1:41:03 Preach is talking to you, Asmongold LMAO 1:52 Why Preach starts to play GW2 5:52 What did Preach think about GW2 when it 1st came out 11:05 Teapot reminds the player how grindy HoT was at 1st launch.... 400HP nerf to 250HP to unlock new spec.... 24:09 and it happened to Preach's story again yesterday Anet... but I guess you were watching bc you made Preach couldn't pull his favorite mount skin until the last ticket lmao 28:57 Talk about the damage output system 30:47 Teapot explains why it is so difficult to balance the classes 35:24 Talk about the elitist within GW2 community... You can check out the comments of those ... not so popular gw2 content creators' channels. There are some elitists who leave comments that look like bullies to me. I'm not sure who they follow or believe in but they like to implement their thoughts to others and deny other ways to play a class even though the vid is about open world content. (36:27 Chat starts to spam certain lines here, I guess there are many disagreements and I hope Preach can notice that as well) 42:13 48:44 Why Preach doesn't really like the raid structure(?) system in GW2 1:01:34 Talk about the issue of the damage meter absent 1:14:50 Preach's raid experience in gw2 so far 1:26:24 Preach's experience of the story so far 1:47:00 1:57:01 lol 1:48:50 Leadership of Anet 2:00:40 What surprises Preach in GW2... 2:10:23 How long would Preach plan to stay in each game for the MMOs project? And how about GW2? 2:14:47 Preach loves mini games in Gw2
Yea I also believe the first statement was kinda directed at Asmongold. I mean everyone calls him the "biggest MMO streamer and content creator" yet he has never ever played GW2 which is a solid, consolidated MMO, one that has for certain achieved the test of time. I've heard Asmongold a couple of times talking about GW2 and why he hasn't played it and tbh he has shared some fair takes and some others that I'm like "wtf are u talking about brother". For example, he has said that he has seen GW2 videos/streams and that the game doesn't seem interesting to him at all (which is fair I think, kinda), but sometimes he has said super weird stuff like I remember once he said something like "I have a friend who played (or plays?) GW2 and told me the game is trash because it doesn't respect your time" like wtf? The only thing I kinda agree is the issue regarding games that have inconveniences that are solved through the cash shop (in the case of GW2 being bank tabs, bag slots, etc) which I personally don't like but I feel like the game is so good you kinda forget about it because you're too busy having fun. I think that he probably hasn't tried GW2 because he's too lazy I mean he played FFXIV and left like in the middle of Stormblood (iirc?), probably he's just too hooked to WoW (being his main game together with PoE I think) and also because hes just trapped in the reaction content swamp/quicksand due to how easy and profitable it is, then I assume there is the org, family stuff, health issues, etc, etc so yea probably trying GW2 or finishing FFXIV aren't even close in his list of priorities in terms of content, and that considering as far as I've seen, he's focusing in new MMOs more rather than playing older ones that are already consolidated.
I started playing GW2 after watching some of Preach's playthrough. I found Teapot while trying to learn some more details of the game. I'm excited to listen to your discussion!
The part Preach said about boons contributing to 60% of others' damage is kinda true. There are so many times in raids when one of the boondps dies and the group be like " Alac/Quick died let's gg" Even though if we look at the DPS meters, boon dps can do like 60% of pure DPS builds, yet we choose to stick to relying on 2 people for quickness and alac and hope they dont die (I know deaths should not happen in good groups).
Originally, when content had no roles, after someone died, everyone died anyway, and this created a small group of elite who kicked out of the team after one mistake so boons in their current form is the answer to that situation that everyone is needed. Even when your boon DPS dies, it's still worth having
True in raids probably- but my in my 6ish months q-healing- I've died plenty of times and never have we had to gg outside of Boneskinner. (And in the situation I am thinking of, we had someone switch to HS and it was cake). Lets face it- tank or heals die in any mmo and essentially the group is done... so its not as big a worry as it might seem.
I’m very glad to hear preach. He’s got a lot of experience and isn’t a push over. TeaPot is very knowledgeable about GW2 and has a lot of love, but also has a big personality about the game. He usually persuades others to agree and I like that preach points out the flaws with the game and trying to hear the rebuttals. I think this is needed to improve the game overall and it’s great to see these two!
@@dropsey3007 Im pretty certain the hair plugs were apart of a Challange, to do with a Money raiser For charity lol, He didnt go out and get hair plugs randomly. his stream kept telling him to get them, And during a charity raiser he had hair plugs as one of them, which his audience delved into, i dont think he was ever insecure about balding lol.
Nike not getting Preach's point is quite on brand. Preach is not complaining about having these roles of Qdps or Adps, the problem steems from your own dps being way more dependant on the boons being well stacked than your own personal performance. This is a COMMON complaint in the forums and reddit and in-game, where several players, me included, want the game to use boons more as a bonus than as a mandatory thing, and most of your dps coming out of good skill usage and gear. There's nothing wrong with you having like 80% of your potential dps done if you are boon-less, but when the boon system QUINTUPLIFIES YOUR DAMAGE, there's something really fucking wrong with it. Yeah, WoW has tanks, and tanks are mandatory, but your personal dps doesn't depend on the tank pressing his Shield Block correctly. I am completely in favour of buffing personal dps while bringing the boon system down a notch, so you don't really depend so much on the performance of others to deal way more damage.
People forget this game was originally designed so that the boons provide moments of burst dps, then its over - very pvpish in design. THAT is why quickness was originally not a boon (it was its own category of buff), gave 2x attack speed and only ONE class (mesmer, time warp) had the ability to give it to the group on a long cooldown back in vanilla gw2. That is also why on launch people struggled with dungeons and orr because no one understood how powerful boons are. Over time people discovered how to permanently maintain certain boons (might, in particular with phalanx strength originally), and when HoT came out it became EVERY boon. Anet should have but didn't nip the issue in the bud when it first occurred, but I think its too late now - the playerbase has acclimated to it too much that removing it would feel pretty bad - hitting things without quickness already feels pretty unfun.
