So, as the title states, I'm a fan. Even with that burden, I try and keep an open mind. I see lots of threads with legitimate and not-so-legitimate concerns about GW2, and I wanted to pool them together and defend them, mostly because I see good reasons for much of it to be as it is.

Quick gaming history, I've been a part of most big MMO's since EQ, and I never played too much of GW1. As soon as I started reading info on GW2 I was hopeful that this was the next game I would delve into.

So........

1. The game looks terrrible.

When people talk about the way a game looks, often they are referring to two different aspects that sometimes get confused. The first is "graphics." This is how well the game is rendered. MMO's have to walk a tightrope in that, if they look too good, it will not be viable on a large range of systems. They other quality is the art direction. This is how a games art comes together from how the world is built to the color palet they use. This is a stronger pillar as you dont need powerful systems to run it, and it carries a similar impact if done well.

As far as graphical quality, its good, but not great. I've seen games that have a higher quality. But its important to note that this is not a bad thing. A-net wants many people to play this game, so, as long as the second pillar is strong, that's the important thing. I find that, althought the graphics are not phenominal, the Art Direction is great and it is all the better for being more accessable.

When it comes to the Art Direction, this is where personal opinion comes into play. GW2 has an ink brush approch. I find the effect visualy stunning, but other could hate it. Like most art, personal taste rules this catagory. I don't think I can find many opinions of the main cities that aren't abject splendor. These places really show off the art talent at A-net, and they should be very proud of this.

2. A monkey could play this clickfest. Combat sucks.

First, the obvious. The game gets harder as time goes on. Just like every other game. You may start out just clicking to get through, but it will get to the point where its just not effective any more. The key word here is "effective"

Combat in GW2 is about finding synergy between weapons and utility skills that fit changing situations. Positioning and timing are important. As is switching weapons.

Now, if you are experienced, you can get by in some situations by simply slowing, kiteing and hit a few key abilities (with timed dodges.) But that misses the point. If I can kill a mob by useing one ability, but I can kill faster by using five (and most would be up in the following fight), why would n't you? Similarly, if I can clear mobs faster by useing all the skills I have available, why wouldn't I?

Add to this that most abilities have multiple uses, both hidden and obvious. In many MMO's, abilities have a very distict and narrow use. They usually have many such abilities, covering all kinds of activities. GW2 has much fewer abilities, but they generally have a lot of depth.

An obvious one is Combos. I won't cover what they are, you can go to the wiki for that, but I will mention one important aspect. They are purely additive. What I mean is, the effects you get are in ADDITION to both of the componet parts. When I realized how combos could impact my play and started useing them, I noticed my effectivness going way up. THis opens up new possibilities for positioning of skills. Can't get close enough to safely throw down a wall? Throw it in fron of the ranger and let him take advantage of it.

There are more than just the obvious ones, however. A good example of this is Clone for the Mesmer. It is straight forward skill that creates two clones. Its the interplay between this skill, other skills, and the class mechanics that make it so deep. You can immediatly shatter clones for either damage or CC effets, so right off the bat I can use this skill for those functions. Also, one of your heals gives extra health for each illusion on the field, so I can spike my heal. I ran with a Sword / Torch and Greatsword setup. If I used the skill with my sword, they would rush up and form a "front line" to shield my companions. If I was useing the Greatsword, they would become ranged support.

These will not become apperaent if you do not wish to look for them, and it is possible to get by without them. But if it greatly increases your effectivness, why would you ignore it?

3. Content is too hard.

This has mostly to due with the amount you are "down-leveled" when going into previous content. I for one, am thrilled that no matter my level, when I got into lower level content, it still poses a significant challege. I have missed that in MMO's for quite some time.

Also, some mobs are just hard. Some hit hard, some have escape mechanisms. You have too learn the behavior of some of these creatures and break them with stuns, dodges, or CC.

I think it is important that content have lots of different kinds of difficulty levels, even if I come back from a higher level zone.

