Guild Wars 2

It pains me to write this as I’m sure it may go unread or not even responded to but there are some serious concerns I and other players have with the future of crafting to max level. Two months ago before the recipes for ascended weapons were released it was easy for a person to craft a level 0-80 character in roughly 60 gold. Currently if a player could get 0-10 levels per craft from the game it would cost them 108 gold, which is still high but okay.

Currently it would take a player 534 gold to craft themselves from 0-65. This is pretty ludicrous even from a hard-core player standpoint. This can’t possibly be a train of thought from this point forward with the release of ascended recipes in the other crafting categories. The amount of gold it would take a character to reach 0-80 could be in the thousands and this is not the kind of goal I’m sure ArenaNet expected from the beginning and needs to be rectified quickly or we as players should receive some kind of statement stating otherwise.

If ArenaNet would like to, they can check and see that I have purchased gems with real money every month to support this wonderful game. I can personally state that I will no longer buy new character slots because I do not have the time or willpower to level a character from 0-80 from content. I can’t believe that the lack of three levels gained from the other recipes has not been addressed yet either.

And the second point of this forum post is that we were promised ascended recipes would have a seventh tier of trading post. We have not seen that. There are only two tradable items on the trading post from ascended recipes. Because of ascended recipe’s needs for lower tier mats and not its own tradable tier has caused the lower tiers prices to increase. This can’t be right.

If leveling is so excruciating to you that the thought of doing anything BUT crafting to get to 80 is this outrageous to you, then you may not have chosen the right game.

Besides, once you hit 80, there’s not much you can do without having a good portion of the waypoints open (especially if you intend on doing any guild missions). You can still level the cheap crafting professions, then just open up waypoints to hit 80 without ever really engaging in any real combat.

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

“Play how you want”, buddy. Not everyone wanna level a character traditional way when it’s more time and cost efficient to just craft. Not to mention it’s boring as hell to go out in the open world. WvW karma train makes it less painful though.

Hahaha…. So in other words, you basically want Anet to give you max level in exchange for money while other people without money slave away killing monsters in dungeons or taking towers in WvW. This game was advertised as casual, but I think it’s a little too casual when someone demands a way to level that doesn’t require time or effort. If easy and super-duper casual is what you want, I hear hello-kitty online is a good place to go.

Hmm, level how you want I guess.

I personally think that they should have left it at 0-400 per 10 levels, and the extra 400-500 gains nothing in terms of overall levels, but that’s just my thoughts.

Poor hello-kitty online.

I wonder if they have a welcoming party set up for all these casual refugees from super hardcore games?

@Galtrix
I do dungeons on my other 80 (time & effort) > earn money > craft new character to 80.

I heard you don’t play gw2 anymore, and I’d rather not join you in hello-kitty online.

you still can craft to 80 by using only 100g.

Here’s how:
-discovery
-post buy orders for raw mats

/thread

Lilius.9850:

you still can craft to 80 by using only 100g.

Here’s how:
-discovery
-post buy orders for raw mats

/thread

Correction, you will NOT be able to craft to 80 with only 100g.

100g covers 8 crafting profession to level 400, each giving 7 character levels.
That’s 7 × 8 = 56 character levels. You can add experience scrolls that level you to 20, which roughly gives you a total of level 76. Not nearly a lvl 80, less so if you don’t have the exp scroll.

Yeah, this is my least favourite of all the recent changes (i.e. nerfs) that have been implemented. Craft levelling is still pretty viable, though in spite of it.

Breeze through levels 1-20 by exploring a few maps and doing the race specific personal storyline, then craft and dungeon-swap the rest.

Yenn.9185:

100g covers 8 crafting profession to level 400, each giving 7 character levels.
That’s 7 × 8 = 56 character levels. You can add experience scrolls that level you to 20, which roughly gives you a total of level 76. Not nearly a lvl 80, less so if you don’t have the exp scroll.

That…actually sounds pretty agreeable to me, and it’s higher than I’d expected. Huh.

Not everyone has extra experience scrolls lying around, I realize, but not everyone needs to rush to 80, either. If we want the game to encourage more people to play mid-level zones, slowing down their ability to powerlevel via crafting might not be a negligible part of that equation.

Honestly, I don’t think slowing down powerleveling will make players play mid-level zones. They can just champ train or wvw train. The need to rush to 80 just depends on what you enjoy in the game really. If you only play wvw or dungeons, you need an 80 to play it competitively.

DomDeuce.7896:

It pains me to write this as I’m sure it may go unread or not even responded to but there are some serious concerns I and other players have with the future of crafting to max level. Two months ago before the recipes for ascended weapons were released it was easy for a person to craft a level 0-80 character in roughly 60 gold. Currently if a player could get 0-10 levels per craft from the game it would cost them 108 gold, which is still high but okay.