Watching Preach try to get gold on one of the time trials for hours, without maxing his glider masteries..... he is going to go batshit for roller beetle races and griffon challenges.
Awesome. Been watching preaches playthrough and was waiting for his appearance on teatime. Been interesting seeing the game from a new players perspective.
I kind of have to disagree with Teapot's assessment of GW2's raiding scene not being elitist or gate-keeping. I have tried to get into raiding on multiple occasions, but for a beginner, it is too much to get into. Not because the encounters are to hard necessarily, but rather because finding a group that will take you in is super difficult. If you want to find one through the lfg, most of them have ridiculous requirements concerning kp or other aspects that someone new cannot possibly fulfill. I can pick the correct build, study up on the wiki, but almost no group will take me in just because I've not cleared it like 50 times. Most people recommend me to try raiding with a guild, and I tried, but most guilds have fixed times or schedules for when they do raid trainings, and I mostly can only decide spontaneously if I have time or not. Raiders should be more open towards new people IMO, raids are not rocket-science, but you have to give people a chance to actually SEE the mechanics for themselves to actually comprehend them. Sorry for the rant there, it just has frustrated me for a while now, because I want to play it, but the community makes it so hard for me to join in to the point of giving up on it.
gw2 needs to stop everything for a while and put all their money into ADS. ffs so many ppl still believe in misconceptions about the game its ridiculous
The core Tyria should go through a update before that, Theres a lot of people that can be convinced to try GW2 who have never touched it, but im sorry current core Tyria would make them stop playing, its actually awful.
Great episode. How interesting that Preach didn't seem to care for flying mounts. Maybe it's because he just hasn't accessed them yet? The Griffon & Skyscale are game-changing and so much fun. GW2's mount system and flying mounts (specifically) are probably my favorite aspect of the game.
They are a grind unless u have gold for griffon. They ruin some of GW2 beautiful world when I just wheeze past everything. Preach is combat and raid mechanic guy. Doesn’t care much about flying beside first few time probably. And he had a bad experience with flying mount in mordemoth fight Or who knows he might get addicted to the race time trial
Skyscale is the worst thing that Anet added to the game, change my mind. It just destroyed so much of the beautiful open world experience and also many great fights such as Dragon's Stand. I personally think Griffon was the perfect flying mount for this game, considering we already had Springer to reach the high ground.
@@TheAsheron Interesting take! I guess everybody is different. I love the Griffon mount and didn't mind the grind/collection for it. It has a ton of personality and I like how much it rewards skillful piloting. Skyscale, on the other hand, was significantly more effort to get, but at least there's a super cute part of the quest (spoilers for Preach) and that was enjoyable.
@@epto For sure, I can't disagree that Skyscale totally changes certain encounters. You're spot on. Griffon is personally my favorite mount (by far), but alternating between Skyscale/Griffon depending on the situation works well. Once the Skyscale has all of its masteries unlocked, it pairs super well with Griffon.
Flying is pretty controversial in wow so that might influence his opinions, it pretty much empties out the open world zones except for a 30 foot radius around the easiest world quests, blizz seems to be unhappy that they can't put the genie back in the bottle, everytime they launch an expac without flying there's a very vocal crowd that complains until flying is implemented, then open world pvp and most non instanced content dies and the rest of the community complains I have played very little of dragonflight even though it seems to be one of their best expacs, this is just my impression from plenty of playtime pre shadowlands
In WvW boons make WvW superboring. Boonballs gameplay has been a thing forever and it is not fun in the long run. WvW and in some regards also PvP, boons and conditions is deciding the outcome in many fights. Outside of GvG you often see guilds tanking up and boonballing stacking in a spot with shileds running 24/7 and it is a shit fest clownfiesta and we dont get how it could go this far and why Arena Net do not do drastic changes around boons and condtions to make it fun again.
Even though I play WoW mainly, I think GW2 remains to be under appreciated. Probably due to that classic Anet marketing. And great interview Teapot, you're the only reason I pretty much keep up with the game nowadays lol
Two fantastic content creators having a great conversation. Being a long time fan and player of both GW2 and WoW, watching preach go in blind has been an enjoyable watch. I've enjoyed how he tried to stay true to the original launch sequence of the game. And I think he's done a pretty good job of looking at the game with a critical eye. Plus watching him stumble into some of those assumptions has been at times comical. But what I most enjoy is the contrast. (Which took place in this conversation, much to the chats dismay.) I have played something like 12 MMO's, with accounts in WoW, GW2, ESO, & EVE hitting thousands of hours. That experience shows they all do MMO's similar enough that it looks the same on the surface. But the moment you delve into any kind of detail, you realize each game is vastly different. So the fun becomes seeing how different Dev teams solved similar problems. You see that in the raid discussion around the trinity or boon systems. Really, neither are perfect, both offer serious flaws. But they were two methods to approach a similar problem set. In fact, the boon system was created as a reaction to WoW's trinity design. One directly influenced the other. And so we can also see how the genera has shifted over time, as later developers learned from the strengths and weaknesses of the previous. It's not to say one is right and another is wrong, rather one is an apple while the other is an orange. Stepping back simply shows the advantages and disadvantages to choices made. And exploring those satisfies an intellectual curiosity as an MMO fan. I will say having played quite a few now, I would have to agree with him. I think what GW2 does best: It allows each player to find something interesting and set there own goals. That is a double edge sword, it's why the game comes of as casual. As the game isn't forcing your path through it. But, it offer tremendous freedom for those who don't need there hand held as they walk to the next ride. I can't say that for any other MMO with the same emphasis, save perhaps EVE. That and I truly adore my WvW
2:05:27 I remember when Southsun Survival first came out, there was a dev in the match I joined, and I killed him. It was one of the most exhilarating online game experiences I've ever had. I felt like the chosen one, even though it was totally meaningless objectively, the fact that the devs played with us players was so cool. And the fact that I killed one made it all come to life for me, a bit paradoxically.
