Guild Wars 2 Archives - Page 16 of 16 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Illusion of Choice

June 26, 2012 by Belghast

Before this past week, I had not really followed the news about the Mists of Pandaria expansion apart from a mention here or there in my RSS reader. So now that I am leaving the wow-free zone that I have created for myself, I am trying to catch up on all the tidbits of progress. I admit, when I first got wind of the expansion I was just as bitter and cynical as the rest of the “kung-fu panda and pokemon” complainers. I am not sure if it is the long leave, or the news I am reading itself but I am looking forward to it.

Never a Real Choice

One of the big complaints that did manage to invade upon my fortress of wow-less solitude, was the “dumbing down” of the talent trees. When I first heard the news, like a good chunk of my friends, I was full of rage over them needlessly simplifying a process that already worked “just fine”. I bemoaned switching to a system that gave up choice in favor of “hand holding”. My talent trees should be tall and full of many widgets to click on, the way they always were!

I have come to the realization that despite the “illusion of choice” and multiple options, in each tree there was really only one viable path. There are roughly 68 DeathKnights in my guild, and apart from no more than a 5 talent difference, each us has almost the exact same blood tanking build. For each class, and each tree, there has always been one spec agreed upon by the community to be head and shoulders above the rest. So while it always felt like we had tons of options, in reality if we wanted to play on any serious level, we were going to go with the agreed upon path.

The thing is, this has been the case in every game I have played that has some sort of a talent system. Rift added a bit more depth to the system, but the same winning combos were there as well. This was so much the case that between my times playing it, they have added this nifty system that tutors you through speccing into one of these agreed upon paths. This was a breath of fresh air, since with 9 potential talent trees to juggle per class, plotting a course became extremely arcane.

Freedom to Fail

The point of view I have eventually come around to is one that I would have argued until I was blue in the face a few years back. In the end, all having a talent tree does is really give a player a chance to screw their character up to the point of being unplayable. I had a friend, who shall go unnamed that decided to try and build a “Jack of all Trades” hunter in vanilla WoW. Instead of focusing on one tree and then some secondary talents, he spread his points out evenly trying to pick up the best all all the early talents.

The end result was a character that had no glaring weaknesses, but no real bonuses either. He could solo just fine, but when it came to running dungeons he lacked the raw damage output needed to support a team effort. Believe it or not, I have seen many people make this mistake over the years. The freedom of picking talents, also gives you the freedom to make characters that simply don’t work. Ultimately the designers have intended us from the start to try and reach those top tier talents. As such when a winning hybrid spec exists it usually gets “fixed” to restore the balance.

Less is More

So in returning to what outraged myself and others, at face value the Deathknight talents are going from 41 points to only 6 points. Initially like everyone else I thought to myself, my god they are watering these classes down. Last night I copied my Deathknight out to pandaland and quickly found out that my assumptions were completely wrong. In truth the new system is going to give us far more personalization while still remaining viable.

Just like with Cataclysm, when you first open an empty talent tree you are asked to choose a specialization. Previously this just gave you whatever the signature ability was for your class. Keeping with the Deathknight analogy, choosing Blood gave me Heart Strike, Veteran of the Third War, Blood Rites, and Vengence. However my talents gave me all the other abilities that made tanking as blood viable, namely all those handy “oh shit” cooldowns.

What it took me a long while to understand, is that in Mists of Pandaria, when you choose a specialization you are essentially receiving with one single click that previous “optimal spec”. Instead of getting those signature abilities from before, I receive 17 active and passive abilities that made up the golden path everyone chose. What this really does, that has never existed to this point is set a clear baseline of abilities that one can expect every possible spec to have. This completely takes the guess work of whether or not a player has some critical ability out of the mix.

Fluffy Goodness

Basically the talent points are now a series of decisions that occur at level 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90. Each of these decisions changes the flavor of your abilities, or adds new functionality to your class. When I switched my Deathknight from Human to Worgen, the thing I really missed was the Every Man for Himself racial. Previously in Wrath it was not terribly difficult to build a viable tanking spec that included the ability Lichborne. However in Cataclysm, you had to give up some high threat talents and utility to get it.

