What percentage of new and casual players do YOU think would post here on a regular basis?
So, this question (to this group of non-casual players) is not going to garner any useful data….
My main issue with leveling in any game is gating. That is, what you have to do to unlock certain common features of the game. Level-gating, quest-gating, money-gating, etc. is to be expected in any game, but if you’re going to hold off on giving players access to something, please have a good reason for doing so.
For example, I don’t have a problem with players in GW2 not having immediate access to all traits for their class, but felt that the trait system revamp a while back was a huge step backwards in terms of how it treated new, leveling characters. No traits at all until level 30? What purpose does this really serve? No access to GM traits until max level (and therefore no way to fully experiment with viable builds until then)? And gating the actual traits behind either gold or tasks (many of which involve going to higher-level zones)? I really can’t see how any player wouldn’t find all this more aggrevating than helpful.
As I’ve seen a few people suggest, why not, instead of level-gating the downed state, include a tutorial on how to use it (complete with a scripted downing) in the intro quest? If players are genuinely confused about certain things, then fine, but instead of merely restricting what they can do based on level, why not find some more constructive ways of explaining game features to them?
As I’ve seen a few people suggest, why not, instead of level-gating the downed state, include a tutorial on how to use it (complete with a scripted downing) in the intro quest? If players are genuinely confused about certain things, then fine, but instead of merely restricting what they can do based on level, why not find some more constructive ways of explaining game features to them?
. . . probably because designing decent “active” tutorials isn’t as easy as it seems. And if it’s missable/skippable, there’s a likely chance people will miss/skip it and we’re back to the beginning.
As an engineer I do find the downed state difficult. not because it’s poorly designed it looks fun but because it was never balanced to begin with. When my boobie trap can’t instakill a regular mob to rally me there’s something definitely wrong because other classes have that capability. And when there are no traits to hide, heal, or protect me while down yeah I’d consider that more difficult than it should be.
I do agree instead of removing it they should balance it. I should have the options as an Engi to get heals like my ranger or to instakill-rally a mob like a mesmer or to hide myself like my thief. And when I don’t have those options yeah there’s something wrong, and they should balance it.
Just to add my feeling about tutorials, I played Aion some years ago. The game provided some video tutorials in game. Honestly, the first time you create a toon, you get 4 or 5 videos to watch and most of the time my reaction was “Meh… I don’t really get what they are talking about” (often due to bad translation) or "Come on it’s pretty obvious !! ". Then some others popped during the game but I never felt it was at the right moment. Then for each alt I opened the vids only to get rid of the alert icon and skip them.
What I think is making a tutorial in game must be really time consuming and I’m not sure if they are so useful. At least in the form I know.
The stuff they’re changing I didn’t find confusing.
Some of the stuff I struggled with early on was figuring out what each attribute did/what it affected, how to change weapons, where to look for in the UI to find what I wanted/needed, what the icons on my map represented, etc.
Overall I was overwhelmed with a lot of things that I needed to learn, so what worked for me was focusing on one thing at a time until I understood it, then I moved on to the next.
Downed states/traits were the least of my concerns. I actually didn’t even think to use trait points until I had at least 10 of them, which I then used all in strength (warrior) as it seemed like the logical choice to me.
Just to add my feeling about tutorials, I played Aion some years ago. The game provided some video tutorials in game. Honestly, the first time you create a toon, you get 4 or 5 videos to watch and most of the time my reaction was “Meh… I don’t really get what they are talking about” (often due to bad translation) or "Come on it’s pretty obvious !! ". Then some others popped during the game but I never felt it was at the right moment. Then for each alt I opened the vids only to get rid of the alert icon and skip them.
What I think is making a tutorial in game must be really time consuming and I’m not sure if they are so useful. At least in the form I know.
Aion also did some good tutorials too, and at later levels. For instance, you didn’t unlock flight until level 20(?), and you had to do a small series of quests for it, that basically introduced you to how everything worked. And then a few levels later, there were some quests that helped you to understand and get used to more advanced flight mechanics. This sort of thing worked well, I thought.
The thing I’m finding hard in starter zones is 80’s camping events so that low level characters don’t get a chance to get a shot in before the 80s have 1 hit everything down. Maybe it’s time to rethink how events are tallied on the starter maps? Maybe starter map events should only be counted towards dailies and monthlies if your level 30 or maybe even 40th level or maybe there is an easier way but IMO something needs to be done especially since there are more 80s everyday.
