Author Topic: Guild Wars 2  (Read 24999 times)

Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #15 on: September 11, 2012, 10:38:33 am »
I actually really like TB's perspective on the whole game, here. Guild Wars 2 has the questing elements that I'm doubting can really be worked around. He splits the types of MMO questing into 5 categories, and that's that. Any kind of quest in any MMO can be boiled down to those 5 quests. I don't remember the categories, but I was really hard-pressed to find something that doesn't fit in any of them.

The dynamic system, the combat, and everything else in the game, it's all meant to cast a shadow over the idea that a game is repetitious. In fact, any game that you ever look at is going to be repetitious if you break it down to its base elements. One big thing to look at, is how well hidden the repetition is in practice. Call of Duty, to use an overused example, is actually just a game about shooting people, so why is it so popular? It's enticing because of how quick the enemies die (you're never shooting someone for long) and because you progress and level up and get shiny new gun sights. That may be an oversimplification, but those factors are there.
In an RTS, are you not just trying to best your opponent? However, the ways which the game presents to best your opponent, and the unique situations that can occur, those hide the fact that all you're trying to do amounts to 'kill another player'.
...buuuut... in MMO questing, you can't exactly give people tech trees and galaxy-wide battlefields on any practical level.

Offline zespri

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #16 on: September 11, 2012, 11:05:40 am »
Who is TB?

Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #17 on: September 11, 2012, 11:09:49 am »
TotalBiscuit. On youtube, his channel is TotalHalibut. He's a cynical, british, variety gaming commentator. His opinions are generally fairly well formed and expressed on his videos, and he knows a whole lot about what goes on in the gaming industry.

Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #18 on: September 11, 2012, 11:47:39 am »
Guild Wars 2 Angry Review
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax-_06Acj8Y

Yeah, that review was a bit hard to buy tbh. Guild Wars 2 is not as revolutionary as he seems to make it out to be. Its good, but not that good.
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Offline madcow

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #19 on: September 11, 2012, 12:06:19 pm »
Fox's reasons against MMOs are pretty much why I think not necessarily are they dying out, but they'll be shifting from the time-sink RPG MMOs (which from a game mechanics point of view, never struck me as interesting), to new genres. Like planetside, the zombie survival MMOs (DayZ, War Z). Other genres would be cool too.

As it is, most MMOs felt like not so great mechanics designed to sink time, but you can play with a ton of people in a persistent world. I think the next move is other genres (FPS's currently, but maybe more later) in huge persistent worlds but without feeling like a grind/timesink.

This is all said from the POV of somebody that's never really played any MMO.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2012, 12:07:56 pm by madcow »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #20 on: September 11, 2012, 02:36:56 pm »
My wife has GW2 and likes it a lot.  I haven't played it but it looks interesting.  I spent many hours on WoW so it's kind of a formula I already like, but with some substantial improvement.  Mainly what impresses me are two improvements to the "singleplayer" levelling experience:

1) The storyline done for your character (not a new thing, TOR did it too, but nice).

2) The way you can effectively work with (and benefit from working with) other players in the area without invites/groups (this does seem pretty new).  Big chaotic ad hoc battles = good.  Granted, it doesn't always feel like a battle instead of a bunch of guys in a field hacking at stuff (the difference can be subtle), but I'm impressed with what they've done.
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Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #21 on: September 11, 2012, 03:07:10 pm »
My problem with justifying MMOs these days is looking at my Steam game list. And then looking at my wishlist. I barely have enough time to finish the games I want to. To add a MMO onto that list with my crazy schedule just doesn't work for me. And then I have college. That's a giant enough time sink on its own.

Maybe after college I'll give MMOs another look, but I'm happy with what I have now to enjoy the experiences of the games I got.
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Offline LaughingThesaurus

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #22 on: September 11, 2012, 03:11:24 pm »
Well, there is a plus, Isaac. You won't be paying 15$ a month for something you won't be able to play due to a crazy schedule.

Offline Hearteater

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #23 on: September 11, 2012, 03:19:53 pm »
Maybe after college I'll give MMOs another look, but I'm happy with what I have now to enjoy the experiences of the games I got.
Aww, he thinks he'll have more time after college.  That's so cute :) .

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #24 on: September 11, 2012, 03:22:37 pm »
Maybe after college I'll give MMOs another look, but I'm happy with what I have now to enjoy the experiences of the games I got.
Aww, he thinks he'll have more time after college.  That's so cute :) .
Isn't it?

I think that's the part of my life where I had the most time for games.
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Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #25 on: September 11, 2012, 03:39:48 pm »
Well, there is a plus, Isaac. You won't be paying 15$ a month for something you won't be able to play due to a crazy schedule.

You are correct, that is one appeal to GW2 compared to say, WoW. So I'll grant you that.

Maybe after college I'll give MMOs another look, but I'm happy with what I have now to enjoy the experiences of the games I got.
Aww, he thinks he'll have more time after college.  That's so cute :) .

