Guild Wars 2

Let me make this one clear before I get brutally beaten down by the wow-fanboy brigade.

This topic is not a matter of the idea of weather leveling is a bad design, but why using it is a crux for Guild Wars 2’s own success and why expanding the game with any more levels would not in any way advance it at all.

Unlike my previous topic on a suggestion for guild housing, this is a cross between a rant and a suggestion on how to improove the game from it:

The Basics:

Leveling is an extremely crux-worthy method of hindering the progression of most mmo’s purley for the sake of trying to justify it with a concept of advancement through numerical statistical supremecy. In any other mmo, this statistic based format would work flawlessly, as evidenced in games like world of warcraft, the old republic and others that are designed for it.

But the way that A-net fundamentally designed this game clearly makes it try to be as different from WoW and other mmo’s of that fundamental oldschool belief as possible.

For a start, we have a clear cut dumbed down set of statistics that allow for more clear cut min maxing regardless of your profession. For another thing, we have a game that fundamentally prides itself on a design philosophy that it tries to do all it can to utterly destroy the holy trinity, and the grind.

For the most part, it has succeeded, except for the grind part.

This is where GW2 begins to fall into the trap that many of wow’s previous compeditors made the mistake of doing. Using levels as a crux to add numerical statistics rather than making optimisted and long lasting end game that was not only enjoyable, but enjoyable to reach in the first place.

Leveling, is an old system, one that simply doesnt work in a quasi-action rpg like GW2, which could near enough be considered Fable with multiplayer based on the way the gameplay and the design works. This game needs a different kind of leveling system, and most of all, it needs the entire process of “leveling” to DIE in a fire.

You want a fun, enjoyable, casual game, that wil appeal to a large audience both casual and hardcore based not on its stats, but on its gameplay? Then I advise this:

1. Do not, make any more levels for this game, this game already has 80 and that is a very healthy and good enough standard, please, despite what has been promised, reconsider levels as your focus, its not a good way forward and its a trap so many mmo’s have fallen into and fell far from.
Example in Question:
TOR: TOR had a railroaded leveling system that tried to compete with wow, and as a consequence of this, it used leveling to make its content as long paced and boring as possible leading to a conclusive lack of end game and thus an outraged fanbase (despite the fact some still enjoy it today, more remember it for that very unfond reason). Do not fall into the trap of what TOR did with its leveling and end up focusing all your effortt into making content that reaches the end game, rather than having content that “is” the end game.

2. Focus more upon getting people “to” the end game early, leveling is a tutorial, not an obligation, and to force it down peoples throats eliminates the fundamental enjoyment of the game because it ultimatley reminds you that in order to explore that next bit of content, you will have to be generically pathed down that bit of content all over again. This quickly becomes a stagnacious and uninspired road to nowhere, and having 1 level 80 seems enough for me because try as I may, I havent really motivated myself to reach level 80 again with an alt (and I have quite a number to count from).
TL:DR version: Make every area in GW2 open world from the start, people should feel that its their choice how they reach 80, and feel like its their choice how their hero evolves, not the games linear pathing.
(I know thats development hell considering how much the game put in but considering your next promised patch is more or less an overhaul of old content, this kind of thing couldnt hurt to give a serious look at if you want GW2 to truley be different from every other mmo.)

These two big points addressed would immediatley make this game alot more worthwhile to play in the long run, and as for big end game, well its pretty easy to add story content that lasts a long time (see GW1 for example) or more expansive ideas such as skill point and ability challanges that require you to unlock new abilities by doing a long adventuerous mini story.

GW2, is a game fundamentally closer to an action rpg with multiplayer than an mmo. I would ideally like to see Anet push it that direction rather than steering it towards (generic valley) or the clicheville of every other mmo out there.

I do not want WoW MK2, I want GW2, a game that I bought to get as far away from that design as possible.

Your 2/3 the way there A-net, with a bit more effort, you could be there 100%.

Personally, I think there are quite a few systems they could have used and adapted instead from levelling:

• Guild Wars’ Profession Attributes – Right from the beginning, players have the majority of their attribute points, with mini-quests in the world to dedicate points to their main attribute. For example, bench-pressing a Norn would dedicate one point into the Warrior’s Strength attribute.

• Guild Wars’ Blue Mage-ing – A.K.A Elite Skill Capturing. I’m personally hoping they bring this back if they add new Traits and Skills.

• Runes of Magic Skill Ranks – Instead of XP going towards levels, the player can spend XP to boost their skills, with each skill maybe having a different boost the higher the rank, whether it be straight up damage, reduced activation, increased duration ect up to a max limit.

