Guild Wars 2 doubts

Keero

Tribe of Judah Membership Administrator
First off, not trying to hate on the game or persuade anyone to cancel their pre-order and give Runescape a shot, just voicing my opinion of the game from what I've seen in beta. I'm sure it's going to be a great game, but these are just some things that have been bugging me. As always, feel free to discuss or offer counter-opinions.

One issue I see is that of combat. I find the mobility, sound effects and visuals to be enjoyable, but overall the combat comes off as shallow. Having only a small number of actual skills to choose from is disappointing. Yeah, I know you can switch off to your second set, choose a different element, or use an Engineer's weapon kit, but I personally don't find pressing the same few buttons that exciting. Whereas the first Guild Wars allowed you to choose from dozens of skills for one weapon, here we're only given five (few more for Thief) to choose from. Is the game action-packed? Sure. But lack of options when it comes to how I play my character makes PVE feel like a faceroll. Normal battle goes tab->auto-attack->crowd control->bigger attack->repeat. Sprinkle in some dodging, circle-strafing and maybe a heal and that's 80% of my combat experience with most of the classes I played.

The other 20% includes group combat. Class-combos which sounded awesome on paper are also rather underwhelming. Sure, ranged attacks with poison/fire/elemental fields are neat, but buffs from combos last but a few seconds at most making them near pointless. Is it a step up from WAR/WoW/Rift? Sure. But it's so dumbed down to the point it becomes a shallow experience overall.

Another issue is that of damage and healing. I understand the game's focus on removing healers/tank/DPS roles and giving a mix of all three. But when it comes to group content, the sheer damage from mobs of the same level, the two-dodge limit, and lengthy cooldown on CC skills mean I see events where people just get destroyed in seconds. People go to revive but they also go down in turn dragging everyone else down. Sure, there's preventative measures that classes get to reduce damage or block the next incoming attack, but overall the game seems off-balance when it comes to damage and healing numbers. Enemy attacks for example could hit for 50 while a player's health is around 400. Regen is not going to help with it's piddly 7~15 health every few seconds. Add another mob to the equation and the player is either running for his life or trying to mash the V key so they can dodge when the cooldown is done. I'm not saying Guild Wars 2 should be easy here though. I enjoy the challenge (I like games like Demon Souls and Megaman :p), but the healing/"support" nature of classes are severely lacking overall.

I will mention how I feel events don't give enough EXP to the point I have to grind 3~4 different ones a few times just to gain a level and that's before level 10! Crafting helps speed up EXP gain plenty (10 mining nodes = one event) but overall it looks like to me like rewards from events are weak in comparison to how fast one should be moving through a zone. Doing an event once in logical order left me at level 4, making the level 6 one in the human area too tough to handle (yay glancing blows!) A player would then have to either 1) redo the same events again (though with some variation) or 2) go to the other starting areas and do those events too.

Anyways, is there anything that you guys had a problem with when playing? I know I can't be the only one. >_>;;
 
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You also have to remember this is still beta. The numbers as far as damage, healing, xp gains, etc. are most definitely going to change (I would be incredibly surprised to find much in that way being the same at release, with the possibility of some stuff being radically different at even the next beta event.) If you don't like something or it feels off and needs to be changed as far as that kind of stuff goes, now is the time you're supposed to bring it to the attention of ANet on their test forums before it goes live and people come out with the same issues you do...

The combat may very well be a valid doubt, since that is something that isn't going to change much over all, and is a matter of personal preference. I don't tend to use more than 6-10 buttons during an average fight in an MMO ever anyway (I only ever had to use 5-6 in WoW running heroics for example, and SWTOR was laughable as an Inquisitor...), and I only ever used one or two builds for PvE in the original Guild Wars per profession anyway -so I'm not likely to notice much if any difference.
 
