Amusing GW2 review - light profanity

If somebody keys my car and slashes all the tires, I don't send them a thank you card with $50 inside.

YMMV.

Because "no trinity" should not mean "anything but a fragile speedster DPSer is vastly inferior".

Why even let players spend points in Tactics and Defence if they're not going to be greatly beneficial to yourself or others? Paradoxically, taking more defence means I take more damage and faceplant more than someone that did not. Because ultimately they've made survivability (and anything but damage for that matter) meaningless and that's not good design.

I may try a Guardian. The game has only been out a week.

But that doesn't nullify my point. Why should a defensively speced Warrior be greatly inferior? If the developers' intent is to get rid of the trinity and let people pick their own roles rather than shoehorned into one because of the class they took, making only one route for building that class viable defeats that purpose. I should be able to build a defensive Warrior and that should benefit me and my team greatly for doing so.
Currently, it doesn't, it just means I kill things slower, die more and contribute less to every team effort.

It makes me a fool for not putting my points into Strength or Arms like every other Warrior. It's not really a choice if every option but one is wrong, is it?

In that case, that's not me "doing it wrong"; that's a major flaw in the game's balance and design that goes against the stated philosophy behind it.



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Uh, yeah, you're doing it wrong because building tanky doesn't remove the need for mobility. Like I said, the guardian's playstyle is to focus more on standing and ignoring hits via blinds and blocks, so they need to dodge LESS often than the more mobility-minded classes. A mace/sword or mace/shield warrior has plenty of blocks too, but they also tend to be more single-target focused than the group defensive options of sword/focus guardians. Because Mace has a strong single target debuff (weakness) to neuter a target's damage, and a single target stun and daze, both of which can be used to interrupt those big Eff-you telegraphed attacks that bosses do, plus a parry stance to absorb another. Taking defense while playing defensively will keep you up longer than a pure glass cannon. But both of you are going to need to dodge. It's just the reality in GW2, and it's balanced more or less the same for all classes. Guardians have a smidge more wiggle room in that regard, and they pay for it with lower mobility and less powerful ranged options (and I think that cost is too high, personally, but that's neither here nor there).

And actually, the traits in the other defensive lines are pretty good for warriors. The major one that makes shouts heal actually provides very decent healing, and 3 perma stacks of might for the party from "For Great Justice!" is nothing to sneeze at. Nor is the ability to get near-perma party-wide swiftness with Warhorn's "Charge" and the right trait setup (taking, wouldn't you know it, defensive/supportive traits).

And yeah, your DPS is going to suffer compared to someone who goes straight Strength and Arms in favor of providing support, and you'll feel less of a benefit while going solo in DEs. But your damage won't be as laughable as a totally support-specced Defender or Controller - in terms of how you stack up against the other professions overall - and you'll be providing buffs that are pretty damn powerful. So keep shooting stuff in between shouting and dropping banners and contribute that way. Or - if you want to play a "tank" - go mace/something and hammer and probably Stomp and keep everything knocked down. Because GW2 has embraced something that has been quietly true in CoH for years - that tanking and control are two sides of the same coin, but one is generally more active than the other.

Yeah, I never understood the need to rush to the cap on a game that has just been released. You'll just run out of end game content sooner. Then again, I've always been an altaholic, smell the roses, kind of player in any MMO.

Completely wrong - there are buffs you get by being in a guild. We are mostly working on Economy buffs right now.

Also, does anyone else notice how the self-righteous in this thread are slamming the hell out of a game that has been out less than two weeks?

Thankfully I haven't done any such thing - I described a behavior that seems to match what you were just talking about and you took it upon yourself to think it was about your personality. I guess the question is why other MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER games should do it, or why you would intentionally look to play MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER games with a goal of whining about the multiplayer part.

Would be nice if you used a less aggressive tone. But to answer the question that puzzles you:

I am not a lot of people, I am me. I don't do TFs more than once, ever, on any character. Only exceptions is if there is a revamp to the specific TF.

