So, that Guild Wars 2 beta eh… What larks, eh Pip!
Over the next few hundred words I aim to present to you my impressions of the GW2 game and client as of the weekend of April 27th-29th.
Very First Impressions
My first impression of GW2 was awful and entirely my own fault. I got a new case for my PC on the Friday, and figured I had enough time to strip everything out of my old tower and install in the new one. I was entirely correct with this assumption, despite stripping half the flesh off a couple of fingers trying to get my gfx card out of my tiny tower.
However, in my haste to put everything back together to test it all out, I’d somehow managed to connect my primary monitor to my secondary gfx card — the one I normally use for running my second monitor and physX stuff. I was thus rather shocked when GW2 ran like complete ass even in character creation, and it wasn’t until I’d fought through the human starter area as a necro and the framerate hadn’t gone above 10 that I realised it might be a PEBCAK issue.
After sorting cables out, rebooting GW2 etc, the game was so much better it was unbelievable. However, the servers were lagging horribly — not surprising considering the size of the BWE — and soon went down. When they didn’t come back up I realised that I should probably do something more with my weekend than sit in a chair refreshing the log in, so I went out on the town.
When I got back, things were very different. Obviously ANet had done a ton of work on increasing server stability etc while I was imbibing Southern Comfort, so I got to find out what GW2 while a bit tipsy is a like.
(FYI: It’s just as much fun as when sober ;D)
Feedback: The Pros and Cons
Constructive criticism is essential for any content developer — be they writers, artists, or videogame developers. What follows is thus a series of Pros and Cons revolving around four areas important to me.
Before I begin, I must confess that I had more fun in just a few short hours of GW2 than I did in 60+ hours of SWTOR. This isn’t because I think SWTOR is a bad game, but simply that GW2 does so much right for me and my playstyle.
I didn’t get any video recording done, sadly. Nor, in fact, did I take as many screenshots as I wanted. Mostly because I was too busy being Mr Runs-Round-N-Rezzes in combat, and its hard to hit the PRT SC key when you’re dodge-rolling out of the way of massive balls of flaming death. There are a few pics of my experiences dotted about anyway.
Without further adieu:
Graphics
- I found the overall aesthetic of the game absolutely stunning. I tried to explore as much as I could (not just because the game incentivised it thanks to its points of interest system — more on that in a bit) and everywhere I went I found something super awesome to look at. From the godrays shining through the swamp canopy near the ruined Temple of Ages to the shimmering ice in the Svanir Dome, everything I saw was gorgeous.
- The UI itself is just as gorgeous, with splashes and strokes of paint breaking up harsh edges. More on the UI shortly.
- On the Saturday and Sunday where I did most of my playing, the game ran very smoothly. I didn’t test my exact framerate, but it certainly ran as well as — if not better than — RIFT, which is pretty demanding with maxed settings. In fact, I was able to run the game at its current maxed settings, and even in massive zergs of 20+ people I barely got any fps drops. My system isn’t a powerhouse either: for the record I’m running Windows 7 64-bit with 12gig RAM, an i7 920 @2.67ghz, and using an Zotac GeForce 580GTX as my main card, and a cheapo 520 GT as my secondary card, running at 1920×1080. The game also loaded very smoothly despite not using RAID-enabled HDs or any kind of SSD.
- I was pleased to find that characters look awesome right from the start. So many games will have your starter and levelling gear looking absolutely pap (yes, RIFT, you again!) but not GW2. I’m particularly fond of the steam-powered charr weapons I found littered around the Plains of Ashford (which were gorgeous btw… remind me very much of the concept art). Oh, and while I’m mentioning Ashford, exploring the ruins of the Abbey was a nice touch. Creepy as Hell too!
