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The Final GW2 Beta Weekend Impressions
I have had words regarding Guild Wars 2 previously. Based on my experiences mere minutes ago, I am almost ready to recant all of them.
Err… the bad words, that is.
As way of preface, since the Sylvari and Asura were available for the first (and last) time, I decided to forgo retesting that Thief nonsense in Queensdale and focus on the new races. The following points/impressions are in the order that I experienced them, with the ones that inspired my opening lines coming at the end.
Point 14: Sylvari are People Too!
For being walking sentient plant gonads (look it up), the Sylvari speak and threaten like typical meatbags:
Plant tongues? Couldn’t it just… you know… grow back?
That was not even the most interesting bit of shrubbery dialog. This was:
Cue angry conservatives.
I was not even out of the tutorial yet and already I am being told two dude plants love each other. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.
Nevertheless, presenting a gay relationship right at the beginning struck me as an unexpectedly bold move on ArenaNet’s part. Every single person that rolls a Sylvari character is going to be seeing this (if they are paying attention), as opposed to hiding it in random NPC dialog.
Then again… is it really all that bold? Sylvari are plant people modeled as pseudo-elves; male elves in videogames are traditionally metrosexual at a minimum. If ArenaNet was really bold, they would have transplanted (har har) this situation over in the human section. But, as far as steps go, this one ain’t a bad first one.
Point 15: Visuals, Jumping Puzzles, and View Points
As far as zone visuals are concerned, the Sylvari thus far take the vegan cake. Alternatively, ArenaNet may have boosted the graphical optimization several notches with this build. Either way, I always have respect for artists who are capable of taking the cliche – plant people living in a giant tree – and still making everything interesting to look at. Remember when you strolled into Northrend during Wrath of the Lich King in WoW, expecting every zone to be snow, snow, and more snow… and being more than a little pleasantly surprised? There is more than enough stereotypical plants to go around here in Sylvariville, but their configuration remains fairly fresh.
A dastardly one at that.
Speaking of jumping puzzles, I am not sure if they are brand new to this build or not, but… there are jumping puzzles now. Hard ones. The one in the screenshot above took probably ~20 minutes to complete (I’m a pro) and even awarded an achievement for making it onto the cliff over on the left. To be honest, I thought the whole thing was a part of the Skill Challenge – the actual challenge was, no joke, clicking on an item in your inventory you got from clicking the bush at the bottom – so I was a little disappointed after the fact.
In any case, another new addition are Kodak Moments View Points: map icons hidden in relatively hard-to-reach locations that start Assassin Creed-esque flybys. Sometimes literally:
Will this be filed under “Homage” or “Parody”?
To be honest, View Points are kinda pointless insofar as they do not reveal anything of note, but I suppose they incentivize climbing on top of things. If you are into that sort of thing. Actually, I do have one minor gripe with that…
Point 16: You Fall Too Fast!
I noticed the instant-terminal-velocity way back in the first minutes of the first beta, but until View Points and Jumping Puzzles were introduced I never had a reason to gain unsafe amounts of altitude. Falling anywhere in Guild Wars 2 feels like you are falling into a black hole. Know how characters sometimes feel “floaty” in MMOs? Imagine the opposite of that. It’s jarring. It may be a minor point, but I was tired of not talking about it like nobody noticed.
Point 17: Necromancers are Boring
While on the character creation screen for Sylvari, one class choice was immediately obvious: Necromancer. Or, well, Engineer might have worked too. If you pick anything else you are squandering the opportunity denied to Draenei Warlocks and Undead Paladins everywhere. Fight the power!
While I breezed through questing as a Necromancer (*cough* ranged are OP *cough*), I never really liked any of my base skills. Sure, it was fun being able to run around with a Blood Fiend, two Bone Minions, and a Shadow creature all by level 10, but everything else felt… meh. Death Shroud as my F1 ability was incredibly disappointing; I do more damage normally, and if it exists solely as a defensive move, well, that still sucks. Overall, the class just seems too damn meta. Dispel buffs, steal buffs, corrupt buffs, use abilities that give yourself debuffs so presumably you can spread them around later… yeah.