Currently it would take a player 534 gold to craft themselves from 0-65. This is pretty ludicrous even from a hard-core player standpoint. This can’t possibly be a train of thought from this point forward with the release of ascended recipes in the other crafting categories. The amount of gold it would take a character to reach 0-80 could be in the thousands and this is not the kind of goal I’m sure ArenaNet expected from the beginning and needs to be rectified quickly or we as players should receive some kind of statement stating otherwise.

If ArenaNet would like to, they can check and see that I have purchased gems with real money every month to support this wonderful game. I can personally state that I will no longer buy new character slots because I do not have the time or willpower to level a character from 0-80 from content. I can’t believe that the lack of three levels gained from the other recipes has not been addressed yet either.

And the second point of this forum post is that we were promised ascended recipes would have a seventh tier of trading post. We have not seen that. There are only two tradable items on the trading post from ascended recipes. Because of ascended recipe’s needs for lower tier mats and not its own tradable tier has caused the lower tiers prices to increase. This can’t be right.

They handed out alot of instant level 20 experience scrolls(massive achievement chest + birthday gifts) before the nerf on crafting exp to lvl 400, it’s almost the same (maybe 4 levels to do manually, big deal lol).

They intentionally wanted to include lower tier mats because they were low valued/underused at the time (kinda the same deal with salvaging ectos->Piles of Crystalline Dust change).

All other account bound mats is to somehow regulate the game from being pay to win($$$->gems->full ascended 5-10% more stats than a non paying guy). You could argue about legendaries but those are regulated by their costs too(if anyone is gonna pay $$$ for a legendary it would be very limited because of the cost involved).

Fair enough, Yenn, fair enough.

crafting to lv 80 was always too easy and cheap anyways. I understand why players like it especially after your first lv 80.

Honestly, I wish I could sell my level 1 – 20 scrolls. I have 5 “mains”, all at level 80, and at least 30 experience scrolls that I have no use for. At least the skill point scrolls are still handy for MF crafting.

Zaxares.5419:

Honestly, I wish I could sell my level 1 – 20 scrolls. I have 5 “mains”, all at level 80, and at least 30 experience scrolls that I have no use for. At least the skill point scrolls are still handy for MF crafting.

It seems like a pretty pointless gift for the one year anniversary of playing the game. I’m pretty sure I won’t have need of it by the time my “birthday” rolls around, and I’m pretty alt-happy.

Maybe if Trahearne wasnt such an emotionless dolt, leveling would be more interesting.

Nah, it’d probably still be kinda rough. Still, while not entirely enjoyable, getting to max level is far more reasonable in GW2 than any other major MMO.

Guhracie.3419:

Zaxares.5419:

Honestly, I wish I could sell my level 1 – 20 scrolls. I have 5 “mains”, all at level 80, and at least 30 experience scrolls that I have no use for. At least the skill point scrolls are still handy for MF crafting.

It seems like a pretty pointless gift for the one year anniversary of playing the game. I’m pretty sure I won’t have need of it by the time my “birthday” rolls around, and I’m pretty alt-happy.

I’d have preferred to get a Black Lion Ticket in my birthday present. -HINT HINT ANET-

Yenn.9185:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

“Play how you want”, buddy. Not everyone wanna level a character traditional way when it’s more time and cost efficient to just craft. Not to mention it’s boring as hell to go out in the open world. WvW karma train makes it less painful though.

Actually, the phrase “Play how you want” is not meant to be interpreted as “Go sit in a corner and craft your way to max level.”

In fact most MMO’s don’t even award the player experience to level their character up when doing crafting, so count yourself lucky that this game does. They didn’t have to implement the EXP reward for crafting. You could just have a crafting grind where the only rewards are money made on high end items (which is in turn limited by costs incurred in making the item) and the actual items you need for your character.

Additionally most MMO’s only let you level 1 or 2 crafts to maximum crafting level, this game apparently lets you level ALL of them, and then for a fee, switch between them as you wish. That is another advantage to crafting in this game that didn’t have to be there.

Point is, this game has it good. Even if crafting experience is nerfed… you really should be playing your character in open world so that you know what you are doing when you actually get to level 80 and start doing end game content. That way you don’t get kicked out of a Fractal or High Level Dungeon for being a noob.

Please note, I don’t use the term Noob lightly. I personally only use it to refer to people who willfully remain ignorant of how their class functions in the actual games content by doing stupid things like leveling their character to 80 by crafting instead of by spending time actually out fighting monsters.

This is GW2, not that just some other MMOs. One of the features advertised by this game, and the reason some players bought it including myself, is that I don’t have to do things I don’t enjoy. Yes, this is different from other MMOs and that’s one of its selling point.

Let’s not even get into the debate that I’m a “noob” for a powerleveling thru crafting. That could turn ugly fast.

Yenn.9185:

This is GW2, not that just some other MMOs. One of the features advertised by this game, and the reason some players bought it including myself, is that I don’t have to do things I don’t enjoy. Yes, this is different from other MMOs and that’s one of its selling point.

