Originally posted by Alot

Personal observations and opinions?

He's passing off his opinion as a fact.

Unless he explicitly writes "this is a fact", it's all just opinion.

Originally posted by Shubawkss
This review sounds more like "Bullshit biased opinions of a game that I don't like so I need to tell everyone else it sucks."

Kind of like "Awesome review of a game that I do like so I need to tell everyone else it's awesome?"

Originally posted by grimal

Originally posted by Alot

Personal observations and opinions?

He's passing off his opinion as a fact.

Unless he explicitly writes "this is a fact", it's all just opinion.

Not quite, although he certainly can express his opinion his title is: 

The boring truth and the hype trainwreck that is GW2

Now truth and opinion are not exactly the same thing but typical of the forms. 

OP, sorry it wasn't the game for you. I'm enjoying myself. 

I agree with the OP.  Hyped game that hasnt lived up to it

Bought this game when Pre-purchase was available

Expected big things, what a let down

Originally posted by Psychow

Originally posted by Alot

 

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Originally posted by Psychow

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Originally posted by Connmacart Would say surprising review, but than again you have been shitting on the game for a long time.  Hard to look at things objectively when you go in with a negative mindset.

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And it doesn't look like he's being a hater, just making personal observations and opinions.

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Personal observations and opinions?

He's passing off his opinion as a fact.

 

This is a Reviews and Impressions sub-forum. By default, it's his personal observations and opinion. Any facts he stated were from his own personal experiances. And how he interprets those facts are his personal observations and opinions.

Originally posted by grimal

Originally posted by Alot

Personal observations and opinions?

He's passing off his opinion as a fact.

Unless he explicitly writes "this is a fact", it's all just opinion.

Had it been a 10/10 review you wouldn't be seeing the GW2 knights in shining armour going on about that...on these subforums none the less.

Though the thread title is a bit sensationalistic imo.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Update:  Community: 2

 

Just look at how quickly and without provocation the replies become personal.  I'm a tool, I'm playing it wrong, etc.  Good stuff.  Also forgot to note how unsociable the game is, though there's so many topics about this in this forum and in the General one, that it pretty much goes without saying.

 -You might be taking the critcism a litle too personally.  Though I do agree some need to back off of the vitriol a bit.

Gameplay and Combat: 6.0

 

Let's rewind to a few months before release.  I didn't have access to BWE.  I could watch videos, which don't really tell you much about certain aspects of an mmo, character creation, customization, skill choices, etc.  No one was really talking about how combat worked outside of wild claims of how much skill it took to move your character away from attacks and hit the dodge button.

 

I was honestly a little intimidated.  I look back at those feelings now and laugh.  Having come from DC Universe, I can tell you that game's movement and attacks are both more varied and involve ten times as much skill as that of GW2.  I know because I never mastered it in DCUO, but I was good enough that I could see how others were able to counter all my common block breaking and stunlock tricks.  Truly impressive gameplay there, but too high level for a casual non-tekkenish player like myself. 

 

Guild wars 2 on the other hand took all of an hour or so, and only because when you first start out you don't have access to all the skills available on the weapon you equip.  But afterwards, you learn a flow, and moving is easy, dodging even easier (especially for me, who set it to the spacebar.)

 

Outside of endurance for dodge (you get 2 dodges per full bar whooopeee), there's no resource management.  There's no mana, no rage, no energy, etc.  Necromancers almost get what would be considered a resource to gather and spend, but I didn't spend enough time with them to say much about it, except it was very simplistic.  Instead, I was a ranger.   Considered by many a powerful choice, I do not disagree.   Oddly though, my pet was more powerful than me.  I didn't test much without trait points allocated, but with 20 into pet attributes, it consistently outdamaged me, and could take more punishment, and regened life faster.    I was hoping to have a powerful sniper, but instead I was a beastmaster. 

 

That's the thing, there's no real glass cannons, there's no powerful snipers, there's no stealth class.   There's no tanks, there's no healers.  The classes are very similar in functionality, and the differences are mostly skin deep aesthetics.  DPS, dodge, use your heal skill, etc  You'll hear a lot about these magical things called combo fields.  Mostly impractically and usually ineffective, they can sometimes help your group.  I have yet to see the miracle in person though.  As if combo fields and dodging can replace resource management, healing, and agro management.  Pure hubris on the part of the devs.

