Author Topic: Guild Wars 2 - U jelly cuz its free  (Read 80374 times)

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Rahxephon91

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #240 on: August 29, 2012, 04:31:34 PM »
IS there anyway I can see how this would run on my system?

Human Snorenado

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Re: Guild Wars 2 Beta (Next BWE 7/20. Launches 8/28)
« Reply #241 on: August 29, 2012, 05:01:07 PM »
I'm gonna be honest- I know practically nothing about this game, but from etoilet's mega pic post I can conclude a few things

-grafx sux
-whatever race etoilet and cg are playing as is a twee monstrosity for the whimsy addled set
-it looks like etoilet likes playing house... BORING.  games should be about killing fucking monsters n shit.  this is why mmos are universally dogshit and arpgs are where it's at.  no dumb guild activities, no dumb job crap, no feggity playing house.  MANLY KILLING OF MONSTERS AS MEN SHOULD DO.  then acquiring of loot.  i am judging every single one of you who show any signs of enjoying this nonsense.

playing dress up is manlier than playing house

got it

When you're dressing up in armor n shit to better KILL MONSTERS. 
yar

Human Snorenado

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Re: Guild Wars 2 Beta (Next BWE 7/20. Launches 8/28)
« Reply #242 on: August 29, 2012, 05:02:03 PM »
http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/

It's not pvp, but as previously stated pvp is for fucking wankers who want to waive their e-peen about.

PeeDee was looking for some team-based FPS and you recommend him a five year old game...

A new expansion to a five year old game, asperfuck.  Step off my shit, you don't want to fuck with me.  Go back to being weird about this game.
yar

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #243 on: August 29, 2012, 05:14:30 PM »
yeah whatever race that is, its a big turn off. I must be MMO racist :(

ASURAN MASTER RACE

BEHOLD OUR POWER


Trent Dole

  • the sharpest tool in the shed
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #244 on: August 29, 2012, 10:31:03 PM »
Magicaru snow storm causin' rori supremacy? I guess I can dig that.
Hi

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #245 on: August 29, 2012, 11:39:31 PM »
Looking through the dungeon reward vendors, I noticed that each dungeon has a set of gear relative to the level of the dungeon, but they also have an extra set of Exotic level gear that is much higher in level. Ascalon Catacombs is a lvl 30 dungeon with a level 60 set, and Cadacius Manor is a level 40 dungeon with a level 70 set. The other six dungeons have max level 80 gear sets. All of the dungeon vendors have special sigils that you can buy for your weapons, and they have some sort of token needed for crafting Legendary Weapons.

Due to the downleveling, this means that all the dungeons are valid at max level and have max level rewards. Catacombs and Manor don't have an 80 set, but are probably part of creating Legendaries.

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #246 on: August 30, 2012, 01:00:04 AM »
Looking through the dungeon reward vendors, I noticed that each dungeon has a set of gear relative to the level of the dungeon, but they also have an extra set of Exotic level gear that is much higher in level. Ascalon Catacombs is a lvl 30 dungeon with a level 60 set, and Cadacius Manor is a level 40 dungeon with a level 70 set. The other six dungeons have max level 80 gear sets. All of the dungeon vendors have special sigils that you can buy for your weapons, and they have some sort of token needed for crafting Legendary Weapons.

Due to the downleveling, this means that all the dungeons are valid at max level and have max level rewards. Catacombs and Manor don't have an 80 set, but are probably part of creating Legendaries.

I love that idea. Plus I heard if a higher level player does a low level dungeon with a low level player, it'll scale accordingly. So no more running lowbies in boring fashion
010

Cerveza mas fina

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #247 on: August 30, 2012, 08:40:50 AM »
*Cough*

ANet takes their betas as actual bug finding and fixing betas. This overloaded their system, but after a few minutes it worked for me. They just don't see beta as anything other than a beta for testing.

You know, so they don't launch a feature-less, unfinished game that nobody can log in to for the first week. *cough*

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #248 on: August 30, 2012, 03:44:16 PM »
uh i'm pretty sure WoW launch wasn't this smooth

The fact that the game stays up and is playable is pretty good for a huge MMO launch. They do need to get their shit together on the social systems. No Trading Post, Guilds fuxored, chat fuxored (this was at like 4am, probably fixed now), mail system unavailable until they ready authentication, and the grouping into overflow issue are highly annoying.  It's very hard to level crafting or make money without the Trading Post being up.

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #249 on: August 30, 2012, 06:05:00 PM »
I'm curious to see if they open up more NA servers. Every server is Medium to High and occasionally Full.  They added three Euro severs because the French and German language servers were filled to capacity.

One of the issues they face with opening new worlds is that they have to do it in threes because of the WvWvW. That means they really need a huge amount of people ready to transfer to a new server to open up a new server. They can't simply add just one world to lighten the overall population balance.

