Originally posted by DeaconX

Btw, isn't this a PREVIEW? Sorry just joking with you cuz you pounced on my having named my SWTOR beta 'preview' a review. hehe

FIXED!

Sorry I was going to write Preview - fail Spock fails

When you are down

1 is throwing rocks.... if you kill the enemy with a rock you get back up

2 - throw something that knocks down the enemy

3- Get back up instantly but you will die after a few seconds

4- Channeled heal that will eventually bring you back up if you can be left casting it long enough

... Every thing is pretty easy to figure out don't know why you are struggling with figuring out what skills do, normally after using something 2-3 times you should know what everything does, I don't think I have read any of the tool tips for skill and I still know what each one does.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by DeaconX

Btw, isn't this a PREVIEW? Sorry just joking with you cuz you pounced on my having named my SWTOR beta 'preview' a review. hehe

FIXED!

Sorry I was going to write Preview - fail Spock fails

well technically it IS your REVIEW of the beta weekends but a PREview of the game before launch so how you had it worded originally was fine

Originally posted by BadSpock

As my Warrior, my favorite thing to do is use Sword+Shield, jump in with 2, slow/cripple with 3, dodge out of their first attack backwards, jump BACK into the fight with 4 (shield bash) use the stun duration to unleash my Adrenaline burst, and if it wasn't dead, shield block next attack, dodge back out, then jump BACK in with 2 again and finish it off.

For ranged mobs/caster I'd get up in their face with a Greatsword, squishier armor = more damage with Greatsword, would still weapon swap to interupt with shield bash, use Greatsword 3 (directional spin attack) to avoid spells/AoE and do damage, get myself back out at range to turn and jump back in with 5 on Greatsword or switch and 2 on sword/shield.

etc. etc.

 

Wow that's exactly pretty much the same I was doing with my Warrior over this BTE - except I used a rifle as my secondary weapon for the most part.  Greatsword was fun but I just enjoyed the rifle at range more.

Originally posted by azonic69

When you are down

1 is throwing rocks.... if you kill the enemy with a rock you get back up

2 - throw something that knocks down the enemy

3- Get back up instantly but you will die after a few seconds

4- Channeled heal that will eventually bring you back up if you can be left casting it long enough

... Every thing is pretty easy to figure out don't know why you are struggling with figuring out what skills do, normally after using something 2-3 times you should know what everything does, I don't think I have read any of the tool tips for skill and I still know what each one does.

not all classes are the same some have extra down mechanics such as thief but I do agree doesn't take long to figure out what each skill does.

Originally posted by DeaconX

Wow that's exactly pretty much the same I was doing with my Warrior over this BTE - except I used a rifle as my secondary weapon for the most part.  Greatsword was fun but I just enjoyed the rifle at range more.

Rifle was a hell of a lot of fun in sPvP.

Sit just outside on the edges of a battle, just building Adrenaline and harrassing players, then BAM massive Kill shot just wreck people...

I made a build specifically for doing just that, building up Adrenaline to use the Rifle burst skill - more often, faster, and with greater effect!

It was pretty terrible for a 1vs1 or when I got jumped on, but with proper movement/timing and battlefield awareness you can be quite the deadly sniper.

Little outdated but pretty much this:

http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/warrior#3.0.5.1-1.6.5.8.1-10.30.0.0.30-2.4.8.9.2.1.6

Originally posted by Meltdown

TLDR: Can't disagree with the review, just felt the newbie experience was very poorly done and the game is not as accessible to casuals as it should be.

 

Maybe I'm just too old now for MMOs... when Badspock gives a positive review for something I did not have a good experience with perhaps its me thats the problem not the game... 

 

You played a considerable amount BadSpock, my experience was quite limited (since I had weddings, christening, and other family events to attend all weekend), but I found the introduction to the game to be clunky and I didn't have the hours to spend looking up skills, strategies, and class specifics online. They start you off with so much action that I don't even get a second to read my skills, new skills are popping up on my bar mid-fight, and im just facerolling the keyboard trying to kill stuff to keep up with the pace of the game.

 

While I have no real objection to your review here and your final score, what is your view to the newbie experience? Were you very familiar with the game before you even started playing? (browsing forums, wikis, etc.). I haven't felt this lost in an MMO in a long time. I know I will now get bitched at for being a hater and getting the RTFM crowd telling me I want to be handheld. But we live in a time in which accessibility is not only necessary, but often required of games. I did not feel GW2 was "accessible" to a casual player.

