What am I missing here?

NeoVeni

This post might be treated as a troll and ignored but I thought it was worth a try anyway...

I recently grabbed the trilogy since GW2 is coming and I wanted to understand the world more before getting into it having only played the game briefly during its beta. With all the praise I've heard about the game it felt like a safe bet, but everytime I try to play the game I quit after an hour or so. So with that being the case I really wish to know what I'm missing when it comes to the appeal of the game?

Issues I'll list with it :

• 
  Rubber banding - I remember this in Beta...Your character basically just bounces all over the place on regular intervals when running most especially near objects like trees or what have you. I have steady FPS so its not that and I've never experienced it as bad as in this game.
• 
  Shallow story - In the Review it was mentioned the game has a good story but I fail to see this? I've made a character in every starting area so far and all I'm getting are extremely run of the mill boring fetch quests with little in the way of interesting writing. Is this something that comes in later?
• 
  Frustrating combat system - It just feels extremely unresponsive. The thing that I've had the most frustration with is tanking. I made a warrior and I can't seem to generate any sort of threat so as soon as the healer henchman fires off a heal the entire lot of them focus fire him dead. Is there some way around this? I've had a similar problem rolling other classes and having a tanking NPC...Everytime a decent sized engagement starts the healer gets FF'd and dies.
• 
  Poor Visual aides - I know some will cringe when they hear WoW invoked, but I have gotten used to having minimap indicators of where NPCs are that have quests and as far as I can find so far they only show up when you have a quest to turn in? Also on some quests you aren't given much indication of what to do. One quest had me needing to get various foods which required a specific drop to be turned in for each one, but the individual NPCs give you no indication at all of what might drop said trade in item.The trade-ins themselves seem rather ill-thought out as you have all these random NPCs strewn about and remembering who trades what for what where just comes across as needlessly complex.
• 
  Harsh Difficulty - This is partly because of the combat problems I've had but the game has a very punishing difficulty level very early on it feels. A specific example would be I was playing the Nightfall campaign and Attempted to do a quest at level 6. The problem was the mobs you had to fight where quite clumped up and even if you waited for them to spread a bit from one another you would end up pulling 4 - 6 of them with no good indication of social agro range. Even more frustrating is the death penalty and how going into town resets your instance. I had fought half way through dying several times and weakening each time, but if I had gone back to town to wipe my res penalty (It had gotten to the point where the healer was getting 2 shot) all of my hard work would simply be reset...It seems rather silly to have such harsh penalties on so low of a level. I also experienced similar scenarios in night fall as well having to clear large packs of mobs and if you died being hampered by ever increasing death penalties. Killing monsters to lessen this seems to take far longer then it should and I saw no means to say pay off this penalty either. All of this lead to a rather frustrating experience.

Anyway I just felt like asking what is it I'm missing here? I'm hardly a novice at MMOs playing them for years (FF11, WAR, WOW, DCUO, and Aion just to name a few.), but this game has truly left me feeling frustrated and vexxed at how it gets such high ratings and yet feels so very un polished and unwelcoming to new players like no other game I've played...Many of my problems may simply be things that I'm misunderstanding, but in that case it would be nice if the game tried to take the time to explain itself more thoroughly.

Alot

Originally posted by NeoVeni

This post might be treated as a troll and ignored but I thought it was worth a try anyway...

I recently grabbed the trilogy since GW2 is coming and I wanted to understand the world more before getting into it having only played the game briefly during its beta. With all the praise I've heard about the game it felt like a safe bet, but everytime I try to play the game I quit after an hour or so. So with that being the case I really wish to know what I'm missing when it comes to the appeal of the game?

Issues I'll list with it :

• 
  Rubber banding - I remember this in Beta...Your character basically just bounces all over the place on regular intervals when running most especially near objects like trees or what have you. I have steady FPS so its not that and I've never experienced it as bad as in this game.
• 
  Shallow story - In the Review it was mentioned the game has a good story but I fail to see this? I've made a character in every starting area so far and all I'm getting are extremely run of the mill boring fetch quests with little in the way of interesting writing. Is this something that comes in later?
• 
  Frustrating combat system - It just feels extremely unresponsive. The thing that I've had the most frustration with is tanking. I made a warrior and I can't seem to generate any sort of threat so as soon as the healer henchman fires off a heal the entire lot of them focus fire him dead. Is there some way around this? I've had a similar problem rolling other classes and having a tanking NPC...Everytime a decent sized engagement starts the healer gets FF'd and dies.
• 
  Poor Visual aides - I know some will cringe when they hear WoW invoked, but I have gotten used to having minimap indicators of where NPCs are that have quests and as far as I can find so far they only show up when you have a quest to turn in? Also on some quests you aren't given much indication of what to do. One quest had me needing to get various foods which required a specific drop to be turned in for each one, but the individual NPCs give you no indication at all of what might drop said trade in item.The trade-ins themselves seem rather ill-thought out as you have all these random NPCs strewn about and remembering who trades what for what where just comes across as needlessly complex.
• 
  Harsh Difficulty - This is partly because of the combat problems I've had but the game has a very punishing difficulty level very early on it feels. A specific example would be I was playing the Nightfall campaign and Attempted to do a quest at level 6. The problem was the mobs you had to fight where quite clumped up and even if you waited for them to spread a bit from one another you would end up pulling 4 - 6 of them with no good indication of social agro range. Even more frustrating is the death penalty and how going into town resets your instance. I had fought half way through dying several times and weakening each time, but if I had gone back to town to wipe my res penalty (It had gotten to the point where the healer was getting 2 shot) all of my hard work would simply be reset...It seems rather silly to have such harsh penalties on so low of a level. I also experienced similar scenarios in night fall as well having to clear large packs of mobs and if you died being hampered by ever increasing death penalties. Killing monsters to lessen this seems to take far longer then it should and I saw no means to say pay off this penalty either. All of this lead to a rather frustrating experience.