Let me hold onto my illusions darnit!!! ;)
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Offline Kahuna

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #26 on: September 13, 2012, 10:49:01 am »
Good thing Guild Wars 2 was released when it was. I didn't think it would be possible.. but I'm getting a bit bored of AI War. According to Steam I've played it 1143 hours. Some of that is afking ofcourse. But I've played the last ~700 hours of AI War without playing any other game every day when I'm not studying. Imma buy Guild Wars 2 tomorrow.. and maybe FTL: Faster Than Light (Available: 14 September 2012. This game will unlock in approximately 1 day and 3 hours). I'll take a break and play Guild Wars 2 for a while.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2012, 10:50:45 am by Kahuna »
set /A diff=10
if %diff%==max (
   set /A me=:)
) else (
   set /A me=SadPanda
)
echo Check out my AI War strategy guide and find your inner Super Cat!
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #27 on: September 13, 2012, 11:53:22 am »
Good thing Guild Wars 2 was released when it was. I didn't think it would be possible.. but I'm getting a bit bored of AI War. According to Steam I've played it 1143 hours. Some of that is afking ofcourse. But I've played the last ~700 hours of AI War without playing any other game every day when I'm not studying.
Um, yea, I suggest a break :)  Glad you've gotten that much time out of it, but I imagine you'll get more total if you break it up with other interesting games.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #28 on: September 15, 2012, 12:55:03 pm »
I've now played about 10 hours of Guild Wars 2, so my perception of it has changed quite a bit than it did based on the first hour or two.

First of all, I've played 3 different races now, and I've discovered that the "personal storyline" (or in other words, the quests based on the character traits you chose at the start) are downright terrible.  I'm not sure who wrote the script for these but they're straight out of a cheesy C-Grade movie, with stupidly one-dimensional characters and blatantly obvious "plot twists".  I understand the difficulty of making a huge, multimillion-player experience individualized, but if that was their goal, they failed f*cking miserably.

However, I now understand how they've designed the experience and leveling system, and that is absolutely fantastic.  Basically, they start you out in an area (based on whatever race you pick), and each area has a bunch of different "stations" that you can attend.  Each station has a different scenario or quest that you can complete simply by participating in them.  Some stations are explore stations, and they reward you simply for walking up to them and discovering the area.  Some stations are called "Vistas", and they are somewhat difficult to get to, but they give you a really pretty view of the landscape, which connects you to the game.  The game gives you a lot of experience for visiting each station, even if the point is to just explore the map or to get a beautiful view of the scenery.  Once you have discovered and completed ALL the stations in the area, you are handsomely rewarded with experience, "fame", and items. 

So for the first few hours, all I was concerned about was leveling up as fast as possible (I tend to find the lower levels of any RPG intensely grinding and boring), but the way I was going about it was completely wrong.  You don't level up by doing the same station over and over again; in fact doing that would takes forever.  You level up by exploring and discovering the world; and the more I did that, the more I realized how much I was enjoying the game, and I stopped caring so much about gaining levels.

One thing that they do to make exploring any given area a lot more interesting and meaningful is having "waypoints" all over the zone, allowing you to quickly travel closer to the places you haven't discovered or completed yet.

Like if you look at this picture (which is just a small portion of a larger area), the grey diamonds with blue in the middle are waypoints, the yellow hearts are interactive quests, the red double-triangles are vistas, and tiny squares are "explorable areas", etc.

So in other words, if you play the game "on a mission" to level as fast as possible (which is the way most MMOs play from my experience), you're going to be pretty disappointed.  Leveling actually takes quite a long time and isn't based on how many things you kill, but how much of the map you explore.  You can also level from much more obscure thing like learning and using skills (such as crafting and cooking etc.), and gain a ton of experience that way.  The game really discourages you from just rushing through it as fast as possible, which I've discovered I really like.  I can forgive the AWFULNESS of the personal story lines simply because you can completely ignore them and just explore the world instead.

One more thing I really like about the game is that each class seems extremely different and unique, which is (from my experience), somewhat rare for an MMO.  Before, most classes could be broken down into 1 of 3 categories:  Tank, Healer, or DPS, and they accomplish their role in similar, but maybe slightly different ways.   In Guild Wars 2, those 3 roles have been somewhat blurred together, as every class is expected to do damage, and "tank" to some degree.  No person can just sit in the front lines and get hit forever.  In fact a few good hits to the face will kill you (or at least put you in a downed state).  Instead, every player is expected to be very active in the battle, constantly dodging, blocking, and parrying, while assisting their downed allies and always being mindful of their positioning.  In this way it really flips a middle finger to the classical MMO formula of everybody having a specific and boring role that you can't really deviate from.

You can learn more about it by reading this article or watching this video:
http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3y62pCQs-Y

I have more to say about each individual class, but I've got to go for now, so I'll finish the post later.
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Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Guild Wars 2
« Reply #29 on: September 17, 2012, 01:16:51 pm »
This is where I've been for the past several weeks. In case anyone was wondering why I completely dropped off the forums. Obviously, I'm enjoying it. I think a person will have a more instant positive reaction to it if they're a disgruntled refugee from WoW, like I am. It basically takes every little annoying thing about the MMO standard and throws it out the window. That said, even a new player should warm to it pretty quickly. There are so many things to list that I won't even try now (just on a break at work at the moment), but it is pretty fantastic. The overall good thing is that there is no grind at all. As long as you enjoy using fun abilities to kill monsters and exploring a great big world with lots of little hidden interesting things, it is a great game. And it can be quite casual, as well. Only logging on for 30 minutes, you can still do some fun things and feel productive. Or you can dump all your free time into it (guilty) and already have a max level character and a ton of alts. No sub fee means if/when I get tired of it I can just go do something else and not feel like I'm missing anything. It's basically just great.

 

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