Guild Wars 2

Daidraco

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
9,217
9,325
If you played the game, like actually played... Then think back to the point where you was trying to get to a vista on top of a mountain. You have to find your way up there on one specific path. Fall down, and you have to run allllll the fuck away around the mountain again. Hence, mounts.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,380
276
Still don't see a *need* for them from that example (did world completion before gliding). They're nice to have for old content, that's all. Obviously they'll be required for the expansion since it is build around them.

At any rate, more features are always welcome. I wish they would add more cosmetics to world content. I'm kinda expecting mounts to get 1 variant through content and 30+ through the gemstore, like gliders did. I get that they need to make money (and I do buy gems when I actively play), but I also want some nice in-game rewards to work towards.
 
Grim1

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,864
6,821
Apparently the new expansion has some pretty big maps with waypoints spread far apart. So the need is probably only for those maps. Much like gliding is really only necessary in the HoT maps.

But even if they're just for fun, that's cool.
 
Tearofsoul

Tearofsoul

Ancient MMO noob
1,791
1,256
I am still debating whether i should pick this up along with HoT or not. Maybe I should wait for beta review 1st?
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Tearofsoul said:
I am still debating whether i should pick this up along with HoT or not. Maybe I should wait for beta review 1st?
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Since there is no monthly fee, just buy when you want to play through it. Your gear doesn't get obsolete, there's always going to be more content. The only reason to buy early is to keep unlocking living world episodes, but that won't be an issue for a while now.
 
Zindan

Zindan

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,638
4,416
Bought the expansions today and started on the HoT storyline, after I completed the first quest the game unlocked Masteries and gave me 1 HoT point and 30 Central Tyria points. It seems those "free" points are locked behind earning points, so for every free point I got, I'll need to earn another point just to spend them. Seems... odd.

Edit: Actually, you need to unlock a Tier by filling up your xp bar, then you can spend points in that Tier.
 
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Daidraco

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
9,217
9,325
Mr Creed said:
Still don't see a *need* for them from that example (did world completion before gliding). They're nice to have for old content, that's all. Obviously they'll be required for the expansion since it is build around them.
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You dont require mounts to go anywhere in most other games, either. But yet, they are still there. Respecting the players and their playtime. This game just felt like the designers knew their game was gorgeous and wanted to force you to "take it all in" which is just a minor thing, but annoying none the less.

With more thought behind it, I really cant find what it was about masteries that made me hate them so much? I dont know if it was the lack of reward that gaining a level in mastery points was, or the fact that I didnt appreciate content being gated behind this time sink that I and my character were ready to do? I guess I just appreciate levels so much more because it shows progress a lot better. If I make plenty of money at work, I feel accomplished for the day. If I found a new way to work that saved me a couple minutes, then well... okay... woo.
 
Grim1

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,864
6,821
Masteries sucked. Hate the whole design. Locking the last ones behind content people never wanted to play was just moronic and went against their base philosophy of "play your way".

But I started playing again with the new expansion announcement and it seems they added a whole bunch of easy to get to masteries in both Tyria and HoT. Thank god, it was depressing watching my xp bar never move because I needed more masteries from parts of the game I dislike.

Gotta give the GW devs credit. They may fuck up but they have always been pretty good about fixing most of their screwups.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,380
276
Daidraco said:
You dont require mounts to go anywhere in most other games, either. But yet, they are still there.
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Absolutely - I didn't play that many MMOs but neither WoW nor TOR needed mounts for mobility reasons - they're nice to have for shaving off a minute here and there, is all. But I'm the kinda player that prefers non-flying to flying in WoW, so probably a tiny minority. In WoW they are also great as rewards and vanity items though. I actually spent most of my WoW time on pets/mounts during the last couple of resubs. Thing is, I don't see GW2 going down that route. I expect Anet to have a skin to purchase once per month and that's that. Hopefully they surprise me by doing more than that.
 
Skinner

Skinner

Trakanon Raider
819
1,137
Raid armor mostly looks like shit anyway and the people in gw2 mostly suck at everything so skip that shit and get your legendary armor through Spvp or WvW and just transmute it to whatever if you don't like how it looks. The WvW T3 armor they introduced recently actually looks somewhat decent but it's gated behind Rank 1,500-2000.