Anyway I just felt like asking what is it I'm missing here? I'm hardly a novice at MMOs playing them for years (FF11, WAR, WOW, DCUO, and Aion just to name a few.), but this game has truly left me feeling frustrated and vexxed at how it gets such high ratings and yet feels so very un polished and unwelcoming to new players like no other game I've played...Many of my problems may simply be things that I'm misunderstanding, but in that case it would be nice if the game tried to take the time to explain itself more thoroughly.

1. Rubber banding is caused by two things: collision detection, but mostly, lag.

2. The story starts off really slow in every campaign so far (especially in Nightfall).

3. In GW1 mobs tend to go after the character with lowest health/armor and highest damage output. You should try to attack the healer or at least the casters in a group first, in order to make the AI in your party attack these mobs as well is by holding "left-ctrl" and pressing spacebar or any of the hotkeys while having targeted a mob. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Aggro

4. Well, most quests create quest markers on your map.

5. Yes, the learning curve can be overwhelming for new players, if you want to properly learn the mechanics you should start with the Prophecies campaign, and I think you should check out http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page as well as http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_making_a_build and the guide that's at bottom of the page about a profession.

And possibly http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_PvE.

AzurePrower

Guild wars has it's certain charm to it.

To me, the exploration part is what makes it great. After I hit max level, I just grabbed a bunch of henchmen and went solo exploring max level areas. Finding random bosses to grab elite skills from.

The story comes from the missions and are pretty decent.

Guild Wars is not the best of games. But for its price and content, it was value for money. I only bought the vanilla version back in 2008 (with out the expansions which don't interest at all) and still I come back to it time to time when I'm bored with another MMO I'm burnt out on.

To be honest. Only playing for one hour isn't really giving it a fair chance.

Sky427

Originally posted by NeoVeni

This post might be treated as a troll and ignored but I thought it was worth a try anyway...

I recently grabbed the trilogy since GW2 is coming and I wanted to understand the world more before getting into it having only played the game briefly during its beta. With all the praise I've heard about the game it felt like a safe bet, but everytime I try to play the game I quit after an hour or so. So with that being the case I really wish to know what I'm missing when it comes to the appeal of the game?

I'll start with addressing your issues and why you're fustrated.

Issues I'll list with it :

Rubber banding - I remember this in Beta...Your character basically just bounces all over the place on regular intervals when running most especially near objects like trees or what have you. I have steady FPS so its not that and I've never experienced it as bad as in this game.

 

Rubberbanding is an issue that happens in many games that I've played however in Guild Wars it's much more prominent but also completely conditional. It only happens under certain circumstances and being able to identify when it could have happened is key in the gameplay. Rubber banding happens when

A.)You pass through two close together objects but there is not enough space for you to pass but looks like you can potentially pass. What happens here is that on the servers side you're stuck but on your screen it may appear you've just ninja'd through the creatures.

B.)When you have a severe speed debuff on you and you are body blocked. What will happen here is that it will appear as though as youve walked past the person trying to hinder your movement further but infact you will rubberband to a location while moving around them(In most cases otherwise it will sync up at a different location)

If Rubberbanding happens alot to you(For neither of the reason) Your internet is being wonky, honestly its not fps related its completely related to the communication between you and the server.

 

Shallow story - In the Review it was mentioned the game has a good story but I fail to see this? I've made a character in every starting area so far and all I'm getting are extremely run of the mill boring fetch quests with little in the way of interesting writing. Is this something that comes in later?

 

Majority of quests in guild wars are only for minimal story involvement(Like for telling you how old a character is or how they became who they are or what happened to village a) in most cases irrelevant. If you want story from Guild Wars it is certainly not in the quests. All the cut scenes and important dialogue are in the Missions. Not the quests. There are quests with important story lines but they make themselves more obvious as to their importance.