• Path of Exile Support Gems – Support gems give skills passive effects that boost them. For example, Fireball has upgrades that either increase the size of the splash, or reduce the size of the splash, increasing damage. Maybe a system where you can unlock upgrades at certain skill ranks / through research, or upgrade slots in skills to slot skill upgrades.

• FFX Sphere Grid – One of my fave progression systems in a game of all time. Mobs drop random spheres, which are used to purchase upgrades on the characters Sphere Grid. Character also gains levels, which are then spent advancing across the grid. Each one would have 5 different paths depending on the Profession (keeping in line with Traits), containing minor stat boosts that suit that path (i.e. Tactics would have -0.1 cooldown to Shouts and Banners, Fire Magic would have +0.1% crit chance against Burning targets), as well as skill upgrades (i.e Critical hits with this skill apply Fire Hex for 5 seconds. Hitting Fire Hex with a Blast Finisher deals AoE damage and Burning for 1 sec). This would essentially be a passive progression system that, given enough time, can be filled out entirely, and would have a straight levelling curve (i.e. every level after level 10 needs 50,000 XP to gain a level.)

We are talking about different forms of progression, no?

I have to agree, the traditional level system is a relic that does not belong in GW2, and the decision to have 4x more levels than GW1 was completely arbitrary and serves no purpose other than to gate content that you would otherwise might enjoy if you didn’t view it as a chore. I look at zones by their level now instead of what there is to explore, or what I accomplished there. I feel no stronger defeating a level 80 monster than I did with level 10 monsters, and having numbers scale up so high is pointless other than to sate people that enjoy 4+ digit damage numbers. Capping levels at 10 or 20 would be ideal in my opinion, since you have most or all of your weapon skills by then, and have the hang of combat. Or just removing levels all together.

Well, it doesn’t matter if you call leveling receiving something.
They could remove levels all together and replace system of getting skills with skill challenges you have to do in instances by yourself and obviously many other funny ways.
Common leveling system is.. just a system. There would be no harm to remove levels alltogether, but you will still have to replace them with something similar to it.
I for one would completely agree to remove the leveling system(the arenanet themselves try to make it not so mattering by level scaling, but why bother? I do not understand why a lvl 2-3 undeads running around in caledon forest should be weaker than undead’s running in orr, still).
However it is undoubtely easier to stick with common system than go for innovations that may not be liked by people. Could this be the reason?

It’s funny because Guild Wars had this perfect system where your level didn’t matter AT ALL. This along with storyline missions is what I miss the most from the old game. I would like to see this comming back instead of having a world full of events.

However, ArenaNet choose to take a different path and I really wonder how the leveling will work in future expansions. What if you have recieved your level 80 ‘legendary’ weapon and a new expansion comes out? Will your legendary be useless, all the farming you did was just a waste of time?

I wouln’t mind if the max level would stay 80 but leveling while exploring is a big part of GW2. Exploring in a future expansion would be pretty much useless if the max level wouln’t increase.

I find that levelling is essentially half the game. And from there you continue your story, explore the world and fight your way through dungeons.
I just got to level 80 and I think I’m at about 22% world completion.

Any expansions, I feel, would be somewhere you would need to be fully equipped with the best items before you enter.

Well With expansions new places to explore maybe guild wars can come up with new machanic’s for maps all together like a toned down fractals one person can do alone. Guild Wars Hm Kinda Like Second Life have alot of potential and like second life well unlike second life because only the developers can edit change maps but Imagination is a kea also. Hopefully A.Net is letting there developers have fun enjoy what they do and not crack a whip over there back as that will lead to lineal unimaginative wow thinking…

The point of the topic was to raise awareness mostly in the danger that GW2 will fall into that same unpleasant cycle that so many an mmo has done before it, lets look at that cycle and see why it has ruined many compeditors to a certain titanic mmo -cough-wow-cough-.

The Cycle: Leveling, Progressing, Expansions, More Leveling, More Progressing.

The problem with this cycle is that it starts off as a simple yet basic concept, that works, its not a good idea, but its a safe one, it doesnt take risks from tradition which in my humble opinion A-net, dissapoints me considering how much you murdered the holy trinity, which was a good step forwards.

Leveling, is a system that im sure alot of long vets are getting outright fed up with, not because its progressive but because it ISNT progressive, its the same old same old you’ve done a hundred and ten times on the last mmo before it. Theres only so many times you can use that system to its death untill finally someone says “screw this, this is getting ‘really’ old.”

And it is…

The fact is, if GW2 spent more time developing the world exploration, the content that made its leveling fun, it would make more use of it and make the game last longer because of it. The game needs to be more of a legend of zelda rpg than an mmo, the way its built could be so full of rich potential for this, from soloable dungeons to massive group events that unlock huge changes in the gaming world that week.

