Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What is easily accomplished
gaeanprayer
Member UncommonPosts: 2,341
I see a lot of worries and concerns about things like Cash Shop, money woes, grinding, and just recently the squishy/underpowered-ness of mages, specifically the Mesmer. The beta is just about wrapping up, so I'm going to post some screenshots of what I've accomplished over two beta weekends, just from playing normally. No cash shop or grinding, just exploring, crafting, and participating in events I came across. Keep in mind my weekends are free, so someone who works or is otherwise busy will take longer than about a week to do this, but just the same.
First up, gear! Note that this is the only image I will include in this post, click the provided links for more. Saves lower end computers exploding from tons of images:
Aren't I purdy? That is 3 pieces (chest, legs and shoulder) of the Divinity's Reach Cultural armor, which are 1 gold a piece:
http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw111.jpg
If anyone is wondering, I used the free transmutation stones we got to combine that with my crafted level 35 armor, which I managed to make a full set of, including weapons. Jewelry provided graciously by a friend:
http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw099.jpg
I actually had the stuff for 40 gear, except for the rare mob drops which don't really exist yet, seeing as those mobs aren't in the beta. They're super rare drops from lower enemies, but the whole point is to avoid grind so, 35 gear was what I used. By the way as you can see from that item menu, I am level 42, with 800 armor, well over 6k health and almost 1k attack. Crit chance is pretty nice, too. After crafting everything, leveling my crafts, buying the 1g per armor and throwing money at alts to play around with, I still ended up with over 1g left over. At this point, I really had nothing to spend it on, so it'll just sit there until the next beta. Moving on!
I leveled both Tailor and Artificer to the beta soft cap. It's 'soft' because once again, they can go higher, but you need those mob drops which barely existed right now to make anything:
Artificer: http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw107.jpg
Tailor: http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw106.jpg
Yes, those are 12 slot bags that you can totally have 4 of. I never bothered to make them for myself, I never even managed to use up all the inventory space I already had. Being as I'm constantly breaking down items for craft mats, and can also right click and select "Deposit Collectible" to put them in the bank from ~anywhere in the world~, I never even managed to use up half of my inventory except when I was emptying lower level mats I wasn't using anymore to sell on auction. Which, by the way, I can also do from anywhere in the world. Reminder: need cash shop for none of this.
All of this and I still had plenty of time to do Ascalon Catacombs. Thrice!
http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw109.jpg
You get the headpiece to your armor for the story mode. I did it twice, once in a pug and once to help some guildees. Then, I did explorable!
http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw110.jpg
And got 41 of the currency you need to buy dungeon armor with. This is the one part that actually disappointed me in GW2. Initially, Anet said we'd get a token for one piece of armor per run. This is not the case anymore. For a full run, I got 41 tears, and each piece costs 100 tears iirc. And explorable mode? No joke. I don't plan on doing it again. That made the GW1 dungeons look like a walk in the park. Explorable mode is purely for the masochists among us. It was like Dark Souls, only without the uber death penalty. Although in GW2, you can't really 'out level' the monsters like you can in Dark Souls so, I guess it evens out.
Finally! How much of the world I've explored:
http://i1061.photobucket.com/albums/t479/gaeanprayer/gw108.jpg
32%, and I haven't touched the Charr 15+ zone yet. There's actually a bunch of stuff there that's still bugged and I got annoyed with putting in the effort just for things to bug out and not complete, so I stopped trying. I'm about halfway to level cap, established myself in the world, defined my character, and I haven't even explored half of the world yet. That currently exists...keeping in mind that we're playing an older build that's missing a lot of content, namely 100% of everything sylvari/asura.
Cash shop wasn't touched for anything involved with the gaming part of GW2 itself, I spent the free gems on dye. I also did not sell left-over gems, in fact I bought more with my silver, just enough to get 3 more character slots so I could have one of every class.
And now I'm going to go catch up on all the sleep I haven't had since Friday...
edit - forgot to make links clickable x-x fixed.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Comments
A mug of ale in your honor!
Good job! I don't think I could do that on a weekend, now that I can't go without sleep anymore...
... but anybody who thinks that the xp/loot/crafting rates have been fucked with to promote cash shop has apparently not played any MMO in the past 12 years or so.
Even with plenty of sleep, I got level 32 and 22, and spent my free gems on fun stuff like... GLASSES.
Because I have a job, I'll totally be throwing cash shop money Arenanet's way, to grab a few character slots (Up to 8) and some of the awesome cosmetic items.