 -But this isn't DCUO.  Of course the combat styles and set ups are going to be a bit different.  Personally, I think it's unfair to compare the two as the systems are completely different.  But you have to also consider that weapon types are meant for different things and that you have to use what you have wisely and not button mash.  This also isn't TERA where dodge is the be all/end all in the game.  And yes, I did play TERA.

Character development and customization: 6.0

 

You can dye your armor.  Just saying that makes me excited.  Unfortunately, GW2 seems to suck the life right out of it by restricting dyes and making any good ones cost prohibitive until you get up in levels.  Even at 43 I cannot afford a black dye, let alone the truly black abyss dye.    There's also not that many different styles of armor, and if you want to keep one style you need to use a rare consumable to transfer the look.   Strange to bring it up again, but in DCUO you colored pieces how you wanted and once you unlocked a certain style you could use it freely.   Perhaps that system is too lax, but somewhere in between these two systems surely there's perfection. 

 

On the development front, 50% of what your character can do is a simple matter of equiping a weapon.  Honestly the system is borderline bizarre.  No choices at all, really?  Then the other half of your skillbar are skills you can unlock, there's a lot of choice here, but as a ranger, most the abilities were so lackluster that it hardly mattered.  The heal was of obvious importance, but the utilities were crap.  I went with the passives after trying most of them. 

 

Then there's traits.  Magical in the same way combo fields are, I believe that they do change how your character performs in various areas, but there's no active abilities gleaned from traits.  Instead, you spend points wherever it will most increase your damage, as most consider toughness/healing power/vit pointless to up with trait points.  

 

Overall, as someone who came from Diablo 3 very recently, I was already tired of the lack of stat points, skill trees, etc, and GW2 was even more restrictive. 

 -I wouldn't be too overly concerned abuot this.  Give ArenaNet time to work on the bugs and they might implement a barbershop.  And the dye system was quite restrictive in Guild Wars 1 as well.  You had to find or purchase other dyes if you wanted to change the color.  This isn't such a big deal, honestly.  Again, it's rather unfair to compare it to DCUO.  Not the same kind of game.  But the good thing is, Guild Wars 2 is not meant to hand hold.  I said it a while ago in another thread that this tends to be a thinking man's game (as it were). You sink or swim.  Learn what certain traits/skill do.  Die and die alot.  I know I do.  But I learn not to do it again and do better.

Crafting: 4.0

 

In the beginning of the game I may have given this a 9, but as I continued to craft, but came up short on ingredients I needed, having to buy them off the trading post for more than I could really afford, I don't like it.  Not only do you already devote time to the endeavor, and despite what anyone says, it doesn't award that much xp/hour, you then lose money instead of gaining it, and outside of early levels, it's unlikely you'll keep up enough to provide yourself upgrades or make any sort of profit.  Isn't that the point of crafting?  What do mmo devs not understand about this?

 -Personal opinion: I like the crafting.  The discovery can net some nice XP.  And you can learn ALL the tradeskills on one character.  It just requires activating deactivating.  But you don't lose your place if you decide to put one on hold.  It just freezes the tradeskill unitl you go back to it which will cost coin.

WvW:  3.0

 

I'd like to hear from some old school DAoC (original frontiers, not new frontiers) players who liked it's RvR and how they feel WvW compares.  To me it's pretty crappy.  It's simplistic, and at the same time requires several players to get even the smallest task complete, and usually you need siege if you don't want it to take an hour.  It's a bad cumbersome unfun system.  Before the game was released, people made wild claims about WvW.  They said that everyone was on equal footing in terms of character power, no matter what their level, and they said it was the fastest way to level.  Neither claim is even in the ballpark of reality. 

