Initial thoughts on the state of GW2

First, my background: Someone who played GW1 (held HoH), and has been in the top few percent of players in PvP in myriad other popular MMO's.

• PvE

My thoughts are similar to the "burned out after 1 day", but hopefully I can do a better job articulating why I feel that way than he did. It's not that the PvE is too easy, which is sort of the impression his post gave. Questing is always easy in MMORPGs, and honestly it should be; if I wanted to play Dark Souls, I would play Dark Souls.

The problem is that PvE is more mindless than in any other big ticket MMO. In WoW, or SW:TOR, or Rift, questing is really easy, just like it is in GW2, the difference is that in those other games there are resources to manage, procs to be on the lookout for, spells to be on the lookout to interrupt, etc. Sure, you can absolutely ignore all these things in those other games and still steamroll the content, but at least it's there; it's something to focus on--something to optimize and become better at.

In GW2 while questing, you will literally find yourself mashing abilities on cooldown with no concern for what any of them do. On paper, it might seem like there's tons of synergy between moves, but almost universally the reward for setting up these combos is non-existent and spamming your moves is probably 95% as effective as perfect play.

Dodging isn't super revolutionary, but I like it as a mechanic overall. It's basically a new way to avoid standing in fire, and also an essential way to drop aggro depending on the situation.

• Structured PvP

It's really nice to be able to get a maxed out character 10 minutes in and play around with it to see if this is the class for you. The battlegrounds are really well done, and the class balance actually seems to be pretty damn good. As much as ANet has attempted to bolster and upsell the PvE, the reality is PvP is still their wheelhouse.

• World PvP

Something is busted about it atm, but I can already see that when it's functioning properly, it's going to be a real blast. Epic battles of large armies vs other large armies, smaller skirmishes between smaller groups breaking out constantly in other places. The hype here is well-deserved; it's going to be incredible and probably worth your 60 dollars by itself.

• Performance

Needs a lot of work. On systems capable of getting 40+ FPS almost everywhere in Skyrim (60 indoors), I find myself getting FPS in the teens while out in the world, and when particle effects go crazy during DEs it can drop to single digits. Interestingly enough, performance seems to be much better in structured PvP (smaller area I guess), but in structured PvP maps I seem to get 30-40 FPS regularly, which is acceptable.

I know "it's only beta!", but the same thing was said about SW:TOR and the performance issues in that game persist even to this day. I expect to be able to get 30 FPS or so in "normal" situations, with drops when things go crazy, but I'm finding that on average my FPS is in the teens or low 20's. The one saving grace is that even at 20 FPS it's surprisingly "smooth", spinning around rarely causes "catches". I would argue that a game that runs at 60 FPS a lot of the time and drops to 20 when you start turning is a lot worse than a game that runs at 30 FPS most of the time and only drops to 25 when turning. Still, this needs a lot of work; hopefully there are further optimizations to be made and driver updates which will squeeze out a few more percentage points of performance.

• Aesthetics

If anything, ANet under-hyped this part of the game. The game is beautiful, and the environments are varied and immersive. The towns are huge and they really do feel alive like they are a real town that you are just visiting, whereas in other MMOs often towns feel like they were placed there just to facilitate repairs/auction houses. GW2 towns feel like you are just a traveler visiting a vibrant city that is going about its day--it's really well done. Simply put, the environments are stunning.

• Hopes

This game as it exists now is probably worth 60 bucks considering there's no subscription. The PvP is really good. My hopes are that ANet decreases the effectiveness of button mashing and increases the effectiveness of skillful use of cooldowns. Make button mashing 50% as effective as perfect setups as opposed to 90% as effective. Also, the performance really needs to be improved. None of the graphics settings change the FPS I get, low settings are within 2-3 FPS of maxed settings (with shadows to low), and again this is on a system that is more than capable of playing Skyrim with tons of eye candy.

This post comes off a little bit more derisive than I meant it to be. This is a great game, and if they can squeeze some more performance out of it, it's absolutely worth your money. I feel bad about breaking the NDA, but I feel like with all the one-sided "this is what's terrible about the game" posts being made in this sub-reddit that I should at least try and offer the game a fair shake.

TL;DR: The game is beautiful, runs like shit, has some of the best PvP of any title out, and solo PvE needs to be tweaked such that skillful use of skills is actually worth doing because right now it's a mindless button mash with nothing worth paying attention to.

edit: It seems like the FPS issues are due to CPU utilization, not GPU. Even on my midrange cards, the GPU usage never goes over 40-50%, but CPU usage is pegging a single core on my not-top-of-the-line i7. Those who are posting good FPS seem to have overclocked CPUs pushing close to 4 Ghz.