With the MoP talents at each level you are basically making a choice and in essence sacrificing other abilities. Most of the tiers, for the classes I have seen all are similar abilities with a similar theme. In the case of Lichborne, I can take it as my level 30 pick, but I am giving up on having Anti-Magic Zone and the brand new Purgatory ability. None of the choices really take away from my viability, but each shapes the flavor of my character.

So while at face value it looks like you have less freedom, in reality I personally feel like I have more than ever. I cannot count the number of times I have respecced just to change one or two points. That was the only real control I had, and in general I have had less than 5 points that could realistically be juggled. This time I am getting to make 6 choices, each of which has some pretty significant ramifications. I can be a tank with Bladestorm, or a Deathknight with AOE Deathgrip (Gorefiend’s Grasp), or Combat Rogue with Shadowstep. I get to make these fun choices knowing that I am not trading my viability for flavor.

Ode to the Trinity

I have to say I am honestly shocked after writing this all out, that I am really looking forward to the expansion. I made as many catty comments about it as the next person, but the more I read about the changes the more I like. The funny thing is, I know I am contradicting things I have said I wanted in the past. I have seen enough of the “post-trinity” games that I know that I don’t really enjoy them. At the end of the day, I really like having clearly defined roles.

The main problem I have had with abolishing the “trinity” is that without them I feel like I have no purpose. While this is great for soloing, grouping in games like Guild Wars 2 has been sheer and total chaos. The classes that generally get hurt the most are the melee, and those are the only thing I have ever been interested in playing. I cannot be happy unless I am sinking a weapon in monster flesh. Playing a “finger wiggler” just lacks the visceral quality that I crave.

So when I would try and take on a difficult/elite/etc encounter with group members, this little scenario would play out. I would run in and begin to attack, sword and board in hand. Sooner or later I would pull aggro, and begin trying to back out. Ultimately I would fail at shedding aggro and die while trying to heal myself. The fighting to stand up would fail as well, since we are fighting a big monster and not easily killed by throwing stones at it. At this point I rez, and try and run back into the action which may or may not be all the way across the current map.

Even in games that have blurred the lines a bit, without going into battle knowing your role it feels like every bad pvp experience I have had. “Lets all run in and throw ourselves at the enemy, I am sure they will fall to one of our flailing bodies.” I like knowing who is the tank, who will be providing dps, and who will save all our asses by healing us when we do something phenomenally stupid. A well balanced party was the key to pen and paper RPGs and honestly it still makes sense for MMO grouping.

Solo Friendly

I think the nugget at the center of every “post-trinity” argument however is pretty simple. Everyone wants to be viable in both a group and while soloing. SWTOR tried to solve this by giving everyone companions that essentially turned you into an instant somewhat balanced group. WoW has added in a lot more self heals, and other ways to save yourself when things are going wrong. Ultimately, everyone wants to be able to play the way they want to play and still be viable doing so. For me that is usually tanking, which I guess places me firmly as a pillar of the trinity.

This post has rambled on a lot longer than I had originally intended. I guess in hindsight I should have broken it into multiple posts, but at least in my mind all of these things are connected. I am still pretty shocked that I am looking forward to roaming around Pandaland. What I have seen of the areas, I have enjoyed. I will go on at length another time, as to why I feel Cataclysm failed whereas Wrath and Burning Crusade did not. Suffice to say, I feel Pandaria will be a return to the world building experience of the first two expansions. I am looking forward to exploring this new and beautiful world.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Rundown

April 29, 2012April 29, 2012 by Belghast

In all honesty I thought I would never be writing this post. I got an opportunity to play the game last year, and what can I say, I really hated it. The entire thing felt extremely “grindy”. I felt clueless as what I should be doing and what I should be focusing on. I went from heart to heart, and event to event, and would still end up having to go out into the fields and grind random mobs just to get to the next story element.

All that said, I was just honestly expecting too much for the state the game was in. There has been so much obnoxious hype surrounding this game, and so many often times violently devoted fans force feeding the notion that Guild Wars 2 was the gaming Messiah. After all of this, and after reading the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto blog post, I was expecting bottled magic. When this unrealistic expectation did not appear before me, I rejected it wholly and had essentially written off the game.

