The dungeons look great so far. but with no proper reward there's no point in doing them more than once imo. Maybe another run on explore mode. Which is like "hard" mode from other games.
Oblivious at best. Nothing else is to be said.
Exactly. at least it's better to not know than to know nothing. bet he gets upset at you though.
I didn't say they were all like that, or most like that, or even many like that. However, it seems either nothing was done to encourage and ensure plenty of in game support for members of the press, or some people just didn't get the memo.
The press should have all received the V.I.P. treatment in order to maximize the experience during the greatly compressed schedule.
It wasn't just Dungeons, but WvW as well, where the permanent testers seemed more concerned about crushing the server the press were assigned to, rather than providing the press with opportunities to experience progress and expansion.
I don't know how much handholding you think Anet should've been doing, but I haven't seen any other games have a beta in which the dev team did so much to help the participants. Not one.
You're right about them not being awesome with PR. That's really not their thing, but they're videos showing the devs guiding press through dungeons, forming world raids so that press members can actually siege keeps for WvW, answering question in general chat, etc. That's a lot for a dev team to be doing, on top of working on the game / dealing with their families and personal lives / and somehwere in there getting sleep.
If that's not V.I.P. treatment, then the only thing more they could've done would be to hire a bunch of players just for the beta, train them on how to play the game properly, and then spend time making sure that each of these trained players found all the various members of the press. Kinda sounds like an effort in futility if you ask me.
There was one Dungeon vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bbBUFqZ9A ) that did the dungeon. They completed it so easily, of course they aren't silly players like... some casters *cough *Yogscast* *Cough*.
I think anyone who has read up on the game well enough before they play it will be able to adapt to the play style in a couple hours. Of course, it will take even hardcore gamers weeks or months to completely master certain playstyles. But I am very well read up on GW2 and know the game mechanics in theory well enough that I will be able to adapt in an hour or two or even less come release. I also believe that new players will notice better players doing things well and ask them what they're doing to be so good and that better player will give them tips. It happens in a lot of games, and it was extremely common in Guild Wars 1, and I don't believe the GW2 community will be any less helpful than the GW1 community has always been. Ultimately, new players will always end up learning. It just takes more than one weekend for most, which is probably a large reason why the press people sucked ass most of the time: they weren't playing GW2 the way it was MADE to be played (which is sad, since GW2 is made to have extremely diverse play styles that are simple so long as you heal yourself and dodge).
A month after release, all will be well save for new players.
There was one Dungeon vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bbBUFqZ9A ) that did the dungeon. They completed it so easily, of course they aren't silly players like... some casters *cough *Yogscast* *Cough*.
The guy narrating admits the group "carried him". You can see two of the characters have Arenanet badges next to their names, another was giving directions and the fourth was not in the Press guild, so this was a group of permanent testers who actually played the dungeon with a press member, without playing dumb and leaving it entirely up to the "newb" to handle the strategy. That's a big difference between the two sessions.
I would have had a sign up for permanent testers to try to ensure that their were continual, guided dungeon runs that were actively advertised to the press members and with the understanding that the permanent testers would do everything possible to try to ensure fun, successful runs. I also would have put out a memo on WvW for the weekend to encourage a solid portion of testers to represent the server the press was based on and coordinate with other testers for some battles through out the weekend. It seems they may have done that to some degree on day one, but on day two the testers from the Green server seemed to have thought that it was more important to just crush the heck out of the server the press was on, rather than try to help show off an underpopulated test in the best possible light.
You don't expect this kind of handholding for a normal beta event, but when you have a weekend just to show off the beta to the press and try to get some free publicity, you do as much hand holding as needed, especially when the test population isn't thick enough to organically represent what the game will feel like under normal conditions.
This all assumes you want to make the best of the press weekend. It has nothing to do with entitlement for the press testers, it's completely about public relations. I don't think Arenanet did everything they could have done in this regard and since PR the one weak spot I've noticed in the past, I just really hope it gets addressed as we near the phase where the game is going to have to be actively marketed. (It's also not fair to expect the Community Managers to be marketing people).
