The Official Guild Wars 2 thread

Well, forgive my ignorance, but I guess I just don't understand why you are "must" raid? (in WoW, etc)

I guess I assumed that like running Underworld or Fissure of Woe, you do it because it's a challenge, it's a test of your guild and you find cool stuff along the way.

What am I missing?
 
DoubleTap said:
Well, forgive my ignorance, but I guess I just don't understand why you are "must" raid? (in WoW, etc)

I guess I assumed that like running Underworld or Fissure of Woe, you do it because it's a challenge, it's a test of your guild and you find cool stuff along the way.

What am I missing?
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Well the "must" part of WoW raiding was... if you wanted the end-game PvE gear this was the path to obtain it by game design.

UW/FoW was nothing like that. If you wanted the end game gear... you had many options. You could just stick with the cheapest stuff if you don't want to grind anything. You'd go for the fissure armor if you wanted the most expensive 'iconic' stuff. Mostly, people just pinpointed the set that they liked the most aesthetically (usually the "15k" armors). So in that sense, you had many options for the 'reward' of your 'PvE gear'. But simultaneously, this reward was purely aesthetic. This has its pros and cons. It trivializes a part of the reward but simultaneously makes it unnecessary for character effectiveness.

I think GW2 will emphasize gear a little bit more than GW1 did just to make PvE more 'rewarding', but it certainly won't adopt the WOW system (and it has no reason to despite what Disposed is ranting about). I don't know personally since I haven't seen any of the end game gear / content for GW2... but just inspecting the PvP gear gives me some ideas about runes. The craftable items and karma reward vendors have also shed some light / clues into what PvE itemization might be like at end game.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Well the "must" part of WoW raiding was... if you wanted the end-game PvE gear this was the path to obtain it by game design.
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From my short time playing WoW, you also had to because new content was apparently often balanced around having completed all previous content. So if they introduced a new raid, you couldn't even effectively do it without first having been geared up with all the previous dungeon's gear. I felt like you basically had to be actively raiding if you didn't want to be locked out of all future content (not fun).
 
I raided during the Onyxia/MC days with a tiny bit of BWL, AQ40, and ZG (I might be getting the acronym wrong; the one with the trolls). After those, I continued to play WoW but focused more on PvP since I was so burnt out on raiding. Raiding just doesn't do anything for me, and I'm glad GW2 isn't going that route-- it allows them to concentrate on other things. I much prefer doing dungeons with smaller groups as I don't have to worry about some incompetent player screwing something up.

I understand Disposed is a bit hesitant on this being a decent game since so many MMOs have just been a disappointment lately. ArenaNet has a great track record though, and after being in closed beta and seeing all the changes they've been making with community feedback, I expect this is going to be a solid MMO for me. It's also been the only MMO in recent times where I want to continue to play the beta, and actually enjoy it.
 
Skizzy said:
It's also been the only MMO in recent times where I want to continue to play the beta, and actually enjoy it.
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This right here. This is the first MMO in a while where I was blown away by how much fun it was to just explore. There many many things you will miss if you just run straight from heart to heart. Also there were a few times where I would just walk up to a random NPC and talk to them and it would start a dynamic event or direct me to one that I couldn't see at the time.
 
WoW is literally ruining the MMORPG landscape. Here's my theory of what happens:

#1 - there's a SHITLOAD of people burnt out on WoW. They are literally looking for a new game. I'm talking masses of people that WANT to go elsewhere. But here's the thing - they don't realize they're actually burnt out not just on WoW, but on the type of game WoW is.
#2 - new MMO is released/hyped/etc. A bunch of WoW addicts jump ship on launch. Servers quickly overflow, new servers are opened, etc.
#3 - after the free month, most of these WoW addicts cancel. They think they want WoW's gameplay, but they don't...because they are actually burnt out on WoW's gameplay. They then return to WoW in droves because even though they're burnt out, they're still addicts. They just never got the fix they wanted from the new game.
#4 - all the servers opened up to service the influx of WoW-ites become ghost towns, server mergers happen, and game is pronounced dead (wrongfully or not.)