I got this game a day after launch when my friends told me to pick it up, only thing that ever confused me was weapon swap because I played an Elementalist and then an Engineer, and once someone explained those 2 classes don’t have that I got along just fine. The game seems straightforward enough to me, but I still see people often asking “what do I do now?”, “what is the best X”, “what is fastest way to 80”, “where should I go”,… because they don’t really seem to get that it’s all about exploring and getting out there. Do whatever you like, everything gives XP anyway.
the only aspect of the game i had problems with was sPvP. i tried playing it last night and had no idea what was going or what i needed to do in order to start playing
Most of the game’s concepts were really easy. The only one that was a little difficult to understand at first was the combo/finisher stuff.
That being said, I do not see anything wrong with a game giving the occasional hint so that more can enjoy it.
Well sure. Would I have preferred to have had a better tutorial process for the downed state? Definitely. Would I have preferred to have not get downed at all during those segments? Yup. Would I have preferred to have just died and being unable to rally? No even a little bit. Moving the downed state to level 5 solves none of the problems with the downed state and removes any advantage it brings until level 5.
I did not. But I bother thinking, and checking the wiki and the official site.
All around me there was a sea of clueless people who didn’t even know the basic things the game’s tooltips say. They just closed them, then spammed around asking for what the tooltip just told them.
I just hope they do the same with water skills soon because I’m still terrified of water; maybe they should prevent players from being able to swim until level 5.
That would mean any time a lv1-4 character enters water they would drown instantly. :P
Not much of an improvment.
My main issue with leveling in any game is gating. That is, what you have to do to unlock certain common features of the game. Level-gating, quest-gating, money-gating, etc. is to be expected in any game, but if you’re going to hold off on giving players access to something, please have a good reason for doing so.
For example, I don’t have a problem with players in GW2 not having immediate access to all traits for their class, but felt that the trait system revamp a while back was a huge step backwards in terms of how it treated new, leveling characters. No traits at all until level 30? What purpose does this really serve? No access to GM traits until max level (and therefore no way to fully experiment with viable builds until then)? And gating the actual traits behind either gold or tasks (many of which involve going to higher-level zones)? I really can’t see how any player wouldn’t find all this more aggrevating than helpful.
As I’ve seen a few people suggest, why not, instead of level-gating the downed state, include a tutorial on how to use it (complete with a scripted downing) in the intro quest? If players are genuinely confused about certain things, then fine, but instead of merely restricting what they can do based on level, why not find some more constructive ways of explaining game features to them?
There used to be a scripted downed state in the intro. Can’t remember if that was in beta or release but it was not well received either. Probably because if it was on your second+ character you could do that part without being in much danger and then suddenly you are down for no apparent reason.
Placeholder features are placeholder. (some are fine, but mostly… well…)
If someone is not able to handle this dumbed down game
not to mention traids and to rally than there is no way you should touch a computer
I’d like to say that when I first died, I wasn’t sure about the downed skills. It’s hard to read them when you either die or rally, so you have to read them while getting hit (unless you know to get the chat link of the skills).
I think, if anything, they could just move the skills onto the Weapon Skills section so players can read about their Downed Skills without being downed. Maybe have a tutorial cutscene where it shows their player downed and then allows them to use their skills on a dummy while regening health when it goes critical (so they know they are losing health).
I had no difficulty with these systems. In fact, I enjoyed getting trait points every level, as it gave me something to do to better my character at each level up. The issue for me isn’t whether downed state or traits are hard or easy to understand. The issue is, “Does the game adequately prepare players to understand these mechanics whenever they appear?” Postponing acquisition does nothing if there is no more information about the mechanics than the game provided before.
I don’t believe the trait system is any more (or any less) comprehensible today than before April 15. Take that with a grain of salt as I already understood it. However, if people are failing to assign trait points at every level up, what makes anyone think they’ll be any better at it every 6 levels?
As to downed state, we’ll see how the level 5 level up dialog looks. If it does not show your downed skills so you can look at what they do, the change will be about as useful as kittens on a kitten. In fact, let’s look at the hypothetical new player who doesn’t bother to read or try to understand. Let’s say he is defeated at level 4. So, he’s dead and needs to respawn. OK, he has experienced how the game handles death. But wait, if he did not note the change to mechanics at level 5, he’s in for a WTK moment the first time he is downed.
