So I got a bunch of hours under the belt playing Guild Wars. I got a level 8 Ranger / Mesmer that just got post-Searing.
Warning: if any of that didn't make sense, stop reading. It just won't be worth it and it will get more and more confusing.
I got a couple of things to say about this game. First, the good stuff: the story is interesting, the graphics are very nice and man do I ever love the pricing scheme.
But having introduced this as a rant, you know some bad stuff is the meat of the text.
My problem is entirely about the GUI. Maybe it's my intensive training with World of Warcraft that got me expecting something from a MMORPG (I love writing those letters together, even though I think it's BS), maybe I'm just thick, it might even be "the forest for the trees" like Mr. Electrifying tells me. I don't know. But it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. No, wait, that's the unsalted nachos. The guy that decided to remove the salt from the nacho making process needs an anal probe. But the game, to stick to the subject at hand, is leaving me with a feeling of... what's the opposite of "man I can't wait to play it again"?
It's funny how little things make such a big difference...
So first off I figured I would play the game and why waste valuable trees on printing a manual anyway? That's what I always do. After a couple of hours of being thoroughly confused, I decided to RTFM before somebody tells me to do it.
It contains lots of stories written by folks that really wanted to be writers instead of programmers, but very little actual knowledge. The stories are fun, pretty well written actually, but doesn't tell you a whole lot about playing the game. In fact, most of it is set post-Searing, oddly enough. But it's a pretty quick read and I'm happy I went through it.
Then I went back to the game with basically no better understanding of what's going on. GUI-wise, that is.
Lemme go through my bad experiences, in no real order.
I found some items marked "unidentified". Oh, I think to myself, this might be good. So after reading the manual and still having no idea how to identify the thing (and I read the manual after trying to equip the item, looking around for an NPC to identify it, etc), I just happen to luckily spot an "identification kit" on a merchant. Many will argue that you will spend so much time at merchants that you are bound to notice it, but still I say: why not write that down in the manual? Isn't that what a manual is for?
I really noticed it because I read on Martin's GW blog about his adventures salvaging components and I already knew about the salvage kit.
Then I spent a lot of time, and it became worse when I started grouping, trying to figure out what the heck is that foe out there. You can mouse over stuff and see its name, in tiny little characters, underneath it. But if there's a bunch of them together, the names get piled up. So who is what? who knows. But what really gets me is that you only see the name of it, not its level or class. So I'm walking around and I see something and the only way for me to know how tough it is is to target it. The best way to target something is to click on it, but clicking means attacking it. A warrior would start running for the creature, so you can easily stop, but a ranger starts chucking arrows. So before I know what it is, I'm attacking it. Hitting the TAB key rotates through the available targets, without attacking, but getting the one in front of you turns out to be hit or miss.
That became a problem twice so far. Once, I saw a dragon hanging out there and I though "what is that?" and before I knew it, very shortly after I clicked on it, my level 3 ranger was fighting with a level 5 dragon. Next was at the "arena" thing where you transition through the searing. My teammate says "healers first" and I spent the next three minutes chucking arrows at someone, while trying to figure out who the heck was a healer anyway.
I really miss the WoW little window at the bottom-right that, when you mouse over something, shows the name, guild, level, class, pvp flag and whether he's wearing underwear.
Ah! can't forget my pet. Apparently, my pet has abilities. It has to, because my pet healing spell says that its abilities are reduced when I resurrect it. But what are those abilities, I ask you? I haven't got a clue. I couldn't find anything that listed them or explained them. So far, it's a cat and it attacks anything I attack first.
Which is my next problem with my pet: I can't tell it to attack anything without chucking an arrow at it first. So invariably, the mob runs to me. I would like a way to tell my pet to attack something while I do something else, like take in the sights. If there is a way, it's neither described in the game nor in the manual.
I'm about half way there... Don't pass out yet!
A little about buffs and debuffs now. Or buffs and hexes, as they are called. Well, hexes and whatever buffs are called. Anyway.
As a mesmer, I got a couple of neat hexes. I thought them particularly interesting since you can also find a bunch of items that have conditions based on hexes (like: "damage +10% on hexed foe"). Since the GUI comes with a quick and simple way to swap between weapon sets, I figured I would carry one of those "damage increased on hex" bow so I could swap them mid-fight or something. Ha! what a left-field idea that was.
So when your foe (or friend) gets a hex, ALL you see is a little arrow in it's health bar, pointing down. If you see one pointing up, it's a buff. But WHAT is it anyway? Your guess is as good as mine. Which is really useful when you consider the delay of hexes: I have one that lasts 2 second, another that lasts 10 seconds. Given that neat weapon from before, I could easily swap it in for my 10 second hex, but probably wouldn't have time to do it within 2 seconds. I guess it's ok when you're the one casting the hex, because you know what it is and how long it lasts, but what if someone else casts it? Heck, I don't even wanna know what monks, who I believe have skills to remove hexes, do with that information. You can see what hexes and buffs YOU have, but NOT AT ALL what ANYBODY else has. I, personally, cannot see myself typing away, in the middle of a heated fight, "I got a slow hex!" so that someone can remove it, only to see it disappear before I'm even done typing.
Speaking of skills, how about getting skills. Ah! gosh darn skills. That's where the manual writing about stuff post-Searing gets confusing. So I talk to my trainer and get my first skills. I talked to other trainers and got "temporary" skills, to try them out. I like the mesmer skills. Anyway. I read in the manual that you buy skills. I see in my "hero" window that I have X skill points. I can't find my trainer. Lots of looking around, nothing. Finally, Mr. Electrifying tells me to actually read what trainers tell me because they are sending me to the person that can give me more skills. Doh! Ok, so I find the "level 1" trainer (for lack of a better name). He gives me some skills. Yay! He then sends me to the "level 2" trainer who gives me a quest to get some skills. Yay again! Where's the next trainer? "Level 2" trainer tells me to talk to "level 1" trainer, and "level 1" trainer tells me to talk to "level 2" trainer (that's what we call an infinite loop). And WTF are skill points for anyway? Where is this imaginary skill trainer with whom I can invest my skill points? Well, Mr. Electrifying tells me, he's post-Searing. There's a tidbit of information worthy of a manual if I ever got one! But the best part: how did he know? A friend told him. How did he know? He saw it in the forums. Hooray for the manual.
So now I got skills, but it's still unclear. The trainer I know seems to have a limited amount, so I'm guessing that I'll be meeting new trainers in other towns. But that's a guess, because I didn't check the forum to confirm and the manual, surprisingly, doesn't say.
And lastly, guilds. I'm part of a guild with the other two guys I mentioned above. When I first got on at the same time as one of them, I got invited into the guild. So five minutes and a lot of chatting later (and I'm not even kidding about the delay) I finally figured out where the "accept invitation" button is. For your reference: it's in the guild screen, which was disabled until that very moment so you never saw it before.
So I'm in the guild with my friends. Where are my friends anyway? And would it be good to group with them? Well, you'd better ask them, because the guild screen doesn't tell you in what area your friends are nor what level / classes they are. It just gives you their names and whether they are "online" or "offline". That's it. I guess it promotes social interaction, but I would rather not have to go "so where are you SPECIFICALLY, anyway? and what level are you at now?" every time.
And that, my friends, is what we call a rant. You know it really is one when, after you spent TEN MINUTES reading the thing, all you want to do is write a rant about how I should SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY or at least make the next one shorter...
Specially when you learn that I'm venting but I will keep playing anyway!