4. Dynamic events arent very dynamic.

This is perhaps my greatest dissapointment. It's not enough to turn me off from the game, but it hurts. In the Manifesto, you heard the phrase to the effect "you will save a village, that will stay saved." Sadly, this is just not so. What you do has little impact on the game world, but your efforts change things. In that way it IS dynamic. But you feel no sense of permanance. If you save the farmers from bandits, they will be back in ten minutes.

I suppose this is a matter of amount of content it would require to make it feel truely dynamic, and I sympathize, but I do feel mislead by the way it was proposed.

Even though it was misrepresented, I LOVE this system. The idea that I no longer need to go pick up quests, and can just run along looking for stuff to happen around me is so freeing, I doubt I will ever be satisfied with quests again. I can explore all I like and I can still level. It's also ingenius. They can add content all the time without the need to look at quest hubs or chains.

5. This is just a cleverly disgused theme-park. The DE's are just quests with another name.

To the first part, this view, while having a hint of truth, is backwards. The theme-park experience was added on top of the events to ease players so attuned to that system. Without it, most players would be lost. You can ignore it if you wish to an extent. Obviously level will limit content, you kind of have to. What they did was add an element that is familiar to MMO veterans, but not REQUIRE it to continue.

As to the second point. Yes this is so. This was always the purpose. It wasn't to change what you where doing, it was to change how it was revealed to you. So that the quests would reflect what you see. Raiders actually raid. Theives actually steal, etc. It's not a "wrapping" of quests. It changes the whole game in a large nuber of ways. The most important of which is co-operation of players.

6. Nobody says anything.

THis is a blessing and a curse of the DE system. In many quests, you will have people asking, What are we doing? Did this guy spawn? Are we doing the same thing? Most of which are rendered irrelevant in DE based quests. You all know what is happening and what you need to do. Thats great.

The downside is, those first questions often lead to friendly discussions. So, now we have to talk to people because we want to, not because we are forced to. That is not on the developers, that is on us as palyers.

7. The framerate was aweful.

This was a problem. being from the lag or from the poor optimization, I can only hope this is remedied by the time the game comes out. I have a good rig, and it pains me to have aweful framerate for a game that is this much fun.

I don't mind posting more questions if they are legitimate complaints and not troll-isms.

So far as point 7 goes....

My framerate was GLORIOUS.

I have an i5 2500k 3.3ghz CPU and a GTX 560Ti, which is hardly amazing...

... and I got a rock steady 50+ frame rate in the open world, 35 or so in the cities, only dipping below 20 twice... 15 during big scale WvW PvP when I ran right through a bunch of people, and 5 fighting the bunny in the last hour of the game.

Note, that's WHILE running another game, 4 messengers and internet explorer on my secondary screen.

It seems sort of random who got everything looking smooth as silk, and who did not.

All I know is that if they optimize it so it works as well as I had it working, except for other people, everybody should be happy, and if they optimize it to be BETTER, then it'll be amazing and even my WvW shouldn't be bad. :)

Originally posted by Meowhead

So far as point 7 goes....

My framerate was GLORIOUS.

I have an i5 2500k 3.3ghz CPU and a GTX 560Ti, which is hardly amazing...

... and I got a rock steady 50+ frame rate in the open world, 35 or so in the cities, only dipping below 20 twice... 15 during big scale WvW PvP when I ran right through a bunch of people, and 5 fighting the bunny in the last hour of the game.

Note, that's WHILE running another game, 4 messengers and internet explorer on my secondary screen.

It seems sort of random who got everything looking smooth as silk, and who did not.

All I know is that if they optimize it so it works as well as I had it working, except for other people, everybody should be happy, and if they optimize it to be BETTER, then it'll be amazing and even my WvW shouldn't be bad. :)

See I have th same CPU and Vid card and my Framerate was aweful..........

Originally posted by Purgatus

See I have th same CPU and Vid card and my Framerate was aweful..........

That's crazy!  Are you overclocked at all?

Only other things worth noting is 2 gig graphics card and 8 gigs of 1666 DDR3?

edit:  By the way, the whole time I was playing I was thinking 'This seems super smooth, but that can't be right, since people bitch so much.  Maybe my eyes are just lazy'.  So I downloaded Fraps and ran it the whole time.

