User talk:Lania Elderfire/BWE1

BWE

→ moved from User_talk:Lania_Elderfire#BWE

If you fought against the shaman chief in The Frozen Maw - that boss who summons ice boulders above the whole area (poor visiblity), covering almost the whole lake with AoE - you couldn't survive if you didn't see the red circles. It gets very important to avoid them, and it's a very good thing that the exact area of damage is clearly visible. The effects also don't last awfully long time and can be in different locations. At times it was very hard to position banners or even myself effectively, let alone revive fallen allies. This may or may not become drastically more critical in higher levels. Visual and audio effects in GW2 are also much more advanced than in GW1, and it can be very confusing to see how wide trail Burning Speed or how large radius Churning Earth has.

I think that the purpose of dodging is to dodge attacks and not dash around the battlefield - combat is already very movement-oriented so I don't think we need to be able to move around any faster than as it currently is. There's also plenty of leaps, retreats and instant movement skills for all professions, from weapon skills to utility skills to profession mechanics. I also think that the point of universal dodge animation is that 1) it's universally recognizable maneuver, so you know when your opponent has used 40% of their endurance bar and 2) because almost all professions have some kind of evasion skills which fit their profession themes, such as Serpent's Strike or Blurred Frenzy.

I also disagree on or disregard most of other issues you have mentioned. The ones I agree with you are.. Hmm. Enemy respawn rate and lack of overextensive customization options. I don't consider level difference effect on combat effectiveness a big deal because there's still a ton of stuff to do in the world and as long as there is somebody to play with you can support them and earn rewards as usual. You should also be able to be sidekicked by party members, though I'm not sure of that. Still, I think they could have increased leveling progress more, but I don't find it to be a big problem atm. Oh, and one thing that I wholeheartedly disagree with is "unusual weapon designs" - dagger+focus made my Elementalist the most fun Mage I have ever played.

Finally, about balance: If you think that 1) a game that is not released and won't be released in at least 2 more months, 2) a game that you have only progressed 20 or so levels in and 3) a game that you have played two or three days (assuming you didn't play any other beta) is supposed to be balanced, you're mistaken. PvP balance in a game like this comes only with time, when people learn to counter specific tactics, builds and strategies. Of course that's aside very poor skill design/update choices for PvP, but it shouldn't be too big issue until players really get to know their game well. There's also less skills in GW2 than in GW1 so ultimately there should be less imba gimmick builds in full release.

Anyway, I hope you're not taking this post in the wrong way. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the game, especially since they were not the usual perfromance issues type. :) Mediggo 18:46, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reading and actually enjoying it :D. There are certain instances where I can see the red circles being necessary. But that's just bad game design because you can't see it coming vs Frostmaw. There has to be some happy medium where you don't have a obvious red circle but not insta AoE out of no where. A lot of player AoE skills are fairly easy to spot, like dragon tooth, lava font, eruption, barrage, etc. Why not have the ice spikes cast a shadow that would warn of an AoE instead of a big red circle? Even in GW1 you had to learn what kind of AoE range that your skills had. It didn't tell you how big of a area firestorm affected, you had to use it and learn. At the current endgame vindictus, you have to learn the "tells" of massive aoe, where it affects, and how to avoid it. Like Colru's black balls of death, he claps is hands and starts charging some energy, and releases it. The entire sequence is just enough time to get to cover if the player was able to read his initial tell, if you are too late, you are dead.

No I didn't expect this game to be balanced at this stage. The issue I had was that it's so unbalanced and it's going to take even more time to try to balance it out. Yeah there are less skills, but there are things like traits that makes things really complicated and are also the cause of some of the imbalance in pvp.

I really don't see this game coming out til november/december. 60 levels of PvE story content missing from beta, and 2 whole races missing. I won't be too suprised if they delay it into 2013. If they release it earlier then it'll be a incomplete release. They already said that features like guild halls will be implemented after release ...--Lania 14:37, 06 May 2012 (UTC)

The game does have a lot of things that need balancing or outright fixing/doing, yes, but...on the other hand, I'm bored and have nothing else to play or look forward to, so I would accept a mostly done and somewhat buggy game if it came out earlier. That's what happened with SWTOR. Then again, maybe that's a poor example :( I dunno. I like Anet's stance that "we want to release the game only when it's finally and totally ready", but unless they're going to be holding beta weekends every month until 2013 or whatever, it's going to be kind of disappointing waiting - now that we've had a taste of what's to come, I mean. I want to shoot me some bandits. Vili 点 14:49, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, it's a beta. I think people just like to complain. Of course the game isn't balanced and is buggy. Secondly, releasing a buggy game early just so people can buy it and play it sort of demonstrates that the developers would be more interested in getting money rather than creating a fantastic product. And lastly, as long as Blizzard is around, every other company's wait times for games looks amazingly short. Venom20 19:09, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Ever heard of Valve? They make games. Sometimes. But when that happens they usually change the way people think about games. Mediggo 16:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Valve? You're kidding yourselves if you think GW2 is going to have some kind of revolutionary milestone impact on anything. The most innovative "feature" to date would be either the well-crafted pro-social/anti-griefing measures, or the whole "skills tied to weapons" plus environmental weapons...but that's not even a totally novel idea, it is just better implemented here than I've seen before.

