Guild Wars 2

Long before this patch came out, I used to wait until I was at the end of a story arc to play the story, so I could play the story all at once and not have it constantly interrupted by the need to gain a couple of levels. Because the story is broken into chapters it becomes disjointed. This is one of the major complaints people have had about the story since day 1. It feels like it’s not connected.

By doing it this way, you not only get better rewards, but you get a chunk of story at once and can finish the arc.

It may just be a preference thing, but many people didn’t like it how it was before and quite a few complained about it.

I never had this issue, I would play and move along, exploring and doing things on the way to the next part of the story.

To my best knowledge I did not see many complaints here about needing the story to be in chunks.

My gut feeling simply says – this is artifical.

Edit: I said this before, if this was supposed to be a “tutorial” kind of easing in thing they could simply allow us to turn it off, same as the new map pointer helpers.

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

“I wanna play the second part of the story, oh wait I’m underleveled, I can’t do it. i’ll have to stop playing the story to go help a farmer, level up and then resume the storytelling”

Works both ways.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

“I wanna play the second part of the story, oh wait I’m underleveled, I can’t do it. i’ll have to stop playing the story to go help a farmer, level up and then resume the storytelling”

Works both ways.

My point is the second part of the story doesn’t exist until you’ve finished the first part. You don’t actually know about it.

Until you can do the story, the story hasn’t started. So it doesn’t work both ways. Take the poor human story. At level 10 I first get a letter from my friend, saying he needs my help. I didn’t get that letter at level 2. I got it when I could do the story. And then I was able to do the WHOLE story.

The other way, I get a letter from my friend at level 2. He’s in trouble and eventually I can do this thing at level 4 this thing at level 6, this thing at level 8.

Now once you finish the story arc, it’s done. There’s nothing else to do, because your character has no knowledge of the next story. Thus immersion isn’t broken.

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

I understand what you are saying, for some this is immersion breaking and that is ok. I still haven’t seen many complaints “here” – but that is not the point, no need to quantify this.

The point is if that is what they wanted to fix, then they could have tweaked the level experience to close these gaps.

No excuse about difficulty and the like please – I’m not sure that was balanced really, from what I hear the PS is much easier and faster now, probably because you are over level.

Excellent post sir.

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

Then you wait until your level is high enough to all the quests at once. Problem solved. You always had this option. But now we’re forced to accomodate to a butchered questing system that forces me to backtrack into the previous zone to do the personal story missions.

Once I reach kessex hills, I have to go back to do the quests in friggin shaemoor village. Once I’m gendarran fields I do the circus quest in kessex etc etc..

The challenge was to create a personal story that tied into the leveling experience of the zone. Incorporate it organically with the flow of the zone. That was the challenge. And guess what? They succeeded at doing that. But not anymore. Now they butchered it for no reason.

there may have been problems with the previous leveling/personal story system but this patch? it didn’t solve anything, it just made it worse especially to the vets. it’s like being constipated and being given a medicine that induced stomach ulcer or something.

I’ve been playing for about ten days now I guess. I got to level 80 in about 4 days. I will admit that the story stuff was hard to do all at once continuously because I had to constantly level up so I ended up not completing it yet. It’s still not done.

The story changes I think are ok, that hardly bothers me. What does bother me is the new leveling system. I tried leveling a few different toons yesterday and it was soooo boring. Auto attack everything is just terrible.

I’m 39 and not new to games but am new to gw2 but to be told I need to play like this because I don’t know any better is insulting.

Maybe some posters I’ve read are right. maybe the don’t care what the NA/EU players are saying, maybe it is all about opening up to the asain markets, I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me though.

It’s curious how quiet Anet has been since the patch dropped though. They haven’t said a word. makes me wonder if they are hiding or are they under orders from superiors not to speak on the forums?

In any case Anet, some of the improvements were ok and some were not so ok. So hit and miss with this gamer.

The new player experience is focussed on people who will buy the game after this update went live. Even after only 2 weeks of playing, you’re not new anymore.