Cerveza mas fina

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #250 on: August 30, 2012, 06:21:46 PM »
Should have thought of that before  :smug

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #251 on: August 30, 2012, 07:36:33 PM »
maybe this could have been avoided if they had a, you know, bigger beta
010

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #252 on: August 30, 2012, 09:03:48 PM »
So Kripp's account got nuked for using karma to buy cooking ingredients and then turning that into gold by selling it back to vendors. I think it's an absurd ban.

As for the player rush:

Quote
What’s going on behind the scenes right now?

We’ve stress-tested every system in the game, but no stress test will get you to the point our servers are at right now with launch, so we’re monitoring every part of the game. It’s a big game, and — you’ve played it, so you know — there are so many moving pieces to it. There’s the game itself, the guilds, parties and friends lists, the trading post, web services and tons more.



Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/08/29/guild-wars-2-producer-wed-turn-off-sales-to-preserve-the-game-experience/#ixzz2555v97O9

.
Quote
How’s server stability at this point?

In general the game has been holding up very well and the servers are running great, even under launch stress. We did have to take some things down, like the Trading Post, which as you know has been offline for a while. That’s because, as players started hitting it, we had capacity issues, and we wanted to make sure it’s in really good shape, because it’s such an important part of the game — it needs to work well. Behind the scenes, we’ve got a lot of brilliant people working on that software, and they’ve identified where players ran into capacity constraints, and we’re testing and testing and testing to make sure we get that fixed.

I’ve had no problems to speak of so far, and I know that’s anecdotal, but I was listening to a pretty popular Guild Wars 2 podcast earlier, and all they talked about was how surprised they’ve been that the servers aren’t underwater.

Demand has just been off the charts. We can’t believe the sales volume so far — it’s been way beyond our expectations. We’ve had concurrent users pushing the 400,000 number, and that’s before the game was even on store shelves. This is why none of us have had any sleep for days. And I do think those numbers will only go up now that the game is on store shelves.

We scheduled the headstart [three- and one-day early launch access] so we’d have a chance with pre-purchasers to discover and fix any problems, and we’ve already discovered and fixed several. I think demand is crazy and it’s only going to go up, but I think we’ll keep things running smoothly.

My priority — our priority — is ultimately making sure that players have a great experience. We spent five years working on Guild Wars 2, and we’re going to spend years and years supporting it. If we got to a point where sales continued to be off the charts, and it threatened the experience that players are having with the game, then we’d just turn off sales.

Turn off sales?

To clarify what I mean by that, we sell the game on our website and we also sell the game at retail. And we know how many boxes we’ve created, so we know how many copies can possibly sell through retail. If it gets to the point where sales are so high that it would be unwise of us to keep selling on our website because it wouldn’t leave enough slots for all the people who’ve already bought and all the people we know are going to buy, then we’d just turn off sales.


That would be a shocking thing to do, obviously — not something that you ever see in the games industry — but for me it’s an easy decision, because for me, Guild Wars 2 is a long-term project. I want players to keep having a great experience, and I know if we had to turn off sales temporarily, it’d be okay.



Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/08/29/guild-wars-2-producer-wed-turn-off-sales-to-preserve-the-game-experience/#ixzz2556DDVQW

It seems they have reached that point as web sales from their website are now closed.

Cerveza mas fina

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #253 on: August 31, 2012, 03:09:59 AM »
Someone got banned for using ingame mechanics?

 :lol

 

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #254 on: August 31, 2012, 03:26:00 AM »
Kripp used Karma (one currency) to buy ingredients for cooking. What he made with his Cooking skill was worth a decent amount of money if sold to the vendor. He did this while streaming. ANet saw it as an exploit that he was advertising, but I don't see how its an exploit. If they got their math wrong then that's their problem and they need to adjust how much karma the ingredients cost or how much the item "jalapeno poppers" is worth to vendors. Cooking  items offer really good buffs, so it's not a surprise they sell for a good amount. Unless there was something else he was doing, I find it pretty bullshit.

A lot of people were banned once it was discovered that level 60 exotic weapons in the Norn city of Hoelbrak were costing like 21 karma instead of 21000 karma. People who bought thousands of these got permabanned. People who bought like a hundred got a 72 hour ban. People who bought one or two got no ban.

They are now offering amensty to everyone who got permabanned and reducing it to a 72 hour ban. Maybe they saw all the charge backs coming their way or the bad PR this makes. Both issues were bugs that are ANets fault. These games are about taking every advantage you have and a lot about min-maxing. I'm glad they did the amnesty, but I don't see why they didn't just do a rollback to begin with. Banning people for taking advantage of your mistake is lame. What Kripp did wasn't even a real exploit. It cost him thousands of karma to make gold, and many good items in the game cost karma.

They are also warning these people that they have to dispose of the items and gold they made. I'm not even sure how you do that. How do you delete currency? You can only spend it on more stuff.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2012, 03:31:59 AM by etiolate »

Human Snorenado

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #255 on: August 31, 2012, 03:36:35 AM »
Rigorous beta testing!
yar

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #256 on: August 31, 2012, 03:49:49 AM »
Thanks for the explanation Etiolate. It really seems like this game needed another few months in the oven and its clearly not finished if players get banned over stuff like this and all these issues that are very basic and could have been resolved with just testers running around.