i had a similar experience in wvw, i pushed agains smc and i saw that anet symbol on that one random ranger on the ramparts and I was like "fuck they know *I'm* here, and *I* exist and matter and I'm gonna take that damn castle now"
I hate to be the one that brings this up but.....marketing. I understand it's silly and some use it as a band aid on any problem in GW2, but I think it's a logical conclusion cause whenever I mention or recommend GW2 to a friend the first thing they say is "oh is this game still alive" literally every person I recommend the game to. I feel like GW2 is never really in the aether like other games like warframe, and whenever it does appear the gaming sphere it's related to the release of another popular game (WOW dragonflight meme).
100% and it gives the players that want to give more of their time, just rewards for that additional expense. It's a win for everyone. Arenanet is the gold standard in innovation and content quality, generally speaking.
@@jgsource552cosmetics meaning what? Both games have cosmetics you can acquire via activities/achivements and microtransactions, GW2 however let's you trade gold for gems/gems for gold
wdym lol map is fucking god awful, "wait how the hell do i get to this event? COME ONNN I NEED THAT HERO POINT WHERE IS IT!?!?!?!" spend 3 more minutes going down levels "BRUHHHHHHH IT'S AT 10% NOW WHERE THE HELL IS IT I'VE BEEN ON THE SPOT ON THE MAP FOR 5 MINS GOING UP AND DOWN AND EVERY WHICH WAY WHERE IS THIS?!?!!?!?!? how in god's name is that fun lol
@@zeening The confusing 2d map and placement of objectives in what were supposed to be hidden or hard to get to areas contributed to a lot of frustrations. But map design and content placement are 2 different things :)
Btw raids *were* in the original game! Not the raids you know but they happened in the way of world bosses. Even now, the best group content is in world bosses. The raids ingame are just larger dungeons that give currency. The original structure actually worked we just again like it is said alot of times in the stream, we just didn't get it. The game was meant to be good and it was meant to be beautiful and we are meant to just experience it. That's what I like about gw2
the price of freedom bit is 100% true. I have multiple level 80 chars with 75 mastery. I often find myself logging in and saying " my hero point runs are done...now what? raids, where, dungeons, no one is running them, fractals? what's that". I guess I just have a hard time finding the drive to do anything, because there's really no sense of direction or reason in the game. at least for me.
1:26:30 The absolute heresy! the first two story steps (lvl 1-20) are the absolute best the story has ever been in GW2. back then, our characters actually had character. After that, they devolved into see-good-am-happy, see-bad-am-angry paper-thin personalities.
Yeah some super special kind of love was given to that early progression though I still like mid core progression a bit more (around the time your character chooses their faction and starts doing things as part of the faction - up to Claw Island). But all this just shows how many different things are in the game for different players. I'm really looking forward to doing sylvari and norn story some time because I haven't tried them yet. And some other player would skip that entirely with boost and create one more human male to play WvW with a new build.
You are absolutely right about that. It had an air of personal depth and seriousness, with a story that actually brought you into a kind of 'grown up world', if I may say. Frankly I was disappointed that all the future stories (after HoT&PoF) made it a lot more fantasy-faerytale-like, with less of an air of seriousness to it. I sincerely hope they would go back towards the professionalism and character development of the origin story. Thanks for mentioning that.
The conversation Preach at 41:30 is really interesting to hear now about how needing certain boons may force you onto a build or class that is not fun. I felt this way for ages when Firebrand, chrono or alacren were the main boon providers, it became hard to justify bringing anything else because these classes were objectively better than any other option and not bringing them meant your whole team had a harder time. The one big W since end of dragons came out (and a little bit before if you think about scrapper, mirage and druid getting quickness/alacrity boons) is that ArenaNet recognized this trend and spread out the boon providers to more classes and specializations.
"If you like MMO and you don't play guild wars, you're hurting yourself" is SOOO TRUE man. I just started week ago and i feel like an absolutely goober not trying it before.
I'd need to see the source, but if the power difference between an average player and a player that knows all the optimizations is a difference of 10 times DPS, that explains a LOT for why the game's group content is as painfully easy or desperately requires playing meta. I just want to do group content that is fun and exciting without having to stick to a rotation and steal a build.
One change that I would much welcome in GW2 is if they would increase buff distances by 2x or even 3x their normal range. They already made unique-class buffs into "global buffs" (boons) in order to make a cap for buffs. So right now, even in WvW or open-world bosses, wouldn't matter much if buffs would be wide-ranged because there is alreasy a cap in both buff stacks and number of targets. Then, make mechanics separate the party on the arena and let them come together on windows where they are being healed and/or the mechanic pulls them to one place. Make mechanics matter and, if you don't want to be extreme against powering-through strats/comps, then make main boss mechanics apply a special type of vulnerability debuff that can't be cleansed, but that stacks and will only be removed by not being hit by such mechanics for a time (one minute maybe). This will make healing/mitigating through viable but up to a certain limit. I just don't want most bosses in the endgame being about 25% unique and 75% of the same.
