Guild Wars 2 : Exclusive Beta Tester Q&A #1

Couple days ago, we were on the lookout for Guild Wars 2 testers who would be willing to answer some questions regarding the game and their experience playing it over the weekend. Several people contacted us offering themselves for the task.

Today we gladly present to you, the first of many to come, Guild Wars 2 beta tester Q&A. Special thanks to everyone who volunteered and also to those who submitted their questions. If you didn’t get contacted for answering some questions, please don’t frown. There’s always next time!

The following questions are answered by a couple different people, to add some variety of opinion to the Q&A. One the testers also offered some background info and a nickname, while the other one wanted to remain anonymous.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading!

 

 

Exclusive Guild Wars 2 beta tester Q&A #1

 

Wanted to start with a short introduction. My name is Ark, I would consider myself an “MMO Veteran” if that term didn’t immediately make me feel like an elitist twat. BUT, I HAVE played a metric shit ton of MMOs.

Started with Dark Age of Camelot, no game since has captured Large Scale PvP quite as well.

From there I went to Anarchy Online for a few years, the PvP was fun in small groups…but in large ones it was so laggy everyone just put the leader on follow, spammed an assist macro, and smashed their faces on their keyboards until all their abilities were on cooldown.

After that I have never really stuck with an MMO for long, played Everquest/EVE/Guild Wars/Earth and Beyond/Lord of the Rings/Aion/WoW/TOR etc etc ad nausium.

I usually play healers in every MMO, so initially I was not excited at all about Guild Wars 2 because it was “killing” my role. But the more I read about it the more I became excited that I could still play “supportish” which is what I really enjoy about healing anyway, and at the same time I get to shoot stuff in the face too.

In this beta weekend I mostly played an Engineer, with a strong focus on turrets. I had the Inventions and Firearms traitlines maxed, with points into turret and rifle improving traits. The last ten points went to getting the turret self repair trait in the last trait line.

While I did most of my PvE and PvP on the Engineer, I also did some matches with the Thief, Necromancer, and one match with a Warrior.

 

Q: I heard that Guild Wars 2 contains portals, similar to the original Guild Wars, yet they are persistent. My question is that are these portals immersion breaking? For example, in Age of Conan minus the expansion, areas were not exactly linked. They were simply spots in the world. You didn’t really get a sense you were traveling in a large world.

A: The only Portals I encountered were the Asura Gates used to travel between Race Capitals and the PvP zones, and when entering Personal Story areas, which were just your own phase of a cave or part of town etc. The world still felt very open and explorable.

Q: I’ve also heard some people say Guild Wars 2 is easy. Now, I happen to think most MMOs are pretty easy and simple with a few snags in dungeons not going right because people aren’t working together properly, but simply is this justified saying Guild Wars 2 is easy? I imagine mentioning that Guild Wars 2 is “Easy” must mean it is easier than most other MMOs.

A: Difficulty is relative. I found the combat engaging and fun, and when I pulled too many enemies I died (3 times total In PvE) Also when fighting my first Veteran (Like Badass in Borderlands) I realised rather quickly that I was out gunned and had to run.

Having played MMOs from DAoC, Anarchy Online, and Everquest through todays WoW and TOR…I would say in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 falls somewhere in the middle as far as difficulty for ME. But as I said, difficulty is relative.

Q: Recently I’ve played Tera closed beta and very much dislike the dodging mechanic because you cannot dodge at will. If your character is in the middle of a move, you can’t break the skill or animation to act in a quick dodge. Rather, you must wait for that to be completed, which causes a delay if you need to dodge immediately from a boss jumping and landing on top of you. I know GW2 has dodging and a stamina meter for it, but is there a delay in dodging if you are in the middle of an attack?

A: There is no delay, dodging can and will interupt you cast, as a matter of fact I found it a bit annoying because I would accidently do it sometimes before I realised that double tapping a direction dodged as well as using the dodge hotkey.

Q: How is the thief class in PVP? Does the stealth work well?

A: The thief was far far more fun that I expected it to be, I usually hate stealthers but the way it is done in GW2 is cool. There is no long term stealth that you sit in bored out of your mind until someone comes along that you can open up on. Instead it is built into some skills, or used for varying reasons with your utility skills. For example, I made a dual-pistol thief that only had stealth in 2 ways, one was an AoE blind that stealthed me and all my allies, and the other was an AoE Stealth field that also healed everyone in it.

