Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

But I do believe there are alternate motivations however. Eliminating key farming by delaying the PS and altering their rewards.

ANet officially blessed that farm.

It is changes like this that shows they want us to buy from the gem store instead of earning things.

We can’t even coordinate the whole community to stop buying keys for one month in protest to the poor RNG of the BLC.

This update coming after the hash that was done with the previous feature patch with traits and the megaserver just shows how out of touch anet are and how poor they are at game design. The trait system was implemented so poorly and this will make it even worse. Whats worse is that they just do not listen or they do and take the wrong message from it.

I’ve always disliked the gaps in the Personal Story, and have poked fun at it here on the forums more than once, so naturally I think fixing those gaps is not a bad thing. The only problem I have with it is, that’s one less thing for me to poke fun at. I’ll get over it, though. Eventually.

These changes don’t fix what I view as the biggest problem with GW2 leveling: most of the time, it makes you feel weaker. Not stronger – weaker.

The scaling systems is great for pooling together players who normally wouldn’t be on the same map in other MMO’s, but there are serious flaws in the math. Most egregious is equipment. Unless you buy new gear every level, you rapidly feel weaker and weaker as you level, even if the level of the enemies you’re facing doesn’t change.

If you watch your attributes when you gain a level in many zones, you can actually see your stats go down – sometimes sharply. It’s depressing and contradictory to the purpose of leveling up in the first place.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

Behellagh.1468:

But I do believe there are alternate motivations however. Eliminating key farming by delaying the PS and altering their rewards.

ANet officially blessed that farm.

It is changes like this that shows they want us to buy from the gem store instead of earning things.

We can’t even coordinate the whole community to stop buying keys for one month in protest to the poor RNG of the BLC.

Doesn’t mean they haven’t changed their minds about it. And this gives them the perfect cover to do so.

Arena net Give us raids and end game not new lvling i got 7 x lvl 80 characters im not gonna do new one the end game is still kitten

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

I never had any problem understanding what to do when I started playing. Neither did anybody that I know.

coudn’t agree more w/ OP. The leveling system was never the problem, all my friends was happy w/ it till few months later they all quit. Because there is absolutely nothing to do after getting ur legendary!

Zanshin.5379:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

I never had any problem understanding what to do when I started playing. Neither did anybody that I know.

Agreed, I thought one of main selling points was that you could go do whatever you wanted, instead of being told where to go the whole time. But they’ve had a while to see how that works, and obviously they aren’t satisfied.

Faux.1937:

Malkavian.4516:

Looking at it, endgame content is what you make of it after you did the story missions. My endgame is making my legendary. I wouldn’t consider it my complaint per se (I can’t say the same for others) as it’s more of a minor gripe for me. As for no new areas, we at least got Dry Top, right?

Feature patches like this are basically a bundle of fixes to what is existing in this game. I don’t know if there was a Feature Patch that literally added anything new, but from what I will get, I’m not too worried. Besides, I got the season 2 story chapters to look forward to once this is cleared out.

Made 4 legendaries, got all cult gear, 1500+ skins, 17k AP, r68 pvp, r400+ WvW, complete everyday more than 100x (CM and CoF over 600x) have 4 character story/map completed, deleted over 10 level 80’s. Done 50 fotm at least 100×.

And I feel and always felt there was enough endgame.

About those feature patches, NO ONE WAS COMPLAINING ABOUT LEVELING, everyone want bug fixes and more content…. not pointless non-rewarded rewards.

I don’t think this is meant to address levelling complaints. But either way, if I read this correctly, I don’t see any harm in this update. As for bug fixes, yeah I definitely want some of em too as I encountered my share of problems.
If you want more content, never forget that Season 2 is still there. Once the Feature Patch is out, we can get back to slaying the Jungle Dragon himself.

I have a terrifying premonition that they’re going to make weapon skills unlock about.. well, let’s see. There’s four weapon skill to gain, so let’s stretch them out. I have a feeling you won’t have all of your weapon skills by level 10 – even by level 15.

Good god what pointless tedium. And no traits till thirty. What the hell is happening to this game? Why should I sit through this? Why are they trying to turn everything they gave us previously for free without hassle into the new mode of ‘progression’?

Lheimroo.2947:

Why are they trying to turn everything they gave us previously for free without hassle into the new mode of ‘progression’?