Let’s not even get into the debate that I’m a “noob” for a powerleveling thru crafting. That could turn ugly fast.

Fine I won’t get into that argument.

However, I will say that if a person came to this game for the explicit reason that they did not have to go out and fight monsters in order to reach max level, because there is a perfectly viable alternative way to reach max level in the form of crafting. And all they have to do is spend X amount of real money in order to accomplish it.

And they do that with every single character that they ever make. Then can you honestly expect that player to know the first thing about how to actually play their chosen class when they get their first character or for that matter ANY character to level 80, and proceed to leave the confines of the crafting district in whatever their starting city was and attempt to join a Fractals Run or whatever the End Game Content of choice that they choose to undertake happens to be?

Please note that for the effort of this discussion, PvP does not count as actually learning to play your character because different rules apply to how your character reacts to things in PvP versus the rules that apply in PvE. Same is true of WvW vs. PvE. Different rules apply no matter what is happening when you are using a Player to fight another Player and then attempt to use that same Player to fight an Artificially Intelligent Opponent.

For one thing, the reaction time of an A.I. is much higher than a human behind a keyboard can pull off. Which is why A.I. Mesmers and Rangers in Guild Wars 1 were so kitten ed good at interrupting their targets, where as Human Mesmers and Rangers had to have godly reflexes to pull off anything quite so good.

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

the crazy thing is, crafting is playing the game and was one of the ways touted by anet before launch as the “play the way you want” and being able to reach max level with it, wvw was another of the “play the way you want” things….

while I don’t personally find the crafting thing an issue, it does highlight a continual back tracking of what the game was promoted as.

Protoavis.9107:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

the crazy thing is, crafting is playing the game and was one of the ways touted by anet before launch as the “play the way you want” and being able to reach max level with it, wvw was another of the “play the way you want” things….

while I don’t personally find the crafting thing an issue, it does highlight a continual back tracking of what the game was promoted as.

I don’t remember Anet promoting the game as you can level from zero to max level through crafting. If it was even said by a dev, it was certainly never said to promote the game.

What they were saying is that you get experience for a variety of different things and there are different ways to level. That’s all they said from my recollection. So you can level in WvW, you can level doing DEs even if you just do them in the starting zones, you can level doing dungeons and you can certainly augment your leveling by crafting and personal story in between. And you get experience also for waypoints, points of interest and vistas.

But to say that the game was advertised as a game that you can reach max level just crafting….I’d need to see a dev quote before I buy into that.

It’s just a trade. By doing other aspects of the game you enjoy, you earn money. With that money, you spend it to level your new character. That concept doesn’t really bother me. I didn’t say start handing out 80s, and 110g for 56 levels isn’t exactly cheap either.

Right after you crafted to 80s, you won’t suddenly start joining fotm50 or soloing lupi. You get yourself familiar with the character first by doing some cof1 or running wvw.

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

the crazy thing is, crafting is playing the game and was one of the ways touted by anet before launch as the “play the way you want” and being able to reach max level with it, wvw was another of the “play the way you want” things….

while I don’t personally find the crafting thing an issue, it does highlight a continual back tracking of what the game was promoted as.

I don’t remember Anet promoting the game as you can level from zero to max level through crafting. If it was even said by a dev, it was certainly never said to promote the game.

What they were saying is that you get experience for a variety of different things and there are different ways to level. That’s all they said from my recollection. So you can level in WvW, you can level doing DEs even if you just do them in the starting zones, you can level doing dungeons and you can certainly augment your leveling by crafting and personal story in between. And you get experience also for waypoints, points of interest and vistas.

But to say that the game was advertised as a game that you can reach max level just crafting….I’d need to see a dev quote before I buy into that.

It came up a bit by dev’s in beta and was even advertised on gaming blogs like

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/12/leveling-to-80-through-pure-crafting-possible-in-guild-wars-2/

http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/06/11/dev-tracker-level-to-80-by-crafting-alone/

The only reason I remember it is because of the “you can make a dedicated crafter and get to 80” type quote that was floating around pre launch

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Then can you honestly expect that player to know the first thing about how to actually play their chosen class when they get their first character or for that matter ANY character to level 80, and proceed to leave the confines of the crafting district in whatever their starting city was and attempt to join a Fractals Run or whatever the End Game Content of choice that they choose to undertake happens to be?

Why not? The professions aren’t that hard to get a basic handle on, and story dungeons/the early levels of fractals are cake. You can’t go 15 minutes in LA without a guild invite, so they can even cut their teeth with guildmates.

You can still play how you want. You want to only craft then you need to get gold. You want to only do jumping puzzles you need to have ok reflexes. Can’t say to ANET (though people do) let me do jumping puzzles without jumping. To me that is the same as let me do crafting without mats.

Yenn.9185:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

“Play how you want”, buddy. Not everyone wanna level a character traditional way when it’s more time and cost efficient to just craft. Not to mention it’s boring as hell to go out in the open world. WvW karma train makes it less painful though.