I am not sure about your skill complaint. The original GW only let you have 8 skills slotted this one lets you have 10 no? 10 seems like a lot to give you some variety in combat. It is not like other games that let you slot 30 skills still didn't only use around 5 in a normal rotation right? LoL is a fantastic game and it only has 4 skills! What would you have them change to make combat better? Just curious .:)
 
I don't mind it being 10 skills total, my qualm is the lack of variety of what we're given for the weapon skills. For instance, in Guild Wars 1, a Warrior could choose from a pool of 19 different skills for both an axe, sword, and 22 for a hammer. This isn't including the extra utility from 30 Tactics skills that go on the bar, too. In Guild Wars 2, we're given just 5 weapon skills. Skills we can't change, move around, or swap to fit our playstyle. I like the utility skills, those are fine. But going from 1-80 with the same attacks? We don't even get different skill trees, just good passives. Just seems restrictive given how many options Guild Wars 1 had.

And I hate LoL, so yes, I would change it to include more space marines and explosions. :p
 
And I hate LoL, so yes, I would change it to include more space marines and explosions. :p

LOL:jk



I hear ya Keero.

1. Skills are an issue in my mind since they changed to the tiered unlock of the slotable skills. However I read the dev notes and they are hoping by doing this that they are giving people something to look forward to rather then just letting someone have everything up front. My concern is in how they have numbered the cost to unlock the skill points. You have to spend 5 points to get into the 2nd tier however you can have 10 points by level 10ish if you know what your doing. I had unlocked all of the first tier and 2 of the 5 in the second tier by level 12. This new system didnt really slow down my unlocking skills it just made me spend points on stuff I didnt really want so I could unlock other stuff I did. HOWEVER there have been tons of posts on this subject in the beta forums too, and the Devs have been talking about it. Im very sure this is on their radar. I would be happier if the other skill slots with the exception of the elite skill were not locked until specific levels. IE I am currently waiting on the # 9 to unlock at level 20, but what ever its not breaker for me.

Healing/damage: I did find in some massive battles that people were going down because of lack of endurance to dodge. When we are told we need to dodge attacks but really only can dodge 2 then heals will be needed and cool down on the heal is very high. Other support classes are needed to keep this kind of fight going because you might dodge one mobs attack but then your in melee range with a different mob. The frozen maw out in the Norn world was the biggest example of this that I saw.

They understand they have to do some tweaking and my understanding is that this is why we dont have a release date yet. Keep the faith and post your concerns on the beta forums if you have not already, they need this kind of feedback.
 
My view on the abilities:

I have never played GW1, but in comparison to WoW, it feels a lot more versatile. Using WoW as my only frame of reference, allow me to compare. Leveling my mage, I started out with fireball. I added lots of abilities along the way, but only a few that I regularly used in combat. I pretty much leveled from 1-85 using Fireball, Living Bomb (only received once I completed my fire talent tree), Scorch, and Fire Blast (Pyroblast on proc). Some situational abilities I would use included CC abilities like Frost Nova, Counterspell, Polymorph. So I'd say I'd only use about 4-5 abilities while leveling, unless I got into some trouble, then I'd dip into 3-4 utilities. In GW2, I've been betaing with an engineer, which is intended to be my main. I have yet to explore all of these abilities, but I generally use a rifle, giving me 5 baseline abilities. I get a heal, the utilities, and a long CD elite skill, along with 4 toolbelt skills that can change depending on the heal and utility skills I choose. Now, I can't change my weapon in combat like other professions, but I can assign engineer kits to my utiltity skills. Each kit - grenade, mine, flamethrower, elixir gun, toolkit - give me five additional abilities, most of which are unique. I had an absolute blast pursuing skill points to gain abilities, using these abilities to discover their corresponding tool belt abilities, and finding a set that worked for me and my playstyle. I feel like, even though you are restricted to 10 buttons to use, the changing of weapons or kits in combat adds more skills than I ever used in WoW.

