Guild Wars 2: Pre-Release Discussion

[Takiwaki]

lol it could not be helped.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6864/lolzie.jpg

[vrumpt]

[Solace]

lol it could not be helped.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6864/lolzie.jpg

That is awesome.

[Takiwaki]

damn huge

[vrumpt]

[GoggleHead]

damn huge

Spoiler: show

All I could think was "Oh god, it's Windurst all over again". There's so much empty space.

[Rhyis.]

Ha.

[niwaar]

I'd love to be wrong, I really would, but I just don't see how. I can think of hardly any ways for keep zerging to be fast paced, dynamic and fun.

1- Some sort of buff where you can only take x DPS max, so that focus fire from any number of people beyond, oh lets say, six is wasted.
2- A sort of super siege weapon which can quickly (quickly is the key, no half hour waiting games) take down a door/wall, and cannot be destroyed unless the defenders leave the walls.
3- I'm at a blank.

Are there mechanics like that?

1) There are actual Guild Based buffs that can give bonuses to several stats, health, damage, etc to those defending any keep currently held by that guild for some duration of time (I think 12 hours a pop). These buffs are gained via the "influence" currency. So yes, there are buffs that will help you to withstand a zerg attacks forces.

2) There are siege weapons that can be built on both sides. There are different types of siege weapon blueprints that can be purchased from a vendor in your "portal in" area of the WvWvW map. They then can be used with the supplies in any keep/castle/tower to create that weapon. Whether that is an anti-personnel weapon such as an Arrow Cart, a more universal Mortar, a more wall siege weapon like a catapult, or if you own certain key points you can create trebuchets that will greatly damage walls in short periods. Also remember that they have spoken at great length that most of the pvp environs are destructible themselves. Meaning, the gate may be the weakest link, but with siege weapons a wall could "easily" be breached as well. Also note that Trebuchet's have a great range and can be used to defend your own outer keep if you own the central castle. Making that of much greater value.

Toss in the fact that once again, Guild "Art of War" and "Architecture" skills allow the faster creation of a more powerful version of some of those siege/defensive weaponry, allows for a more tactical set of circumstances.

3) The "healthbar wars" may continue, yet do so in a slightly different manner, as to my knowledge, the Supply currency is not only used to build siege weaponry, but also the repair of things. So in theory, a single player could be hold up inside a keep and continually reinforce the main gate until help arrives. Creating the possibility of counter attack waves.

The real issue is, that how does holding an outer keep effect the balance of the map as a whole? Does it reduce the supply to the other enemy owned lands? Does it buff or debuff the area surrounding it? Other than the "Power of the Mists" buff that is strengthened and weakened by how much or how little you hold in the zone, what set of balance does it give? In Aion and Warhammer both, owning minor "nodes" was a dramatic advantage when sieging. If this is not the case, we are just looking at limiting supplies and that in and of itself may push this to success or failure.

--

Sadly, the news coming out of the beta is not good news for those of us who had high hopes for the game to ship "within reach" of Tera and MoP. With Tera being released in May, and people reporting that the F&F Alpha has already begun for MoP, its hard to believe that we will see it anywhere past early July. Combine that with the reality that the Asura and Sylvari home areas are not complete, that they are having issues with higher graphics settings, and seemingly visible bugs in "pet class" gameplay, GW2 looks to still be at least 3-4 months out. Toss in the NCSoft comment about not wanting to release in the "wrong" season and we are probably looking for September/October release, which is far too long of a wait (but we will) for most of us who are just dying to play an MMO that actually understands all that WoW (and its clones; SWTOR, Rift, etc) have repeatedly done wrong.

[vrumpt]

Sadly, the news coming out of the beta is not good news for those of us who had high hopes for the game to ship "within reach" of Tera and MoP. With Tera being released in May, and people reporting that the F&F Alpha has already begun for MoP, its hard to believe that we will see it anywhere past early July. Combine that with the reality that the Asura and Sylvari home areas are not complete, that they are having issues with higher graphics settings, and seemingly visible bugs in "pet class" gameplay, GW2 looks to still be at least 3-4 months out. Toss in the NCSoft comment about not wanting to release in the "wrong" season and we are probably looking for September/October release, which is far too long of a wait (but we will) for most of us who are just dying to play an MMO that actually understands all that WoW (and its clones; SWTOR, Rift, etc) have repeatedly done wrong.

Yeah, In addition to that i'm seeing a lot of WIP and PH names on items and other stuff. Its very working but its obvious there is still a lot left to do. I'll be happy to test all of this new content as it gets released though. Here's hoping they have consistent tests from now until launch.

[Rhyis.]

Almost everything you side was done in WAR too. WAR had guild based keep buffs, siege weapons for both sides, and supplies that repaired the keep doors. The thing that's new with this WvWvW are that walls are breakable.

Just so people don't keep saying stuff is new when it isn't. I'm just as excited about this game as the next guy though.

[vrumpt]

Almost everything you side was done in WAR too. WAR had guild based keep buffs, siege weapons for both sides, and supplies that repaired the keep doors. The thing that's new with this WvWvW are that walls are breakable.