OP: Well, think of it this way – How does crafting teach your character to fight monsters/enemies effectively? It will not.
This game was never intended to be P2W or in this case Pay 2 Level and I quite appreciate this decision made by Anet.
It would be ridiculous if in so called MMO*RPG* game, you could literally buy your character a max level, even though this change won’t make me to call this game an RPG, it’s a step in the right direction.

STRanger.5120:

This game was never intended to be P2W or in this case Pay 2 Level and I quite appreciate this decision made by Anet.

Check the links a few posts up….game designer said otherwise.

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

the crazy thing is, crafting is playing the game and was one of the ways touted by anet before launch as the “play the way you want” and being able to reach max level with it, wvw was another of the “play the way you want” things….

while I don’t personally find the crafting thing an issue, it does highlight a continual back tracking of what the game was promoted as.

I don’t remember Anet promoting the game as you can level from zero to max level through crafting. If it was even said by a dev, it was certainly never said to promote the game.

What they were saying is that you get experience for a variety of different things and there are different ways to level. That’s all they said from my recollection. So you can level in WvW, you can level doing DEs even if you just do them in the starting zones, you can level doing dungeons and you can certainly augment your leveling by crafting and personal story in between. And you get experience also for waypoints, points of interest and vistas.

But to say that the game was advertised as a game that you can reach max level just crafting….I’d need to see a dev quote before I buy into that.

It came up a bit by dev’s in beta and was even advertised on gaming blogs like

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/12/leveling-to-80-through-pure-crafting-possible-in-guild-wars-2/

http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/06/11/dev-tracker-level-to-80-by-crafting-alone/

The only reason I remember it is because of the “you can make a dedicated crafter and get to 80” type quote that was floating around pre launch

Okay, what gaming sites write in their blogs is not “advertisement”. They can write anything they want, positive or negative, for that matter.

So Anet didn’t advertise this game as a game you could level to 80 in crafting. What’s really being said here is that at one time it was possible, someone noticed, and they wrote an article about it. I read all those articles.

I also read articles that talked about dye seeds, but they’re not in the game anymore.

MMOs change all the time. The game wasn’t sold on the premise that everyone can level to 80 in crafting, in spite of the fact that you originally could. I personally believe (and has always believed) that was over the top, and that it should be scaled back, which is eventually what happened. I wasn’t surprised it happened. It made sense.

But there’s a big difference between something in the game changing and something in the game changing that it was “advertised” on. This wasn’t a main selling point of the game, even if some people bought it for that reason.

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

the crazy thing is, crafting is playing the game and was one of the ways touted by anet before launch as the “play the way you want” and being able to reach max level with it, wvw was another of the “play the way you want” things….

while I don’t personally find the crafting thing an issue, it does highlight a continual back tracking of what the game was promoted as.

I don’t remember Anet promoting the game as you can level from zero to max level through crafting. If it was even said by a dev, it was certainly never said to promote the game.

What they were saying is that you get experience for a variety of different things and there are different ways to level. That’s all they said from my recollection. So you can level in WvW, you can level doing DEs even if you just do them in the starting zones, you can level doing dungeons and you can certainly augment your leveling by crafting and personal story in between. And you get experience also for waypoints, points of interest and vistas.

But to say that the game was advertised as a game that you can reach max level just crafting….I’d need to see a dev quote before I buy into that.

It came up a bit by dev’s in beta and was even advertised on gaming blogs like

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/12/leveling-to-80-through-pure-crafting-possible-in-guild-wars-2/

http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/06/11/dev-tracker-level-to-80-by-crafting-alone/

The only reason I remember it is because of the “you can make a dedicated crafter and get to 80” type quote that was floating around pre launch

Okay, what gaming sites write in their blogs is not “advertisement”. They can write anything they want, positive or negative, for that matter.

So Anet didn’t advertise this game as a game you could level to 80 in crafting. What’s really being said here is that at one time it was possible, someone noticed, and they wrote an article about it. I read all those articles.

I also read articles that talked about dye seeds, but they’re not in the game anymore.

MMOs change all the time. The game wasn’t sold on the premise that everyone can level to 80 in crafting, in spite of the fact that you originally could. I personally believe (and has always believed) that was over the top, and that it should be scaled back, which is eventually what happened. I wasn’t surprised it happened. It made sense.

But there’s a big difference between something in the game changing and something in the game changing that it was “advertised” on. This wasn’t a main selling point of the game, even if some people bought it for that reason.

You’re missing the quote by one of the dev’s/game designers which started the blog entries….the quote came about during beta and as with most info dump quotes by anet were quote everywhere as part of the hype…..the whole public beta was advertising and stress testing, not actually beta testing.

The dye seeds changed after mass negative feedback, it’s in a different league, crafting leveling wasn’t changed based on massive fan tantrums during beta.