 

Leveling is slow, you'll die a lot, you'll spend a lot on repair costs, and you'll spend a lot of time just running hoping to find a fight you can get some xp out of before you die again.  And level 80s have many more trait points and much better gear that directly effects the damage they can give and take, and they will beat you up and take your lunchmoney, and if they don't then they suck and have bad gear, probably from leveling all the way up in WvW.   It's not fair at all to lower level players, who don't get their own zones.  Instead of having 4 different WvW zones where one is busy and 3 are not, all at level 80, they could have had Eternal at 80, and one at 30 for a cap, 50, and 65 or 70. 

 

I didn't do sPvP, I don't care about capture the flag or whatever it is they do in there.  I like war, like in WoW early days at tarren mill/southshore, or DAoC old frontiers, or even in warhammer online. 

 

In truth there's no war here.  No factions, no world pvp.  Just a cumbersome war game outside the reality of the rest of the game.  It's just another immersion breaker, and makes you wonder, what's the point?

 -I don't PvP so I really can't comment on this.  Only that again, you are unfairly trying to compare one system to another when they are completely different.

PvE:  7.0

 

It's actually not bad at first.  Just running out and doing some stuff without collecting a novel full of quests.  I always thought the way oldschool WoW did it was a bit obnoxious.  I prefer a handful of quests that chain together to make a story or drama, of which I am not the star, but an important player.  GW2 doesn't offer that.   And after a while, DE's seem all the same, boss encounters seem all the same.  spam spam spam that attack, done.   Hearts and collecting vistas and POIs and waypoints is not a replacement for questing.  It just doesn't fill the gap that's left from not having any sort of meaningful quest system.  And it gets old fast.   Not only that, but DEs are so dumbed down and simplistic, and you are never awarded loot.  In general loot is very boring even when you find an upgrade.

 

I only played one dungeon.  It was a chaotic yet boring spamfest, with cutscenes that only I actually watched while the rest of my group left me behind.    In general it wasn't fun.

 -I find the dungeons a rather nice learning experience.  You will never have the same group twice and you learn new ways of how not to do things.  Again, please stop trying to compare to another game.  ArenaNet is doing their own thing.  You have to learn lessons in this game and often the hard way.  But at least you can go back to other areas and enjoy the quests there and STILL get good xp for going back because your level is dropped to the appropriate level.

Aesthetics: 9.0

I don't care for the style, especially of mobiles, but the scenery is nice and the graphics quality is clearly impressive.

 -I think the artstyle is great and not cartoonish.  Props to ArenaNet for that.

Overall,:not good.  You can do the math yourself.

 -Again, I do not agree.  I think the game is amazing.

I spent 300 bucks upgrading to an i5 to play this game at better than a slideshow.  I'm not just some guy who plopped the game in and played for 5 minutes without anything invested into it.  What irks me the most is how hyped up the game was by people making wild claims that were simply untrue after playing BWEs.  Claims about world vs world, and how awesome combat was seem so out of this world.

 

I only now review it, as I think I'm ready to move on.  For the past week I've been trying very hard to log in and have fun, and it's just too boring.  With borderlands 2, TL2, and D3 1.05 looming, I don't see why I should waste anymore time.  Otherwise I would have gotten to 80 before writing a review. 

 

On a final note, doing things differently does not warrant the title revolutionary if the change is bad, and most of the divergence of GW2's systems from the mold are downgrades.   Kudos to the devs for trying, but whoever came up with the replacement systems for the trinity, dungeons, questing, and pvp simply did a bad job.

The posts in red are my own personal opinions as you have yours.  I have said before that Guild Wars is a "thinking man's game" and not meant for people who do not like old school or want to learn constantly in a game.  Yes, I said that most vile of phrases:  "Thinking in an MMO".  But that is what the Guild Wars series is.  I'm sorry if you don't like the game.  But that is your own opinion.  Many like it.  I know I do.

Originally posted by Psychow

Originally posted by Alot

 

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Originally posted by Psychow

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Originally posted by Connmacart Would say surprising review, but than again you have been shitting on the game for a long time.  Hard to look at things objectively when you go in with a negative mindset.

---

 
And it doesn't look like he's being a hater, just making personal observations and opinions.

---

 

Personal observations and opinions?

He's passing off his opinion as a fact.

 

This is a Reviews and Impressions sub-forum. By default, it's his personal observations and opinion. Any facts he stated were from his own personal experiances. And how he interprets those facts are his personal observations and opinions.