I don't know whats going on with the story in this new expansion. Until now, I've mostly enjoyed the lore and story (even the rushed opps we ran out of money and time ending they threw on Mord), but I just can't get into this Balthazar stuff after heavily investing into killing dragons. For 5 years several races in this game have been talking about killing the racial dragon who fucked them and then randomly right as we're about to take on two of the most popular dragons in Jormag and Primordus at once the writers just toss in Balthazar out of the blue and Taimi's magical machine beep boops that we can't kill dragons anymore or the world could explode.

The sudden pivot from slaying dragons to now chasing down Balthazar across the CD to stop him from killing dragons just feels really odd...and unfulfilling. Maybe I'm just salty I didn't get to see the Norn and Asura mobilize and fuck shit up after 5 years of talking about Jormag and Primordus.

I'm actually kinda fearful that this upcoming expansion is going to be worse than HoT. I know this weekends beta is just a fraction of the first zone and only the first instance of the first chapter of the story, but outside of the Raptor mount (which I kinda enjoy) the entire zone was pretty boring to me.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
I'm slowly working through the campaign, holy shit do the meta events shower with absolutely useless loot. Other MMOs give you bigger numbers on the loot, here you just get absolutely drowned in blue/green crap and a single look at the AH tells you that even the rares can't be any cheaper since they salvage for ectos ...

PvE is still pretty crappy, since the game gives you very little feedback whether you are doing well or not. individual contribution is 0,01% of success of the event, or at least it feels like that.
 
chorboy

chorboy

Silver Knight of the Realm
375
83
I still think the worst part about this game is its community, just go look at the reddit forums for like ten seconds and you will realize how fucking cancerous it is.

The new expansion feels really fanservicy, like we spend YEARS sitting there waiting to take down dragons and the two we do kill have shitty scripts/strats that are incredibly boring, and now magically some teenagers machine makes two dragons go to sleep. Right.

Mounts feel a bit clunky, i've only used the one mount so far but i don't really feel like it's different than gliding, it's just like they saw how everyone thought gliding was cool and decided to base the entire mastery system around it.

I don't really know if i'm going to play the expansion when it comes out, i'll probably wait for it to go on sale super cheap and then pick it up, I have no desire to play through shit broken content for months just for them to change 1/2 of it within the first few months like they did heart of thorns.
 
X

Xenrauk

Trakanon Raider
1,213
888
I stopped following stories only doing them whenever I feel like it, which only amounted to 1 episode of the current living story. But yeah it was a complete left turn going from hunting dragons to hunting a god instead in the end, they even had that stupid naming poll for the character's group taking over for Destiny's Edge, which they eventually picked Dragon's Watch, yeah, suddenly Eternity's Guard(which the eu side had picked) and The Unbroken seem more fitting now.

As for the preview weekend, the mount felt good to me, nice weight and speed to it and even the jump felt good, but it felt really awkward not being able to strafe to the side. The zone stuff, more of the same really, bounties are just repeatable mini boss hunts, the race in the zone I did once and only because the one time I did it I lag spiked 3 times going from first to last, said fuck it after that. They're changing the loot system from showering you with loot to showering you with unidentified stuff, which has already garnered it's complaints since you have to pay to identify it. Still surprised they are going that way since they like flooding your bags with useless junk to salvage so you can think about buying more bag space and their copper and silver fed salvageomatic kits.

They're doing another preview this weekend with the elite specs for wvw and spvp, so I expect to see some broken ass shit with shit balance in there. I would really wait and see some reviews at release before buying, to get an idea of how much content is actually in there, although I'm sure even the $30 price will be worth it anyways.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Xenrauk said:
I stopped following stories only doing them whenever I feel like it, which only amounted to 1 episode of the current living story. But yeah it was a complete left turn going from hunting dragons to hunting a god instead in the end, they even had that stupid naming poll for the character's group taking over for Destiny's Edge, which they eventually picked Dragon's Watch, yeah, suddenly Eternity's Guard(which the eu side had picked) and The Unbroken seem more fitting now.

As for the preview weekend, the mount felt good to me, nice weight and speed to it and even the jump felt good, but it felt really awkward not being able to strafe to the side. The zone stuff, more of the same really, bounties are just repeatable mini boss hunts, the race in the zone I did once and only because the one time I did it I lag spiked 3 times going from first to last, said fuck it after that. They're changing the loot system from showering you with loot to showering you with unidentified stuff, which has already garnered it's complaints since you have to pay to identify it. Still surprised they are going that way since they like flooding your bags with useless junk to salvage so you can think about buying more bag space and their copper and silver fed salvageomatic kits.

