Guild Wars Beyond: What do you like/dislike about the gameplay and storytelling?

Slightly offtopic, but I'm now curious... what's your standard E/W bar?

I feel all of it has been sloppily implemented. The difficulty and varied skills of the White Mantle was fine.. but no forethought was given to the limited group size and utter uselessness of the available NM proph heroes.

Loot and rewards.. ugh. This should have been on a factional/rank system like EoTN.. not based upon miniscule % of getting anything worth having. 100g noob scrolls and 1pt sweets are not adequate rewards for the effort required to gain Royal Gifts. Farming trash mobs in Pre pays off better. It's sad that in order to make the lackluster Oppressor weapons even remotely desirable they had to add them to HOM point earning.

No forethought was given as to unlocking the content. I would have liked a yes/no trigger.. something I DECIDED rather than the new mobs showing up simply because I finished Proph two years ago. I do not want to do this over and over again simply to clear the areas of WIK mobs on every char.

I won't do Hearts of the North at all. I didn't roll a Kieran, don't want to play one, and didn't work on developing my Chars, skills, and equipment to play a canned skillset on a canned char. Forcing this system upon us absolutely kills any enjoyable replayability.

As far as a lead in to GW2.. honestly.. you plan to destroy my chosen homeland, Elona, destroy my Sunspears... and then expect me to somehow give a rats patoot about Psycho Gwen and her Doormat? No amount of missions would ever make me care.

Personally.. I think the Play as Kieran thing was more about ease to develop rather than innovative story line. One canned skillset was far quicker to implement than the myriad of profession bars would have been.

I liked being able to one-shot mobs as Thackeray. That was cool. Idc about the white mantle stuff. Poor rewards, long and annoying quest lines. I've only completed WiK on one char and cba to do it again. Besides all those white mantle infesting the countryside can't be good for tourism.

I can't stand alternating rewards for NM and HM. People complain content is too easy but refuse to do HM because the rewards are not increased. If you are going to complain about how easy something is in NM before you've tried HM, the solution is right in front of you.

Either you want a greater challenge completing HM (because you enjoy it) or you want to complete HM not because you enjoy it but because you want a greater reward.

I personally hate HM. I have done every mission in the game in HM (hero/hench) and vanquished all of Elona, parts of Cantha and half of Tyria so I'm not incapable of completing content in HM by any stretch of the imagination. I've also cleared most end game elite areas (including DoA and Slavers) in HM.

Why do I hate HM? Because it shoe horns me into a more difficult experience which I won't enjoy simply because it has greater reward. I can't play with the build I want to play or the party mix up I want to play.

It's perfectly fine for content like this to exist in the game for people who want to play like that, but for those of us who like to bring our spear chuck ranger or Melandru's Resilience beastmaster warrior, why should we feel the need to alter our builds and play styles simply to complete content in a play style we enjoy less because we get less reward (are punished) for choosing NM. The NM rewards when these two are split are forgettable at best, hell the HM rewards for most bounties were forgettable.

Either you want to complete HM content because you enjoy a greater challenge and take the same reward or you simply want more loot. If you truly want a greater challenge because that's what you enjoy, do it on HM simply for the greater challenge, they shouldn't have to throw in more rewards. Why do NM players have to settle for less because some people don't care about marginalised niche encouraging game design? Don't reward people for bringing sabway and pvx wiki build mentalities, reward us all for having fun - it's a game after all.

I never bothered with WiK content because of how horrendously unbalanced the enemies are for where you find them if you're by yourself.

Why am I fighting near-Slaver's-level super-mobs in a 6-man area where the henchmen are level 10-12, again?

Too bad theres no scenes that u can skip.
That's what i don't like about it.

The Hearts of the North quests are getting too long and too much of the solo quests is bad. You dont get to play GW as you would normally play it.

Besides I have 16 PvE characters, which means I have to do 4*16 = 64 solo quests. Previously, I could always team up both my accounts to complete them in half the time, but I can't do that with solo quests.

They are not supermobs. They are super fun.
It's no longer "target the one with the monk name, nuke, get rid of the rest". With them, you actually have to see their skills and change your strategy accordingly.
Is the Priest a smiter or a healer? The mesmer is healing? Sabannah Heat savant! Who is resurrecting them?
Go to the Anguish, THOSE are the bad designed ones. Just big numbers and nothing else.