Not trashing anyone, just offering constructive criticism and a caveat about judging story mode dungeon difficulty based on the Yogscast experience.
There was one Dungeon vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bbBUFqZ9A ) that did the dungeon. They completed it so easily, of course they aren't silly players like... some casters *cough *Yogscast* *Cough*.
While it was a very entertaining video indeed, the fact that Mike kept stating that he "didn't really know what was going on" concerns me a little. Amidst the endless onslaught of enemies, traps, and ground effects both friendly and harmful, the word that would best characterize the run seems to be "chaotic" -- a reaction shared almost unanimously by everyone in every dungeon video we've seen. They all had fun to be sure, but nobody seemed to really know what was going on at any given point.
"I'm not really sure what this boss is doing."
"I'm not really sure what my teammates are doing. They're just hammering away."
"I'm not really sure where this damage is coming from."
For one, the spell effects perpetually bombard our senses. There are so many different aoe effects going off at any given time that it becomes impossible to discern what is what. Rather than being able to strategically identify each ability (both friendly and hostile) and then react accordingly, combat seems to devolve into ONE singular mini game made up of dodging out of red circles while trying to stand in as many blue circles as posslbe, while, of course, aiming your abilities at the enemies (which are sometimes difficult to even locate amidst all the chaos.)
This gives rise to the issue of combos. Surely plenty of profession combos could be initiated (and very likely many are), but it simply seems imposslbe to tell what is going on, especially since many of the effects are on top of each other. Even if combos are going off, if the players who perform the combos cannot notice them--feel the effectiveness derived from teamwork--then their entire purpose is eliminated. If the goal is just to passively increase your character's effectiveness, that could just as easily be achieved by tweaking stats or ability ratios.
I understand these videos are of players' first time in the dungeon; and I understand that they are all GW2 novices (though there are many devs in many of the runs), but I think there's something to be said about how intuitive a combat system is or is not. And honestly, what would change with more experienced players? Would they use their abilities less frequently to reduce the chaos? Isolate themselves into 2-man teams to execute their own combos while staying away from everyone else's mess? Both of these options seem counter-inuitive to full group cohesiveness. No matter what, you're still going to be playing the same mini game: avoid red circles, stand in blue circles. The specific effects of those circles almost become unimportant because the outcome is the same.
Chaos does not necessarily equal complexity or depth.
Oh, and because we wear our black-and-white goggles around here and have to lump everyone into either the fanboy or hater category, I unfortunately must clarify that I'm a rather huge GW2 fan who is capable of being critical and skeptical of a feature when I feel it's justified.
There are no raids at all, on release anyways, perhaps they will implement some for a later time. That being said, raid gear will be the same as dungeon gear, will be the same as open world gear. They only will have cosmetic differences so you can proudly show off your achievements. All level 80 gear is the same no matter where you get it.
So as to your end-game comment, it is purely for fun to run the 3 versions of explorable mode or for the achievements. Everything is based that a casual is the same as a hardcore player with bumping up levels, deleveling players, making all gear the same stats, normalizing gear in structured pvp. There are no advantages except for skill, of course hardcore players will have more practice to beef up their skill play.
As to the dungeon issues, I honestly have no desire to do explorable mode. This is my personal preference because I do not have a lot of time these days. Perhaps on my days off from work I will look to do some of them for achievements/cool looking gear. For the main part I will be doing story/personal quests/DE's/WvWvW - The dungeon chaos is crazy looking, but I think things will be clearer the more you play. You will understand what is going on the more hours you put into the game.
Half the time Yogscast doesnt even know what they are doing or talking about. They are a very good example of your traditional MMO carebear. And they are just plain terrible at GW2 and they openly admitted it. So why should their opinions hold any water? They dont because that is their opinion and this post is my opinion.