Tera Online to me had the best Raiding experience. It had the tank in the front taking all the damage and Aggro. While the main dps are on the back of the boss dealing back damage while supports healing everyone. Not to fund of this all stack in one spot
gw2 is pretty much the only mmo that does that lol ff14 couldn't be more different but obviously very different gameplay and combat, even old janky shit like LOTRO doesn't do that though
@@euclxd8033 really? you tried to be petty and correct someone but are so dumb you made a mistake and had to go back and edit it? classic, you realize we can all see you edited it right?
The issue I have with GW@ is I can't find friends to play with. I also suffer from fomo and it feels like I've missed so much when I don't play for 1-2 years.
Bro.. imagine how bad anet is at advertising and marketing with GW2. Preach heard about the game... thanks to an wow expansion trailer. an WOW expansion!!!! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!
i always think of guild wars 2 as my mmo secret girlfriend, with a meth problem. she got a great heart and is so fun to hang out with and is a total babe, but she is a hot mess, cant finish one project she starts and there's always a day where i think to myself what am i doing here? i cant stop coming back to her...
Preach is right on the money when he talks about how the boon system kinda streamlines the game (and consequently the endgame community's mentality). I remember how it was when I was learing IBS Strike Missions (one-boss instances) and the leader teaching is was like "Just super-tight stack with everyone and dodge this attack on first part, and then you just be mindful of this other mechanic on phase 2". And he was reight. There is about 10 attacks/mechanics in each boss fight (always about 2-4 overlaping on each phase) but there is only 2 mechanics that are worth paying attention two (and they don't even overlap) because everything else is powered through healing+mitigation powering through it and even supposedly phases being skipped (or lasting too short to be worried about) due to the party DPS being so much higher than what was expected when the fight was designed. I hate when mechanics are entirely skipped/ignored by team composition. And I don't blame players, I blame devs who let it happen.
The game wasn’t like this up to the end of the hot era I remember on fractals back then, everyone played the fights and the mechanics. This week I did a fractal and got scolded because I wasn’t stacked to sit there and face tank. I was surprised because back in the day you actually needed to fight and dodge in the fights
Bad ass teatime I love what preach has said about everything and as always teapot is award winning entertainment, hands down favorite content creator/streamer
Dude, I would love if Gw2 borrowed from Lost Ark with the boats and made a bit of a minigame with islands, "the mist" or w/e. Or made the boats guild sized and have a whole map filled with water, with only a little bit of the shore is earth, and water toxic or something with massive bosses that might unlock some guild stuff. Or underwater places that is insanely deep and not toxic but dark or something. Entire cities could be down there
One of the important parts, i think Preach is kind of missing out on in his playthrought, is all of the EKSTRA content zones have, that are there for collections and achivements, there so much good content there, that it makes many of the zones very replayable.
I agree that he is probably skipping a lot of cool stuff, but he also has goals set to clear the raids. I will say that if he really enjoys the game he will come back to play it.
Everything that has to do with story in guild wars 2 is terrible. Everything that has to do with gameplay, however, is revolutionary and incredible. It is a crime how underappreciated gw2 is. I wish the developers had the team and the budget to polish it, give it the wealth of content it deserves. I also wish they'd fire whoever is responsible for the terrible writing, because it is the reason a lot of new players drop this game.
Preach has an overtone of negativity and snobbery. He doesn't seem like much of a gamer to me - definitely don't appreciate his opinions or commentary.
I need to push back a bit on that talk about gw2 having the best animations.... As far as mmos go maybe.. But man... the combat has no feeling of weight whatsoever
It's kinda sad because Mordremoths fight at the time was incredible, same as new Shatterer, i stopped playin wow completely whenever I experienced those two
There is a huge influence of gw1 i to gw2, in the sense that gw1 was a classic that had a loyal base so Arenanet could not go to a wow copy. It’s the freedom, the story, the heritage. Dificult to put in words. Gw1 is Gw2 DNA.
Preach raises a good point about playing specs you don't enjoy. When we started progging HT CM I was on quick herald and I hated its playstyle (i dislike rev in general) and I asked to swap to firebrand which I am much more comfortable on. I caught so much flak from people over that solely because herald was that strong.
This is a difficult one, there is a balance between getting stuff done and progressing quickly compared to playing the build you want and it's very much up to each group to figure out how they want to go about doing things. Firebrand VS herald on HT CM is not the end of the world, but there is a huge difference between playing a vindicator vs a power daredevil on HT CM, and if everyone makes large tradeoffs because they prefer a certain build the group effectiveness will plummet. TL:DR Hard content complicates 'play what you want'
@@MightyTeapot and that's all well and good. But it does make me less interested in playing hard content. I can clear KO CM, but I basically might as well not play DPS on it because I don't play Virtuoso and that is far and away the best DPS build for that fight.
@@TFalconwing That's not really accurate, any (preferably ranged, and some melee can do very well too) DPS will be just fine for KO CM, the only time where virt is mega crazy is the first 3 minibosses which is not the major progression point (the mech + sniper is) Balance is understood extremely poorly by the community and gets massively exaggerated.
@@MightyTeapot Well, perhaps that particular example is something the community needs more education on because when I got title on that fight every DPS was a virtuoso and every week since when we do our CM clear most of the DPS are virtuosos. I have cleared it on DPS firebrand and condi soulbeast and scourge and it was very clear that I was outclassed on most phases by the virts, with the exception of the very first Li phase. At least in my experience and from my observation virt is the ideal choice for this example.
@@TFalconwing Virt is the ideal choice, and when it comes to hard content people will usually pick the ideal choice, even if it's only by 5-10% because that's better for the team, and people are trying to do their best for the team.