Okay, ArenaNet, you have the convoluted PvP interactions down. Now what is a Necromancer supposed to do while questing? Auto-attack + press 2 every 8-12 seconds? Yawn.
Point 18: Elementalists are the Most Fun I Have Had in an Action RPG
In blinding contrast to Necromancers, I feel I need to repeat myself for emphasis: Elementalists are the most fun I have had in an Action RPG. Guild Wars 2 is not strictly an action RPG, of course, but it goddamn turns into one when you roll an Elementalist.
Green check-marks indicate fun abilities.
Necromancer was Press 1 (auto-attack) + Press 2 every ~10 seconds while your pets unfailingly tanked mobs.
Double-dagger Elementalist? Your auto-attack shoots three flame arrows in a spread pattern. Right off the bat you grok the strategic possibilities: the closer you get, the more likely your target will get hit by multiple arrows, increasing the deeps. But maybe you hang back and let your arrows hit the crowd… oh hell, naw! Get in there, boyz! Button number 2 is a channeled dragon breath you can use while moving. Button number 3 is one of my favorite in the bunch: it is a charging jump attack that leaves a trail of fire on the ground while you blow the area up when you land. Nothing says badass pyromancer like one jumping at your face with an explosion. Follow that up with button number 4, which is an AoE fireblast that leaves a ring of fire on the ground that burns enemies who step through it. Flame Wreath this, beotch! Finally, button number 5 is another cone-shaped attack that simply deals extra damage to Burning enemies, such as those who took damage from button(s) 2, 3, and/or 4.
All of that is just double-daggers under the Fire sign. Pressing F2 at any time brings up the Water sign, whose auto-attack is spinning icy hula-hoop of death¹ which passes through all enemies in a line and debuffs with stacking Vulnerability before boomeranging back and hitting them a second time. F3 is the Air sign which, admittedly, is pretty lame aside from the 1,200-ranged charge attack called Ride the Goddamn Lightning. Finally, F4 busts out the Earth sign, with all its fairly Necromacer-ish short-ranged-but-powerful Bleed attacks.
Again, all of that was with the same weapon loadout. Most classes in GW2 have 5 abilities per weapon combo, changing only two per offhand switch. The Elementalist gets six (6) no matter what you switch around. I did not make it to level 10 to check, but presumably I could go from double-dagger to scepter-focus and get 20 different abilities to play around with each time I press the ` button. Other classes may get a similar number of abilities overall (since the Elementalist cannot wield as many different weapon types), but none of them have as much access to these abilities at any time. We are talking about 10 vs 40 here. It’s ridiculous. And even if there is some kind of Elementalist-only weapon-swap limitation, it’s still 10 vs 20.
If it was not obvious by now, check your pulse I had a ton of fun playing the Elementalist. At the same time, the Elementalist is so clearly some designer’s pet project it is not funny… and that worries me. Nothing comes close to this class’s complexity, and I have to wonder at what (eventual) cost. Thieves can press F1 to Shadowstep and get “stolen” one-time-use abilities, Warriors press F1 when their Rage Adrenaline meter fills up, and so on and so forth. Are Elementalists going to be balanced around correct usage of 20+ abilities? Or will they simply be OP as they stab you in the face with their explodey burning rings of fire?
I have already heard grumblings vis-a-vis Elementalists dying practically instantly in PvP, so maybe this issue “fixes” itself. I hope not. I want an Elementalist main and to run some BGs.
Point 19: Asura Females (Can) Straddle the Line between Cute and Uncomfortably Cute
If you were originally put off by the Asura concept art (like I was), feel free to give it a spin:
Wha… no! The pink one-piece swimsuit makes it worse!