It’s difficult to measure these changes without letting someone entirely new play the game today without him visiting the forums/reddit.

They should just create two systems → One for a completely new player and one for new characters. I’d say this would resolve most issues.

Vayne.8563:

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

“I wanna play the second part of the story, oh wait I’m underleveled, I can’t do it. i’ll have to stop playing the story to go help a farmer, level up and then resume the storytelling”

Works both ways.

My point is the second part of the story doesn’t exist until you’ve finished the first part. You don’t actually know about it.

Until you can do the story, the story hasn’t started. So it doesn’t work both ways. Take the poor human story. At level 10 I first get a letter from my friend, saying he needs my help. I didn’t get that letter at level 2. I got it when I could do the story. And then I was able to do the WHOLE story.

The other way, I get a letter from my friend at level 2. He’s in trouble and eventually I can do this thing at level 4 this thing at level 6, this thing at level 8.

Now once you finish the story arc, it’s done. There’s nothing else to do, because your character has no knowledge of the next story. Thus immersion isn’t broken.

Forgot about the unlocking -_-’

You’re right. IMHO I do prefer to know I have a challenge to complete before being able to do anything, just like I know I’ll have to kill a dragon but I can’t do it at level 1. However, once the story is done, people will be like “ok, what’s next?” and begin harvesting mushrooms.

It depends on every single player, but I assume, as far as I know, most people will prefer to know they need to be more powerful to continue their journey, rather than being left without a clue after 3 missions.

The game was like a regular Final Fantasy and now it has become FFXIII…

Even if you wanted to fix the issue of immersion being broken for the story… you only needed to do one thing… just move a chapter all in on level bracket and make us do events and some sort…. they had no reason to block off skills 4&5 which I dismiss, but F1-F4 along with utility skills in even higher levels was stupid

The OP’s experience with leveling (before yesterday) is how I felt when I was leveling my first toon. I felt that way throughout most of leveling (no gated traits back then). While not leveling, I still sort of feel this way in Orr.

THIS, I think, is a very important post. Anet, if they want to survive, need to pay attention to this post.

I am hoping Anet reads this post all the way through. There are a few argumentative posts but, please, Anet, listen to these new players.

Straylight.7529:

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

Then you wait until your level is high enough to all the quests at once. Problem solved. You always had this option. But now we’re forced to accomodate to a butchered questing system that forces me to backtrack into the previous zone to do the personal story missions.

Once I reach kessex hills, I have to go back to do the quests in friggin shaemoor village. Once I’m gendarran fields I do the circus quest in kessex etc etc..

The challenge was to create a personal story that tied into the leveling experience of the zone. Incorporate it organically with the flow of the zone. That was the challenge. And guess what? They succeeded at doing that. But not anymore. Now they butchered it for no reason.

At the sacrifice of any reward worth anything. I was doing that. I prefer this. That’s all. This gives me much better rewards and they’re things I can use while leveling.

The old way I’d be level 10 getting level 3 rewards, the level 4 rewards then level 6 rewards.

You know, a lot of people really don’t like the personal story. It’s been complained about quite a bit. People really felt it was underwhelming. They didn’t care about anyone.

The breaks in it really don’t help.

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

Lets be honest this was NEVER the fault of the players nor is it even really solved by more ridiculous time gating, this was the fault of Anets inability to hand out XP at a reasonable scale and time. I have four eighties, I have NEVER completed an area with a single one of them, even doing absolutely everything available, and been the level I should have been upon entering the next.

Vayne.8563:

Straylight.7529:

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

Then you wait until your level is high enough to all the quests at once. Problem solved. You always had this option. But now we’re forced to accomodate to a butchered questing system that forces me to backtrack into the previous zone to do the personal story missions.

Once I reach kessex hills, I have to go back to do the quests in friggin shaemoor village. Once I’m gendarran fields I do the circus quest in kessex etc etc..

The challenge was to create a personal story that tied into the leveling experience of the zone. Incorporate it organically with the flow of the zone. That was the challenge. And guess what? They succeeded at doing that. But not anymore. Now they butchered it for no reason.

