1. I'm unsure if they are working on this or not but it looks terrible how charr tails go through all the armors our characters have been wearing in the Beta. I see NPC's with armor models that take the tail into account and I'd imagine higher level gear does but that should be the case for ALL the armor models especially considering the early game is when you're giving first impressions.
2. The non persistent world and the typical NCSoft 'lets instance off each zone and even use instances within the cities themselves'. It probably made it easier for them to make the zones but having each zone instanced off definitly isn't as neat as a full out persistent world. I also noticed how each zone is a rectangle (http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w1/leviathonlx10/Other Stuff/rectanglewars-1.jpg)
3. The game seems to heavily favor ranged classes. I was enjoying my thief but I found it silly how to avoid a melee a attack all you need to do is side step them while the only way to avoid a fireball auto tracing to you is with the dodging. Dodging in general felt very iffy compared to Tera's active combat.
My other concerns will have to wait for when more content is available.
My biggest bitch is all the f'ing Black Moas in the final event! lol
Other than that, most of the issues I saw in game were pretty minor IMO and should be dealt with by launch. If they're not dealt with, then I will have some definite issues.
I didn't see it this weekend, but I can see how the grouping thing can be a big problem with the overflow servers. Hopefully, Anet has been informed and will address it.
I'm wondering if the "cartoony" look will be fixed by adding textures before launch. I hope so. Along with having the option to use DirectX11. I'll be pretty ticked if that doesn't happen.
BTW, WvWvW rules!!!!!
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
I have to somewhat agree with most of your points.
5. I wasn't in press beta so I wasn't really hoping for Asura and Sylvari already, but it would have been nice.
4. Cartoonish, well, I'll give you the big hands in the cutscenes, but I don't find them all that cartoony. It's stylized, yes, but I have no issues with the art style.
3. The good and the bad of overflow servers. There is room for improvement there in keeping friends together if it's not possible to abuse the system, negatively impacting the server.
2. No tank, no healer. I can't mindlessly charge a boss and expect to live! Hell this game is broken! Yeah some people have gotten so used to the holy trinity they have genuine problems adapting. I'll chuck "The game is too hard, I die way too much." Into this point, they are probably related.
1. Lag, well some people had very little lag. Some just changed servers at the start and had little to no problems later on. I assume if you decided to follow a large community onto a server that was filled to the brim then you'd have more problems than most.
For those concerned with #3 it's already posted on the ANet Beta Forums that was a BUG. They gave a workaround that mostly worked for this past BWE (gather in a less populated Zone and then have the Party Leader zone where you want first and the group will follow) - but that won't be neeeded going forward as it is intended for Groups to Zone together.
Did like the game overal but the performance was realy bad on my and wifes pc running gtx 580 /i7 myself and couldnt maintain 30 fps . Ofcours i know its a beta but if this would have been a realy easy fix why did they take the risk and not take care of it already , anyway hoping they actualy fix performance alot before release.
I love this game... I truly enjoyed playing it and right now I am having withdrawals. As for lag.. I rarely experienced any except during the 100+ ppl boss killings.. then it got laggy. The connection issues were cleared up by Sunday. People need to realise what beta is about and that it's for the gaming community to experience the game then let the dev know about any bugs they experienced so it can be ironed out before launch. Give it a chance. I enjoyed it immensely.
It was. What was different about this beta?..you all PAID to be in it. A genious move by NC/ANet to turn the tables and instead of paying testers or letting them atleast test for free.
Dude, no game company "pays" for enough gametesters to accomplish what they did this weekend... it's not an option. The only way to let you game be stress tested with 100s of thousands of users is to do a beta like this.
My main concern was how the game is cpu-bound right now. I had to play with 20 fps and there was nothing I could do to get it better, since lowering the graphics weren't showing any effect. Meanwhile, I couldn't even hear the noise of my gpu cooler, as it usually does when playing newer games.
The other thing is that I felt kinda lost in the story for the part I played.
teams/friends/guilds being broken up with the Overflow server
Chat bubbles would be nice for players and npcs as an option if people wanted it. (I would have used it)
Could use a beginner's guide or walk through for the first level or so and then pop-ups or guides as skills/new character abilities become available.
Gear/weapon preview function was not in place. In a game where gear "doesn't matter" I still want to look bad ass
aka = Duskruby
If there werent an overflow server you would just stand in line to log in, and you can still do that now. I dunno what you think should be done here, it ain't possible to solve it better unless you can let people play on a single server with a single instance and they just can't make the game that big.