• 
  Frustrating combat system - It just feels extremely unresponsive. The thing that I've had the most frustration with is tanking. I made a warrior and I can't seem to generate any sort of threat so as soon as the healer henchman fires off a heal the entire lot of them focus fire him dead. Is there some way around this? I've had a similar problem rolling other classes and having a tanking NPC...Everytime a decent sized engagement starts the healer gets FF'd and dies.

In Guild Wars there is no threat. Monsters don't care if you /taunt them and say their mothers are ugly. Because they already know if they can kill your squishies first you're screwed anyways. Mobs have several rules they follow when engaging in combat, Priority targets are lower AL(Armor Level) and Lower Priority targets are High AL targets. Warriors are not the only tanks in the game, any class can be a tank depending on the foes to be dealt with. Don't delude yourself into thinking Guild Wars is like any other game. It's not. Mobs go for squishies and may give up pursuit of you depending on how much faster you are than them. They always go right when you block their path and their interuptts are on an unhuman level. Get used to it. It's how the game works and once you learn how it works it's very easy to overcome them.

 

More on thanking... All high end Mission tanking is completely positional tanking. Your build will typically be build to survive huge amounts of monsters by taking their damage and reducing it to 0 or healing you over the damage and then instantly killing every creature you aggro. In most cases you will never just run in and let them wail on you hoping to reduce their energy or waste their skills. Most creatures in the guild wars have limitless amounts of energy and improved cool down reductions so it is key to ensure you have them against a wall and boxed in by two objects, yourself and the wall. (Thats where the mobs always turn right then you block them rule comes in) otherwise the creatures will scatter, run away from you continue running away from you while turning right and then when they have regened, destory your team.

• 
  Poor Visual aides - I know some will cringe when they hear WoW invoked, but I have gotten used to having minimap indicators of where NPCs are that have quests and as far as I can find so far they only show up when you have a quest to turn in? Also on some quests you aren't given much indication of what to do. One quest had me needing to get various foods which required a specific drop to be turned in for each one, but the individual NPCs give you no indication at all of what might drop said trade in item.The trade-ins themselves seem rather ill-thought out as you have all these random NPCs strewn about and remembering who trades what for what where just comes across as needlessly complex.

If you play enough you'll memorize them. Hold Alt+Ctrl to see all the names in an area.

• 
  Harsh Difficulty - This is partly because of the combat problems I've had but the game has a very punishing difficulty level very early on it feels. A specific example would be I was playing the Nightfall campaign and Attempted to do a quest at level 6. The problem was the mobs you had to fight where quite clumped up and even if you waited for them to spread a bit from one another you would end up pulling 4 - 6 of them with no good indication of social agro range. Even more frustrating is the death penalty and how going into town resets your instance. I had fought half way through dying several times and weakening each time, but if I had gone back to town to wipe my res penalty (It had gotten to the point where the healer was getting 2 shot) all of my hard work would simply be reset...It seems rather silly to have such harsh penalties on so low of a level. I also experienced similar scenarios in night fall as well having to clear large packs of mobs and if you died being hampered by ever increasing death penalties. Killing monsters to lessen this seems to take far longer then it should and I saw no means to say pay off this penalty either. All of this lead to a rather frustrating experience.

lol harsh penalities? Death Penalty is easily removed with a few creature kills or items aquired on holidays such as candy canes. Creatures are always linked together, if you make one mad you make them all mad. However they are still monsters and thus follow a specific set of rules and act a certain way. You're intended to use this to your advantage. Elementalist? Pull them with a longbow(So they are out of spell range) Walk them onto a wall so they ball up and nuke them. Bam, dead no problem. What are you out in zones killing monsters for? If you need to get somwhere, then you can either do that, or run right past them. How you might ask? Don't ask me, ask yourself "How can I run past all these creatures and not die?" alternatively you can just type pvxwiki.com into your address bar and it can tell you. Lazy bastard.(No jk it's how 90% of the GW community works anyways go ahead enjoy the cookie cutters.)

 

Anyway I just felt like asking what is it I'm missing here? I'm hardly a novice at MMOs playing them for years (FF11, WAR, WOW, DCUO, and Aion just to name a few.), but this game has truly left me feeling frustrated and vexxed at how it gets such high ratings and yet feels so very un polished and unwelcoming to new players like no other game I've played...Many of my problems may simply be things that I'm misunderstanding, but in that case it would be nice if the game tried to take the time to explain itself more thoroughly.

 

The game doesn't need to explain anything, it tells you how combat works, how to move, how to chat thats all you need to know to play. If you want a specific set of instructions and information on every mechanic in the game(Theres alot) Then that is what the /wiki command in the game is for. Alternatively if you're still finding this game "fustrating" I'd be happy to take a few minutes to explain how things work in the game and even demonstrate for you.

drbaltazar

guildwars is a great game,if you dont see it just go play something else!

we were millions playing it till arenanet advertised gw2,player of gw1 have been olding their breath ever since that annoucement!