This game is RICH for “NEW” methods of progression and it should EXPLOIT that to the fullest it can, rip a new one in the old and say down with regieme because im honest here, theres nothing more boring than being reminded that a few mmo’s ago I was doing the same thing over and over again.

Levels are not a fun method of progress anymore, they are just a safe way to make content longer which isnt a good way to make it work. Leveling should be an unconsious process on par with Skyrim, where your leveling with the world, around the world, not because you had to go through one area to reach another.

And before people say this isnt TES, or that it ist Skyrim, look at the way this game is formatted and tell me im wrong:

- You get waypoints that for a fee you can instantly go to anywhere in the world (rather like skyrims fast travel system).
- You enter places of vast, explorable wonder, filled with strange and wonderful architecture and encounters (rather like skyrim, again).
- You venture through explorable secret areas, jumping puzzles, minature open dungeons, and group with others to do fractals and dungeons. (Rather like, okay, excluding the grouping- (oh wait we get npcs on skyrim, nevermind!) Rather Like Skyrim!)

See where this train of thought is going?

This game, needs to be more like TESO than TESO can be, by being an open world sandbox mmo that actually promotes exploration, adventure and most of all, rewarding the player for actually taking the time to go around and appriciate the long worked architecture the devs put into it.

INSTEAD OF USING AN ARBATARY OUTDATED SYSTEM TO STOP US REACHING THAT CONTENT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Seriously A-net… you know better, and thats a slap to your own pride, you know having made GW1, people dont LIKE being told they cant go somewhere. Even less so when theres a big level cap telling you “lol no reach this level before you go here”.

Now… in defence of this, you can technically go anywhere at any level but its hardly a smart idea and not really recommended. This is the problem, this game really needs to up its effort on promoting the world exploration deal a whole lot more, it would be a VASTLY more enjoyable game for it and nothing, and I do mean NOTHING would be lost.

A-net, I really love this game, if your reading this, take the time to consider what you “COULD” do with this product instead of what everyone else HAS already done.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Leveling is an extremely crux-worthy method of hindering the progression of most mmo’s purley for the sake of trying to justify it with a concept of advancement through numerical statistical supremecy. In any other mmo, this statistic based format would work flawlessly, as evidenced in games like world of warcraft, the old republic and others that are designed for it.

The way you’re viewing leveling is probably not the way most game developers view it. Not that I am a game developer myself but WoW’s leveling progression has been what you’ve stated at the start and instead turned itself into a lengthy tutorial that allows you to experience the game while you learn it.

Simply put, if you were to jump into a raid as soon as you just registered an account and activated a subscription, you basically wouldn’t know what the heck you were doing.

This is somewhat similar in GW 2, it’s true that you can beat and get credit for the Claw of Jormag by being AFK so long as you hit him like twice, but without learning the game through the leveling process, if you were to actually contribute to the fight, you would still be pretty confused.

As for the point that there’s less things to learn in GW 2, that’s certainly true but even with the limited amount of skills, there are ways you can use them that aren’t quite as apparent as the tooltip would describe. Heck, there are some tooltips that don’t even describe the full power of the ability.

Being tied to zones while leveling “could” be considered a problem, but would you really want to go to Orr immediately as soon as you buy the game?

Lastly.

GW 1’s leveling process still existed and was extremely linear especially in Prophecies. Prophecies (for me) had the most boring 1-20 and I would take GW 2’s 1-80 any day of the week. I started off in Factions as a level 20 so I can’t say what that was like, and Nightfall’s level grind was shortened tremendously.

So if that’s proof as to how Arenanet likes to handle grinding, I think that’s perfectly fine.

When the game is young, make things take longer as players are still learning the game then when the next expansion comes along, since they would know players are less interested in grinding, either remove the leveling process entirely or shorten it even further.

To me, the best thing that could be possible is to keep the 1-80 grind but somehow shorten it for future characters after you have a level 80 character.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Personally, I think there are quite a few systems they could have used and adapted instead from levelling:

• Guild Wars’ Profession Attributes – Right from the beginning, players have the majority of their attribute points, with mini-quests in the world to dedicate points to their main attribute. For example, bench-pressing a Norn would dedicate one point into the Warrior’s Strength attribute.

• Guild Wars’ Blue Mage-ing – A.K.A Elite Skill Capturing. I’m personally hoping they bring this back if they add new Traits and Skills.

• Runes of Magic Skill Ranks – Instead of XP going towards levels, the player can spend XP to boost their skills, with each skill maybe having a different boost the higher the rank, whether it be straight up damage, reduced activation, increased duration ect up to a max limit.