This “feature pack” is porting functionality from the China version which is Pay-to-Win.

Everyone just let that sink in and think about it.

So far I haven’t seen any pay to win features yet.

The changes are unneeded, unwanted, and as a someone who’s being playing since open beta (as well as having played GW1 since it launched) they’re beyond irritating. When Anet made the changes to the trait system (and I felt the the same way then as I do now about these changes) I was willing to give Anet the benefit of the doubt and give time to fix it but know after seeing these changes I’m about ready to give up.

Behellagh.1468:

So far I haven’t seen any pay to win features yet.

Yet.

I’ve always had an easy sense of direction in this game, and I raised myself through FlyFF, Global Agenda and Perfect world, all junk mmos.

I really can’t fathom anyone having as hard a time as this patch makes it sound for new players. This was the easiest grind to maxlevel I’ve ever experienced. Give us veterans something to do, I’ve made 30+ ascended weapons, several legendaries, I certainly got my money’s worth but I won’t and never pay any further in something as goofy as new skins for the same tired content.

It doesn’t matter how dope they look, I’m still standing in Hoelbrak. My guild hall is waiting on several other games but I’m stubborn and have high hopes for anet to get it together.

Coldtart.4785:

Behellagh.1468:

So far I haven’t seen any pay to win features yet.

Yet.

That the worst mind set any one could have soon every thing in this game and other games will be p2w to you if you hold that point of view.

Its not pointless revamps ppl like to level up and leveling up is a big part of the game. GW2 is made to be more then just about end game so if you see something added to level 80 content your going to see things added for level 1 to 79 content too.

Revamping something by making it worse is quite pointless, actually.

Edit: and the worst mindset anyone can ever have is that anything done by a company is ever in the interests of its customers. The shareholders are always right.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Malkavian.4516:

Looking at it, endgame content is what you make of it after you did the story missions. My endgame is making my legendary. I wouldn’t consider it my complaint per se (I can’t say the same for others) as it’s more of a minor gripe for me. As for no new areas, we at least got Dry Top, right?

Feature patches like this are basically a bundle of fixes to what is existing in this game. I don’t know if there was a Feature Patch that literally added anything new, but from what I will get, I’m not too worried. Besides, I got the season 2 story chapters to look forward to once this is cleared out.

They should re-name them “QoL” patches or “bug fix” patches then.

Features are things like:
new skills
Guild halls
The introductions of fractals
Guild missions
new trait lines

They initially said that feature patches would be like major patches in other MMO’s. But I just don’t see that.

I completely agree that these updates are named wrong. Its like they are trying to make the patches SEEM better by calling them “feature” (sort of like people humorously call a bug a feature lol).

Electro.4173:

Its like they’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

But I dunno, maybe I should just give them the benefit of the doubt. I can’t have possibly seen feedback from every player, so maybe there are players out there saying “Man, I really want to level up one time and just feel a huge boost all at once”.

This. And I LOLd at the last part.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

More information will be released next week about features that are more suited to veteran players.

Has anyone else lost faith in that those “features” will be small, minimal, and kinda nerf like?

OP if you haven’t heard complaints about the leveling system, you’ve been ignoring posts that don’t apply to you. There have been many posts over time about the leveling system, and it shows in the retention of players, a stat that you don’t have access to and Anet does.

It’s easy for some people and really hard for others. Almost every day someone posts in players helping players saying they just don’t get the game, or leveling or how it is. Almost every day.

You got it. You followed the game maybe. You knew what to expect. Or it fit your style. For a lot of people. those used to other games, they really don’t have a clue.

This isn’t a single isolated case, but a problem that’s existed since day 1.

Hype train finally derails. Buying more popcorn!

only problem here is arenanet trie to make the “representation” from a feature patch like an event – and even cancle living story for this

please MR.Arenanet stop this – bring the patch and done

The way I see it, the recently announced changes to levelling are in response to the complaining about the new trait system.

In case you don’t recall, tons of people were complaining that now gaining a single level feels meaningless and unrewarding, especially up until level 30.
With the new changes, they’re “fixing” that problem with new rewards and UI changes that make levelling feel important.

The Personal Story change was needed. As it is now, here’s how it goes.

Level 2 story step.
level 5 story step.
level 8 story step.
etc.