- While I didn’t suffer much of a fps drop with all the particle effects in big zergs (which really surprised me) the effects themselves are very obscuring. This is feedback that ANet have had many times over the last couple of months and have mentioned they are working on. It is sometimes very difficult to target enemies because of everything going on, and even harder to spot their ‘tells’ for when they’re about to unleash a big attack. TERA has mobs’ eyes flash red before they unleash a super attack. While this would probably look out of place in GW2, something artistic and fitting with the aesthetic wouldn’t go amiss I think.
- I noticed in the Style tab of the cash shop that there is a not yet implemented preview function for gear. I assume that there will thus be a Wardrobe function for ingame items where we can see what armour and weapons will look like on us before we are either high enough level to use them, or have the necessary currency to purchase them. I like being able to see what aiming for, and feel a wardrobe is a pretty essential feature.
User Interface (UI)
- The game’s UI is gorgeous and, for the most part, very accessible. It aims to keep you looking at the action at the centre of the screen — though I admit I often found myself panickedly looking at the Endurance bar or when my Heal was coming off recharge! It tries to allow you concentrate on dodging and staying mobile.
- The compress bags function is great. I can get a bit OCD about having gaps in my bag windows, often spending some time between vendoring stuff in RIFT filling in the gaps in my inventory so that the junk starts piling up after the stuff I’m interested in. More on this below, however.
- The weapon skills panel is very useful, allowing you to see what you have unlocked (with full tooltips) as well as what you haven’t. This affords you a handy reference place for when you’re trying to pick your weapons for the next encounter.
- The dye mode gives you the ability to trial and error your looks, which is much better than dyes being tied to physical vials like in RIFT. Nothing gets applied until you close the Hero panel, so you can tinker to your heart’s content, even with the pretty limited palette of beginner dyes. I read somewhere the dyes weren’t currently account bound: hopefully this is a bug!
- There are lots of little flourishes in the UI. I’m very fond of how the XP you get from completed achievements and events turns into little golden sparkles that flicker across your skill bar from the tracker/log and fill up your XP bar with a sound like jingling coins. It feels very rewarding, and helps keep you constantly aware that you’re making progress.
- The map is a strong feature, featuring the same aesthetic design as the rest of the game — a more painterly approach on unexplored areas instead of a darkened-out “fog of war” effect. It does take some getting used to the different levels of the map, especially in cities. I imagine the first thing I and many will do in each city is find the waypoints nearest to the bank and crafting stations!
- While compress bags may help neaten your inventory, it doesn’t help organising it. Bag spaces fills up extremely quickly if you’re conscientious of hoarding crafting materials (like I did until I realised that, duh, it’s beta… you can’t take it with you!) An auto-sort feature would be extremely useful, like the old addons for WoW or TERA’s native functionality that sorts items by type in your bags: all weapons together, all chest, hands, legs items, etc. That way I could quickly compare the five focus offhands I had to quickly see which I could dump.
- While 99% awesome, the skills panel is not without a minor niggle: I’d like to be able to see what I’m aiming for in-game without having to get to level 5 and 30 for utility and elite skills respectively. I know they are locked until I get to those levels. I also know I can just go to the Mists to check them out, but that’s a tiny cutback on freedom that I’m not fond of.
- While we’re talking skills, the tooltips could do with a bit of standardising. For example, Hammer of Wisdom lists a 15 second duration. Sword of Justice doesn’t list one, but definitely has one — not that I thought to time it.
- Another issue to do with inventory management is to do with bank panes and auto-stacking. Currently if you deposit an item into your bank, it doesn’t stack with like items already extant in storage. You have to manually do that. There is also no way to compress your bank panes.
- Some kind of mention of the crafting storage would be great. I discovered it purely by accident. I also only found out today, several hours after the close of beta, that basic crafting materials like cloth scraps etc can be deposited directly to crafting storage from anywhere in the world: you don’t need to go back to the bank! (This is awesome!)
- Why do I need to fully log out of the game to change my character? Return to character select option please?