• Path of Exile Support Gems – Support gems give skills passive effects that boost them. For example, Fireball has upgrades that either increase the size of the splash, or reduce the size of the splash, increasing damage. Maybe a system where you can unlock upgrades at certain skill ranks / through research, or upgrade slots in skills to slot skill upgrades.

• FFX Sphere Grid – One of my fave progression systems in a game of all time. Mobs drop random spheres, which are used to purchase upgrades on the characters Sphere Grid. Character also gains levels, which are then spent advancing across the grid. Each one would have 5 different paths depending on the Profession (keeping in line with Traits), containing minor stat boosts that suit that path (i.e. Tactics would have -0.1 cooldown to Shouts and Banners, Fire Magic would have +0.1% crit chance against Burning targets), as well as skill upgrades (i.e Critical hits with this skill apply Fire Hex for 5 seconds. Hitting Fire Hex with a Blast Finisher deals AoE damage and Burning for 1 sec). This would essentially be a passive progression system that, given enough time, can be filled out entirely, and would have a straight levelling curve (i.e. every level after level 10 needs 50,000 XP to gain a level.)

We are talking about different forms of progression, no?

100%, man.

Love Sphere Grid as well, though I think it’d be messy to adapt to Guild Wars 2.

Anyway, taking on your points, here’s how I would change GW2’s character progression system:

• Guild Wars’ Profession Attributes & God of War
  - There would be no levels
  - No exponential stat growth.
  - Experience would fill up a pool like in God of War, from wich you can spend to unlock various features, in wichever order you prefer.
  Example:
  - Default – Spiritual Growth (Passive) – You automatically gain 1 Skill Point every X experience.
  - Unlockable – Spiritual Guidance (Passive, Costs Y Experience) – Spiritual Growth also grants 1 of 70 Attribute Points every X experience.
  - Unlockable – Weapon Swap (Cost W experience)
  - Default – F1 Skill
  - Unlockable (for some professions) – F2 Skill (Cost W experience)
  - Unlockable (for some professions) – F3 Skill (Cost W experience)
  - Unlockable (for some professions) – F4 Skill (Cost W experience)
  - Unlockable – Utility Slot #1 (Cost Z experience)
  - Unlockable – Utility Slot #2 (Cost Z*2 experience)
  - Unlockable – Utility Slot #3 (Cost Z*3 experience)
  - Unlockable – Elite Slot (Cost Z*5 experience)

• Guild Wars’ Blue Mage-ing & Skill Runes
  I’d mix Guild Wars’ Skill Hunting with Diablo 3’s Skill Runes.
  Essentially, each and every skill, be it weapon, healing, utility or elite, would have 3-5 “Advanced Versions” – small improvements, wich would slightly adjust the skill to different playstyles.
  To use an Advanced version of a skill, you’d need to:
  - defeat 1 to 3 specific monsters in the world
  - unlock the default version of all skills
  - spend X Skill Points to unlock the Advanced version of that skill
  You’d be able to freely swap Advanced Versions of skills while out of combat, like you do with Major Traits.

I agree with issues mentioned mostly. A lot of it comes down to 2 things:

- What ANet thinks the mass of MMO players want. Is it grind? Does the mass of MMO players actually enjoy grinding and endless microtransactions? Do they want a game that is based on farming and loot? Do they want to play the same things over and over and over so as to eventually get a fancy skin for a sword or coat of armour?

- The game tries to be a jack of all trades by having both co-op and competitive modes. As a result a lot of what would have been cool skills to play with in PvE are seriously underpowered in an attempt to make PvP and WvW balanced. Combine this with the serious problem of near-instant re-spawns in many areas, and you ave a PvE mode that is ultimately frustrating and unrewarding in terms of gameplay . The levelling means you never feel powerful and not even being able to do damage to higher level enemies makes this game not so open world. In practice higher level areas may as well be blocked until you reach the right level.

A bit more about the skills and weapons in PvE: Seriously nerfed. eg:
-Chill 1 second. What good is that?
-Remove condition every 10 seconds. Dice roll. In 10 seconds you’re easily dead.
-Invisible so long as you don’t move or deal damage. whatever.
- Things like “10% chance to provide 33% protection on critical hit” ( which you have a chance of getting) . Sometimes I feel like I’m in a glorified gambling game.

All those limitations are clearly there to prevent organized teams from sequentially spamming the skills and becoming unbeatable in competitive modes .

Elite skills are jut not strong or long enough to make much of a difference with big bosses, etc etc.

Pretty much evry skill and weapon upgrade that sounds awesome on paper just fails to deliver the awesomeness in practice.

The PvE feels too handcuffed, similar to “free-to-play” games.

There is a thinking behind all this that since this is an MMO , there will be large groups of people in PvE rampaging all over the map. Well, this just isn’t the case as far as I’ve seen.