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

Protoavis.9107:

Togashi Jack.9531:

I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?

the crazy thing is, crafting is playing the game and was one of the ways touted by anet before launch as the “play the way you want” and being able to reach max level with it, wvw was another of the “play the way you want” things….

while I don’t personally find the crafting thing an issue, it does highlight a continual back tracking of what the game was promoted as.

I don’t remember Anet promoting the game as you can level from zero to max level through crafting. If it was even said by a dev, it was certainly never said to promote the game.

What they were saying is that you get experience for a variety of different things and there are different ways to level. That’s all they said from my recollection. So you can level in WvW, you can level doing DEs even if you just do them in the starting zones, you can level doing dungeons and you can certainly augment your leveling by crafting and personal story in between. And you get experience also for waypoints, points of interest and vistas.

But to say that the game was advertised as a game that you can reach max level just crafting….I’d need to see a dev quote before I buy into that.

It came up a bit by dev’s in beta and was even advertised on gaming blogs like

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/12/leveling-to-80-through-pure-crafting-possible-in-guild-wars-2/

http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/06/11/dev-tracker-level-to-80-by-crafting-alone/

The only reason I remember it is because of the “you can make a dedicated crafter and get to 80” type quote that was floating around pre launch

Okay, what gaming sites write in their blogs is not “advertisement”. They can write anything they want, positive or negative, for that matter.

So Anet didn’t advertise this game as a game you could level to 80 in crafting. What’s really being said here is that at one time it was possible, someone noticed, and they wrote an article about it. I read all those articles.

I also read articles that talked about dye seeds, but they’re not in the game anymore.

MMOs change all the time. The game wasn’t sold on the premise that everyone can level to 80 in crafting, in spite of the fact that you originally could. I personally believe (and has always believed) that was over the top, and that it should be scaled back, which is eventually what happened. I wasn’t surprised it happened. It made sense.

But there’s a big difference between something in the game changing and something in the game changing that it was “advertised” on. This wasn’t a main selling point of the game, even if some people bought it for that reason.

You’re missing the quote by one of the dev’s/game designers which started the blog entries….

I’m not missing it, all I see is a quote with absolutely no context at all. Let’s say there was a thread and a dev posted in it and said, yes it’s possible to do this. Does that mean the game was advertised that way? Not in my mind, because you have to own the game to see the quote.

There’s a difference between a dev saying something in a post on a forum and how a game is advertised. As the simplest example, at one point Colin said in a quote that you wouldn’t be able to walk in this game. At another point he said you wouldn’t be able to change your eye color. Other dev comments included stuff about energy potions, which were later taken out of the game. I brought up dye seeds before.

Just because a dev mentions something in a forum post, doesn’t mean the game was sold based on that. It only means that a dev made a comment. Now, was it in response to a question. Did someone ask the question can it be done and the dev said yes, because at the time it could? I don’t know. That thread can’t be accessed at all.

And again, if you can’t access the forums until you buy the game, if a dev said something on the forums and someone else reported on it, it’s still not something the game was sold on, even if someone bought the game because of it.

Suppose I went and bought this game because I liked the idea of dye seeds. They were in the game. They’re in the official strategy guide. They were taken out very late in the development of the game, abandoned in favor of the current system.

Does that mean that the game was sold on the basis of dye seeds? I don’t think so.

You didn’t have to own the game to see the quote, owning the game only guaranteed entry into beta, many randoms who hadn’t bought it were also in beta. the public betas (which that quote eventuates from) was also largely advertising/hype making as pretty much every press outlet was invited into it because anet wanted them to post articles (ie free advertising…), anet were also aware from previous press betas (before the public ones) that their quotes would be extracted from the beta forums and posted everywhere……lets call a spade a spade, anet and how much experience they had around that time with multiple beta’s and everything they posted being quoted in the hype train that anet manipulated and arranged (by giving every press outlet access) can’t possibly be that naive, so let’s not play dumb

ATMAvatar.5749:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Then can you honestly expect that player to know the first thing about how to actually play their chosen class when they get their first character or for that matter ANY character to level 80, and proceed to leave the confines of the crafting district in whatever their starting city was and attempt to join a Fractals Run or whatever the End Game Content of choice that they choose to undertake happens to be?

Why not? The professions aren’t that hard to get a basic handle on, and story dungeons/the early levels of fractals are cake. You can’t go 15 minutes in LA without a guild invite, so they can even cut their teeth with guildmates.

Okay…

A.) A Profession (aka Proficiency) is a Crafting Skill, like Artifice.

B.) A Class, is what your character actually does in Combat, i.e. a Guardian.

C.) A Race is the species of the Character which can augment the characters abilities in combat to some extent.

Get those terms right. They were defined this way long before Guild Wars was even conceived of. Heck, they were defined this way long before Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Games were even dreamt about.

These terms defined in this way, have their origin in the Pencil and Paper Role Playing Game known as Dungeons and Dragons First Edition! Said game was first published in 1974, long before Video Games developed an online presence of any sort, much less a massively multiplayer presence. So please adhere to the definitions held by all RPG’s. Even Guild Wars in its attempts to break away from conventions has not defied the traditional definitions of the Class/Race/Proficiency trinity, even though they tried to do away with the other trinity inherent in Role Playing Games.

