Whew, I slept late after staying up until 3am poking around the guild's new digs. Let me catch up on the overnights, sorry for the mega-post!
So far there's only two real issues with HoT I can see:
- Stupid amount of HP needed to unlock Elite specs and having some of the VB ones gated behind masteries.
- Barely any new skins (most of which are gem store again) for an expansion.
I agree with both of these, though maybe not equally.
I definitely feel like elite specs should open sooner, and even though I'm close to being done with one (Daredevil, being able to sneak around and grab some has been useful) I still feel like it's taking too long. I'm glad they didn't just unlock everything at once, but it feels like far too many of the challenges are gated behind Masteries or require a group, and that kinda blows. Hopefully they tune it down because I'm not looking forward to doing this 8 more times.
As far as the skins go, I've just been traveling around seeing so much new stuff in the past 48 hours that what's been collecting in my inventory doesn't really give me much pause. I know I've gotten a few new skins because I've seen the pop-ups from salvaging. But now that I think about it, I think you're right. Usually expansions come dripping with new gear but that may be the most subdued part of HoT. Hopefully more in the Living Story (which I'm sure we'll hear about in the next few weeks).
PVT gear doesn't feel like enough on Thief. No matter what I do I'm constantly dying. Meanwhile I can go full glass on Reaper and still feel relatively sturdy. I'm just not enjoying myself on Thief as much in HoT.
I've been zipping around on my thief just to explore (I'm broken now, I can't stay in one place doing stuff for long) and I've found that it's hard to see stuff coming which is an absolute necessity for thieves. I've had to slow down and pick my battles much more carefully and flat out avoid some fights with stealth (smokescales especially, since they tend to run in packs). There's a lot more danger in the jungle and thieves don't handle the close quarters / narrow ledges / enemy density as well as others.
I've had to basically play Thief like a stealth game, it's actually kind of interesting, but it makes getting things done a tad harder (though I've also been able to sneak a handful of Hero challenges that other people needed help with).
I bought the game a while ago but I did not even download it. Can someone encourage me to get into the game? I always had the impression that the game (and MMOs in general barring PSO2) revolves around stats, builds, equipment/resources where you run around and "click" abilities or kite enemies from a distance (I admit that I saw tempting melee strategies that abuse some blind effect, teleport and crit. attacks).
I had written up a big, detailed response to your post, with lots of explanations and comparisons to other MMORPGs (which usually doesn't help and only draws rabid fanboys out of the woodwork to shit up the thread) and descriptions of how the game works and such, but you know what? I really don't need to say that much and you
definitely don't need to read that much.
Instead, I'll just say that for everything you've ever heard about MMORPGs, just ignore
all of it; it's better to look at other genres entirely to really get an accurate picture. For example, one regular poster here describes it as a big, open-world brawler, like Golden Axe had a torrid tryst with something like... Grand Theft Auto. Each profession is different enough one of my guild co-leaders compares them to characters in a fighting game. There are jumping puzzles that call back to platformers like Castlevania (one amazing and notoriously absent holiday even featured
a retro-themed multi-world jumping dungeon
), boss battles and game modes that crib from MOBAs... it's hard to describe just how much is different.
There's a reason people use a controller despite a lack of native support; it's more important to think of it as an action game with MMO trimmings than an MMO with action game trimmings. If you played PSO and felt like you wanted a bigger world, more customization options and a fuck ton of friends to play with, that's more or less Guild Wars 2.
Is grinding too much? I don't have that much time to invest on consistent basis, but I can play regularly on weekends.
I'm addressing this part separately (but still with as much brevity as I'm capable of) because it speaks to the long-term expectations of the game.
Grinding is a subjective term (some people seem to think doing anything more than twice is a grind), but I would say that the grind factor is the lowest of any MMO I've ever played. There is no gear treadmill that requires you to constantly play to keep up with your friends, leveling is fast (almost too fast, you absolutely will not see even half of the game by the time you reach max level), and there's ton of ways to advance. This is a game you play for fun, not because there's a carrot on the end of the stick.
Time investment is low; you can wander around exploring for a half hour, do a quick 10 minute PVP match, knock out a dungeon path in 20 minutes, play a few mini-games or adventures, spend an hour doing your personal story, log in quickly and do your daily achievements, hang out with the guild for a couple hours doing missions or spend all damn weekend in World vs. World mode, tearing down towers with siege engines against two other servers. Because there's no gear treadmill or level cap increase, once you reach a certain level of equipment you can basically walk away from the game for days, weeks, months or even years and pick up right where you left off; the only thing you miss is the huge amount of content they drop in every two weeks during the active "Living World" seasons.
How much you play, and how you play, is entirely up to you.
Is there a page that details all the things about Halloween? Things like the events, skins, minis etc that are limited to it.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/october-23-2015/
Finally started the story, made it to auric basin, and WOW Anet ! WOW ! O_O
Auric Basin makes Verdant Brink look like Queensdale. Tangled Paths makes Auric Basin look like a WoW zone.
I'm usually not cheap when it comes to gaming, but since I've heard some people have tried coming back to GW2 and couldn't get into it.. would playing it for free give me a good sense of the direction Anet is going in, or is all the new stuff in the expansion?
Not gonna lie; the game the content launched with does a terrible job of conveying how much more advanced they've gotten in the expansion. Everything from their map design to the visuals to the way dynamic events work is just a thousand times better in the expansion. I've never seen an MMO developer make such amazing progress over such a short span of time, and the game at launch was leaps and bounds ahead of everything else out there to begin with.
That said, the profession design is very spot on and I'm pretty sure getting a taste for the core game will be enough to convince you to take the plunge. You absolutely will enjoy what you play... the expansion is just... all of that on steroids.
I am not against either keeping or changing the old logo but now that the subject is on the table : what is it supposed to look like ? as someone else said , only thing i could make of it is a rising sun over the mountains .
I always heard "Red Panda", but the real reason we went with it?
Cover the left half with your finger and tilt your head to the right; it looks like an orange N and a white G. When we were picking the emblem everyone voted for that one. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen another guild using it either.
I just can't play as melee in the new content. Everything hits so damn hard and I can never see it coming. Ranged I have no problem. Melee I'm meat
You may need to change your gear and tactics up a bit. Instead of raw damage, look for weapons with more knockbacks / blocks / etc. so you can shrug off the heavier blows or give yourself a moment to look around / change tactics. Pair a ranged weapon with a melee set so you can back off and get some breathing room while you wait for your heal to recharge. Consider utilities that give you some survival / stability too.
Stat-wise, Vitality is probably your best bet since toughness doesn't affect condition damage; Valkyrie gear (Power/Vitality/Ferocity) seems like a good way to go if you want to step down from Berserker gear, but on my warrior I went Knights and I've been doing fine when I've played him.
Really though, it's just learning the new critters, learning to adopt more defensive / survival-oriented skills, utilities and tactics, and getting used to the terrain. Playing on my thief has been especially tough because there's so much you can dodge / evade off of at the top of a 200 foot drop.