“This game, needs to be more like TESO than TESO can be, by being an open world sandbox mmo that actually promotes exploration, adventure and most of all, rewarding the player for actually taking the time to go around and appriciate the long worked architecture the devs put into it.”

YES!

Exactly Elx, the fundamental problem is that leveling was intended long ago as an experience built for cooperative gameplay and the game, that encourages soloing and non cooperation because you dont even have to join a party to help others, prooves that it does not “need” a long, boring, predictably cliche system to make itself the same as every other uniform robot out there.

The sandbox method is needed here, something that takes us a whole new direction, I dont actually see an issue with the soloing system infact what I think needs to be done is to enhance the open world for the solo gamer. That is the part of the world the soloist, the individual is going to want the most of to themselves. Some might argue that an MMO’s fundamental is about having more than one person but you know what? Thats what Dungeons, WvW and PvP are for.

Leave my open world exploration to me, and my friends that I so willingly choose to work with “if” I want to, otherwise, leave it to me and to me alone.

The point is, this game needs to be friendly to that dogma, the idea that, I dont honestly have to care about going through EVERY zone from 1-80 over and over, but rather, maybe one day I feel like doing Frostsound while the next I can simply make a long treck over to the Shatterer.

It should be free for me to decide where I go, with a scaling system in the open world segment of the game that indulges the random explorer rather than puts him off by throwing unstoppable mobs his way.

Sometimes, killing said mobs is actually inavoidable, ive noticed times when ive literally done ‘every’ vista, heartquest, skillpoint challange, point of interest, completed a zone and still not capped it.

Then I find myself realising that fact I didnt want to.

Im going to have to go to a completley diffrent area to finish my leveling and that immediatley bores me, I shouldnt “have” to do that.

The game should never once feel like you are forced to go through every single area, thats the joy of having more than ONE character you can go BACK and explore that area you DIDNT explore with a DIFFERENT character.

That, A-net is honestly the best way to approach the game as a fundament, the idea that as a concept, we, the player, have the right to indulge in the world you, the developer so eagerly want us to explore.

The reason so many games last so long is because they give the player more control to enjoy it. Take that away and the player is quickly reminded why they skipped the previous boat to this one.

It becomes a vicious cycle.

Let me recount to you my memories of TOR:

Beta, Starting:
- Wonderful start, full of story quests and cinematics!
- OMG THE RACE CHOICES ARE AWESOME!
- This is so the game of the year.
Beta, 2 weeks in:
- Okay, im getting bored now.
- WHY IS EVERY MOB AND ITS BROTHER ABLE TO ONE SHOT MY IMPERIAL AGENT kittenIT!
- Seriously, you mean to tell me that if I want to do certain missions I am FORCED to join a group?

Vanillia:
- Okay I hope to god they learned from the Beta…
Vanillia: First Week:
- Urgh, no they didnt, its the same kitten mistakes made before and why is my class so god kitten fleshy.
- Why is it that no matter how much dps I do this guy can out heal everything!
- ARGH.
Week Two:
- Okay so ive made my guild, were cool.
- Hey this game is actually kinda fun, the flashpoints were interesting at least, right, right?
- Who am I kidding.
Week Three:
- Oh hay they announced patch content, that sounds promising, the devs sound like they actually care!
Week Four:
- The content is for level 50’s only? Great, well im level 50, and im bored, ive just finished my PvP grind and my end game gear is a laughable joke because its getting replaced in the next patch anyway.

Now, allow me to repeat this:
For the past… oh…
Eight? Nine? MMO’s I have played, this process seemed to be literally reoccuring.
Lineage 2, Everquest 2, WoW, WAR (oh god why), RIFT, LOTRO and even to some degree GW1 was guilty of this stagnacious clicheness that makes so many mmo’s appealing to one audience, and offputting to the latter (me and my bros).

GW2, is the first game ive felt I actually “want” to stay on this game and keep going, I actually “want” to enjoy the content. But there are times I feel the game literally goes down nostalgia lane and from there its only a matter of time before the same old same old strikes and then…

Well, I quit.

This time, I havent quit, but I feel… dissapointed, that this game is definatley the best of its genre, but not quite all it could be.

So please, please, do not fall into that pithole of doing what every other mmo has done, failed to surpass and ultimatley devoured itself on.

Please, look at what the game is, and make it the best it can be with what it is, rather than doing the steriotypical thing of making the game the exact same game it was and will be like every neat, robotic uniform mmo out there today.

Break, that, tradition.