My bottom line is this: an MMORPG does NOT have to dethrone WoW to be successful. I've said it many times in Rift threads here and elsewhere on the internet. We need to get away from this notion. The only thing that will kill WoW is WoW, when enough people wake up and realize they've been playing a steaming pile of shit for the last few years (disclaimer: I'm an ex-WoW player, quit shortly after Cataclysm's release.)

I don't see GW 2 as being an attempt to compete with WoW, because of the no monthly fee thing. I just hope that people finally wake up from this stupid idea that WoW needs to be dethroned, and that if a game doesn't accomplish it, it's a failure. Before WoW, no MMO had touched anywhere near WoW's current playerbase. Did EQ have 10 million plus subscribers? No. Was it still incredibly successful?
 
In my personal opinion GW2 will be very successful as long as they do not fall deep into the "over promise and under deliver" MMO curse. Their F2P model makes it stand out, as most games that start F2P are by relatively unknown developers who can't justify a subscription for a game they put little time and money into in terms of marketing. The rest of the F2P models have been "forced" F2P by starting out with a subscription model that failed, then eventually moving to a F2P model to attract some of its playerbase back. Well, most of us know by that point that they are going F2P for a REASON (the game is stale or there are glaring issues that have caused it to bleed so much money that they didn't have a choice). By GW2 starting F2P, and having all of the hype built up around it, all they have to do is keep their promises about what they are saying the game is going to shape up to be. The RMT shop is right where it should be with cosmetic and sensible upgrades like additional character/bank slots and they will probably make tons of money on this kind of stuff because we can justify spending a few bucks here and there because we aren't paying that $15 dollar monthly sub that we are used to paying with other games. BWE2 was a ton of fun and I can't wait for the next one. I know I'm probably one of a million that thinks a Sylvari Ranger will be a pretty badass race/class combo to play and I am excited to see the starting areas for the final 2 races. I also can't wait for further development in the realm of CPU/GPU optimization so all of the haters will shut up about how they had low FPS in the 2nd beta on their 5 year old PCs.
 
EPOQ said:
In my personal opinion GW2 will be very successful as long as they do not fall deep into the "over promise and under deliver" MMO curse. Their F2P model makes it stand out, as most games that start F2P are by relatively unknown developers who can't justify a subscription for a game they put little time and money into in terms of marketing. The rest of the F2P models have been "forced" F2P by starting out with a subscription model that failed, then eventually moving to a F2P model to attract some of its playerbase back. Well, most of us know by that point that they are going F2P for a REASON (the game is stale or there are glaring issues that have caused it to bleed so much money that they didn't have a choice). By GW2 starting F2P, and having all of the hype built up around it, all they have to do is keep their promises about what they are saying the game is going to shape up to be. The RMT shop is right where it should be with cosmetic and sensible upgrades like additional character/bank slots and they will probably make tons of money on this kind of stuff because we can justify spending a few bucks here and there because we aren't paying that $15 dollar monthly sub that we are used to paying with other games.
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It's not F2P, there's just no subscription. You still have to buy the game, unlike a f2p. They've probably already made back close to the cost of development with pre-sales.
 
Oomps said:
It's not F2P, there's just no subscription. You still have to buy the game, unlike a f2p. They've probably already made back close to the cost of development with pre-sales.
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Up until recently, my brain has equated "F2P" with low quality games but it's starting to change.

GW2 is not free to buy, but it is "free to play" unlike subscription games. Funny that I was thinking we need a term for that, but that is really how games used to be - buy the game and then just play it.

I will probably be a ridiculous RMT whore once GW2 comes out and I'll probably max out the character slots and everything else because I like having just one game to focus and lavish with my attention and money - I'm probably the dream customer for Anet.
 
SilverSliver said:
Your theory is terrific. Except for they are all based on subscription based models. This is free to play. Theory does not apply.
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It very much applies. When GW1 came out the F2P competition was pretty shitty now with good games being F2P GW2 will have some real competition.

But we will see i guess. Im sure it will sell very well my concern is whether or not the community will last.
 
Disposed said:
It very much applies. When GW1 came out the F2P competition was pretty shitty now with good games being F2P GW2 will have some real competition.

