I Leveled Archer to 10 and then switched to Gladiator and leveled to 15 but didn't get a chance to do Tam Tara. I completed the dungeon a few times in Alpha so I'm curious about the differences between Alpha and Beta and how the dungeon will feel with a more proper party setup.
Combat actually felt really good and was a huge improvement over 1.0 and the Alpha in my opinion. I liked the pacing quite a bit. The lack of animation lock definitely looks ridiculous when you're sliding around and firing off an ability but it's a necessary evil I guess. It helps to use the target lock on feature and to train yourself to stop moving when you use skills and abilities. The effects and animations were nice but I would love to see something with a bit more impact. I'm also looking forward to more interesting combos and strategic elements beyond just their plans for Limit Breaks. I'm still holding on to the hope that they completely replace the Battle Regimen system with something more like skill chains and magic bursts.
Will mobs get much more challenging as the game progresses? They all feel way too squishy right now.
The day night transitions, music, and general improvements to lighting and shadows have made a huge difference in adding to the atmosphere and overall look of the game. I hope they still have plans for dynamic weather and that we get to see some of that during one of these beta phases.
Protip: Disable "Glare". I think this might be adding a ton of bloom and makes everything look terrible.
Agreed.
The mobs spawn quickly so thats nice but its pretty annoying when youre at a spawn with 4 diremites and 20 other people camping them for logs, quests, etc. They all pop at once and then they all die at once. Out of the 4 pops, youre going to get credit for 1...maybe 2 and then you have to wait for the next set of pops. It doesnt really feel all that fast.
Did they say why they did it this way? I was told it was done to encourage people to work together but I dont feel like thats happening at all.
Part of the problem is that sometimes I was only getting credit if I did a certain percentage of damage or a number of actions while fighting an unclaimed mob. There would be times where I would only be able to hit a mob once and I wouldn't get any credit. Another problem is that unlike Guild Wars 2 and dynamic events, everyone doesn't automatically have the same quest and so every kill from every person does not automatically give everyone credit. This could maybe be resolved by giving everyone in the area that has the quest credit for each kill, regardless of the individual, but this would open the door to a number of other problems. I would rather they didn't.
I'm pretty happy with the implementation and like the system overall. I never want to go back to traditional claiming. I don't think it will be as big an issue when players are more spread out but it will likely still be a problem in some areas during launch.
I will say that it is slightly annoying when someone pulls hate on a mob that you have claimed and then runs away causing it to reset. This opens the mob up to get potentially claimed by that person or someone else. Not that it's a big deal since everyone gets credit but it's still annoying.
And dungeons every 5-10 lv.
And Caravan, and class/job quests which are unique to each class/job, and Grand Company quests (which may or may not be repeatable), etc.
It's a shame that a lot of the primary leveling quests are not repeatable but I think there will be plenty of content to level other jobs with and it might get old repeating those quests anyway. Also, it wouldn't make much sense from a lore perspective.
