Guild Wars 2

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
I don't know if I can go back to Guild Wars 1, sadly. It's... slow and I can't jump, so it's lot to get used to all over again.
 
I have thought over the years to pick it up and try it, if for norhing else so I can unlock the ranger pets that are locked behind the Hall of Monuments. With this it might actually happen, since I play a lot more ranger in gw2 now, as the expansion gave us a fun elite spec.
 
can they change the annoying eye the north login screen we have had for 15 years? It's hardcoded so you can't change it. Although a lot of these changes are mods (UI, graphics) I welcome it as neglecting this game for the past few years I saw as a mistake by Anet.
 
I owned both GW1 and GW2 off-Steam. I was a kid and never achieved shit in the hall of monuments, so I figured I'd just restart and buy both on Steam. However, you can't link GW1 accounts to a GW2 steam account, so like.. what's the point? "Come back and fill your HoM! Can't use them though".

And they're adding a steam auto-login, meaning they intend for people to use the Steam account for GW1.. that you can't link.

Anyway: I actually played a bunch of GW2 and doing old content but it dawned on me that you -have- to do old content. The game is lateral. You have to do all content and completing one expansion won't overgear you for the next. It made me realize it's an endless grind whereas in WoW, you do old expansions for fun and achievements.
 
Th
Scream Aim Fire said:
Remember that Guild Wars 2 goes out of it's way to piss on GW1's story; retconning the Searing to look justified and such. I'm very much hesitant in seeing what Anet will be doing to with this update.
Click to expand...
The writers are also a bunch of progressives and tankies. They regularly insert their nonsense into the story. It’s everywhere, but I’ll try and list some standout moments I recall.

Two of the main cast in LW Season 2 are lesbian lovers, and in the middle of a mission they have a domestic dispute which is an unskippable story scene. The domestic dispute isn’t even interesting, and just amounts to being upset their partner didn’t tell them they had to respond to an emergency ahead of time.

In the expansion titled “End of Dragons.” One of the characters insults another calling her “bourgeoisie”, the character also takes it as an insult. A character introduces themselves “ Hey, everyone it’s your favourite non-binary engineer, Yao!”. In a strike mission (dungeon) one of the characters literally recites tanky propaganda against a strawman of a “conservative” about property rights. The ending of this expansion is the previously mentioned lesbian lovers having a wedding.

The entire “Icebrood Saga” about a civil war in the Charr. The allegories to US politics were very on the nose and later on the writers straight up admitted that various characters were shoe ins for Trump, evil white conservatives etc….

I’m sure there’s way more nonsense but I haven’t been keeping up.
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I owned both GW1 and GW2 off-Steam. I was a kid and never achieved shit in the hall of monuments, so I figured I'd just restart and buy both on Steam. However, you can't link GW1 accounts to a GW2 steam account, so like.. what's the point? "Come back and fill your HoM! Can't use them though".
Click to expand...
I've got good news for you





Where the fuck were they a year ago when I was finishing my 30/50 HoM...
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I owned both GW1 and GW2 off-Steam. I was a kid and never achieved shit in the hall of monuments, so I figured I'd just restart and buy both on Steam. However, you can't link GW1 accounts to a GW2 steam account, so like.. what's the point? "Come back and fill your HoM! Can't use them though".

And they're adding a steam auto-login, meaning they intend for people to use the Steam account for GW1.. that you can't link.

Anyway: I actually played a bunch of GW2 and doing old content but it dawned on me that you -have- to do old content. The game is lateral. You have to do all content and completing one expansion won't overgear you for the next. It made me realize it's an endless grind whereas in WoW, you do old expansions for fun and achievements.
Click to expand...
The weird thing is, you can't link a GW1 account to a steam-GW2 account, but you CAN link a steam-GW1 account to a proprietary-launcher-GW2 account. I know because my GW1 is on steam and I have some of the hall of monuments skins. So we know that Steam by itself was never the problem, it was always an issue of anet never getting around to getting the HoM linking to work.
 
The GW1 re-release just looks like it's a UI and slight graphical boon, thank god. I don't think they're changing much around with it so much as cashing in on retro-nostalgia waves. It's not even clear if it will be a separate server-set from the original game, honestly. The main cause for concern is "we plan to keep collaborating with our partners at 2weeks to make further improvements to the game in the future!" I don't really see the point of that, unless they're looking to nerf mesmerway.