- Speaking of other characters, it would be nice if you could see speech bubbles for other players in the game world. I don’t focus too much on the chat log — especially since player and npc names are the same colour — and thus don’t often notice when I’m being spoken to by a guy right next to me.
- Speaking of the chat log, please let us change text colour or at least the colour of names. It was very confusing trying to tell NPCs and players apart. I imagine it’d be fine on a RP server, but I don’t plan to do that!
Sound, Music, and Ambience
- During server outages, I spent a fair chunk of time listening to the login screen music. Jeremy Soule is still rather good
- I was really impressed with the quality of the voice-acting. While it is obviously not finished for many of the cutscenes, what was there was very well done indeed, offering a dynamic range of vocal expression often lacking in games. Lord Faren made me laugh more than once, despite my determination to find him an annoying ponce.
- The best kind of ambient sound is the kind you don’t notice until it’s not there. When night fell in Ascalon and I wandered into a graveyard, I felt uneasy even before the ghosts appeared and proceeded to remind me that I wasn’t really high enough level to be there.
- I loved the way music shifted in and out depending on the situation. When combat became more desperate, especially in the fight against that damned Flame Legion Shaman champion, the music ramped up in intensity, adding more fuel to the fire (if you’ll excuse the pun).
- Not much to complain about in terms of sound design. The gunpowder weapon effects were a little too loud, even when well away from their source; as were the whispers of various NPCs around Divinity’s Reach — I know whispers carry better than normal voice a lot of the time, but they shouldn’t scare the crap out of you the first time you hear them with headphones on!
- I was saddened to see the custom music feature wasn’t in the game — or if it was, that I couldn’t find it. Hopefully this isn’t a cut feature and will be in future builds!
Gameplay
While I’ve played with strong communities in FFXI and WoW for small group content, I’ve never felt like I was playing with people in open world content. Guild Wars 2 changes that. It really felt like people were working together, forming impromptu groups, to get stuff done.- In fact, I’d say the game is definitely more fun when paired up with another player. This is great for me, as I expect to have friends playing with me a fair chunk of the time. Sidekicking will ensure we’re all being challenged by the content too. In fact, the game is definitely challenging. Maybe I’m just bad at it, but I was definitely dying a lot more than I ever expected to.
- Having an extra pair of hands along really helps the content feel more manageable, especially when delving into the tougher areas in search of that illusive skill challenge — I’m looking at you, narrow pass full of Ettins in Queensdale with a Veteran Ettin at the end! In fact, if I saw another player in an area, I often found they’d tag along with me and strike up a conversation or join me in a group, or vice versa, simply because there are only positives to joining people.
- For me the biggest game changer in GW2 is the lack of killstealing and instanced nodes. I don’t need to race for that copper node to beat others to it. It’ll still be there for me when I’ve finished killing X, Y or Z nearby. Likewise, there’s no need for the selfish person to run past me to the node instead of helping me kill the nearby mobs. We both get XP for the mobs; we can both mine the node. Everybody wins. We can work towards common goals together, rather than doing exactly the same thing along side each other. I know that’s been ANet’s marketing spiel for a while now, but it really makes a difference!
- When you do down a mob, loot is instanced too, meaning you never steal someone else’s loot. As long as you’ve got a few hits in on a mob, you get a roll on its loot table. This is probably why my bags filled up so bloody fast. Good job I discovered you can make 8-slot bags straight away as soon as you learn Tailoring!
- For the most part, events scale really well. I almost never felt like I was being unfairly or frustratingly penalised for tackling appropriate level content. More on this below for those exceptions
You can fail events. I’ve seen feedback that you can’t, but that’s wrong. I was in several assault events and defense events that we failed. In fact, one of the failed defense events led to another series of events where I had to help escort the surviving NPCs to a nearby town so they could relocate their stuff while efforts were being made to muster a counter-attack and rebuilding effort.- If you want a real challenge, then fight higher level mobs. Enemies of your level and maybe one above are about the right difficulty. Mobs two levels above your attacks start to glance rather than being full hits, substantially reducing your damage output. Mobs three levels above you can one-shot you if you aren’t quick with that dodge roll. Effective use of conditions — cripples, blinds, dazes, knockdowns — were essential to beating higher level enemies, and I failed more often than I succeeded. Speaking of…
- The downed state is awesome. You will get downed a lot in GW2, even in the starter areas. Get used to the downed state. Also get used to rallying only to be immediately downed again. Be quick on that Heal and Dodge, people!