Some comments from someone that has played both wow and ff xiv as well as gw2. (done end game in all 3 games) My journey in gw2 started when the game came out, but was dissapointed as there was not any pve end game content that I enjoyed came back each expansion but never truly stayed. Until end of dragons when I decided to try out the game again. Been loving it currently (playing it alongside of ff xiv). I actually think in terms of casual perspective for people it is probably the best mmorpg game available if you still wish to do end game content in addition to everything else amazing that the game has to offer story, pvp, exploration, fashion and so on. Since in a sense you never get behind of the curve, as gear is stagnant in a sense since once you reach ascended gear status which does not take long at all. You are pretty much set for eternity. Thus, gearing is insanely easy in my opinion as well as most raids, strikes and fractals are also quite easy (obviously few exceptions) However, in regards to Teapots comment about gatekeeping and elitism. I would VERY heavily pushback his argument. There is an insane amount of end game pve gatekeeping. 1) Commander tag, I literally bought this via real money, just because I got tired of trying to organize pug groups without it. Had so many bad experiences of people joining and telling us that they wont tell us their role since we do not have a commander. Or just someone joining, taking over and then kicking us out, or merging us with some random other group. 2) I would say majority of raid groups/strike groups are KP locked. Most groups demand some freaking 250 kill proof on a boss that is very easy. (another topic would be the worst system in existence of having to hold on to some random trophies from bosses or integrate some external website tool to showcase your kills of a boss) I quite rarely see groups that say everyone welcome outside of stuff like IBS3. 3) his argument about people not caring. They definitely do. I usually like to try off meta builds in easy strikes like IBS3/DS and so on. But even there I have been complained to so many times (before the strike has even started so not an issue about dps or healing) about not playing meta. 4) People even look at your ach points and assume you are total trash. Before even seeing your performance. 5) I probably would had never raided unless I made my own groups and I studied the encounters alone. Totally unrelated but on the boon topic, I merely hate the fact that its constant stacking more or less. Makes the game much less exciting.
BASED. I’ve experienced everything you have almost to the “T”. I get a lot if pushback when I’ve brought this up in game and in other comments. Maybe it was not like this when most of these vets were new but but it’s def like this now in my experiences.
I had a lot of these experiences years ago shortly after HoT launch. Obviously people have gotten even more anal about gatekeeping skill level. I can honestly say I have met some of my best friends in GW, but also some of the most vile people in existence. Just a weird fucking community 🙃
Preach's point on quest hubs as apposed to the more explorative approach is very interesting. As gamers we actually are almost programmed to follow instructions rather than create our own paths, and I like that Guild Wars 2 does the ladder.
I played when it first came out then stopped, 9 years later I picked GW2 up again. I have no idea how to get good gear, level or what half the items clogging my bank are for. Way too many currencies. Also coming from WoW then FFXIV the story... ugh. You have to buy the story with real world money. Just bad as making gold in game is almost impossible. The market is worthless to sell stuff unless you need 30 copper for something.
49:00 that's actually a very good point, and also exactly how we wvw roamers don't play, everyone plays their own build they like and has fun but not optimal at all when it comes to buffing eachother. I would probably much more likely join strikes / raids if I could just play my own / fav build that I like to play instead of needing to meet all these req.
To enable this, the game would have to be made so that each class had one build, which would make the game boring meanwhile in endgame context each class has between 3 and 6 build which are meta at this time so why change it
I strongly agree that WvW was the place that let players be more experimental with builds. And even if the build is the dumbest thing ever, a player can still apply some skill and be mostly effective.
@@chilliewhk yes very true, if you know what you are doing off meta builds can be harder to counter. Also for raids / strikes teapot and other tubers already proven that many builds can work well. I also love the Sui Won with all dps core ele and there I believe there where some other variants aswell.. These are examples of players having fun and even if you are not the most efficient it shouldn't matter, unless of course it is your personal preference to play this way. I dunno.. If I didn't have kids and work I would be able to find and or build a relaxed group of flexible happy people, I personally just hate it whenever I end up in a fractal / strike / raid that runs it only to be most optimal for the sake of farming efficient... To me that feels like work.
@@woof3065 A large part of more high end players is that they're also just good players. I knew guys that could swap to any class on demand and bring the same good performance on all of them. The only thing that detracts from skill is relying and maintaining on some very powerful boons. So the end result is the skill gap that Preach noticed when he saw how experienced groups clear the same content. I ruined the game for myself because I became obsessed with efficiency, and finding myself with guilds that promoted efficiency/skill but were so toxic to each other when 1 person fell behind. Players will optimize the fun out of a game given the right motivation.
@@chilliewhk yes exactly! You hit the nail right on the head. This is the kind of content I would enjoy with relaxed people like Teapot and other open minded chill guys.. But I just don't know them and I can't play on fixed appointments. In wvw I experienced the same.. 1 guild I was in first was more try hard with defined roles and there was lots of yelling and toxicity when we lost or someone made a mistake.. In the guild I am now with everyone being roamers and not depending on each other that much it's very chill. Rarely some1 get's mad if he's completely ignored / not helped. I personally always run builds and play in a way that I can help myself, because I know you can't rely on people that much, everyone plays there own game, has their focus on something that might be different from yours. If you want to play very well together you need to be on voice chat and know each other and be friends (to some level) to keep it fun.