They're doing another preview this weekend with the elite specs for wvw and spvp, so I expect to see some broken ass shit with shit balance in there. I would really wait and see some reviews at release before buying, to get an idea of how much content is actually in there, although I'm sure even the $30 price will be worth it anyways.
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I think the price tag will be fine, especially with the amount of content they will patch in eventually. GW2 is still an undisputed king in sidetracking me. WoW comes down all to numbers, anything you do makes your character's numbers go up, it's just about doing it the most efficient way. GW2 showers you with pointless achievements, collections, events, fractals, legendary crafting ... But it's kind of fun every once in a while. If you have a set goal when you log in and grind towards it, the game will bore you to death, however if you log in and see what is happening and just wander around, I would rate it higher than WoW. Oh look, there's a mastery point ! And when the meta events get done, it feels pretty good, my favorite so far is the Auric Basin, even though the chests in there prompted a small rant about pointless crap the game showers you with. Look, rare crafting material worth 4c !

I played like an hour of PoF, the mounts felt right, they have a little bit of momentum instead of just +%movement speed. It really is more of the same, but it felt like they learned from past mistakes.
 
Valderen

Valderen

Space Pirate
<Bronze Donator>
4,454
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I got back into the game this weekend in preparation for the expansion. I always like GW2, I enjoy most of the gameplay. It's fairly casual, and fun solo or with a friend.

I'm still debating which character I want to play for the expansion. I have a 80 Revenant, he finished the Heart of Thorns storyline, but hadn't finished the original game story, or s1, s2, and s3...I finished original game, he was almost at the end in Orr, S1 is not replayable so just watch the recap and started S2. I also have an engineer at 80, she was my main character before the Revenant was released. She finished original story, s1, s2, and was halfway through Heart of Thorns, and didn't do S3.

I like both, tried the new specialization a little this weekend on dummies...and I think the Holosmith is going to be the difference maker, and make me play the Engineer. It looks pretty damn cool, and seemed fun.

I'll probably have time to complete the story they are both missing before the expansion so I still have time to decide. They are both in exotic gear, never got around to doing Ascended, not sure I'll bother either...seemed to be very expensive and time consuming for minimal gain (5% I think).

I also have a 80 Thief, Mesmer and Necro...but those were never really serious characters...so unlikely to play any of those.
 
Miele

Miele

Lord Nagafen Raider
916
48
I got HoT some months ago, but I can't really love it like I did with the original content. Any tricks to speed up masteries or should I just gtfo of the first HoT zone?
 
Valderen

Valderen

Space Pirate
<Bronze Donator>
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I enjoyed the HoT story, and had a love/hate relashionship with the zones. I like the verticality and general design of the zones which are nice...but that same verticality made navigating the zones a pain in the ass, and I dislike the events big time, they are for lack of a better term too disruptive to the day to day activities.

As for masteries, I just got what I needed to complete the story, and do the 100% zone completion. Didn't bother with farming everything.

I am hoping the expansion tones down the zone events a bit. I still will enjoy the expansion I am sure since I find GW 2 to be one of the most fun game for exploration/discovering the new zones.
 
Grim1

Grim1

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,864
6,821
Miele said:
I got HoT some months ago, but I can't really love it like I did with the original content. Any tricks to speed up masteries or should I just gtfo of the first HoT zone?
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Go check out the other zones too. You can get most of the masteries you need by exploring them a bit. Also, the second zone event seems to be farmed quite a bit during the weekend.

Last couple of zones are a bit harder to navigate (and tougher mobs), but if you spend enough time in them, they start to make sense.
 
Zaphid

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Auric Basin is by far the most populated, since the meta event really makes it rain. Tangled Depths are so-so, especially if they turn up in the daily event achievement and the event doesn't take that long. I have yet to see Dragon's Stand meta happen, since the whole map is dependant on it, which sucks balls. The personal story wasn't terrible, but nobody really plays the game because of that. It's not bad to experience and I'm quite confident PoF will be worth it, since you can ejoy it very casually. The game is still an undisputed king in sidetracking you, it's ADHD: The Game. Collections, dungeons, masteries, events, world bosses, daily achievements, the list is almost endless. I wonder how they will tackle HoT content though, since you need people around pretty much all the time, the base game is at least F2P and places like Silverwastets get surprising amount of traffic.

I have been grinding fractals a bit, up to like 21 and honestly the new ones are really well done. It's no WoW when it comes to minmaxing and class fantasies, but the world feels much more interactive, including the encounters and it feels a lot less formulaic with trash almost non-existant. I've been thinking about trying the raids, but apparently I don't play the meta classes or don't have enough ascended gear.
 
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