"Say" should be added, agreed. Same with the gear preview.
And I don't really care about the noob guide since I think there will be plenty of websites offere'ing that, but sure, it wouldn't hurt to add it as well if it is optional.
Would have been fun to try them but I don't think its really that big of a deal. Something to look forward to.
4:Cartoonish Character Models – Norn & Human
I loved how my Norn looked the humans were alittle generic but looked ok, I was not a fan of the charr.
3:Overflows
They work very well however they do need to do something about the partys getting split up.
2:Changing the MMO Game Play Paradigm
I prefer this, much better than the boring ways of older mmos
1:LAAAAAG
Well it is a beta and to expect no lag is just foolish, but I only experianceed lag a couple of times throught the weekend. Even during the final event with 30-40 people around me I had zero lag with maxed settings.
All in all there really was nothing to b*tch about at all for me, the game was so much fun that I don't want to play any other game now that I have played it and can not wait to get back in.
5. The absence of 2 of 5 races only leads me to believe that we are likely nowhere near release. I would guess at jun/jul at least.
4. I am not super crazy about the models either... they look... too simple. I also find the armor to be very meh... again... too simple. I can live with it, but I was hoping for more
3. Overflow servers = WAY better than sitting in a queue for hours. Been there, done that, WoW, WAR, Aion, Rift... it's the most boring thing ever. Letting you play, but possibly with some restrictions on your grouping, it much better than sitting there watching your queue go from 982 to 981.
2. I just came from Rift, which is VERY holy trinity-centric. Yes, it will take some getting used to... but I like change and so far, I am getting used to the new paradigm of GW2. Long term = TBD
1. I encountered no lag, ever. I had several DCs and a couple of CTD but overall, the game was fine server-wise for me.
4. I dont like "realistic" looking fantasy games, so I'm glad the models are not too realistic looking. I see enough realistic looking people when I go to work or spend a night out, and I'll take unique and/or good looking art style anyday over realism in games. One of the things I really disliked in AoC was the overall visuals, lack of colors and boring looking characters with that little extra realism sprinkled on them.
Yeah I played throughout the weekend and had a pretty fun time. Especially the like 6 hours I played at night with a few friends in World vs World. That was a very entertaining experience, even though we lost two of them. PvP battlegrounds aren't as fun as they were in the first Guild Wars to me I think personally. They can be fun, but I think I enjoyed the first more in that field.
The lag definitely was a bit annoying at times. Honestly I was fine when it came to performance as I have a pretty good computer, but the lag when everyone just would freeze in place and nothing was really going on was annoying. Playing Friday compared to Sunday, huge difference without a doubt.
I didn't really notice the issue with the characters being cartoonish, sounds like maybe I heard it a couple times though.
Man three things I loved about the game was the dynamic events, there were always people around whenever I was hunting or doing a dynamic event, and the personal questline. I wasn't always the recommended level for the personal questline so it was generally always tough, but later on after those 6 hours of WvW I caught up to it. I ended up then speeding through it and finished the demo bit.
Overall, even with current issues, I'm sure they'll be fixed by the time GW2 is out. And I had a ton of fun anyway. Now where's that release date? =P
Where there's a game, there's a player, I'm that player.
Haven't heard any bitchin about 2, 4 or 5... On the official Forum, mostly it's about overflow and lag, the last one being blamed on the fact that it is BETA...
My personnal beef is not only overflow but all those little things missing to help groups gather and stay together. Seriously, you don't have a great field of view and the characters move fast. Blink one second and your party has split up accidentally. Maybe some more obvious HUD marker pointing at party members would help limiting the number of times you have to ask: "Where are you now Bobby?" because the minimap and large map don't always show the tiny blue dot that should be your friend.
Auto-follow is also a feature that many seem to be requesting. that and making items easier to share and trade outside the mail system.
I found the Char and Norn to have sluggish movement at best (running slowly... even on all fours), got on my nerves quite fast, won't be playing those races at launch if they don't fix it.
About the manga style characters, THEY ARE NOT TOONS. WoW has toons, you can regognize a toon by its blue skin, purple hooves, bright green glow in the dark oversized weapons and he's riding a mount... naked on an orange road under a pink sky. TOONS suck. Guild wars has "characters" NOT TOONS.
more options for body shape would have been nice but I guess we get more than SWTOR players did.