At the sacrifice of any reward worth anything. I was doing that. I prefer this. That’s all. This gives me much better rewards and they’re things I can use while leveling.

The old way I’d be level 10 getting level 3 rewards, the level 4 rewards then level 6 rewards.

You know, a lot of people really don’t like the personal story. It’s been complained about quite a bit. People really felt it was underwhelming. They didn’t care about anyone.

The breaks in it really don’t help.

No, but as another poster mentioned; the locations the individual story steps were set in, tied nicely and organically into your levelling experience and also acted as sort of a ‘guide’ in a sense that after you completed a step, the next one would be in a different place with a higher level so you immediatly knew where to go next in your levelling process.

The way it is now forces you to backtrack and visit zones you have already completed, which is just mind boggling. I get Anets attempts to incentivise visiting low zones for max level players because ‘everything is endgame’ but this shouldn’t be the case during the act of getting there.

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

An Error Prevented Saving:
Flood Control: Please wait 1800 seconds between posts!

So what you’re saying is that the XP awards for personal story weren’t high enough?

There’s an incredibly simple fix for this problem: Each chapter of the personal story should award exactly enough experience to bring the character to whatever level the next chapter is supposed to be started at assuming the player began the personal story at Level 1 and continued playing it, uninterrupted all the way through. You might end up higher than recommended level (if you voluntarily stop to do something else), but you would never be underleveled.

That way, you are guaranteed to be the appropriate level, if you are following the personal story exclusively.

Duh.

Alternatively, the PS could auto-level characters (regardless of actual XP earned) to the minimum level for the next chapter.

Problem solved.

Thanks for the post OP, a great reminder of what was so great about first starting this game and a warning of what we lose with this feature pack.

This was how I felt when I started playing.

People feel good about overcoming challenges. Turning the incentive to play from “overcoming challenge” to “level to unlock rewards”, while having your hand held, protecting new players (and alts) from the game and forcing them to do things in a very rigid way…

Not good.

I’ve got to agree here. I feel like the gating of the abilities is really arbitrary and not well thought out. Did nobody at Anet Test this?! I understand this for the first character on an account. That is great. But for a half hour or so I could only use one ability and it took forever to kill things. The unlocking skills for individual weapons was a fantastic system! If people didn’t take the two seconds it takes to understand what they were unlocking that is just them being dumb and you shouldn’t force the rest of the game to revolve around them.
Many of the changes are cool. I like the arrow guiding thing and the pop up for leveling up. But locking the skills behind a level make absolutely no sense. I understand that you are experimenting but this seems like a failed experiment and for that you should revert to how it was before.

Crovax.7854:

The way it is now forces you to backtrack and visit zones you have already completed, which is just mind boggling. I get Anets attempts to incentivise visiting low zones for max level players because ‘everything is endgame’ but this shouldn’t be the case during the act of getting there.

I was so annoyed when I realized I couldn’t even ATTEMPT to do the skill challenges until i unlocked the slot. So i did everything thing else and kept leveling till i was finally about to do them.

I’ve been playing for a few weeks and think the changes are terrible. I don’t need a pop up while in lions arch telling me there is some quest I could be doing in another zone. I skipped it because I wanted to….. Its my game to play how I enjoy. I didn’t feel like doing it then and I’m certainly not doing it now no matter how much the game wants to harass me. The old system of being in a quests range was great. It was simple and to the point. This new system plain sucks.

I have an M button and a mini map which clearly provides such information. Story line quest… MIA. I was standing in front of the freaken marker to begin the instance. Ready and prepared to do it upon my next log in. Not only is the quest gone from my quest area on the screen. Its gone from the map completely!

I’ve yet to wait until a suggested level to complete a section of the story line. Again…Its my game and I’d like to play it how I see fit. The story line CLEARLY showed the quests suggested level. If its red and I can do it… Great. I mean it worked fine for the last 3 weeks…..

If I wanted a game with some mindless single path being spoon fed goals like drooling idiot. I certainly wouldn’t be playing an MMORPG.