I’m sure i got the level gaps wrong, but that’s not the point.
The point is, there will no longer be gaps in your personal story.. hopefully.

It was very jarring doing Personal Story, getting involved in it, and then unable to progress through it because of levels.

The other changes are good for new players and alts, and perhaps new content that will come. (maybe a new level cap? 100?)

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

So far, this feature patch is great for new players, but, what about the veteran players? It doesn’t seems to offer much to make us stick to the game.

More information will be released next week about features that are more suited to veteran players.

Wait. One person thinks the feature pack was/is a good idea, out of this whole chain, and THAT is the one you respond to? Really?

What I am getting from this upcoming feature pack is “Stop leveling your alts until this comes out.” Which I have done. Actually, I did that before I read about the changes, because it was excruciating – the Trait system is horrible. If ANet thinks some bland trinkets or new clothing styles (“Oooo, I have a pretty new hat!”) is going to change things, I think they might be mistaken.

Behellagh.1468:

I’ve seen numerous posts in PHP board where newcomers from other MMOs have no idea what to do because they aren’t pushed from one traditional quest giver to another. Also seen new players confused doing the personal story because it contains level gaps and they have no idea what to do to level.

It’s too bad these changes don’t address that at all. In fact, you could argue it makes it worse, because if they use the Chinese model, you won’t get any story until level 10. As for gaps.. How the heck does this fix any gaps? all it does is move the gaps to different places.
You’ll get a chunk of story, then once you complete that, you’ll have to level till you get to the next chunk. There are still gaps… they are actually bigger, but more spread out. And it certainly doesn’t address what you said about “what to do”. In fact you’ll start with 10 levels of no story. The only thing it does for sure(if it follows the China model) is kill key farming.

I’ve always disliked the gaps in the Personal Story, and have poked fun at it here on the forums more than once, so naturally I think fixing those gaps is not a bad thing. The only problem I have with it is, that’s one less thing for me to poke fun at. I’ll get over it, though. Eventually.

Since it doesn’t actually remove gaps, i’m not sure what you’re talking about. What do you mean?

DarksunG.9537:

Behellagh.1468:

I’ve seen numerous posts in PHP board where newcomers from other MMOs have no idea what to do because they aren’t pushed from one traditional quest giver to another. Also seen new players confused doing the personal story because it contains level gaps and they have no idea what to do to level.

It’s too bad these changes don’t address that at all. In fact, you could argue it makes it worse, because if they use the Chinese model, you won’t get any story until level 10. As for gaps.. How the heck does this fix any gaps? all it does is move the gaps to different places.
You’ll get a chunk of story, then once you complete that, you’ll have to level till you get to the next chunk. There are still gaps… they are actually bigger, but more spread out. And it certainly doesn’t address what you said about “what to do”. In fact you’ll start with 10 levels of no story. The only thing it does for sure(if it follows the China model) is kill key farming.

I’ve always disliked the gaps in the Personal Story, and have poked fun at it here on the forums more than once, so naturally I think fixing those gaps is not a bad thing. The only problem I have with it is, that’s one less thing for me to poke fun at. I’ll get over it, though. Eventually.

Since it doesn’t actually remove gaps, i’m not sure what you’re talking about. What do you mean?

First, that second quote isn’t from me. Now from the blog post.

One of our first changes is the content direction system. This system simplifies the UI in the top-right side of the game window, providing one clear suggested location (and an arrow providing general direction) to guide players to exciting content. This system will also help guide players to content areas of appropriate level difficulty, even to the next map so they have a better idea of where to go when advancing their character.

Funny, sounds like it’s designed to lead new players from zone to zone.

As another addition with the level-up guide, we’re updating the personal story steps using our new Story Journal so they come in story chunks that unlock all at once per chapter. When a story chapter is unlocked as a level-up reward, you’ll be able to play straight through the entire chapter from start to finish and not have any awkward starts and stops that throw off the storyline.

At the very least the chapter sounds like it unlocks when you can do all of it. Currently you are always pointed to the next mission regardless if you are an appropriate level or not.

“One of our first changes is the content direction system. This system simplifies the UI in the top-right side of the game window, providing one clear suggested location (and an arrow providing general direction) to guide players to exciting content. This system will also help guide players to content areas of appropriate level difficulty, even to the next map so they have a better idea of where to go when advancing their character.”

