Guild Wars 2 Begins
Okay, so the game is out "for real" as of tomorrow, but I think I've been playing the final version over the weekend, so I feel pretty confident in commenting at this point. Not many changes since beta, but I think there have been a few. So, on to initial impression...
The graphics look good, in general. I encountered a few visual issues (where things disappear at certain angles) and I am minorly bugged by just how often hands brush through clothing in cut scenes.
Character customization is probably above average for MMORPGs, with a selection of body types in addition to faces and hair styles. There are sliders for just about everything, but most of the changes from them are minimal - which is fine. You can recolor your gear at any time, with a decent palette to start with and other colors unlocked by dyes found in-game.
Movement is fair. Alas, I still have to say no MMORPG I have played moves as cleanly and smoothly as WoW. Here, jumping and falling seem stiff and I notice some "gliding" over the ground when moving at angles. There's head-turning toward active targets, which is sort of nice, but I don't like it as much as being able to control that manually. No real problems per se in this area.
Cut scenes are stylistic with set backdrops and animated character models, and usually fairly direct. Branches exist in dialogue, but not so much in cut scenes. So how does that rate? Well, WoW doesn't have anything comparable. Despite the static background, I find this more immersive than The Secret World (with its silent and non-responsive PCs), but not as good as The Old Republic (with fully in-engine scenes and branching dialogue). The above-mentioned frequent clipping issue bothers me a little, but the scenes work and are good overall.
Sounds is fine and voice work is generally pretty good. No complaints or special observations there at this time.
Personal stories are looking pretty good. You can assist others with theirs, though only the "instance owner" can initiate and select dialogue (others can see it, but choices are greyed out). If you're on the same story/quest as someone else, there's the option to accept completion and move on or to not complete it (so you can do it again yourself). It's an interesting way to be able to see branches in the same thing - I went with a fellow noble through a stage where you choose whether to carouse at a party or break into a home, and by choosing different paths we got to see both before the story remerged afterward. So I'm going to rate the execution of the story aspect right up there with TOR so far, though I'll have to consider in more detail when I've played through more.
I'm still undecided on the dynamic events. The ups and downs remain pretty much the same. I like having things to do pop up. But sometimes it gets overwhelming. I haven't yet seen repetitions, though I have seen a couple different events pop up in the same place within a minute or two of completion of the last.
The level system is an interesting choice, scaling level down to match not only instances but zones. It's a pretty invisible reduction to stats, and higher-level character still have some advantage in having unlocked more skills/slots - at least as near as I can tell. It doesn't go the other way, though, making it difficult to assist someone a few levels over you doing their thing without getting downed anytime something breathes in your direction.
It looks like someone fudged the distribution of Hall of Monuments access stones at the beginning, as my first character had to run off to Lion's Arch to find a vendor to get one manually, but my later characters had them in inventory. I'm a little disappointed that all the HoM items are simply skins (I was hoping to pick up a second dagger and pistol, darn it), but I can see that's probably the best way to sidestep the power issue entirely.
I've been playing a thief, and generally enjoying it. The weapon selection is fairly simple: combinations of sword (main hand), dagger, pistol, short bow (two-hand). Pistols are stylish, but I find the short bow good for ranged support, with a couple abilities that set up a condition area, granting poison to attacks or chaining to inflict "area weakness." The bow was my go-to setup for assisting a friend a couple levels higher, as it kept me out of the immediate danger zone. Mostly, I've been using sword-and-dagger, which feels like the most potent in direct offense (though I'd have to compare numbers to know for sure). The #2 ability in that setup, though, is a bit odd as it lays down a mark and teleports you to a target to attack, then a second use in fifteen seconds 'ports you back to the mark - easy to pull you where you don't want if you get button-happy, but potentially useful if careful. I really like the movement/evasive abilities, but they do have a way of evading you right off a bridge/hill/platform if you aren't careful. It's been reasonably fun, though it's still hard to keep track of everything, and I'm thinking I want my charr alt to be an elementalist to play around more with conditions and area effects to combo.
I can now mouse-over a skill and see what it chains into, which was a complaint of mind in the beta. Yay.
I'm still waiting to see how the guilds shape up practically. There's a build queue for improvements, and you spend earned points to pay for upgrades. Points are apparently earned by individuals while "representing" a guild (you can be part of several, but apparently only represent one at a time.
I've only partied with one other person so far, and it has some interesting quirks in that logging off and changing characters does not disband a party, it keeps the players together regardless of active character. I'm sure I'll have more observations later.
The overflow servers are a mixed blessing. On the up side, I've not had to sit outside the game in a queue (in fact, the game didn't disconnect me while I played this weekend - which is pretty impressive in itself, even if the full release isn't until Tuesday). On the down side, I've had the "do you want to go to the main server instance" prompt get in my way, and there's no way to join a person in the main server if you've grouped with them from overflow - though it looks like you can go the other way, joining the person in the overflow. Shifting between didn't take long.
I've only done a little crafting - not much to say there as yet.
Though I did confuse the heck out of myself by sending my crafting components to bank storage (which is a nice option in-field to clear space), then not realizing such things are stored on a different tab from normal items (which is as it was in GW, I'll admit). Mini-pets are also now stored on the "collectibles" tab, which is nice, so they don't have to take up normal storage slots. Bank storage is shared between characters (again, a GW holdover), for better or worse.
The waypoint system works reasonably well for getting around quickly to places you've been. Maps are pretty large, and so are the major cities. I still sort of want a mount. And flying, though that won't happen without serious changes because of how zone portals are set up between areas.
