GW2 Beta 2 Day 1
Jun. 9th, 2012 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoThis'll be short cuz I'm falling asleep at my desk here. Messed around with the various options, skills, traits panels. Took another look at pet stats. Played some ranger, some ele.
Some stuff got fixed. Some stuff got added. I noticed a lot more tooltip popups and a hints button in the main menu. Not quite the same level of tutorial that GW1 had, but still better than nothing.
Changes to dye system is much better. No more fiddly once a day dye seed thing. Mobs drop random unknown dyes. When you use them they become a dye bottle of a particular color bound to the account. When you use it the color becomes part of a palette of a particular character.
More options added to the materials panel for storage, which is great. Means more room left for the actual bank storage.
Merchants offer actual stuff now rather than just all placeholders. But they're all still all labeled "Merchant". So sometimes you have to look around for the one selling what you want. Also noticed that weapon/armorsmiths adjust the gear they sell for your level (eg. lvl 1 gear when you're lvl 1-9, lvl 10 gear when you're lvl 10-14, etc.); I think they were this way last time too. Not sure how I feel about that; especially since crafting is the same way (means you need to lvl all characters evenly to share benefits...).
Cash shop got overhauled. Much more stuff in it now. My brain is too mushed right now to do the conversion for the more important stuff like character slots and storage adds. I did look through to make sure there's nothing in there that's going to "ruin the game". Town clothes/costumes, XP boosters, storage adds, minipet/dye random packs... the usual suspects.
Ranger - went back and did the personal stories. They were ok, I think. Also picked up a few more pets and died less this time due to timely pet-switching. Played around with weapons. Longbow still the best. Axe/offhand a decent alternative. Shortbow has the same range as long (wtf?) but is more condition/PvP focused. Norn faces didn't get changed though... so still undecided as to whether I'll be making one at release.
Ele - Apparently the attunements unlock by level now. And actually they unlocked fairly quickly if you join a player zerg and do a lot of dynamic events that feature large number of foes and spam your AoEs. Good thing the human starting area has a lot of those. I tried out dagger/dagger that people on the forums raved about, but the shorter range is just too much of a down side when facing ranged mobs in the lvl 7+ areas. Staff is probably the safe bet for PvE. Maybe scepter...
Anyway, if I want to play test the higher level content, I should pick maybe just one character and play that for the rest of the beta. Probably not engineer since from some of the interviews it sounds like they're still planning on doing some pretty major overhauls of the skill system. That leaves:
Guardian / lvl 14
Ranger / lvl 12
Elementalist / lvl 8
Votes? Suggestions?
Images will need to be cleaned up since I took some UI stuff for reference. Will probably not be putting them up til Monday.
Some stuff got fixed. Some stuff got added. I noticed a lot more tooltip popups and a hints button in the main menu. Not quite the same level of tutorial that GW1 had, but still better than nothing.
Changes to dye system is much better. No more fiddly once a day dye seed thing. Mobs drop random unknown dyes. When you use them they become a dye bottle of a particular color bound to the account. When you use it the color becomes part of a palette of a particular character.
More options added to the materials panel for storage, which is great. Means more room left for the actual bank storage.
Merchants offer actual stuff now rather than just all placeholders. But they're all still all labeled "Merchant". So sometimes you have to look around for the one selling what you want. Also noticed that weapon/armorsmiths adjust the gear they sell for your level (eg. lvl 1 gear when you're lvl 1-9, lvl 10 gear when you're lvl 10-14, etc.); I think they were this way last time too. Not sure how I feel about that; especially since crafting is the same way (means you need to lvl all characters evenly to share benefits...).
Cash shop got overhauled. Much more stuff in it now. My brain is too mushed right now to do the conversion for the more important stuff like character slots and storage adds. I did look through to make sure there's nothing in there that's going to "ruin the game". Town clothes/costumes, XP boosters, storage adds, minipet/dye random packs... the usual suspects.
Ranger - went back and did the personal stories. They were ok, I think. Also picked up a few more pets and died less this time due to timely pet-switching. Played around with weapons. Longbow still the best. Axe/offhand a decent alternative. Shortbow has the same range as long (wtf?) but is more condition/PvP focused. Norn faces didn't get changed though... so still undecided as to whether I'll be making one at release.
Ele - Apparently the attunements unlock by level now. And actually they unlocked fairly quickly if you join a player zerg and do a lot of dynamic events that feature large number of foes and spam your AoEs. Good thing the human starting area has a lot of those. I tried out dagger/dagger that people on the forums raved about, but the shorter range is just too much of a down side when facing ranged mobs in the lvl 7+ areas. Staff is probably the safe bet for PvE. Maybe scepter...
Anyway, if I want to play test the higher level content, I should pick maybe just one character and play that for the rest of the beta. Probably not engineer since from some of the interviews it sounds like they're still planning on doing some pretty major overhauls of the skill system. That leaves:
Guardian / lvl 14
Ranger / lvl 12
Elementalist / lvl 8
Votes? Suggestions?
Images will need to be cleaned up since I took some UI stuff for reference. Will probably not be putting them up til Monday.