Delightful…you know how ppl loved the freedom that came to levelling in pve? well no more, now we’ll “nudge” you to follow a linear path each and every time. How fantastic.

AlexEBT.7240:

“One of our first changes is the content direction system. This system simplifies the UI in the top-right side of the game window, providing one clear suggested location (and an arrow providing general direction) to guide players to exciting content. This system will also help guide players to content areas of appropriate level difficulty, even to the next map so they have a better idea of where to go when advancing their character.”

Delightful…you know how ppl loved the freedom that came to levelling in pve? well no more, now we’ll “nudge” you to follow a linear path each and every time. How fantastic.

The 2nd half I left out since it wasn’t for new players.

Players who don’t need direction can ignore this system and go exploring in any direction they want, do content in any order, and play any content they want exactly as they can currently in Guild Wars 2 as it’s available today.

There are advanced settings in the options menu for more experienced players that will allow you to change the functionality of the content direction system. You can select to disable it if you like the way the game UI functions now, or you can select “world complete” mode, which will focus only on providing direction to areas for world completion.

Honestly don’t people read anymore?

Behellagh.1468:

AlexEBT.7240:

“One of our first changes is the content direction system. This system simplifies the UI in the top-right side of the game window, providing one clear suggested location (and an arrow providing general direction) to guide players to exciting content. This system will also help guide players to content areas of appropriate level difficulty, even to the next map so they have a better idea of where to go when advancing their character.”

Delightful…you know how ppl loved the freedom that came to levelling in pve? well no more, now we’ll “nudge” you to follow a linear path each and every time. How fantastic.

The 2nd half I left out since it wasn’t for new players.

Players who don’t need direction can ignore this system and go exploring in any direction they want, do content in any order, and play any content they want exactly as they can currently in Guild Wars 2 as it’s available today.

There are advanced settings in the options menu for more experienced players that will allow you to change the functionality of the content direction system. You can select to disable it if you like the way the game UI functions now, or you can select “world complete” mode, which will focus only on providing direction to areas for world completion.

Honestly don’t people read anymore?

I know about that, it’s the mindest that came up with this and all the other levelling “adjustments” that really bothers me. The levelling experience is boring as it is and they are drawing it out even longer now. You only get downed state by lvl5? You are given all the weapon skill on weapon aquisition? the story comes in batches at every 10 lvls? let alone the trait aquisition….and all of this because we are unable to comprehend all these incredibly “deep” and “complex” systems
Aha. Ok then i’ll treat them they same way they treat me as a player.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Yet we now have spent the last 2 “feature” patches revamping the leveling system from the ground up and not introducing a single bit of endgame. I literally just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a SINGLE thread that said they should revamp leveling and I couldn’t find one person complaining about it. The biggest complaint related to leveling I could find was to undo the changes to leveling the last “feature” patch brought.

So what exactly is the point of revamping the only part of the game people almost unanimously loved and completely ignoring the areas of the game people think need the most work? It just seems like a terrible business strategy to me.

That was probably me.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I made a thread titled Do What Now? or Why I suck at this game where I outlined several of the teaching problems this game has. Many of these teaching problems had to deal with leveling and how boring it was.

Though not every change to leveling reflects this, there are certain parts that I feel responsible for in the blog entry:

To help ease the learning curve for new players experience when they first load into the game, we’ve simplified the number of systems visible to players early on and layered them all into the level-up guide. When you reach a specific level, any system tied to that level will be presented in the form of a reward. The game will also offer to teach you how to use the new system and will show you what you’ll get the next time you level up.

Anyway, leveling problems in a game aren’t the kind of things people go to the forums and complain about. They are the kind of thing that turns off new players, who just leave and don’t say a word.

Before the trait rework, leveling was a bit more interactive in that you continually received trait points for leveling, which you could invest to gain new skills. Come new trait rework, then suddenly everything is spaced further, longer in leveling overall, and utterly boring. This made a _very_big problem with the game: playing it wasn’t fun at low levels anymore. It was a featureless and unremarkable slog where you received barely anything at a slow pace.

Things like flashing lights and little chests with minor rewards mean a whole lot from a conditioning standpoint. Before you can get to theorycrafting, builds, nuanced mechanics, and meaningful difficulty, you have to level and learn first. Leveling is the first and primary experience every new player has with the MMO. So, if the leveling system is horrible, then this is a gigantic turnoff for prospective new players.