That ltitle number in the corner told me that I am, indeed, not crazy, and really was getting close to 60 fps in most of the overworld.  Also, I got well over 100 fps during cutscenes, and some OBSCENE amount in character creation. xD  Not that anybody cares about those.

Originally posted by Meowhead

Originally posted by Purgatus

See I have th same CPU and Vid card and my Framerate was aweful..........

That's crazy!  Are you overclocked at all?

Only other things worth noting is 2 gig graphics card and 8 gigs of 1666 DDR3?

edit:  By the way, the whole time I was playing I was thinking 'This seems super smooth, but that can't be right, since people bitch so much.  Maybe my eyes are just lazy'.  So I downloaded Fraps and ran it the whole time.

That ltitle number in the corner told me that I am, indeed, not crazy, and really was getting close to 60 fps in most of the overworld.  Also, I got well over 100 fps during cutscenes, and some OBSCENE amount in character creation. xD  Not that anybody cares about those.

LoL. I have 8 gigs of RAM as well. I was thinking.......it can't be my set-up......can it? I think my NDA is down for previous stuff so I can say that when I did test previously, it had no problems.

Originally posted by Purgatus

LoL. I have 8 gigs of RAM as well. I was thinking.......it can't be my set-up......can it? I think my NDA is down for previous stuff so I can say that when I did test previously, it had no problems.

No idea!  Obviously they have a lot of work to do optimizing the game, since right now it seems to be some sort of roulette for whether it's good or not.

Only other thing I can think of is that I played it only at 1080p for resolution, I play it on my TV. xD

I guess I pleased the Arenanet gods with my sacrifices of milk and honey, because our systems seem twinned. :P

I didn't overclock though, and I heard any overclocking tended to REDUCE performance.

3 and 6 go well togeher. The only long-lasting friend I made in the game, I met while we were lying next to eachother, waiting to be revived. With nothing to do but watch the rest of the players get their heads handed to them on a silver platter by centaurs, we just chatted for awhile. After that, we decided to roam together. Eventually, we were able to take down creatures 5 levels higher than us, because we just naturally learned how to manuever with eachother.

And with 4, I have to disagree. Some are more permanent than others. Yeah, the farmers can never seem to catch a break, but that pump station would go for hours without being under threat, and the Blades would hold fortresses for a long time before the centaurs made another attempt on it. It really just depends.

My only major complaint was the overall early Norn experience. That still needs ALOT of polish. I mean, gobs.

x58 mb CPU i7 920 3.4ghz OC  Amd 6970 OC DDR3 1600 6gB

And even with fraps i had whole weeknd mostly a smooth game even with huge battles going and running fraps.

Never had frame drop or lag.

Your #4 on the events is only half accurate. I understand the logic behind the complaint, it's a valid one, but this is actually working as intended. The more people in an area, the quicker these events respawn so that people have lots of things to do. When people start to spread out, those events will have more permanence.

For instance, in the 1-15 Human zone, I found I could literally just stand there and wait a few minutes, farming the poisoned water supply event. There were so many people, the bandits just never stopped trying. When I went into the 15+ zones where there were FAR less people (it seems most never left the starting areas), events stayed as they were left for large stretches of time. A bridge got taken out (while I was running across it, mind you, I was sort of pissed about that) and it stayed down for the duration of my time in that area. I also took out support beams of a cave to cause a collapse on Dredge that had taken over a town, and the town stayed in NPC hands  the next time I went back, which was a while later. 

Once you start exploring more and more of the game, a lot of things that seem sort of odd or annoying in the very beginning start to make sense.

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

Your #4 on the events is only half accurate. I understand the logic behind the complaint, it's a valid one, but this is actually working as intended. The more people in an area, the quicker these events respawn so that people have lots of things to do. When people start to spread out, those events will have more permanence.