Having my party spilt up due to the overflow for literally 1/3 of the time we were playing was extreamly annoying.
The dynamic events did not seem to reward you for being a team player and rezing other people. If I ignored the dead people and just shot things with my pistols as fast as I could I would get gold. If I spent most of the time rezing I would get bronze or silver if I was lucky.. I tried it enough times on the same events to make sure it wasn't just a fluke. That really needs to be fixed somehow.
The crafting system could use some tutorials, and some work... cooking, OMG, don't bother trying to take up cooking a for a while. None of the materials you pick up or loot can be used in experiment combines until you get like 50 skill in cooking, and the recipes you have all involve store bought mats that will take all your money and leave you with nothing to use teleporter or repairers. It sucked. Huntsman craft, OTOH, was fine, only a few things I had to buy to make my looted crafting mats into nice shiny new pistols. (hint- the eagle gryphons behind the bear event in Norn land drop the weak blood with a reasonable frequency)
Not being able to trade stuff sucked. Not being able to split stacks to mail my fiance 1/2 my weak blood so he could use them to craft sucked even more. There is absolutely no reason for that lack of functionality and it needs to be fixed immediately. I understand the not trading til your account is 24 hour old thing, that's fine.. but mine was way older than that, at least 2 weeks if they're counting from logging in a character verses making an account. And not being able to split stacks.. damn, even Warhammer could do that and that game had the worst inventory UI I've ever seen.
Other than that.. would like more options for character customization but I assume they will be adding more as time goes on. And the game overall it fun. I love the dynamic events and lack of regular "kill 10, collect 5" quests.
It was. What was different about this beta?..you all PAID to be in it. A genious move by NC/ANet to turn the tables and instead of paying testers or letting them atleast test for free.
Trust me, this isn't new to the MMO world in general.
Blizzard's been using their LIVE playerbase as a testing department for years, and people keep paying them to do it. /smackhead
People throw around the term "cartoonish" so loosely anymore it has lost all meaning. It's bascially another way of saying "I don't like it."
As far as lag, I experienced none. The game performed very well overall on my 4 year-old rig. Was very surprised for a first open beta test. Though I did not try any WvWvW.
It was. What was different about this beta?..you all PAID to be in it. A genious move by NC/ANet to turn the tables and instead of paying testers or letting them atleast test for free.
I certainly didn't pay to be in GW2 beta weekend and I don't know anyone who did. If you bought a beta account on ebay then you made a dumb mistake, you should have just preordered the game and you would get access to beta weekends.
Biggest problem I had was the inability to cancel a spell or action. There needs to be a cancel button, ESC, so that if I accidently target a non agroed enemy with a 2 second spell I have time to hit a button and correct my targetting mistake.
Comments
1. I'm unsure if they are working on this or not but it looks terrible how charr tails go through all the armors our characters have been wearing in the Beta. I see NPC's with armor models that take the tail into account and I'd imagine higher level gear does but that should be the case for ALL the armor models especially considering the early game is when you're giving first impressions.
2. The non persistent world and the typical NCSoft 'lets instance off each zone and even use instances within the cities themselves'. It probably made it easier for them to make the zones but having each zone instanced off definitly isn't as neat as a full out persistent world. I also noticed how each zone is a rectangle (http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w1/leviathonlx10/Other Stuff/rectanglewars-1.jpg)
3. The game seems to heavily favor ranged classes. I was enjoying my thief but I found it silly how to avoid a melee a attack all you need to do is side step them while the only way to avoid a fireball auto tracing to you is with the dodging. Dodging in general felt very iffy compared to Tera's active combat.
My other concerns will have to wait for when more content is available.
My biggest bitch is all the f'ing Black Moas in the final event! lol
Other than that, most of the issues I saw in game were pretty minor IMO and should be dealt with by launch. If they're not dealt with, then I will have some definite issues.
I didn't see it this weekend, but I can see how the grouping thing can be a big problem with the overflow servers. Hopefully, Anet has been informed and will address it.
I'm wondering if the "cartoony" look will be fixed by adding textures before launch. I hope so. Along with having the option to use DirectX11. I'll be pretty ticked if that doesn't happen.
BTW, WvWvW rules!!!!!
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
I have to somewhat agree with most of your points.
5. I wasn't in press beta so I wasn't really hoping for Asura and Sylvari already, but it would have been nice.
4. Cartoonish, well, I'll give you the big hands in the cutscenes, but I don't find them all that cartoony. It's stylized, yes, but I have no issues with the art style.