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As for your assertion that the Classes aren’t all that hard to get a basic handle on. Sure, maybe not. That doesn’t change the fact that if you want an advanced knowledge of how the class works on an indepth level, your going to need to level it from the ground up, in a combat friendly environment. Preferably against both Player and A.I. opponents. Theory alone will not suffice. Nor will simply a few weeks of practice.

I know from personal experience that I did not understand the dodge mechanikittenil I had gone through a little over 80 levels. I haven’t actually leveled any one character up to level 70 yet, but between 2 characters that I leveled to 33 and 35 each, and another that is in it’s early 20’s, I have a little over 80 cumulative levels worth of experience at my disposal, and it took almost all of them for me to completely comprehend how to use the dodge mechanic to its fullest capabilities. I would not expect a person who has leveled all of their characters exclusively through Crafting to be capable of understanding that particular mechanikittenil they are forced to, because most MMO’s do not have that type of a mechanic.

Protoavis.9107:

You didn’t have to own the game to see the quote, owning the game only guaranteed entry into beta, many randoms who hadn’t bought it were also in beta. the public betas (which that quote eventuates from) was also largely advertising/hype making as pretty much every press outlet was invited into it because anet wanted them to post articles (ie free advertising…), anet were also aware from previous press betas (before the public ones) that their quotes would be extracted from the beta forums and posted everywhere……lets call a spade a spade, anet and how much experience they had around that time with multiple beta’s and everything they posted being quoted in the hype train that anet manipulated and arranged (by giving every press outlet access) can’t possibly be that naive, so let’s not play dumb

So you’re saying that no dev can say anything at all that’s not advertising? And people want devs to be more open and transparent? Both these things can’t happen.

A dev in an MMO is going to say hundreds of things and some of those things, particularly pre release are going to change. That’s why there are betas in the first place. A beta is a test period during which things are tried and then changed if they’re deemed not to work.

So a dev that answers a question on a forum, there answer is now an advertisement and their word is locked in forever as a promise?

This is something I can’t agree with at all. And if people insist on using this argument, then Anet becomes completely justified in not saying anything, just in case it might change at some point in the future.

I don’t believe, and I don’t believe most people think, that this game was sold on the basis that you can level to 80 crafting. It was a neat fact that was always going to be subject to change.

If all that interests you is crafting, why does getting to level 80 even bother you?

Jiminy.8340:

If all that interests you is crafting, why does getting to level 80 even bother you?

Because of max stats? Wearing what YOU crafted?

@topic

Not everyone wants to repeat the content for an alt. I have 3 characters sitting on level 40 because it’s too kitten boring to repeat hearts, explore Tyria, re-run dungeons for exp purposes (oh and btw, since most people are only talking to Warriors, Mes and Guardians, my poor Necro/Engi usually gets insta-kicked on PuG. Guilds and I see only on weekends due to timezone differences, and I have other things to do on a weekend other than play so…) and no, the personal story sucks the X time, where X is more than the first. My server sucks at WvWvW, making gaining exp a lot slower than doing hearts. Transfer is expensive (no, I’m not going to delete 4 level 80’s)…

While I didn’t do crafting to 80, I understand why people do it. I don’t agree with it though. ANet needs to give viable ways to enjoy the field. Right now, what’s supposed to be dynamic has become static and boring…

If this is such an issue, remove EXP from crafting – you already have an incentive – to get gears. Or reduce the EXP so that if you manage to max out all professions, max level is 40. That’s it. Or you no longer gain EXP/gain very little EXP once you reach a certain level.

Zaxares.5419:

Honestly, I wish I could sell my level 1 – 20 scrolls. I have 5 “mains”, all at level 80, and at least 30 experience scrolls that I have no use for. At least the skill point scrolls are still handy for MF crafting.

Don’t those scrolls give a new character 20 levels and 15 skill points? If so, doesn’t that allow you to use those points in the way you chose is best (ie the MF)? And who will stop you from deleting that character after using the skill points, making a new one, and then rinse and repeat the above?

If that’s the case, didn’t Anet throw roughly 450g in your lap in skill points, assuming you know how to convert 1 skill point to 1g (I won’t help you there)?

Edit: do this right (ie finish the initial story line) an you’ll have 30 BL keys as well. Might be a nice additional incentive?

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Crafting to be capable of understanding that particular mechanikittenil they are forced to, because most MMO’s do not have that type of a mechanic.

If you’ve come from WoW or a WoW clone that makes sense, to an extent, but many mmo’s that came out a year or so below GW2 had some degree of active combat, eg the dodge mechanic of gw2 isn’t that different from DCUO block mechanic which isn’t that different from Age of Conan, etc they all boil doing to watching out for telegraphed attacks and mitigating that damage through reflex action rather than a skill.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

ATMAvatar.5749:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Then can you honestly expect that player to know the first thing about how to actually play their chosen class when they get their first character or for that matter ANY character to level 80, and proceed to leave the confines of the crafting district in whatever their starting city was and attempt to join a Fractals Run or whatever the End Game Content of choice that they choose to undertake happens to be?

