Support NeoGAF

[razgriz417]

nvm found the .dat file, though its making me start from the beginning :/

 

[Kiyo]

Are people sure this is the proper client? Didn't they say that the old betas wouldn't work and you'd have to redownload the game completely?

 

[GasProblem]

Meh, cancelled the download. I'll wait untill the official client is released, at least I'll be sure I'm downloading the right thing.

 

[GrizzNKev]

Are people sure this is the proper client? Didn't they say that the old betas wouldn't work and you'd have to redownload the game completely?

Yeah. But now running the old beta downloads the new one. lol

 

[VanillaCakeIsBurning]

I think I'll pause my download as well until tomorrow. Wouldn't want to download 15gb for nothing.

 

[ForzaFerrari]

3d 9h 30m....

 

[Jira]

People are reporting that the client isn't reporting the actual speeds, but it can be downloading much faster than you think it is. It's estimated that the launcher text is only showing about 30% of your real speed. The old launcher reported the correct speeds so they'll likely be fixing this before giving out the official link.

 

[Torraz]

Only getting 230 kb/s (around a third of my max download speed) when downloading the beta client linked further up in the thread. Luckily I can start today.

 

[Kiyo]

Only getting 230 kb/s (around a third of my max download speed) when downloading the beta client linked further up in the thread. Luckily I can start today.

As Jira said above, the launcher is only reporting 30% of the speed it's actually downloading at. I'm downloading at around 940kb/sec when my max is 2.8mb/sec. Yet I'm already at 7gb downloaded after an hour which is about what I'd get at max speed.

 

[Naxx]

nvm

 

[Kem0sabe]

Anyone else find it wrong to pay for a game upfront that has no release date? Plus... 55 euros seems kinda steep priced for a digital version.

 

[GasProblem]

Anyone else find it wrong to pay for a game upfront that has no release date? Plus... 55 euros seems kinda steep priced for a digital version.

Well, no one is forcing you to pay up front. And it has some pretty nice things for people who do, like the 3 day headstart, the Heros band and the beta acces.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Well, no one is forcing you to pay up front. And it has some pretty nice things for people who do, like the 3 day headstart, the Heros band and the beta acces.

I would have no problem with that, if there was a set release date. Just don´t like handing anyone money for a product from someone who refuses to set a date for it´s release.

 

[Ashodin]

People are reporting that the client isn't reporting the actual speeds, but it can be downloading much faster than you think it is. It's estimated that the launcher text is only showing about 30% of your real speed. The old launcher reported the correct speeds so they'll likely be fixing this before giving out the official link.

Or, more than likely, it will be updated on the launcher tomorrow anyway.

 

[Sophuis]

"Your account is all prepared".

That's right, motherfuckers. I am prepared.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I didn't see what was so offensive about Kintaro's post, tbh. He's right, from my experience, a lot of MMO players whine saying they want something more, but in reality they just want to grind out the same dungeons for minor loot upgrades until the next content patch where they can whine about having to grind out more dungeons (but still do so willingly).

I hope that the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 are more along the lines of something like Left 4 Dead campaigns where even though you are running the same campaign/dungeon over and over again, there is enough variation (in gameplay, setpieces, dynamic events, multiple paths, players/professions makeup, etc) that makes each runthrough fun. Regardless of what reward is at the end.

I didnt, and I assume most L4D players, didn't run through No Mercy over and over because we wanted to get a chance at some piece of loot at the end (or accomplish some achievement). Yet thats seemingly why the typical MMOer who grew up on WoW and WoW-clones run dungeons. I find it sad that so many players just run through raids/dungeons to squeeze out rewards; the actual gameplay became stale, boring, whatever long before they get that last piece of gear....yet thats exactly what so many MMO players seem to like. Its easy. Its familiar, and its "rewarding" to them.

However all that said, I don't think GW2 is going for that type of player. Some concessions were made to ease that type of player into the game (leveling to 80, rather than 20. I think at one point a dev even said that they had thought about having no levels at all), but a lot of the game design is based around being able to play with anyone at anytime and still have an enjoyable experience without that enjoyment being solely derived from carrot on the stick loot-grind bullshittery.

