BWE1 comes to an end today ( Aug. 10th, 2015) at 1304hrs

We were saddened by the end and eager to participate in the next BWE (Beta Weekend Event). Below is a post we made on the forums along with some caps and a revised Rytlock video showing his return from the Mists.

Some guildy’s and I had a conversation about the new adventure system coming out in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. We were discussing what we would rank on the leader boards given that our guild is mostly PvE and non-competitive.  I had mentioned I would place 99th on the adventure leaderboards. I guess I was wrong, though not far from the truth either!

Just goes to show Guild Wars 2 & Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Team is looking out for the PvE’rs and those who might not be “elite” (by choice or otherwise). Granted I did earn the Gold rank, and it took me only 2 tries achieving it on the second try. That was not the case with the Tendril Torching. After 4 tries I was still 5 from placing in Silver.  I guess you win some you lose some eh? 😉

Kinda cool new map system coming out for those who might not know. It’s the Map Bonus Reward System meant to “The goals of this system are to provide ways for players to target the materials they need, let players know exactly where to obtain those materials, and help all explorable maps always feel like relevant and rewarding places to play.” ~ by Linsey Murdock on March 26, 2015  read more…

Some screen caps of Verdant Brinks

Forum Post

BWE1 responses to Guild Wars 2:Heart of Thorns Team wants to know ( from 1st BWE Post) by two avid Guild Wars 2 & Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns fans. These are our combined opinions of Crystal Virgo and Seth Moonshadow.

We want your thoughts on how fun it is to play our new profession as well as the elite specializations.

Revenant ~ We very much enjoy playing the Revenant! We do however find it a little more difficult to return to than any of the other professions. Shiro has a steeper learning curve than Mallyx, otherwise he seems okay. We found that skill Unrelenting Assault and skill Phase Traversal on the Revenant dual swords would not always work especially with the new beast “Arrowhead”. Those skills would not shadowstep or mist step to target very often. Also, Unrelenting Assault does not always return character to starting position when it does Shadowstep.  Impossible Odds & Jade Winds are sweet! Just wish they could hit more targets 😀

Tempest ~ During heavy combat animations sometimes do not show. We’re on the fence about whether or not an overload skill should be blockable, and many of our attempts to use Tempest Overload are blocked / interrupted / negated. The animations and sounds are awesome. It really helps make our Elementalist feel more like an Elementalist. We can’t wait until the horn sounds are replaced also, it will be even that much sweeter! We found ourselves using Tempest abilities far more than we thought we would.

Dragonhunter ~ WOW! Very fun indeed! It did creep close to the Ranger realm at first, but after playing Dragonhunter for a while you can see the Ranger is still a very valid profession. We took to Dragonhunter very fast and it quickly became a very close favorite to our Tempests.

Reaper ~ Nicely done, we enjoyed Reaper’s Shroud especially Soul Spiral. The animations and new character skin are a welcome piece of eye candy 🙂

Chronomancer ~ The clock sounds and time visuals are sweet! It added a little bit of comic relief to playing and yet did not turn it into a clown show 😀

Do the elite specializations feel like they are creating an entirely new role for your main profession?

Tempest: Not really. It does however really give you the feeling that an Elementalist is truly an Elementalist and “commands” the Elements rather than just using them. We were at first sceptical about the Tempest. Now we have a rekindled love of our main character who will most certainly become a Tempest! While it does not give the feeling of an entirely new role, it does provide much needed staying power to the “Battle Mage” build I already use frequently on my Elementalist.

Reaper: Not so much, only because I (Seth) already use my Necromancer in much the same way as a Reaper is used for “brawling”. However, the Reaper will give my current Necro Brawler much needed staying power to survive more battles. Instead of rush in, hit, rush out, spam staff #1 then repeat.

Dragonhunter: Yes!

Chronomancer: Undecided / not completely sure.

Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles?

Yes. We found ourselves using 0-9 skills as soon as they are available far more in Verdant Brinks than we do in normal play. Though, we use the 0-9 skills all the time during normal game play and elite skills probably more often than most. After all, they were put there to be used right?

Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding?

Yes. In this version of Verdant Brinks we found it much more necessary to find a “Battle Buddy” before heading off into the woods! The Pocket Raptors were cute and dangerous, but also a defeatable enemy even in the packs. The Mushrooms on the other hand proved quite a bit more challenging when in packs and “praise the six!” you don’t get a veteran in with them!! If for no other reason than survival, teaming up–or at the very least following others–was needed more than previous tests. The reward came from not having to use the WP’s as often and did give you the Us vs Them feeling (as I noticed many individual stragglers buddying up also).

Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters?

On occasion, yes.

We’re looking for comments on how well Adventures help accomplish the goals we set out for them here.

As a competitive part of PvE it definitely adds challenge to achieving the Silver or Gold. They are a unique game play feature and can be made easier with some mastery tracks completed. Many of us PvE’rs appreciate that you have the bronze achievable (if it provides a mastery point?) for those of us not into the competitive play realm, some of us are here for the fun not the Hard Core challenge. We do appreciate the Adventure Systems uniqueness and look forward to trying more. We have already witnessed Adventures being dropped for easier ones in order to acquire Mastery points. We noticed how players quickly took playing the easier more achievable Adventures rather than attempting more “challenging” / harder Adventures. Some players are older and slower, have older / minimum requirement  computers, slower internet connections among some of the reasons.

That being said, we both took Gold on Salvage pit after a couple tries and I was just 5 shy of taking Silver on Airstrike after 4 tries.

Does night feel different from the daytime?

Yes. Daytime is much safer to roam freely solo vs Night.  Like Dry Top, it is nice to have events change with the day and night; this offers variety and avoids feeling like grinding. The alternating events for day and night is something that should be added to all maps including the starter zones. It is a welcome change to the world and adds some replayability to maps.