As I see it. The next thing I was doing in the game was the quest in front of me. It was my current content based on my ability as a player. Its gone. which means my game is currently broken. I’m not going to run around doing BS I don’t choose to do in hopes my game un breaks itself in a day, week or month.

The NPE should be an option for both new and veteran players of GW2. There are games that use ‘tutorial instances’ when introducing new players, rather than forcing the experience on all players. There should be an option to bypass tutorials. Having this choice can bring back the fun of leveling alts for veterans, and the joys of discovery for new players.

I recently had my brother join the game (he bought it when it was on 50% sale), he plays roughly 3hrs/week (he’s active Navy with his 2nd kid on the way). He’s played maybe 3 hours total so far. I’m curious what his take on it is. Last I saw him he was level 8, and that was before the feature patch, so he’s right in the midst of what would be considered the most affected group.

He has no loyalty to GW2 (he is/was a WoW player), he doesn’t read the forums, he doesn’t really have the time for an MMO, he just got sick of paying a sub for a game he can barely play (again 3h a WEEK) so he wants to try GW2.

I want to hear his feedback. Not the feedback of people with multiple 80s who now feel leveling up yet another alt is more tedious. This isn’t for us, it’s for completely new players who don’t know the previous system. Sure you can claim something is more tedious, but as someone with 9 level 80s, I can say it was never tedious to begin with. So when we veterans are talking about this being more tedious, we have a reference point already and so we can honestly say it is more tedious. Because, yes, technically it is more tedious than zero tediousness.

Whether a new player (who does not go on the forums—this is the most important) will feel it is tedious to begin with is what is important.

For all we know completely new players will just play the game and not know one way or the other.

He’s an example of a completely new person picking up the game and starting out fresh. No pre-conceived notions, no haters or fanbois trying to build up or put down the game. Just a regular guy, who has MMO experience, playing a new MMO he’s never played before.

push for visibility

Hopefully posts like this finally snap players out of their shilling coma. Maybe players finally realize that Anet is actively killing this game and making it worse for everyone, giving empty promises and only developing stuff that metrics tell to increase the money made by ncsoft investors

+1 bump /15 chars etc.

If there ever was a thread that needed devs attention, this is the one.

This is what veterans and new players feel alike with the recent changes.
I know pouring money into this development may make it feel like you would have wasted it all (which it is, unfortunately) but the state of the game and players satisfaction is way more important than saving face by sticking to your guns.
The game is in a bad place right now and putting your head in the sand is gonna be the death of it, anet.

ps this reads way more dramatic than intended.

If the changes were meant for new players, then they obviously failed with this OP. What baffles me is that the changes are from how the game is in China. Um…ok…what does that have to do with us? Just because we have a lot of “Made in China” merch on our shelves doesn’t mean we need some hostile takeover of a game that was fun to play!

“New” Trait system change + this = awful new player experience. Can’t do this, can’t do that. Have to grind this, have to grind that.

Good thing I’ve leveled my necro like year ago, and don’t have to deal with it. I have toons though, and I’d like to level them up at some point. But then I’ll have to deal with all these pointless blocks, which kinda drives me off of doing that. Sure, I’m not a new player, but I have hard time seeing how new players would appreciate that.

I’ll just say obvious thing outloud: don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Old trait system was good, why “fix” that? I never felt bad about “old” leveling / unlocking style, even when I started the game, why “fix” that? There surely was testing before the release, right? I mean you can’t just blindly push such changes? But I have hard time imagining testers who approved such changes…

Moyayuki.3619:

If the changes were meant for new players, then they obviously failed with this OP. What baffles me is that the changes are from how the game is in China. Um…ok…what does that have to do with us? Just because we have a lot of “Made in China” merch on our shelves doesn’t mean we need some hostile takeover of a game that was fun to play!