But we will see i guess. Im sure it will sell very well my concern is whether or not the community will last.
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You can keep saying it. Does not make it true. DAoC had a robust RvR community for YEARS past it's prime and it had a subscription. Show me a big budget, F2P game out there right now that is even in the same league as GW2. That means robust, 3 sided RvR, huge world, etc. Shitty asian MMORPG's don't count so do not even bother. Plantedside 2 is the only game I even see on the horizon, and with no monthly fee I will likely play both.
 
Oomps said:
It's not F2P, there's just no subscription. You still have to buy the game, unlike a f2p. They've probably already made back close to the cost of development with pre-sales.
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I know, I just dont know what else to call the model. F2PAYBTB? Free To Play After You Buy The Box?
 
Game is fun. No subscription fee. Looking at both betas, they were incredibly addicting to me. In addition, there's an optional gem shop purely for things that are optional: extra character slots, etc.

Not regretting my purchase at all. Easily 30 hours put into the game and it isn't even released.
 
what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?


taken from the blog... This really just hits it for me, Arenanet gets it.
 
Liqq said:
taken from the blog... This really just hits it for me, Arenanet gets it.
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Well, let's hope they deliver.



Overall I'm pretty satisfied with where GW2 is going... but you can't help but keep in the back of your mind videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E


And wonder hmm did they really stick to everything they said in that video?...

"Fully branching personalized storyline" - I don't recall the personal story ever branching. Maybe it does later but it's pretty much the definition of linear right now. Also, they use the word personal and personalized very gratuitously. It changes slightly based on a couple of your responses when making your character but that's about it.

The art team really did a good job I feel. They definitely nailed the look and feel of the world.

"And then when you play the combat in our game you will say Wow that's incredible! I've never seen anything like that..." "I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, hey~~~" ... Hmm, actually that's what the combat is right now. No offense Anet... but you oversold the combat a great deal, not sure how it can be changed at this point. The Roll mechanic needs to be looked at and mobs need to be designed with that in mind.

"Everybody around you is doing the same thing you're doing. The boss you just killed will respawn 10 minutes later" - Sorry but this is still true in GW2. All of these events will respawn and the bosses still don't care that you're there. The good thing about hearts/events in GW2 is that it does promote player cooperation rather than competition to tag quest mobs etc.

"You get a quest step that says go kill 10 centaurs" - Sorry, but hearts and events really aren't any different. The plus (a big one) is that it cuts out the middle man. No need to visit town and gather quests then go figure out where to do them... then come back to the quest giver etc.

"You rescue a village that will stay rescued" - Until the same centaurs maraud it again after the event respawns.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Well, let's hope they deliver.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with where GW2 is going... but you can't help but keep in the back of your mind videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

And wonder hmm did they really stick to everything they said in that video?...

"Fully branching personalized storyline" - I don't recall the personal story ever branching. Maybe it does later but it's pretty much the definition of linear right now. Also, they use the word personal and personalized very gratuitously. It changes slightly based on a couple of your responses when making your character but that's about it.

The art team really did a good job I feel. They definitely nailed the look and feel of the world.

"And then when you play the combat in our game you will say Wow that's incredible! I've never seen anything like that..." "I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, hey~~~" ... Hmm, actually that's what the combat is right now. No offense Anet... but you oversold the combat a great deal, not sure how it can be changed at this point. The Roll mechanic needs to be looked at and mobs need to be designed with that in mind.

"Everybody around you is doing the same thing you're doing. The boss you just killed will respawn 10 minutes later" - Sorry but this is still true in GW2. All of these events will respawn and the bosses still don't care that you're there. The good thing about hearts/events in GW2 is that it does promote player cooperation rather than competition to tag quest mobs etc.

"You get a quest step that says go kill 10 centaurs" - Sorry, but hearts and events really aren't any different. The plus (a big one) is that it cuts out the middle man. No need to visit town and gather quests then go figure out where to do them... then come back to the quest giver etc.

"You rescue a village that will stay rescued" - Until the same centaurs maraud it again after the event respawns.
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Well said, gotta agree with this. I'm excited for GW2, but I am not really as "omgcantwait" hyped as I was before I played the first BWE.

