The Fundamental Flaw with the Preview Weekend

The basic flaw with a preview weekend such as this is the inability to test out all of the skills. The Dervish, which has seen a huge hit with the nerf bat, can not be tested properly by the masses. Most are stuck with using the prebuilts which are subpar. The Paragon is the same way. You are stuck with the Paragon prebuilts that don't take fully the power that they posses into consideration. Most people are stuck playing these prebuilts, never seeing the true power of the class.

All of the skills should have been unlocked for the preview weekend. This would have allowed people to try out the classes in many different ways. For Dervish this would allow people to see that the nerfs received might not be so bad. While some of the nerfs are a bit extensive (Mysticism useless, anyone?) there are still viable builds for Dervish but you can't play them because there are so many skills. In order to make a decent Paragon build, the same is true, you need massive faction to unlock different skills.

Overall, this weekend is lacking compared to the last. The last preview weekend it was easier to get faction because of the zaishen medalions allowed you to gain faction very fast. Not to mention there didn't seem to be as many "noobs not knowing how to play using prebuilts" running around. This weekend, it is impossible to win consecutively to gain enough faction to try out new skills. Arena Net definetly has their work cut out now.

The correct term would be "improved" rather then "nerfed".

Congradulations on writing the most cryptic sentence ever. I figured out what you meant after reading the rest of the paragraph. By itself, however, it's a gem.

Fixed

*hides in shame*

The correct term is >>> PVE <<< content testing.

The Nightfall PVP event was specifically for people to test the skills for feedback and tweaking. The developers/programmers simply figure out the results after which tweaks are made. Skill testing done.

THIS event was for PvE CONTENT! Not skills. Yes, skills play a big part of the game, but i am sure since this was a PREVIEW the developers don't wanna give away EVERY feature!! Since skill tweaking has already officially occured, no need to reveal all skills and their changes.

Come on! We all know that skill balancing/tweaking happens constantly through GW play history, so i am sure if even more changes are needed on NF release, they will be made in short time. No need to nit-pick Anet for giving us a FREE preview to quite a large amount of content. And just think, this large part is only like 10% of the map (or less)!!!

Be happy and excited for NF release! I sure am! Yes there was errors here, issues there, but we can't expect perfection from this preview.

cheers!

Even if it was only meant for PvE testing, it still failed at that. All that it showed was the new heros. The number of skills able to be unlocked from skill trainers was subpar. I literally used the same build for Paragon the entire noob island. That, is very boring. I also do not like the fact that you have to buy all the skills once again. It gets very pricey once skills start costing 1platinum a pop. Why is it so hard to give skill quests like in prophecies?

Originally Posted by Horuku
Overall, this weekend was the same as the last one, but its different this time.


That should be changed and put on a NPC in game that randomly says things but make it say

Overall, this QUEST is the same as the last one, but its different this time.

oh crap!

Is this the Trolls Unit Thread? Doh! I walked right into this trap! More of the same old complaints/complainers...*sigh*

Who says you have to buy all new skills? i remember completing a quest and getting skills...
And PVE Preview FAILED??! It showed NOT only the heros, but the lush environments, variety of monsters, quest types, new titles, variety of new weapon skins, and much more. You have experienced mebe 10% or less of the game, don't be crying already!

Ok, that was slightly harsh, but cmooooon. I guess you are entitled to your opinions. I got a suggestion, you don't like the preview event? Don't buy the game. Problems solved.

cheers!

I dunno what you're talking about. I was able to get a Gladiator point with a team of. Whirling Dervish prebuild (me), Dervish with a sword.., Assassin, and Monk (who only used a total of 6 different skills)

/cry...

This event did not fail. Personally I found this event to be more enjoyable than the whole campaign of factions. It took me longer to finish all the quests in the event than it did to beat all of factions. This is the most fun I have had with GW in a very long time, it has restored my interest in this game.

Failed? Not for me it didn't.
As for not showing all the skills, who cares? That is like complaining that the whole campaign wasn't open for us to beat...
When are people going to be thankful that we get this preview stuff for free and quit crying about it wasn't enough? There is nothing posted or written anywhere that says you are entitled to an event, quit complaining and enjoy what you get already.

Skillwise, it seemed clear that the top-level PvP players actually got a decent chance to experiment with what they (as the experts they presumably are) considered the most powerful skills to be. Observer mode shows a decent amount of new-build testing amongst the rated<100 guilds.

...Obviously every powerful combination hasn't been tested, but that's why this is a new format and not a mature one. Hopefully the really broken stuff's been found and exhibited already.

Presumably a lot of PvPers run around with 10K Balths faction waiting for events like this one or other emergencies, ne? I know I don't!

The hardcare PVPers were able to experiment because all your PVP unlockes from the last PVP preview event were carried over to this weekend. So in fact you could have stored faction unlocked stuff during the PVP weekend stored up faction again then unlocked new stuff this weekend. That is 20,000 faction spent if you do not count any faction made and spent during the actual events.

I enjoyed the event from start to finish.. well, till I ran out of time anyway. It really showed Anet was listening to it's player base with some of the additions. It also allowed us to see some of the things that are still being worked on and still need to be changed. Locked gates for example still need to be removed, but they may have been there only for the preview as I can't imagine them ruining a gem of a game with those again.
All in all, I thought the event was awesome.

You don't get all skills in the preview for the same reason you don't see the whole movie in a trailer.

people that have never played guild wars before will not have enough skills unlocked in time to properly enjoy the characters

People that have never played guild wars will not be PvPing. And you can finish PvE with an empty skillbar. You'll have more than enough money from just questing to unlock every primary and secondary available from the Istani skill trainers, and, really, some of them like Hexbreaker Aria you just won't be using in PvE ever so even if you don't unlock it, big deal.

granor: You could also have unlocked using faction during both events. It doesn't take a hardcore PvPer to have 10k faction.

WasaGuest: About the locked gates: I noticed there are points in the storyline that could not be done until a particular Sunspear Rank had been achieved. I think this may be ANet's response to the locked / open gate debate. Maybe you can get to verious places, but unless you follow and complete the storyline, you won't be able to get the valuable endgame greens because the missions aren't able to be done without criteria being met. You did notice the lack of "Enter Mission" buttons and the presence of an NPC to talk to ? I hope this is the case. It will allow poeple to rush to high level areas for whatever reason, but it will also preserve the reward of endgame greens to those who actually complete the storyline.

I, too, hope the locked Gates was just for the Preview.

Of course, I didn't play enough to even get to a locked gate, so I enjoyed the preview just fine!

I can see the OPs point, though. Part of the fun of a preview is experimentation, and the more skills we have access to, the better.

Still, I can also see the point of others who feel some stuff should be saved for the rest of the game. Case in point, the Factions preview, which revealed too much.

I think this preview accomplished it's goal: It gave us a nice taste of Nightfall, without giving away the cow.

I wasn't to dissapointed, the major problem for me was the lack of armor choice.