Axelwarrior.9084:

The way I see it, the recently announced changes to levelling are in response to the complaining about the new trait system.

In case you don’t recall, tons of people were complaining that now gaining a single level feels meaningless and unrewarding, especially up until level 30.
With the new changes, they’re “fixing” that problem with new rewards and UI changes that make levelling feel important.

Have you actually seen the rewards for level 58 on their blog? Yeah, important my…

Also, i don’t get why “making it easier for the new players” suddenly transformed into changing things so they’ll be actually harder (the traits change, for example, definitely made levelling less rewarding and more painful).

Regina, thank you for responding in this thread. I know there are a lot of negative comments here and that must be frustrating to keep reading. Nobody likes criticism about their work, and to post a response is respectable. So, thank you.

As for the endgame. The community has asked for and suggested some fantastic changes and revamps of core systems: sPvP, dungeons, raids,WvW, etc… I truly hope that we see some of those suggestions implemented in this feature patch. We still have another week of info about it. Only time will tell, but I remember a dev thread asking for suggestions for different sPvP game modes. Why would they do that and not make changes? I am still optimistic for this feature patch.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

More information will be released next week about features that are more suited to veteran players.

Have an e-hug!

The problem I see is currently is that after level 30, all we get are skill points and trait points. You don’t really feel like your character is getting more powerful other than getting/buying better gear. Sure you can unlock all the other skills you don’t initially take and of course we now have traits starting then.

Slot 7 unlocks at level 5
Weapon swap unlock at 7
Slot 8 unlocks at level 10
Slot 9 unlocks at level 20
Slot 0 unlocks at level 30

So on one hand I can understand wanting to feel like your character is becoming more powerful over time but the drawback of spreading it out it weakens how your character feels at lower levels. It’s a balancing act. Moving the weapon swap later in leveling will be annoying.

Telling players what bonuses they get each level helps defeat the perception of nothing changing is good. The rewards will likely be as good as the personal story, which is not a lot.

Removing the down state for the first four levels is so-so. I agree that the first time it appeared without explanation for me and I didn’t realize 4 was heal. It’s not like there was a lot of time to read the tooltips for what each button does while your downed HP is dropping. I just pounded on 1 until I or the critter hitting me died.

Re: the downed state change. We really should have been tossed into our personal instance and gone through some of these things in a casual way. I just don’t see how moving it out in levels helps. Maybe there is more to it than that?

Well as a ‘veteran’ player who has been playing for 2 years since launch, (although pretty much hardly at all since the last festival ended, too boring), I am completely unimpressed by the feature patch so far. Hopefully, next week will bring better news…

I think this feature patch is aimed at the ‘new’ Chinese players mostly and anyone else new who picks up GW2.

Currently, I would never create a new character on GW2, compared with launch it looks awesomely bad to level a character to 80 now. Only ever going to do it if they release a new character class and I can’t see that happening in 2014.

Largely, GW2 offers long term players like me nothing, so back to playing other games that actually give you character progression and useful objectives to do. GW2 as turned into a glorified platform game as far as I can tell….

Meglobob.8620:

I think this feature patch is aimed at the ‘new’ Chinese players mostly and anyone else new who picks up GW2.

The ‘new’ Chinese players have most of this already. I have the suspicion they’re normalizing the two games as much as they dare so they’re not too dissimilar in function.

Axelwarrior.9084:

The way I see it, the recently announced changes to levelling are in response to the complaining about the new trait system.

In case you don’t recall, tons of people were complaining that now gaining a single level feels meaningless and unrewarding, especially up until level 30.
With the new changes, they’re “fixing” that problem with new rewards and UI changes that make levelling feel important.

But now the levels are even more meaningless .. in fact they can make max level
now 16 .. because its like 1 level you get stats / traits .. and the next 4 level you
only get weaker because you don’t get anything.

Its actually maybe a little different because of the 5 level stat progression and 6 level
trait progression .. but if they would set traits also to 5 level they can really delete
all those levels.

relevant, Colin:

I think that’s a totally fair question, as a veteran user I’d wonder that too – why does making the game better for new users benefit me when I want features that benefit me?