So basically I stayed at range as much as possible, unloaded pretty decent damage from afar, and if someone got me and/or my allies low I would pop my AoE blind stealth to save us, and my AoE heal stealth in those “oh crap” moments.

I had a ton of fun with that build. However, when I tried to be more like a “classic rogue” build…I was terrible. It was fun, and seemed if in the right hands would be great…but I did not have the skill to weapon swap effectively and keep the right venoms on at the right times etc etc…I just got destroyed a lot.

Q: Does the self heal make getting kills too hard?

A: Not really. Most of the self heals have fairly significant cooldowns (60 seconds or so) and if they don’t it is because they are weaker heals. I didn’t find I had too much trouble killing anything on my Turret Engineer, Except Minion Master Necros and Guardians…and they never killed me either we just spent 6 hours dancing with each other until our friends showed up lol.

Q: How does the last stand mechanic work and is it useful or just a gimmick?

A: Basically, you get knocked on the ground when your health gets to 0, at which point you get 4 abilities that replace your normal ones (based on class) that you use to do some damage. If you successfully kill something while in this downed state you “Rally”…which means you come back to life with fairly low health (seemed like 20%ish) and if you don’t you die, and have to respawn at a waypoint.

I thought it was a cool way to do death…makes death a little fun and stressful as you try to get yourself back up.

Q: I’d like to know if enemies in GW2 work on threat tables or if they have some kind of AI or awareness. Also, if there are any direct interrupts, do they interrupt you or stun you when you’re casting?

A: As far as I could tell in the couple groups I ran some events with, enemies usually attacked whoever was closest to them. As a thief I seemed to get aggro a lot, but never as my Engineer, even though my engineer did way more damage (because I sucked at thief not because the profession is weak)

I don’t think I ever ran into any pure interupts, just stuns and knockdowns that obviously interupted casting. I could be wrong of course, and I only got to lvl 18.

Q: I understand there are cross profession combos. Are there very visible tells on how/when they can be done, or do they require planning ahead of time. For example, if I am fighting a large dragon with a thrown together bunch and we can’t really communicate, will we be able to pull off some of these combos?

A: The combos are pretty straight-forward, it tells you right in the tooltip of every ability that is a combo starter/finisher. and even in a “thrown together bunch” some combos are going to happen even if they arent on purpose. Someone is bound to put a “field” on the ground near the dragon/adds…and Some ranged characters are bound to shoot through it.

Having said that, some planning ahead will definitely help make more efficient use of the combos.

Q: Would like to know how WvW is for melee orientated classes? In large groups is it a constant stream-roll or do they actually get some hits in?

A: All professions have access to ranged weapons, so there isn’t really a “melee oriented class”. I will say that all Warriors/Thieves who used both their weapon swaps on melee…got their faces torn off by my Engineer and his turrets. IMO, in PvP, everyone will need to use one of their weapon swaps on a gun/bow/staff/scepter and will need to use them during particularly “zergy” encounters.

…or against me…Seriously I can root people every 10 seconds, my net turret can root people…and every time I apply a root I also cripple (snare) you…get a gun/bow.

Q: I’ve been checking out the wiki and noticed that for humans, Avatar of Melandru and Hounds of Balthazar are elite skills; are there elite skills for the other 4 gods as well?

A: Grenth had one that was a PBAoE debuff…basically you turned all black and cloudy…and everyone who came near you got bleed/poisoned if I remember correctly.

Dwayna had a racial but it wasn’t an elite it was a heal skill…I don’t remember anything from Kormir of the top of my head…or Lyssa…

I could be wrong, I am just trying to remember as I type this and I cant think of racials for those.

Q: Do town clothes, as implied by their names, only appear in towns? Or are they costumes equippable above armor”

A: You can make them appear whenever you want, but they had no stats.

Q: Usually at what level does each player race start to meet the other races’ players and areas?

A: You can travel to other races capitals and do their content at level 2. It requires 3 clicks on the interface..walking to a portal, and clicking once more.

Q: What are some of the biggest changes to human cities in Tyria, community- and appearance-wise?

A: They are more hugerer (totally a word, shut up). and seem a lot more…busy? The city feels alive. Can’t really speak for community as it was a 3 day beta and not many people hung out in town.

