GW2 Beta Weekend 2

[Pie]

First off, I want to apologize for not hanging around this weekend on GW2. I really wanted to, but I don't think I was much in the mode because of life stuff. I wanted to join you guys because of the wonderfully fun experiences we've had in the previous two betas and to experience some of the new players' (like Fixxxer, Farore, and Roll) first experiences. Bear and I did spend some relaxing couple-play time though which I don't think we've had in a long time so it was still very nice; It's just a shame there wasn't enough time to do both.

Anyhow, please share impressions, thoughts, doodles, and/or screenshots of your Guild Wars 2 beta weekend 2!! =D

(I have no new screenshots )

[RollCasket]

Well, I'll first say that overall I like it...but I do have a few issues, and if this were a monthly subscription game I wouldn't get it.

Overwhelming difficulty while at the same time faceroll easy. Mainly this has to do with the world event quests and really just stems from how many people are doing the quest. If there are too many people there you're practically fighting just to tag enemies before they die, or when there are not enough you're dying due to being overwhelmed. Now, this might be better adjusted if they scaled the event for how many people were in the area, but currently it doesn't seem like it does.

No flow between quests. Unfortunately this is something that probably won't change because of how much would have to be done to fix it, but one story quest was recommended lvl 7 (and I was 6) and did it with not too much issue...step out of the instance and walk the 40 feet or so (in the city still) to the next story quest and it's recommended lvl 11 and far too difficult...huh? The story quests are easily my favorite part and it's a HUGE disconnect to be in the middle of a story and then get basically told to go wander out in the world to do odd jobs. This is especially annoying when the story quests are so good by comparison and the world stuff is super grindy and gets tedious quickly. To make it worse sometimes you just don't know where to go/what to do because the game certainly doesn't tell you...like I left of with my ranger having done everything on the map...but the next story quest is still higher lvl...so then what?

I do have some other minor issues, like how slow you run, there's a repair npc (every weaponsmith/armorsmith/etc should be able to repair, come on now), actually killing enemies gives almost no exp (why is there even an exp booster item?), but like I said, I still like it overall. The story stuff is well presented and for the most part fun. The variety of weapons and skills associated with them is new and interesting. Finally, the character creation/customization is pretty cool and helps to pull you into the story and characters within quite well.

Edit: Also, thought I took some screenshots but either I didn't or I can't find where it put them...

[Farore]

Doooodles!?!?



Apparently I only took one screen shot, and it was during the big final event thing:



Overall I had a fun time. My one big issue is with the camera. I really wish it would zoom out at least a little farther, being so close to the character makes me dizzy. The level flow to the main story line was a little out of wack, but I think that if they placed the scouts better, or gave you a quest to go talk to them, it would make it easier to find side quests.

Elementalist was tons of fun! There were so man moved with the different attunements, I'm sad that I wasn't able to play more. I did get pretty good at the "fight for your life" thing, which I guess is probably a bad thing >.< I died... A lot.

I am looking forward to launch and playing with everyone.

[Farore]

Apparently doodle resolution isn't so great. That first screen says:

Pie: Get GW2
Me: Maybe
Pie: Get GW2
Me: Oww my arm!

[Bear]

Haha, that's awesome Farore =D

As far as this BWE, I was really disappointed by the fact that ArenaNet implemented tiers to skills and traits. It was a big bummer for me because I feel it runs contradictory to the awesome game design philosophy that they exhibited before, which was one of the major drawing factors for me to be interested in the game. Hopefully ArenaNet makes some really smart decisions on how to address balance before release, preferably without tiers.

As far as the big spike in difficulty, I certainly found that out too. In the first BWE, since we ran as a large group almost all the time, we never really had that issue. This time around the little bit that we did play, Pie and I were alone. This made certain areas quite dangerous when the spawn rate seemed to be far higher than one would expect. I actually enjoyed it because I like a game to have some bite to it, so we had fun with it, running away when necessary.

The no flow between quests thing that you talk about Roll is such an oddity to me. I'm so used to making my own adventure when I drop into a game, that it feels a bit odd to have every bit of Azeroth stuffed with quests in WoW.