3. The good and the bad of overflow servers. There is room for improvement there in keeping friends together if it's not possible to abuse the system, negatively impacting the server.
2. No tank, no healer. I can't mindlessly charge a boss and expect to live! Hell this game is broken! Yeah some people have gotten so used to the holy trinity they have genuine problems adapting. I'll chuck "The game is too hard, I die way too much." Into this point, they are probably related.
1. Lag, well some people had very little lag. Some just changed servers at the start and had little to no problems later on. I assume if you decided to follow a large community onto a server that was filled to the brim then you'd have more problems than most.
Dude, no game company "pays" for enough gametesters to accomplish what they did this weekend... it's not an option. The only way to let you game be stress tested with 100s of thousands of users is to do a beta like this.
me neither. the models looks quite realistic and awesome in general. have no idea where youre coming from on that.
secondly, you seemed to have left out the most important issue: low FPS. lag wasnt much of a problem at all.
Some of my flaws were:
no /say (or "small area" communication)
teams/friends/guilds being broken up with the Overflow server
Chat bubbles would be nice for players and npcs as an option if people wanted it. (I would have used it)
Could use a beginner's guide or walk through for the first level or so and then pop-ups or guides as skills/new character abilities become available.
Gear/weapon preview function was not in place. In a game where gear "doesn't matter" I still want to look bad ass
aka = Duskruby
Outside of that I LOVED IT!
My main concern was how the game is cpu-bound right now. I had to play with 20 fps and there was nothing I could do to get it better, since lowering the graphics weren't showing any effect. Meanwhile, I couldn't even hear the noise of my gpu cooler, as it usually does when playing newer games.
The other thing is that I felt kinda lost in the story for the part I played.
If there werent an overflow server you would just stand in line to log in, and you can still do that now. I dunno what you think should be done here, it ain't possible to solve it better unless you can let people play on a single server with a single instance and they just can't make the game that big.
"Say" should be added, agreed. Same with the gear preview.
And I don't really care about the noob guide since I think there will be plenty of websites offere'ing that, but sure, it wouldn't hurt to add it as well if it is optional.
5: No Asura, No Sylvari
Would have been fun to try them but I don't think its really that big of a deal. Something to look forward to.
4:Cartoonish Character Models – Norn & Human
I loved how my Norn looked the humans were alittle generic but looked ok, I was not a fan of the charr.
3:Overflows
They work very well however they do need to do something about the partys getting split up.
2:Changing the MMO Game Play Paradigm
I prefer this, much better than the boring ways of older mmos
1:LAAAAAG
Well it is a beta and to expect no lag is just foolish, but I only experianceed lag a couple of times throught the weekend. Even during the final event with 30-40 people around me I had zero lag with maxed settings.
All in all there really was nothing to b*tch about at all for me, the game was so much fun that I don't want to play any other game now that I have played it and can not wait to get back in.
5. The absence of 2 of 5 races only leads me to believe that we are likely nowhere near release. I would guess at jun/jul at least.
4. I am not super crazy about the models either... they look... too simple. I also find the armor to be very meh... again... too simple. I can live with it, but I was hoping for more
3. Overflow servers = WAY better than sitting in a queue for hours. Been there, done that, WoW, WAR, Aion, Rift... it's the most boring thing ever. Letting you play, but possibly with some restrictions on your grouping, it much better than sitting there watching your queue go from 982 to 981.
2. I just came from Rift, which is VERY holy trinity-centric. Yes, it will take some getting used to... but I like change and so far, I am getting used to the new paradigm of GW2. Long term = TBD
1. I encountered no lag, ever. I had several DCs and a couple of CTD but overall, the game was fine server-wise for me.
Yeah I played throughout the weekend and had a pretty fun time. Especially the like 6 hours I played at night with a few friends in World vs World. That was a very entertaining experience, even though we lost two of them. PvP battlegrounds aren't as fun as they were in the first Guild Wars to me I think personally. They can be fun, but I think I enjoyed the first more in that field.
The lag definitely was a bit annoying at times. Honestly I was fine when it came to performance as I have a pretty good computer, but the lag when everyone just would freeze in place and nothing was really going on was annoying. Playing Friday compared to Sunday, huge difference without a doubt.
I didn't really notice the issue with the characters being cartoonish, sounds like maybe I heard it a couple times though.