Scaling player levels is one way to achieve this (and one very important way), so is free server hopping, automatic grouping, no subscription fee. But those are all ways of making the connection. That last part is designing the instances to be enjoyable on their own, repeatable on their own, without some external rewards factor driving desirability (gear, loot, cosmetic items) of playing the instance. Removing the trinity should by default open up a lot of the gameplay in these instances which should at a base allow each runthrough be a little different and not so rote learned dance-stepping.

I have not watched many videos of playthroughs of that level 30 dungeon that was in the press betas, so I don't know how well this is implemented. By the sounds of it, from the various comments made by Anet over the years, it does seem like Anet has taken care to create a varied experience within the dungeons. Hopefully this translates into the same type of replayability that L4D's AI director allows for in that game.


Maybe this will require a different kind of gamer than who normally plays MMOs, but I don't think that will be a bad thing at all. As long as Arenanet is able to reach that audience, and as long as the game is able to fulfill that need from that audience, I couldn't give two shits what the typical gear grind raid or die MMO player is used to, or faux-whines about.

tl;dr

I hope that when GW2 launches when someone says "Anyone want to run Dungeon A?" instead of saying "Ya, cause I need that damn pair of boots that drops there" or "Hell no, I got all my cosmetics from there I am done with doing that over and over" people will say "Sure, that sounds like fun".

I am not a Diablo fanboy, and while I did play some Diablo 2, I never thought THAT highly of the franchise.

But looking at a game like Diablo 3 it becomes painfully clear what most other games in general lack that Diablo 3 has. It's something that sounds so simple, that it will fuck up the most game designers heads tenfold. That thing is Flow.

Diablo 3 might be retro as fuck. In fact it is. By any stretch of the imagination, the gaming world would have been a lot less if it was not for the major leaps made from franchises like GTA and Zelda into new visual perspectives and territories. Diablo 3 receives no brownie points on this end.

But it does receive on flow. Diablo 3, has amazing combat. Almost like a good story, the center piece, the hero / the player, is less important in the face of what surrounds it. Notice the enemies in Diablo 3. Notice how great they are. There is a Halo symbiose here. A classic form of 1-shot 1-kill weak cannon fodder trash mobs that make you feal powerful but mixed with other enemies that fight different and will behave differently, even at different stages as you beat them (exploding fat zombie turning into AoE bomb turning into critter madness with attacking snakes). This creates flow. This is the 20 seconds of fun that Bungie was talking about.

My point is - most games dont have this. They don't have flow. In Everquest or Conan or Warcraft, the mobs don't feel different no matter if it's a lvl 1 defias brotherhood thief or a lvl 99 demon. It's the same A.I. It's the same pathing system. all that is changed is a model, some sound files and the amount of hit points on it, plus or minus some mob abillities. This is not flow. this is 5 seconds of fun over and over. It's not enough.


Diablo 3 gets away with having such simple gameplay because it's varied in it's ecosystem. Or at least varied enough to not make it tedious. This is why the others fail.




Guild Wars 2 needs to just be fun. the combat needs to be of the same calibur. that you just want to go out there in the world for no reason and just beat the living crap out of creatures because it feels good. because the gameplay systems have enough effort put into them.


you would never do this in WoW. You only do shit in those games to be rewarded. In other words - this game has a shitty combat systems and I expect to be rewarded with stimuli pixels for wasting my time. That's what that shit is. and friends, the social aspect and guildies further clouds this truth for us, and thats how you end up with 100 days played of mediocre gameplay, that still felt exciting, but no thanks to the core gameplay.

So you are right. I hope the combat will have weight to it. That your attacks really connect, that the sound feels right, and that your just looting and killing at such a pace, it feels good, and not anti-heroric of bashing with a sharp sword for 2 minutes on a rat.

Diablo 3 treats everyone like they have ADHD. I'm impressed by it's flow.




TL;DR - Diablo 3 has fun combat, all hotkey MMOs have shitty combat and thats why you need to be rewarded to do anything. you would never go out and spend 2 hours killing rats just because it was fun. gw2 needs to be so tight that its just fun to kill shit over and over and over for no reason.