The article you posted was a great example of how people who play MMOs with raiding as the only endgame content are so bad at stuff they actually have to think about.
To be honest, it's really hard for me to decide whether dungeons have a problem or not at this point.
On one hand, it's extremely easy to write off the criticism directed towards dungeons as the whining of an inexperienced player who is "losing" at the game. Because let's face it...losing isn't fun.
But on the other hand, there's no way I can no for certain that the complaints are solely due to "losing" or if the dunveons actually do have some problems with being grindy.
So for now, I'm taking the wait and see approach. I want to actually get my hands on the game so I can see how dungeons are for myself.
Half the time Yogscast doesnt even know what they are doing or talking about. They are a very good example of your traditional MMO carebear. And they are just plain terrible at GW2 and they openly admitted it. So why should their opinions hold any water? They dont because that is their opinion and this post is my opinion.
The article you posted was a great example of how people who play MMOs with raiding as the only endgame content are so bad at stuff they actually have to think about.
Carebear is more used for people who dislike PvP, these people plainly just suck.
There might be issues with the dungeons, I can´t know that until I tried them but as for them being "unoriginal" have I been playing countless of MMOs since 1996 and can´t say I seen something close to that dungeon. Traps have always been rare on none existing before, and I like those "the lovers" that forced you to think to be able to separate them from eachother, something this group just couldn´t do.
The whole idea of combat in GW2 is to move while you fight, yet these guys stand still most of the time, often on top of a trap that are killing them.
If someone would have said the same thing after aceing the dungeon I would have listened a lot more.
Homitu's post was very close to my main worry. It seems very chaotic gameplay wise. Which could lead to a large group of people attacking the attempt at killing the whole trinity system. Let's be real, people tend to cling on to the past. Unless the new thing is well revealed.
If you are going to take down a paradigm, doing it with something that is not very clear or well explained will lead to frustration for many. The noobs like Simon will just trash it, the middle of the road people will start barking for what they were comfortable with in the past(trinity) and those who do figure it out, will treat the other groups like leppers.
GW2 game videos have done nothing but impress the heck out of me when compared to Anet's claims. But this is one claim Anet has planted their banner firmly. Even yesterday Flannum posted that the "Trinity is dead". But so far nothing I have seen and now people like MikeB fony are also somewhat skeptical as to what it is that's going to replace it.
here was Flanum's post :
To go a little bit more in depth with the answer I gave, it doesn't really matter which professions you bring. Over the beta weekend I played through the dungeon with several different journalists and getting through was never a matter of bringing particular professions or even changing the builds that people were using. When we hit a tough patch people would change which weapons or utilities they were using but nobody ever had to go respec their traits. I was in groups that wiped multiple times in story mode but I was also in groups that did not wipe at all in story mode and was in one group that made it through explorable mode (we wiped a lot in that one). It all came down to how well we coordinated and how well we responded to the situations we encountered.
For example, in the explorable run through I think it was two journalists who were both warriors (one may have been a guardian, I'm having trouble recalling), our producer Chris Whiteside with a ranger, Izzy playing an elementalist, and myself playing an engineer. At different times Izzy was our condition removal guy, our debuffer, and our "tank" (bait is a more appropriate term actually). He was our most important player because he was our best player but he was actually very support/healing specced. The important thing about that group was that we were all talking and coordinating our efforts and coming up with strategies together. Those strategies never really revolved around specific skills but rather things like "We need condition removal" or "we need to stack as much vulnerability on this guy as possible" or even "we need Izzy to run around attracting attention while the rest of us activate the traps built into the area to kill the hordes of incoming mobs". I hope that helps shed some light on how the game plays.
It does shed some light, but it still a bit dimly lit.
There are no raids at all, on release anyways, perhaps they will implement some for a later time. That being said, raid gear will be the same as dungeon gear, will be the same as open world gear. They only will have cosmetic differences so you can proudly show off your achievements. All level 80 gear is the same no matter where you get it.