Don't get me wrong, I think GW2 has the potential to be a solid game, and it's going to perform well no matter what they do. But an 8/10 game is not a 10/10 game, and no amount of "beta is beta" logic will change that. Unless Anet is planning to alter the fundamental structure of the game instead of polishing what they already have, and I doubt that. I think you're also overlooking the fact that unfortunately, Anet is a for-profit company, so their primay interests lie with the shareholders, not the end user. This is why a lot of the shit in GW1 persisted despite everyone who knew what they were talking about calling it out as BS. At the end of the day, you've gotta make money, and (as World of Warcraft continues to illustrate so well) pandering to the lowest common denominator is one easy way to do that. So argue all you want that a fantasic product will be the best path to profit and success; if I were bankrolling Anet, though, I'd have to trust them quite a bit to keep paying for a new and improved game whose release date keeps getting extended. Tangible results are important, you know?

tl;dr question boils down to which is a better strategy: make the customer wait for a premium product that will be available "eventually", or sell them something workable but not perfect now. (I don't mean right now, they need at least one more beta, but you get the point.) The longer that Anet takes to release GW2, the more premium it will have to be to compete with games that do come out in the meantime. Vili 点 21:00, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, no, that's not what I meant at all. I simply meant to compare Valve's development cycle with Blizzard's. They're somewhat similiar compared to many other developers and publishers in the industry. Obviously you cannot call any kind of developer altruistic, unless they're indies giving out free patches or DLC and exceptional support to the already polished full release of a game. Still, I think GW2 has some very good things in one package, without monthly fees, and that alone is a big selling point. Many people claim that it's the MMO that gives them just what they have wanted from MMOs for years. Mediggo 04:36, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, just from the pre-purchase sales numbers alone, there is no doubt that GW2 will be a blowout when it is released. GW2 doesn't have anything really "new" about it, and yeah it's probably just the best amalgamation of all the popular features that make mmos fun to play. Like I said before, GW2 is a jack of all trades, master of none... well probably a master at integrating all different kinds of features. --Lania 14:47, 07 May 2012 (UTC)

The whole point of red circles is the same as consistency of dodge animations across classes, which I mentioned - they allow you to actually play the encounter without having to carefully analyze and study it beforehand. I also think that ANet doesn't want to spoil personal story too much, as it is quite a major feature of the game in release. Mediggo 16:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

The issue of visual indicators for in-game effects is, I think, an extremely important consideration that real-time game developers have to make. On the one hand, they want their game to be as immersive as possible, and obtrusive UI elements do break the fourth wall and remind players that they are, in fact, just playing a game. On the other hand, it's absolutely vital that players feel as though they are in control when they are playing. I wouldn't want to play a game where rocks fall on me and squash me dead with no warning. Of course there are limits to this control as well- WoW in its declining days pretty much plays itself with add-ons. It's a constant balancing act. 16:46, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't want it to be like vindictus where you have to practice raid bosses for hours so that you won't be a dead weight in a raid... Study every nuance of a enemy move, know exactly where the hit boxes are, and time your attacks so that you are doing minimal dodging with maximum attacks w/o getting hit... it's fine for that kind of action rpg game but not appropriate for a mmorpg. But in GW2 its the other end of the extreme as the UI tells you outright where to move to avoid damage and its just weird. How did the ice spikes appear? did the air condense and form ice crystals? If it needs red circles, give it some visual gameplay indicators that would indicate something bad is going to happen... like ice coalescing into a giant spike and then fall. Its just that i never played a game that tells you exactly how big the area of effect is in a real-time combat setting... and for about 95% of PvE, it's just not needed. In the vindictus 24man dragon raid there is an aoe that covers 3/4 of the map, but it doesn't just happen out of no where... the dragon flies around and does a "napalm run", and there is plenty of advance visual warning (like the dragon flying and setting up the napalm run) to take cover.

Now there are over 84 pages of comments, suggestions, complaints in the official BWE GW2 forum, and the developers seem to be very receptive to the comments etc. So, hopefully BWE2 the gameplay experience will be more smoother. --Lania 18:46, 06 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there will be change regarding red circles, though, as it would probably require great amount of rebalancing and redesigning all kinds of encounters and skills - not just PvE, but PvP too. And yeah, it's not like there weren't any visual cues, it was just quite difficult to avoid them, as the circles seemed to disappear before the AoE actually landed and after ice blocks could be seen in the sky... It sure does seem weird, but I think it really ends up making the game more fun. Because you can also see friendly AoE circles, you know exactly where to lead your foe or knockback them to, or where to position yourself to receive buffs, or whatever. Because the effects are so diverse, it'd be difficult to tell otherwise, but they can still be identified by following the visual cues and effects and not just the circles. Mediggo 20:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't think they'll change it either. --Lania 14:47, 07 May 2012 (UTC)

Story (and spoilers?)

Did you only play human storyline? I had pretty fun time recovering lost charr attack vehicle I managed to lose after good time at moot, or designing a ghostbore rifle for my legion. I mean, how many other games actually let you design a ghostbuster gun of your own? :) Mediggo 07:12, 10 May 2012 (UTC)