It’s pretty much a simple question, on this game leveling seems one small thing, but “annoying” specially at endgame, that they decided to follow with scaling, what tries to make one approach to spread people around the game but yet far from the rewards of the lvl 80 areas.
So i wonder, would not be better if there wasn’t leveling at all one GW2? That the progression would be based on other things, so all maps of the game could be fairly difficult, fairly rewarding, and not causing to most players be at the X areas of the world map where they can make their gameplay time worth more?
The game at this moment start at 80, all the events, the living story, even dungeons, etc…
What would be GW2 without leveling? Better? Worse?
You mean like ever zone would be an endgame zone? And no zones would have been wasted as progression areas (even though ANet thought people would come back on their own, but they just didn’t so they put the LS in the game)?
GW2 would probably have been a better game and closer to GW1, so it was something many people were hoping for before release anyway.
This is no new topic though, it pops up every now and then.
I don’t see how this isn’t the case already. The fact that level scaling exists means you can go to any map and have it be fairly challenging, and rewards generally scale to your level rather than the zone’s level, so you’re getting the same stuff everywhere. The lack of loot tables is, in my opinion, more in line with why people don’t feel compelled to break out of the same few areas. I can get (essentially) the same champ boxes from the trains in Frostgorge/Queensdale as I can in more spread out maps. The idea of making the world even more homogeneous (or, since I suspect this will be kittened out as potential hate speech- “same-y”) is not even a little bit appealing to me, personally.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Simple human psychology. People feel that zones in which they are level 80 are endgame zones.
If you are downscaled you feel weaker. It might not be true or even the opposite, but that’s just how the brain works.
Simple human psychology. People feel that zones in which they are level 80 are endgame zones.
If you are downscaled you feel weaker. It might not be true or even the opposite, but that’s just how the brain works.
I might agree if the endgame zones were where people tend to congregate, but they’re not. Orr is a ghost town (appropriately enough), for example.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
Simple human psychology. People feel that zones in which they are level 80 are endgame zones.
If you are downscaled you feel weaker. It might not be true or even the opposite, but that’s just how the brain works.
Yet Teq and Worm are in lower level zones.
Personally levels or no levels, its all the same to me. The only limiting factor to do “end game” content is agony resistance and gear stats (somewhat) with both being fairly easy to acquire now.
Simple human psychology. People feel that zones in which they are level 80 are endgame zones.
If you are downscaled you feel weaker. It might not be true or even the opposite, but that’s just how the brain works.
I might agree if the endgame zones were where people tend to congregate, but they’re not. Orr is a ghost town (appropriately enough), for example.
GW2 has been released what, 18 monthes ago. And one part of Orr + Southsun Cove have been the only level 80 combat zones and Southsun Cove does not even have very much there.
Two zones for 18 monthes, who would think that people would get tired of them. There have probably more players left the game because of the lack of new level 80 zones than people going back to the lower level areas to do stuff.
You want everyone to have equal levels for each zone – is that not exactly what level scaling achieves? You say living story and events start at level 80 – umm no they start at level 1. And the first dungeon is available from 30. I disagree that this game starts at 80. That being said, leveling is not scaling so its easy to hit 80 within a reasonable amount of time
You want everyone to have equal levels for each zone – is that not exactly what level scaling achieves? You say living story and events start at level 80 – umm no they start at level 1. And the first dungeon is available from 30. I disagree that this game starts at 80. That being said, leveling is not scaling so its easy to hit 80 within a reasonable amount of time
The leveling is fake as levels do not mean a thing because of downscaling or upscaling, you got that right.
It only excludes you from later zones. So the point is, why having levels at all. That is what this thread is about.
I suspect the only way to address this issue which seems to creep up in all MMOs is to reverse the way things currently work and and have the game constantly adjust to balance rewards based on what the players are doing instead of setting the rewards static and the players adjusting to maximize returns.
Simply put, things players do more of are things they find more rewarding than things they do less of. If the pattern holds for hundreds of thousands of players, clearly an imbalance exists in perceived effort/risk/reward. Perhaps MMOs could be programmed to analyze those trends and adjust rewards up on content that is under utilized and adjust rewards down on content that is over utilized (while accounting for external factors like special events). That kind of system might roughly track a balance point where the majority of players find most alternatives equally viable or it might possibly lag behind player trends resulting in the currently popular activity constantly changing as the last popular activity becomes progressively less rewarding.
People want a carrot. Simple as that. Take away the carrot in GW2, and they move on to a game that provides a carrot.
Pretty much this.
MMO players WANT vertical progression. They WANT to feel like they are steadily getting stronger. An MMO without “levels” would be largely rejected by the MMO market. GW2 would be scoffed at outside of the GW1 veterans who would not be enough to carry the game on their own.
How would i have some kind of indication of my experience progression of each of my characters? But does this level- gate or weaken too much of my game playing experience?
Sometimes I make an alt, start to play it for a bit, then realise doing world events and such on it is a waste of time because my level 80 will get better rewards for it. So I get bored of the alt and go back to the 80.
I know, “it only takes 8 minutes to level from 0-80, noob!” whatever. It takes me weeks :p and the professions just aren’t fun enough to get to 80, after maining as an Ele.
Without levels, I’d perhaps get to know the other classes more. With them, I can’t be bothered.
“meta” this, “meta” that. Please stop saying the word “meta”.
I’m going to be declared a heretic for this… but I do remember quite vividly more than a handful of people wondering if [x] update for GW1 would allow characters to level past 20, and a bevy of fake pings and images of characters like, “I am Level 21 and 32,001 EXP away from next level!”
Even in the “anti-grind utopia”, there was a pretty strong desire for that sort of vertical progression.
