Questions about issues w/ GW

I noticed i seem to pick up a lot of junk when killing monsters, takes like 5 minutes to fill up my inventory... and most of the different items that i'll find are the same thing, like all the shields for instance are armor of 4. I find it irritating that it is so easy to find stuff and that its mostly junk. Also, i picked up an ice wand and fought and ice monster with it and killed it easily...so much for elemental attributes.

Also this game is supposed to let you create unique looking characters... They all look the same to me, doesnt seem like you can really do much about your armor, and you're limited on what you can wear, lets see, gloves or shield... wtf? I cant wear gloves and have a shield at the same time??? in what kinda messed up world..... i cant even imagine a world so insane.

I played the beta for the first time (had to wait a week) since i got the preorder, sounded like it'd be really fun, but it was boring, none of the monsters on any of my quests were a challenge, way too easy to kill. The guild battles were a joke, you just run around in a circle trying to kill eachother with the weirdest skills ever... you end up just spamming the same 2 moves cause none of the others seem to do anything or you dont know how to apply such weird ass abilities so you ignore them.

One of the most irritating things in this game are the random special effects for whatever spell you're casting... looks goofy, i want concrete looking magic.

Question: Do you people notice these things too???

with that junk you're supposed to salvage it to get crafting materials. some of the stuff you find is useful but most is just salvagable junk.

well you get to customize your character at start and you get to color your armor and maybe change around some armor to get unique characters. you can wear a glove and a shield at the same time. the glove you had was called a grim cestus im assuming and thats an item that goes on your off hand. thats why you could not use a shield with it. if you look to your right, you will see the real armor you're wearing.

were you in the ascalon before it was ruined? that of course is easy because it is considered a newbie area. i soloed that entire part because monsters were made easy. thats why the cold wand by passed the ice monster. its ment to be easy. i wouldnt consider the other parts way too easy.

the arena is not the only place for pvp, when you do gvg, you have objectives and such. you should consider reading what the skills do and find some sort of strategy to use them. i didnt find them wierd assed and worthless half the time. all of them were helpful to me and i really dont get what you mean by "concrete looking magic," they all had some solid animation to me.

i doubt most people noticed the things you saw. the majority of your problems are from being completely new to the game. most people are not used to guildwars' style of gameplay.

A few things:

For the loot, do you really expect every monster in the game to have some highly enchanted uber weapon of doom, or a top-end shield? The majority of items are junk, just as in any battle/war in history, the majority of equipment that the common fighters used was pretty much junk. The nice thing about GW is that you can salvage that junk into it's components and use those components to make items that aren't junk. Of course, you can find nice items off of high-level bosses and such too.

There are a considerable number of options to make in customizing your appearance- when creating your character, you get to choose your skin tone, hair style, hair color, size, facial features, etc. There's a fair variety there, though I would like to see more options when the game is released. As for armors, there's 6-7 different sets for each profession currently you can choose between, each with their own unique appearance- and you can mix and match sets if you want to as well. On top of that, you can dye your armor different colors using dyes, which can make a big difference in appearance for some of the armor sets.

As for PvP being running around using 1-2 skills, this changes a lot when you get more experience with the game. After playing in the alpha for a few months, I could pretty much tell you what every skill in the game does off the top of my head- because I've seen them all be used. Each skill has it's own effect, and one of the major things that separates a skilled PvP player from an unskilled one is knowing what skills to take on their character, and which ones to watch out for the other team using. I can tell you that whenever I make a character, I've always got 8 skills that I use often, and I'd love to be able to take a few more as well.

For challenge in the game, which missions did you do? Most of the storyline missions(once you get to ruined ascalon, and out of the tutorial area) are rather challenging- I'd be very surprised for you to say you breezed through them, at least if you weren't playing a character that was far higher level than they were balanced for. I can definately tell you that in the later missions, even full parties of experienced alpha players can have difficulties completing some of the maps. Some of the low-level areas were a bit unbalanced due to the ease of getting experience in the tutorial, which was just recently added, but expect to see everything balanced out to be more challenging next beta weekend, once the devs have had more of a chance to fix things. Of course, i wouldn't expect too much challenge in the tutorial, as if a newbie can't get through the tutorial, they're unlikely to stay around for the rest of the game. Once you've got a few levels under your belt, though, expect to be struggling to survive.

Well, before i could even try to get in depth the beta weekend event was over... also... its hard to find npcs, never found the one that would allow me to make "crafting materials". I managed to get a weapon smith upgrade my hammer once. From what you guys have told me it would seem that the game has more features than I had initially thought so I'll give it another try next month. In the guild battles i was in, we all just ran out and fought and died, I dont even know how the teams were decided, i used a premade character and it just says: "join battle?" and i click join. Then i'm stuck on some team thats usually got no healers so i get hit by weird spells that curse me and poison me and i have no idea how to fight that... so i just die. Then the last guy on a team runs in a circle for half an hour with people chasing him. That was my gvg experience.

what classes did you play? for a beginner i would recommend warrior/monk just because of all the healing spells and still being able to dish out damage. i know how you feel because the first time i played, i was a warrior/necro and i had no clue how to kill anything and just ended up dieing the majority of the time.

that doesn't sound like a guild battle. that sounds like arena. guild battles you fight with your guild and you know who your teammates will be before the battle.

What you described is the Arena and not Tombs or Guild-vs-Guild.
The Arena currently is the only one that you randomly join a team of 4. For the other ones, you have to specificly select your team of 8.

nrjize:

Sounds to me like you just jumped into the game, selected a pre-made toon, when into batlle with no clue what the hell this game is about and got omgwtfpowned!!

This game isn't your FPS by a long shoot. This game is about teamwork, building a solid party, using skill and strategy. One needs to take the time to learn this game, what each professions strengths and weaknesses are, what each spell and skill does. Once this is understood one can build a viable pvp toon.

Using a pre-made toon is a curse not a blessing, it's like give a car to a 2 year old .. guess what happens .. crash and burn baby. One needs to learn how to use his toon, once this is accomplished one needs to learn how to be a usefull teammate. Hotshots are not welcomed on my team btw, the best parties are built with team players, people who know what they are doing and listen.

This game has a steep learning curve but it's also additive as all hell. I hope you have the fortitude to stick it out,, it's worth it.

Pax

After reading some of the posts by those who seem to have been very dissappointed by the game, it occurs to me these people may have been expecting an entirely different experience than the one they had.

Although this past Beta was my first one, I had read up on the game details beforehand to get a handle on what to expect. Upon seeing the game myself, I have to say that the game is everything I thought it would be and more. I did not do any PVP at all, as I'm not that interested in that for right now(maybe later), but I played the regular game past the tutorial and I loved every minute of it. I , personally like to start RPG games slowly, so I can build a character up, while learning the game mechanics. I loved the tutorial area for enabling me to do just that. Assuming the game will only get better closer to release, I believe I will be playing it for a long time to came. 4/28 can't come soon enough!

i spent last beta and this one simply exploring and trying out different builds

i will be strictly a PVE player and finally i found out i am just not cut out to be a warrior/anything but i am having a wonderful time as a fire elementalist/mesmer

waiting to explore some more next month