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Great OP Mono!!! I don't have anything else to say about this game that hasn't already said. Can't loving wait.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 16:21 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 06:50 |
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One thing I've found in light of the beta weekend is how hard it is to talk about this game. I keep explaining to others what Guild Wars 2 is by explaining what it isn't. It's kind of hard to talk about the game without just breaking it down to the fundamental elements and starting from scratch, since I think saying, "It's an MMO, but X" does a bit of a disservice to the game by putting a lot of preconceived notions into peoples' heads. In that respect, thank goodness for this OP.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 16:29 |
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Wonderful OP. Real quality work. So as we are all suffering the GW2 hangover and build theory is really the only thing to keep me going, I was making a Mesmer to be the biggest dick I could (which is quite easy) when I noticed the trait "Cleansing Conflagration" which removes ALL conditions when you use a torch skill. This allows The Prestige to become my new favorite skill. PBAoE blind, removal of all negative statuses, three seconds of invisibility and then a pretty nice PBAoE fire spread all in one single skill. I'm in love and we are still weeks away from playing again 
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| # ? May 5, 2012 16:36 |
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brainSnakes posted:"Why are we selling stuff to the humans again?" And those ones over by the crafting area. The humans say "even with a truce, we never thought we'd be rescued b a charr" and the charr sort of laugh about how saving humans is insignificant and walk away.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 16:54 |
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Stiggs posted:I'll be doing this for BWE2. Also gonna try and focus a lot more on WvW. Hopefully it's not too laggy! Didn't get the chance to compare it, but I've heard a few people also say that their connections to the NA servers were better than to the EU servers, but I imagine that was something that will be fixed before launch. I'll definitely be rolling on the NA server for launch, and I hope I can convince other Euro goons to do the same. Right now it mostly hinges on how Anet plans to manage home server population limits.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 16:56 |
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One thing I'm a bit worried about is that they (or the OP?) are selling the dynamic events a bit too much. The OP claims you'll even want to return to the newbie area after you've levelled up. How can those events possibly be varied enough that people will want to do them day in, day out, again and again? Or, how can there be enough different events to keep people interested? Picking up rhino poop instead of coconuts in today's random nearby event doesn't make it more interesting. I have a hard time imagining that there won't simply be a relatively small set of "event types", that you can immediately pick out as you walk near the event. One will be a mob invasion, one will be a collect quest, one will be a vehicle quest, or something else. Then it's going to border on WoW daily quests, and we'll hear sighs of "ugh, this type of event again, I just did it 3 times today!". Correct me if I'm wrong in my pessimistic assessment, please. Or perhaps these events aren't such a big part of the gameplay?
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| # ? May 5, 2012 16:57 |
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Pilsner posted:One thing I'm a bit worried about is that they (or the OP?) are selling the dynamic events a bit too much. The OP claims you'll even want to return to the newbie area after you've levelled up. How can those events possibly be varied enough that people will want to do them day in, day out, again and again? Or, how can there be enough different events to keep people interested? Picking up rhino poop instead of coconuts in today's random nearby event doesn't make it more interesting. I did the human zone 8 times during the BWE and I found at least 1 new thing I didn't experience each time. That was me basically just doing the hearts and not looking for events. The later zones have more complex events, so it's quite possible to go to one of those zones and see something completely new again.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:06 |
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Most events are not just disconnected quests that have nothing to do with each other. In Kessex Hills events are used in the zone invasion by the Centaurs. Depending on the outcome of previous events new events will occur. For example, while running through the zone the players had pushed back the Centaurs a bit and had to kill them from repairing a bridge. As I went further into the zone I came across the Centaur fort, the game told me the military (whatever the name was) is preparing to take over some more land and events were being used to push this, the one I saw included killing some commanders. I hope they make some events harder each time they are won so players can eventually see what happens when the event is lost. Going back to Kessex Hills, many players probably won't see what happens when the Centaurs take over as they'll be forever stuck holding back the hordes of players. There are quite a few places that do have events that just tell a story for the area, like the kids being a bunch of jerks in the Norn town. Yaos fucked around with this message at May 5, 2012 around 17:13 |
| # ? May 5, 2012 17:09 |
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Stop not being playable Guild Wars 2. I'm getting quite angry now.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:12 |