1) Events do respawn way too fast. They said after the first BWE event that they didn't turn up the frequency significantly for the beta, which I really found disturbing. They should be saying "it's OK for players that come by 30 minutes or an hour later to miss this event, there are plenty more for them to see" and the events should be scaled to happen once every few hours at the earliest.

You can increase the rewards for finishing them to compensate for players not seeing as many, and BAM without having to change anything other than numbers on a timer and reward you have a system where someone feels like "wow I really did save that town - and I got like half a level for doing it!" instead of "ok saved the town, lets get out of here before they come back and someone else has to save it 20 minutes later. Oh yea we got 5% of a level for that, better go try to do 20 more."

2) Combat is pretty bland. The dodge button is awesome, but to dodge the actual hits that are coming in goes beyond "skill" and is simply "luck." That or you're in such a big group (flinching is really significant in this game) or sitting safely at range that you completely ignore the attacks.

Many hard mobs (champions and dungeon creatures/bosses) have instant attacks (auto attacks) as well as instant AOE abilities that are not dodgeable by using the visual queues. Not to mention they do a pretty ridiculous portion of your HP when you consider that it's just an auto-attack or instant attack and you only have 1 heal every 20-30 seconds (considering an auto-attack can happen every 2 seconds).

Combat could be GREAT, but they need to make melee combat based on looking for visual queues and giving players more reaction time to dodge them, EVEN AUTO ATTACKS. Well I guess you could nerf enemy auto attack damage to the point where it's trivial and have players just need to dodge big wind-up attacks.

Wind-ups, "tells," and telegraphed attacks are NECESSARY in action RPGs and MMOs. You need to give players a chance to show skill, not just lucky guessing.
 
Russ said:
Combat could be GREAT, but they need to make melee combat based on looking for visual queues and giving players more reaction time to dodge them, EVEN AUTO ATTACKS. Well I guess you could nerf enemy auto attack damage to the point where it's trivial and have players just need to dodge big wind-up attacks.

Wind-ups, "tells," and telegraphed attacks are NECESSARY in action RPGs and MMOs. You need to give players a chance to show skill, not just lucky guessing.
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I'll agree with this. It's one of the things I really like about TERA. Once you've fought a mob you can see what it's tells are and then use that to your advantage when dodging attacks in the future. I hardly even used the Dodge in GW2 during BWE2. There never felt like a "right" time to use it. Especially in big battles, mobs were popping off big abilities instantly with no real way of telling when it was going to happen.
 
EPOQ said:
I'll agree with this. It's one of the things I really like about TERA. Once you've fought a mob you can see what it's tells are and then use that to your advantage when dodging attacks in the future. I hardly even used the Dodge in GW2 during BWE2. There never felt like a "right" time to use it. Especially in big battles, mobs were popping off big abilities instantly with no real way of telling when it was going to happen.
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Yeah I think they definitely need to do a better job of telegraphing, especially when there's 30 people beating on a mob and a giant cloud of fire, sparks, and whatnot all over. Hard to read what the boss is doing when you can barely even see the thing.
 
Yeah IMO Tera's combat is a bit more fun then GW2, mainly because their dodge abilties and how the npc's can have a "tell" about certain abilities they are going to use, you can make smart use of dodge and use it to your advantage.
 
Is anyone at all running a single 6870 or even crossfire 6870's in the GW 2 beta yet? I think I keep reading that crossfire isn't working yet, so I'm just curious if anyone is using a 6870 and how is it running for them at max detail level and what resolution? I have a brother that's very much anticipating this game and he's got a single 6870 right now, soon to be crossfire 6870's, and I'm wondering what he can expect.

I've run the beta already on a HD 7950 and a GTX 670 and both run pretty well, although still not 60fps all the time.
 
EPOQ said:
I'll agree with this. It's one of the things I really like about TERA. Once you've fought a mob you can see what it's tells are and then use that to your advantage when dodging attacks in the future. I hardly even used the Dodge in GW2 during BWE2. There never felt like a "right" time to use it. Especially in big battles, mobs were popping off big abilities instantly with no real way of telling when it was going to happen.
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I used dodge quite a bit in the last BWE2, its more helpful when dealing when smaller mobs, or even 1-2 enemies with slower melee attacks.
 