Hmm, I never got to the explore mode dungeons, only story mode, and that was hard enough for me :P Honestly, I think the dungeons in GW2 are a lot harder than anything I've seen in Dark Souls (although to be fair, I didn't finish Dark Souls yet. Got it like a week ago and just got the Lordvessel). In Dark Souls at least it is possible to play well enough to not take any damage at all.
Gold seemed pretty easy to come by. At some point I decided to put all items I wouldn't use (both crafted and found) on the Trading Post. Came back next day, 1.5 gold earned. If I had been doing this the whole time instead of just once, I'd have a lot of gold.
Must say I did fill my inventory all the way often enough though. However, usually it was full of armor/weapons I didn't/couldn't use, junk, salvage items, crafting mats. So maybe it was possibly sort of a little bit kinda my own fault.
I used the cash shop to get that nice pirate outfit. The outfit costs 700 gems, and we got 500 gems for free, so I needed only 200 more, which cost me 24 silver (a mere fraction of what I had).
"I'll lead, you follow."
I didn't have to like, not sleep, actually. I just woke up far earlier than I'm used to, lol. Not even Guild Wars 2 is worth causing potential harm to the body, but I usually limit sleep to about 4-5 hours on the beta weekends to try and get as much out of the betas as I can. But that just goes to show how reasonable progression is in the game; gameplay-wise, it's a challenge, but progression-wise it all happens very naturally. Crafters will be thrilled, I actually stopped trying to level around 37, but ended up hitting level 40 just from crafting. The rest of the levels were from Ascalon Cata and helping friends and guildees out with their stories and events.
As for the inventory, you get tons of loot, so you need to be managing it fairly consistantly. You could have tons of bags and that wouldn't change, the Guild Wars series has always been very generous with loot, comparable with aRPGs. Perhaps it's because I played GW1 for so many years that I knew what to expect, and how to handle it. Don't just let stuff sit in your inventory, that's actually not what it's for; break it down into craft mats if you don't need it/can't use it (unless it's particularly good) then either deposit the mats for later crafting or sell them to people who will use them for money.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Oh no no no my friend, it's still P2W *Goes and stick his head deep in the sand*
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
lol I know right? My real fear is that if people say it enough, it will be true. GW2 will have a hard time profiting to the degree that other MMOs do, even if it has a huge following, just because the item shop is literally unecessary. They pulled it off with GW1, but GW2 is a much bigger and more involved game. They keep removing things from the item mall people don't like, even the whole dye seed thing (not dye also drops from mobs and are instantly usable), but if they start feeling like they can't win with the community either way, they might be less inclined to listen to it.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I'm inclined to agree with this, mainly because there's also a reliance on the other people in the team. It truly takes only one less experienced person to ruin the run for everyone. I had to fight the urge to scream at someone in our team who made much of the boss fights go on longer than necessary, because they'd keep dying and also didn't utilize their skills synergetically with the team. In DS, it's all on you, but GW2's dungeons bring group coordination to a whole new level of necessity.
That's actually, in part, a criticism from me. Story mode is doable in a PUG...barely, but you can do it. Explorable however, will leave most people so flustered and frustrated they'll either give up, or the run will last for many hours, which it shouldn't. There is literally no elbow room for error, first strike and you're out. In other words, explorable mode isn't very inclusive, and it's content a lot of people won't get to experience because it's likely only guilds will run it and even then, only the top tier members. Fortunately, the rewards from the dungeon are not better than what you can get outside of it, but that too might be a problem for some people, the risk vs reward.
Should be noted however, that the fear that you'd need specific classes to run dungeons is completely unfounded. My first time was 2 necros, 1 eles, me (mesmer) and a thief. My second was 2 necros, 2 thieves, and me. My third was guardian, ele, 2 necros (there's a lot of necro players in the game >_>) and me. With the exception of the last team, our compositions were always full of very squishy people, and we made out alright.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Heh, yeah had a guy comment on how fast it was to get a group going for AC. It is easy when you can just grab some people and just go. No looking for tank/healer is a blessing in disguise.
BOOYAKA!
Probably the biggest selling point for me with GW2, not needing a specific class for anything. Everyone is so able to take care of themselves, or will be once they get it through their head that GW2 is a game best played defensively. People keep loading up their skill bars with attack skills and putting all trait points into Power, then suddenly wonder why they're dying in 1 hit. Meanwhile even in dungeons my Mesmer was almost always the last man standing....a friggin mage, tanking long enough for everyone else to rush back so the boss didn't reset. Some of these players should be ashamed of their inability to adapt.
But yeah, just stand outside the dungeon or shout for a team and you get in one. I never waited more than a few minutes, and that's without any LFG mechanic. Yet.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."