 

[Raytow]

TL;DR - Diablo 3 has fun combat, all hotkey MMOs have shitty combat and thats why you need to be rewarded to do anything. you would never go out and spend 2 hours killing rats just because it was fun. gw2 needs to be so tight that its just fun to kill shit over and over and over for no reason.

*clap.gif*
Excellent summary, here is hoping GW2 is like this, I'm extremely pumped for the BWE.

 

[Card Boy]

I always enjoy Vigilant Walrus posts when it comes to MMOs. Hit the nail on the head.

 

[BrettWeir]

This is what I get:

 

[Sophuis]

C:\ full?

 

[BrettWeir]

C:\ full?

Nope. 350 gigs free.

 

[Dead Prince]

so close. the download client link is back in the account page. they need to hurry and make it available.

 

[RepairmanJack]

Retro style post incoming.

just when I thought the asura couldn't get any uglier

You shut your mouth!

GAF Wars 2 Podcast Episode 3 YouTube Edition

Still processing, will be available when youtube feels like it.

Good job guys, will be listening later on today.

https://account.guildwars2.com/download

DAMN IT
The button! It does nothing! No matter how many times I click it.

Before reading all the happenings in the thread I first went to the site and was excited to see the button for the client has changed. I'm guessing around 12eastern today.

http://i.imgur.com/uy60J.jpg[IMG]

Also, the GW2 GAF Podcast has 2 likes already despite not being done processing yet. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/JUWnj.gif

This is amazing and perfect.

Holy shit. Hilarious that it made it over here. I was not talking about GW2 specifically besides the point in the first part (which, if you don't realize that there WILL be players bitching about dungeons being scaled to your level over and over whether they are on this forum or some other one, you're delusional). There are other MMOs which have scaled dungeons and players just shrug them off.

Did you completely miss the overall point of the post? MMO players ARE afraid of change and ARE afraid of trying something different. Especially after WoW.

For the record, I've barely gotten to play Tera since my SSDs were bad and the shit BSoD' every time I played any game, so I can't even TALK about Tera or how good it is. Just like I can't talk too much about this game because I haven't tried it yet. Am I hyped? A bit, but it's tempered. Why? GAF overhype is a real problem on these boards. When people claim that it will innovate every aspect of an MMO, one can't help but temper it.

Will there be MMO players who bitch about GW2 as well and say it's just another coat of paint of WoW regardless if its true or not? Hell fucking yes.

My goodness.

I don't understand the generalization. I don't think that players are scared of anything new at all. They all look for something new and when they try out some new MMO like TOR they realize it's just a wow clone and a not so great one at that so they go back to WoW. I don't see how that paints general MMO players as being afraid of change.

The problem isn't the player base it's the MMO's. They are trying to grab wow's audience with a little bit of change and not doing it that great instead of just trying something completely new. That's what I think GW2 is doing. They aren't just taking the basic mold and throwing something new into it like a reticle.

 

[Kapoios]

This is what I get:

(img)

It's probably because you put it in Program Files and have UAC on. Either run gw2 as an administrator, move it out of program files or disable UAC.

 

[flyinpiranha]

Diablo III is awesomely tight with gameplay

It's funny, I loved D1 and played a lot of D2, but just recently played D3 and it felt very archaic. I know I'm not even remotely part of the masses or majority mindset with this but I only played for about 30 minutes and was just not into it. Surprising since it was one of my most "wanted" games and now I'm not purchasing it at all (until it goes on sale in 4 years heh)

I do agree with how gear is a reward but I always think MMO's have a "Facebook" type of effect where people want things to happen where others see whether they are interacting or not. Don't get me wrong, people love Skyrim, Xenoblade, Zelda's and other epic RPG games (I do!) but I think with how social gaming has exploded people want others to see what they're doing. XBL and the "gamer score" is a good example of where this is going where you can play your game, join or not a join a party, but you're in a persistent 'world' of where your exploits are shown to others.

I think GW2 is going to fill this niche nicely. Scaling enemies, persistent world, etc ...

Of course GW2 has to have great combat, that's a majority of any game out there (it has to be enjoyable) but at the same time even "tight gameplay" games such as COD or BF or TF2 have their own little reward systems. Honestly (not being rude here), what you stated is obvious to a point, there has to be a reward whether that be a visual, stat, score, or story reward there will have to be one.