The simple answer is: by ensuring the game foundation is solid for new users, we’ll be in a place after the feature pack where we can do the kind of things that excite both veteran and new users simultaneously, and we’ll be able to retain a much larger percentage of the new or long returning users when they show up. Can’t say anything more than that yet – but that’s the thinking, you don’t need to agree with it, but it’s important to know why the decision was made!

and

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

I have no time at the moment to post the context/questions/statements, look for yourself: http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaColin

This feature pack….. to me it’s all about aligning the Asian release with the NA and EU game or actually bringing the EU and NA versions features in-line with the Asian release. It’s easy to see what the devs have been working on for the last year or so which was releasing the game in China and given the market who can blame them from a business perspective?

So with this feature pack we get the changes made to the China release and Anet gets a more unified core game code, nothing wrong with that at all, it’ll be better for the devs from here forward and we should get more features in a quicker time-frame down the road.

Of course this is just my opinion based on nothing but my point of view.

But a lot of those changes were made to the China release due to research from the American release. They knew more when they made the Chinese release.

Zanshin.5379:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

I never had any problem understanding what to do when I started playing. Neither did anybody that I know.

That’s because it was simple, easy to understand, and fluid. Not anymore.

Ezrin.8217:

Zanshin.5379:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

I never had any problem understanding what to do when I started playing. Neither did anybody that I know.

That’s because it was simple, easy to understand, and fluid. Not anymore.

Even before the trait changes, we had so many people who didn’t know what to do. I don’t see how you guys could ignore the posts in Players Helping players.

People woudl do everything in a zone and not know what to do, because they weren’t high enough to get to the next zone. And we’d tell them to go to another zone, which isn’t really the only answer.

Most games have statics quests and clearly defined hubs and that’s it. You finish one hub, every quest, before you move to the next, because that’s the way you have a high enough level for it. This game is completely different.

And there are people who poke their head it, don’t get it and leave. You can say it doesn’t happen, but I’ve seen it happen.

It might well happen often enough to warrant changing it.

As someone who has lurked the forums basically since release I can say that there was definitely a community of players that felt leveling was difficult, a “grind” as they call it and very un-rewarding. While most people feel this wasn’t needed, there are people who will find it useful.

Plenty of new players have come on the forums, or have messaged in /map, about what do to, where to go; that their personal story mission is too high a level for them and they don’t know what to do to level up.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

[…]

They should re-name them “QoL” patches or “bug fix” patches then.

Features are things like:
new skills
Guild halls
The introductions of fractals
Guild missions
new trait lines

They initially said that feature patches would be like major patches in other MMO’s. But I just don’t see that.

You go that mixed up.

That is “content” not “features”.

Features are things like systems, game rules and interfaces with which you interact with the content, like the crafting system or the LFG tool.

Draknar.5748:

As someone who has lurked the forums basically since release I can say that there was definitely a community of players that felt leveling was difficult, a “grind” as they call it and very un-rewarding. While most people feel this wasn’t needed, there are people who will find it useful.

Plenty of new players have come on the forums, or have messaged in /map, about what do to, where to go; that their personal story mission is too high a level for them and they don’t know what to do to level up.

I’m not even sure most people find it wasn’t needed. Maybe most people who stuck with the game find that, because obviously it’s not a big deal to them. What we really don’t know is how many people started the game, got bored or confused and went and played something they understood. It’s amazing what people don’t know about this game, even some level 80s I’ve met.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Maybe someone can help me out here, because I just don’t understand this “feature” patch.

Since the game launched 2 years ago, it was touted as having a great leveling system, where you could go anywhere, didn’t have to do quests and could level doing pretty much anything.

The game has always had one major complaint, the lack of endgame content. There were no raids, no new areas, no endgame progression, and no new ingame skins being released.

These two things have been pretty much the two constants of the game since launch… leveling good… endgame bad…

Yet we now have spent the last 2 “feature” patches revamping the leveling system from the ground up and not introducing a single bit of endgame. I literally just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a SINGLE thread that said they should revamp leveling and I couldn’t find one person complaining about it. The biggest complaint related to leveling I could find was to undo the changes to leveling the last “feature” patch brought.

So what exactly is the point of revamping the only part of the game people almost unanimously loved and completely ignoring the areas of the game people think need the most work? It just seems like a terrible business strategy to me.

Totally agree, Anet made things that community don`t need at all…