the treasure hunt is essentially something i do when i wind down.

If the objective is solely money yep, (assuming a guild party of course, not pub because pub exploration mode or pub anything dungeon is frankly just asking for trouble, especially in exploration mode) but i generally do it because treasure hunting itself is fun for me and most importantly doable when i am alone instead of requiring a party that frankly gives me headache when i am not with the guild party. (even though many of the treasure guardians tend to be heavy for solo, they r doable… just takes careful approach and decently configured character)

my typical run with them generally net me a handful of items i want to keep, then the rest i either sell to trade house, salvage into rare mats or crunch into the forge.

bronzed:
nekosan,

You could always go treasure hunting,

Problem is that once you have a set of crafted oranges there’s a 0% chance of getting upgrades, that makes it basically a money farm (which you can probably do better by spamming a 20 minute exploration mode run).

You could always go treasure hunting,

since the chest rewards are scaled to your level (not the whole reward i believe since i’ve gotten some gears not level appropriate from some chests).

Strewn around the world essentially are hidden chests and location, many of them have no point of interests marker so you either have to seek them or well… the lazy way out is to to google it or wiki it and find the location.

But some indication to help you recognize such sites are:
A. the place has a name on the map but no point of interest marker
B. the place has no name but has an elaborate entrance, either concealed or otherwise.
C. there are mobs inside it or guarding the entrance
D. there is an unusual mobs or concentration of mobs (often veterans) that guards the area.

Usually if you find that there are large number of veterans in it, the chest reward is at least a splendid chest.

Or sometimes it’s a difficult location, like one where they put a single veteran troll in a very cramped arena…

It’s basically a continuation of the GW1 treasures concept, except this time around with a fair bit of work required to actually get to the treasures themselves so you don’t just farm the treasures with ease based on it’s cycling timing.

Yep, it does combo with itself as in the bullet it fires when blackshot is triggered does blind the target it’s fired at, either that or the bullet it fires is naturally given blind property not sure which is which but logically it makes sense that the bullet gains the combo field property as well.

Hmmm.. i’ll try using it as a stealth gap closer, though wouldn’t that expend my entire initiative reserve? Blackshot itself is not cheap, plus the gap closer, that would be close to normal initiative total reserve so even with 5 seconds of stealth (i assume this with the stealth duration upgrade trait) i’d have no initiative left to actually do something to them once i am inside much less initiative to get out alive, but i’ll try it anyway and see how it goes from there.

nekosan: What I’m saying is that once you get to max level and you’ve run each dungeon once there needs to be something for you to do.

Why simplify it all into just a game of Quake?

Well Guild Wars is closer to a competitive PVP game, just like CounterStrike, DOTA2, Starcraft 2, and less like WoW.

The whole point is that everyone competes on equal footing. Having gear progression is antithetical to that idea.

I suppose you might look at DOTA2 and go, well what’s the point of playing, my character doesn’t get any stronger !

Yes, the more skilled player will win, but I’d much rather that he beat me fair and square based on skill rather than beating me purely because he put in 200 hours grinding better gear.

aetherfox:
Nekosan: I don’t understand your stance. So you’re saying that an MMO isn’t complete without end gear progression, even though it has everything else (beautiful world, cooperative gameplay, decent story)

I’m kind of happy that it doesn’t have an end game gear grind the way other MMOs do (Aion, SWTOR, WoW) and I’m sure many people are. We don’t really want to have to compete people who can burn 500+ hours on a single character.

What I’m saying is that once you get to max level and you’ve run each dungeon once there needs to be something for you to do… something to look forward to, pve gear doesn’t transfer to pvp and in my off time from pvp I;m pretty much restricted to an Asian MMO style spam farm for better looking pants/whatever.

My issue is that there’s not actually much to do at max level, jumping puzzles etc are only entertaining the first time through. I’ve never understood the “i don’t want to compete with someone who puts in 500 hours on their character” because no gear progression doesn’t change that aspect… you’re still competing with people who play more than you do and at the end of the day a decent chunk of them are going to beat you, you just have less to look forward to.

Why simplify it all into just a game of Quake?

The other thing is that I think the pistol shot from black powder actually combos with itself, so you can use it as a 900 range blinding shot. Kinda expensive though.

but actually using blackpowder to it’s most potent strength (ie: lingering blind) thus far in both structured PvP and WvW for me generally have either been ineffective (because they just get out of it almost immediately) or suicidal in WvW because they shoot you full of holes if you get anywhere close to within range in a class as soft as a thief.

so i am very interested to know if there’s something i am missing with my thief since i naturally would like to be able to cast blackpowder right on top of them if possible (where it IS powerful indeed) as opposed to trying to find a ranger that can stand still for once so i don’t have to run after him and stand near him to cast the skill and all that for the chance to get to blind enemiy group for ONE attack, as opposed to lingering blind that needs to be casted point blank on the enemy.