You describe one type of gamer who needs this "amazing" gameplay but there are so many others out there. Halo and CoD have "tight" gameplay but then why are they only attracting a certain type of gamer? They are geared towards a certain type. I think (hope) with GW2 that it doesn't just attract MMO players that are stat junkies and gear grinders. I'm in the process of upgrading my PC and building a second one because my girlfriend wants to play with me, she'll be a completely different player than me, probably making me tons of gold and supporting me haha, but she won't pick up Halo or Diablo 3 because it's not the style of game she would get into. I think GW2 (if marketed correctly) can reach multiple different styles of gamers much like WoW did with the Soccer mom and the MMO grinding PVP "1337' champions.

 

[Dash27]

It's a joke from the third podcast, which is up right now!!!! GO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqVRiiF3RKo

GO

Thanks, listening now.

 

[whyman]

Have they said when we can start downloading the beta?

 

[RepairmanJack]

Have they said when we can start downloading the beta?

All hints are pointing to today.

 

[BrettWeir]

It's probably because you put it in Program Files and have UAC on. Either run gw2 as an administrator, move it out of program files or disable UAC.

Must have just been something funky going on. I rebooted, and all is well with the world now.

1% @ 315 megs. /smile

 

[Hawkian]

just when I thought the asura couldn't get any uglier

You really want to piss these guys off?

 

[Retro]

I hope that the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 are more along the lines of something like Left 4 Dead campaigns where even though you are running the same campaign/dungeon over and over again, there is enough variation (in gameplay, setpieces, dynamic events, multiple paths, players/professions makeup, etc) that makes each runthrough fun. Regardless of what reward is at the end.

That seems to be the case; "The player is presented with different play-through options, of which there are usually (at least) three to choose from. The party votes on the option they will take through the dungeon and the majority determines the dungeon version seen. The explorable mode dungeon is designed to be repeated, with player actions and decisions determining the occurrence of hidden or random events along with the related changes to the dungeon. This mode requires significantly more co-ordination between team members and so is more difficult than story mode. It takes a significant longer period of time than normal mode." (source)

I have not watched many videos of playthroughs of that level 30 dungeon that was in the press betas, so I don't know how well this is implemented. By the sounds of it, from the various comments made by Anet over the years, it does seem like Anet has taken care to create a varied experience within the dungeons. Hopefully this translates into the same type of replayability that L4D's AI director allows for in that game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2IM2rAK0Q-8

You can see the group voting which route to take at 2:40 mark. Also note the awesome coordination-requiring fight with the brood mother and players needing to spring the spike trap or get overwhelmed by adds (That's around 23:20).

Downloading the new client! Such a pretty launcher!

Gorgeous. The art direction in this game is incredible.

Anyone else find it wrong to pay for a game upfront that has no release date?

As others have said, paying upfront is just for people who want guaranteed Beta access. You can wait, you know, though they have said that they may temporarily suspend Pre-Purchase to keep the numbers manageable in the Betas.

If Beta doesn't matter to you, you can most certainly wait.

TL;DR - Diablo 3 has fun combat, all hotkey MMOs have shitty combat and thats why you need to be rewarded to do anything. you would never go out and spend 2 hours killing rats just because it was fun. gw2 needs to be so tight that its just fun to kill shit over and over and over for no reason.

Your posts are sometimes a little tricky to read (no offense, it almost feels like English isn't your first language maybe?) but always worth it. Even when we disagree on stuff, you make your case on solid ground. Very nice post.

Retro style post incoming.

Sorry, I just don't refresh the thread quickly enough to respond to every single post as it happens, but sometimes questions slip through the cracks or somebody makes a point worth highlighting or refuting. I'm sorry I care too much!

It's funny, I loved D1 and played a lot of D2, but just recently played D3 and it felt very archaic. I know I'm not even remotely part of the masses or majority mindset with this but I only played for about 30 minutes and was just not into it. Surprising since it was one of my most "wanted" games and now I'm not purchasing it at all (until it goes on sale in 4 years heh)

I can't speak from experience, but based on feedback from the D3 Beta and articles I've read, it sounds like Blizzard built Diablo inside a bubble in which Titan Quest, Torchlight, etc. were not permitted to enter. Let's face it, the Dungeon Crawler / Loot Whore genre has changed in the ten years since Lord of Destruction, and yet D3 appears to disregard quality of life and gameplay improvements that now feel like they should be genre staples. Which makes it feel, as you say, archaic. The Diablo clones went and made a bunch of advances to the genre which Blizzard is ignoring.