Well their are raids in game they are just in dynamic event form. Arena really fliped the script on how raiding and dungeons work. The Large scale dynamic events(raids) are suppose to be somewhat casual content for anyone to do. While the Dungeons tend to lean towards hardcore content for groups of adaptive/knowledgable poeple. For the normal mmo's it is the opposite of that.
Have you seen some of the open world dynamic event bosses? Tequalt the Sunless(~lvl 59), The Shatter (~lvl 50), Shadow behemoth ( ~lvl15), and here is one from the press beta (lvl 10). All of the videos from beta make the bosses seem easy but they are just beta testers. I just hope they are scale to the point were it is possible for people to fail the DE.
There was one Dungeon vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bbBUFqZ9A ) that did the dungeon. They completed it so easily, of course they aren't silly players like... some casters *cough *Yogscast* *Cough*.
CANNOT watch that guys videos his voice is HORRIBLE! I will just take your word for it =D
I didnt liked the dungeons also. The atmosphere was great fro catacombs but i dont like the playstyle.And let me explain:
The idea of using some abilities to avoid something or support is great but from at the videos their an unvlear thing.
Its not like they are shooting us i ll throw a wall to reflect the arrows and avoid dmg its more like something happening and we are taking much dmg or there are many enemies i ll throw an aoe support ability and i ll hope that this will avoid some dmg and give us some regen.
So my final opinion is that ll have to make things more obvious and use specific kind of abilities for specific reasons and not just throw a support ability when something happens(and we cant understand what clearly) and some healing ability and hope that will heal some when our health is going low.
There are no raids at all, on release anyways, perhaps they will implement some for a later time. That being said, raid gear will be the same as dungeon gear, will be the same as open world gear. They only will have cosmetic differences so you can proudly show off your achievements. All level 80 gear is the same no matter where you get it.
Well their are raids in game they are just in dynamic event form. Arena really fliped the script on how raiding and dungeons work. The Large scale dynamic events(raids) are suppose to be somewhat casual content for anyone to do. While the Dungeons tend to lean towards hardcore content for groups of adaptive/knowledgable poeple. For the normal mmo's it is the opposite of that.
Have you seen some of the open world dynamic event bosses? Tequalt the Sunless(~lvl 59), The Shatter (~lvl 50), Shadow behemoth ( ~lvl15), and here is one from the press beta (lvl 10). All of the videos from beta make the bosses seem easy but they are just beta testers. I just hope they are scale to the point were it is possible for people to fail the DE.
nice, I hadn't seen that vid from IGN the lvl 10 one.
To be honest, it's really hard for me to decide whether dungeons have a problem or not at this point.
On one hand, it's extremely easy to write off the criticism directed towards dungeons as the whining of an inexperienced player who is "losing" at the game. Because let's face it...losing isn't fun.
But on the other hand, there's no way I can no for certain that the complaints are solely due to "losing" or if the dunveons actually do have some problems with being grindy.
So for now, I'm taking the wait and see approach. I want to actually get my hands on the game so I can see how dungeons are for myself.
I completely agree with this. We can't judge Dungeons based on what we've seen. Not only were the press members complete newbs at the game thrust into difficult, mid level group content, but the level of help and information they received from experienced testers varied greatly.
Also, we, of course, haven't played the game, so we are trying to follow what's going on with no play time under our belts. I already don't find the effects as confusing as some seem to find them, but I'm sure all of us who go onto play the game, while being a little overwhelmed at first, will become accustomed to all that stuff and eventually will appreciate and understand exactly what is going on just by viewing what is happening in front of our eyes.
What I can take away from these videos is that the Dungeons look great and each encounter will require some strategy to win, with some solutions being more obvious than others. I also understand that as a player really, really learns their profession, they will know exactly what solutions their skills may offer to certain situations, which will lead to much better strategic and tactical play when encountering such content for the first time.