Which is good. The original Guild Wars is a fascinating piece of design with so much potential that was just utterly and completely abandoned. GW2 is completely forgettable drivel.
 
milk said:
In the expansion titled “End of Dragons.” One of the characters insults another calling her “bourgeoisie”, the character also takes it as an insult. A character introduces themselves “ Hey, everyone it’s your favourite non-binary engineer, Yao!”. In a strike mission (dungeon) one of the characters literally recites tanky propaganda against a strawman of a “conservative” about property rights. The ending of this expansion is the previously mentioned lesbian lovers having a wedding.
Click to expand...

Don't forget that the end of the expansion also has Minister Li made out to be a Nazi strawman for the heinous crime of wanting to close the nation's borders because of repeated terror attacks. Meanwhile, the Empress is outright praised for hording all of the wealth and tech and for leaving the country open to said attacks in the first place; she even goes so far as to stonewall Li's attempts to protect the country and shut down investigations for... whatever reason.

Remember that this bitch also legit almost blew up the planet multiple times due to complete idiocy, and that we're supposed to be praising and defending her.

milk said:
The entire “Icebrood Saga” about a civil war in the Charr. The allegories to US politics were very on the nose and later on the writers straight up admitted that various characters were shoe ins for Trump, evil white conservatives etc….
Click to expand...

Worth noting just how many characters they assassinated in this one, both figuratively and literally. Also worth remembering that the only part of the expansion that was unironically considered good by most of the fanbase is the beginning parts... when you're working with Bangar and co., since they come across as sensible and likable.

Wasn't the Frost Legion brought back in a recent expansion? Haven't kept up with this game since EoD; I know there's talks about executing Bangar because he's an "evil fascist" or some shit, and that the Charr were apparently going to elect this "strang wamen" Charr as their supreme leader.
 
Last edited:
Scream Aim Fire said:
Wasn't the Frost Legion brought back in a recent expansion? Haven't kept up with this game since EoD; I know there's talks about executing Bangar because he's an "evil fascist" or some shit, and that the Charr were apparently going to elect this "strang wamen" Charr as their supreme leader.
Click to expand...

From the marketing material the latest antagonists are the inquest (bad asura), I may give it a shot since I liked the gameplay, I just wonder how much cringe I have to endure before accessing the new content.
 
Finished the story (as much as have been released) and exploration for the latest expansion, and all I can say is "not bad". The zones are nice, the underwater tunnels leading to grotto's are kinda fun to discover. But, just like last time there is a focus on a mount, this time the skimmer and like last time it feels very expansion specific and will probably not see much use once we move on.

The story is inoffensive, nothing great or even what I would call good, but also nothing really bad, although there is one thing that might go somewhere interesting, but having seen what the writing team has produced so far in this game, I'm pretty sure they will go for the generic story troupe instead.

The new elite specialisations are fun (atleast the ones I spent any real time with), the renown hearts are fine and the story quest design is boring and uninspired, but that is nothing new. Nothing really stood out as having a message or relate to real world events or people as far as I noticed. Overall, I'm happy with it so far.
 
Molag Bal said:
The weird thing is, you can't link a GW1 account to a steam-GW2 account, but you CAN link a steam-GW1 account to a proprietary-launcher-GW2 account. I know because my GW1 is on steam and I have some of the hall of monuments skins. So we know that Steam by itself was never the problem, it was always an issue of anet never getting around to getting the HoM linking to work.
Click to expand...
Update: Turns out you automatically link Steam GW2 accounts to Steam GW1 accounts. Upon launching the 'new' GW1, you get to choose from a menu whether you want to log into a Steam GW1 account. So basically, The two GW games linked AND on steam. I'm done with WoW and their bullshit. The crap writing, the leaving developers, all of it. I may not be a huge fan of GW2 but I like it simply because it's a completionist collectathon and it's on Steam.

That said: man I can't get into gw2 at all. Even if I find a class I like, knowing you can't change race and that all expansions take place on the same lateral level. If you beat one, you aren't gonna have an easier time with the next. There's no ladder. I'm in a /vg/ guild of sorts and even with 20 people online, nobody talks. They're all autistic eastern europeans who just log in to run their trains and log off again. I can't really enjoy GW2 outside hitting max level because I have no fucking clue what power grinds are worth doing or where they even are.

