What's new
  • Please do not post any links until you have 3 posts as they will automatically be rejected to prevent SPAM. Many words are also blocked due to being used in SPAM Messages. Thanks!

Guild Wars 2

Omega_Phoenix

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
51
Location
Etobicoke
Actually got an email from NCSoft yesterday about opting in, since I had a Guild Wars account for a while. Admittedly I didn't commit much time to it, I wasn't into MMOs at the time. Soultribunal and some friends convinced me to play WoW with them, and I have a good time with that. So I opted in. We'll see what happens.

I think most of the problem I had with MMOs (and still have with some online games) is I'm not really a fan of, shall we call it, "public gaming" - I enjoy playing online with friends, but entering a game with a bunch of people I don't know kinda freaks me out subconsciously. I used to do it all the time in Diablo II, maybe I just got tired of the BS some people throw at you, so I avoided playing games online.

....either that or I'm scared I suck. It's probably that.
 

JJThomp

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 6, 2011
Messages
1,392
Location
Ontario
Actually got an email from NCSoft yesterday about opting in, since I had a Guild Wars account for a while. Admittedly I didn't commit much time to it, I wasn't into MMOs at the time. Soultribunal and some friends convinced me to play WoW with them, and I have a good time with that. So I opted in. We'll see what happens.

I think most of the problem I had with MMOs (and still have with some online games) is I'm not really a fan of, shall we call it, "public gaming" - I enjoy playing online with friends, but entering a game with a bunch of people I don't know kinda freaks me out subconsciously. I used to do it all the time in Diablo II, maybe I just got tired of the BS some people throw at you, so I avoided playing games online.

....either that or I'm scared I suck. It's probably that.

See I play for the BS, man that is like half the entertainment just watching people go at eachother saying rediculous things on the internet... Man makes me miss my 12 sky days.

P.S I'm so excited for this game
 
Last edited:

thorn

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
1,969
Location
South Shore Montreal
Most that have played GW1 competitively would argue that dedicated healing classes and spikes were what broke the game.

Self healing in the GW universe has always been relatively inefficient. (even for dedicated healers) It was the game developer's way to promote teamwork over solo play.

Well I wouldn't say spikes were what ruined the game. Good guilds would split on a spike team since spike teams generally had difficulties dealing with splits.

I would say the fact the constantly nerfed things instead of buffing less used skills hurt the game. That and a couple if very broken skills/skill combinations taking too long to be dealt with (the original spirit spam, IWAY, SS/Fear Me). The only thing dedicated healing classes did was limit build possibilities since you typically had to use up two of the team slots for healers (three originally before boon prots and the other "continents" came along).)
 

ilya

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 26, 2010
Messages
1,563
Location
Markham
Well I wouldn't say spikes were what ruined the game. Good guilds would split on a spike team since spike teams generally had difficulties dealing with splits.

I would say the fact the constantly nerfed things instead of buffing less used skills hurt the game. That and a couple if very broken skills/skill combinations taking too long to be dealt with (the original spirit spam, IWAY, SS/Fear Me). The only thing dedicated healing classes did was limit build possibilities since you typically had to use up two of the team slots for healers (three originally before boon prots and the other "continents" came along).)

I'm not just talking about dedicated spikes, but coordinated damage in general. The fact that you could have 2-3 guys work together to kill someone instantly broke the game balance. Sure a good prot could pre-prot, but only until you run out of energy or make a mistake. In which case you're forcing your partner to use a bad skill called Infuse Health. Pressure oriented builds were rarely viable in the metagame unless the skills involved were completely broken at the time or it was a "spike" pressure.

The devs knew about this and that's probably why they completely changed the damage/health ratio in GW2. Pressure oriented play has less of an initial learning curve and is frankly a lot more fun to play. Especially when it's all big damage numbers popping up on your screen.
 

thorn

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
1,969
Location
South Shore Montreal
None of the gvger's I knew had any complaints about "pressure" spikes, in fact most probably preferred that. Against a good team you aren't going to kill someone with pure pressure, at least not quickly enough (they did nerf healing quite a bit). The only exception might have been hex spam before it was nerfed.

I am still not sold on GW2 PvP as it compares to the more organised GvG and HoH of GW1. Obviously they have "dumbed it down" to try and cater to the more casual player but I am just concerned that the higher level play just isn't there. However as I mentioned earlier the people currently with beta access aren't exactly the right people to put the PvP system through its paces.
 

JJThomp

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 6, 2011
Messages
1,392
Location
Ontario
None of the gvger's I knew had any complaints about "pressure" spikes, in fact most probably preferred that. Against a good team you aren't going to kill someone with pure pressure, at least not quickly enough (they did nerf healing quite a bit). The only exception might have been hex spam before it was nerfed.