its a bit funny hearing talks of making raids accessible and baby steps because I vaguely remember back in the day when the community called for ultra hard content and for ppl to git gud, and im pretty sure ppl were going to scream bloody murder if any raids were more hand-holdy. I did take like a 6 year break tho so I dunno if that sentiment have turned around, and maybe back then it was vocal minority? XD I'm glad there are strikes now tho, as raids are not only hard but LONG. that was a thing where working adults don't necessarily have 2-3 hr chunk. and strikes now are the more easily accessible ver of raids I guess lol one thing I love about gw2 is that freedom teapot mentioned actually- and this applies to raids or any hard or easy content in the game. I want to play/try/explore the maps and various types of content, I dont want to be told that the only way I can play content X is if I've farmed for gear Y. there are various ways to earn ascended gear, im not locked into grinding something if I don't enjoy it. so yeah there is less grinding in some sense, which I really appreciate because now I can take that time and do something else I do enjoy, that prob can also give me that ascended gear I need. legendaries, the grindiest thing to work toward - is entirely optional. if I want to set a goal for myself, I have a choice to do so, and not because someone else told me I have to in order to play some other content. Thus, its actually a pro for me that if i dont want to raid, i dont *have* to (tho i l did raid n really enjoyed it back in the day) as a busy working adult, I can't appreciate this enough another thing to note that I liked about gw2 IS that they are willing to change things and try new things. games that just does the same on repeat gets really stale, but like, having stuff taken out isn't great either when ppl just got used to it. I don't play enough mmo long term to know I guess, but to give new experiences to players for over 10 years, doesnt it NEED to do diff things? I'm reminded of long running franchises having to basically reboot itself because ppl got tired of the same old (god of war, assassins creed, tomb raider). gw2, wouldnt it need to innovate if they want to have the game keep going...? i do understand the "having a consistent vision" but I feel like having new and different content doesnt means it's bad. even with raids, I don't see why raids have to be consistent across thd diff wings, because then they just be almost re-skins of the same thing? I could be just not understanding I guess, I played gw2 several years ago, came back recently so I basically don't really know what the new issues are 😂
Something that I think doubly hurt guild wars 2 early on was living world. I know people loved it but it was very contrary to the “play how you like” format. I played since a few months after launch and missed season 1 because I didn’t know it was happening since I was too busy doing the things I wanted (map exploration etc). The fact that living world was there then it was gone meant that if you missed it then you missed out, which means that you absolutely should be doing it while it’s active. Of course, you had to finish the personal story to fully appreciate season 1, too. Obviously the cool part was the content stream, which is now one of the game’s current problems for established players, but the change of approach away from temporary content was really good long-term, I think.
I've been really enjoying Mike's playthrough of the game, so nice to see him start to genuinely enjoy it as well. Have been looking forward to this chat with him as well to get more of his thoughts.
Speaking as someone who played GW1 last year in its entirety, and started GW2 last November... been having a blast. Love it. I'm up to the mid point of Living World Season 2. But my biggest criticism in terms of the story stuff? The writers desperately, desperately need to get over themselves. No, you didn't write a good character. No, I don't care about Trahearne; he's painfully, obnoxiously and persistently dull. No, I don't care about Braham and Rox. Why would I? They're not Ogden Stonehealer - they haven't proven themselves to me by actually being a vital member of my team, going through actual challenging content and keeping me alive. Half the time, they don't even acknowledge my presence, even during major story beats. What the hell happened to the heroes? Even the core campaign henchmen from GW1 were better teammates; with genuinely entertaining quips, and actual combat competence. And they never forgot who the protagonist was - ME. Us. The players. Destiny's Edge are the worst. And their entire concept is terrible. Their backstory build-up in the dungeon content? "Before you start this dungeon and actually have fun, you have to listen to a couple of these total strangers whine about their personal stuff and put that before the mission". Great work, guys; really compelling "heroes" - who abandon each other repeatedly because of personal stuff that has nothing to do with the player. And the real insult at the end? The big celebratory "you defeated Zhaitan" cutscene? Shows you walking with Destiny's Edge. Not you walking with your actual human party members, if you're playing with friends as I am - just you and Destiny's Edge. Even though they did nothing (oh, sorry, Thackery stupidly cut a rope from the bottom and nearly died for no reason, good job Thackery), and even though they never once invite you to actually join their team. The game's writing and story content is absolutely at its best when it's not self-indulgent, and either focuses on the player, or focuses on the big epic stuff. You know why everyone loves Tybalt? He's a bro. He's not smug, he's not a Mary Sue, he's just another dude who seems genuinely thrilled to be working with you, talks directly to you, and serves as a conduit for adventure instead of a "please wait until we've stopped talking" exposition dump. And the saddest thing? 90% of the core campaign, and most of the living world stuff I've done so far, would have worked absolutely fine... with none of these "hero" characters. All it required was an NPC to send the player on a mission, and let the player discover the story themselves, and directly interact with the characters associated with it. The story never needed these overtly writer-ego-driven inserts to act as middlemen. Didn't need to make the player the "Commander", and then think it's fine to ignore them. Just needed to acknowledge their agency. Needed to let them do some major story beats... alone. No hand-holding. Just say, have the Queen or the Pale Tree or whoever ask the player - as an independent but dependable adventurer - to go deal with something, to go check it out. To follow a thread. That's all it needed. Imagine, for example, if nobody knew the origin of the zombies in the core campaign. Imagine if nobody knew Orr had risen. Imagine if you, alone - because none of the major players were willing to divert resources - had to go on a long journey to the south, down the coast, to find the origin... and you, as the player, discovered this lost place, and had to report your findings, and find a way to convince the various factions and races to join forces. Imagine how much more compelling that would be, than having Trahearne tell you "Oh, I totally already knew all about Orr, and I know exactly what to do next, and I know how to use this magical sword, and this prophetic dream is all about me uniting the factions, and it's my calling to become the marshal."
To add to the topic about power creep.... There is normal player. There is mighty Teapot who is highly professient and doing 10 times normal player damage and then there is special kind of showflake called Lord Hizen going and solo killing everything.