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #257 on: August 31, 2012, 04:50:31 AM »
Most everything in the game is smooth. The servers have remained up. They just patched in a new build, the game logged me off, and then logged back in, downloaded the patch in a few minutes and was ready to go. I realize that a lot of features going missing is because I'm playing late at night when they do live maintenance. During these moments, guilds and parties disappear, and mail gets wonky. It's a bit weird, because most online games just go down and then back up. ANet live patches, sometimes features that are on their side go out, but you can still play the game because most everything you need to play works. It's just weird that suddenly your contact list disappears because its maintenance time.

But it's still an MMO, so not everything is smooth, and the experience won't smooth out in every aspect until (I am guessing) a month.  If they get the Trading Post back up, then that's about everything working. Partying has been working for me now, so that seems fixed.

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #258 on: August 31, 2012, 05:41:04 AM »
I dunno you must admit its a bit of a fuck up, considering that this is a much smaller launch then WoW or Diablo.

Not only the technical side, but the issues with selling stuff etc. Wrong prices of things. Thats basics.

Of course I there will always be issues with MMO's, but Anet fanboys where bitching about Blizzard and lo behold, same shit, different game.

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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #259 on: August 31, 2012, 02:57:45 PM »
Maybe if you pay 2 euro you get access to some fancy private bank.

Pay2Win.

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #260 on: August 31, 2012, 04:18:17 PM »
Banning Kripp lol. That's one way to fuck up your game's PR

Again, this is something that would have been snuffed out by a longer, bigger beta
010

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #261 on: August 31, 2012, 04:49:04 PM »
I think its kind of insulting to spergs to try to use it to explain Ruzbeh.


Othewise

Chillin out relaxin
actin all cool

« Last Edit: August 31, 2012, 04:57:19 PM by etiolate »

ManaByte

  • I must hurry back to my comic book store, where I dispense the insults rather than absorb them.
  • Senior Member
Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #262 on: August 31, 2012, 05:10:54 PM »
Crashing and burning less than a week out the gate.
CBG

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #263 on: August 31, 2012, 05:15:08 PM »
No, if it was like Diablo 3, it'd be unplayable.  SMUGFACE

Also, it's apparently selling like crazy.


Cerveza mas fina

  • I don't care for Islam tbqh
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Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #264 on: August 31, 2012, 06:11:41 PM »
Crazy like 10 million crazy like diablo?

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #265 on: August 31, 2012, 06:14:59 PM »
haha no

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #266 on: August 31, 2012, 07:45:51 PM »
Read what I post. They stopped digital sales because the influx of people needed to be ebbed.

FatalT

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #267 on: August 31, 2012, 08:50:54 PM »
Traded in a few games at Gamestop since they had the 50% extra trade-in value deal going on and got this for basically free. Rolling on Stormbluff Isle after I finish patching/downloading!

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #268 on: August 31, 2012, 11:05:54 PM »
I'm etiolate.9185 in game if you want to play with CrystalGemini and I sometime.

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #269 on: August 31, 2012, 11:22:51 PM »
What does CrystalGemini think of the game?!?! Her opinion will decide my fate
010

chronovore

  • relapsed dev
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #270 on: August 31, 2012, 11:33:26 PM »
Bears do banking now?

Occasionally it's a bear market. Sometimes bull's.

Damian79

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #271 on: September 01, 2012, 08:16:56 AM »
This game is awesome.

p.s.  Ruzbeh is an idiot.  Seriously complaining that the bank is not large enough asthetically?  WTF is wrong with you.

archie4208

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #272 on: September 01, 2012, 11:55:52 AM »
Two stupid questions:

1) Why isn't this on Steam?
2) Why wasn't this F2P from the outset if it comes with a buttload of microtransactions? 

ManaByte

  • I must hurry back to my comic book store, where I dispense the insults rather than absorb them.
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #273 on: September 01, 2012, 12:06:03 PM »
Two stupid questions:

1) Why isn't this on Steam?
2) Why wasn't this F2P from the outset if it comes with a buttload of microtransactions? 

Because ArenaNet's "NO MONTHLY FEES EVER!" relies on people paying $60 for "Expansions".
CBG

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #274 on: September 01, 2012, 03:21:09 PM »
Two stupid questions:

1) Why isn't this on Steam?
2) Why wasn't this F2P from the outset if it comes with a buttload of microtransactions?

1. It seems Steam has policies now about in-game sales and microtransactions where Valve wants to take a cut. For now, it seems ANet doesn't want to do that. They did have the first Guild Wars on Steam, so I imagine they might work it out at some point.