I am still not sold on GW2 PvP as it compares to the more organised GvG and HoH of GW1. Obviously they have "dumbed it down" to try and cater to the more casual player but I am just concerned that the higher level play just isn't there. However as I mentioned earlier the people currently with beta access aren't exactly the right people to put the PvP system through its paces.

I don't think it is dumbed down at all, between how characters can interact with each other on the same team I think they have increased the difficulty at the top end but lowered it at the mid end. So to be very good you need to think everything through, but to be decent you can just get a bunch of friends together and do whatever you're comfortable with. Also the way the items decide your skills may sound like you have a lot less skills but it isn't so bad because of all the sweet combinations you can have.

I also love how in the 5v5 mode everyone starts on equal ground, truly gives you a chance to show off your skills. If two people go in as the exact same team, the more skilled team will emerge victorious not the team that farmed the best gear. The way it is set up is so that people with less time can still be competitive, me being one of those people with less time appreciate that, but that doesn't mean the skillcap is necessarily lower. At the end of the day PvP is only as hard as your opponents make it so no matter how low you think the skillcap is you will be beat by better players. People always talk about HoN vs. LoL and how HoN is so much harder, yes HoN is harder to pick up but at the end of the day if you win 51% of your games in HoN you will win 51% of your games in LoL because everyone is on the same playing field.

I'm very excited for WvWvW, massive battles are what MMO's are all about and 3 servers duking it out will be huge, I really hope I get a beta invite so i can mess around with item builds before the game comes out.

Don't look at it like "this is what we have and now this is what we have left", think of it as "this is what I had to think about then and this is what i have to think about now". When i look at it the second way I see a lot more.
 
Last edited:

thorn

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
1,969
Location
South Shore Montreal
The issue is the map "type," the capture point mechanism. It is just running around trying to out capture your opponent which, in GW1 at least, doesn't really require as much strategy/"skill". However it seems they will be adding other modes post-release so there is hope for something more interesting.

I didn't mention anything about the skill selection, though it is true there is less potential for variety since you only really choose 5 of the 10 skills with one of the 5 needing to be a heal skill as opposed to all 8 in GW1. But you now have more skills available to you at a time and switching weapons switches the first set of 5 skills, since you generally have 2 sets of weapons you have 15 skills available to you. Also while you had the selection of 300+ skills between your primary and secondary class in GW1 the large majority were hardly if ever used. So the end result is likely a similar number of potential useful builds, though less chance of finding some imba combo since it is likely easier for them to test and manage a smaller base skill set.

I also love how in the 5v5 mode everyone starts on equal ground, truly gives you a chance to show off your skills. If two people go in as the exact same team, the more skilled team will emerge victorious not the team that farmed the best gear. The way it is set up is so that people with less time can still be competitive, me being one of those people with less time appreciate that, but that doesn't mean the skillcap is necessarily lower.

This is more or less how it was in GW1. To PvP you had the option of creating a PvP only character which was at max level (20) and had access to the max level weapons/armour as well as whatever skills and runes you had unlocked. With the addition of balthazar faction unlocking stuff for PvP become really easy (initially you had to unlock everything through PvE which took time). Also if you wanted to use a PvE character it didn't take long to get max level (max two days). Max dmg weapons could be bought for cheap at merchants same with armour. You only had to pay/play more if you wanted the nicer looking equipment, attribute wise they were identical though. And getting skills wasn't that difficult either. The only thing that took a little while was acquiring the runes depending on your class as certain classes/runes were more expensive due to popularity in farming builds using them. However in the end even for a casual player wanting to get their PvE char ready for PvP it didn't take long.
 

JJThomp

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 6, 2011
Messages
1,392
Location
Ontario
The issue is the map "type," the capture point mechanism. It is just running around trying to out capture your opponent which, in GW1 at least, doesn't really require as much strategy/"skill". However it seems they will be adding other modes post-release so there is hope for something more interesting.

I think you would be very surprised, if you have ever played league of legends they have a mode called Dominion which is very similar and you constantly need to be aware of how your opponents are splitting, it is a very reactionary game and how you react and with who makes it very difficult. You have to try and predict who your opponents will send where at what characters on your team you can best send to counter them.

The game is based on having many scrimmages around the map so the combination of characters you send is very important. For example even though Guardian, Elementalist might be a good combo if you put it up against a theif + mesmer you might lose so you might have to split your pair. Also if you have to think about how you can best use your time, if you send 2 people to take one guardian in mid the guardian might be able to draw that fight out for a very long time, thus losing your team time and leaving hem at a disadvantage other places. You might have to brute force it with 4 people and then split after you take it and hope you can capture one side faster.

Like I said, low end will be easy but if you want to be competitive there is a lot more to think about than you first realize.
 

Latest posts

Top