If a horribly played beta video is worrying you this much you should quit playing mmos. Its beta! Not to mention most of the videos that have been released since the beta are horrible gameplay. I really ahve to ask 90% of the press that played in this beta, have you ever played an mmo before because you play like you have never been apart of one. And these are supposed to be the peopl covering the mmo to convey the information that we all seek. In one word t describe the majority of the video information after beta would be Pathetic.
It's kind of funny that they are pretty open that "we don't really have a clue what they are doing" part of their shtick (which I quite like) is the bumbling british bafoons. Well it is when it comes to GWII coverage. I am surpised that he was surprised that this was not too effective a method (bumbling around without a clue) of dealing with more challenging content. Didn't one of the devs talk about this? Most of the journos ran through with some hiccups and one group even did it in non story mode (with several wipes) guess they wern't quitters then!
Some funny moments, When the ranger summoned a bear and our commentator thought the boss had polymorphed. When Lewis got stuck on the cliff face under the boss and rather than drop off and run back up the ramp decided to pew pew from there. Perhaps the funniest one for me was when Lewis was talking about how cool it was to put a boulder on the pressure plate, Simon had just thrown a convienient one throught the portcullis. They then had to run round (splitting everyone up) looking for one.
Of course setting the difficulty level so content is challenging without being a downer is tough but setting it to the lowest common denominator removes all challenge really. I feel pretty good about things if a reasonably organised pug that know how to play their characters can get through 'smoothly'. They should still feel that they where challenged and that they achieved something. The tipping point between sucess and failure can be quite small and something fairly inconsequential (people not doing foolish things rather than everyone being that 'brilliant').
Comments
Exactly. at least it's better to not know than to know nothing. bet he gets upset at you though.
I don't know how much handholding you think Anet should've been doing, but I haven't seen any other games have a beta in which the dev team did so much to help the participants. Not one.
You're right about them not being awesome with PR. That's really not their thing, but they're videos showing the devs guiding press through dungeons, forming world raids so that press members can actually siege keeps for WvW, answering question in general chat, etc. That's a lot for a dev team to be doing, on top of working on the game / dealing with their families and personal lives / and somehwere in there getting sleep.
If that's not V.I.P. treatment, then the only thing more they could've done would be to hire a bunch of players just for the beta, train them on how to play the game properly, and then spend time making sure that each of these trained players found all the various members of the press. Kinda sounds like an effort in futility if you ask me.
There was one Dungeon vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bbBUFqZ9A ) that did the dungeon. They completed it so easily, of course they aren't silly players like... some casters *cough *Yogscast* *Cough*.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
If people like Yogscast can't complete a dungeon, I'd call it a success.
I think anyone who has read up on the game well enough before they play it will be able to adapt to the play style in a couple hours. Of course, it will take even hardcore gamers weeks or months to completely master certain playstyles. But I am very well read up on GW2 and know the game mechanics in theory well enough that I will be able to adapt in an hour or two or even less come release. I also believe that new players will notice better players doing things well and ask them what they're doing to be so good and that better player will give them tips. It happens in a lot of games, and it was extremely common in Guild Wars 1, and I don't believe the GW2 community will be any less helpful than the GW1 community has always been. Ultimately, new players will always end up learning. It just takes more than one weekend for most, which is probably a large reason why the press people sucked ass most of the time: they weren't playing GW2 the way it was MADE to be played (which is sad, since GW2 is made to have extremely diverse play styles that are simple so long as you heal yourself and dodge).
A month after release, all will be well save for new players.
The guy narrating admits the group "carried him". You can see two of the characters have Arenanet badges next to their names, another was giving directions and the fourth was not in the Press guild, so this was a group of permanent testers who actually played the dungeon with a press member, without playing dumb and leaving it entirely up to the "newb" to handle the strategy. That's a big difference between the two sessions.
