Guild Wars 2

Recently it was announced that horizontal progression in the form of new skills and traits will be added to the game.

From my understanding levels are a form of vertical progression.
If we are getting horizontal progression even after level 80 then why do we have 80 levels in this game.

Can’t we just get rid of all levels and just have horizontal progression from the start?
or can’t we reduce the level cap to 30 when we have all our skill bars unlocked and start horizontal progression from there?

Just to be clear, I do not think that leveling in Guild Wars 2 is in any shape or form a burden, I just think it is unnecessary, especially after hearing about the new progression system.

I am interested to see what everyone else thinks about this.

My opinion is that Anet wants you to play their game every single day for as long as possible, which is pretty much the goal of every game developer. Adding a vertical progression system, (Leveling), is one way to do that. After you hit 80, it’s dailies/monthly’s and time gated content that keep you playing for as long as Anet wants you to. Sure, the leveling system is very unnecessary, but again, it keeps you playing just a little bit longer so that Anet can dish out another form of horizontal progression to get you interested in that. Think of leveling as “stalling”, because that’s essentially all it is.

Even for the people that enjoy leveling, it’s still just a form of stalling so Anet can dish out more content before you hit 80. That’s my opinion anyway, and is in no way an actual fact.

Levels serve a purpose.

Here’s a short list of level-related milestones:

• Level 5: Skill points, first tier of skills
• Level 10: Second tier of skills
• Level 11: Adept traits
• Level 14: Masterwork tier of items
• Level 20: second tier of skills
• Level 30: Elite skills, Rare tier of items
• Level 40: Master Traits
• Level 60: Grandmaster Traits
• Level 62: Exotic tier of items
• Level 80: Ascended and Legendary tier of items

And mind you, levels being tied to gear tiers is something the developers intended. It was one of the things that was brought up with the introduction of Ascended.

It takes a lot longer than level 30 to know how to play a class. I don’t think that you can even claim to know how to play a class until you’ve played it with its full potential, meaning level 80.

And there are tons of things that are tied to level in the game. Dynamic level and item drops come to mind. Honestly, I cannot see the dynamic level system working properly with much less levels, unless they made the difference between each level much more significant. Which in turn would mean it would have to take longer to get to that level.

Galtrix.7369:

My opinion is that Anet wants you to play their game every single day for as long as possible, which is pretty much the goal of every game developer. Adding a vertical progression system, (Leveling), is one way to do that. After you hit 80, it’s dailies/monthly’s and time gated content that keep you playing for as long as Anet wants you to. Sure, the leveling system is very unnecessary, but again, it keeps you playing just a little bit longer so that Anet can dish out another form of horizontal progression to get you interested in that. Think of leveling as “stalling”, because that’s essentially all it is.

Even for the people that enjoy leveling, it’s still just a form of stalling so Anet can dish out more content before you hit 80. That’s my opinion anyway, and is in no way an actual fact.

What you are saying makes sense and I think it might have been one of the reasons to have 80 levels at launch. If the game had launched with just 30 levels people might not have played for long.

Though now with dailies/monthlies, achievements, living story and upcoming new skills and traits I do not think they need leveling to keep people from logging in.