 

The positive feedback on these forums (positive, suprising I know) might still persuade me to buy the game (I've probably already spent more money on steam sales of games I will never play), but I felt the one downside if anything was the entire newbie experience, I wonder how others felt about this during the beta weekends.

I have to agree GW2 can be a bit overwhelming at first. There is so much to do and learn. The simplistic skill bar seems easy to pick up but it has so much depth underneath.

As an older gamer than you I can tell you, in the end I have enjoyed the GW2 BWE so much and I will be buying for sure. Being a GW1 fan, I know Anet can deliver and support GW2 and make it even better.

As mentioned early the OP gave an excellent review.

I do agree that this is a great game but I am not in the "new" crowd that thinks the end of the "Holy Trinity" is good and that gear grind is bad. Action Combat is still a turn off to me and I think that it will prevent me from progressing past level 30 or so but I certainly enjoyed the combat in GW2. (With the exception of the next-to-the-last scene of the human Mesmer level 10 quest - it took me 7 tries to beat it at level 11!)

One minor point - you do compete for DE items. By this I give an example: we had to return items from a Skritt cave to the quest npc. Three times I got to an item but somebody got it before I did. If I was bitter (which I was not) I would say that it dropped my completion medal from gold to silver. But this is a minor point. I REALLY, REALLY like what Anet has done with the whole co-operative experience. For the first time ever in a game I don't cringe when I see another person sharing my quest. That, to me, is worth the price of admission.

Originally posted by Meltdown

Originally posted by evolver1972

Originally posted by Meltdown

...

*snip*

Yea I definately seem to be in the minority, at least on these forums. I also spoke with my friend and his experience with the last beta, and it sounds a lot like there are significant class differences at low levels. Between me and him starting out with thief/engineer. I think we both were killed 4-5 times starting out (levels 1-6), then I had to go do family obligations and he switched over to playing a ranger and he said it felt much better and didn't die at all, so I'm not sure if its a learning curve or just different classes have completely different experiences.

 

Also in regards to taking the time to read through stuff. Who has time to read what all those abilities do when you have been incapacitated and are fighting to stay alive (rally I believe its called) ? 4 abilities pop up, I still can't tell you what they do and I've been given the chance to rally multiple times in my short gameplay. Saw some had cooldowns and some could be spammed, couldn't really discern wtf was going on during that time. 

I'm not sure if the rally is the same for everyone, but for my Thief (BWEs 1-2) and my Warrior (BWE3) the abilities were the same and the pictures of the skills told a thousand words.  And if the pictures didn't work, I could easily figure out what they did by clicking on them.  I just looked at it that everything on that skill bar was there to help me rally so I just click what I can when I can.

My only gripe about the downed function is that you can't really see what enemy you're attacking at that point.

As for dying:  That happens a lot in this game, get used to it.  I died a lot in every level area I've played in and so did most of the people I played with.  It's a part of the game.  It happens less as you really figure out how to play, but it still happens a lot.

@BadSpock - I should have said this in my first post:  Great (P)review.  I agree with most of what you said in your OP.  Before this weekend I would have given the Personal Story barely a 6.  I did the human one and didn't care for it at all.  However, I found myself having a lot of fun with the Asura story this weekend so I would actually bump that score to an 8.  I also enjoyed WvWvW quite a bit, but not so much with the sPvP.  So you and I are flip flopped on that one.  Other than that, I don't find much to disagree with.

Can't wait for release!

Edit:  Oops, double post

Thanks for the responses.

Keep up the discussions, any other issues people had in the game?

No issues for me had a great weekend playing. Would agree with your scoring of the game as well. Guess my only issue would be not being able to play for a few more weeks...

Great Stuff badspock. the game was so good for me i'm now a fan of it. it took me back to the enitre reason MMOs are fun. we have lost that way these many years with the genre. but this one is something special and i think it will be a huge hit.

I look at the cash shop as a way to say thanks Anet heres a few bucks. more like a donation were you get something in return for your kindness. of course with every MMO release, some people are not got going to enjoy it. this round i think the ones that do enjoy are going to blot out the ones that don't.

Only frustration I had with the cash shop was that I looted about 10 Mystic Chests and only got 1 key (from my Personal Story quest.)

Thankfully, the chest I opened had some random useless stuff (flavor) and one "potion" to increase my damage... which I think are craftable anyway.

Not a game breaker - probably end up just selling my Mystic Chests on Trading Post because I don't care at all about mini-pets.

Got a lot of dyes throughout the weekend, but I'll probably buy the dye pack off the shop right away.