Torchlight 2 is dropping a month after Diablo 3, apparently. They don't seem to be concerned. I think it's because they know Diablo 3 isn't taking enough steps forward to match what everyone else in the genre is doing. You're not the first person who's walked away with an impression of the game being stale.

Have they said when we can start downloading the beta?

It's still 6am on the West Coast, we'll probably start to hear some rumblings around noon eastern when people actually get to work. If you read over the last page or so, you'll see that there have been some changes to their site and such already.

Soon.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I am not a Diablo fanboy, and while I did play some Diablo 2, I never thought THAT highly of the franchise.

But looking at a game like Diablo 3 it becomes painfully clear what most other games in general lack that Diablo 3 has. It's something that sounds so simple, that it will fuck up the most game designers heads tenfold. That thing is Flow.

Diablo 3 might be retro as fuck. In fact it is. By any stretch of the imagination, the gaming world would have been a lot less if it was not for the major leaps made from franchises like GTA and Zelda into new visual perspectives and territories. Diablo 3 receives no brownie points on this end.

But it does receive on flow. Diablo 3, has amazing combat. Almost like a good story, the center piece, the hero / the player, is less important in the face of what surrounds it. Notice the enemies in Diablo 3. Notice how great they are. There is a Halo symbiose here. A classic form of 1-shot 1-kill weak cannon fodder trash mobs that make you feal powerful but mixed with other enemies that fight different and will behave differently, even at different stages as you beat them (exploding fat zombie turning into AoE bomb turning into critter madness with attacking snakes). This creates flow. This is the 20 seconds of fun that Bungie was talking about.

My point is - most games dont have this. They don't have flow. In Everquest or Conan or Warcraft, the mobs don't feel different no matter if it's a lvl 1 defias brotherhood thief or a lvl 99 demon. It's the same A.I. It's the same pathing system. all that is changed is a model, some sound files and the amount of hit points on it, plus or minus some mob abillities. This is not flow. this is 5 seconds of fun over and over. It's not enough.


Diablo 3 gets away with having such simple gameplay because it's varied in it's ecosystem. Or at least varied enough to not make it tedious. This is why the others fail.




Guild Wars 2 needs to just be fun. the combat needs to be of the same calibur. that you just want to go out there in the world for no reason and just beat the living crap out of creatures because it feels good. because the gameplay systems have enough effort put into them.


you would never do this in WoW. You only do shit in those games to be rewarded. In other words - this game has a shitty combat systems and I expect to be rewarded with stimuli pixels for wasting my time. That's what that shit is. and friends, the social aspect and guildies further clouds this truth for us, and thats how you end up with 100 days played of mediocre gameplay, that still felt exciting, but no thanks to the core gameplay.

So you are right. I hope the combat will have weight to it. That your attacks really connect, that the sound feels right, and that your just looting and killing at such a pace, it feels good, and not anti-heroric of bashing with a sharp sword for 2 minutes on a rat.

Diablo 3 treats everyone like they have ADHD. I'm impressed by it's flow.




TL;DR - Diablo 3 has fun combat, all hotkey MMOs have shitty combat and thats why you need to be rewarded to do anything. you would never go out and spend 2 hours killing rats just because it was fun. gw2 needs to be so tight that its just fun to kill shit over and over and over for no reason.

Eh comparing Diablo 3 combat to a MMO combat is pretty massive stretch, and I wouldn't even say Diablo combat is even that fun. People aren't playing Diablo just because they think click click click click is fun combat, they are playing it for reward which pretty much goes against what you are talking about. Theres a reason why Diablo is the grand daddy of the loot whore genre. Without the carrot on stick constantly moving in Diablo, people would not be as invested in the gameplay. I can see what you are saying about combat being fun being more of a motivator for play, but Diablo is a very bad comparison to be making when it's whole design philosophy is about reward.