I’d love for someone to explain the thought process behind, “People don’t pay attention or read, so let’s postpone the point at which mechanics kick in.” Maybe there’s some logic there I’m not seeing.
To be honest I kind of got everything after 2-3 tries and found it amazing to learn such new things and find out how these mechanics work on my own without having to have a tutorial shove it in my face. It’s good that if I fought an enemy that was just barely able to get me down, I still had a chance to kill him before he could finish me off.
I think people are either too stupid or impatient to understand that not every MMO is a copy of World of Warcraft. It’s one of those cases where players are fixated on the only method they know and not trying to assimilate new knowledge to adapt to new circumstances, which makes the game seem that much harder to them. If they took their time to just stop and think about it one moment, they would start “getting” it and consequently be able to enjoy the game.
I feel really bad for this game – what’s going to happen to it. I really enjoyed it when it first came out – it had some large flaws but it was incredibly fun to play and did not feel like a chore. You’d get rewarded for every thing you did, whether it was exploring, gathering, fighting, helping others, doing events, and even leveling (with the old trait system + utilities).
Now the developers seem to think that its playerbase is mentally kittened or something and needs to spend 10x as much time to understand something than it actually does. They’re ruining the game by doing so. Eventually everything that made Guild Wars 2 great – weapon swapping, fight to survive, dodging/interrupting, underwater combat and traits – is going to end up pushed back so far into the game that it’s no longer going to be about getting something and improving it as the game progresses, but grinding through most of the game to even kittening unlock these features.
Anet, we are not kittening kittened. Stop ruining the game by trying to make it more “beginner-friendly”. If they weren’t whiny kittenes that expected to have everything explained and handed to them who had to wiki something the second they had a minor inconvenience, they would be able to “get” the Guild Wars 2 spirit. We did not need to have traits pushed back by 20 levels to understand them better. We did not need to have 5 points condensed into 1, eliminating any sort of growth the 5 levels you take before getting another trait point, to figure out that it adds up to an effect much like skill tiers, runes or set items do in other games.
The only things I found hard was jumping shockwaves 400 ms in advance, and predicting what players in WvW do so I can react before they actually even take the actions. Reacting normally to animations is the luxury of North Americans/Europeans in their servers.
None of these were remotely difficult.
Don’t forget that when you are highly familiar with something (especially to the point of being an “expert”) it is difficult to go back and remember what it was like to have no idea what you were doing.
I’ll admit that I didn’t know you could try to heal yourself in downed state until I saw someone doing it in a video.
i think its is very very stupid that the traits are so kitten hard to unlock now…
ofc for veteran players it is not too hard since they can do most content brainafk by now and they usually have enough skillpoints and gold to buy traits that they dont have…
but those veteran players dont even need it since they usually have all of their characters already done…
but for new players it is super stupid that you cant learn the traits already while leveling and test things out…
you cant use 66% of all traits until you are lvl 60….
it is sooo kitten annoying to fight without traits and be so weak since you cant even spend 1 trait point per level…
right now leveling up feels like… oh wow i leveled up… uhm right that has ZERO good effects because: you dont get stats like before…. it is just boring and tedious to always level up so many levels until you get just a TINY boost like 1 trait with lvl 40 or what….
just the opposite of fun…
Don’t forget that when you are highly familiar with something (especially to the point of being an “expert”) it is difficult to go back and remember what it was like to have no idea what you were doing.
I’ll admit that I didn’t know you could try to heal yourself in downed state until I saw someone doing it in a video.
Considering if I’m in group play and I go down, someone usually runs over and picks me up? And I tend to do the same if it’s not going to knock me down also? Yeah . . .
I think someone mentioned already. Majority of people tried GW2 didn’t get very far before they quit the game. You can see that from the AP leader boards.
So, it’s not surprising Anet are doing many tweaks to make sure new players play as long as possible, even silly pointless tweaks like making changes to the downed states.
Personally the trait system hasn’t been confusing at all since the beginning, minus a few details being left out of the traits (Such as explosives not counting for grenades with the engineer when it says 10% more damage with explosions, but that’s been fixed now). The downed state was a little confusing at first, because I had a time limit, and always felt compelled to hit the buttons rather than read what effects they had. I was still like level 3 when I took the time to read what each of the attacks did though, and understood it well afterwards.
I feel like down state would be better explained in the beginning tutorial though, like a cinematic where your character goes down during one of the battles, and you fight a weakened npc to get back up, but it should give you time to read over the description of your attacks.
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