GW2 -- Pre release Discussion

Things we do or don't know about GW2:

Betas: Betas occur late in each month.
Release: By the end of 2012 (I've seen speculation from April to December. The last I saw from A-Net had it pegged as 'by the end of this year').
Beta access: PrePurchase for garanteed access

How much:
Basic: $60
Deluxe: $80
Collector Edition: $150

Difference between Deluxe & CE: Physical content is included with the Collector version, including Photos, a book, and a charr statue. The charr does appear to have a FDS...
There is no announced in-game difference between the Deluxe and CE versions.

Any of the pre-order versions grant access to all remaining betas, plus a bonus item and 3-day head-start access to the game.

System requirements: Seem fairly low-key.... If you're getting good FPS in GW1 now, you'll probaby do fine in GW2 (tho 'do fine' may mean 5-7fps..)

Alliances: No official word, other than to say that they have no decision here on whether there will be alliances or not.

Crafting: Yes. You can gather and craft items. In a move for eliminating redundently repetative actions, it appears that you can craft huge amounts of something with relatively few clicks. Lets hope this carries over to using consumables in acquiring titles.

Play-style: Watching some of the PvP videos, I got a feel of Team Fortress 2, minus all those 'grind a pwn-ability' components of Team Fortress 2. Some of that's just the technology change. Some of that's the ability to jump and walk off ledges, or leap (fatally) off high balconies. The PvP side will include periodic WvWvW matches (think GvG, but Big. Real Big. **Really** **really* **big**). Some of the videos appeared to take place in more of a fort-aspenwood style setting -- a detail I find hardly surprising from leaks made early in the dev process.

Titles: Looks like these will exist. Different display of, but similar 'each next tier is x times more difficult than the last' from GW1. Even looks like there'll be a survivor title (eep!)

Elites: Some of these will be race based, some of them profession based.

Guilds: Guilds will be able to buy temporary buffs for their members (a-la guild-wide xp scrolls), as well as (I think) lasting upgrades to the guildhall (a-la GW1 guild upgrades).

Currency: As I follow it, there will be a straight in-game currency and a buyable 'gem' currency (micro-payments). Players will be able to trade gems and coins amongst themselves. This may seem cheap, but it will allow an un-inflated coinage currency in the game, while still allowing players to buy some types of things with gems, and allow people not paying $ for gems to farm fcoins and trade them for gems in-game. I'll be really interested to see how they get the gem prices to balance. I highly doubt the gem market will be left to chance. Yes, it should balance itself, but I suspect A-Net will include elements to help the process along somewhat.

Emotes: Some emotes include sound. The Female Human-Mesmer appears to be over-acting (probably taking after Norgu) but the female norn necromancer emotes appear to be well acted.

Play-style by class:
Mesmer includes part tank and part Beam Weapon. This will probably be one of the easiest to play outside of PvP.

Ranger can alternate tanking and range attacks. Might seem odd for the 'I use a bow' profession, but I think it's great that A-Net has kept the flexible playstyle.

Guardian: Looks to be a smite-monk in heavy armor (the class icon even incoorporates the monk symbol from GW1). The staff attack is slightly short range but looks handy, and some of the prot skills look to be quite potent. These will probably be popular in dungeon venues.

Elementalist: Not for novices anymore. Each element gets a different set of skills, and it takes time to unlock each. You are also given buffs each time you change your attunement to another element, so there is a gain by using the different elements instead of latching onto fire.

Engineer: Haven't seen much of this yet, but the equipment pack.... yowza.

Golems: Yes. And it appears that any race can use them. I've not seen them used outside WvWvW, but it sounds like they will exist in at least some capacity outside of PvP.

//Yamagawa

Ah, found the quote. It touches on the single thing that went nicely in GW1 and I see missing in GW2:

I believe Shoob said he hit for somewhere in the range of two billion damage. You know something has gone terribly righ... wrong. Terribly wrong. When weapon power is expressed in exponential.

//Yamagawa

Is that quote saying that damage is way to high? In all the videos I watched hits could be in 1000s.

The quote comes from a different game. The point behind my use of the quote is: Once you start expressing damage in larger numbers, the smaller bits of those numbers become irrelevant. Might as well use smaller numbers all around, then all you have is relevant bits of relevant numbers.

Yeah, you can hit someone for 1246 damage, but that 6 is kinda moot. So is the 4. Really, all you need to do is let the 12 represent the damage.

That can be done a number of ways.

GW1 did this by saying 'as you gain levels, you gain 'might' and 'toughness'. The mightier you are, the more damge you do against foes. The 'tougher' you are, the less damage foes do to you. This was part of the base damage calculation, which took difference of level into account and modified damage by it, on a logarithmic scale. Sure, you got HP along the way in leveling , but that HP gain was linear, and stopped at a mid 3-digit range. A foe that you might hit for 5 or 8 damage early on, after you hit level 20 you could nail for 3000 damage (although anything after that first 120 or so damage was wasted effort).

In GW2, the health scale appears to be linear. A 3000 damage hit could be fatal, it could be significant, or it could be a minor wound. For a max level player it would be like a 50 hp blow in GW1. When the damage is in the 3000 range, the detail of the damage being 3099 or 3001 is irrelevant information that the user needs to ignore, beyond counting the digits. The more digits you get, the harder it is for the user to realize the magnitude of that damage.

I'd much rather see scaling of ability/damage manged by level than by raw increase in ability/damage. This would scale somewhat to how things might appear in the real world (yes, GW is a *game*, but go with me for a moment). Critter XYZ is fully healthy, wounded, or dead. It's not a question of whether it has 20 max hp or 2000000 max hp, it's a question of what proportion of those max HP it has. A wound may be a scratch or a mortal blow. It's not a question of whether it dealt 19 of the 20 damage, or 1900000 of the 2000000 damage. Both are equally serious. The toughness of the critter is not something that is necessarily easy to view, but it becomes apparent when you run over that rattle snake with a pickup truck, and it continues hissing at you and shaking its rattle like nothing happened. Likewise, when the uber-mesmer-beam-weapon strikes that boss, if it goes 'tink' for 4 damage, you know you need bigger guns. If it goes 'tink' for 1200 damage, you see the 1200 and say 'Good deal!'. There's that added step of looking then at the health bar of the foe to see.... hang on, he's still at effective full health, and that looks like a over-charge boss attack being prepared... (Pitty the mesmer that doesn't look at the boss's health bar, and expects the incoming boss attack to land a meager 50hp...)

//Yamagawa
Fan of the 'not for 2 billion damage' schema.

Hahaha, I used to play runescape and about a year ago the multipled everything by 10, because i guess people like seeing high numbers and no zeros.