Now... as for how to deal with WiK enemies, there are many ways.
But first, you must remember than only two henchmen are worth it around there.
ONLY TWO: Dunham and Claude
They strip enchantments, get rid of hexes, interrupt and and give energy to your party. Claude's soul leech takes care of enemy healers at incredible speed. you'll understand it when facing a Word of Healing Sycophant.
The rest of henchmen suck, never pick any of them. Never. Specially the warriors. Bringing a melee is bringing problems.
I've made all mursaat quests in NM with those two in levels 10..15, only had problemas with my warrior. I had to join player parties for EVERYTHING in WiK with my warrior, and if heroes were used, I didn't bring any, otherwise they'll chase me around instead doing their jobs.
The inquisitor ones were done in HM. Lovisa was specially easy, again with all but my warrior.
I still have to make them with dervish and assassin, and I probably won't unless AI is fixed. I have 7 Thackerays and my paragon is going for the 8th. And only the warrior had trouble so far. It was specially easy for my ritualist, elementalist and necromancer.
My elementalist even made the battle in a party of 1(3) before they made it easier.


Once you have those two henchmen, all you need is 3 decent heroes.

You'll have to experiment to find something that works for you.
For me, panic works with big mobs,but in WiK you will usually face 3..6 enemies at a time, and 1/3 of them will move around as melee. That's why psychic instability is better here. One blinding surge, one healing monk, and whatever you wanna be... excepting a melee.
Caster, SoS, spears or bows, but never melee weapons.

Why not melee?
Well... I'm afraid that won't work with h/h.
Anyone that has ever played both caster and melee knows it. A melee character can't really use heroes properly. They may manage, and even succeed, but they will always work way worse than when there's no melee in the party.

Monsters won't get too close if you are outside range, since H/H aggro bubbles are smaller, and as soon as they see a player, they'll gain the incredible power to see the entire party in the radar. When they see heroes or henchmen, they only see those they have in range.
When I'm a caster, I can throw a vanguard assassin and that's all the melee I'll ever need.

When I'm a melee, I can flag the heroes half radar away, and the monsters will still ignore me and go directly to them. And it's not funny when H/H decide that they NEED so hard to be behind me that they'll cross the enemy lines if I turn my back to them, ignoring the fight in the process.
It's as if someone was controlling my flag and flagging them all over the place.

And don't even think about putting a flag yourself. They won't stay around there moving properly, instead they'll do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HRo04mu-ag
♪ All this will I do if you'll ma... ♪
Ahem... catchy tune...

Anyways... As long as there is no melee involved, you should be fine with H/H even in there, it you still find it hard, it only takes practice to get the knack of it.

This is expected behaviour and how agro works. If you don't want the mobs to fight your party then make sure that the agro bubble of your heroes doesn't overlap with your agro bubble. If it does, that bridge will cause mobs to treat you all as a threat and will attack who they choose. You can get them to ball up and get agro on you first and then bring heroes in if you want to tank. Alternatively, look to pull mobs near a wall where you can body block them to keep them away from your back lines.

Its kinda odd; the only one of my characters that I managed to finish BLA (before change), using only three heroes, was my warrior using 100b.

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/9329/gw004a.jpg

Half radar away, their aggro bubbles, which are smaller than mine, are far enough so they'll won't overlap with mine even if they were as big as mine, since the radar range's diameter is longer than 5 times the aggro bubble's.
That's no bridge. That's a wormhole, XD.
When I'm melee, even if I manage to keep them around me with things like Aura of Thorns or Grasping earth before bringing the rest of the party back, as soon as the rest of the party gets closer, they'll ignore me and go for them.
Even if you bring a melee H/H, they don't do that when you are not close, they stick to what you bring them in the front as long as no player gets too close, being it a Vanguard Asassin, a minion, a melee summon or a W henchman. Also, henchman kite properly and stick around without spreading too much or bunching up too much, while they move like ants when you step on an ant hill when you are melee.
I've even tried using a warrior with SoS and a staff, and they behave properly in that case.

I really enjoyed the new content. I totally did all of it as it was being updated so sometimes it got a little frustrating trying to find everything, but all turned out alright in the long run and I didn't have to use the wiki.

The combat has been the best part of the GW:B so far. I love the skill bars of the enemies. I really liked Keiran's bar as well. The weapons were top notch: Law and Order, Alari's Double Blades, Izzy's Balance still makes me LOL.