What changed my mind

I really hated the original Guild Wars, but even saying that I own two different accounts from two different attempts to play the game. I expected to give Guild Wars 2 a chance, regardless of my pre-disposition. With the very public beta weekend coming up, I went ahead and preordered the game to give it another chance. Essentially I went into this weekend expecting the game to be horrible, based on my previous experience.

I allowed myself to play the game with a fairly clean palette. What can I say, the game has grown on me. I can’t entirely attribute this to my change of attitude, because really the game is in a much more polished state. Previously most of the mobs were not even properly itemized, so that only added to the feeling of purposeless grinding. This time around I allowed myself to wander aimlessly, explore, and work my way through the various objectives on the map in a much more fluid way.

The Strong Points

Dynamic Mentoring:

This is by far my favorite feature of the game. As you move through the world, and it is a huge one, your level is automatically mentored down to the content. If you wander back in a level 4 area at level 15, you will be scaled down to level 6 or so allowing you to participate in events. The best part of this is that you gain experience and karma similar to your native level.

Auction House Anywhere:

This weekend there were some major issues with the Trade post system, but when it was working it was nice. Essentially you can open up your commerce window, and buy and sell from the trade post anywhere in the world. Once the bugs are ironed out, this will allow you to clear your bags of anything worth selling very quickly. The only negative of the system, is that it is not terribly straight forward, and it takes a bit to figure out that you have to physically go to a trade post location to pick up your items and earnings.

Dynamic Role Switching:

Early in the process, they have claimed to be abolishing the holy trinity of MMOs. This is certainly true from one perspective, but I like to look at it slightly differently. Each weapon set, gives you your first 5 hot bar abilities. Each weapon combo, gives your character a completely different feel, and you can swap these out on the fly based on your situation.

I tended to focus on a sword and board style tanky warrior all weekend, but my choice of main hand greatly changes the flavor. From my shield, I gained hot bar slots 4 and 5, but if I equipped a sword in my main hand, I gained a good deal of mobility with a nice leap, as well as a powerful cleave. If I swapped in an axe, I lost the mobility, but gained a strong 360 multi target AOE. If I changed it out again for a Mace, I gained several new defensive abilities, including a really strong block/counter attack combo.

If I dropped the shield entirely, and equipped a two handed sword, it gave me a series of very powerful AOE attacks, perfect for playing a more dps role. If I equipped a rifle, I had the ability to actually do powerful ranged damage. To complement these weapon abilities, are a series of skills that you purchase with points earned by doing the various skill challenges spread across the map. While there are still very clear tanky, dps, ranged, style roles, it feels like you have the freely to swap between them at will just by changing out your gear.

Huge Detailed World:

I cannot emphasis this one enough. The world is massive, and filled with tons of exploration candy. I put on several levels by just roaming around aimlessly trying to unlock the various points of interest on the map. A lot of times in these games, you sacrifice detail for size. However every little corner of the map seems to have the same artistic care as the main hubs. I found lots of little secret paths, stuff hidden under water, and plenty of other reasons to go off wandering.

I have a friend who claims she is part mountain goat, and she would have felt right at home in this world. If you can see it, there seems to be a way to get up there. I’ve only actually seen a very tiny portion of the map in my roughly 20 hours or so of gameplay. I’ve already seen snowy mountain peaks, lush forests, and murky swamps. The best part of the world are the cities, they are more detailed than I have ever seen in an MMO. They didn’t just get the city proper right, they got the surrounding land, and suburbs as well.

The Weak Points

Limited To Original Server Choice:

This one is pretty massive to me. When you first log into the game, you are asked to choose a server. At this point there is no real way to fully understand the ramifications of this choice. Essentially this server becomes your home server, and the only way to change servers is to pay 1800 gems (which if it follows standard cash shop trends equates to $18). There is a system in place, that lets you play on other servers as a guest, but since this was disabled during beta weekend it is uncertain how limiting this will be.