It’s my preferred setup as it’s very flexible, but it is spammy.

In WvW, you don’t actually have to get out the front to use black powder. You can actually just cast it *on* a friendly ranger.

But now we’re getting into theorycrafting that possibly indicates GW2 does have some depth to it. :p

in structured PvP, they all will get out of the area, same with WvW too except in WvW you’ll get shot into pin cushion just getting close to them to do it in general…

UNLESS, A. they r routed, B. your team is very brave or foolhardy and engaged them into mass melee, C. the fight scale is small enough (half a dozen per side or so like during objective raids) that you can survive going in and out of the ranged fire.

Please don’t get me wrong, i am not doubting you strictly.. but i am curious how you actually pull it off and get them to stay in it or do it in WvW and lived without being shot into little pieces.

because while PvP is indeed chaotic, most ppl generally will get the heck out of any circle on the ground and while WvW is chaotic to the max indeed, ppl will shoot at anything squishy enough and a thief trying to cast a PBAoE skill on them is pretty high on the list of target that will get shot at.

PvP is just chaotic, so ‘perfect positioning’ is very rarely achieved.

or alternatively you put the blackpowder down and your team somehow are smart enough to actually shoot through them (a level of intelligence i frankly never see so you generally have to position the blackpowder in front of your team firing line and get yourself shot doing so)

it’s especially confusing to me since most ppl prefer ranged over melee given the difficulty in tracking ppl through dodges, and frantic fight (doesn’t stop some ppl from still using melee of course but i see way more ranged than melee), so i am not sure why anyone would stay within one area at all unless you root and snare him to death.

bronzed:
I am especially interested since i have yet to see someone in the structured PvP that actually… well, primarily auto attack and actually hold his own ground when engaged with someone.

the last time i saw something remotely close to that was the ranger spirit build but they still have to apply their entire range of bow condition damage to actually win direct one on one engagement and any sort of spike AoE smash their spirits to oblivion.

I found it possible with a thief smoke build. Either swords or daggers with pistol offhand.

Black powder is so incredibly uber because it’s a guaranteed miss for anyone caught in it. It also mindlessly activates blind combos for team members without any real thought as to placement. Just fire and forget and the enemy team gets blinded.

It is possible that my opponents were subpar, of course, but that’s what worked for me. :p

And the point of the auto attack is because using initiative on any other skills but black powder reduces both survivability and group utility a ton. You can even get away with putting a leap with daggers in to go into stealth, but still the primary damage comes from chained auto attacks then, because you black powder, leap, backstab, then bash bash bash while the blind is still on. When you’re not blinding anyone, you dodge.

It’s also true that I didn’t actually go into any guild vs guild pvp, but that’s a bit in-depth for a release game.

In WvW black powder is also the best tactic because an entire army of blind combos is far more effective than anything you can do, which then means you’re stuck with no initiative but to auto attack.

I guess you could say, and you’d be right, that using black powder and even leap as well is not pure auto attack spam, but all the damage comes from it, and it makes the system no real different from The Secret World, say, where you do most damage with builders and occasionally fire off a consumer. So it’s still very MMO-ish.

Wow you replied to my comment. I’m always glad when I get to connect with reviewers =)

I apologize upfront then – at the risk of sounding elitist or trying to tell you something you already know (as I have no knowledge of you extent of your experience) … what sort of PVP did you engage in? I ask this because the dodge+autoattack build sounds like a solo PuG build where you play with randoms.

Guild Wars was very much a game where the team leader decides exactly how his team is going to handle different maps and different enemy teams (metagame) and directly specifies the 64 skills his team is going to bring to the map – everything is painstakingly examined, every skill brought for a specific reason – to exploit a particular map, to counter a particular skill the opponent might bring.

It’s certainly not all about individual performance in kills / deaths, and individual survivability.

It would be as if I was giving advice to people playing DOTA2 – if your sole objective was to “do well” when playing with other random players in solo matchmaking, where you have somehow defined doing well as “killing lots of enemies and dying as little as possible” – then I would say, you should play a hero with an escape mechanism, has good scaling with farm, and just go and play conservatively. Have fun ! Nothing wrong with that. In pugs, it’s likely no one will stop you farming up to an unstoppable level and winning.

But that’s not how the real game is won or played. A team consisting of 5 carries with escape mechs who just spend the first 25 minutes farming is hardly going to work, in fact it’s going to fail miserably. There are a multitude of other roles that need to be filled for a team to be effective – support, ganker, etc. Those playstyles look like they have less success from an individual point of view, but are vital to the success of the team. If I was giving you advice on how to actually win games, I would have to go into the different roles that are required, some of which involve dying a whole lot and not getting many kills, levels or gold.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I have a hard time imagining that 5 players with simple autoattack spam + dodge is going to be the optimal team composition in this game. In fact, I would imagine the optimal team composition won’t be discovered for another few months.