Why not? The professions aren’t that hard to get a basic handle on, and story dungeons/the early levels of fractals are cake. You can’t go 15 minutes in LA without a guild invite, so they can even cut their teeth with guildmates.

Okay…

A.) A Profession (aka Proficiency) is a Crafting Skill, like Artifice.

B.) A Class, is what your character actually does in Combat, i.e. a Guardian.

C.) A Race is the species of the Character which can augment the characters abilities in combat to some extent.

Get those terms right. They were defined this way long before Guild Wars was even conceived of. Heck, they were defined this way long before Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Games were even dreamt about.

Get your facts right. Confusing as may be, in GW2 classes are called professions and got nothing to do with crafting. Stop making this discussion more confusing than necessary. Few people care about definitions made up for pencil and paper games from 1974 these days.

That being said, being one of those players who collected a vast amount of lower tier materials while leveling 5 characters to 80 the regular way I think OP has a mostly valid complaint here. Leveling even more characters has become boringly repetitive while all some people want is another level 80 character to gear up for fractals, dungeons, wvw or just for fun. GW2 had the benefit that there was the alternative way of leveling characters quickly by just crafting your way to 80 and skipping going through the same zones for the 6th time. The ascended weapons patch has made that more difficult and I too wonder if that was entirely intended. And yes, ofcourse, if you use a scroll to get to level 20 and then craft all your crafting skills to 400, you get close to 80 still, and getting the last 4 levels ain’t much trouble at all. That argument doesn’t change much to the OP’s saying that leveling through crafting has become much more expensive than it used to be.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Okay…

A.) A Profession (aka Proficiency) is a Crafting Skill, like Artifice.

B.) A Class, is what your character actually does in Combat, i.e. a Guardian.

C.) A Race is the species of the Character which can augment the characters abilities in combat to some extent.

Get those terms right. They were defined this way long before Guild Wars was even conceived of. Heck, they were defined this way long before Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Games were even dreamt about.

Guild Wars 2 defines them differently. I can accept that you would rather use the term Class for Guild Wars 2 Professions, but if you want to be a pedantic jerk about it, at least get your pedantry right for this game.

If you don’t like that classes are called professions in this game, then take it up with ANET, not me.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

As for your assertion that the Classes aren’t all that hard to get a basic handle on. Sure, maybe not. That doesn’t change the fact that if you want an advanced knowledge of how the class works on an indepth level, your going to need to level it from the ground up, in a combat friendly environment. Preferably against both Player and A.I. opponents. Theory alone will not suffice. Nor will simply a few weeks of practice.

I know from personal experience that I did not understand the dodge mechanikittenil I had gone through a little over 80 levels. I haven’t actually leveled any one character up to level 70 yet, but between 2 characters that I leveled to 33 and 35 each, and another that is in it’s early 20’s, I have a little over 80 cumulative levels worth of experience at my disposal, and it took almost all of them for me to completely comprehend how to use the dodge mechanic to its fullest capabilities. I would not expect a person who has leveled all of their characters exclusively through Crafting to be capable of understanding that particular mechanikittenil they are forced to, because most MMO’s do not have that type of a mechanic.

I am sorry to hear that it took so long for you to grasp the game mechanics. Dodging was reasonably natural in the first few hours for me – the only difficulty I ever had with it came from the default keybinding.

Class mechanics themselves are pretty straightforward, particularly if you pick a forgiving profession like Warrior or Guardian. It doesn’t take more than an hour or two to figure them out to the extent required to tackle most dungeons, particularly if you are used to MMOs or even gaming in general.

Protoavis.9107:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Crafting to be capable of understanding that particular mechanikittenil they are forced to, because most MMO’s do not have that type of a mechanic.

If you’ve come from WoW or a WoW clone that makes sense, to an extent, but many mmo’s that came out a year or so below GW2 had some degree of active combat, eg the dodge mechanic of gw2 isn’t that different from DCUO block mechanic which isn’t that different from Age of Conan, etc they all boil doing to watching out for telegraphed attacks and mitigating that damage through reflex action rather than a skill.

WTH happened to my post, that is supposed to say “Mechanic” followed by “until” not “mechanikittenil” what the heck is a Mechanikittenil?

The first Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game I ever played, was Final Fantasy XI. That game is anything, EXCEPT a World of Warcraft Clone. Rather it is the first installement of the Massively Mutliplayer versions of the entire Final Fantasy Franchise. That in and of itself earned it some respect, seeing as how the Final Fantasy Franchise is WAY WAY more popular than World of Warcraft in a lot of ways.