The stuff that disappointed me about the story was how haphazardly the Seer was thrown into the mix. I think the basics of storytelling got thrown out the window for this one. Also, Blimm and Zinn's "helpful" thing for the BLA was pretty much a huge let down. That could have been worked into some graphically grandiose thing and instead was pretty mundane. We could at least have had GOX go steamroll through the front gate of LA for laughs right and taken out like 30 dudes? If you don't bother to explain everything then why not go whole hog crazy with it? At least that is my take.

(Side note: waiting for people to wake up to open presents on Christmas right now. this post may have been a little long winded )

I liked the new content, though I do agree that they could have done a bit better with how the storyline was actually played out. Cutscenes are difficult, but give me some reasons why these particular Mantle/Mursaat are so despicable. Adjust NPC dialogue a bit, so you hear them talking about rumors they've heard about this or that. And yes, I agree that Salma should have done something to help fight in BLA.

Also, while it was nice that they went the "quality over quantity" for the Mantle and Peacekeepers, once it came to BLA they went right back to "let's make this difficult by jamming as many enemies into this small space as we can". If they wanted to throw a literal army at us like that, the Mantle should have started out with low level mobs and then ramped up the difficulty as we destroyed the cannon fodder and forced their elite fighters to come out and make a stand themselves.

I liked the HotN stuff, though I struggled with it at first before I learned to just let Miku tank and take my sweet time with stuff. And while part of it is about how Gwen realizes she loves Kieran, it's really more about Kieran actually growing up and maturing and being a leader. It's a love story, but that's mixed in with other things.

(and I don't get why people whine about Gwen and call her a shrew or a harpy all the time. She's not some teenage cheerleader who's going to be all "teehee oh my god!" over everything. She's a grown woman who has been through hell and back, has lost just about everything dear to her, and as a result has closed herself off from others and has become extremely determined to make things right herself. Or are people here just scared of strong female characters that are independent and have a mind of their own?)

Independent women don't have to whine constantly. Gwen is, quite frankly, very annoying, with all the whining and harpying.

But...she really doesn't whine. At all. Standoff-ish, yes. Single-mindedly vicious, at times, yes. Determined to block out anything but her duty, yes. Incredibly angry, yes. But very rarely whiny.

I think a lot of people project the whininess onto her, simply because she is rather cold and single-minded.

Except for all the parts where she is stamping her feet like a child or pouting, or telling Keiran she doesn't want anything to do with him and then telling him to, "wait, Keiran" and he says, "you have something to say." and she says, "no" and he says, "I didn't think so." Besides all of that juvenile banter on her side and him being really nice to her, you are totally correct. Strong female character? Sorry, but where? When I think strong female in GW I think of Captain Langmar or Melonni.

I think it is because she seems to be always angry and complaining about stuff, she is rather standoffish. That makes her appear whiny and bitchy.

She is the one with the long dialogues of Keiran being irritating, complaining about his pony tail, etc..etc and ordering him around. If that is not a shrew, I dont know what is. Many guys do despise women like that.

This is why I think the dialogues/storyline may be created by a woman instead, because women tend to look at such behavior as "strong", while most men would look at her very differently.

I think you're just doing it wrong. I rolled everything on my warrior. Did the inquisitors in HM, quests in NM. Took gwen as an int-bot and force-targeted her on the casters. Panic worked well, because I don't care if the melee get skills off most of the time, and the casters tend to stay where they are when aggroed, especially when I'm breaking their backs with my hammer. If I can knocklock one caster, the other ones aren't being targeted by me so they don't kite. I always take an earth warder so my heroes are mostly safe from the melee enemies. I also use an IMS to get into aggro well before my heroes, so I take the brunt of the attack even without flagging them back.

As I've said before..anyone who takes the dialogues between Gwen and Keiran and assigns serious tones to every word has never been in any real meaningful relationship. Having been in a few, and currently a very strong marriage for over a decade, I know how two people interact when they have a strong relationship built around struggle. I assigned a joking, half-crying, enthusiastic and a bit uncomfortable tone of voice to Gwen's dialogue throughout the whole thing. Most of it was that she was pissed at herself for being so bitchy, but loving him for seeing through it and bringing her out of her shell. the whole "complaining about his ponytail" bit is just retarded...she's obviously not dead-serious about that. Put a little laughter into the words and you'll see it for yourself. I also haven't seen any direct orders, ALTHOUGH she's still technically his superior officer.

I know this is an impossible request, but I've been dying for voiced cut scenes, that's one thing I would have loved to see in WiK and HotN. It helps slow down the pace and goes beneath the skin of the characters.