I would have had a sign up for permanent testers to try to ensure that their were continual, guided dungeon runs that were actively advertised to the press members and with the understanding that the permanent testers would do everything possible to try to ensure fun, successful runs. I also would have put out a memo on WvW for the weekend to encourage a solid portion of testers to represent the server the press was based on and coordinate with other testers for some battles through out the weekend. It seems they may have done that to some degree on day one, but on day two the testers from the Green server seemed to have thought that it was more important to just crush the heck out of the server the press was on, rather than try to help show off an underpopulated test in the best possible light.
You don't expect this kind of handholding for a normal beta event, but when you have a weekend just to show off the beta to the press and try to get some free publicity, you do as much hand holding as needed, especially when the test population isn't thick enough to organically represent what the game will feel like under normal conditions.
This all assumes you want to make the best of the press weekend. It has nothing to do with entitlement for the press testers, it's completely about public relations. I don't think Arenanet did everything they could have done in this regard and since PR the one weak spot I've noticed in the past, I just really hope it gets addressed as we near the phase where the game is going to have to be actively marketed. (It's also not fair to expect the Community Managers to be marketing people).
Not trashing anyone, just offering constructive criticism and a caveat about judging story mode dungeon difficulty based on the Yogscast experience.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
While it was a very entertaining video indeed, the fact that Mike kept stating that he "didn't really know what was going on" concerns me a little. Amidst the endless onslaught of enemies, traps, and ground effects both friendly and harmful, the word that would best characterize the run seems to be "chaotic" -- a reaction shared almost unanimously by everyone in every dungeon video we've seen. They all had fun to be sure, but nobody seemed to really know what was going on at any given point.
"I'm not really sure what this boss is doing."
"I'm not really sure what my teammates are doing. They're just hammering away."
"I'm not really sure where this damage is coming from."
For one, the spell effects perpetually bombard our senses. There are so many different aoe effects going off at any given time that it becomes impossible to discern what is what. Rather than being able to strategically identify each ability (both friendly and hostile) and then react accordingly, combat seems to devolve into ONE singular mini game made up of dodging out of red circles while trying to stand in as many blue circles as posslbe, while, of course, aiming your abilities at the enemies (which are sometimes difficult to even locate amidst all the chaos.)
This gives rise to the issue of combos. Surely plenty of profession combos could be initiated (and very likely many are), but it simply seems imposslbe to tell what is going on, especially since many of the effects are on top of each other. Even if combos are going off, if the players who perform the combos cannot notice them--feel the effectiveness derived from teamwork--then their entire purpose is eliminated. If the goal is just to passively increase your character's effectiveness, that could just as easily be achieved by tweaking stats or ability ratios.
I understand these videos are of players' first time in the dungeon; and I understand that they are all GW2 novices (though there are many devs in many of the runs), but I think there's something to be said about how intuitive a combat system is or is not. And honestly, what would change with more experienced players? Would they use their abilities less frequently to reduce the chaos? Isolate themselves into 2-man teams to execute their own combos while staying away from everyone else's mess? Both of these options seem counter-inuitive to full group cohesiveness. No matter what, you're still going to be playing the same mini game: avoid red circles, stand in blue circles. The specific effects of those circles almost become unimportant because the outcome is the same.
Chaos does not necessarily equal complexity or depth.
Oh, and because we wear our black-and-white goggles around here and have to lump everyone into either the fanboy or hater category, I unfortunately must clarify that I'm a rather huge GW2 fan who is capable of being critical and skeptical of a feature when I feel it's justified.
There are no raids at all, on release anyways, perhaps they will implement some for a later time. That being said, raid gear will be the same as dungeon gear, will be the same as open world gear. They only will have cosmetic differences so you can proudly show off your achievements. All level 80 gear is the same no matter where you get it.
So as to your end-game comment, it is purely for fun to run the 3 versions of explorable mode or for the achievements. Everything is based that a casual is the same as a hardcore player with bumping up levels, deleveling players, making all gear the same stats, normalizing gear in structured pvp. There are no advantages except for skill, of course hardcore players will have more practice to beef up their skill play.