This topic comes up a lot. OP you should have looked at the forums search and found 1 of the 1000 topics. Done this part of the rant.
Ok now on to the most common reason why there are levels. GW2 during Alpha did not have any levels. Nor did it have hearts. Both were added after alpha testers disliked the idea of not having the sense of accomplishment. They wanted to feel like they were getting stronger (which is what levels do). So without levels people think they are not getting any where. As well without hearts people did not understand what to do or what goals they should have.
Anet tried to design GW2 in the aspect that there were no concrete goals, and you could do what you wanted to do. Turns out humans are too dumb for that concept as seen by the million threads saying there is no end game. SO over the years Anet has been trying to fix that design philosophy and put concrete goals in.
GW1 did not have concrete goals and players could do what they wanted (mostly there were still quests). GW2 shared that same philosophy forward but was not successful since a majority of the player base was not from GW1.
Ranger; Warrior; Mesmer; Elementalist; Guardian; Engineer
[GWAM] and [LUST]
Mess with the best, die like the rest.
I’ve never understood the need or desire to have levels, but apparently I’m one of the few that doesn’t get a chubby seeing the number next to my character’s name go up by one.
Levels are great for restricting players and make having alts a chore.
Shouldn’t player progression (experience gained from playing) be more important?
I’ve never understood the need or desire to have levels, but apparently I’m one of the few that doesn’t get a chubby seeing the number next to my character’s name go up by one.
Levels are great for restricting players and make having alts a chore.
Shouldn’t player progression (experience gained from playing) be more important?
It’s just kitten near two decades of conditioning. It’s how MMOs have done it for so kitten long that anything that DOESN’T do it isn’t REALLY an MMO. It’s the same reason why to this day we have random chests strewn about in most RPGs (even when it would make absolutely no earthly sense).
It’s become what the market is familiar and comfortable with… and any attempt to break that conditioning is hit with the dreaded “not fun” label, and is rejected by the market.
Simple human psychology. People feel that zones in which they are level 80 are endgame zones.
If you are downscaled you feel weaker. It might not be true or even the opposite, but that’s just how the brain works.
I might agree if the endgame zones were where people tend to congregate, but they’re not. Orr is a ghost town (appropriately enough), for example.
And southsun never has more than 2-3 people in the entire zone (anecdotal evidence, granted).
Simple human psychology. People feel that zones in which they are level 80 are endgame zones.
If you are downscaled you feel weaker. It might not be true or even the opposite, but that’s just how the brain works.
They’re endgame zones because that was where the endgame loot was. You couldn’t make Exo gear with lvl30 zone mats and until Ascended came out we had little use for low level mats besides craft leveling. Why farm a place that gives t1 dust and fragments when it’s T6 dust and lodestones you need?
I’m also pretty sure no one ever feels weaker in a downscaled zone regardless of what the number in the lower left hand corner reads. Just like most of us wouldn’t feel any stronger even if the lvl counter just kept increasing every time we “lvl’d up” if we never got statistically stronger. It’d be as meaningless as a “kill counter” or the /age command.
I’ve never understood the need or desire to have levels, but apparently I’m one of the few that doesn’t get a chubby seeing the number next to my character’s name go up by one.
Levels are great for restricting players and make having alts a chore.
Shouldn’t player progression (experience gained from playing) be more important?
I’ve never understood the need or desire to have levels, but apparently I’m one of the few that doesn’t get a chubby seeing the number next to my character’s name go up by one.
Levels are great for restricting players and make having alts a chore.
Shouldn’t player progression (experience gained from playing) be more important?
True, but if the game has a story, there has to be a way of restricting where you can go and when. It makes no sense to encounter Pact forces before you help forge the pact.
The other big problem is a greenhorn fresh out of boot camp wouldn’t logically be able to go toe to toe with Zaihtan’s elite troops. That can be emulated by making later foes stronger or smarter so you have to play more tactically with skills you acquire naturally through gameplay but most companies just go the “just put in arbitrary level restrictions” route and have areas with deer that are stronger than hardened bandits.
It doubly sad to see Anet not only do this after they worked around it in Factions and Nightfall, but to then say ta’ Hell with levels meaning anything and just up leveling everyone for these LS chapters.
Do they want character level to mean something or not? I can’t even tell anymore…
Well I think any MMO that didn’t have levels and all kinds of gear tiers would be infinitely better than the everquest/wow clones.
But that’s coming from someone that has played ultima online and EVE online for many years and knows that it’s possible to have a succesful MMO that works differently.
I think we just have to wait for Everquest Next or similar games that offer a next-generation MMO that has sandbox features and removes/changes the progression grind. Then all the other MMO designers suddenly go “oooooh, see how succesful that is, we want it toooooo” and start copying that design instead of copying the previous most succesful MMO, WoW.
Well I think any MMO that didn’t have levels and all kinds of gear tiers would be infinitely better than the everquest/wow clones.
But that’s coming from someone that has played ultima online and EVE online for many years and knows that it’s possible to have a succesful MMO that works differently.
I think we just have to wait for Everquest Next or similar games that offer a next-generation MMO that has sandbox features and removes/changes the progression grind. Then all the other MMO designers suddenly go “oooooh, see how succesful that is, we want it toooooo” and start copying that design instead of copying the previous most succesful MMO, WoW.
I believe i agree with this, on the case of EverQuest Next is the first MMO i see taking a whole new aproach to the MMO genre, to avoid this same thing.
The thing about leveling on GW2 is that is such a small part of the game, ASAP you are 80 and after a while you wonder why with all this scaled already, why didn’t they simply add the progression and difficulty based on something else rather than character levels?
Not sure how EQN will be related to that, but certainly tries to approach this things differently, not doing “that” like “that” because all other MMOs do it like that.