I have to agree with TC. I don’t mind leveling systems in and of themselves, but I do mind the way GW2 implemented it. As TC mentioned, leveling is a tutorial and one important aspect of it is that it paces the player by gating content. For the system to be effective, the each segment of content needs to relevant by priming players for the next, and this happens in a plethora of ways outside of a simple stat increase; often times it becomes even more effective when the player is able to choose how they are to deal with the next bit of content. In this way statistics act as a microcosm that defines the player experience.

GW2 uses it very haphazardly as a simple content gate that gives players a superficial sense of progression through numbers. Rather than having the more intricate mechanics of the game introduced to the player piecemeal in a meaningful digestible manner through content gating by the leveling system, everything is thrown at the player with the expectation that they’d automatically understand it. This is further exacerbated by the fact that they challenges posed in different maps are relatively the thing but with different number scaling. To go to Gendarran Fields, your number needs to be greater than or equal to the number listed on the map. It makes combat shallow and those enjoying the game only for the combat will find the game rather repetitive as a result.

What if they just made lvl’s account wide? You level up to 80 and then if u create a new chat it will be lvl 80 and u get the skill points and traits for him. Since leveling is like a tutorial i don’t think u should need to do it more than once since at lvl 80 u already know what to do. And i know that would mean less players in the low lvl zones but that’s something that should been improved with making it worth going there for lvl 80’s.

The problem with that Kormona would be that new players would find it very hard to catch up to the old, which would force the content to be more casual friendly. The real issue is making the content “worth” replaying more than once which seems to be the angle a-net is going, and its not working save the introduction of living story, living story is a start, but its not the answer.

I vote for a legacy system on the leveling note, where players can effectivly enhance their leveling experience per every 80 character they aquire, so that when you do role an alt you get an immediate boost over a new player, but you still have to play content again, however.

I also believe that every zone should be free-form from level 1, I pretty much see the ideal way of this games direction becomming more akin to WvW levels where the level is irelevent, the challange becomes more interesting.

So if your going to continue having a system “Where” leveling matters, make the adventure worthy of that system, make people have the option to go straight into the hardest areas from day one at their own pleasure, because honestly, the adventure is far more exciting than the grind.

You want an effective, definate way to remove grinding? That is it, you need to make this game utterly sandbox so that levels are either part of the progression for later content, or, you reach them much faster, much earlier, and give people the ability to experience the main story in their own free time.

The moment you put a barrier on levels is the moment you slow it down to a halt, your forcing people to go from X-to-Y-to-Z which isnt fun for anyone after you get used to it. Maybe I want to make a charr whos entire life is all about flame legion slaying, or a human who spends his entire carrear killing bandits all day.

Maybe I want to go straight into Orr and fight and harden myself from dark gritty experiences of war.

Things, need, to be, shifted so that the experience is more open.

THere were many posts in this forum about “getting rid of the leveling” but they were all ignored or mocked out because “the leveling is very easy”
I am gald to see a new thread on this and finally people agree thet the leveling system is an old MMO relic that needs to be changed into something more appealing.

In the list below, the skills will upgrade through usage after being unlocked.

my 2c since i have an opinion on the matter.
when i discovered gw2 had 80 level i was utterly disappointed.
i wondered what do you have to do to in this game that there is a need of 80 level?
when they first started to talk about creating gw2 they talked about 30 levels, and that design is still noticeable throughout the game. the real sense of achievement for leveling is capped at 30, when you have all the skill bar unlocked and the weapon swap.

the rest of the level are pretty useless,, you need them all for the sake of acquiring all the skill a profession have and all the traits.
but the part from level 30 to 80 is pretty boring. you can feel some emotion when you unlock the next trait tier (feeling that fade very fast when you look at the cost of manual).

so i agree that level progression is the most old and boring way to give players a sense of achievement. i like to progress, in story, in number of skills, in quality of life, in skins etc etc. but i don’t like the fact that some content is gated based on levels or even worst on equipment.
i never in gw1 felt like i had nothing to do after level cap was reached and i never managed to collect al the skills and skins.

every other mmo i played, since my first ragnarock online, always had this level system and i never managed to get level cap. never once before i quit bored to death by killing mobs to get levels and do nothing.

there was a game that i loved besides gw1 it was mabinogi, it had a very cheap graphic and had a very static combat system, but it was level free and class free, you could go wherever in the world to face monsters way beyond your ability and you also had way to avoid battle. you could improve your skill by using them, you could unlock skills through chain quests, you could wear what ever you liked because any armor or clothe in the game was merely skin with no stats and you have stat increase according to the skill you managed to improve. and even if this could lead the way to mindlessly using skills over and over to improve them, there was litterally no time to do it since there was a very deep and interesting storyline.
i loved mabinogi even if it was so strange to look at its mechanic after playing more smooth and appealing game graphicwise.
it had wonderful other feature like you could create if you were able to use the tool provided your very own armor style, make it to the fashon show and if winning have it implemented permanently to the game with your name attached to it.
and was free to play.
after years it was closed unfortunately.

now gw2, i still love it and levelling is not a big issue since i have 2 toons to max level and even both of them have 100% map completion.
and for me it is new since as i said i never managed to max level in any game.
so i wouldn’t really mind a level cap increase since it is pretty fast (i like it to be fast).

what i do mind is or it is useless due to downscaling system (so there is no real point in being at high level in low level maps) or there will be more gated content and gated gear that will outdate old content and old gear.
do we really need it? do we really need to see health raise to 6 digits and stat to 5? what is the problem in keeping the math simple?