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I'd say it's more a matter of people letting hype color their perceptions to the point of unrealistic. Like, they aren't incomprehensibly revolutionary. You're still killing poo poo for rewards and will see content repeat. But i had more fun in the charr starting zone, with two buttons, following a giant zerg that flat out broke half the encounters i had, than i've had in any other mmo pve. It's like a themepark mmo where each zone is an open ended, multiple choice raid dungeon. Where all the encounters lead and bleed into each other. And then you add the smooth as butter quest logless interface and it becomes so good it's sexxy. Some people get pretty zealous about white knighting the game, kind of flip out when anyone compares its systems to other mmos, and oversell the new systems. But the reason they're doing that is because anet's system works. It works and it's incredibly loving fun. It's a matter of looking at the sum of the parts. All the little changes and conveniences of this bold new subscriptionless mmo really come together brilliantly. And yes i know gw1 didn't have a subscription fee either, but it wasn't really this kind of mmo before, either.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:12 |
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Those centaur events were one of the better ones i saw.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:13 |
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Adam Bowen posted:Since playing the beta of Diablo 3 and then Guild Wars 2, I haven't been able to play a single other game without getting bored within 30 minutes. I just want something to take up some of my free time until D3 comes out so I've been trying to play WoW and a couple of other MMOs again but I just can't go back to chasing their poo poo-filled carrots anymore. Didn't get on the GW2 beta, but I did play diablo3 and was very underwhelmed. Hopefully you are not telling me that they are on the same level, cause I just preordered GW2.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:15 |
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TomatoActivator posted:Didn't get on the GW2 beta, but I did play diablo3 and was very underwhelmed. Hopefully you are not telling me that they are on the same level, cause I just preordered GW2. They're not on the same level at all. Guild Wars 2 will actually be worth your money.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:16 |
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In beta weekend I did some random public events, specifically escorting a mule somewhere then overtaking/defending a small keep from centaur invasion. After this I decided I must be leveled up enough to continue my personal storyline quests. Turns out the next 2 personal quests were exactly the same as the last 2 public quests, only they were instanced. Really sucked, how much of this is bound to be in the final game? Another thing that bothered me with personal quests was going into the city, having to go into some instance to talk to some dude, and it dragged my party members in so I could have 3 lines of dialog with someone just to continue the quest in some other zone entirely. Why not just put these npcs outside without having to instance in and annoy the rest of the party with my personal quest?
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:20 |
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Plavski posted:Stop not being playable Guild Wars 2. I'm getting quite angry now. Go and play through Stranger's Wrath again in the meantime 
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:21 |
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Jerkops posted:I am in Germany and played on the NA servers for the BWE. The lag was not bad at all, in fact there were occasions where other people who were logged in from the US were complaining of lag and I didn't notice any on my end. I played mostly WvW, for the record. This is good news! We will be a ceaseless force of destruction in WvW, and it will be glorious.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:30 |
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It will be amazing if Euro and Aus goons are able to play on the same server as US goons. I know there aren't dedicated Aus servers, but if the sun never sets on the [GOON]s, we will have perpetual WvW dominance and it will be glorious.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:39 |
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I really hope they take the opportunity in Orr to go completely nuts with the dynamic events. Like the entire zone involving a massive meta-event where you have to help the Tyrian forces land, establish beachheads, push back undead, clear out forts and basically cleanse the land one step at a time. One end of the chain is 'everybody is dead' and the other is 'you're controlling 95% of the continent' but the latter should be really really hard to maintain, with constant waves of undead and difficult bosses, so that only a really determined group of good players can hold out. It's never going to be as cool as it is in my head 
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:40 |
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Was gonna make a big post about how i agree with paradigmm, but then i realized i've already done two or three of those this morning and am basically caught in that beta withdrawel feeling others have mentioned, so.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:46 |
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Oh man, the OP is so goddamn epic. The headers look even better when they're implemented  Quick note on a couple fixes though (because I'm anal/a perfectionist!) - The races section doesn't have the label separator above the video header. This one:  And looks as if the Necromancer information under the Professions section is indented. Just some minor blips in an otherwise brilliant and amazing OP, which I know for sure took a major effort to put together. Bravo! And to reiterate prior sentiments, I stopped playing the Counter-Strike GO beta because I'm having GW2 withdrawals, lol. I've reverted back to finishing up Winds of Change in GW1, but poo poo, it's just not the same Everything else is just so bland now.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:49 |
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AXE COP posted:I really hope they take the opportunity in Orr to go completely nuts with the dynamic events. Like the entire zone involving a massive meta-event where you have to help the Tyrian forces land, establish beachheads, push back undead, clear out forts and basically cleanse the land one step at a time. One end of the chain is 'everybody is dead' and the other is 'you're controlling 95% of the continent' but the latter should be really really hard to maintain, with constant waves of undead and difficult bosses, so that only a really determined group of good players can hold out. That is exactly what I'm hoping for.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:49 |