If you liked the original concept art look, or are afraid of what your probation officer would say if he walked in while you were playing, ArenaNet still has your back:
Morgan County Parole Board and Mordor Approved.
Luckily for everyone, Asura act more like Goblins/Gnomes from WoW rather than Elin from TERA. And they go back to looking like the cute, cocky nephews and nieces of Yoda from Episode 2 in the main world:
Muuuuuch better.
My Asura was the Elementalist, by the way, so that Episode 2 reference was especially apt.
Point 20: It Will be an Interesting Ride, One Way or the Other
Lest I be confused for someone with boundless optimism in the integrity of the human race, I still have major concerns regarding damn near everything I said previously under the Guild Wars 2 Category tag. Things like unbalanced melee, bad pacing when it comes to Personal Stories/questing in general (the Sylvari starting zone was smooth as butter, but I still had to grind mobs in the Asura zone twice), how Thief, Guardian, and Necromancer gameplay feels pretty bad, suspicions regarding the cash shop and how it affects future game design, and so on and so forth.
In fact, regarding the latter, I was reading a comment to this post over at Keen & Graev’s mentioning being an altaholic. Uh… not unless you pay $10 per slot beyond five. Five slots, eight professions, you do the math. And it is not as though you can roll on another sever either – “guest” anytime anywhere, but it will always be a pain in the ass if your friends rolled elsewhere unless there is an “auto-guest on X server upon login” option. Maybe an extra $15 here and there is nothing as long as it doesn’t happen faster than once a month. But for me, there is no such thing as a friendly, on-your-side cash shop.
Anyway, that is that, my friends. I might have some leftover screenshots, but they will definitely have to wait until next time.
¹ Don’t tell me you never gave a hula-hoop a reverse spin before tossing it down the driveway.
Melee and Kiting
In the extreme off-chance you have not been following the gripping drama unfolding in the comment section of my post about Guild Wars 2 questing (which long ceased to be about questing), let me summarize my position on the design intention of melee kiting mobs.
…actually, wait. Let me quote GW2’s Jon Peters instead (emphasis mine):
Hey all. I wanted to talk about this a bit since it is a hot topic here and also on the internets. The intention is that both styles are viable. Certainly right now Melee is more difficult than ranged. There are some things we will try to do to address this, but I think the more you play you would find they are closer than you think.
First what’s already there:
- Melee does more damage. Melee damage is simply higher than ranged damage across the board.
- Melee has more control. With a few intentional exception Melee has a lot more control than ranged.
What Melee needs:
- defensive tools on more weapons, particularly on lower armor professions.
- ai needs to favor Melee a bit less than it currently does.
What else:
Finally because of the more action based nature of combat Melee needs to be taught better. Effective Melee requires skills that translate over from FPS games which are notoriously harder on casual players. You have to wasd to move, constantly aim with your mouse camera, and hit skills on 1-5.
Some tips:
If you have learned any good Melee tips that you think we should pass on to newer players feel free to post them here. I’ll start with a few tips of my own.
- If you don’t have mouse look on when using a skill you will turn to face. I sometimes let go of mouse look as I activate to help me aim through the chaos and then click it back down in between attacks.
- Melee has a lot of hard hitting skills and good setup. Utility skills Can really help set up big Melee attacks. Bulls charge on warrior, scorpion wire on thief, judges intervention on guardian.
- Know when to run. No matter what you are not a tank. You have to move in and out avoiding damage. If you have to soak damage try and bring boons like Protection and Regeneration or conditions like Blindness and the very undervalued Weakness.
Thanks for reading this all. Rest assured we will keep working on this and just keep in mind the subtle differences in GW2 combat that take a while to sink in.
The above was posted May 1st, the same day I basically pointed out the same thing, vis-a-vis the melee vs ranged discrepancy, with my first GW2 beta weekend impressions. As of the second beta weekend, there has been no improvement I could detect. Jon mentions that melee deals more damage “across the board,” but what difference happened to exist was not perceptible to me.
