, I kept dropping med kit packs for players. I wasn't sure people understood what they were for or not, so maybe I should have said something in chat. Most of the communication between players is through play rather than text, so I assume people understand to run over the kits.
LumpOfCole
Member
Except for Friday when the everyone was in the same part of the starting area, the whole weekend ran about 50-70fps for me.
My comp:
i5-2500k
GTX 480
8 gigs RAM
Game installed on SSD
My settings were all maxed 1920x1080 except:
- Shadows: Medium (only 4 fps increase from shadows being on High so I might just go with High on release)
- Reflections: Terrain and Sky Only (major FPS decrease in areas with water when reflections were on Reflect All)
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Wow I felt totally opposite in this regard, I have never seen more people work together randomly then I have in this game. In Other games the other players were just in my way making my quests take longer unless I needed them, but here everything helps so there was impromptu groups all over doing events, exploring,etc. I honestly don't think I have had this much player interactions since EQ and FF XI where you were forced to group.
These next 30 days are going to feel like forever
I just wrote that post after a discussion I had with a coworker who felt the same way after playing the beta weekend. I played with hundreds of people during the event, revived a ton and helped them battle big bosses, but none of those interactions were particularly meaningful. They literally could have been anyone. No one really talked (no need to), and it's not like I remember any of their names.
It just seems to me that in making everything so passive, they also made it all rather meaningless.
Maybe that's not how everyone experienced it, but that's the impression I got.
Yes, but that's mainly due to the games I like to play. They still require you to seek out others if you want to group. I'm firmly in the camp that thinks the dungeon finder in WoW put the final nail in the coffin for that game.
I changed the graphic options to the highest settings on my laptop to make some screenshots and forgot to set them back again for most of the rest of this BWE. I did lots of PvE, PvP and WvWvW and never really had any problems aside from a display bug that occured rather frequently, especially in cities, where some NPC and player models weren't visible to me.
and considering that I was playing on an full US server during a beta as a European with a not-so-great connection, there was remarkably little lag
Got round to playing some WvW last night, and I'm suprised how much I enjoyed it even with 15 fps in some of the chaotic battles.
Still having trouble deciding on what race / gender to pick though. In previous MMO's I've always played males, but in GW2 I'll be rolling an Ele and the female models / animations just seemed to flow a lot better.
Will Gandara still be the GAF-EU server at launch?
Still having trouble deciding on what race / gender to pick though. In previous MMO's I've always played males, but in GW2 I'll be rolling an Ele and the female models / animations just seemed to flow a lot better.
Will Gandara still be the GAF-EU server at launch?
Lovely Salsa
Banned
Is there any crafting guide out there? since I haven't touched crafting i beta I have no idea what to do but if its a quick way to level up I want to learn it before the real game starts so I'll know what to do
Kos Luftar
Member
Here is a bunch of screens I took during BWE 3.
Let me know what you guys think.
http://imgur.com/a/e80Gl
Let me know what you guys think.
http://imgur.com/a/e80Gl
Vistas aren't jumping puzzles. Jumping puzzles have treasure chests at the end.
FutureZombie
Banned
There are platforming sections where you end up getting a treasure chest at the end of them. The rookery in the Norn area is the only one I did, and my god it took me like 30 minutes to get across.
Did you do the one in Caledon Forest, Morgan's Spiral or something? Initial one for the achievement not so bad - inside the area it leads to with mortars and veterans getting in your way while finding the way up, not so easy...
D
Deleted member 10571
Unconfirmed Member
To join the roundup: Phenom Black x4 3,2GHZ, 8 Gigs RAM, Radeon HD6850, 1680x1050. Played on High/Shadows medium/no VSync, and it ran very, very well, except for high populated towns at times, and WvW mass fights. Way better than last BWE and WORLDS better than the first one. If they keep this up, I should be good to go on launch day :3
Oh, but i had some display bugs, like screen flashes or objects that weren't visible from specific angles sometimes, and some environment textures changed very late to more detail, in a quite weird way. Those may just have been standard bugs though, I just didn't notice that during the last Weekends.
How is the ranger class this time around? I played exclusively with my engineer because I heard bad things about this class but I miss having a pet
Pets improved greatly, but rangers damage was nerfed to compensate for pets not being stupid.
