Guild Wars 2

I was visiting a merchant on Snowden Drifts to get some new equipment. The pants he was selling had +1 power more than what I was wearing and so I decided to give him 1 silver 92 copper for them. I equipped the pants and my attack went from 869 to 870. My effective attack didn’t budge from 418 where the game had dumped me. Every time I level up, my stats go down. I need to get new pieces of equipment to get where I was before.

I wonder what’s the appeal of the system as it is. Sure I understand that ANET wants to make it so that every field is like endgame field. But that directly implies that there is no character progression, and indeed that’s the case. Leveling up is like punishment, where in other games it’s a thing you desire – you become more able and powerful. Original Guild Wars’ expansion packs had the right idea: leveling from 1-20 was like doing tutorial. You graduated and became more knowledgeable, eventually reaching level 20 where majority of the game happened. Why did they change the system?

My stats went up every time I levelled. Why are yours going down? Are you visting areas which reduce your effective level?

You need to research the game you are playing more.

There’s level and effective level. You downscale depending on the zone your in.

Why in the world did you buy vendor gear when there’s a TP.

Tyrindor.5049:

You need to research the game you are playing more.

There’s level and effective level. You downscale depending on the zone your in.

^^^^^^^^^^

One day, my wife asked me why her health kept getting lower. After being punched for saying ‘because you are being hit’ I saw what she was confused about.

Your stats are auto adjusted down for any zone you are in that lower level than you. You are brought down to be 1 level more powerful than the level the zone was designed for. This is to make everything still a challenge yet reward you for being a higher level.

As for gear upgrades, I can’t mention too much about that as I am constantly upgrading my gear with drops so I have not had any drastic changes in power.

Alright, I’ll explain. Stats go down when you level up because of level scaling. A level 10 character with level 10 equipment is going to be better than level 11 character with level 10 equipment. Scaling means that your level is measured against your gear to determine your effective power. You can see this for yourself when you take screenshot of your character stats just before you level up and compare it.

The system assumes that you keep upgrading your equipment all the time as you progress. From my point of view, we’re forced to do it. Equal power could be accomplished by capping the level lower, or designing some creative system where levels are no longer necessary.

I’m not aware of level scaling the way you describe it. It was my understanding that Level 10 gear will add exactly the same stats to a level 11 character as it would to a level 10 character.

According to the wiki the only level scaling is the environmental version, which reduces you to the effective level based on the mobs surrounding you (source).

Can you explain more about how this level scaling you refer to is supposed to work?

How is anyone unaware of down-scaling?

They boasted about it for days son.

FOR DAYS.

Campana.9216:

I’m not aware of level scaling the way you describe it. It was my understanding that Level 10 gear will add exactly the same stats to a level 11 character as it would to a level 10 character.

According to the wiki the only level scaling is the environmental version, which reduces you to the effective level based on the mobs surrounding you (source).

Can you explain more about how this level scaling you refer to is supposed to work?

The wiki is probably just flat out wrong or intentionally vague.

The most obvious downscaling of gear to me was when I hit 80 and went back to do AC with a friend. His stats were 100-200 points ahead of me in my downleveled state due to the fact that I was still using level 65-75 blues/greens on my 80.

?
fishy

it should be total power (level+gear) then adjusted to downscale.
you should never be better with lower level gear than with higher level gear.

anyhow, for whatever reason, yeah, itemization is not really necessary or even interesting before hitting level 80.
the game is a blast as is, without tweaking the stats.
i guess min maxing and itemization is an endgame thing.

Campana.9216:

I’m not aware of level scaling the way you describe it. It was my understanding that Level 10 gear will add exactly the same stats to a level 11 character as it would to a level 10 character.

- There are white stats and green stats. White stats are what your character has without any scaling taking place. Green stats are what your character actually has after scaling is applied.

I took two screenshots to illustrate this:
http://imgur.com/a/CiDPy

The first image is my character level 15 and second is my character level 16. I changed no items between these pictures. The white stats got higher from level up, but the green ones went down. This means that my character performs worse and the only remedy is to upgrade equipment.

Zenith.6403:

Campana.9216:

I’m not aware of level scaling the way you describe it. It was my understanding that Level 10 gear will add exactly the same stats to a level 11 character as it would to a level 10 character.

- There are white stats and green stats. White stats are what your character has without any scaling taking place. Green stats are what your character actually has after scaling is applied.

I took two screenshots to illustrate this:
http://imgur.com/a/CiDPy

The first image is my character level 15 and second is my character level 16. I changed no items between these pictures. The white stats got higher from level up, but the green ones went down. This means that my character performs worse and the only remedy is to upgrade equipment.

Because you’re downleveled. The “gap” between your character level and your gear grew between 15 and 16, so in a downleveled state you will see a decrease in your effective stats because it downscales you to a level as if your gear at that level were equally lagging your character level. It’s a significant penalty, and is intended to be countered to some degree by having more trait points and utilities for higher level characters (obviously not the case with a level 15 or 16).

anyway.. no big deal.
you start to look at your stats at level 80 anyway.

Exactly knightblaster. Now we get back to the question I asked in opening post: if level-upping doesn’t give you a stronger character but rather appears to be a penalty, why have leveling system along the whole storyline in the first place?

When you level up you need more points in a stat to maintain that level of power. At level 30 I had 49% crit, as soon as I hit 31 I had 48% crit. If we didn’t have a system like this we wouldn’t have upgrades in gear, the gear you start with would be just as strong as the gear you end with, and we’d be left with no feeling of progression or advancement.

Zenith.6403:

Exactly knightblaster. Now we get back to the question I asked in opening post: if level-upping doesn’t give you a stronger character but rather appears to be a penalty, why have leveling system along the whole storyline in the first place?

I would have preferred if they had left it aside myself, and been more bold and just had 10 or perhaps 20 levels like GW1 and have the remainder of the content be horizontal progression like it was in GW1. I think they probably thought that was too bold, so they retained a leveling system while making it rather pro forma. However, leveling up isn’t a penalty if you are in level-peer content — it can become a penalty when you downlevel.

Well, thanks for the explanations, I understand now how it works :P

Since the penalty is only present if you have gear lower than your level I don’t see how it negates the effect of levelling. You have better traits and a bigger range of utility skills to choose from which will likely offset any minor penalty from having underlevelled gear.

I used blue/green drops the entire time I was levelling up, which meant that my gear was usually no more than about 10 levels below my current level – when I went to e.g. a level 20 area at level 40 I felt I was killing mobs faster, and able to survive longer than I had when I was in that area at level 20. The lower level the area the more noticeable the effect is. If you go as a level 80 to a level 10 area you’ll find mobs hp just melts away like butter under a blowtorch and they barely do any damage to you.

Also, the gear disparity issue is a temporary one that will disappear at 80.

Zenith.6403:

Exactly knightblaster. Now we get back to the question I asked in opening post: if level-upping doesn’t give you a stronger character but rather appears to be a penalty, why have leveling system along the whole storyline in the first place?

Because – in my opinion leveling does nothing character wise due to scaling – leveling simply keeps you out of higher level zones you do not belong in yet.

Levels simply throttle the masses to stay in the zones they “can” be in. People would just run to Orr if they could… they reason they don’t / can’t is because they are not high enough level.

• edit – it also gives trait points prior to 80 so it serves as a tool to slowly unlock your traits.