Why is this such a huge deal? Well this is just one of the ways the game is not super friendly to groups of friends that want to play together. As a long time guild leader, it is always a struggle to try and get all of your members on the same server at the launch of a game. SWTOR had a great system that let you preload your guild onto a server intact, but even with that there were a good number of stragglers that could not be bothered to sign up for the system.

As a result, even with that system in place it was a mess those first few weeks getting everyone re-rolled in the right place. Essentially there is no re-rolling on a new server without an additional cash outlay. This system is going to be a wholesale nightmare for large guilds, and will likely cause a certain measure of un-necessary fragmentation. I know personally that I can afford to pay to swap servers, but not every member of my guilds can. My only hope is that for a few weeks after release they turn on the home server moves for free.

Overflow System:

This honestly could have just as well gone as a positive, but it has some rather crippling side effects. When you load into your server, instead of placing you in a queue, you get placed into the Overflow system. This is great because it allows you to get in and play immediately, but in essence it places you in limbo. You are not really on the server as the rest of your friends.

So if you are trying to hook up and play with other players, you can wind up in separate instances with no way that I could find to swap between them. Since this entire system is a bit murky, I figure this is going to cause more than a small bit of headache. All that said however, I applaud the efforts they have made to remove queues from gameplay.

No Golden Path:

This is what gave me so much trouble when I had played it last year. You have series of instanced storyline quests that move the tale of your legend forward. The problem is there is no clear path outlined for you to get from point a to point b. If you were like me and went into this expecting the same basic quest construct as the rest of mmo-dom, you will likely find this as mentally jarring as I did.

Guild Wars 2 essentially is a sandbox, much the same way as Skyrim was. Quests exist out in the field, in the form of the various hearts on the map, but there is no guiding hand to make sure you go by and visit them all. On your map, there is a completion score showing how many hearts you have completed, points of interests discovered, and waypoints unlocked. I found that wandering around and exploring, took me across most of the major hearts and events, but I just had to change my mindset.

Voice Acting:

This is something odd, because while playing this weekend I recognized a good number of the voices from SWTOR. The male warrior voice, sounds like the same actor that played the Jedi Consular. Another voice I recognized as the woman who says “Oh Spanios” during “Lovers” quest on Tython. The problem is, the voice acting as a whole is not nearly as high quality as it was in SWTOR. While some of the same actors obviously were involved, the delivery just feels a good deal more stiff, and forced.

On the positive side however, the world is full of dialog. As you walk through the cities there is often times a murmur of multiple conversations going on at the same time. It really makes these areas feel more lived in. The only place you really notice the stiff delivery of lines, is during the story quests, when you have nothing else fighting for your attention. It wasn’t bad enough to keep me from playing, but it was noticeable.

The Takeaway

As the weekend has gone on, the game has grown on me more and more. Essentially I have adjusted my outlook to fit the game, rather than trying to mold the game into what I was expecting from other games. GW2 harkens back to an older era of MMOs, where the focus was on exploration rather than following a pre-planned path. Will I be cancelling my paid subscription MMOs to play it? Not likely, but I will be playing Guild Wars 2 when it releases.

Scarybooster put the game in perspective for me this weekend. Essentially he said that he is viewing this game as competing with the other free to play experiences. When you view it in that way, then it wins hands down against the other f2p titles. The world is huge, engaging, and as you move through it you are in no way gimped for not having spent money. When you look at the game like that, it is a complete no-brainer to buy.

For many players this game will be enough to make them cancel their subscription accounts. For me, it just scratches a different itch. I have no plans on cancelling either EQ2 or SWTOR for the sake of this game. I am in the position where I can do that. I think for your average player, this game will be enough for them. The game is a much more polished experience today, than it was at the tail end of last year when I initially tried it. So I have some hope that all the little bugs and annoyances will be given a thick coat of shine before release.

So all this said, I am taking back my opinion on the game. I am officially “un-writing it off”. I look forward to release, and look forward to seeing how the game progresses as we go through other beta weekends. As we close out the weekend, I made it to level 15, after 20 or so focused ours of gameplay. With 80 levels worth of content, and large chunks of it unique to each race, it looks like there will be more than enough content to satiate us. Fun combat, lots of content, and no subscription fee seems like a win to me.