But for the sake of argument, let us assume Jon is correct. Let us assume, as Conwolv does, that I “like to make up excuses for [my] poor playstyle” rather than have any possible legitimate complaint. Let us, in other words, look upon the design principals as they exist in their purest form:
- Melee deals more damage | It is more difficult to get/stay in melee range.
- Melee is at greater risk of damage | Melee takes less damage.
- Ranged deals less damage | It is easier to stay on target.
- Ranged is at less risk of damage | Ranged takes more damage.
Do you believe the above is good, balanced game design?
Go ahead and write down your answer.
.
.
Write it down?
.
.
If you wrote “Yes,” you are wrong. Don’t feel too bad though, as Blizzard makes this mistake repeatedly, and ArenaNet appears to be on track to do the same for different reasons.
You see, the problem with the above “balanced” game design is the notion that both ranged and melee are intended to ultimately be viable, e.g. be equivalently good at damage. If ranged DPS is as good as melee in the long-run, that means there is no benefit to it being more difficult to get into/stay in melee range. If melee has greater burst damage to compensate, that merely imbalances PvP and/or forces encounter designers to include adds that need to be killed quickly… and somehow make it so that ranged cannot simply kill them in the time it takes melee to switch targets.
Similarly, “risk” is not a particularly compelling balance mechanism for two reasons. The first is simple psychology: most people are risk averse. Would you rather have $50 right now, or $100 if you win a coin flip? Both have an average payout of $50, so there is no difference between the two… right? Second, there are “perceived fun” barriers that designers have to keep in mind when crafting encounters. Instant-death mechanics are probably not fun for a lot of people, even if that is a way to balance ranged having an easier time avoiding said attack than melee (whom would only take 50% damage or whatever). At the other end, if melee doesn’t take enough damage, they could potentially ignore the mechanic altogether.
There are potentially ways to balance the melee vs ranged rift, but the bottom line is that a “mirrored” approach simply does not cut it.
Flying the Melee Kite
This brings me back to the GW2 melee problem.
Simply put, melee has every possible disadvantage. Instead of melee taking less damage per the balancing mechanism for #2, melee takes the same or more damage. You have less time to react to “Dodge This!” abilities, nevermind how few of those abilities ranged even has to care about. As Jon points out, “You have to move in and out avoiding damage.” What does ranged do? Move… backwards? To be honest, at the levels I played, my Ranger never had to move at all if I lead off with a snare. And here is the thing: even if that changes later, I would not be doing more than my melee toons already do.
More often than not, melee characters having to kite mobs is a sign of design failure. What else could it be, by definition?
One of the interesting defenses that a commenter named Fn0 presented was the following:
GW2 goes further. Capiche? It is not the same. GW2 allows you as melee (as in, you started melee at level 1) to spec as full-blown ranged with the blink of putting a ranged weapon equiped. In GW2 you can respec in battle with they key ` which allows one to, for example, switch between melee and ranged. This means we are much more hybrid than in previous MMOs.
It is an interesting thought that ArenaNet might be endeavoring to do away with both class roles (i.e. the Trinity) and any distinction between ranged and melee classes. I do not believe the argument works particular well, given that melee vs ranged is still a balance issue regardless of whether each class can be both – just because a Thief can be ranged 100% of the time doesn’t fix the fact that melee is imbalanced. And I have a more subjective problem with the idea of presenting Thieves, Guardians, and Warriors as “ranged” archetypes. But it is an interesting thought just the same.
Having said all that, what do you guys think? Is kiting a “standard strategy for melee in all MMO games?” Even in questing and general PvE? Are the discrepancies between melee and ranged classes something you think about at all? I have not played TERA, so I would also be interested in knowing how melee vs ranged is handled in that game. And if you played a game where you thought things were balanced pretty well, let me know that as well in the comments below.
In An Age 