Just want to clarify before I mention this, I don't think Preach's take is inherently bad, it just might need to be something he gets used to if he keeps playing GW2. Most professions have an option for everything. Everything but warrior and necro has group alacrity (and healing pepepga), everything but ranger has group quickness. Most people can try playing a more important role without changing profession, and playing multiple roles can be quite fun. For example, if Preach likes his sword/sword revenant, then he can play his DPS vindicator, OR he can do quickness DPS herald, without really changing playstyle for Shiro and his weapons. He provides quickness, might, fury, protection, and can change his non-Glint legend for something like Jalis (dwarf) for stability or ventari (centaur) for the bubble. Alternatively, he could play Renegade for an alacrity source, and both renegade and herald can potentially provide healing roles with quickness or alacrity respectively.
It's something that flows easily for veterans, because many of us have collected a huge variety of builds and are happy to fill whichever role. It makes sense why Preach would be concerned as a new player, since he lacks that information and has focused entirely on one build. I do hope he branches out a bit as he leans how easy it is to play multiple things.
Little late to this one but MY GOD such a great conversation. I love how Mighty get's so excited when he has an epiphany and wants to say something lol. Real genuine stuff and a lot of fun seeing two wrinkly brains going at it for over 2 hours. Love you guys!
41:25 onwards is spot-on and absolutely hit the nail on the head on why high-end group content turned me off, I main a Warrior and I didn’t like how in raid settings I’m forced to fulfil the role of a bannerslave solely for the boons. Like, I’m a warrior, lemme smash things up with my greatsword instead of being a buffing cheerleader goddammit
because dps warrior doesn't exist in your reality? snowcrows.com/en/builds/warrior/berserker/power-berserker snowcrows.com/en/builds/warrior/spellbreaker/power-spellbreaker snowcrows.com/en/builds/warrior/bladesworn/power-bladesworn ?????
@@linkazzatore not at least 5 years ago when I last played the game, nah - iirc at the time Condi Berserker + bannerslave was by far the best choice and I was forced to spec to it which I hated ngl glad to see it's changed since then though!
@@hyperionnova2854 6 years ago builds without banners existed already and condi bs also doesn't run banners snowcrows.com/en/builds/warrior/berserker/condition-berserker
It's interesting to hear about Preach's opinion on boons since I've never thought of it that way, I've always assumed I'll always have the boons and most of the time I do. Searching for two alacs and two quicks has never seemed annoying or weird to me, it's just what you do. What I don't find true (for me) is "playing something I don't enjoy" because my squad needs some buffs. One of the joys is playing a wide variety of builds so I don't burn myself out playing the same thing over and over again. This is made easy because a vide variety of classes can now heal, a vide variety has access to quick/alac. I never mind healing or playing offensive support, I may play alacren one day but alac specter the next, just to keep it fresh. This may seem annoying early when you don't have any alts or other builds set up yet, but once you do you'll enjoy yourself.
For him it might be a problem just because he's new here and doesn't know how easy it is to alt in this game and have several classes and professions that can do every role. After finishing the entire story mode, dressing a new character with the necessary equipment is a matter of a few hours, not weeks as in other games.
Right, also I feel like players aren’t as rigid as other MMOs. What I mean is, let’s say you want to join a strike but they need quick which your class can’t provide. No worries, you just make/find a new group. If it’s niche content or too early/late in the day, still no problem. You can join the group and tell people that you’d really like to join but can’t do quickness, and just ask if someone would be willing to do that instead. Or, given how alt friendly the game is, if you’re serious about pve you can just have an alt. It’s very unlikely that you can’t cover ANY roles with 2-3 characters.
I feel it's kinda missing the point though. It's not a matter of how easy it is to play an alt or not. It's whether you want to. If you're the type who only likes the way one class plays then you're going to be sol in this case. Even ff14 has people like this who only play one job and that's despite that you're character can literally be all jobs at once and many roles share gear. They still don't want to swap from one to another. Which is fine. Everyone has their own playstyle. But, that is a part of what he's talking about here I think.
@@Khaoticsuccubus Then those people are actively hurting their chances to fit into groups, and frankly their understanding of the game as part of the instanced late game content is knowing the game, what classes can and can not do, etc. That's fine though, people can still find groups as pure [I refuse to play any other class I am the Reaper I move for no man] dps and ignore everything else, I just think that's stupid and they should rethink their approach to instanced content.
As someone that started GW2 San a guardian learning boons became very easy since that class use booms a lot with that said I’m still trying to learn when to use them in group content
A lot of great stuff said here. But when it comes to raiding i think the (im just gonna call the participating side this, as it might feel like it to a lot of players) 'elitist' players often forget how it looks to the outside players. So the lfg system with all its kp, LI, title requirements is just SCARY for newer players. Yes there are training runs and stuff, but if i open the lfg as an new but interested player and see these requirements on 90+% of the listings it paints a scary picture. Then looking up guides and builds, seeing these minmaxed gear layouts, 50step rotations and expected damage numbers. It is scary. Then maybe even going to the golem and trying it out to only reach like 50% of max dps is just discouraging (excluding the other roles here, bwcause these usually get handed of to other players) Tldr: But yeah to an outstanding player looking at t4 fracs, strikes and esp. Raids looks scary and yes elitist to an extend. So the perspective here is vastly different from inside to an outsider (even though a lot of improvements/requirements might easily be met) Ps: i do raid personally, occasionally do fracs, but also felt quite a lot pressure after i had a long pause in it
Also adding to this with some of the points brought up (mainly launch difficulty & player participation + groupd/splitting): Teapot literally said an important thing that could be felt: these raids were quite hard when HoT launched. Especially in pugs but also statics. I remember trying to clear gorseval no updraft. We pushed the dps numbers, delayed breakbar and tried not dyimg to retaliation as eles ... it was something that we couldnt pull off consistently for quite a while and something that was hard to pug. So now you have these hard raids and the highest tier of hardcore raiders discovering 'high end' strategies, while the average guy tries a raid and gets demolished. Ofc they are gonna be looking at raids thinking thats to hard for me (especially coming from a 'casual' mindset). "Let them others better/highly invested (read elitist) players do that content im gonna stick to open world" I know the difficulty shifted a lot. When i returned to raiding recently after a long hiatus, i was dissappointed with the amount of mechanics skipped/ignored at this point. I was sad when i learned that you ignore so much that made the funs hard and engaging but fun before. But not everyone knows that. The playerbase is still split (which then obviously exploded with the EoD world boss). And raiders forming specific groups in the lfg, looking for meta comps (i know nowadays its mostly bring some alac and quickness, rest is fine) and then shouting at the rest of the playerbase "git gud" didnt help that split. And yes most of that all comes back to the 10x damage difference between open world pleb and the optimized, fully booned, guy with somewhat of a rotation and therefore is something the game should handle ... i still feel it is untrue to say there is no elitism in this game (or it cant feel like that to a big playerbase) which then lead to the discontinuation of raids. And i am also sad we dont get a W8 But yeah, i kinda clung to that statement because perspective matters a lot!!