2. It's Buy to Play, and it's not a buttload of microtransactions or at least not in the way a F2P has microstransactions and microtrans ads. The store offers a nice amount of things, but the only real store-only items are cosmetic items like pirate costumes and top hats for your character, and account upgrades like extra character slots and added storage space. Buy to Play is the same price model they used for the first game and they're using it here. Their design is based around that and not F2P or Subs.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2012, 03:37:45 PM by etiolate »

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #275 on: September 01, 2012, 04:28:22 PM »

So, last night, I finally did Ascalon Catacombs. AC is a level 30 dungeon and its Story Mode is the first dungeon in the game. It was much harder than I was expecting or anyone in my group was expecting. I think everyone thought they could just mindlessly DPS and be fine. We all rushed in without a strategy and nearly wiped on the first pull. Our group had two thieves, one guardian, an Elementalist and my Mesmer.

As the dungeon went on, we started getting much better at the pulls, mobs and flow of the dungeon. We had a couple of people who had tried Story Mode before but not beaten it. I think I'd rather just break this post into certain encounters, why they kicked our as, and what we did about it.

1. Mobs

Our first pulls - We fight the first two or three mob pull and nearly wipe. The Melee goes down first and rather quickly. Some people are just DPSing and standing still. I try to rez one of our melee guys and nearly die myself. Early on, we were doing a lot of corpse runs from the Waypoint to progress. I hope this is not by design, as it racks up the repair bill. Luckily, they include a armor repair guy in the dungeon. Anyways, what we learned is:

-You have to figure out your pulls before going in. Call Targets and separate targets. You can pull individuals from a pack away from the rest. This allows you to fight one mob at a time, and this is much easier. You also don't want to fight multiples in a tight area. Pull the mobs out of stairwells and chaotic tight spots.
-When fighting a ranged + melee mob, you can LoS the range or anti-range him. As a Mesmer, I switched up my toolbar to aoe combo fields and a lot of anti-range stuff. My Illusionary Warden could occupy a ranger mob while we focused on another mob.
-Combo fields! Drop them, use them. I was stacking combo fields with our Guardian. Applying chaos fields on top of light and fire fields. This gave chaos armor and condition cleansing to those who used them up with a finisher. After awhile, our melee adjusted, remembered to move and dodge, and take advantage of fields. They began to live longer.

2. Traps

We ran into our first trap room and did pretty well with it. We quickly focused on the gryphon heads that controlled the traps and took them out. The trap room that gave us trouble was an open room with a gate, and a Champion level mob guarding the gate. The room was full of spike traps. The person who did it before informed us that there is a chain by the Champion that disables the traps. I blinked thorugh, found the chain and pulled it before dying. The rest of the group had run in and died on the traps, so I had the miniboss focused on me. After this was done, we downed the gate guard pretty easily.

At this point, we were starting to improve as a group. The next part was the locked gate that required you to drop a stone on a pressure plate, but we all know about that and it was done before I even got to the door. We then cleared out the next trap room. The following stairs gave us trouble because we made the previously mentioned mistake of fighting in a tight area. Once we began pulling each mob from the pack of three out of the stairs, one by one, we took them down. There was still a lot of dying and corpse res and running.

3. Bosses

Next came another miniboss that was already engaged in a fight with a NPC. We ran in and joined the fight. There was some dying and corpse running here. I realized this miniboss needed some interrupts, but I didn't have many on me. I used my KD from Greatsword and my Diversion shatter here and there, plus my CHaos Storm had a daze chance. Someone pulled him into the stair well entry, and that gave the rest of us a chance to DPS him for awhile, but tight spots are dangerous. After some dyings going on, I ended up kiting the miniboss until my staff hits killed it.

Another thing I should mention is that story mode has story segments. There are cut-aways and conversation scenes between the NPCs. When we downed this miniboss, we freed up Eir and there was a dialogue scene. After that, Eir joined our party. So we had us five, plus two NPCs. One a ranger and the other a Warrior-like.

The real bosses:
There are three real bosses after all the minibosses. We started off with the Ranger boss. In this fight, the boss stands atop a platform and range attacks you. The platform is separated from the rest of the surrounding area, and the only way to get to it is going up a beam of wood. Our melee went on the beam, and the rest of us kited in the circle area surrounding the island platform. This boss went farely well. He was by far the easiest encounter. He randomly attacks people from range, then teleports to the surrounding circle and engages in melee distance. This process then repeats. When he dropped into melee range at low health, I dropped my Time Warp on all of us and we speed bursted the last of his health down. When He was on the island, I kept my anti-range skills up on him. By now, I had ditched my Greatsword for a Scepter and Focus. The reason for this is the Focus has the iWarden for DPS and deflections, and the temporal curtain/into the void skill allowed me a way to pull groups of mobs and do knockdowns during fights. Plus the Scepter 2 skill was a block/blind depending on how you used it.

On our way to the second boss, our Guardian pulled a gorup before we were ready. We wiped on this, but when I came back, they were still engaged from corpse running. They were focusing on the Warrior and my presence drew the monk mob. Because I fucked it up, I decided to kite/tank the Monk with my anti-range attack skills. I ended up pulling this off long enough for them to finish the other mob and switch to the monk. So yes, a Mesmer semi-tanked for a bit. The second boss we fought was also pretty easy. You could fight this boss as a straight dps attack. She was sort of a Necro boss, and would summon adds. In story mode, we just ignored the adds. At certain points she sends out these beams to the adds and channels something to herself. RUnning across the beams fears you, so you have to stick to an area. Mostly, we DPSed and ressed each other from downed stage.