To spread gameplay more throughout the gw2 world and to put less emphasis on levels (or disregard it completely), map layout could be done where easy difficulty (low level) content is locate in every geographical area on the gw2 map. Varying levels of difficult content would be placed in pockets or pools areas in selected areas throughout the world. These areas of various levels of difficulty areas could also be contained in land/sea shaped areas of varying shapes and sizes (ex. bar shaped area, oval shaped area, object shaped area etc.). Higher difficulty areas could be located in the center or side of a lesser difficult area (think of a bulls-eye type of difficulty mapping). Difficulty could also be done with a more 3-dimensional depth, where difficult levels are placed in relation to different elevations of the world. This would make more use of the map layers. In this layout, players would go deeper or higher into an area to access areas of different difficulty. If levels were not given in the game and players were measured of their advancement by other means, then each area of the map with its different levels of difficulty could be locked somehow (wall, gate, physical barrier etc) and unlocked by means of some challenge (easy or difficult, whatever) to provide more gameplay value when accessing different areas. Locked areas could be optional since it could keep populations of players away from those areas. Well that’s just a possible way of laying out game content.

The above mentioned layout could be used for elevated and levitated land masses and subterranean zones as an addition to current layouts.

They should make the max level 30 as Amadan.9451 said. All the other zones will be redone to the same difficulty level and every time you complete a level you gain skill points so you can unlock more skills but this would be optional.
It will be easier to spread out the dailies through the whole zones after that because there wont be any level restriction for armors or weapons
World explorations should be an optional thing like in GW1 not a required method for faster leveling (aka Heart quests, vistas, PoIs). Daily and monthly achievements should be enough motivation for all players to explore more zones.
Getting to lvl 30 will be a matter of ~20 – 30h which can be achieved in a weekend for most of the players.
After getting to lvl 30 it will be a matter of choice where to go and explore because the skill points needed will be earned by leveling so for faster earning skill points, the players will have the option to do heart quests, PoI Vistas, etc in any other zone in completly random order.
The dailies can send players to specific zones so they will not restrict the players for not going. there. If you are a total new player, it is understandable that you will not be able to complete the dailies from the first day. I don’t think there will be to many complaining they cant do the dailies from the first hour they entered the game.

This freedom of exploration will give the achieved titles more importance.

Let players be “good” because they WANT to not because they need to

I agree. Leveling is an extremely outdated gaming mechanic and its one of the reasons I loved the original Guild Wars.

Leveling breaks immersion. Imagine a game after 10 expansions, There is nothing more stupid then a level 200 rat being more powerful then the level 50 dragon from the original game.

Compleatley agreed guys, this topic needs to get notice because the more people that speak out about the old system the more likey and hopefully A-net will consider future designs around improoving it for us folks who are fed up of constantly grinding to that 80 level cap!

Thank you so far for all the possitive feed back on the topic and I believe some good suggestions are being made here, alot of them infact.

Leveling could be kept, but might be better off not so level dependent, like any of the level-dependent unlocks in the game…

Not to be -that- guy or anything but this topic is over a month old. Why necro-bump when you could have easily created your own topic?

Leveling in this game is also very -easy- and far less grindy than any other game that I’ve played. Take my advice (or not, entirely up to you) and just ignore the experience bar. If they ever make the GW2 UI modular go as far as disabling it entirely so you can’t see it, then just explore the world going from heart to heart, clearing entire zones and you’ll level -very- quickly.

No pain no gain, stop asking for shortcuts >.<

Sorry Kyn but you are “that guy” and the very reason the problem exists, shortcuts are there to stop you having to do the same thing twice which is, by definition, insanity! (or sparta depending which logic you go by).

Leveling in this game isnt necessarily hard, but grindy? I dont agree, especially the end stretch considering you will literally run out of quests to do if you dont spend the entirety of your time farming every single zones heart quests just to get to the end game.

And the entire point of this topic “is” that going from zone to zone farming every single heart is arduous and ruins immersion. Whats the point of alting if you’ve done it once already? Its fun to have a bit of new each time you try something old.

