Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

chemiclord.3978:

31-40

Ya know, I kinda like how the Personal Story is clumped together. I find I don’t have to think, “Who is [x] character again?” because it was several levels between visits.

I do like how the rewards have improved as well (many of the items allow you to choose what stats you want rather than pre-determined (and usually pretty poor). And of top of that, finishing this PS segment earned me an Order related weapon skin. Not too shabby.

I also conveniently earned another clump of skill points just in time to grab my elite skill just as they unlocked (Rampage as One, obviously). I guess it kinda worked out… but I’m skill not completely sold on this entire “get everything in clumps” strategy. I mean, I kinda get the logic behind it (I can see how players could kinda “forget” getting 1 trait point and 1 skill point when each step requires multiple points), but it’s still kinda meh.

Meanwhile, as far as trait hunting goes, I immediately found one absurd one that was fairly fundamental for the Ranger build (Vigorous Spirits), which required exploring all of Harathi Hinterlands to unlock.

Eff.

That.

I mean, I kinda get how it could work, as additional incentive for new players to do things they wouldn’t normally think of doing. But for someone who has already explored Harathi three times?

Eff.

That.

So I cheated, and had my other ranger (the level 80 with a bajillion skill points) buy the guides and drop them in my bank. Sorry. I guess it’s nice that you can do it that way… but it’s still pretty stupid that something that was perfectly fine to begin with is now something so poorly implemented.

Other traits weren’t particularly time consuming, and often were a surprise to stumble on, like earning one through kill Kol in Harathi. If more were like that (having to go off the more beaten path) rather than something merely time consuming (like zone exploration), it’d be more bearable.

I’ll admit to bias, I’m not a fan of “hunting” things for trivial reasons. I despised the elite skill capping of GW1. I came into this having already decided I was going to hate the trait capping of GW2. So take that in mind when I say I pretty much entirely loathe what Arena.net did to the trait system.

Revert it back to the way it was, please. I want all my traits without having to do stupid stuff to get them. Thank you.

So, I’m now at level 40, where the NPE was supposed to really come to an “end” initially, and my personal judgment of the matter is “eh.” It’s not nearly as terrible as the vocal forum presence wants to claim… but it’s not a particularly impressive improvement on what existed before.

Some things are better. Some things are more annoying. I guess if you had never played the game before, you wouldn’t be bothered, and would probably like it. For a veteran, I really think the best Arena.net can hope for is that you find it more different than worse.

For me, that’s how I’ve decided to view it.

Except for trait capping.

That can die in a fire.

the npe, is the entire package, they broke it up here, but in china it was released together.
New player is going from 1-80 the first time.
the trait system totally changes the balance of skillpoint, aka traits versus utilities. It dramatically increases the time to getting a max skill/trait/level charachter. Now, you use the same resource to obtain your traits, and your utilities, or you do tasks that most people take quite some time doing.

I disagree that the trait change is part of the NPE. There were many changes to the China game. But the NPE is the new player experience, about leveling and leveling rewards. You can say the trait change is part of it, but it has to be discussed separately anyway.

Because I don’t like the trait system but I like everything else.

For all intents and purposes it’s a different system.

I also don’t think that the experience from this point on (outside of the clumping of skill points and stats) is going to be all that terribly different. At level 40, outside of the kittened up trait system, the game really wasn’t playing all that differently for me. By this point, it doesn’t feel particularly new. It’s, outside of those details, pretty much the leveling experience I know and remember. I really don’t think I’ll find anything unique to comment on going from level 40 on… it’ll just be pretty much the same review as 31-40.

So, I’m confident enough to call it here, honestly. I find leveling to be fairly tedious as a general rule regardless of system used, and I’m not particularly keen to go through 40 more levels of stuff I already know.

chemiclord.3978:

I also don’t think that the experience from this point on (outside of the clumping of skill points and stats) is going to be all that terribly different. At level 40, outside of the kittened up trait system, the game really wasn’t playing all that differently for me. By this point, it doesn’t feel particularly new. It’s, outside of those details, pretty much the leveling experience I know and remember. I really don’t think I’ll find anything unique to comment on going from level 40 on… it’ll just be pretty much the same review as 31-40.