Just so people don't keep saying stuff is new when it isn't. I'm just as excited about this game as the next guy though.

Did WAR have 3 teams and 50~ locations to fight over?

[Takiwaki]

lol pretty cool mes vs thf gameplay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0WX4Cc7TFs#t=8m26s

[Rhyis.]

Did WAR have 3 teams and 50~ locations to fight over?

Like I said before, 3 factions is the huge improvement. DAoC had 3 factions and it simply works out better. It's a better design. With 2 factions you run into the issue of one side having more people then the other. Which results in a constant stomping because of bigger numbers and more people online at different times of the day (hard to defend a keep when you're asleep or at work). Which results in more people joining the winning side (people don't like to lose). Which results in a bigger stomping then before. And it keeps going like that until you've got nobody left playing your game.

[Guitarman]

Watching that mess of videos, the only thing that turns me off is, some of the monsters have WAY too much HP. Look at the 2nd video in the series, when they fight the lizard in the water. it takes 2 of them 10minutes or so to kill it. That's not fun.

[Takiwaki]

Watching that mess of videos, the only thing that turns me off is, some of the monsters have WAY too much HP. Look at the 2nd video in the series, when they fight the lizard in the water. it takes 2 of them 10minutes or so to kill it. That's not fun.

That was an NM . . .

[Guitarman]

That was an NM . . .

So? It was level 3, and a quest monster (i think, based on the players talking). Protracted difficult battles are one thing, but when it takes 10 minutes of whittling away its hp for it to fall over and die for something that early on, it's over the top. It's going to get very aggrivating very quickly.

[Lucavi]

Watching that mess of videos, the only thing that turns me off is, some of the monsters have WAY too much HP. Look at the 2nd video in the series, when they fight the lizard in the water. it takes 2 of them 10minutes or so to kill it. That's not fun.

Remember FFXI? NMs say hello.

[Guitarman]

Eh I just think it needs to be toned down just a bit. Not the difficulty, i love that part, just the massive hp pools ive seen from a few different videos. Not saying it's not a day 1 buy still, which it is for me.

any word on allowing mods and the like?

[niwaar]

Almost everything you side was done in WAR too. WAR had guild based keep buffs, siege weapons for both sides, and supplies that repaired the keep doors. The thing that's new with this WvWvW are that walls are breakable.

Just so people don't keep saying stuff is new when it isn't. I'm just as excited about this game as the next guy though.

I will admit that WAR had siege weapons and the ability to repair keep doors. Admittedly I only played til about lvl46 and my guild at the time never managed to capture any keeps during my play time (Chaos sucked on our server), but the only guild style buffs I remember were the battle standards. Which were nice buffs but were extremely limited and did not necessarily effect ALL of the defenders regardless of their guild. I may be wrong about that given my limited playtime (alpha thru about 2months of play - I left when Wrath launched as the game got really lackluster the more you leveled.)

That being said, breakable walls make a huge difference and the manner of acquisition and damage each weapon will produce will make or break their use and balance. Siege Weapons in WAR were worth the time but only barely so. WAR is an apt comparison, but time will tell if its the correct one. Also remember, we are discounting the third faction which is just about every WvW video I have seen its only been 2 warring factions. It takes time to build alliances and in a press beta where people are truly confined to 1 side or the other, we will not be able to see how this mechanic actually works til we see a wider more populated beta.

For my thoughts I believe that there will just be very little to stop a large determined group, no more so than any other game previous. Also note, that (to my knowledge) its unknown if the Keep Lord actually scales at all with the numbers brought against him/her. This could easily be where they choose to tweak the balance once the game gets closer to launch.

Watching that mess of videos, the only thing that turns me off is, some of the monsters have WAY too much HP. Look at the 2nd video in the series, when they fight the lizard in the water. it takes 2 of them 10minutes or so to kill it. That's not fun.

I was thinking the same thing. But every "NM" really needs to be significant. Also if you are referring to the Yogscast video... well the two of them are pretty much morons who had no clue as to how to play, what to do and admittedly "sucks as a human being" because he can not use the dodge button correctly. There are other videos of the same "event" that have more and less people and those show fights much shorter, but much more interesting as the NM gains more abilities as more people show up.

Mind you, all the videos I have seen thus far of larger scale player vs. event bosses have come down to things having a shitload of HP and taking a significant time to down. If you go over to IGN and watch the Mesmer Play video, you will see a event boss that takes 10+ minutes to down by 15+ players. Mind you, alot of them are like the Yogscast crew and are incapable players and can't avoid stuff and died several times during the event, but it shows off that a lot of event NMs are going to take a good amount of time to defeat. Think "early" XI where a Fafhogg fight could last 20-30 minutes if you werent trying to stall the timer.

[Guitarman]

That's probably what's going to be the case. With abyssea in ffxi, the lolfest wow is and the like, it's going to be a bit of a shock to go back to battles like that. I can just imagine the flood of tears over the difficulty i can see in parts of the videos. And yeah, the guys playing were morons.