Blkout said:
I used dodge quite a bit in the last BWE2, its more helpful when dealing when smaller mobs, or even 1-2 enemies with slower melee attacks.
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It's very apparent that the dodge mechanic wasn't well thought out when you encounter bosses / dungeons like ascalon catacombs.

In general, melee fighting is a bit rough on the edges. Your character's auto attack (the "1" skill) tends to interfere a lot with your positioning. Your character likes to bounce back and forth for the sake of the animation. Rolling around to avoid attacks is extremely non rewarding for melee and is very hit or miss.

The "unique combat" for ranged classes boils down to circle strafing and rolling away. This isn't 'unique'. It's barely considered a departure from a game like WOW.

The real issue rears its ugly head for prolonged fights (bosses and packs in ascalon catacombs). There are a lot of attacks that either happen instantly (if you dodge it you basically got lucky) or happen so frequently it undermines the idea of rolling out of attacks. For example, the ranger mobs in ascalon catacombs. There's nothing you can really do about the ranger's auto attacks. You end up just zerging them without a lot of depth in the action. This ends up being true for just about every mob in there. If you die, just do your thing in downed state or let someone res you... or better yet just graveyard zerg since that's perfectly viable apparently.

Basically there's no real innovation beyond typical MMORPG's. It's certainly not the action RPG gameplay they seemed to have convinced everyone it was going to be. Games like Tera and Vindictus are most certainly much better examples.
 
Blkout said:
Is anyone at all running a single 6870 or even crossfire 6870's in the GW 2 beta yet? I think I keep reading that crossfire isn't working yet, so I'm just curious if anyone is using a 6870 and how is it running for them at max detail level and what resolution? I have a brother that's very much anticipating this game and he's got a single 6870 right now, soon to be crossfire 6870's, and I'm wondering what he can expect.

I've run the beta already on a HD 7950 and a GTX 670 and both run pretty well, although still not 60fps all the time.
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They haven't really put in the necessary "switch" to allow the system to use the GPU's as well as they should. They've done this intentionally and make the game run mostly on the CPU right now. They helped that in BWE2, but I expect to see more optimization in BWE3 and further before release.
 
Lol. Is this directed at U.S. players? 10am to 2pm on a Wednesday seems like a helluva weird time to try to do a stress test. Unless they are just performing a stress test on like......1 server. Lol.
 
nope, its not only directed to US players.

tweet from earlier today
For those of you wondering about the time of the stress test: Keep in mind that we have a huge playerbase outside of the US. ^MK
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Intel_Hydralisk said:
It's very apparent that the dodge mechanic wasn't well thought out when you encounter bosses / dungeons like ascalon catacombs.

In general, melee fighting is a bit rough on the edges. Your character's auto attack (the "1" skill) tends to interfere a lot with your positioning. Your character likes to bounce back and forth for the sake of the animation. Rolling around to avoid attacks is extremely non rewarding for melee and is very hit or miss.

The "unique combat" for ranged classes boils down to circle strafing and rolling away. This isn't 'unique'. It's barely considered a departure from a game like WOW.

The real issue rears its ugly head for prolonged fights (bosses and packs in ascalon catacombs). There are a lot of attacks that either happen instantly (if you dodge it you basically got lucky) or happen so frequently it undermines the idea of rolling out of attacks. For example, the ranger mobs in ascalon catacombs. There's nothing you can really do about the ranger's auto attacks. You end up just zerging them without a lot of depth in the action. This ends up being true for just about every mob in there. If you die, just do your thing in downed state or let someone res you... or better yet just graveyard zerg since that's perfectly viable apparently.

