Guild Wars 2

Manticmuse · #1 05-13-2016, 10:15 AM

Anybody played this? What were your impressions?

Daywolf · #2 05-13-2016, 05:46 PM

Yeah for the first year (I played GW1 before that). I leveled all classes and maxed all tradeskills. I won, game over.

Oh my impressions? For the first 3-6 months I'd rate it 7/10. After that it slid down to 2/10. There was a whole lot of ragequitting in that game with what the developers re-developed the game into. I'd now classify it as a grindy-grindy super-casual pay-to-win game. There is just soooo much wrong with that game to list, and all mostly from changing from a fun challenging B2P game to just gutter trash on so many levels.

Baler · #3 05-13-2016, 09:35 PM

I've played it for over 1 year now. My first impressions were that it was pretty amazing, Well worth a play through. Some starting areas are better then others but it is pretty easy to travel anywhere in the world at anytime.

End game (without the expansion) what end game? I only found it to be a grind for gold/items to twink out my main(s). PVP is alright can be fun at times.

I max leveled a thief, warrior and guardian. Did armour + weapon smithing and leather working. Trade skills are gold to win.

Game has an auction house which you can buy nearly everything off. It also makes getting gold super easy.

I recommend trying the free to play version and make your own assumptions. It can be fun but I don't think it will last as long as you hope at first.

GW2 does have the best micro transaction point of view ever IMO,. use in game currency or real money to buy fluff stuff.
(I know eve did it first with plex)

Daywolf · #4 05-13-2016, 10:34 PM

That fluff stuff you sell to other players then buy the junk to craft (time gated components) the best weapons and armor that can take months to make without just outright buying the components. I've spoken to people that claim to have spent $1000's in the item shop. Some claiming over $10k (mmo whales). Everything shifted from "will never be grindy" and "we wont add more armor/weapon tiers" etc etc to just full on cash shop grab in every way, including black lion chest keys to open chests which is nothing but gambling. Even crafting was destroyed, made to be compulsive for everyone, and materials to grind your crafting levels were worth more than the things you could make. Bosses and mobs like in Cursed Shore were all made kitten easy. The only challenge with instanced dungeons became speed run times. This is a game that dropped 70 IQ after launch state, refining it for ultra-casual cash-shop whales.

Me what I did, main things for end-game, WvW and I liked doing Temples (was hardest thing to do). Temples are sort of the closest thing to oldschool open-world raiding. Fav char was a D/D Stealth Thief, made Commander second month after release. Guild missions. Uninstalled.

Laugher · #5 05-14-2016, 09:09 AM

I'd agree with Baler about their cash store, GW2 doesn't break the game with it like others

That being said I hadn't played it as much, picked it up when it came out and got to around level 70/80 before quitting as a hunter. The end game issue is something I think they might be trying to address w/their new xpac? Not sure. Read somewhere a year or two ago that whatever xpac was on the horizon would possibly have static PvE encounters, which until this point the closest thing to that GW2 had was world events that would occurr every so often or pending a quest/circumstances

*edit* if I had to pick I would still take GW2 over Aion.

Manticmuse · #6 05-14-2016, 11:34 AM

Ty for the all the info.

As far as balance, at end game can a skilled player on any class defeat a slightly lesser skilled player on any class? Are there wildly op fotm classes?

This cash chop you speak of, Daywolf, you are saying it helps power buyers buy many more RNG chances to get the best stuff...but not that it gives anyone access to gear that is otherwise unobtainable?

Can people use real money to buy health or mana potions or speed/armor boosts...that kind of pvp killing crap? Daywolf I get that you're saying people can sell other things bought with real money and use that money to get those boosts, if they exist. Is it so prevalent that almost every match was decided by it? Would restocking equivalent boosts with in game gold be too difficult to keep up with people spending real money?

Can people use real money to buy extra trait/spec points?

Sorry for all the questions...I've heard the deal about how great it is at first and the fun wears off. I'm not interested in another LOTRO where a fantastic pvp environment went to shit because people have access to extra health and mana pots and more that didn't even share cooldowns with the in-game currency bought stuff (this is like 6 years ago).

In an ideal game, I wouldn't have to grind new armor/weapons every couple months to maintain relevance in pvp. There wouldn't be a ton of pve either, as I would focus mostly on doing pvp in groups of 4-8. Yes, I would be happy pvping over and over even in a handful of zones because every fight would be different. Is this an achievable playstyle?

I'm interested in the p99 perspective on this game. We are all here because we like some of the same concepts in mmos. Thanks for your input.

Daywolf · #7 05-14-2016, 06:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manticmuse [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This cash chop you speak of, Daywolf, you are saying it helps power buyers buy many more RNG chances to get the best stuff...but not that it gives anyone access to gear that is otherwise unobtainable?