The third boss was directly after this, and was the boss our Guardian couldn't beat in his last group. The fight is like Twins from AQ or anyone of the raid bosses that followed that strategy in WoW afterwards. The difference is that you can't simply aggro and tank the two bosses apart from each other. You have to use pushbacks and knockdowns to separate them. There are boulders all over the area, and picking them up lets you throw the boulder and knockback a boss. This fight took a long time, a LONG time, and we died and ran back from waypoints over and over. It was very hard to move the bosses how you wanted to move htem, and we weren't totally coordinated. You might have one player knock the boss one direction, and then another knock the boss back another direction. If we did it again, I think I'd have one or two players on Boulder duty, and make sure they just keep knocking one of the bosses down and away from the other. Then have the other three focus on one boss. Our damage ended up split in all the chaos and the bosses got next to each other quite often. We did manage to defeat them though.

Final boss was the ghost of Duke Barradin. He's  a warrior/ melee boss. He hits hard, but the real bitch is the Foefire he summons. This is an AOE holy fire that will kill you almost immediatly. Once you realize you can't spend a second in it, then it becomes top priority to avoid. After that, my second priority was blinds and disables on the boss to lower his damage output. My combo fields, scepter, and iDuelist applied stacks of confusion to the boss to do condition damage. The offhand pistol also gave me another interrupt to lower damage output on the Duke. We beat him, and I felt he was far easier than the Two Lovers bosses. You just had to stay out of Foefire, and kite/play defensively if he came after you. Help your teammates with combo fields, rezzes and disables on the boss. By this point, that process was a part of every encounter for me.

4. Loot:

I got half my wardrobe replaced on this dungeon run. I got loot off of bosses and loot from treasure chests that drop after beating a boss. I got a new scepter, greatsword, pistol and torch. I also got a new head, shoulders and chest. The last boss doesn't drop a treasure chest in Story mode, but completing it the first time gives you a rare helm. This was my first rare item, so I was pretty happy. Defeating the dungeon in the variatiants in Explorable mode will get you the other rares that are part of the dungeon set.

Unfortunately, they removed the dungeon set look from Story/Explorable mode. Those unique looks are now moved to the higher level versions which require rerunning the dungeon in explorable mode. At least, thats what I think they involve. I'm not sure how they dole out the tokens.

Overall, we died a lot and I learned a lot. Their dungeon design is different than WoW or Rift, but it has to be because the trinity is gone. I think they expect you to go into downed state, and expect teams to help each other out of downed state.


Afterwards, I cleared out some inventory, put some stuff up for sale on the Trading Post and then grouped up with FatalT to run around in Queensdale for some fun.

Dungeon pics and dungeon armor pic:




« Last Edit: September 01, 2012, 05:20:01 PM by etiolate »

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #276 on: September 01, 2012, 09:16:09 PM »

So, last night, I finally did Ascalon Catacombs. AC is a level 30 dungeon and its Story Mode is the first dungeon in the game. It was much harder than I was expecting or anyone in my group was expecting. I think everyone thought they could just mindlessly DPS and be fine. We all rushed in without a strategy and nearly wiped on the first pull. Our group had two thieves, one guardian, an Elementalist and my Mesmer.

As the dungeon went on, we started getting much better at the pulls, mobs and flow of the dungeon. We had a couple of people who had tried Story Mode before but not beaten it. I think I'd rather just break this post into certain encounters, why they kicked our as, and what we did about it.

1. Mobs

Our first pulls - We fight the first two or three mob pull and nearly wipe. The Melee goes down first and rather quickly. Some people are just DPSing and standing still. I try to rez one of our melee guys and nearly die myself. Early on, we were doing a lot of corpse runs from the Waypoint to progress. I hope this is not by design, as it racks up the repair bill. Luckily, they include a armor repair guy in the dungeon. Anyways, what we learned is:

-You have to figure out your pulls before going in. Call Targets and separate targets. You can pull individuals from a pack away from the rest. This allows you to fight one mob at a time, and this is much easier. You also don't want to fight multiples in a tight area. Pull the mobs out of stairwells and chaotic tight spots.
-When fighting a ranged + melee mob, you can LoS the range or anti-range him. As a Mesmer, I switched up my toolbar to aoe combo fields and a lot of anti-range stuff. My Illusionary Warden could occupy a ranger mob while we focused on another mob.
-Combo fields! Drop them, use them. I was stacking combo fields with our Guardian. Applying chaos fields on top of light and fire fields. This gave chaos armor and condition cleansing to those who used them up with a finisher. After awhile, our melee adjusted, remembered to move and dodge, and take advantage of fields. They began to live longer.