Basically there's no real innovation beyond typical MMORPG's. It's certainly not the action RPG gameplay they seemed to have convinced everyone it was going to be. Games like Tera and Vindictus are most certainly much better examples.
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I don't disagree. I actually don't like the combat in GW 2 nearly as much as the original GW. I understand they were trying for more depth, but it feels a bit clunky sometimes and fighting in tight spaces as you mentioned causes issues. I feel the same though about the texture clipping when changing levels sometimes, most notably I saw in the stairway going to fight Big Nose Ted for the first time, running up and down the stairs in that Tavern was a graphical nightmare.
 
timtheenchantor said:
They haven't really put in the necessary "switch" to allow the system to use the GPU's as well as they should. They've done this intentionally and make the game run mostly on the CPU right now. They helped that in BWE2, but I expect to see more optimization in BWE3 and further before release.
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About what I've been reading here and there just wasn't sure if anyone had any first hand experience with GW2 and a single or dual 6870.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
It's very apparent that the dodge mechanic wasn't well thought out when you encounter bosses / dungeons like ascalon catacombs.
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I thought dodge worked pretty well during my experience, but I never made it to any dungeons. I mostly did events and soloed. I did however notice it losing some effectiveness during some boss encounters. It seems they may have to rebalance those types of encounters if they want players to be able to utilize the dodge system throughout the game.
 
Interview about BWE feedback and upcoming changes

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/guildwars/guildwars2/guildwars2BWE2interview.html

1. What were some of the big takeaways for the development team from BWE 2?

Chris Whiteside: We got a large amount of extremely important feedback from the weekend. The key takeaway was that much of the feedback was micro rather than macro—we received a lot of feedback regarding balancing and accessibility rather than some of the much broader feedback items from BWE1. This is fantastic for us because it shows that the actions the community wanted us to take after the previous event were executed in the correct manner.
Much of the feedback we are looking into now surrounds balancing, accessibility, tutorials, and a number of “nice to have” requests from the community.

To our community: Please do keep the feedback coming—it’s making a huge difference to the game. And thanks for all your support; we really do appreciate it!



2. What are some of the main things you'll be working on for BWE 3?

Chris: Interesting question. As you know we have not announced a BWE3 [ed. note: Developers actually confirmed that there will be a third Beta Weekend Event in a Reddit Q&A just prior to BWE 2] so I will answer in the context of our continued work-to-launch readiness.
Aside from the areas listed above, we are doing some work on melee vs. ranged balancing (across the game) as well as finishing off a handful of core systems and features, based on the feedback we received from the previous event. We also have a few new things to show off!

3. What was your favorite bug that players found in the BWE?

Chris: Well “favorite” is definitely subjective in the two examples I am going to give here. The first one actually popped up in BWE1. “Sleep-jump” allowed players to use the “/sleep” emote and then jump whilst lying on the floor. The community really loved it, and we thought it was hilarious.
The second was an instance in which a player could execute a set of actions on their character and bring down the zone for everyone. We didn’t find this one hilarious, but we did find it very interesting. Needless to say, we got this fixed very quickly.


4. One particularly big topic on the Beta forums was that armor dyes are now applied per-character instead of over the entire account—something that proved wildly unpopular with beta forum posters. Is ArenaNet thinking of making any changes to the current dye system based on player feedback?

Eric Flannum:We always take player feedback seriously, and while we have no current plans to make dyes unlock on an account basis, we are going to do a few things that will allow players to more easily acquire the colors they want through crafting and use of the mystic forge.

5. As of BWE 2, the only way to obtain town clothes or minis was to purchase them from the gem shop. Will some town clothes or minis be obtainable as in-game rewards (say, for achievements or as mini-game prizes) when the game launches, or will they be restricted to the cash shop only?

Eric: At the moment, our plan for town clothes and minis is that they are only available via the Black Lion Trading Post (formerly, the Gem Store). There are, of course, some exceptions to this for things like the collector’s edition and other promotional giveaways. One other thing to note is that players are able to use in-game gold to trade for gems with other players via the exchange, so a player does not necessarily need to use cash to acquire these items.

6. Speaking of mini-games like the bar brawling and shooting gallery mentioned in various development blogs, are they still planned for launch? I keep trying to hop over the fence to crash that private shooting gallery party in Divinity's Reach!