Originally posted by Shubawkss
This review sounds more like "Bullshit biased opinions of a game that I don't like so I need to tell everyone else it sucks."

No, I can give you that if you like, but it would be very far off OP, and not sincere.

I know trolls when I see them, and OP isn't one.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Update:  Community: 2

Just look at how quickly and without provocation the replies become personal.

you have a strange sense of what provocation is

you title your thread -- Boring and Hype Trainwreck -- and you dont consider that provocative

When the hype was high for this game, months before release, I looked at the features and really wondered what was so great about it and decided not to get the game.

But with nothing better around the corner and friends pulling me over with a "Let's form a team and do stuff together and get powerful in this game" argument (Imo, whats fun in MMO is forming a band of friend, control ressources and watch each other's back in pvp).

But thing is, there's no point of ever hanging with your friend in this game, anyone just passing by can offer you the help you'd have needed. In WvW you need to be a dozen to make a difference, I guess it's fun if you can get that number, but if you can't youre just trying to get a huge group of headless pugs to have a semblance of strategy that turns on you and tell you to shut up he second you give a suggestion.(ok that part is not only against GW2, any mmo is like that anyway)

To me, GW2 will remain a fun game, I still log in and enjoy most of my time in it, but it's not a fun MMO.

And note to OP, ignore the tools bashing your opinions, if you give them attention we'll wake up in a faschist state someday lol.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by adam_nox

Update:  Community: 2

Just look at how quickly and without provocation the replies become personal.

you have a strange sense of what provacation is

you title your thread -- Boring and Hype Trainwreck -- and you dont consider that provactive

I can't believe I am defending people of a different opinion than mine, shame on me, but seriously headlines are posters. Read the text.

I couldn't even find one point in the OP that I agree with.  Clearly I love GW2, but it definitely has its flaws.  For me they're not mentioned in the OP at all.

I know you hate to hear you're doing it wrong, but as someone that at leasts sounds like they've played a lot more than you a lot of your points are downright wrong (like your whole crafting section - "it sucks because I couldn't find enough mats on my own") or sound like you played for only 5 minutes.  Clearly you've been playing the last month according to your post, but it does not come across that way.

I have seen some great constructive posts pointing out the flaws with the game and mismatch with original advertising, etc. however, for me your review rang hollow and contains a great deal of inaccurate information.

Community: on forums: strongly agree... in game: strongly disagree.

Gameplay and Combat: I have to say I disagree, but never played DCU (not really interested that much in superheroes as a setting). I don't really know what you expected of the ranger, it's always been said that it is a pet class (you can't even dismiss it) and you're surprised your pet was outdamaging and outliving you with 20 (out of 30 possible) points allocated on pet traits. BTW, while there are no glass cannons classes, I do have seen some characters built as glass cannons that dish out lots of damage but that die quite quickly as well if their enemies survive it.

Character development and Customization: Partially agree. I like the armor die feature and the fact that the rare colors are hard to get, but I don't like that at least while leveling there are limited armor looks available, personally I'm happy that I at least unlocked my heritage armor in GW1 (that looks cools and doesn't need t-stones to keep the look) and plan on using that look until I'm 80 and stop changing armor so quickly. I would have much preferred the way it works in GW, where you get a costume slot, or in Rift or AoC, where you hace an "appearance" slot for all armor types and you can choose which to put there. And of course, it's not going to compare to DCO, mainly because the best feature of superhero MMOs is the amount of customization options you get for your characters upon creation (haven't played it, but played CO... while the game itself didn't feel as good, I could spend hours on the character creation alone).

On the actual custmization, partially agree. In my experience with the chars I've played (warrior, guardian, mesmer and a little of ranger) there are lots of posibilities of different builds you can make, all depends on how you synergize your skills and your weapons. That said, I say that I partially agree because I feel it's a step back from what we had in GW1, I would like to at the very least have the searching for skill vendors that sold a particular skill, or the hunting of elites for the elite skills back.