2. Traps

We ran into our first trap room and did pretty well with it. We quickly focused on the gryphon heads that controlled the traps and took them out. The trap room that gave us trouble was an open room with a gate, and a Champion level mob guarding the gate. The room was full of spike traps. The person who did it before informed us that there is a chain by the Champion that disables the traps. I blinked thorugh, found the chain and pulled it before dying. The rest of the group had run in and died on the traps, so I had the miniboss focused on me. After this was done, we downed the gate guard pretty easily.

At this point, we were starting to improve as a group. The next part was the locked gate that required you to drop a stone on a pressure plate, but we all know about that and it was done before I even got to the door. We then cleared out the next trap room. The following stairs gave us trouble because we made the previously mentioned mistake of fighting in a tight area. Once we began pulling each mob from the pack of three out of the stairs, one by one, we took them down. There was still a lot of dying and corpse res and running.

3. Bosses

Next came another miniboss that was already engaged in a fight with a NPC. We ran in and joined the fight. There was some dying and corpse running here. I realized this miniboss needed some interrupts, but I didn't have many on me. I used my KD from Greatsword and my Diversion shatter here and there, plus my CHaos Storm had a daze chance. Someone pulled him into the stair well entry, and that gave the rest of us a chance to DPS him for awhile, but tight spots are dangerous. After some dyings going on, I ended up kiting the miniboss until my staff hits killed it.

Another thing I should mention is that story mode has story segments. There are cut-aways and conversation scenes between the NPCs. When we downed this miniboss, we freed up Eir and there was a dialogue scene. After that, Eir joined our party. So we had us five, plus two NPCs. One a ranger and the other a Warrior-like.

The real bosses:
There are three real bosses after all the minibosses. We started off with the Ranger boss. In this fight, the boss stands atop a platform and range attacks you. The platform is separated from the rest of the surrounding area, and the only way to get to it is going up a beam of wood. Our melee went on the beam, and the rest of us kited in the circle area surrounding the island platform. This boss went farely well. He was by far the easiest encounter. He randomly attacks people from range, then teleports to the surrounding circle and engages in melee distance. This process then repeats. When he dropped into melee range at low health, I dropped my Time Warp on all of us and we speed bursted the last of his health down. When He was on the island, I kept my anti-range skills up on him. By now, I had ditched my Greatsword for a Scepter and Focus. The reason for this is the Focus has the iWarden for DPS and deflections, and the temporal curtain/into the void skill allowed me a way to pull groups of mobs and do knockdowns during fights. Plus the Scepter 2 skill was a block/blind depending on how you used it.

On our way to the second boss, our Guardian pulled a gorup before we were ready. We wiped on this, but when I came back, they were still engaged from corpse running. They were focusing on the Warrior and my presence drew the monk mob. Because I fucked it up, I decided to kite/tank the Monk with my anti-range attack skills. I ended up pulling this off long enough for them to finish the other mob and switch to the monk. So yes, a Mesmer semi-tanked for a bit. The second boss we fought was also pretty easy. You could fight this boss as a straight dps attack. She was sort of a Necro boss, and would summon adds. In story mode, we just ignored the adds. At certain points she sends out these beams to the adds and channels something to herself. RUnning across the beams fears you, so you have to stick to an area. Mostly, we DPSed and ressed each other from downed stage.

The third boss was directly after this, and was the boss our Guardian couldn't beat in his last group. The fight is like Twins from AQ or anyone of the raid bosses that followed that strategy in WoW afterwards. The difference is that you can't simply aggro and tank the two bosses apart from each other. You have to use pushbacks and knockdowns to separate them. There are boulders all over the area, and picking them up lets you throw the boulder and knockback a boss. This fight took a long time, a LONG time, and we died and ran back from waypoints over and over. It was very hard to move the bosses how you wanted to move htem, and we weren't totally coordinated. You might have one player knock the boss one direction, and then another knock the boss back another direction. If we did it again, I think I'd have one or two players on Boulder duty, and make sure they just keep knocking one of the bosses down and away from the other. Then have the other three focus on one boss. Our damage ended up split in all the chaos and the bosses got next to each other quite often. We did manage to defeat them though.

Final boss was the ghost of Duke Barradin. He's  a warrior/ melee boss. He hits hard, but the real bitch is the Foefire he summons. This is an AOE holy fire that will kill you almost immediatly. Once you realize you can't spend a second in it, then it becomes top priority to avoid. After that, my second priority was blinds and disables on the boss to lower his damage output. My combo fields, scepter, and iDuelist applied stacks of confusion to the boss to do condition damage. The offhand pistol also gave me another interrupt to lower damage output on the Duke. We beat him, and I felt he was far easier than the Two Lovers bosses. You just had to stay out of Foefire, and kite/play defensively if he came after you. Help your teammates with combo fields, rezzes and disables on the boss. By this point, that process was a part of every encounter for me.