The Chinese players aren’t very fond of the changes, either.

bigblah.3285:

Moyayuki.3619:

If the changes were meant for new players, then they obviously failed with this OP. What baffles me is that the changes are from how the game is in China. Um…ok…what does that have to do with us? Just because we have a lot of “Made in China” merch on our shelves doesn’t mean we need some hostile takeover of a game that was fun to play!

The Chinese players aren’t very fond of the changes, either.

That just makes it even MORE baffling… I mean…what the heck? Seriously? Where’s the kitten ed logic behind this?

What in the world made Anet think that making the game easier to understand for new players couldn’t have been achieved with simply adding to the introductions? There were relatively VERY few tutorial/introduction bubbles that pop up in your first levels. That’s all you need. My newbie friends had a bunch of questions for me. I gave them simple answers. They understood. Those questions could’ve easily been answered by in-game text bubbles.

But no, Anet wasted all this time and energy level gating everything, thereby taking away one of the game’s main strengths in providing fun and rewarding level profession. I’ve been very supportive of all of Anet’s actions for the past 8+ years, but this is definitely one thing that has definitely flew over my head and left me extremely disappointed and bewildered by them.

These forums are always derided for being the vocal minority. But that minority has spread in-world. That minority has overrun social media. The voice is singular, unanimous: this feature pack is not welcomed. Anet has further chipped away at an already strained relationship with their existing playerbase.

Yeah people say this is the “vocal minority”, but there are no numbers either way.

And like was said I am hearing lots of in game heat on the gating and locking out.

Crazy. Maybe new players did have some problems, but you can tell anet is trying to “fix it the cheapest and quickest way with the least amount of work” type fix.

It is too much work to make a proper tutorial… I guess? Quicker to gate and lock stuff than actually make something that actually teaches you.

TheGreyGhost.1835:

As stated in the title, I began around 2 weeks ago

I feel sorry for you. You got ripped by Arenanet. This game used to have so much going for it. Leveling was better even before the trait revamp (which you never experienced) because you didn’t have to wait until high levels to get traits. You could use ANY utility skill at level 5 as long as you had enough skill points to learn it. You could use ANY healing skill at any level as long as you had enough skill points to learn it. You could even be using A.E.D. by level 2 if you farmed for skill scrolls on a different character. Although, for a completely new character, it would be nearly impossible to get 25 skill points at extremely low levels.

You never experienced the best parts of this game, and you barely even had time to experience the good parts. You deserve a refund.

I really hope the dev’s are paying attention to this.

Great post sir. I can only say that after this last update, i would never, NEVER roll a new character in the game.

Nor advise my friends to buy the game anymore.

Today is surely a sad day.

- Finwe, advocating everyone to GW2 awesomeness since BWE1

Welp, no alts for me it seems. Taking away choice under the guise of ‘streamlining’ doesn’t sit well with me, Anet.

MrsAngelD.6971:

I really hope the dev’s are paying attention to this.

Since when does the devs pay attention to the community?

I started playing 3 weeks ago and I was really enjoying this game, I also convinced my sister to buy the game too.
Then I noticed the announcement about the september pack, with all the changes for new players; I thought it was cool since I was one of the main targets of the changes, and waited to make a new character just to see what it was all about.
Then I discovered the horrible changes: I never had any problem learning what I needed, I had fun in unlocking the skills and also aiding the farmers in the initial area (one of the most ridiculous change I found: before you had to feed the cows? Well, now you have to entertain them by DANCING! Yuck!)
I feel like the developers think I (as a -fairly- new player) am a bit… you know, incapable of doing anything if they don’t show me the way by giving me their hand.
I’m sad to say that since the update I have not played again, and now I feel quite sorry to have bought the game

I’m sorry they managed to mess things up for you. But it’s kind of what they do. They got off to such a brilliant start… back in beta, I had never been happier about a new MMO and its community. Lately it’s like ANet has become anti-fun and anti-community. The last nail in the community’s coffin was just driven with this patch, too. Joined up because you liked the community of a certain server? Too bad, we’re taking that from you, too.

Maybe there’s more to it, but I almost think this is just a cynical bid to stop veteran players from farming keys on alts.