Character Creation
Character creation is not just "race, profession, appearance", but will have a series of choices to make as well that will affect your personal stories. We knew this from early info releases, but this is the first glimpse we've gotten at the actual process. The various professions seem to have a specialty of sorts to choose; for elementalists, it's a favored element (which appears to give a head piece and possibly determine which elements you start with); for rangers, it's the starting pet (for humans, it's dog, moa, or bear); for necromancers, it's a favored part of their mechanic (which also appears to give a head piece). Yes, I said "necromancers"; more on that later. At this point no one's run through the warrior choices yet.
The physical customization is not in the demo; there's a big note instead that says "available in the full game". Pity, but not at all a surprise.
Humans are also asked to pick their social class, the god they were blessed by, and a regret (which are, alas, very limited and two of three are cliché). Their social class appears to affect their starting armor. Charr are also asked to pick their legion, their "sparring partner" (a friend of some sort it looks like), and the type of father they have (akin to social class). The other races were not available in the demo.
Humans are being created at level 1 in the demo and it looks as if the first thing they do is get thrown into an event in which a town just outside the capital city is being attacked by centaurs, which are one of the main early enemies for humans (another apparently being bandits). After that, they go off towards the main city, possibly encountering another large event on the way, and can start in on their personal story. Charr are being created at level 47 in the demo, and start in a higher-level area, the Dragonbrand, which is where one of the (big bad) Elder Dragons flew over the land and twisted it. As part of the demo, they can clear out a big charr fortress or fight a super-large boss dragonoid thing called The Shatterer which freaking awesome. This is mid-level play. Presumably charr have a starting set of events just like humans but we don't get to see that yet, of course.
Professions and Combat
Most of the info on professions was released already, but necromancers are new. We don't have their mechanics firmly yet—there's been no official-site release, so it's all being funnelled through people choosing to play them—but it appears to be some life/death force thing, a lot of life-stealing skills (direct, unblockable/armor-ignoring damage, if it follows what GW1 had), and some minions (not as controllable as ranger pets, but still some extra firepower, some of which have additional effects like stealing life and funneling it to the necromancer). Necromancers have support skills; so far they look like they're similar to the well skills in the first game. Still, despite being pretty much patterned on the original necro there is a slight ritualist feel to them because of what looks like a stronger emphasis on support... so I wasn't 100% wrong about combos. I think. :D It is closer to a retooled necro (which I also proposed). Oh, and I was right about the bladed weapons; so far it looks like they get axe (main hand or maybe dual?), dagger, maybe sword, focus.
This is the first time we've really gotten a good feel for combat. Elementalists seem to be limited in the demo to fire and water. It looks as if fire is really pretty much all damage all the time (with a fair amount of AoE), while water has a mix of damage and control. Both elements have a spammable skill that's usable while moving. Other skills seem to require stopping, and have cooldowns. The "spammable first skill" holds true for other professions, as well. There is no regular weapon attack, but you can set any skill to auto-attack (probably most useful on the quick-rechargers, of course).
Rangers are mostly seen with both shortbows (run and shoot demonstrated, looking very smooth) and dual axe. Charr are being given some sort of red (maybe fire) drake pets, but I've seen all three of the human pets. The bear is white, but I don't know if it's a polar bear. The moa is yellowish (not full-on chocobo yellow, just some yellow markings). I haven't been able to tell if there's more than one dog style.
Warriors have mainly used double axe, axe/shield, and (in the guided demo) longbow. They've emphasized that longbow is a viable damage dealer for the warrior, which they said before but this time we see it really does appear to be pretty good. We catch glimpses of rifles and I saw a human with sword/shield in passing, but not enough to see well what they're like.
All of the combat is very, very fluid. Everyone can dodge (apparently with double-press on the movement keys). We see some cross-profession combos, mainly elementalists with fire walls plus warriors (and once or twice, rangers). Not a lot of info on whether or not there's within-profession combos or what else besides "elementalist + fighting type", alas, so not much new there. Still, it's nice to see it in action more. Some of the warrior skills are blindingly fast, pretty awesome to watch. They're actually as flashy as the elementalists, which is often not the case.
Instead of targetting circles, it appears things you mouse over or target now have coloured outlines: red for aggressive, yellow for neutral but fightable, blue for players, green for NPCs. Some people hate this. I wasn't sure but it's growing on me.