That said, power leveling of any sort in that game was next to impossible until the Abyssea Expansions, which weren’t released until EIGHT years after the original release of the game. The reason for this is because if you tried to party with a character whose level was more than a few (read 2 or 3) levels higher than yours, then your experience point rewards from monsters would be nerfed so hard as to make it pointless. In otherwords in that game the only way to power level effectively, was to have a high level White Mage, or other healing spec class sitting outside the party, performing healing on the party, while the party goes to town on the local flaura and fauna.

Unfortunately, the side effect of power leveling in that game, was that you would end up having level 75 characters dressed in level 10 armor, and somehow unable to get the level 75 armor because they are woefully under geared and under financed thanks to having spent all their money to finance their power leveling.

The same kinds of things happened in the next MMORPG I played, Perfect World, which was essentially a WoW clone, even if it was an Asian WoW clone. There they actually promoted power leveling by having items that multiplied the amount of experience you got from kills by as much as 12 times the normal rate. Which is of course understandable to an extent considering that the maximum level in that game was at the time 105, and it took over 2 billion total experience points to reach it, and most mobs even in end game content only dropped around 100 experience points at any given time without the XP Boosters. But the same aftereffects of power leveling in that game arose, people were too high level, with too low finances, and couldn’t afford the end game gear to make up the difference in stats.

Same problem appears in multiple games. The effort Guild Wars makes to try and change that, by having Crafting Award Experience Points, where most other games do not, is admirable, but ultimately problematic in its own right. Because crafting to level robs people of the skill to play properly. Even if it does give them the ability to craft their own end game gear. It also apparently costs a lot of money to do. So basically, you have to spend a crap ton of money to get to end game levels, where you have to spend an even larger sum of money to get end game gear, where you then have to spend an even larger amount of time, learning how to play.

Yeah, I don’t see any problem whatsoever /sarcasm.

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I will also add that a Public Beta is essentially the last stage of development for a game. And nothing else. Yes, it also generally doubles as a major source of advertisement, but its primary purpose is that of letting the developers know what the public at large thinks of the game, as well as having the public at large have access to the game so that they can find any and all bugs that the developers themselves did not find in the first place.

If it were purely a marketing tool, then a public beta would not be public. It would be accessible only to media outlets and thus a closed beta.

Additionally, it should be noted that Game Developers are just as much humans as the rest of us. What sets them apart from us however, is that we do not own the license to modify this game, they do. As such they are permitted to at any time change their mind about any design decision they had previously made, and change how it operates within the game, for any kitten reason that they want. They don’t even have to justify their reasons for doing this. THEY OWN THE GAME, NOT US! All we own are copies of the game.

The censor mechanic comes into play when the last letter of the first word you used and the first 3 letters of the second word you used are separated by a space (or not). Very inflexible censor but that is what they have.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Protoavis.9107:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Crafting to be capable of understanding that particular mechanikittenil they are forced to, because most MMO’s do not have that type of a mechanic.

If you’ve come from WoW or a WoW clone that makes sense, to an extent, but many mmo’s that came out a year or so below GW2 had some degree of active combat, eg the dodge mechanic of gw2 isn’t that different from DCUO block mechanic which isn’t that different from Age of Conan, etc they all boil doing to watching out for telegraphed attacks and mitigating that damage through reflex action rather than a skill.

WTH happened to my post, that is supposed to say “Mechanic” followed by “until” not “mechanikittenil” what the heck is a Mechanikittenil?

You forgot spaces in between. It formed a word that is being censored. lol Starts with C and ends in T.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

WTH happened to my post, that is supposed to say “Mechanic” followed by “until” not “mechanikittenil” what the heck is a Mechanikittenil?

the filter (replaces anything on it’s list with kitten) seems to think you were saying “sea you en tea”

they need a more inventive censor. And ironically I did have a space inbetween the words, somehow that space appears to have been ignored by the censor. Does it do that often?

I also appear to have lost a response that I edited in on my last post for some reason.

Suffice to say, I define Class / Race / Proficiency (Crafting) the way that it is defined in Dungeons and Dragons, because that was the very first actual Role Playing Game ever created. Until Dungeons and Dragons defines these things differently in all of its versions, I will continue to define them the way that the majority of versions of Dungeons and Dragons defines it, and not the way that Anet or another gaming company deigns to define it on their own whim. Simply because the intellectual concept belongs to TSR who is owned by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro. Not by anyone else.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

they need a more inventive censor. And ironically I did have a space inbetween the words, somehow that space appears to have been ignored by the censor. Does it do that often?

yes

I’m curious about the argument people are making about “knowing your class and how to play”. Forget crafting and look at the other methods of ‘power-leveling’ in GW2. What exactly does running the champ train in Queensdale teach about your class, besides how to wp around quickly and press 1? What does a WvW karma train teach you about your class mechanics, besides how important it is to tag things for credit? What does most open world content teach you, since most of it is facerolled?
Its an empty argument IMO. None of the quicker ways to level teach you anything about mechanics, crafting included.