As to the dungeon issues, I honestly have no desire to do explorable mode. This is my personal preference because I do not have a lot of time these days. Perhaps on my days off from work I will look to do some of them for achievements/cool looking gear. For the main part I will be doing story/personal quests/DE's/WvWvW - The dungeon chaos is crazy looking, but I think things will be clearer the more you play. You will understand what is going on the more hours you put into the game.
Half the time Yogscast doesnt even know what they are doing or talking about. They are a very good example of your traditional MMO carebear. And they are just plain terrible at GW2 and they openly admitted it. So why should their opinions hold any water? They dont because that is their opinion and this post is my opinion.
The article you posted was a great example of how people who play MMOs with raiding as the only endgame content are so bad at stuff they actually have to think about.
-I am here to perform logic
To be honest, it's really hard for me to decide whether dungeons have a problem or not at this point.
On one hand, it's extremely easy to write off the criticism directed towards dungeons as the whining of an inexperienced player who is "losing" at the game. Because let's face it...losing isn't fun.
But on the other hand, there's no way I can no for certain that the complaints are solely due to "losing" or if the dunveons actually do have some problems with being grindy.
So for now, I'm taking the wait and see approach. I want to actually get my hands on the game so I can see how dungeons are for myself.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Carebear is more used for people who dislike PvP, these people plainly just suck.
There might be issues with the dungeons, I can´t know that until I tried them but as for them being "unoriginal" have I been playing countless of MMOs since 1996 and can´t say I seen something close to that dungeon. Traps have always been rare on none existing before, and I like those "the lovers" that forced you to think to be able to separate them from eachother, something this group just couldn´t do.
The whole idea of combat in GW2 is to move while you fight, yet these guys stand still most of the time, often on top of a trap that are killing them.
If someone would have said the same thing after aceing the dungeon I would have listened a lot more.
Homitu's post was very close to my main worry. It seems very chaotic gameplay wise. Which could lead to a large group of people attacking the attempt at killing the whole trinity system. Let's be real, people tend to cling on to the past. Unless the new thing is well revealed.
If you are going to take down a paradigm, doing it with something that is not very clear or well explained will lead to frustration for many. The noobs like Simon will just trash it, the middle of the road people will start barking for what they were comfortable with in the past(trinity) and those who do figure it out, will treat the other groups like leppers.
GW2 game videos have done nothing but impress the heck out of me when compared to Anet's claims. But this is one claim Anet has planted their banner firmly. Even yesterday Flannum posted that the "Trinity is dead". But so far nothing I have seen and now people like MikeB fony are also somewhat skeptical as to what it is that's going to replace it.
here was Flanum's post :
To go a little bit more in depth with the answer I gave, it doesn't really matter which professions you bring. Over the beta weekend I played through the dungeon with several different journalists and getting through was never a matter of bringing particular professions or even changing the builds that people were using. When we hit a tough patch people would change which weapons or utilities they were using but nobody ever had to go respec their traits. I was in groups that wiped multiple times in story mode but I was also in groups that did not wipe at all in story mode and was in one group that made it through explorable mode (we wiped a lot in that one). It all came down to how well we coordinated and how well we responded to the situations we encountered.
For example, in the explorable run through I think it was two journalists who were both warriors (one may have been a guardian, I'm having trouble recalling), our producer Chris Whiteside with a ranger, Izzy playing an elementalist, and myself playing an engineer. At different times Izzy was our condition removal guy, our debuffer, and our "tank" (bait is a more appropriate term actually). He was our most important player because he was our best player but he was actually very support/healing specced. The important thing about that group was that we were all talking and coordinating our efforts and coming up with strategies together. Those strategies never really revolved around specific skills but rather things like "We need condition removal" or "we need to stack as much vulnerability on this guy as possible" or even "we need Izzy to run around attracting attention while the rest of us activate the traps built into the area to kill the hordes of incoming mobs". I hope that helps shed some light on how the game plays.