Can people use real money to buy health or mana potions or speed/armor boosts...that kind of pvp killing crap? Daywolf I get that you're saying people can sell other things bought with real money and use that money to get those boosts, if they exist. Is it so prevalent that almost every match was decided by it? Would restocking equivalent boosts with in game gold be too difficult to keep up with people spending real money?

Can people use real money to buy extra trait/spec points?

Well they have those token things, clickables that give you temp buffs like health regen, armor buff, XP modifiers for general xp and crafting, luck boosts (for better mob loot) etc etc etc. Most or all is in the shop, but also comes out of the black lion chests. Those chests drop like crazy, worth like 2c in auction. But the keys you might get one out of the game every couple months. They sell them in the shop though, and people buy them up like crazy. There are a lot of very desirable things in those chests, can make a fortune if you strike it lucky (RNG), and if you have a gambling addiction problem, you're Anets new best friend. The tokens are not the big thing, tons of very valuable and rare items to gamble for.

Top tier gear is "legendary" and "Ascended". They added that into the game after swearing they would never add another tier such as Ascended. And when they added, it drove the market crazy for buying things out of the shop and selling them in auction to other players for gold. There is no such thing as "only fluff", it's just a matter of exchange. You buy what's new or hot from the shop and sell in auction to other players, take the gold you make and then buy components to instantly assemble top tier equipment that in total from start could take you as long as a year to fully gear up with ...for one character. Not just gear that makes your char look good, but actually gives you an edge over other players in everything apart from tournament pvp.

So an example, I start an account, roll my thief, then spend say $1000 in the item shop. Now I take that stuff and sell it to other players through the auction. Now I take the gold I got from auction and buy everything to level my thief up like 300% faster than someone that didn't micro-transaction. Finally at cap, I buy time gated crafted components from other players through auction and assemble all my ascended gear and buy my legendary weapon from auction.

They make a lot of money this way from teh all fluff item shop. So much so, for the longest time they mostly abandoned the b2p model and it became an f2p apart from initial box fee. Originally they were going to just mainly sell expansions to fund the game, but that changed to buying like tickets to get into the latest temp holiday content etc. You had to pay to get into new special zones where new special items dropped or could be bought off of special vendors, for a limited time during special temp content. Game went into melt down over all this, just so much anger from the community.

They eventually released an expansion, but not until the new model had already failed and the zones were all just ghost towns then they tried to switch back to the original pre-release promises that they broke. They merged every server into one, and there still wasn't even hardly half-filled zones. Anyway I was on closed beta for the expansion, uninstalled before it released. Too little too late. If they had stuck to expansions and not slid into the quasi-F2P crud and turning the game into a serious grind (worst grind game I ever played), game could have done well.

It's on my list of worst fail mmo's. GW2 is #2 on my list, with SWG:NGE as #1 biggest fail ever (but my fav mmo ever, pre-NGE expansion. Not speaking of just bad games, lots of those, but games that were good but went full retard from a game revamp and just crashed.

Play it if you want... I'm not saying don't, but just above is something to know about before doing it. I'd suggest something else. The EQ emu is about the only mmo I'm playing now, and GW2 is the last of the newer mmo's I've installed. I filed f2p mmo's in the round file long ago, they're all a scourge. Anarchy Online? EVE Online? way better choice than GW2. Heck, I think EQ live can beat GW2.

Yeah I got fed up with it, just like I left the battlefield series, went to ARMA instead, where the publisher hates the idea of micro-transactions. You know that military shooter very popular, Battlefield 3 etc. Spend more time playing like Space Engineers, X Rebirth (X series in general), the EQ emu, still playing Skyrim, some Quake Live. I don't like micro transactions, I could link you game industry articles that explain how they are scams, designed for just the few people they call "whales" that compulsively spend tons of money in micro-transactions. IMO wrecks game design, so now that rather than having the best and most innovative fun in mind, they rather do the other thing that will help compel a few people to spend like hookers with a stolen credit card.

Daywolf · #8 05-14-2016, 10:26 PM

And when I said "gated" I mean time gated. So say you want to make a piece of ascended armor, boots or whatever. You gotta put mats/materials together and combine at the crafting station. The special mats require difficult to get items, and then when you do craft the material it is then time-gated until you can make another, pretty long timer. Once you make that mat, you combine it with another, then that is time-gated. You may need to do this a number of times and have a number of the same mat to finally combing into a last component. Then people can sell those, or use them in the last full combine of all these many time-gated mats to make the armor at which point it's account bound. Long-long process, taking weeks for each armor item, even a month per item as certain components needed for a combine come as a monthly reward after grinding daily events.

Now people argue that it doesn't make a difference, that the stats are not that much more, but like in wvw it absolutely made a difference in my full set of armor and trinkets vs players w/o, huge difference. In pve less so, but you are underequipped and an anchor to some groups. Reaching cap with one character can take a month if you understand the game. But once there it is a terrible grind to fully gear like most other players, unless you drop cash into the game [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]