How is the ranger class this time around? I played exclusively with my engineer because I heard bad things about this class but I miss having a pet
No complaints from me. And that's saying something.
Ferrio: Melee damage seemed fine to me... Perhaps it was just ranged...
I played on a very similar system as you, except with a 965 BE OC to 3.7Ghz and a 5850. Performance was much better this weekend than the last 2. I was getting around 30-40 fps during the first weekends, and yesterday I was getting between 40-60 while questing. It would only drop to 30 or so during some events, with the only time it only dropping to 15 fps with fights involving 40+ people.
Easily a 50% performance increase from the first beta weekend to the last!
I had a big reply to a lot of posts going but my phones browser decided to crap out. I'll respond to a lot of stuff on this page when I get home.
Or in one particularly beautiful case, Strawberries.
Or in one particularly beautiful case, Strawberries.
Weltall Zero
Member
I was wondering if the orphanage would even BE there depending on the initial personal story choice, because I've heard that it's tied to a decision you make on a particular one of the personal stories later on (which I won't spoil).
Awesome, thanks! Will be sure to check it out in retail. I think I tried to enter other mills near a town.
Phantasy Star II was my first ever JRPG; I was utterly blown away. Years later, I came across Final Fantasy II(IV), and was blown away again. This was way before JRPGs were officially released in Europe, let alone Spain; these were import carts that took many months of a teenager's allowance saving to afford (not like official games were much cheaper).
In any case, Phantasy Star IV managed to beat the rose-colored memories I had of II and become my favorite PS. It was just so ahead of its time; the only thing I regret is not having played PS1 and therefore missing all references to it, me being a NES-only kid at the time. Still, 1994-95 made for quite of a three-hit combo with FF6, PS4 and Chrono Trigger...
Speaking of Phantasy Star, Weltall Zero was actually the name of the first online character I made, in Phantasy Star Online. He was a bulky RaCast, and at the time Xenogears was my favorite game, so it made sense for him to be named after its main gear.
This went wildly off tangent; I hope I don't get moderated for going off-topic. Er, back to GW2! ^_^;
It's all good. I know I'm the same way with a lot of GAF posters here. Half the time I only remember people by their avatars, and Real Pic July has thrown me for a loop a number of times. That's just the nature of these boards, especially in a thread as active as this one.
Yeah, it's a shame you had to leave when you did. Stupid real life interfering with game playing time. We never ended up completing that Asura jumping puzzle though. We made some real progress, but we had to stop so we could do the Beta ending event. Oh well, it will still be there at launch
even if that seems like an eternity away
And yes, people get on mumble. As much fun as I had in the first two Betas, even when grouping with GAF it was never quite as fun as when we were all talking to each other. Besides, text chat doesn't really mesh well with jumping puzzles.
Its amazing how completely different my experience has been. While I have a few times strayed outside of my level range because an event popped up higher level than me and I didn't want to miss out on it, I have never run out of stuff to do at or below my level. I thought maybe this was because I got a bunch of levels in WvW and from crafting, but that wasn't the case in this past weekend.
I was level 16 when I fully explored the Sylvari starting (1-15) zone. I did zero WvW, and barely any crafting. I only did enough crafting to make 3 8-slot bags, which probably added up to less than a single level worth of exp. Also, the only time I even ventured outside the Sylvari area was to go to Lion's Arch (which I did get every location and Vista in), until Sunday night, which was after I had finished the Sylvari starting area. I didn't even really repeat many events. I specifically avoided any event I had already completed, unless the event was actively preventing me from doing what I was currently doing (e.g. I was trying to sell off some items and restock on supplies in an outpost, but the outpost is getting attacked in an event I've already completed). So no WvW, minimal crafting, no grinding events, and no need to go to other races zones, and I still was higher level than the zone when I completed it. I really don't understand how leveling is that difficult.
Edit - I don't mean for this to be antagonistic. I'm not trying to say "lrn 2 play" or anything. I'm just legitimately at a loss for how someone could do everything there is to do in an area, and not get decent exp as a result, because that is not something I have ever observed.
Edit 2 - I also only did a single (level 2) mission in my personal story. Just in case you were thinking that's how i leveled up.