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TomatoActivator posted:Didn't get on the GW2 beta, but I did play diablo3 and was very underwhelmed. Hopefully you are not telling me that they are on the same level, cause I just preordered GW2. It depends on why you were underwhelmed by the beta for D3, I guess. I loved it because instead of just being a half-assed clone of what came before it the development team had the guts to look at all of the conventions of the genre, and then they kept the ideas that still work and tossed out the poo poo that doesn't work. That might sound off-topic since this is the Guild Wars 2 thread, but everything I just said about D3 is even more true of GW2. Instead of creating a straight clone of a 7 year old game (which was itself a clone of an older, shittier game) ArenaNet looked at the conventions of the genre, kept the good ones and tossed out the poo poo. The end result is a game that is fun as hell, but it will alienate a lot of "hardcore" fans of the genre who think fun is something you should earn by playing a game like it's a full-time job.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:52 |
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Woo, new thread. Great OP as always Mono, slightly disappointed you didn't claim
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:53 |
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Pilsner posted:Correct me if I'm wrong in my pessimistic assessment, please. You're wrong. Even with only the lowbie zones we've seen so far, there is a lot of variation to the events. Moreover, even the same types of events have different follow ups. You escort a chick with her dancing moa, you can watch a cute little bit where they dance and she sells them afterward. Doesn't matter if you are 80, you are still getting a meaningful amount of karma for doing it. No reason not to check it out.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 17:56 |
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I realized after the weekend that I was playing wrong. I think most of my complaints about the human zone seeming like it was too sparse for XP gains was simply because I was mindlessly trying to play it like a traditional MMO with hearts in place of exclamation points. Find heart > go to heart > do heart > repeat. If I had been talking to NPCs and watching what they were doing and finding all the ways to trigger dynamic events, I'm sure I wouldn't have wanted for XP at all.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:06 |
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Pilsner posted:How can those events possibly be varied enough that people will want to do them day in, day out, again and again? As you level up and go to higher areas, guess what? There are more dynamic events for you to enjoy and join in with. You don't have to click on any blue exclamation mark guys day after day in order to pick up baskets for stupid walrus people. You just do them if they're fun. In the beta you could wander by and find 20 or 30 people fighting a centaur leader. Or you could go and pull up grubs from some dudes garden which would eventually lead to you tackling a swamp monster from the underworld 20 times bigger than you. Or you could start beating up a cave troll and be on the ropes until over the hill comes 15 random people to help you kick its rear end. It's events like that that make you want to come back and do them again. Not xp or loot, but the awesomeness of having actual events happen, not just exclamation marks turning into question marks.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:06 |
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denizen posted:Those centaur events were one of the better ones i saw. This game really made me hate centaurs. gently caress those guys 
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:07 |
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Plavski posted:It's events like that that make you want to come back and do them again. Not xp or loot, but the awesomeness of having actual events happen, not just exclamation marks turning into question marks. This guy gets it. Also, screw you pal for making my GW2 hangover kick into high gear. I thought I had it under control. Now I'm twitching again. I think I need to go open the login screen and stare at it for a while until the music calms me down.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:09 |
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Let's see, it's only been a week since the beta? It's going to be forever for the next beta and I bet they won't have one at the end of this month. Bunch of jerks.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:16 |
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It'd really own if the next beta let us autolevel to 30 like the press beta did, just so we could see how wvw feels when the majority of players aren't totally untraited lowbies.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:24 |
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That's an absurd amount of information in the OP, wow. I'm so excited about this! Will we have to get another code for the next beta weekend? I had the 9 error problem and I think I might have gotten a pre-order code or something wonky and I want to make sure I'm able to play the full weekend this time.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:27 |
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Plavski posted:They're not dailies. You don't grind them. You do them if they're fun and if your friends are doing them. There are hundreds of them throughout the world in all the different zones. The point is that they're great fun to do, take no effort to get started and involved in, and you can come back and join in with whichever one you like with no particular negative side-effects and you'll always be at an appropriate level to have them be a challenge. I get what you're saying, but I'm not impressed by what I bolded. Those sound like any generic quest in WoW from 7 years ago. Kill a centaur leader, collect grubs and kill a big boss mob, fight a big guy and allies come to help? Woooo.  I'm not saying those events will be boring specifically, but I see no reason why they would exciting the 5th time you run into the same gang of centaurs, or the 4th time you get the same follow-up with that chick (or whatever). Thus I ask again, how big a part of the levelling experience and general gameplay are the events, compared to dungeons and such? Didn't the dynamic events in RIFT turn out just like that; something that's a bit exciting when you run into them as you explore and level up, then pretty much ignore once you've done them enough?
