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 ), 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. >_>;;
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 ), 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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