With Gwen, we're missing the emotion in her voice. Imagine if we could fully realize the tortured soul that's trying to understand not only Keiran, but what feelings and emotions are.

That's pretty much what they did, really. Remember, as far as the Mursaat are concerned, the White Mantle *are* the cannon fodder...

You are not the only one here who have been happily married for over a decade. A truly matured woman would understand that driving everyone that she cares about away from her is not the happiest way of living. In fact, it stems from selfishness and self-protection, a point that even Gwen acknowledged in the end as she grew.

Whether she is his superior officer or not does not excuse her from being abusive and disrespectful to her fellow Ebon Vangard members. She should grant Keiran the same amount of respect that she gives to everyone else who have sacrificed their lives for the cause. In other words, she should behave in way that her subordinates can look up to, not being bitchy, whiny, and immature. Being in a position of power means that she must exhibit more self control and stop picking on Keiran for every single thing possible, from his ponytail to calling him an irritating idiot at every turn, in front of his friends (i.e. us the player).

Go spend your early teens in a slave camp and tell me you won't be stand-offish for a while.

And again you're missing the whole point I was trying to make. Most of their dialogue after Keiran's return is said with tongue-in-cheek...learn something please. You keep harping on the ponytail...seriously, let it go. She doesn't like it, so she says so. You don't have to be a bitch/whiner/immature person to poke a little fun at something ridiculous as a g-dam ponytail. Every comment you make about her makes you seem like you simply hate women.

I doubt you're married...in fact, I doubt you've even had a real relationship.

If you are as mature as you say you are, you would not stoop to personal attacks simply because you think Gwen is such a great character, and we happen to disagree with you?

Togue-in-cheek or not, Gwen should behave a manner befitting of her position in the Ebon Vanguard ranks.

You doubt me because you probably lied about yourself being married for over a decade. A matured person would not have to stoop to personal attacks the moment someone disagrees with him. You sound like a kid to me.

Myself, I really don't like solo missions, so I found the Thackeray things with assassin girl a pain. Once I actually tried to understand the skill set, it wasn't that bad, except the time assassin girl got stuck and 10 minutes of running around would not unstick her (yes I'm that stubborn). I enjoy the shiny blade bounties, it gives me something to do, since I gave up title hunting. I just do the five bosses on the one track from TOA, as a character builds up to 3. It's easy enough and free stuff ensues (though I got 4 Evennias and none of the other two minis).
The Beyond things are a nice plus to bridge us into GW2, whenever that happy day arrives, hopefully before I qualify for social security (I'm 57 now) though I'm betting minimum retirement age will be raised to 70 soon, but that's another discussion.
Overall I find the bonus WIK stuff to be a worthy addition to GW. And the footage of GW2 looks cool.
And merry holiday season or whatever (December, Wintersday, Festivus, winter solstice) to all.

She's a teenager and the only creatures there for her during adolescence kept her for entertainment. She joined the Vanguard for vengeance, not to be a better, caring person, which you can't learn anywhere but through experience with people. Hello, Keiran.

In my eyes Keiran acts as the leader that Gwen should be. Gwen doesn't seem too sympathetic that he had to bury Langmar and how traumatic that was for him. Gwen does come across as an extrememly brattish and immature girl who shouldn't be holding a high rank in the Vanguard as she's not exactly a shining example of leadership considering her attitude. Sure, she knows a lot about Charr and their actions, but how is she fit to lead others when she can't conduct herself in a manner befitting to her position?

With this in mind, I'd have been grateful for cutscenes for the dialogue. I'm glad this part of GW:B is over so I don't have to put up with her whining until I do the storyline on another character, at which point I will go occupy myself with something else for the half an hour it takes for her to finish her bitchfit over whatever it is she's complaining about this time.

I could understand her standoffish behaviour at the start of Keiran's courtship of her, but her reaction during the proposal... yeah. At the wedding there should have been the option of "Keiran has put up with Gwen".

Didn't everyone else in the Ebon Vanguard join for vengeance? One would think that after going through so much sufferings in life and leading war veterans to many victories, she would have matured. But I guess not...If you don't care for the people you lead, they wouldn't care for you either and the Vanguard risks falling apart.

Constant picking on Keiran (who is another respectable member of her team, being the leader of the Ebon Falcons and a war hero) and calling him an idiot in front of his friends, is not acting like a matured leader. Captain Langmar is not even half as bitchy as Gwen is.

That's why i take Keiran with my party,i want to keep him away as far as possible from that harpy.