So, I’m confident enough to call it here, honestly. I find leveling to be fairly tedious as a general rule regardless of system used, and I’m not particularly keen to go through 40 more levels of stuff I already know.

Except that the rewards for leveling are much much better. The yellow and later on even exotic items you get are pretty cool as you level.

However, if you liked leveling before (and many do) it’s fine. If you didn’t like it before, it’s not going to make it amazingly better. Nor does it make it amazingly worse.

phys.7689:

chemiclord.3978:

31-40

Ya know, I kinda like how the Personal Story is clumped together. I find I don’t have to think, “Who is [x] character again?” because it was several levels between visits.

I do like how the rewards have improved as well (many of the items allow you to choose what stats you want rather than pre-determined (and usually pretty poor). And of top of that, finishing this PS segment earned me an Order related weapon skin. Not too shabby.

I also conveniently earned another clump of skill points just in time to grab my elite skill just as they unlocked (Rampage as One, obviously). I guess it kinda worked out… but I’m skill not completely sold on this entire “get everything in clumps” strategy. I mean, I kinda get the logic behind it (I can see how players could kinda “forget” getting 1 trait point and 1 skill point when each step requires multiple points), but it’s still kinda meh.

Meanwhile, as far as trait hunting goes, I immediately found one absurd one that was fairly fundamental for the Ranger build (Vigorous Spirits), which required exploring all of Harathi Hinterlands to unlock.

Eff.

That.

I mean, I kinda get how it could work, as additional incentive for new players to do things they wouldn’t normally think of doing. But for someone who has already explored Harathi three times?

Eff.

That.

So I cheated, and had my other ranger (the level 80 with a bajillion skill points) buy the guides and drop them in my bank. Sorry. I guess it’s nice that you can do it that way… but it’s still pretty stupid that something that was perfectly fine to begin with is now something so poorly implemented.

Other traits weren’t particularly time consuming, and often were a surprise to stumble on, like earning one through kill Kol in Harathi. If more were like that (having to go off the more beaten path) rather than something merely time consuming (like zone exploration), it’d be more bearable.

I’ll admit to bias, I’m not a fan of “hunting” things for trivial reasons. I despised the elite skill capping of GW1. I came into this having already decided I was going to hate the trait capping of GW2. So take that in mind when I say I pretty much entirely loathe what Arena.net did to the trait system.

Revert it back to the way it was, please. I want all my traits without having to do stupid stuff to get them. Thank you.

So, I’m now at level 40, where the NPE was supposed to really come to an “end” initially, and my personal judgment of the matter is “eh.” It’s not nearly as terrible as the vocal forum presence wants to claim… but it’s not a particularly impressive improvement on what existed before.

Some things are better. Some things are more annoying. I guess if you had never played the game before, you wouldn’t be bothered, and would probably like it. For a veteran, I really think the best Arena.net can hope for is that you find it more different than worse.

For me, that’s how I’ve decided to view it.

Except for trait capping.

That can die in a fire.

the npe, is the entire package, they broke it up here, but in china it was released together.
New player is going from 1-80 the first time.
the trait system totally changes the balance of skillpoint, aka traits versus utilities. It dramatically increases the time to getting a max skill/trait/level charachter. Now, you use the same resource to obtain your traits, and your utilities, or you do tasks that most people take quite some time doing.

Actually, no, trait changes were introduced because certain small vocal minority was whining on the forums.

chemiclord.3978:

I also don’t think that the experience from this point on (outside of the clumping of skill points and stats) is going to be all that terribly different. At level 40, outside of the kittened up trait system, the game really wasn’t playing all that differently for me. By this point, it doesn’t feel particularly new. It’s, outside of those details, pretty much the leveling experience I know and remember. I really don’t think I’ll find anything unique to comment on going from level 40 on… it’ll just be pretty much the same review as 31-40.

So, I’m confident enough to call it here, honestly. I find leveling to be fairly tedious as a general rule regardless of system used, and I’m not particularly keen to go through 40 more levels of stuff I already know.

Thats it, for true vets NPE is insignificant, and they also should have a means of skipping it altogether if they choose so ( that they also had before)