Eric: There will be several activities ready to go for launch. You haven’t seen them yet because we’ve been waiting for some tech that we’re developing for PvP before we could consider them finished. We’ve got that tech now, and while I don’t know if they’re going to be in any future BWE, you will definitely be able to throw kegs at each other and break chairs over peoples’ heads in bars by launch.

7. Did you get a lot of players testing out Catacombs in explorable mode? What did you learn from their experiences that you can apply to it and other explorable mode dungeons?

Chris: We had a lot of players try out the explorable dungeon. I, too, ran it a number of times with players to get their feedback. We found two seemingly diverging opinions in one main category of feedback: difficulty.
Interestingly, the prevailing feedback was to not change the current difficulty of the enemies and scenarios, and yet we were also getting feedback that the dungeon was too hard.

As we researched the difference between the two sets of feedback, we noticed that the latter group of players was having trouble due to the high skill ceiling and associated learning curve. Our dungeons and core combat mechanics are very different to those found in other MMOs, and, as such, these experiences were very daunting for some players.

We felt that the difficulty shouldn’t be lowered, however, as we don’t believe this to be the issue.

Instead, we isolated two key areas that we will be working on to ensure that all players have more of an equal footing based on the diversity of their previous game experiences. First, we are going to do some work on melee combat to give players more time to react to enemy attacks and behaviors. Second, we will be putting in systems that telegraph changes in the game states and behaviors of enemies and bosses dependent on how the group is interacting with them. A good example of this is the lack of perceivable telegraphs when the Spider Queen spawns her spiders.

All in all, we were very excited by the feedback on the explorable version of the dungeon. We just needed more players passing through it to understand what we needed to tackle to ensure that the explorable versions of our dungeons would be both highly accessible and challenging—and above all, fun.

8. Are you looking at keeping the initial guild member cap at 100 for launch? Either way, can you tell us more about the mechanics for raising the initial cap, as alluded to in the recent Reddit Q&A?

Eric:We are definitely going to have a higher guild cap. We’ve just implemented the new system and are looking to iterate on it based on feedback from our internal testing, so I’m afraid I can’t say more about it until we’ve had a little testing time.

9. Thanks to some matchup mishaps in BWE 2, a number of servers found themselves quite demolished in World vs World vs. World PvP. Even though the finished matchmaking system should make that situation less common, what kinds of strategies might servers employ to bounce back from such a situation? Are there any plans to make it easier for servers to recover from losing all their objectives in WvWvW?

Eric: The matchmaking actually worked as intended, but since the new servers had a record of zero wins and zero losses, they ended up being matched with existing servers that also happened to have even records. It was our mistake—we simply didn’t anticipate that happening. We’ve already made changes to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
One of the best ways for a server to bounce back from being dominated is to switch to a different map. Enemies are often very slow to react to a shift in the battlefront, and sometimes jumping to a different map entirely can buy a server some breathing space.

We are currently talking about giving some help to servers that are severely overmatched, but we aren’t quite ready to talk about just how we’re going to do it yet.


10. The state of the mesmer class was much-discussed during BWE 2. What's the current thinking on the role that the team wants clones and phantasms to play for mesmers in PvE and PvP?

Eric: Clones are intended to act as decoys and fodder for shatters in both PvP and PvE. As such, we don’t want them to be significant sources of damage. Phantasms, on the other hand, should be dangerous, which is why we call them out to enemy players by not making them exact copies of the mesmer. We’re still working on getting the balance for illusions down properly, and players should continue to see improvements as we progress.
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So I'm too far behind in Diablo III for it to keep my interest... should I be wary of being interested in this game? Played WoW for the first 6 months, then quit and never looked back, haven't played an MMO since.
 
Dark Shade said:
should I be wary of being interested in this game? Played WoW for the first 6 months, then quit and never looked back, haven't played an MMO since.
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It's quite easy to be wary of any upcoming MMOs since lately they've been pretty disappointing (IMO), but ArenaNet seems to have a great track record and they listen to the community quite well. Check out some gameplay videos and make a decision yourself. I think the majority of people that visit this thread are pretty psyched about it though, and personally I've had more fun with the Beta than I've had with other games' release.

Also, I didn't know that being 'too far behind in Diablo III' could be a thing. :confused:
 
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