Man three things I loved about the game was the dynamic events, there were always people around whenever I was hunting or doing a dynamic event, and the personal questline. I wasn't always the recommended level for the personal questline so it was generally always tough, but later on after those 6 hours of WvW I caught up to it. I ended up then speeding through it and finished the demo bit.
Overall, even with current issues, I'm sure they'll be fixed by the time GW2 is out. And I had a ton of fun anyway. Now where's that release date? =P
Where there's a game, there's a player, I'm that player.
Haven't heard any bitchin about 2, 4 or 5... On the official Forum, mostly it's about overflow and lag, the last one being blamed on the fact that it is BETA...
My personnal beef is not only overflow but all those little things missing to help groups gather and stay together. Seriously, you don't have a great field of view and the characters move fast. Blink one second and your party has split up accidentally. Maybe some more obvious HUD marker pointing at party members would help limiting the number of times you have to ask: "Where are you now Bobby?" because the minimap and large map don't always show the tiny blue dot that should be your friend.
Auto-follow is also a feature that many seem to be requesting. that and making items easier to share and trade outside the mail system.
I found the Char and Norn to have sluggish movement at best (running slowly... even on all fours), got on my nerves quite fast, won't be playing those races at launch if they don't fix it.
About the manga style characters, THEY ARE NOT TOONS. WoW has toons, you can regognize a toon by its blue skin, purple hooves, bright green glow in the dark oversized weapons and he's riding a mount... naked on an orange road under a pink sky. TOONS suck. Guild wars has "characters" NOT TOONS.
more options for body shape would have been nice but I guess we get more than SWTOR players did.
Having my party spilt up due to the overflow for literally 1/3 of the time we were playing was extreamly annoying.
The dynamic events did not seem to reward you for being a team player and rezing other people. If I ignored the dead people and just shot things with my pistols as fast as I could I would get gold. If I spent most of the time rezing I would get bronze or silver if I was lucky.. I tried it enough times on the same events to make sure it wasn't just a fluke. That really needs to be fixed somehow.
The crafting system could use some tutorials, and some work... cooking, OMG, don't bother trying to take up cooking a for a while. None of the materials you pick up or loot can be used in experiment combines until you get like 50 skill in cooking, and the recipes you have all involve store bought mats that will take all your money and leave you with nothing to use teleporter or repairers. It sucked. Huntsman craft, OTOH, was fine, only a few things I had to buy to make my looted crafting mats into nice shiny new pistols. (hint- the eagle gryphons behind the bear event in Norn land drop the weak blood with a reasonable frequency)
Not being able to trade stuff sucked. Not being able to split stacks to mail my fiance 1/2 my weak blood so he could use them to craft sucked even more. There is absolutely no reason for that lack of functionality and it needs to be fixed immediately. I understand the not trading til your account is 24 hour old thing, that's fine.. but mine was way older than that, at least 2 weeks if they're counting from logging in a character verses making an account. And not being able to split stacks.. damn, even Warhammer could do that and that game had the worst inventory UI I've ever seen.
Other than that.. would like more options for character customization but I assume they will be adding more as time goes on. And the game overall it fun. I love the dynamic events and lack of regular "kill 10, collect 5" quests.
Trust me, this isn't new to the MMO world in general.
Blizzard's been using their LIVE playerbase as a testing department for years, and people keep paying them to do it. /smackhead
Wherever you go, there you are.
People throw around the term "cartoonish" so loosely anymore it has lost all meaning. It's bascially another way of saying "I don't like it."
As far as lag, I experienced none. The game performed very well overall on my 4 year-old rig. Was very surprised for a first open beta test. Though I did not try any WvWvW.
I love it i heard the GPU is not activated yet.. so we will have less lag
Anyways check the video my bf made his pvp experience as a warrior human xD
BTW next time ill have to make my character a little nose, the nose of my character looked like a macarooni xD
<a href="http://s526.photobucket.com/albums/cc344/zori4/Guild Wars 2 Beta/?action=view&current=zoyita.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i526.photobucket.com/albums/cc344/zori4/Guild Wars 2 Beta/zoyita.png" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
I certainly didn't pay to be in GW2 beta weekend and I don't know anyone who did. If you bought a beta account on ebay then you made a dumb mistake, you should have just preordered the game and you would get access to beta weekends.
As for beta players being paid... haha.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
The GPU?? What the hell would that ever have to do with network lag??
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.