About 40 minutes in when Preach talks about boons and understanding them, I start wondering how many people don't know or haven't learned what there is to know about combo field as well. The game really does not do a good job of teaching players about them and how a particular class can use particular fields to an advantage. There are so many combo field differences between classes I understand that it would be difficult for the game to do a complete tutorial, but their tooltip that pops up for a short time needs expanding.
Honestly a lot of this could be helped if the game introduced players into pvp, where these are used rather commonly with water, fire, smoke, light fields and finishers used. A whole lot of class mechanics and skill, traits can be learned just by playing pvp, perhaps an aftereffect of the original pvp-oriented game design.
I wish I liked GW2. Initially it was okay because i was a huge fan of GW1 but man, GW2 is such a shallow shell of what GW1 was. The combat is boring as fuck because theres really no challenge to it until very very end game. So many skills have these "combos" that no one ever does and can complete the entire campaign and every dungeon and not evem know what Field abilities do. Preach mentioned this also in his Raid video. The open world heart crap is boring and repetitive too. Gathering little fucking acorns and underwater content is lame as fuck. Escort quests, my goodness lol Some hearts are memorable, most are not. The Secret World had the best questing system when it comes to open world because it made every character important, but in GW2, they just exist and you do menaningless tasks that offer no challenge other than tedium. Group content doesnt exist until dungeons which only happen a dozen hours into the game which eliminate any co-oping and the will for playing with friends. Idk man, its just not good, im ranting, but its mostly cause Im pissed they scrapped GW1 and how amazing that design was, for whatever this is
I think the big problem of Arena Net and Guild Wars is, that they learn how to manage expectations. As a GW1 vet, I was used to 3 full campaigns in the timespan of 2,5 years. Like fuck me, Nightfall released 9 MONTHS after Factions. That's huge. Well, it was obviously not a thing the devs could go for in the long run just because crunch exists and it's a real thing. So when GW2 released, we knew that the studio can do great things. And GW2 was great when it released. But then... Nothing happened. LW1 happened and that was a shit show because people missed content because they went on holiday for 3 to 4 weeks. And that shouldn't happen. So they changed it. But we never went back to a state of "We know what to expect and Arena Net delivers on it". Dungeons would have been great even today, if they didn't abandon it. Raids would habe been great, if they didn't abandon it. Living world would have been great, if they didn't abandon it. And we just have been in this constant state of "Is this really what we can expect from the game?". Arena Net and Guild Wars (even the first game, because that's still alive and kicking) is really good when they do stuff. And I mean REALLY GOOD. But the problem was, the content wasn't coming. And every time they tried something new, they fall on their faces. Hard. And that's when the community always reacted badly. They don't need to reinvent the industry. It's enough when they do what their're good at. And that's all we ask for.
I love to hear that someone else loves Xera. I always thought it was one of the coolest raid encounters but so many people in the game seem to hate it. I guess they hate it due to difficulty and maybe because of leyling gliding? But it’s often the first boss I showcase to final fantasy players to entice them to try the game.
this is such an amazing interview - but big lol at what I interpret as Preach suggesting that "70th percentile parses" were average. they're percentiles - average is always going to be the 50th percentile. if you look at the 25th percentile parse of demonology (median spec) on H Volo this tier, it's about 120k, while a 75th percentile parse (same fight/spec) is 195k. doing double another player's damage is pretty normal in wow, especially with gear, augmentation evokers, PI, etc.
Man it's so weird hearing preach say that anyone who like Tangled Depths is "brainwashed" (2:13:20) but also say other GW2 features are subjective. I played Tangled Depths at the launch of Heart of Thornes and immediately loved it, when it was fresh it was the most fun I've ever had in any zone of any MMO.
I think the idea of the Mystic forge is the... mystery of it if you will xD, but yeah nah I reckon a tutorial would be nice, but how do you tutorialise something like that in the first place anyways, I mean I guess you could be like, "slot items here, and try different combinations!", but in a MMO with thousands of trash items, currencies, and sometimes uber valuable doodads, why in the name of all things holy would anyone risk potentially losing an item of value in something named "The Mystic Forge" like its up there with "Pyramid Scheme" and "Black Lion Keys". When I first looked at the mystic forge I was like this is probebly some kinda material sink for uber end game where you just dont care if you lose your stuff. When I started to craft Twilight I was so stresssed when putting in those bits and peices in I think I double checked the items and quantities like 3 times before clicking forge it was almost like gambling with the past 5 months of my game time xD