 

For instance, in the 1-15 Human zone, I found I could literally just stand there and wait a few minutes, farming the poisoned water supply event. There were so many people, the bandits just never stopped trying. When I went into the 15+ zones where there were FAR less people (it seems most never left the starting areas), events stayed as they were left for large stretches of time. A bridge got taken out (while I was running across it, mind you, I was sort of pissed about that) and it stayed down for the duration of my time in that area. I also took out support beams of a cave to cause a collapse on Dredge that had taken over a town, and the town stayed in NPC hands  the next time I went back, which was a while later. 

 

Once you start exploring more and more of the game, a lot of things that seem sort of odd or annoying in the very beginning start to make sense.

I really do hope that is the case. Even with that, I still feel that it is still misleading and I can certainly understand why some people are upset. Even with that, I just wish they would see how great they are for the genre.

Originally posted by Purgatus

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

Your #4 on the events is only half accurate. I understand the logic behind the complaint, it's a valid one, but this is actually working as intended. The more people in an area, the quicker these events respawn so that people have lots of things to do. When people start to spread out, those events will have more permanence.

 

For instance, in the 1-15 Human zone, I found I could literally just stand there and wait a few minutes, farming the poisoned water supply event. There were so many people, the bandits just never stopped trying. When I went into the 15+ zones where there were FAR less people (it seems most never left the starting areas), events stayed as they were left for large stretches of time. A bridge got taken out (while I was running across it, mind you, I was sort of pissed about that) and it stayed down for the duration of my time in that area. I also took out support beams of a cave to cause a collapse on Dredge that had taken over a town, and the town stayed in NPC hands  the next time I went back, which was a while later. 

 

Once you start exploring more and more of the game, a lot of things that seem sort of odd or annoying in the very beginning start to make sense.

I really do hope that is the case. Even with that, I still feel that it is still misleading and I can certainly understand why some people are upset. Even with that, I just wish they would see how great they are for the genre.

No, I can understand the disappointment for sure. It would be cool to have some actual, permanent effects, but this is a pretty close compromise that lets others participate as well. I was upset about it when I first started playing, and when I got out of the beginner areas and had more of a lasting impact, a lot of my fears were qualmed. That's why it's so hard to judge during a beta where everyone is so concentrated in the same areas, we'll probably only have that experience at launch and then never again, not including the betas. 

Of course, the downside to that is certain events, like the shadow fiend in the swamp area, only activate with large amounts of people. I am a bit worried about how Anet is going to balance it, so 6 months after launch when those areas are more vacant, others still have an opportunity to participate in those events. I guess we'll see, but so far they've done a good job of inspiring my confidence in them.

Originally posted by Purgatus

1. The game looks terrrible.

[ ... ]When it comes to the Art Direction, this is where personal opinion comes into play. GW2 has an ink brush approch. I find the effect visualy stunning, but other could hate it. Like most art, personal taste rules this catagory. I don't think I can find many opinions of the main cities that aren't abject splendor. These places really show off the art talent at A-net, and they should be very proud of this.

It is something called visual style. Not many games these days risk it. GW2 knows where it wants to go (f.e. in regards to massive-scale PvP) and decided to sacrifice pure technical graphics (polygon count, texture depth, particle complexity) in favor of performance during (uncontrollably occuring) high demand peaks of "stuff happening on your screen at once". (f.e. crowded DEs, WvWvW etc.)

Their choice of a very stylistic visual direction is them trying to accommodate the sacrifices they made in 3D aspects with what they know they can accomplish in the 2D aspects.

This is a very wise and thought out decision, methinks.

 3. Content is too hard.

[ ... ]

Also, some mobs are just hard. Some hit hard, some have escape mechanisms. You have too learn the behavior of some of these creatures and break them with stuns, dodges, or CC.

I think it is important that content have lots of different kinds of difficulty levels, even if I come back from a higher level zone.

Having trouble grasping the combat in GW2 is normal, apparently. Labeling the "content" (whatever that envelopes for anyone) as "too hard" so soon is premature.

Partly, it is because every mob you encounter can possess different mechanics than the last one; and they count. But mostly, its because of our own shortcomings, being used to post-WoW combat styles. Even the people that grasp combat really quickly have trouble letting go of "t.a.a.a.m.e."-combat. (target acquired, auto attacking, mostly easy combat). Myself included.