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:35 |
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Those 'allies' are real people. They are just random people who are playing and who you might stumble across fighting a boss and join in with for the enjoyment of playing a game. You might be out doing stuff on your own and all of a sudden a group of 10 real people appear and help you with your stuff. You then tag along with their gang and go and do some stuff together, like killing big monsters or helping a fisherman keep his traps clear. I think you're getting hung up on the desire to redo them continuously. Most people won't, they'll move onto the rest of the content in the game and do that. But if you want to, because doing things in GW2 is fun then you can come back and do cool things like joining in the siege of a city or defending a town against a horde of rampaging undead or helping a bunch of people stop harpies from breaking down the dam that keeps their village from being flooded. All this with loads of other people and not a word needed to be said to each other. But maybe you don't want to play a PvE leveling MMO after all and nothing that's in GW2 is gonna change your mind. Maybe you should watch some videos of people doing these things and see if it looks like fun? Fun seems to be a missing thing from most MMOs, wherein grinding to the next level is the only important thing and upon hitting top level, it's all about endgame grinding for items. GW2 has really emphasised the fun and less of the grinding. You don't have to do this stuff if you don't want to; go and break down doors in WvW if you want xp without questing I suppose.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:43 |
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Slabs posted:Pretty sure Pet Evolution isn't in the game any more. Pets just scale to your level and you can pick and choose from your menagerie any time you are out of combat. Corrected, cheers. teagone posted:Quick note on a couple fixes though (because I'm anal/a perfectionist!) Done, and well spotted on the indentation. I deleted a outdated section of the Ranger and forgot to reclose the list!
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:50 |
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Mono while you're here, i got a totally insignificant change for ya as well. You've got the engineer listed as having 2 weapon kits in the flamethrower and the elixir gun, but the tool kit is one as well. It's possibly the most fun one, even
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:55 |
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Pilsner posted:Wait to play the game, because literally nothing you talk about is like it. At all. Talking to you about it is like trying to teach you a foreign language, you are thinking about it in terms that simply do not apply.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:55 |
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Plavski posted:You don't have to do this stuff if you don't want to; go and break down doors in WvW if you want xp without questing I suppose. Or! Don't do this because it is your last resort, make it your first resort! Organized W3 is the greatest PvP I've found in an MMO in a long time. DAoC, and to an extend WAR are really the only things to have delivered it so far. And organized groups (IE goons) can absolutely dominate the Eternal Battlegrounds. WvW: A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head. Mind you, this is coming from a guy that pretty much abhors PvE as it exists in MMOs in this day and age. I may have a slight bias. brainSnakes posted:Mono while you're here, i got a totally insignificant change for ya as well. Technically he has 5. Elixir gun, Flamethrower, Tool Kit, Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit. The MedKit also completely swaps your skillbar, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a weapon kit.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:57 |
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Boogaleeboo posted:Wait to play the game, because literally nothing you talk about is like it. At all. Talking to you about it is like trying to teach you a foreign language, you are thinking about it in terms that simply do not apply.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 18:57 |
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Plavski posted:But maybe you don't want to play a PvE leveling MMO after all and nothing that's in GW2 is gonna change your mind. Maybe you should watch some videos of people doing these things and see if it looks like fun? Fun seems to be a missing thing from most MMOs, wherein grinding to the next level is the only important thing and upon hitting top level, it's all about endgame grinding for items. GW2 has really emphasised the fun and less of the grinding. Ok, thanks for the clarification. I certainly do want a PvE levelling game, I like that. However, I'm the type of player who thinks the levelling phase is the best part of the game, because you constantly get to new areas, get new spells and abilities, and perform some progression. Imagine a pre-made character in WoW that had all achievements, the best gear and a million gold. I would be bored playing him in two seconds. Thus, I do want some (actually, a SHITLOAD) progression in an MMO. If I wanted a no-progress game where people go straight to the end-game, so to speak, I'd play an FPS Deathmatch instead.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 19:00 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 06:50 |
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Nah man, the bomb, grenade, mine, and medic kit aren't weapon kits. They're device kits. Basically the same thing but more specialized. And it actually does matter due to traits. For instance there's a trait to give you 90 toughness when using a device kit. You'd get it for equipping the bomb kit, but not the tool kit. This is also part of why the engineer is the most fun class to me. It's like building yourself into a customized swiss army knife with how the kits work.
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| # ? May 5, 2012 19:01 |
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