Crafting: Partially disagree. I say partially because I do agree that right now crafting can be a pain sometimes because of how hard is it to make money and how expensive things can be, and the fact that you lose money by doing it, but I really like the fact that some of the very best gear in the game can be crafted. Also so far I haven't ran out of materials for it, but mainly because I have 3 characters actively playing, focusing on one crafting profesion for each, and choosing them so that the needed materials don't overlap.

WvW: Disagree. While I never played DaoC (not really a PvPer here), I do find WvW to be loads of fun. Also seems most of your gripe with it is with the belief that everyone would be equal there. As far as I remember (since WvW was detailed), they had always said that the sPvP was the one where everyone would be equalized, while in WvW your character would be upgraded to level 80 but with the skills, traits and gear they had in PvE, so a truel level 80 would have an advantage. Also I do remember the slower leveling in WvW to be a big issue on forums on beta. In my experience the leveling speed is about the same in WvW and in PvE... the main difference is that in PvE you're gaining XP constantly, while in WvW is more spotty... you can be for an hour without gaining almost any XP, and you can gain almost a full level in less than half the time during big battles (specially when using siege equipment).

PvE: Disagree with the comment, not so much about the score (I'd give it an 8)

Aesthetics: Strongly agree.. :)

Of course, that is in my experience, and I understand it's not a game for everyone.. but for the time being, it's a great game for me.. :)

I mostly agree with the OP. The game is largely a single player experience. The eight classes all do basically the same thing with different graphics, wtih maybe slight differences in effectiveness in certain areas(which I believe was accidental) the removal of the trinnity didn't make for more diverse game play, it made for a singularity as opposed to a trinity.  I actually like MMOS and mmorpg combat, the wanna be console action-ish combat of this game isn't that good and is in fact less strategic imho. 

GW2 is proof that sometimes different for the sake of different isn't a good thing.

Originally posted by Elbone

When the hype was high for this game, months before release, I looked at the features and really wondered what was so great about it and decided not to get the game.

But with nothing better around the corner and friends pulling me over with a "Let's form a team and do stuff together and get powerful in this game" argument (Imo, whats fun in MMO is forming a band of friend, control ressources and watch each other's back in pvp).

But thing is, there's no point of ever hanging with your friend in this game, anyone just passing by can offer you the help you'd have needed. In WvW you need to be a dozen to make a difference, I guess it's fun if you can get that number, but if you can't youre just trying to get a huge group of headless pugs to have a semblance of strategy that turns on you and tell you to shut up he second you give a suggestion.(ok that part is not only against GW2, any mmo is like that anyway)

 

To me, GW2 will remain a fun game, I still log in and enjoy most of my time in it, but it's not a fun MMO.

And note to OP, ignore the tools bashing your opinions, if you give them attention we'll wake up in a faschist state someday lol.

Nothing better around the corner?

I asume you already finished TSW's story line then? 

I wonder how many GW2 players ended up in this game because "all their friends" was going to play it ;)

I am glad you and all your friends got your money's worth.

to the Op;

funny that every game you rant on, I end up playing and liking!

Originally posted by adam_nox

Update:  Community: 2

 

Just look at how quickly and without provocation the replies become personal.  I'm a tool, I'm playing it wrong, etc.  Good stuff.  Also forgot to note how unsociable the game is, though there's so many topics about this in this forum and in the General one, that it pretty much goes without saying.

Actually you have given enough provocation already in your opening post and the title of this thread. It's a given that people are gonna argue if you state your opinion as fact. So don't play innocent and blame the 'bad' community for their 'bad' responses. 

The "playing it wrong" argument is actually a valid one as Gw2 should'nt be played with the same mindset as one takes in a more traditional MMO (like Wow).  It's a given that while playing the game in a more exploration driven fashion that you get the most out of it. Most people giving this argument don't blame you, but just want you to enjoy the game.

I'm not gonna say anything about your second point but I guess you are in the following category of players:

"I don't talk to my the people on my friendslist unless I need them to help me with something I really can't finish. And even then I'll still try to finish it and only ask you when I really don't have any choice. I never adventure with another person because it bothers me to have someone around me at all time"

This mentality is offcourse wrong as friends are for talking and having fun with and not for doing your chores

But I hope you find your new online home elsewhere than...