Q: Have you met any game moderators?

A: Yes.

Q: Is attribute distribution permanent, or can you pay a small in-game currency fee to reset it, like traits?

A: You no longer distribute attributes.

Q: What are some of the strongest environmental weapons out there? (Jar of bees, egg, etc.)

A: I don’t know about strongest but my personal favorite was breaking a piece of wood on someone sending them flying…then finishing them off by throwing the twig I had left in my hand at them.

Q: Is it known if Engineer backpacks are able to be hidden? I know some players don’t like running around looking at the bulkiness all the time.

A: It is not able to be hidden as far as I could find. I wish I could at least dye the things to match my armor though. Fortunately, the build I ended up going with had no backpacks.

Q: How much of the beta community has played the original Guild Wars campaigns?

A: I have no idea how I could possibly answer that.

Q: Any rumours in-game as to Guild Wars 2′s release date? I’m so excited.

A: No.

Q: Will there be NPC companions appearing like the Heroes of Guild Wars, where you can choose to deploy them and control their skillsets and abilities?

A: Not in the beta.

Q: Hey, In MMO’s generally i HATE leveling, it leveling fun in GW2 or is it just the same old boring grind to max level?

A: For me it was the same as in all other mmo’s. Quests/Events/Story to get exp, to level up. Killing mobs is not efficient because you get small amount of exp for it.
The good thing is difference between amount of exp for next level.
For example from lvl6 to 7, you need 5000 exp. From lvl7 to 8, you need 5380exp.
But most exp you get from story mode, then from quests and events.
Leveling in WvWvW is real pain and made no sense, at least in this beta event.

Q: Hello there, I wanted to know how often are the loading screens? do u encounter them between every zone or only between regions and cities?

A:Not very often from my experience. In starter area there were like 2 loading screens – for main city and then for story mode instance. All other terrain was loading during game.

Q: How can you create a guild ingame? Any Requierments?

A:In beta we could just create a guild, even with 1 person.

Q: The chat bubble that occasionally pop up during combat, can they be turned off?

A:It was showing very rare and mostly encouraging. I didnt look for an option to turn it off, and now its too late to check

Q: Do the chat bubbles pop up when a thief is stealthed?

A:Never saw that happen.

Q: Can you describe the auction house? Is there a sort option for the AH?

A:Didn’t test it.

Q: Besides Destiny’s Edge, what other in-lore guilds are there?

A:Can’t answer.

Q: I hear that you can join several guilds and select one to be active; how does this system work?

A:I will check that in next event

Q: I hear that endgame content scales with the level of an area, and that endgame gear and loot drops as much from these areas as higher-level ones. But do higher-level areas bear better rewards in comparison, and is there a distinctive trend marking this?

A: Can’t say about endgame content, but drops were very common for pve areas and WvWvW.
In higher-level areas drops are adapted to your level. In beta there were a lot of blue gear drops.

Q: Guild Wars 2 is all about innovating the MMO genre, according to ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY); but what existing conventions and systems remain in the game? (Sorry, I know this question is somewhat vague.)

A:If i understood this right. I didnt find many innovations in GW2. Except maybe for combat which is different from most.
But other aspects are the same as in other mmo’s. Pve – quests are standard (you dont have to go back and turn them in – big plus), events are like rifts in Rift.
WvWvW is polished version of New Frontiers from Daoc – that’s why i love gw2

Q: If you put your skill ’1′ in auto-attack mode, when you press any other of the skills on the bar, the ability ’1′ will continue in automatic mode or you have to turn it back on?

A:To be honest I always turn it on, mostly because pvp fights are really intense in gw2 So, cant answer for sure atm.

Q: So my question really is about the amount of “micro” involved in handling the classes. Are there classes that have high micro demands? To give you context, I played a Bard in Dark Age of Camelot and it was probably the most fun I ever had in a MMO — I had to swap my instruments, twist multiple shouts, heal, interrupt enemy spell casters, and provide crowd control all at the same time. Suffice it to say, my fingers were a blur — is there a class in GW2 that will give me that feeling?

A: I think that if you will want to ‘master’ gw2 you will get this feeling with most classes (i played DAOC a lot). But closest one will be mesmer. You may need more fingers