4. Loot:

I got half my wardrobe replaced on this dungeon run. I got loot off of bosses and loot from treasure chests that drop after beating a boss. I got a new scepter, greatsword, pistol and torch. I also got a new head, shoulders and chest. The last boss doesn't drop a treasure chest in Story mode, but completing it the first time gives you a rare helm. This was my first rare item, so I was pretty happy. Defeating the dungeon in the variatiants in Explorable mode will get you the other rares that are part of the dungeon set.

Unfortunately, they removed the dungeon set look from Story/Explorable mode. Those unique looks are now moved to the higher level versions which require rerunning the dungeon in explorable mode. At least, thats what I think they involve. I'm not sure how they dole out the tokens.

Overall, we died a lot and I learned a lot. Their dungeon design is different than WoW or Rift, but it has to be because the trinity is gone. I think they expect you to go into downed state, and expect teams to help each other out of downed state.


Afterwards, I cleared out some inventory, put some stuff up for sale on the Trading Post and then grouped up with FatalT to run around in Queensdale for some fun.

Dungeon pics and dungeon armor pic:

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(Image removed from quote.)
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Nice write up thanks. I've seen videos of it, and it looks so chaotic...but the design is certainly interesting. I'll have to play to determine how well this works without the trinity.

I agree with Ruzbeh in terms of WoW's take on PvE. As someone who loves dungeons, holding them off until lv30 sounds ridiculous to me. Deadmines in many ways was like a rite of passage. You'd go in having mainly played the game solo and learn basic mechanics that would stay with you for the rest of the game, basically. And Deadmines wasn't really a cake walk either, it could be tough depending on your group. After that there was Gnomer and many other challenging dungeons. A player could decide to level predominantly in dungeons, but doing outside quests was more viable; still, the ability to chose your means of PvE progression was important.

010

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #277 on: September 01, 2012, 11:38:00 PM »
I think they wait 30 levels for dungeons because level 30 is where you unlock your elite skill. So they don't throw dungeons at you until you have a full skillbar. I think this helps them balance it for a level 30 with level 30 gear, and a level 80 with level 80 gear being downgraded to level 30 (or level 35 for Explorable mode).  I also think they wait this long because the difficulty would be a huge turnoff. It's almost unenjoyably hard at the start. At first, I thought "this is fucking stupid". How to handle encounters started to make more sense as we went along though and I started to enjoy the dungeon.

At first, it was a "this is lame" difficulty, but it became a "this is a good challenge" difficulty. I hope that at some point there is less corpse running. For now, I'm blaming it on not knowing the dungeons. We wiped on the Captain miniboss because only one person knew you could disable the traps by pulling the chain, and only then because I knew there was a safe spot near the Captain that so conveniently happened to be near the chain. 

I'm level 35 now, so I'm high enough to give a go at Explorable mode, but I'm honestly a little scare to try it. I don't mind progression failing, but I can't afford a huge repair bill. You get a good amount of loot from completing it on Story Mode, so in spite of all the dying, and repairing, I ended up profiting from the run. But at level 40, I need 1 gold to buy my next trait manual, and I currently only have half of that. Also, the first tier of my cultural armor is unlocked now, and buying all of that costs a gold or two as well.  Wouldn't be a problem if they GOT THE TRADING POST WORKING SO I COULD MAKE MONEY.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2012, 02:18:09 AM by etiolate »

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #278 on: September 02, 2012, 01:09:10 AM »
Do you que for dungeons, or does it rely on finding people in chat on your server?
010

FatalT

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #279 on: September 02, 2012, 01:35:54 AM »
Stop getting mad about video games and just enjoy it. What do you get out of bashing Guild Wars 2? Enjoyment from seeing etiolate defend it? He helped me in a few areas last night! :D

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #280 on: September 02, 2012, 02:17:31 AM »
Do you que for dungeons, or does it rely on finding people in chat on your server?

No Looking for Dungeon. You can set yourself to Looking For Group, and you'll show up on map with a LFG icon and in guild with a note saying you're LFG, but mostly you just spam map chat LFG. It wasn't that hard for me to make a group as you don't need to fill roles. I just got the first five people and went. It helps that there's so many playing right now, but I don't know how easy it will be to do down the road.

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #281 on: September 02, 2012, 02:39:31 AM »
Cool. I miss the days of finding groups in chat, adding people to your friend list after runs, being hounded by people looking for a group once you log on, etc. And while I like the que system in WoW due to it allowing you to find groups quickly regardless of server size, I had long wished for a mixture of these two options - some groups you'd find in chat, and for quick runs you could just que. I'm glad MoP is implementing that with the speed runs, and the re-focus on using summon stones.
010

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #282 on: September 02, 2012, 03:00:44 AM »
I plan to run University of Jellybeans guild through it soon. CG and Rodi are 30+ now.

On another note, the game is getting hit hard by Chinese hackers and gold sellers. I've gotten two in game mails offering to sell me gold. The funny bit is that the offer was 3 gold for like $20. I thought "that sounds like a lot for 3 gold." So I checked the gem to gold numbers, and figured out that 3 gold would cost you about $11 through official means within the game. I don't know how the gold farmers plan to make money when its cheaper to do through the gemstore.