I have to agree with you on group content though. Although I only ran ONE dungeon at the end of beta, it was hectic and really annoyed me a lot. There were times where we would pull two mobs, I'd be instantly stunned, and dead before I recovered control of my character. This is not fun. Part of this may be that we just need to get used to a new style of play/combat. I think a lot of it (for me at least) was that I CAN'T ZOOM OUT FAR ENOUGH TO SEE WHAT'S GOING ON AROUND ME. I seriously hope they increase the camera zoom out, because I felt clausterphobic all weekend. It probably didn't help that I chose Norn, and went with their largest body type though.

The big thing for me in this game though is - what will keep me playing each week? They don't have large scale group content like raiding, which may be ok. I need something to work towards though - gearing, achievements, etc. I'm not sure WvW is for me, but I am sure going to give it a try. Basically - once I play through the story, what is there for me at max level? These 'endgame' questions are what will make or break the game for me.
 
I love GW2 it's not without it's fault, but many of those faults the devs said they are working on. They already said there would be a BW3, so we still are at a bare minimum 3 months from launch.
 
The big thing for me in this game though is - what will keep me playing each week? They don't have large scale group content like raiding, which may be ok. I need something to work towards though - gearing, achievements, etc. I'm not sure WvW is for me, but I am sure going to give it a try. Basically - once I play through the story, what is there for me at max level? These 'endgame' questions are what will make or break the game for me.

From what I understand the "Explorable" dungeons at max level are the closest thing to raiding. There will be extremely challenging dungeons that have multiple paths to take giving them many play-throughs. There will be lots of achieves in them and rewards if you fully explore them. However I think they are only for 1 group. If you are looking for the large group aspect of raiding, then you have to turn to the World bosses and end game "events" that will cycle.

I too hope that it will be enough to keep players interested. Personally WvW is exactly what i want from a MMO so I will be living in there.
 
From what I understand the "Explorable" dungeons at max level are the closest thing to raiding. There will be extremely challenging dungeons that have multiple paths to take giving them many play-throughs. There will be lots of achieves in them and rewards if you fully explore them. However I think they are only for 1 group. If you are looking for the large group aspect of raiding, then you have to turn to the World bosses and end game "events" that will cycle.

I too hope that it will be enough to keep players interested. Personally WvW is exactly what i want from a MMO so I will be living in there.

I didn't try it this last BWE, but my first BWE WvW experience basically was:
- run to the battle for five minutes
- fight for 10-30 seconds
- die
- repeat

Some of the updates I've read about actually sound very cool, and I'm really looking forward to trying them!
 
I didn't try it this last BWE, but my first BWE WvW experience basically was:
- run to the battle for five minutes
- fight for 10-30 seconds
- die
- repeat

Some of the updates I've read about actually sound very cool, and I'm really looking forward to trying them!

I would say then your doing it wrong.

Once you find a group to be running with they should be trying to rez you because they benefit from you being around.

ALSO keeps can be upgraded to have waypoints in them if there is enough supplies running to the keep. AND the supply depots are close to the original spawn points for each group in each area. A keep with a waypoint in it will be way powerful so long as people are there to defend it.

Gator got killed outside our keep the other day so we made a strong push to rez him quickly and managed to get him back inside with us. The system will work really well in coop.... Look forward to owning the mysts with you some time.
 
It's too late now, but if you are seriously interested in GW2, the official GW2 forums that Anet hosts is a great place to lurk. They closed them on Tuesday so Anet can go through them and see all the player responses, but from what Devs have posted on there and what players have suggested, a lot of the concerns that were posted here were beaten like a dead horse there. I am super excited about where the Guardian is suggested to go, and WvWvW is looking to get some love as well.

Unfortunately Keero, the weapon skills are going to stay, one Dev even stated that they don't have the bandwidth to add a longbow weapon to the Guardian, so they most likely will change the scepter to a 1200 range weapon and rework the staff a bit. But it's too late in development to do away with skills linked to weapons. I personally like the change, because in theory you have way more than just 10 skills once you hit level 7 and can swap weapons. Not counting chain skills or skills that become active once you use one, you essentially have a total of 10 weapons skills alone since you can swap. I've found several different combos that synergize well using skills from weapons set A with skills from weapons set B, and that synergy is what Guild Wars is all about.