I agree with you that at first glance Guild Wars 2 has less depth than Guild Wars 1, but I would say it’s far too early to tell how things will pan out.

nekosan:
The problem is that it isn’t so fun in itself, very little in the dungeon content is actually “fun gameplay”, it’s just boring repetitive crap.

That isn’t ‘The’ problem, that is ‘Your’ problem. If you don’t enjoy it, then once again, not the game for you. There are plenty of titles out there that focus on nothing more than item grinding. Just because a game doesn’t cater to your idea of what fun is, doesn’t mean the game isn’t so, just that it is not for you.

If constant item stat progression is the only thing you can actually enjoy in a game, well I feel rather sorry for you. But never will I say that has anything to do with what makes a game good or bad.

The game isn’t exclusively PvP and I never said it was. However that is what you usually do with your character in any MMO after completing all of the PvE content.

the last time i saw something remotely close to that was the ranger spirit build but they still have to apply their entire range of bow condition damage to actually win direct one on one engagement and any sort of spike AoE smash their spirits to oblivion.

i am curious what build is this and what class, so i can test it in the Mist PvP arena.

aetherfox:

IMO anyone who talks Guild Wars without talking about the PVP aspect has completely missed the core of the game. It’s like someone reviewing WoW but never hit the level cap and never raided and never did any instances.

Unfortunately, Guild Wars 2 seems a lot more simplistic than Guild Wars 1 at first glance, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve actually played more of it.

I know you’re more talking to Nekosan, but I want to repeat this anyway:

I did plenty of PvP for this review. But I chose to talk about general combat mechanics because it wasn’t the holy grail of PvP it was hyped up to be. My strongest pvp builds all relied on auto attack spam.

Guild Wars 2 had significant balance problems all up to the end of the beta, and I’m not convinced they resolved them, unfortunately. In GW1 this wasn’t such an issue because you could get around balance by being able to run with two classes, so everyone was OP, and the metagame constantly shifted.

But GW2, with its simplified traits system, does not achieve this. Just my opinion, anyway. :)

I’m kind of happy that it doesn’t have an end game gear grind the way other MMOs do (Aion, SWTOR, WoW) and I’m sure many people are. We don’t really want to have to compete people who can burn 500+ hours on a single character.

syncourt:
nekosan,

In the end when it comes to PvE imo, the game should be fun in itself. Relyig on having to unlock items or shinys to enjoy it is just a cheap way of hooking players.

Rest assured that they will bring in expansions, while you may not enjoy them due to a lack of item progression, many others will enjoy them purely due to the well designed dungeons and actual fun gameplay that they create with it.

The problem is that it isn’t so fun in itself, very little in the dungeon content is actually “fun gameplay”, it’s just boring repetitive crap.

If the game was meant to be almost exclusively about the PvP like you say then what was the point of them crafting a beautiful world and all that leveling content?

They’ve basically shown the will to provide high quality, long term pve content but also the fact that they have no idea how to do it. Going back and doing other races leveling quests isnt my idea of fun end game content.

I think most of this has been said upthread but it bears repeating: Guild Wars is, well, Guild Wars. It may not fit everyone’s idea of what an MMO is supposed to be about, and that’s fine. If people want to play WoW, they will play WoW instead.

It would be kind of silly for Arenanet to spend a hundred million dollars to slavishly copy WoW and then come out second best. If they tried to create a gear-gated raid progression system, do you think they could do a better job than what WoW has spent 7 years perfecting? No.They would just create an inferior experience, and get slammed by the very people they were trying to cater to (like yourself).

They already have a very successful franchise that has been running for years, of course they’re going to stick with it. I don’t think it’s fair for players to complain about the lack of level 80 gear progression in a game that never had gear progression to begin with.

In case you hadn’t played the original Guild Wars – it was designed primarily as a PVP game (hence the name – Guild Wars). There was a storymode, but many people I know didn’t finish the story or hit the level cap, they just PVPed. The PVP was amazing, by the way – one of the best, I daresay, of any genre I’ve played. My guild was pretty good, we played with / against the top 10 teams in the world – (prize money at the time was $200,000) – before the match the opponent guild ranking and team name would flash on the screen. There was a depth of tactics and strategy in GW that I have never seen replicated in any game so far, and I play and watch a tonne of competitive esports games at a decent level. (got into the top 10 nationals, etc)

IMO anyone who talks Guild Wars without talking about the PVP aspect has completely missed the core of the game. It’s like someone reviewing WoW but never hit the level cap and never raided and never did any instances.

Unfortunately, Guild Wars 2 seems a lot more simplistic than Guild Wars 1 at first glance, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve actually played more of it.