It does shed some light, but it still a bit dimly lit.
Well their are raids in game they are just in dynamic event form. Arena really fliped the script on how raiding and dungeons work. The Large scale dynamic events(raids) are suppose to be somewhat casual content for anyone to do. While the Dungeons tend to lean towards hardcore content for groups of adaptive/knowledgable poeple. For the normal mmo's it is the opposite of that.
Have you seen some of the open world dynamic event bosses? Tequalt the Sunless(~lvl 59), The Shatter (~lvl 50), Shadow behemoth ( ~lvl15), and here is one from the press beta (lvl 10). All of the videos from beta make the bosses seem easy but they are just beta testers. I just hope they are scale to the point were it is possible for people to fail the DE.
CANNOT watch that guys videos his voice is HORRIBLE! I will just take your word for it =D
I didnt liked the dungeons also. The atmosphere was great fro catacombs but i dont like the playstyle.And let me explain:
The idea of using some abilities to avoid something or support is great but from at the videos their an unvlear thing.
Its not like they are shooting us i ll throw a wall to reflect the arrows and avoid dmg its more like something happening and we are taking much dmg or there are many enemies i ll throw an aoe support ability and i ll hope that this will avoid some dmg and give us some regen.
So my final opinion is that ll have to make things more obvious and use specific kind of abilities for specific reasons and not just throw a support ability when something happens(and we cant understand what clearly) and some healing ability and hope that will heal some when our health is going low.
nice, I hadn't seen that vid from IGN the lvl 10 one.
I completely agree with this. We can't judge Dungeons based on what we've seen. Not only were the press members complete newbs at the game thrust into difficult, mid level group content, but the level of help and information they received from experienced testers varied greatly.
Also, we, of course, haven't played the game, so we are trying to follow what's going on with no play time under our belts. I already don't find the effects as confusing as some seem to find them, but I'm sure all of us who go onto play the game, while being a little overwhelmed at first, will become accustomed to all that stuff and eventually will appreciate and understand exactly what is going on just by viewing what is happening in front of our eyes.
What I can take away from these videos is that the Dungeons look great and each encounter will require some strategy to win, with some solutions being more obvious than others. I also understand that as a player really, really learns their profession, they will know exactly what solutions their skills may offer to certain situations, which will lead to much better strategic and tactical play when encountering such content for the first time.
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If a horribly played beta video is worrying you this much you should quit playing mmos. Its beta! Not to mention most of the videos that have been released since the beta are horrible gameplay. I really ahve to ask 90% of the press that played in this beta, have you ever played an mmo before because you play like you have never been apart of one. And these are supposed to be the peopl covering the mmo to convey the information that we all seek. In one word t describe the majority of the video information after beta would be Pathetic.
It's kind of funny that they are pretty open that "we don't really have a clue what they are doing" part of their shtick (which I quite like) is the bumbling british bafoons. Well it is when it comes to GWII coverage. I am surpised that he was surprised that this was not too effective a method (bumbling around without a clue) of dealing with more challenging content. Didn't one of the devs talk about this? Most of the journos ran through with some hiccups and one group even did it in non story mode (with several wipes) guess they wern't quitters then!
Some funny moments, When the ranger summoned a bear and our commentator thought the boss had polymorphed. When Lewis got stuck on the cliff face under the boss and rather than drop off and run back up the ramp decided to pew pew from there. Perhaps the funniest one for me was when Lewis was talking about how cool it was to put a boulder on the pressure plate, Simon had just thrown a convienient one throught the portcullis. They then had to run round (splitting everyone up) looking for one.
Of course setting the difficulty level so content is challenging without being a downer is tough but setting it to the lowest common denominator removes all challenge really. I feel pretty good about things if a reasonably organised pug that know how to play their characters can get through 'smoothly'. They should still feel that they where challenged and that they achieved something. The tipping point between sucess and failure can be quite small and something fairly inconsequential (people not doing foolish things rather than everyone being that 'brilliant').