It really comes down to preference, and I really enjoy having to decide which skills work best together because I can only bring a certain amount rather than bringing as many as I want.

EDIT: Keero, you should try out the Guardian with the torch offhand. Same playstyle as the pyro from TF2, except you breathe fire rather than a flame thrower :p
 
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Bit of a late response, but one thing I wanted to respond to on the versatility of weapons...there are less skills per weapon, but there are also many more weapons.

For example, a warrior can use 9 non-aquatic weapons for a total of ~40 (?) usable weapon skills. That's almost as many as a GW1 warrior ever had, and this is before we inevitably add more skills with expansions. For comparison, it's worth pointing out that there were 31 when Prophecies launched, if my count is correct. Whether expansions will add more weapons or optional skills per weapon is yet to be seen. In addition, let's be honest: many (most?) GW1 skills were completely useless due to being underpowered, e-management, or not comboing well. How many different warrior builds were any good? General PvE saw very few viable builds, and all of those were inferior to an assassin running the same or a similar build most of the time.

I think the main thing you're losing here is the ability to pick exactly which great sword skills you want to bring, but that's essentially been replaced with picking the weapon, as shown above. Honestly, despite so much choice this is something that often plagued GW1 as well. My A/W setup pretty much never left my bar from 0 to GWAMM. And why should it? Best bar ever!

Utility (tactics/strength) has obviously moved to the optional skills and traiting. So I think what we'll see more of is traiting to meet our specific playstyles versus theory crafting on builds. Personally I am a bit sad to see that go but I think it's better for the game (e.g.: goodbye invincabuilds!).

Combat felt better to me personally than 8-7-C-SPACE-6-1-2-5-3-5-4-3-4-3-4-C-SPACE-SPACE all day long.

All that said...I definitely found myself pretty much sticking to longbow only for most of my ranger play...definitely got a little stale at points. Only at the end did I start to play great sword/axe...and I really saw what I was missing there. I think the new system requires us to get out of the single weapon mindset and into one of swapping to keep things fresh.

I'm hoping expansion sees alternate skills on weapons to add even more versatility.
 
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Something I just remembered Keero, from BWE1 to BWE2, Anet tried to improve the feel of combat. They updated it so "you can feel each blow" or something along those lines. I didn't notice much of a difference, but I was paying attention to other stuff. I don't remember seeing if that complaint was resolved this time around in the forums, but I will agree with you that combat is not exactly what I was expecting. Hopefully they will continue improving it, with noticeable changes :)
 
Something I just remembered Keero, from BWE1 to BWE2, Anet tried to improve the feel of combat. They updated it so "you can feel each blow" or something along those lines.

That proves it - they're making a PS3 version with dual shock support. /stupidspeculation
 
I'm not sure how many hours you've been able to play Keero, but I had similar complaints and doubts during the press/limited beta weekend. A lot of it came down to me just getting roflstomped by literally EVERY mob I encountered. I can survive persistently now but heals do feel WAY under powered.

As far as skills go I play Elementalist and use 20 different skills with my 1-5 keys. You may want to change your profession and see if one doesn't feel more exciting and challenging.

Have you been able to play with people you know and coordinate attacks? The one time I was actually able to team up with friends I had a LOT better time. It felt like we were actually bringing tactics into each fight. Group play def. makes GW2 loads more fun. Solo... not so much.
 
Heals are definitely underpowered. For better or worse, that's by design. The idea is to bring in more active combat. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with health bars, the emphasis is now on avoiding damage instead of soaking it.

I think that for the most part, the game is balanced in theory...it just takes some getting used to and none of us have played very much. The biggest balance issues left over are ranged vs melee, and crowd size. E.G. many events were very easy or very hard when a lot of people were around.
 
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