Hmm... that's all for this time around, and it should be plenty. We'll see after some more play.
The graphics look good, in general. I encountered a few visual issues (where things disappear at certain angles) and I am minorly bugged by just how often hands brush through clothing in cut scenes.
Character customization is probably above average for MMORPGs, with a selection of body types in addition to faces and hair styles. There are sliders for just about everything, but most of the changes from them are minimal - which is fine. You can recolor your gear at any time, with a decent palette to start with and other colors unlocked by dyes found in-game.
Movement is fair. Alas, I still have to say no MMORPG I have played moves as cleanly and smoothly as WoW. Here, jumping and falling seem stiff and I notice some "gliding" over the ground when moving at angles. There's head-turning toward active targets, which is sort of nice, but I don't like it as much as being able to control that manually. No real problems per se in this area.
Cut scenes are stylistic with set backdrops and animated character models, and usually fairly direct. Branches exist in dialogue, but not so much in cut scenes. So how does that rate? Well, WoW doesn't have anything comparable. Despite the static background, I find this more immersive than The Secret World (with its silent and non-responsive PCs), but not as good as The Old Republic (with fully in-engine scenes and branching dialogue). The above-mentioned frequent clipping issue bothers me a little, but the scenes work and are good overall.
Sounds is fine and voice work is generally pretty good. No complaints or special observations there at this time.
Personal stories are looking pretty good. You can assist others with theirs, though only the "instance owner" can initiate and select dialogue (others can see it, but choices are greyed out). If you're on the same story/quest as someone else, there's the option to accept completion and move on or to not complete it (so you can do it again yourself). It's an interesting way to be able to see branches in the same thing - I went with a fellow noble through a stage where you choose whether to carouse at a party or break into a home, and by choosing different paths we got to see both before the story remerged afterward. So I'm going to rate the execution of the story aspect right up there with TOR so far, though I'll have to consider in more detail when I've played through more.
I'm still undecided on the dynamic events. The ups and downs remain pretty much the same. I like having things to do pop up. But sometimes it gets overwhelming. I haven't yet seen repetitions, though I have seen a couple different events pop up in the same place within a minute or two of completion of the last.
The level system is an interesting choice, scaling level down to match not only instances but zones. It's a pretty invisible reduction to stats, and higher-level character still have some advantage in having unlocked more skills/slots - at least as near as I can tell. It doesn't go the other way, though, making it difficult to assist someone a few levels over you doing their thing without getting downed anytime something breathes in your direction.
It looks like someone fudged the distribution of Hall of Monuments access stones at the beginning, as my first character had to run off to Lion's Arch to find a vendor to get one manually, but my later characters had them in inventory. I'm a little disappointed that all the HoM items are simply skins (I was hoping to pick up a second dagger and pistol, darn it), but I can see that's probably the best way to sidestep the power issue entirely.
I've been playing a thief, and generally enjoying it. The weapon selection is fairly simple: combinations of sword (main hand), dagger, pistol, short bow (two-hand). Pistols are stylish, but I find the short bow good for ranged support, with a couple abilities that set up a condition area, granting poison to attacks or chaining to inflict "area weakness." The bow was my go-to setup for assisting a friend a couple levels higher, as it kept me out of the immediate danger zone. Mostly, I've been using sword-and-dagger, which feels like the most potent in direct offense (though I'd have to compare numbers to know for sure). The #2 ability in that setup, though, is a bit odd as it lays down a mark and teleports you to a target to attack, then a second use in fifteen seconds 'ports you back to the mark - easy to pull you where you don't want if you get button-happy, but potentially useful if careful. I really like the movement/evasive abilities, but they do have a way of evading you right off a bridge/hill/platform if you aren't careful. It's been reasonably fun, though it's still hard to keep track of everything, and I'm thinking I want my charr alt to be an elementalist to play around more with conditions and area effects to combo.
I can now mouse-over a skill and see what it chains into, which was a complaint of mind in the beta. Yay.
I'm still waiting to see how the guilds shape up practically. There's a build queue for improvements, and you spend earned points to pay for upgrades. Points are apparently earned by individuals while "representing" a guild (you can be part of several, but apparently only represent one at a time.
I've only partied with one other person so far, and it has some interesting quirks in that logging off and changing characters does not disband a party, it keeps the players together regardless of active character. I'm sure I'll have more observations later.
The overflow servers are a mixed blessing. On the up side, I've not had to sit outside the game in a queue (in fact, the game didn't disconnect me while I played this weekend - which is pretty impressive in itself, even if the full release isn't until Tuesday). On the down side, I've had the "do you want to go to the main server instance" prompt get in my way, and there's no way to join a person in the main server if you've grouped with them from overflow - though it looks like you can go the other way, joining the person in the overflow. Shifting between didn't take long.
I've only done a little crafting - not much to say there as yet.
Though I did confuse the heck out of myself by sending my crafting components to bank storage (which is a nice option in-field to clear space), then not realizing such things are stored on a different tab from normal items (which is as it was in GW, I'll admit). Mini-pets are also now stored on the "collectibles" tab, which is nice, so they don't have to take up normal storage slots. Bank storage is shared between characters (again, a GW holdover), for better or worse.
The waypoint system works reasonably well for getting around quickly to places you've been. Maps are pretty large, and so are the major cities. I still sort of want a mount. And flying, though that won't happen without serious changes because of how zone portals are set up between areas.
Hmm... that's all for this time around, and it should be plenty. We'll see after some more play.
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