Trials? I only ran one iTrial and only once. Had the trials been structured in a more apt way, a way that made sense for it to be a common occurrence, I may had been more into incarnate progression. As it is, the most annoying thing I done in this game was run Dark Astoria a few times to grind up IXP. Never unlocked Hybrid nor did i got beyond T1 on any tree (besides Alpha.)

Radio missions? Nop. Did them once, again in a bit of a grind, just for badges. I rarely took the rescue missions, though. Mostly would speed run them, and again, not one of the game's finest moments. But again: those are exceptions that I went through because I decided to go for badges instead of experience.

The fact that you defeat Praetor White 100 a month does not get tossed in my face, though. If I fly by the open world version of those zones, I wont see people killing him over and over. Chronos Titan may be the closest thing to that. Even then only seen him twice, and the second one was because my then SG called in for help.

Anyways, point is, your indoor activities are not tossed in the face of those that are walking about doing other activities, therefore can be experienced in isolation without having to see others repeating them in a critter version of The Groundhog Day.

I need to clarify this: as far as I understand it, you don't share anything in GW2 - you all get full benefits - nothing is split up.

Well, Johnny... I am forced to thank you. I had some interest to try the game out of pure curiosity (because it DOES look gorgeous, despite my dislike of outdoor content) but this here kills it for me 100%.

If there is no point to build for survivability, there is no point for me to try it since thats the gameplay I like.

It's the main reason I gave up Aion quickly (second being PvP grieffing) where my tank had to rest after every single fight but the "squishy" safely kited everything in the game, and the DPS killed fast enough to not be forced to nearly full HP bar downtime after every single solo fight.

Are they as inspirationally powerful as the buffs you get for WvW? +3% endurance gain, ooh, ahh. I meant substantive game system design, not little bones they threw in at the last minute.
I didn't realize that it was self righteous to express a negative opinion about a product that one has purchased.

So... at max level, if everyone does some big raid, everyone gets a purple drop? There is no rare purple drops in the game, unless everyone gets one? There is no rule saying "only one purple per defeat that will be randomly given to one of the participants"?

Ok, here's the question:

What would you like NCSoft to do to treat you better while still shutting down the studio and game? The 3 free months is not enough; I understand that part - is there anything else they can do for you directly?

I have yet to reach it - feel free to research.

I'll check with my guild leader about the numbers. I assume there is a specific percentage you are looking for, and that if they are high enough, you will then back off and instantly back off with the attacks... nah, we both know that won't happen.

The 'self-righteous' wasn't aimed at you - it was a generalization.

Sorry Sam but we're using your definition here in the examples you gave about why you feel open world missions can't give a sense of completion.

That same logic applies just as much to every single instanced mission, TF, Trial, etc, that can be repeated in CoH as it does to overworld activities.

No instanced mission in CoH is ever completed because it is always available to other people, and frequently to the same character via certain repeatable contacts.

Pretty much this.

However for me its' a combination of me finding the overall game to be terrible.

That combined with it being made by NCsoft is all I need to know to know that I'll never be spending money on GW2.

YMMV.

Nothing.

Pretty much done with NCSoft.

Had enough experience with them over the years to know that they won't get better.

So is/was Paragon Studios.

What free three months? I'm paid up through May 2013 and NCSoft has given me no indication whether they intend to issue refunds.

Your point? I didn't have a problem with NCSoft before this. Now I do.

And there's nothing wrong with that decision. Had I not bought the game over a month ago I would be doing the same as you. But since I can't get a refund I'm not going to turn my pre-purchase of GW2 into a gift by not playing it. It's not CoH but I don't hate the game.

I don't either. And I'm in the same boat. Already bought the game. Will play it casually. Will never buy any gems or expansions.

And there is no reason why we should not expect the game to be canceled the same way as soon as it starts performing only marginally well. That's the main reason I will not give NCSoft any more money.

To be honest with you if that's the way they want to do business they can.

Just no one should expect that I should continue to support that way of the doing business.