Cerveza mas fina

  • I don't care for Islam tbqh
  • filler
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #283 on: September 02, 2012, 06:04:30 AM »
Oh wow what a clusterfuck launch. Now you cant make new accounts?

Prob worst launch in recent mmo history.

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #284 on: September 02, 2012, 08:18:31 AM »
Huh?  You can make new accounts.

Cerveza mas fina

  • I don't care for Islam tbqh
  • filler
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #285 on: September 02, 2012, 11:33:50 AM »
Didnt they stop the sales?

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #286 on: September 02, 2012, 03:58:54 PM »
Didnt they stop the sales?

Only on their website. There's still retail copies.

FatalT

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #287 on: September 02, 2012, 06:28:14 PM »
Ruzbeh, do you have autism? That post was intense.

I'm not gonna lie, I skip to the end of every conversational cutscene because I don't give a shit about story. I just like to mash keys and make XP bars fill. So far, the game has fulfilled my enjoyment of watching numbers go up.

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #288 on: September 02, 2012, 06:53:36 PM »
ruzbeh's point on the general zerg-esque feel of large combat is true. In Wow you can pretty much determine who is who and what is what in a raid or even large PvP (Wintergrasp, TB, etc). I found everything to just be a giant mess of characters during some of the larger PvE moments in the beta. It's a bunch of players running around, getting killed, downed state, etc. I'll have to play the retail before making final judgements obviously, but the general chaos of GW2 strikes me as a turn off
010

Damian79

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #289 on: September 02, 2012, 08:37:41 PM »
Farming and crafting worse than WoW.  WTF?  You truly are an idiot.

1.  WoW's crafted items weere for the most part worthless.
2.  WoW's crafting takes literally hours to do every time you want to do some of it.

WoW's craftign was a piece of shit, even worse than diablo's crafting.  Because atleast you could have a decent chance of gettign a decent item with Diablo 3's crafting.

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #290 on: September 02, 2012, 08:42:45 PM »
The Trading Post is finally working. Praise Jebus. Almost at 1 gold as soon as some stuff sales. Close to level 40 as well. It also seems that the lag I had been plagued with has cleared up. I still can't tell if it was on my end or ANet's end. The "ping" monitor Ruzbeh refers to wasn't in GW1 at launch or by the time Factions came out. It'll probably be added in later here as well.

Anyways, it's a new game. You will have to learn the combat. It's not like wow-clone combat. At first, the large events will be pure chaos. Over time, you learn to parse the battlefield. I am pretty in control now even in big DEs. I can take on multiple chains of higher level enemies with my Sword/Sword & Staff setup. I'm a magical rogue that slips into support caster and then teleports into a blademaster within five seconds. That's not something you will experience in other MMOs, so it takes time to learn and adjust.

Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #291 on: September 02, 2012, 08:57:06 PM »
Crafting sucks in WoW
010

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #292 on: September 02, 2012, 09:02:35 PM »
From what CG tells me, cooking is awesome in this game.

FatalT

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #293 on: September 02, 2012, 09:16:45 PM »
Ruzbeh, do you have autism? That post was intense.

By that logic, Barack Obama must be the most autistic man in the world.

I'm not gonna lie, I skip to the end of every conversational cutscene because I don't give a shit about story. I just like to mash keys and make XP bars fill. So far, the game has fulfilled my enjoyment of watching numbers go up.

A brainless game for brainless people.

WHAT I HAVE BRIAN WHY YOU SAY THIS

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #294 on: September 02, 2012, 09:19:54 PM »

FatalT

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #295 on: September 02, 2012, 09:20:59 PM »
Pile of Paprika...lol

Damian79

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #296 on: September 02, 2012, 10:11:16 PM »
Its very easy to discover shit.  I dont knwo what youa re smoking.  You choose an ingerdient and i fthere are oterh ingredients that you can use they wotn be greyed out.  It is very simple.  You are just a bad player.

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #297 on: September 03, 2012, 04:59:01 AM »
Hit level 40 today. Did Caudecus Manor, the second dungeon. Was much easier than the first dungeon. Not a lot of trash, mostly just go boss to boss. I only went into downed state a few times through the whole run. This one I did as mostly a melee Mesmer and handled it fairly well. I wanted to try being melee in a dungeon, and I had been practicing my melee rotation in open world situations. Sword/Sword & Staff is durable enough to have prolonged bouts inside melee range without going down.

demi

  • cooler than willco
  • Administrator
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #298 on: September 03, 2012, 04:27:50 PM »
lol, Ruzbeh is like etoilet when he was hating on WoW. Only 60 more hours until you can review it!
fat

etiolate

  • Senior Member
Re: Guild Wars 2 - U Jelly
« Reply #299 on: September 03, 2012, 04:46:35 PM »
My WoW criticisms were everything everyone complains about in regards to WoW now. I just saw them quicker.

Ruzbeh is spurging his brains out.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2012, 05:17:07 PM by etiolate »