 

[Retro]

You really want to piss these guys off? http://i.imgur.com/dyuyQ.png

I was just thinking this morning, there's gonna be a ton of Asura gameplay videos using Hans Zimmer's Sherlock Holmes score. And if not, there should be.

It sounds like the perfect music to compliment an entire race of short, snarky mad scientists hard at work overthrowing the world from the seat of a steam-powered war machine.

 

[LowParry]

Watching that dungeon video, I'm still somewhat baffled about the lack of a dedicated healer and such. It seems like most of the time, you're going to die, get revived, kill kill, die, get revived, etc. The lack of a trinity is just strange. Which makes me much more eager to play to see how it will work.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Watching that dungeon video, I'm still somewhat baffled about the lack of a dedicated healer and such. It seems like most of the time, you're going to die, get revived, kill kill, die, get revived, etc. The lack of a trinity is just strange. Which makes me much more eager to play to see how it will work.

It's more like a single player game where you don't have a trinity. Players are responsible for their own healing or staying alive while other players can help.

 

[LowParry]

It's more like a single player game where you don't have a trinity. Players are responsible for their own healing or staying alive while other players can help.

Right, but say if I'm a caster and I got agro, there's no tank to taunt it off me. I take it each class has a sort of evasive type of play to them? I've seen it with thief (thief tanking is always cool). Again, it's just strange to see no trinity involved. It's new and refreshing to see.

 

[Stuart444]

I have GW2 downloaded now... now to wait for Friday... *twiddles thumbs*

Hopefully it's Sunny on Thursday or Friday so I can head out for the day. Will make time go by a lot quicker.

Also anyone else like the new Chroma Hash thing next to password on the login screen?

 

[BattleMonkey]

Right, but say if I'm a caster and I got agro, there's no tank to taunt it off me. I take it each class has a sort of evasive type of play to them? I've seen it with thief (thief tanking is always cool). Again, it's just strange to see no trinity involved. It's new and refreshing to see.

Characters are supposed to be more survivable in general so it's not like a caster is going to be useless if he gets agro. Everyone is supposed to be able to skill up to handle any situation mostly.

Trinity like gameplay will still exist when you group up, players in GW1 when grouping still often took up trinity like builds/roles for maximum effect. But really it's just not as required as roles are not defined in stone in this series. You can't make a very dedicated character for something like healing, but it would be more like a support oriented character.

 

[GrizzNKev]

You really want to piss these guys off?

That happens to be my current wallpaper.

 

[Retro]

Watching that dungeon video, I'm still somewhat baffled about the lack of a dedicated healer and such. It seems like most of the time, you're going to die, get revived, kill kill, die, get revived, etc. The lack of a trinity is just strange. Which makes me much more eager to play to see how it will work.

To be fair, that was an Exploration mode (which is harder) that was still unfinished (the developers in their party had to manually trigger some stuff) and the guy who was playing kinda sucks (Biscuit was narrating only, he's been having legal issues that keep him from playing).

If you're smart, keep your eyes open, know what you're doing, and have a solid team you work well with, it should be possible to not die at all. Even

Besides, I want an MMO that kicks my ass because I'm not good enough at playing it, not because I didn't memorize the dance steps or have the optimized stat distribution. I think it was the PC Gamer article that referred to current MMO gameplay as "more about logistics than skill", and they're absolutely right. I personally call it herding nerds, which is a bit like herding kittens but less cute and more obnoxious.

I liken it to Demon and Dark Souls; some people just aren't going to understand the attraction to something that outwardly appears masochistic. I have (former) friends who hate Dark Souls because it was just too difficult for them.

Some people want to drift through spoon-fed content without firing a single neuron. GW2 is not for them.

 

[RepairmanJack]

Watching that dungeon video, I'm still somewhat baffled about the lack of a dedicated healer and such. It seems like most of the time, you're going to die, get revived, kill kill, die, get revived, etc. The lack of a trinity is just strange. Which makes me much more eager to play to see how it will work.

You have to take into account that this is half press people who as we saw weren't very good at the game and an uncoordinated group.

I think it's up in the air as to how it will turn out, I have my reservations as well, but I think the opportunity for some fun challenging gameplay is there. The last fight in that video is the type of cooperating I see happening when the game actually releases. That last fight people had more of a grasp on what was going on and the fight revolved completely around group control and not just one or two people controlling everything while everyone else deals damage.