Might spend a bit on a bigger bag, though I never had I problem if you use "Send items to Collections" and beyond that I bet I'll spend a lot of Transmute Stones to look super awesome at all times.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Only frustration I had with the cash shop was that I looted about 10 Mystic Chests and only got 1 key (from my Personal Story quest.)

Thankfully, the chest I opened had some random useless stuff (flavor) and one "potion" to increase my damage... which I think are craftable anyway.

Interesting o.O

I looted a total of I think 6 mystic chests over the BWE

From the 1 key I got from my personal story I opened one and got stuff + another mystic key

opened another one got stuff + another mystic key... and so on..4 more times

and then I looted a 2nd mystic key from mobs

so I actually ended up with more keys than chests :p

I guess I was just really lucky 'cause I thought they raised the chance of getting a key from the box or something

One of the things that makes the best mmorpg, is that the style of the world and the characters are AAAA. It is like they took EQ2 , Aion, and AoC  style wise and mashed them up to a game that in some ways is comparable to skyrim.

The content flow is , do I day say, innovative. People will aregue that RiFt system or ect, but in GW2 that is the entire game, completely dydmaic content done in quest form. I never really had to talk to an NPC  to get quests , just run to an area and look for an event/

Guild Wars 2 , is the greatest mmorg ever made  since shadowbanes EPic sieging and character systems. GW2 is EPIC !

Originally posted by Meltdown

TLDR: Can't disagree with the review, just felt the newbie experience was very poorly done and the game *snip*

But we live in a time in which accessibility is not only necessary, but often required of games. I did not feel GW2 was "accessible" to a casual player.

*snip*

 Well I thought it as more accessible than I expected. From the looks of earlier videos I got the impression that a lot of player were just running around with no idea of where they should be going.

You have to know the deal with unlocking the weapon skills and using the hero panel a bit. If you're really clueless then Anet isn't holding your hand as much as you could have gotten used to from other games. You just have to go out there and give it a shot. I think the first levels as forgiving enough to get to know the game a bit. You're not going to get killed if you don't know how to dodge from the get go.

The double tap and the exploration could be explained a bit better I guess, thought it's entirely possible you just clicked all the help away without really reading it.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Thanks for the responses.

Keep up the discussions, any other issues people had in the game?

Excellent review Spock! Definitely saved me the trouble of having to write my own.

I can see where some people might have issues w/ 'accessibility'. One of the double-edged swords of this game is it's content. It can be incredible once you finally 'get it', but the tradeoff is that it doesn't do a very good job of hand-holding. Those that don't take the initiative to figure it out on their own (or at least find someone they can ask for help) will miss out on a lot. It's one of the main reasons I keep telling people to slow down, stop & smell the roses. There's sooo much in this game that it's easy to overlooking a lot of the content, especially if you're new.

As for issues with the game, most of the ones I had were fairly minor.

I noticed I still had some map glitches this beta, in which the map would turn black for a little bit. It would correct itself, but was still somewhat jarring.

I also feel like the engineer & mesmer still need work. I had a blast with the engineer, but the changes they made to some of the toolkits (minefield) just seemed to lack any 'umpf'. I also don't like how the flamethrower STILL doesn't set things on fire. The trait to proc a 1sec burn is okay, but I feel like it should be able to set things on fire at least as much as the elementalist.

As for the mesmer, the clones did indeed feel a bit useless. I also really want them to change how marking works on mesmers. If you mark a mesmer it should mark all their clones & illusions as well, even after summoning new ones. It's too easy to spot the real one currently. I feel like the clones should also shatter where they stand, instead of having to run over to their target.

On a side note:

I noticed you mentioning some of the skill point challenges being bugged. I had originally thought the same. However, what I noticed is that some of them require an event in the erea to be at a certain stage in order to be accessible. They do work, but some of them won't spawn the mob you need to kill, if the nearby event is at the wrong stage. I noticed this multiple times across different zones, and came back when the event was at a different point in the chain and it worked fine.

I also noticed things like in the hylak village, if you buildings were all destroyed you couldn't access the skill point challenge. However, if the buildings were alive around it, you could trigger it just fine.

+1 to the review and score, pretty much bang on line with my own impressions.  Not a 10, but a solid 9 based on the intelligent upgrade or makeover of all the classing mmorgs elements + the discarding of many elements that have ruined other well known titles.

You're right, it's all about the tiny details and man does GW2 have 'em!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx4UdIpaCWU

I can't wait to go exploring! This will be the longest month ever :(