Does it change the way you play while night is active?

It does. We tend to remain in the area when Night falls and do not do as much traveling alone. Or we find a location with more players hanging about. There is a clear increase of volume to beasts around events mostly at night.

Is the nighttime meta-event experience that we’ve shown so far engaging and fun?

Yes.

Does the Mastery system feel like a system that works to provide meaningful progression?

We feel it does a decent job for what it was designed to do. It gives us a reason to look at our XP bar again 😉 and a use for all those XP Boosters we saved up:). It would be nice if there was only one “Region” instead of two. Mainly since the balance of earning points for each is difficult to see (from a player’s perspective) right now.

Does it make you care about experience and Mastery points?

Experience more so than mastery points. It seems in-line with existing leveling for level 80 characters, not too fast and not so slow. It did take longer to earn mastery unlocks this time compared to last. Event hunting will be needed far more than before as beasts do little to help level masteries. We noticed Writs of Experience do not affect Mastery leveling. we’re on the fence about that remaining or not, but we can see the reason to block it for testing.

Does it provide a framework that you think we could regularly add to in live updates?

Absolutely! We are hoping we have not been shown all the masteries Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will ship with 😉 In any case we can’t wait to level them up!

Does it improve the experience of gathering materials if you’re working on building items that require specific crafting materials that previously had no clear place to earn them?

Yes. We like that the map shows materials we can earn while playing there :). It would be nice to have them added to achievements or hero panel for tracking them also, if that is possible? Maybe have a show / hide option setting that will add that display to the Event Assistant?

Does it feel like it will help keep the core world we’ve built today still a place you’ll want to return to and play in, and do you feel rewarded for doing so?

Answer A – A little, and a little. Though we are mostly PvE players, the new Map Bonus Reward System really helps us to collect those materials wanted most in inventory. While crafting ascended armor, materials for Bolts of Damask have been quite elusive. The New Map Reward System helps us in being able to focus on materials we want most while enjoying events in Tyria. We like that the Next Reward is kept while moving between maps 🙂 We like that it will rotate between maps each week (we are okay even if it is a daily rotation, maybe with daily Event Completer?). We like that Map Bonus Rewards are also Event Bonus Rewards! If this remains true for the Map Bonus Rewards System across all events in Tyria then Answer B below is negated and our answer changes to: Very Much So!

Answer B – Unfortunately, not enough to choose over existing material farming methods. It needs to be more frequent or be awarded per event. We would rather a rotation list instead of a random item from the list. We keep getting drops we don’t want or need vs the rewarding drops we want for working to our ascended or legendary. For example after 6 events I only had 3 Shiny Baubles, the next two events rewarded 1 Onyx Core. 8 events for 1 desired drop is not quite enticing enough; better would be half that: 4 events for 1 desired drop. Absolutely, it would be rewarding enough to make sure and hit all maps again! On the other hand, our BWE characters did not have personal story or map completion done, so they did not have an event locator to make use of, drastically increasing the time between rewards vs. a character who could Event hunt (having completed Personal Story and 100% of the world).

Additional Comments:

Dynamic Event Changes:

We really liked the way some events were changed to be more Tequatl / Triple Trouble  -esque. The Event Colossal Vine needing coordination by 1) defending snipers so they could do their jobs, 2) holding one location so another could fire mortars. Was a very welcome change from the normal defeat this foe, defend this person or escort this thing. Engaging events don’t need to all be Tequatl / Triple Trouble. But simply adding a step or two of coordination will help in many ways other than just changing the norm. It established a PvE use for Commander Tags (other than here is an event we are doing), promotes cooperation and community building. More of these events should be added to the rest of Tyria!! Awesome work!!!

Beasts:

We noticed some beasts had more player-like maneuvers. Having them dodge and use skills that players use, combined with foe abilities makes them more fun to combat.

Audio:

We noticed a few new sounds to the game! We really like the Tempest sound effects. We enjoyed the ambient sounds of the map as well, very nice! Can’t wait to hear more!!

Map Completion & XP:

Not sure if this was intended. We took a short trip to Rata Sum to grab some XP Boosters to help level our Mastery’s. After WPing in we found a nice shiny bouncy map completion chest! After grabbing our gear and WPing back to Verdant Brinks we opened the chests for a wonderful 27k XP reward! So naturally we then visited each map that was completed. This helped level at least ¾  of Mastery Track! So THANK YOU for the bonus XP for getting started on Mastery’s 😀

Thank You Colin and Rubi for the reminder to gather nodes! We had chosen at first to bypass them, knowing we could not keep the materials. Gathering helped by providing between 802 – 1200 XP.

It seems bugged events kept us from earning XP – eg: would like to see the Itzel larvae event work from start to finish.  Weren’t there more small-scale events in the Revenant beta test?

Closing:

We really had loads of fun playing the Revenant & all four Elite Specializations. They give new life, if not new roles, to existing characters we have come to enjoy and love!

The Map Bonus Reward System is a nice plus but could use some improvement to drops.

Adventures, while fun, did pose some challenges, though placement on the leaderboard would not be enough for us to keep repeating them. Maybe add Map Bonus Rewards as part of a repeat reward (assuming they player already placed high enough to receive a mastery point) and you can bet you’ll find me there many times!

Masteries are a reason to love my leveling bar again and provide fun and unique rewards for doing so. I can only imaging future additions to the Mastery system. It was a little slow to level, but I figure that was by design and we are fine with that. After all. we should not get them in 2 days right?

Adding cooperation and teamwork to the events was a very welcome and fun change to the standard events. It brings the Dynamic to Dynamic Events!!

Can not wait until BWE2 and release of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!!