Guild Wars 2

No.1
The leveling & related system changes introduced in the latest feature pack were intended to improve the way new players learned the game mechanics – one justification for the change of pacing is to give players more time to practice & learn their current skills before moving on to the next one, however:

The previous way of unlocking weapon skills not only felt cool, but also made sure that the player had to use that weapon for a bit before unlocking all of the skills with it. At higher levels, you unlocked the other skills after only killing one mob since it was assumed you didn’t need an introduction course in those weapon skills. This makes perfect sense.

The current way doesn’t. After unlocking my sword skills, I can then swap to a completely different weapon and have all of the skills unlocked. I will mash everything.

I don’t see why this was implemented if the learning curve was really the concern. It feels to me more like a shiny thing was required in the level-up popup. Is there any justification for this change backed up with any tangible whatever? Because right now I’m inclined to believe the popular accusations that, in lieu of making new content (either because of resource, time, or effort constraints), existing content was just locked and gated in order to give the impression of progression.

Thing no. 2 I don’t understand.
The changes implemented are supposed to engage newer players and keep them engaged for prolonged periods of time, but it seems like the direction taken is the direct opposite of what most games have been doing for the past few years.

What most games seem to be doing now is, when picking and starting your character, you usually get a short (GW2 starting instance-sized) instance where you play your character with a set of unlocked late game skills. Then, once you complete that instance you are set to the regular starting state. This not only gives you a preview of your character’s class (which I assume would be welcomed by new and veteran players alike), but also teases the skills that you’ll get to use later. It gives the player something to look forward to and strive towards. Since it’s an isolated sandbox instance, there are no worries of the player not knowing what to do due to the amount of skills – they can literally just click buttons and see what happens.

Instead, for the first 10 minutes of the game, what a player is doing is just pressing 1. And then possibly 6. With no guarantee that they will actually be enjoying the skills they’ll unlock later in the game. And then by the time they unlock the profession mechanic, they’ve already invested what feels like so much time into the character that they will not want to reroll to try again. And if they do, they’ll have to go through the whole process again with another class.

I don’t understand why this approach was taken at all.