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Guild Wars 2: Progress Shown this Beta Weekend
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
During this past weekend's second beta event, we took some time to check out the improvements and changes to the Guild Wars 2 client. We've go the full report of our impressions in our latest column. Read on!
So what type of changes are we talking about? Most of the more noticeable changes involve the UI. I’ve talked about this topic a few times in the past, and it’s a very delicate issue for some players. I’ve designed a few UIs myself, and it isn’t an easy job. You have to come up with something that is easy to use, yet looks pleasing to the eye, all while not taking up the entire screen. In some ways the new build does a great job of doing all these things. The energy meter use to be a bar. Now the meter takes up less space, and arches around the health globe. Now we have one element of the UI that does the complete opposite, the mini map.
Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: Progress Shown this Beta Weekend.
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Some of the pirate structures were made from old ships.
Comments
Yeah, game is just great. I did like new minimap. Also game run very smooth. I had screen full of people, NPC (centaur event) and effects from spells and abilities and game runs great :-D
Changes in chat and optimization of the client were huge, and certainly bear mention. After frame rate issues last beta weekend, I had no issues at all in large scale WvWvW PvP, and finally being able to communicate across a zone was a big win. Those were 2 of the big things I pegged as noticeable issues and I was glad to see massive progress.
I went into the WvWvW dungeon with some friends, and I'm not sure what to make of it. It wasn't really the Darkness Falls I was hoping for, but it was more of some platforming puzzle dungeon with a treasure box at the end that ended up having nothing in it. I'm not really sure what the point of this is especially since the entrence is in the central PvP lake.
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I get the feeling that "feeding cows" is going to be the punchline of a lot of GW2 jokes.
I love the new minimap, everything is square / rectangle on the UI, so it fits better than a circle. The tiering is a good idea, this way people are 'forced' to explore more places to unlock skill points, this makes players enjoy the PVE content more. If people get everything they want, they would get bored too fast and stop working for new goals.
Had a blast myself in the BWE. This was my first one that I actually played in, so it was a lot of fun. Trying to find the right combination of weapons/skills/traits is making for a very strategic way of thinking, something that has been totally lost with older MMOs. I came from playing WoW almost since release, so this is a very nice change of pace. Can't wait for launch, we just need a release date already, my nerves can't take much more of this!
I thought the new minimap was amazing. I don't get how holding shift to ping the map is difficult, even in combat. An option to change that would be nice though, since some people had dodge bound to shift and couldn't draw on the map without rolling around.
I think they are still tweaking since guildmates who were PvP'ing all weekend said changes were happening over the entire weekend there.
I wouldn't read anything into it yet. Also these BWE's are small stress tests also.
So far, very happy with what I saw in the recent BWE - I want the next one ASAP as well as the release but I also want A.Net to be proud of their product.
Another major change has to deal with skills. They decided to tier the skills, kind of like the traits. To unlock the next tier, you have to unlock 5 of the current tiers skills. It’s not really complicated, and does give a decent sense of character progression as you level up. Now, I read on the forums that some other players didn’t like this, and I can see where they are coming from. We all just want to unlock a specific skill when we have the points, not have to wait to unlock the tier it’s in. I get it, but I think this was a smart move. If you have all these skills, you start to think about different strategies. You really do play differently, and it makes you a better player
No it does not make you a, 'better player'. How are you a better player now that you have to get five skills you may never have wanted in the first place just to unlock the next tier? I played exactly the same as I did with BWE I just had to mandatorially pick three other things to unlock the next tier, something which I hate being forced to do seeings as the first BWE had much more variety. It also gave you more incentive to work towards something.
The only reason this was changed was because some people gimped themselves in the previous betas and whined about it, no other reason then that. It's a bad move IMO and it's a shame because I thought it was the one aspect GW2 had got down very well. I guess it's a bit scary for people who love their talent tress and they are the majority.
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
Performance changes were incredible.
Went from modest FPS (30+) at Medium settings to great FPS (50+) at High settings without a single change in hardware.
I was a little dissapointed with the uie changes map and skill window changes 'graphically' details, i think they are starting to dumb down the look and feel of the navigation ingame for new players.
very disssapointed in this -they are starting to kill details graphics in the uie. unlocking tiers skills was like beign hand held. havent compared it to Blizzard simpleton mentallity until this past weekend.
for those who dont understand you can look up images of old screen shots etc etc...
Maybe they should switch map controling. Let drawing be just a click, and scrolling be shift+click.
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Im really on the fence about the new skill setup. I preferred haveing the skills priced according to potency and allowing me to choose what to get. As far as, "makeing me a better player," once I had the skills I wanted, its not like I would never spend points again. I would of course move on the the skills I wanted almost as much until I got to the skills I least wanted. I can understnad why they did it, but I still preferr the old way.
Its funny that traits werent mentioned. They were a pretty huge change too.
I also forsee two more beta weekends to come -each one releasing the 2 remaining races.
maybe shooting for a september elease?
I didn't like the new mini map, preferred the old one, it just fitted in much better for me, it was simple, clean and functional. I wonder if it was changed because GW players may have missed the old mission map we used to be able to bring up by pressing 'u', the new mini map seems to be an almagation of that and a compass.
Skills, didn't like that my Mesmer had to change her build completely and didn't have access to a core skill for her previous build, I also don't like the fact that they are encouraging you to go to other starter zones to unlock skill points, I want that content fresh for my alts, of which there will be many
I noticed that the charr starter zone had more events added to it, I was impressed they added so many in such a short time, when they bragged about being able to add them easily they weren't lying. In a way I felt it backfired, some players seemed to get stuck where the events were packed together and repeated them instead of moving on to find new content. There's an inherent difficulty in balancing starter zones, on release and close to it we'll see player zerg throughout the early areas, a month or two after release they'll quiten down and more people will get to solo the content, not an enviable task.
The zoom of the camera really started to bug me this BWE, I got really tired of not being able to zoom out to see my surroundings, in a game that demands movement it seems counter productive to limit your view this way. Really, really missed being able to go in to first person view too, I didn't take any screenshots or any video this BWE for that reason, such beautiful cities and environments but I have my characters back in the way all the time.
I love the game, I know it's going to be my MMO home for years to come, looking forward to the next one
You should watch the video of the gamebreaker people going in the dungeon. People could set off traps to amper other peoples progress, it was cool. And there was stuff in the chest at the end, I guess yours might have been bugged?
Here's the video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWguoKzccF4
This is not a game.
I think that part of it is that other players can control the traps in that platforming puzzle.
I loved it i did a game journal on it here 3 hours of gameplay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ujrr8X-GT4&list=PLCEC17EAA9757064D&feature=plcp
Spoiler alert dont click this if you want to keep the game fresh for you launch time
I loved everything but my character but the developer said in the forum they will fix it so im hopeing. Im a mesmer. But only my character i didnt like, i used an ranger and was perfectly good the damage and everything only the pets still so squishy, they run around dead 95% of the time. And about world vs world ill reply there when you make your observations... wvw....
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hated the new minimap, but finding out now that you held shift to mark the minimap could change my perspective. I guess I need a do-over on the BWE. You hear that Anet?! Fire up the servers for me this weekend cause I missed the memo!
GW2 1st BWE was impressive but the improvement in the 2nd BWE was even more impressive. The difficulty tweak to the lower level DE was great imo