One thing that I really enjoyed was not referring to the map at all and just exploring the world. It was great because we would uncover things and it gave a lot of wonderment to our playtime. It was especially cool in the Norn zone, where Pie and I found a "Shaman Challenge", where a group of shamans representing different animals were housed in a cave. You would have to jump from different platforms, avoiding ravens that would knock you off into a pit of monsters and face off against the four different animal shamans on their respective platforms. The last set of shamans representing snow leopard were guarding a treasure chest with some pretty neat gear.

What made this so fun was that it wasn't stated on the map as having a heart location, point of interest or skill challenge; you just had to find it in your travels. This happens in WoW too, but is a lot less interesting because even though you find lots of cool things, everything feels like it has purpose, you rarely feel like you made genuine discoveries. Like, if you don't pick up quests, you might find a cave, which is cool. But there is always that known feeling that this cave probably has a quest tied to it, so I probably should have just followed the quest chains and let the game lead me around so I can get extra EXP and potentially nice gear while exploring.

[RollCasket]

Yeah but that was my issue...I explored the whole map (which is a bit painful due to how slow it is...and I used waypoints when I could) and was STILL underleveled. I'm not saying I want the game handed to me, I'm not a fan of handholding, but this I feel could definitely use some work. Obviously WoW has had a lot of time to get to where it is today, but in GW2 you literally HAVE to do everything on the map (which apparently still wasn't enough as I was still underleveled) which I'm definitely not a fan of, I like being able to skip quests or even whole areas I don't like.

Like I said though, overall I still like it...just think some things could be better.

[Fixxxer 117]

I do agree that it was very hard, for me at least, to level up without resorting to repeating events.

[ThePaul]

I think the difficulty curve got tweaked at some point, because I spent a bit of time not running around with the group the last Beta event, and I don't remember dying as much as I did this time around.

I didn't play as much as I wanted to, because the sirin's call of a certain game kept coming out of my PS3, but I had a little bit of fun trying out Ranger and a tiny bit o Mesmer. Also tried Warrior some, and have descided I don't really want to play a close ranged character during beta again. I just don't have as much fun playing them, and what with the events only being 72 hours I want to sink some time into other classes.

[th3squirr3l]

I was extremely happy with this weekend, as it proved that my new laptop could run highest settings smoothly.... So long as there wasn't a large group of people around.... I had to go down to the highest performance settings for that.

Anyways, my one complaint with this game is the how a majority of the event chains aren't, well, event chains.
They said before that every dynamic event would have an effect on the world, and that a pass or fail for each event would "push it along a rail" to the next one. This is an awesome way of doing it, and worked worked beautifully when implemented. The problem is, I've seen only a couple event chains like this... Everything else seems to reset within minutes. I remember one event that I participated in, we had to defeat a few veteran guards, and then another few veteran cave trolls. There was a chest in the back of the room. After looting it, I decided to do a little bit of inventory management, and everyone else moved on. In about a minute or so, everything respawned directly on top of me, killing me and separating me from the group I had been traveling with for a bit... I couldn't find them again

Other than that, I really did love this game. I just wish that the events would have a little more impact on the world, like was promised.

[Luc of True Wind]

I really love this game! I also did not get to play as much as I did last time, but I still think I died just as many times as before... like 50 times hahaha
Usually I don't like games where I die all the time, but I don't seem to mind it here because I don't feel like there is any big penalty for dying or that I miss things. I certainly got frustrated at points, but that's all part of playing a new game. I rather like the wandering and discovering things between character questing. I think wandering just gives you so many more opportunities to discover new things and stumble upon events and join random groups. I love how much this game fosters cooperation and teamwork! This makes the game so much more fun to me and does not seem so vacuous when I am just meandering about; the cooperation makes it feel like I am always around people I can trust and help.
I tried out Guardian class and I really liked it! I think I will still have elementalist as my main class just because they are so much fun to play
I look forward to playing with everyone when the game is officially released!