I dont think your point is a bad one but I dont agree with it at all, honestly, its that thinking that prooves that if we allow that kind of method to remain then nothing will change and mmo’s in general will stagnate.

Its an old, outdated method of going about questing each area at a time and unless you enjoy uniform leveling (which im sure by the posts here, alot of us dont) then you’ll likley want something fresh each time.

AS mentioned however:

- Living Story is a possitive start, but not enough to bring the feeling of immersion back.
- Events such as Wintersday and Halloween definatley did something right.
- Boosters are okay, but the fact they only work by forcing you to kill even more mobs defeats the point of xp boosters in the first place (especially since they dont even stack).
- Leveling, isnt the problem, the experience of the leveling “is” the problem.

Its not about how fast you do it, its about how you do it at all that matters. The issue here is that with a lack of end game and a heavy enphasis on world exploration, you kind of feel railroaded into having to do world compleation to consider yourself “end game” material.

Thats not what I define as end game, I define that as what happens after I hit the level cap? The Level Cap in GW2 is 80 and once you hit it, you’ve pretty much done everything, you can reach everything now, congradulations, but… that defeats the point again:

Because now you have the issue that you pretty much did everything already in the first place to reach it, so now theres no real reason to go back because you’ve already hit cap, so unless your indulged enough to farm for a legendary (which not all of us have the time to do) then you really wont care much for that focus.

Heres what really needs to become a bigger focus in bullet points:

- Skill point challanges that unlock new abilities aswell as skills:

This idea is basic but simple, you have what is already in game and expand on it. Making skill point challanges more interesting by making them almost akin to an oldschool quest, but with a significantly more impactful reward at the end. For example, maybe you want a new set of abilities but in order to aquire them you have to, proove yourself to some expert trainer who demands you kill something “impressive”.
You go on a quest to find said impressive thing (a champion mob) and hunt it down with friends, at the end, your rewarded with new skills to add to your current ones, and the capacity to unlock one of them immediatley, while having to continue gaining skill points to unlock the others.

- End Game World Bosses:

There is truley not enough of these, epic fights like the shatterer (which are epic in theory but admittingly a bit too lackluster in reality) arent focused on enough. The world is really alot more interesting than Anet gives it credit and instead of instancing everything we should have the right to be exposed to it more.
So in those end game areas, we should have more, epic, titanicly grandeur bosses, that require multiple groups of people to take down, hard, bosses, that cant simply be facerolled and make the sense of taking on a great evil feel more rewarding.
On that note, these bosses should be tied to the story of a zone or event, such as a great giant drake trying to destroy one of the pact forts in Orr or a monsterous primal karka trying to destroy the (hinted to be upcomming) villages in lost shores. Something that gives you a feeling your saving the world with your epic army of friends and companions.

This, needs to be the direction that GW2’s “end game” heads, but more importantly, the capacity to enjoy that end game should come sooner, and more immersivley. By reducing the level cap, or simply making the xp to get to end game faster, you get more to do in end game and feel like you have more to accomplish on a char. That way, even when you do it more than once, you still feel a sense of progression because its up to you where your char goes from there.

The End game, should be the beginning, not the end, the beginning “of” the end.

@CaptainVanguard

I completely agree. This game had incredible potential for exploration and “End Game” as the beginning- a more sandbox approach.

Because ANet regimented the player experience through levels, there’s now a clear separation between beginner, mid, and high level and this conflicts directly with the game’s touted philosophy of the “end game”. Some of the most negative of effects this has had is visible in the gear system. Getting a piece of equipment is a mundane experience rather than an exciting one because players are probably just going to vendor it to save up for “end game” stuff. They may as well just give players gold and save them a step.

So we kill any sense of progression in PVE? If you get stronger through some mechanic (gear, skills etc.) which is a core part of an MMORPG, the content becomes laughable easy because it’s designed for fresh characters all the way through. You could gimp the Player character so he always feels like a start character, which would kill the game.

To compare it to Single player RPG’s that can scale the enemies with the Player is just stupid, that is not a possibility a MMO has, unless you instance everything for one players and then it stops to be an MMO.

I have no problem with leveling the first char to max, if level progression is decent, but they need to make it quicker for alts, because running through the same content just to get to the end game is not fun.

as we all said, leveling is already useless in this game since there is downscaling, which is a great feature imo. the real difference you have between a lv 1 and a lv 80 is traits and stat armor…
i think people is suggesting to look at that kind of progression and tie it to a different thing than simply do x level harvesting heart.

it’s the point of wvwvw for example, if you go there the only difference is traits and gear between player, you can still go there at level 2 having hard time on your own but you can, that is what we are asking for if i didn’t misunderstand completely the point.