 

[Warrior_Keoni]

Characters are supposed to be more survivable in general so it's not like a caster is going to be useless if he gets agro. Everyone is supposed to be able to skill up to handle any situation mostly.

Trinity like gameplay will still exist when you group up, players in GW1 when grouping still often took up trinity like builds/roles for maximum effect. But really it's just not as required as roles are not defined in stone in this series. You can't make a very dedicated character for something like healing, but it would be more like a support oriented character.

This is indeed true, and even though a warrior or guardian might "spec" into a 'tanking' role, they still need to learn when and where to avoid big damage.

 

[zon]

Is everyone supposed to have gotten the link to download the beta client? I pre-purchased from their website on the first day and I haven't gotten a mail sent to me yet.

 

[RepairmanJack]

Is everyone supposed to have gotten the link to download the beta client? I pre-purchased from their website on the first day and I haven't gotten a mail sent to me yet.

No, people are just using the old client they had from the CBT.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Can you preorder this from amazon and get into the beta? I know at amazon I can cancel afterwords.

 

[flyinpiranha]

Eh comparing Diablo 3 combat to a MMO combat is pretty massive stretch, and I wouldn't even say Diablo combat is even that fun. People aren't playing Diablo just because they think click click click click is fun combat, they are playing it for reward which pretty much goes against what you are talking about. Theres a reason why Diablo is the grand daddy of the loot whore genre. Without the carrot on stick constantly moving in Diablo, people would not be as invested in the gameplay. I can see what you are saying about combat being fun being more of a motivator for play, but Diablo is a very bad comparison to be making when it's whole design philosophy is about reward.

Honestly I think one of the best lootwhore-ing games with excellent (by excellent, I mean fun!) gameplay recently has been Borderlands.

EDIT: Damn, new page and it's not even about GW2. I have failed ye'.

 

[Stuart444]

Is everyone supposed to have gotten the link to download the beta client? I pre-purchased from their website on the first day and I haven't gotten a mail sent to me yet.

Someone leaked the link but it should be available on account.guildwars2.com today or tomorrow

 

[razgriz417]

Can you preorder this from amazon and get into the beta? I know at amazon I can cancel afterwords.

As of yet, Amazon only allows you to preorder (no beta access) not prepurchase in the US. Your options are directly from Anet, Gamestop or BestBuy (online only i believe)

 

[Hawkian]

Watching that dungeon video, I'm still somewhat baffled about the lack of a dedicated healer and such. It seems like most of the time, you're going to die, get revived, kill kill, die, get revived, etc. The lack of a trinity is just strange. Which makes me much more eager to play to see how it will work.

Bear in mind a couple of things...

Every class has a dedicated healing skill on their bar at all times (there are multiple skills to choose from, but you must have one). These skills suit the class logically; as a result some will work to heal others, some will be about getting the hell out of combat, some will be about being able to take some more damage without leaving combat (tank style). Using this skill properly in your role will be crucial, in contrast to GW1 when you wouldn't bother to bring a self-heal if you had monks in the party.

Second, classes that are set up in the support role (Guardian will be a favorite) can heal other team members regularly, and the fact that they aren't dedicated healers is a really good thing.

I was just thinking this morning, there's gonna be a ton of Asura gameplay videos using Hans Zimmer's Sherlock Holmes score. And if not, there should be.

It sounds like the perfect music to compliment an entire race of short, snarky mad scientists hard at work overthrowing the world from the seat of a steam-powered war machine.

Hans Zimmer <3

On a tangentially related note, I just learned that mesmers have an amazng (and amazingly-named once you see what it does) skill called The Prestige. Second character confirmed.

 

[commish]

TL;DR - Diablo 3 has fun combat, all hotkey MMOs have shitty combat and thats why you need to be rewarded to do anything. you would never go out and spend 2 hours killing rats just because it was fun. gw2 needs to be so tight that its just fun to kill shit over and over and over for no reason.

I love the combat of GW2. The ability to dive and roll may seem minor but it makes a pretty large difference. They got the gameplay right. It's not just run up to mob, hit all hotkeys, walk away when dead.