Numbers are bigger, but that makes sense with a higher cap on level. Some people are really upset by this, but I think they're just demonstrating They Changed It Now It Sucks behavior. More upsetting to people, spawning a vicious argument on GW2Guru, is about potions. The energy pool appears to work much differently now, and they've included energy potions. People are pissed because, as we all know, consumables are the devil, except they aren't. I'd like to reproduce what I said about that:
Consumables are not the devil. They have been a standard part of gameplay for many, many games, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with including them if they are implemented well.The biggest reason I'm quoting this? A CM posted a dev response to how potions work and why they're implemented, which basically boils down to: we've totally revamped the energy mechanic, so energy can last over multiple battles. In combat, potions have a long cooldown. Out of combat you can use them more often and also other consumables. There will still be an advantage to being skilled at energy management. Potions are cheap and easy to find so you shouldn't have to worry about that part. Please remember this is a different game. And then he posted a link to what I just quoted, saying it was said as well as he could say it. I win. :D
On a more general note: not everything in the game is going to be like the first one, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. It means they really did restructure their mechanics from the ground up, retaining things they felt were useful and/or fun (like a certain amount of flexibility in skill choice per profession instead of every warrior having the same skills), but not feeling bound to include them just because they did it a certain way the first time.
I want them to change things they think don't work or are bars to people actually having fun, because "actually having fun" is what games are about. If that means potions so there's less down-time and more flexibility in skill choice, then I am perfectly willing to wait and try it out for myself before condemning it just because some other game entirely did it badly, even if that "some other game" is Guild Wars 1.
Events are not quests
Some people seem to feel events are basically quests with a different name. They are not. Some are player-initiated, meaning, you talk to someone kick them off. The dialogue boxes are, however, very small. Others start regardless of your input. You can optionally talk to someone nearby to get more info, but even those aren't as text-wall-laden as traditional quests. And most importantly: they're optional. You probably will want to do them and you certainly get rewarded for them, but they aren't the main means of progressing through a story. They happen whether you get involved or not. We saw examples of this already; someone wanders up to one in progress and just stands there, and the mobs keep doing what they were doing.
Most of the ones we saw seem to involve combat in some sense, but one in the human areas also involved using environmental weapons in part to put out fires being started, and they've said there are other non-combat things to do. One involves collecting harpy glands, which people are, ahem, harpying on, because Oh Noes, it's like "Kill Ten Rats". Except it's not because a) it's totally optional, b) harpies are way more interesting than rats, and c) it's specifically for a reward, again, not progression through the game.
The event shown that was coolest is, of course, The Shatterer. There's cannons to shoot at it, tons of creatures being called or spawned that attack you, and clearly a large-scale event requiring all players to participate. It looked freakin' awesome. Not all events are on that scale, of course, but that one is truly epic, and I love it, and it's given me another good reason to make a charr because it's technically in their area (though not limited to them, as far as I can tell).
Gleaned from Interview
This just in from interview via GW2Guru and a helpful person from FFXIVCore.com (some of which answered my specific questions, yay!):
- There may be something like GW1's Zaishen Menagerie, so perhaps rangers won't have to pick and choose pets quite as conservatively as feared. They have not finalized this system, however.
- Everyone starts with the same weapons, to help keep it simpler. (We saw in the demos, however, that there's a weapon merchant in the starting area and that you get drops pretty quickly.)
- Crafting will include gathering, but to cut down on griefing and conflict, they're using something like a phasing system so that each person can see and collect the same thing.
- They're not 100% sure what will be in your home instance, other than they're still saying it will reflect your gameplay choices in personal stories, especially who you've met (and presumably, who you've helped). So no ideas yet on whether or not you'll get easier access to certain things that way except in the most vague.
- Content is not tied to leveling, plenty of stuff to do even once you hit max level, which should be relatively quickly compared to what there is to do. Same stuff we knew, really, but nice to see it confirmed.
Last Thoughts
There are a ton of other little details I could get into here, like how cool all the armor and weapons look, how freaking relieved I was to see that the starting armor for human women actually covers them pretty well (for both ele and necro, in fact) as well as how the necros no longer look like total half-undead freaks and have some really pretty starting armor in general (pic showing both), how there's been a quick glance at the dye system and it looks like the options are extremely varied (although they haven't given a lot of details on how you get dye and such yet), and so forth, but I'm really suffering from info overload at this point (and text wall syndrome, soz).
But let me just say this: this game looks extremely fun, extremely flexible, and very, very pretty, and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
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