For the first time in centuries, players will once more have to LEARN to play a game and appreciate it not for what they achieve but for the challenge it poses.

 4. Dynamic events arent very dynamic.

 This is perhaps my greatest dissapointment. It's not enough to turn me off from the game, but it hurts. In the Manifesto, you heard the phrase to the effect "you will save a village, that will stay saved." Sadly, this is just not so. What you do has little impact on the game world, but your efforts change things. In that way it IS dynamic. But you feel no sense of permanance. If you save the farmers from bandits, they will be back in ten minutes.

[ ... ]

ANet implemented a system that makes the higher and lower tiers of a dynamic event "stand still" for a much shorter timespan than the levels in between. This is accentuated when you have the typical "beta crowd" phenomenon going on.

Once the low-lvl zones clear up a bit (amount of players vise) it will be quite different. The length and activity of DEs adapts to whats going on around it.

Also, I'm sure there will be much larger DEs than what we've seen in Beta so far. Surely, nothing will ever change for good, but your sense of "no permanence" will be diminished. Me hopes.

 5. This is just a cleverly disgused theme-park. The DE's are just quests with another name.

 As to the second point. Yes this is so. This was always the purpose. It wasn't to change what you where doing, it was to change how it was revealed to you. So that the quests would reflect what you see. Raiders actually raid. Theives actually steal, etc. It's not a "wrapping" of quests. It changes the whole game in a large number of ways. The most important of which is co-operation of players.

Glad you explain that how it is. No game can function without stuff to do. In MMOs and RPGs in general, that "stuff to do" is called QUESTS. Nothing will ever change that. And why would you get hung up on that? Its just semantics.

GW2 forces you to take another look into your MMO-dictionary and make some adjustments. It won't (and can't) let you erase anything, but it will update some definitions that have been gathering far too much dust for far too long.

 6. Nobody says anything.

[ ... ]

The downside is, those first questions often lead to friendly discussions. So, now we have to talk to people because we want to, not because we are forced to. That is not on the developers, that is on us as palyers.

I don't get this paragraph. Maybe I am hung up on a typo? Please check again. °O

(And also: Beta crowd is a lot more silent than release crowd. Nothing to worry about.)

 7. The framerate was aweful.

I'm glad the framerate was enjoyed. Hurrr....

(Purgatus, I know those aren't your questions in red letters. In case it sounds like I don't, it wasn't supposed to. :P )

Originally posted by Purgatus

 In the Manifesto, you heard the phrase to the effect "you will save a village, that will stay saved."

nope, never heard this phrase. DE's are DYNAMIC. the village will stay saved for a little while before the opposing faction attempts to retake it. you also dont seem to have a good grasp of the combat system. dont care to go into details. it seems you're a misinformed "fanboi", one who didnt do his research and overall failed at the game.

Originally posted by sonoggi

Originally posted by Purgatus

 In the Manifesto, you heard the phrase to the effect "you will save a village, that will stay saved."

nope, never heard this phrase. DE's are DYNAMIC. the village will stay saved for a little while before the opposing faction attempts to retake it. you also dont seem to have a good grasp of the combat system. dont care to go into details. it seems you're a misinformed "fanboi", one who didnt do his research and overall failed at the game.

.....ok. I get the impression you didn't actually read my article.

These are not my points. They are criticisms that I have seen around the forums and wanted to refute. The poster above you seemed to grasp that.

On to you points:

First off, listen to the Manifesto again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HktHgzhDKAg

at about  2:28 you will hear "your meeting new people, whom you will see again, resuceing a village that will stay rescued, who then remeber you."

There were some event kicking off again and again destroying that sense of permanence. The dynamic nature of these events had nothing to do with it. Several factors may have contributed to this, and it lessened after the first zone, but it was still an issue.

Second. Could you outline how my sense of the combat system is flawed?

I showed how varied, nuanced, and deep the system was, and how people could overlook it if they not prepared to shed old concepts.

I urge you to read the post again rather than lash out at anything the looks like a critisism.