And the fact I always gravitate towards necro, but necro and even the new ritualist elite spec are just so fucking far from what normal necromancer fantasy is. None of the specs are appealing so it's not like "I'm okay playing a dogshit spec cause it's MY dogshit spec!!!". This sadly extends to GW1. Pet necros aren't a thing and ritualist is too wacky.. Ranger maybe? Elementalist in its purity is great - the fact it's a tryhard sweat spec in GW2 however ruins any hype.
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I can't really enjoy GW2 outside hitting max level because I have no fucking clue what power grinds are worth doing or where they even are.
Click to expand...
There are no power grinds past lvl 80 ascended (and maybe stat-infused). If you enjoy simple number-go-up vertical progression, then the game isn't for you, it stops at level 80. After you get ascended gear, gear doesn't get stronger in the conventional sense, you don't get additional stat points, you just find new ways to leverage the same amount of points more effectively. Like a weapon that scales well with them, or a spec, or a new allocation of the same stats that opens up a new build and role. That's the whole foundation for masteries and horizontal progression. You no longer level up your combat level, you level up expansion-specific masteries, that sometimes don't even affect more than the expansion they're from. The grind at that point isn't to get more power for your character, but to get more quality of life. If you already have an ascended build, you could gather gear for more different ascended builds so you can handle more roles in group content. Or when you already have all the ascended gear you could need, maybe you go for a legendary so you can worry less about assembling builds entirely.
 
Molag Bal said:
There are no power grinds past lvl 80 ascended (and maybe stat-infused). If you enjoy simple number-go-up vertical progression, then the game isn't for you, it stops at level 80. After you get ascended gear, gear doesn't get stronger in the conventional sense, you don't get additional stat points, you just find new ways to leverage the same amount of points more effectively. Like a weapon that scales well with them, or a spec, or a new allocation of the same stats that opens up a new build and role. That's the whole foundation for masteries and horizontal progression. You no longer level up your combat level, you level up expansion-specific masteries, that sometimes don't even affect more than the expansion they're from. The grind at that point isn't to get more power for your character, but to get more quality of life. If you already have an ascended build, you could gather gear for more different ascended builds so you can handle more roles in group content. Or when you already have all the ascended gear you could need, maybe you go for a legendary so you can worry less about assembling builds entirely.
Click to expand...
I'm all for doing old-ass grinds that takes 20 dailies to reach, ie. the fucking beetle mount in outdated old-ass musty content. But again, "if I had a main I loved and would do it all with". There's specs I enjoy but I'd like to enjoy the profession at its core and then just deal with whatever specs come my way. I love necros but fucking timed shrouds? Nukes? On a fucking necro? What wer they smoking? Sure engineer got a mech but that's -too- simple for me, and engies other specs make no sense.

I bought a bunch of expansions at one time and got a bunch of boosts, but apparently the boosted gear is like pre-instanced content? So those I've boosted have no benefit from gear from now on unless I do instanced PvE. Then there's all my alts where I have to climb the ladder the normal way which is fine but still, I figured a boost was like blue items in WoW, not pre-raid epics. I was really hoping Rt in GW2 would spawn turret spirits but apparently that's also only during a shroud. Mesmer always appealed but the way illusions die when you switch target and how half the specs are edgy-difficult makes it unappealing.

Maybe it's a blessing that GW2 professions are so non-typical but it makes it incredibly difficult to stick to anything. Pets? Ranger? Oh nvm, one spec barely uses them and the other absorbs them.
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I bought a bunch of expansions at one time and got a bunch of boosts, but apparently the boosted gear is like pre-instanced content? So those I've boosted have no benefit from gear from now on unless I do instanced PvE.
Click to expand...
The gear they give you for boosted characters is celestial, which is great for solo overworld pve, but in group pve, you'll want something more specialized, and that means getting new gear of the same rarity with different stats. The whole 'the same gear adapts itself so that it is always perfect for your spec, even when you switch builds' system from wow doesn't exist in gw2. There's a way to switch stats on ascended gear, but that isn't free, it's a crafting recipe that requires key materials that involve a chunk of what an exotic piece of the same stats would cost to make. The only way to make it free and instantaneous is if you have the legendary version of a piece of gear.

