The GW2 Book of Crazy’s Thoughts

Crazy_Stick

I picked up GW2 on the cheap during the holiday sale as a hard to beat buy to play offer only matched by TSW in value. I was hoping to find a fun to play fantasy alternative to WOW that wouldn’t sub or cash shop me to death. As a typical MMORPG consumer, I am finding it harder to justify spending for subscription based or supposed free to play games. It’s simple really, the comparative value isn’t there for me anymore with most modern day “one month wonder” releases lacking real lasting content.

 

About PVE: There is some really good area layout and event design on display while leveling. The various regions are all interesting with a couple of exceptions. I have enjoyed the dynamic events enough that I hope future games take note. It’s awesome finding everyone working together and helping instinctively. Some events are run of the mill and others over the top fun such as dressing up like a cow and teaching a herd how to fight by example. The problem comes when you move out of the starting areas though.

 

The middle level regions can be pretty empty so there are a lot of events running that no one does anymore and that’s a shame. They really needed to add layers of functionality to the various regions and events in PVE to draw people into visiting them later, be it a region with a rare crafting resource from an event or a station thats the only spot to craft a type of exotic or something else.

 

This is also a game that treats PVE and particular end game PVE environments as an area and tool for little more than farming loot and karma. You will find yourself equipping special gear to find magic items, good crafting ingredients, and more coin by fighting trash mobs of undead farmers and chickens for the best drops rather than putting on the best battle gear to fight dragons in epic brawls. This is the only MMORPG I have played where this was true...

 

About Dungeons and Fractals: I bought into the game for what I hoped would be good, dynamic, environmental quests. If I had bought into it for the dungeons I would be very angry. They can be summed up as unfun, overly repetitive, character grinders. They are amongst the worst in any game from my perspective. Basically, in dungeons focus fire one mob member down to reduce their numbers, expect to die, and rush back to repeat. High DPS build warriors have become popular for speed runs as a result. Fractals aren’t so bad but doing them forty or fifty times for loot will become the most boring thing ever.

 

Understand, the lack of the classic trinity isn’t the problem here. It’s how they decided to design the dungeons for play. Someone really needed to play more tabletop RPGs in their youth to to develop needed skills and get an idea of how to actually go about it. “I” could have done better than this and so could many people I know.

 

About Graphics and Art: Whomever did the art for GW2 is my hero. They made outstanding use of the engine. You can expect solid performance from the engine even on lower end machines. There is a major issue to be aware of. It’s called culling and it can kill your game play in PVE and particularly in WV3. Sometimes in order to guard FPS The engine will not render a mass of nearby players in a graphically intense environment until you are right up on top of them if at all leaving you to wonder where all the hostile invisible men came from.

 

About Crafting: This isn’t a game where crafters will be a respected part of the community. It can be useful at high level for making exotic gear for personal use or sale assuming you can harvest or aquire the needed resources and maybe for legendary stuff. There are some useful consumables. Otherwise, it’s a money sink with cruddy organization and total waste while leveling. You can easily buy quality gear off the trading post and stockpile a lot of coin by selling harvested resources to get what you need far more cheaply than making it yourself.

 

About Professions: The various character types can be a lot of fun to play and combat with them is fun. There is no trinity but you will quickly find out that classes seemed designed to favor certain play activities above others and that will impact your enjoyment of them. That’s how they are balanced really and many seem upset about it depending on what they want to do in game. As an example, Warriors rock in dungeon runs and PVE all around but while viable are very mediocre in PVP. Thieves play kind of cruddy in dungeon runs but can rock at PVP. They are not so versatile as one would wish for a game without the trinity and I wish they were more hybridized so you could play what you like and do what you want with it while feeling good about it rather than like you are handicapping yourself for liking class X.

 

About PVP: It’s fun and decently put together. WvWvW is a selling point and what I think was intended to be the end game for most people and to make it guild wars indeed. It’s not something you will really enjoy doing alone and some professions are simply much better at it than others by intentional design I think. If this is your thing then find a guild to run with and you can have some solid fun. The map is nicely designed and the environments entertaining. However, walls and ledges you jump down and over minimize the usefulness of terrain features. It’s funny watching a zerg run off a cliff like a bunch of lemmings only to bounce off the ground and keep going. Who bothers with roads? There are a lot of hacks going on sometimes and mining bots have been spotted there as well as in the PVE world. I already mentioned culling.

 

About Story: It’s not very good for what most people are going to want out of an MMORPG. I honestly wonder if it was intended for some form of cross media venture with comics and books. It makes their owned characters the center piece of everything and delves into the personal issues of the real “heroes of Tyria” while you clean up their messes. I really hate Destiny’s Edge now.

 

About Gems and Game Economy: This is not really a game with a true player driven economy. You can eventually grind out many things you will need to advance but there is a system of Diminishing Returns for loot drops programmed into the client itself to keep everything tightly controlled even with magic find gear. It’s their economy and not yours and the gripe that it intentionally leads more casual players to rely in the gem trade for spending coin for things they will need has a grain of truth to it. As many bots as are loose in areas in the game I am not sure I buy DR as a control against them. And don't get me started on the intentionally designed " error attempting to sell" crap...

 

The Bottom Line: In spite of all issues it manages to be a fun and very playable game. It’s one of the better MMORPG releases to come along in years as a result. You can spend a lot of time in Tyria. I would be much harsher if this were a game requiring a subscription as it doesn’t warrant one but it’s buy to play. As such its easy to play until the next big thing comes along and pick it up again when bored. It’ll be interesting to see where they go with it. I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

Vorch

Glad that you enjoy it despite its flaws.

 

* Middle-Areas Empty: I am hoping against hope that guild missions and new daily choices are going to help this.

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* Risk vs Reward Ratio: It is quite strange that the more difficult the encounter, the LESS likely you are to be rewarded. It makes more sense to farm lower level mobs than to tackle a champ. Which is a shame. Give open world champs a 5% chance to drop a laurel...that would make things very interesting.

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* Dungeons: Gonna disagree with you there. Since they removed the ability to use a WP while a party member is in combat, more and more groups promote intelligent play that includes protecting one's self and prioritizing the rezzing of other people. I understand that CoF path 1 speed runs require 4 zerker warriors and a mes, but quite frankly I take groups of varied composition. In the end, I lose MAYBE 2-3 minutes. 11-13 minute run instead of 9-11 minutes.

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* Art and Graphics: Nothing to add there. Extremely well done...only TERA imo is in the same category. However, in GW2 there are MUCH fewer invisible walls...you can explore the vast majority of what you see.

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*Crafting: Crafting was alright until ascended items came into play. Now, jeweler's are pointless due to laurels and FotM, armor/weapon smiths are pointless due to dungeons, and the only really useful craft is cooking. I don't mind having multiple methods of acquiring gear, but there should be certain stat combinations and skins EXCLUSIVE to crafting. Imo, the only reason to max crafting is to level or to do what's neccessary for a Legendary Weapon.

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* Story: Going to agree and disagree. I've played GW1 and read Edge of Destiny and Ghosts of Ascalon. I feel like the game provides enough story to keep people happy. There are, however, two major flaws in it's design. First is the level gating. I'd rather have chunks of the story unlocked ever 10 levels than recieve it in such a piecemeal fashion. By the time you go to another story mission, you have no idea  what's going on.

Secondly, Trehearne steps in and becomes the hero...something not seen since Kormir stole your ability to become a god in GW1: Nightfall. But instead of happening at the very end, it occurs half way through the story. It is an extremely puzzling choice in the story.

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That said, I'm still playing it. It's an amazing value and seems like there will be more to come.