- Hunting for things on the map was great fun. Apart from the one instance in Wayfarer Hills where I was getting frustrated trying to find the last Place of Interest (which, it turns out, I was being blind and was almost smack bang in the centre of the map which I’d been skirting the edges of looking for secrets) hunting down skill challenges, PoIs, and all the waypoints is very incentivizing. So much so that you get a reward mailed to you if you complete all 4 types of task in a zone: unlock all skill challenges and waypoints, find all places of interest, and complete all renown hearts. It would be nice if the rewards were specifically tailored to your profession/armour category however. My Guardian got a lovely cloth chest that he couldn’t wear.
- I mentioned some exceptions to the rule on scaling. A couple of events such as the centaurs invading the camp pass, sons of Svanir assaulting a city in the north west of Wayfarer Hills, and the event with the worms below the lake seemed a mite unfair and badly tuned. The worms one especially, with largish groups of worms quickly decimating you before you could do anything. The last wave of the sons of Svanir assault hit when I was pretty much the only person left standing, and unsurprisingly six shaman and a ton of ice elementals made me explode!
As an Elementalist, unlocking all the different weapon skills for all the attunements took absolutely ages. Offhands especially could, in my opinion, do with speeding up their unlocking a little. I couldn’t really discern what the pace was supposed to be. I thought it was simply a percent per kill, but now I’m not sure. Going back to earlier areas seemed to unlock them a bit faster than in later areas, so is it something to do with a percentage of damage, especially in larger groups? *shrug*- I only found two bugs in my entire playthrough. This kinda made me feel sad that I wasn’t doing a good beta testing job, but also happy as the fewer bugs there are, the closer to release we get. For the record, the two I found are using Flashing Blade on a Guardian when right next to a Sons of Svanir arbalest teleported me under the world, where I promptly fell into a great watery expanse with an overabundance of lightbloom effects; and the escort quest as part of the human noble early personal story, where the paper maker and his packmule seemed to randomly teleport around me rather than pathing properly.
Conclusions
I had such an awesome time in the first BWE. I admit I played solo for most of the time — as in, without a party or guild — so I didn’t experience many of the bigger issues to do with overflow servers and parties, or the cap of 100 on guild membership. I also simply didn’t have time to do any PvP which, in hindsight, I’m rather regretting now.
Next beta weekend, I’m going to try out the other professions: warrior, rogue, ranger, and mesmer, as well as do some PvP and crafting. But so far, I’m pleased to say that despite being a little bit sceptical of the hype, and prepared for another massive letdown like Final Fantasy XIV, GW2 is actually living up to my expectations.
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[...] rest of this article is going to follow the same format that I used for the Guild Wars 2‘s first impression post. I figured a little consistency would help. [...]
[...] Demajen — Beta Weekend One: Impressions & Feedback. “My first impression of GW2 was awful and entirely my own fault. I got a new case for my PC [...]
A nice summary. Be happy you discovered the bank’s materials panel … I didn’t even discover the bank!
I agree with your desire for more organization tools for inventory: it sounds like we sort the same way (shared OCD traits?).
Watched a couple of videos on the crafting storage this evening. Realised it can store even more than I realised — don’t think I saw the cooking ingredients storage when I checked it out.
Also saw a video showing how you can post stuff on the Trading Post from anywhere: you just have to be next to one to pick stuff up. Another excellent feature that shows how little I truly explored while playing. So much to uncover