That said, if you need a stat-ladder to climb, you won't find it here. There's no climbing up the stat numbers. There is power creep, but no DBZ tier power escalation like in wow. In wow terms, imagine if wow was different. You take a max level character, and you go all the way back to outland, tbc era outland. And the mobs outland are weaker than what you're used to from Midnight, but not so much that they aren't a threat, they can still kill you if you don't watch out. That's basically what GW2 is like.

You may not like it because 'ooga booga number no go up', but if you tackle mmos as a theme park adventure world, this approach - so I claim - is better. Because with the DBZ tier power escalation you have in wow, old content doesn't feel like it's part of the game anymore. It's more like you're just viewing the old areas through a special debug mode where you have permanent godmode on and every skill is a /kill macro. An expansion isn't really an expansion, you're playing an entirely new game and everything that came before is abandoned content whose continued existence is merely vestigial in nature. The entire game, as far as the average player is concerned, is contained to the newest expansion and you never really visit anything else, beyond maybe Orgrimmar or Stormwind before you go back to the newest zones. Maybe the housing system will help with that, but with how much of that I fear they'll lock behind that new RMT currency they're introducing, I'm not hopeful.

In games like this (gw2 isn't the only one, ESO has a very similar design philosophy too), there is less content in total, but every piece of content added is an actual addition that you can still play years later and it still is as much a part of the game as it was when it was new and it very much plays like it did originally too. Every expansion actually expands upon the game as a whole, rather than replacing previous content. That way even though the game is miniscule compared to its vertical-progression competitors, it feels like it's bigger.
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I love necros but fucking timed shrouds? Nukes? On a fucking necro? What wer they smoking? Sure engineer got a mech but that's -too- simple for me, and engies other specs make no sense.
Click to expand...
Anet likes to play "I'm not like other MMOs" so every class feels really weird, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. Engineers whacky specs are my favorite, but I could never get into Revenants or Warriors.

⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
I bought a bunch of expansions at one time and got a bunch of boosts, but apparently the boosted gear is like pre-instanced content? So those I've boosted have no benefit from gear from now on unless I do instanced PvE.
Click to expand...
When looking at gear, you need to take account the quality and the stat distribution.
The gear you get by boosting is Exotic quality, with Celestial stats. That is good for soloing and Open World content. But is a "master of none" stat spread.

Depending on the activity you want to do or the build you want to run, you want to look for the adequate stat distribution.

There's only one "power up" after Exotic, and that's Ascended/Legendary. After that, there is no more "number go up".
 
Drifting Panzer said:
Finished the story (as much as have been released) and exploration for the latest expansion, and all I can say is "not bad". The zones are nice, the underwater tunnels leading to grotto's are kinda fun to discover. But, just like last time there is a focus on a mount, this time the skimmer and like last time it feels very expansion specific and will probably not see much use once we move on.

The story is inoffensive, nothing great or even what I would call good, but also nothing really bad, although there is one thing that might go somewhere interesting, but having seen what the writing team has produced so far in this game, I'm pretty sure they will go for the generic story troupe instead.

The new elite specialisations are fun (atleast the ones I spent any real time with), the renown hearts are fine and the story quest design is boring and uninspired, but that is nothing new. Nothing really stood out as having a message or relate to real world events or people as far as I noticed. Overall, I'm happy with it so far.
Click to expand...
I just finished the story today, you're right it's not that bad. They managed to make two good maps especially when you compare to what they did with janthir's wild where it felt like they focused too much on the first map, making the second one very disappointing.

Explorationwise the underwater grottos and the ruins in the second zones were really nice to explore. I don't mind the focus on a single mount as to be fair the skimmer was already a underused mount in the game so it's nice seeing it getting new use (even if it'll be used only in that expansion)

Storywise it's far better they focused on a smaller threat rather than what they did in both Janthir and SOTO. I just find it a bit sad we're still with the same uninteresting NPCs. I kind of miss the whole dragonwatch arc and the banter we used to get between characters. I'm also curious for once where it'll go, as this time they have the ingredients to do something interesting with the main villain of the story.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom