Guild Wars 2

I really enjoyed playing GW1 and I now also enjoy GW2. In many ways GW2 is superior to GW1, however the character progression in this game seems less satisfying than my character progression in GW1. The leveling changes have made GW2 much more tedious for me than GW1 did. There are a couple key differences between the 2 games that I am talking about.

1. GW1 had a very short leveling process, I could do it in a day if I wanted to. GW2 takes weeks, sometimes months (for me anyways). Yes I’m not the fastest, but, I find grinding to cap level to be a very painstaking process. It simultaneously limits my ability to make a whole bunch of alts (I love making alts, but I don’t want to repeat the same tedious leveling process every time). This is one of my least favorite aspects of WoW and I was not happy it made it into the game. In GW1, character level maxed out, I was as powerful as I was going to be (stat and SkillPoint wise). It was only a matter of customizing my play style, if I wanted more hammer skills or sword skills. It also made the game about collecting armor sets etc. to customize my appearance. Which I could do across all of my characters, sometimes I even made more than one character of a class just to get different looks.

Here’s what I think should be done. Cap the levels lower, say at level 20 (min) or 40 (max), and give us all our trait points. Keep the current skill unlock system with skill points etc. But make traits a treasure hunt like elite skills were in GW1. There are more than enough traits to make this a long process for completionists, and a short enough process for someone who just wants to setup one or two builds. This would also give people reasons to revisit old maps, and to expend skill points on yet something else. Furthermore, this could be used to channel people to content. For example, putting copies of a monster with the “trait” you want to capture at the end of a jumping puzzle or a mini-dungeon. Or an actual dungeon.

2. Solo vs Group story quests. The problem with story quests in GW1 was that they limited you from progressing to the rest of the map. This was not so bad in prophecies, but in factions, it was very frustrating. But GW2 changed that, your story quests now instance you in the world. This is great. However, I do miss having to party up with people in these quests, they were like the dungeons but more interesting because it was the main storyline in the game. In GW2 I would like to see this eventually. I think this could be easily facilitated by having the story quests “recommend” at least 2 or 3 players. Then the story quests could all start in towns or camps (near waypoints), so people on the same story step would be meeting up in a town or outpost to start their quests. I think this would naturally encourage people to group up because it is convenient.

So you want more of the personal story to require (err “recommend”) a group? It’s already bad enough that you need to get a group for arah when you want to finish the story.

I’d rather see some of the later storyline require a group also. It was one of the things in GW that made it great and a social game. Didn’t have people just soloing theendgame Missions untill Heroes were introduced.

i want every single mission to be co-op. as is, its unplayably boring to say the least. even though gw1 had a garbage story i enjoyed the hell out of its main story missions (especially Faction ones). In gw2 its like playing a very VERY low budged single player rpg. THE worst campaign of this year for me by far and i don’t remember playing anything worst in the past couple of years.

I don’t know, it’s called a personal story quest for a reason; I’d rather be able to complete the personal story without being forced into a group. If anything, I was rather annoyed that I had to be forced to make a group to finish my story quest; only to be disappointed at the end due to lack of difficulty.

I would rather see Anet change the leveling system all together; at the moment, it is way to easy level; leveling shouldn’t be as easy as it is in this game. It seems like everything gives experience: mining, gathering, chopping trees, crafting, discovering new areas, killing mobs, completing events, etc. You can go from 1 to 80 in less than a week; there is no reason why a player should be able to cap out their level in less than week from character creation…

The reason I think I would prefer to have a low level cap is because a high level cap limits me from rolling a whole bunch of avatars and customizing all of them. The changes I suggest could make the full progression of the character much longer and seem more fulfilling at the same time. Instead of just getting a trait point and a few stat bumps per level (which is essentially what the whole 1-80 leveling process is). I’d rather be as powerful as I’m going to get very early, and then spend a my time diversifying and customizing my builds and abilities as I see fit. If I wanted to sink a bunch of time into one particular character, in GW1 I could do so by hunting down skills (or traits I think would work well for this purpose in GW2). But the point was I was at my maximum power very quickly and this made the game more engaging, I could spend my time anywhere I wanted. Instead I feel more than a bit channeled in GW2, forced to spend a great deal of time on a weak character unable to get right into the events, dungeons, gear customizing that I want to. Once this is fine, but I don’t feel like repeating the leveling process twice let alone 8 times (for all the professions). For a game about collectables, having more characters to collect stuff on is better than having fewer.