Guild Wars 2

I don’t farm keys, never did. I find the rewards very underwhelming but that’s not the point…

It is my understanding starting September 9th personal stories will start at level 10, because that was the only way they could think of. Now i know how much they hate players and player feedback and everything, but i feel the xp portion of the personal stories kept leveling balanced. Removing that until level 10 would not only make it very counter intuitive for newbies but would also cause them to be required to grind in other race’s zones.

I don’t really care if they move personal stories to level 10 but don’t solve one problem creating another. Balance newbie leveling doing so.

Where does it say LS will start at level 10?

Elixir.3701:

Where does it say LS will start at level 10?

You won’t unlock the LS until level 10. I’m not sure if this is one of the tutorial options that you can bypass through the options menu, but I’m sure the story will be boosted to level 10 so you can’t just skip it.

Additionally, I hear that the key will be awarded at the level 20 quest, similar to China (no confirmation on this, so it’s just empty words unless someone can prove me right/wrong).

Let’s just say there is a fairly high probability it will start when you reach level 10 and a good possibility the first key won’t be available till level 20.

Either way, if that happens, key farming is badly nerfed.

The title of this thread is misleading. You might consider changing it, as your OP is more about the loss of XP for new players than anything to do with key-farming. Otherwise, it may just be merged into a previous thread.

Good luck.

rip. I just learned about the key farming today.

Well, if there’s a Black Lion wep skin you want best to get it now prices will shoot up with lack of key farmers selling them.

I’m sure ANet’s bean counters have been chewing their fingernails into bloody nubs waiting for the key farm to get the axe. I’m just surprised it took them so long. Y’know, assuming it’s the case at all…but I’d bet on it.

The change shouldn’t affect leveling experience since you can easily level without the help of the personal story. As long as you do events and 100% the map, it won’t matter. I for example simply follow the personal story and 100% whatever zone it takes me to, which gets me through ~20%-30% of the game before reaching 80. People that try to level through traditional questing however are going to have a bad time.

With the personal story being delivered in chapters, I suspect it’s going to create an odd leveling experience. Now you’ll have to go backwards to complete the personal story since what was once 1-10 is now 10. It’s also going to cause level jumps, just like crafting, since the entire chapter will probably be worth something like 5 levels, which you are now encouraged to complete all at once rather than as part of your journey. For those that had problems with leveling to begin with, they’ll likely struggle to make it to level 10, at which point the entire chapter will carry them to the next zone, causing a feeling of uphill-downhill-uphill-etc leveling.

Also, the personal story being moved to level 10 has nothing to do with key farming since they moved the key to the level 20. This change is in response to complaints about the flow of the personal story. Back at launch for example, the level gaps between steps was a common complaint from people trying to quest their way through the game, since they felt they needed to grind experience to catch up.

Well, Queensdale hasn’t been so populated since the champ train nerf. Kinda fun to play there atm. Make an alt and join the BLK frenzy.

Healix.5819:

Also, the personal story being moved to level 10 has nothing to do with key farming since they moved the key to the level 20. This change is in response to complaints about the flow of the personal story. Back at launch for example, the level gaps between steps was a common complaint from people trying to quest their way through the game, since they felt they needed to grind experience to catch up.

Insofar as the early PStory is concerned, it takes very little time to catch up to the level requirement. IMO interspersing some open world experience—in the sense of learning and exploring—with the PStory is good design. Not sure who was complaining about this since experienced players can manage PStory legs significantly earlier than the level requirement, and inexperienced players should be learning the rest of the game in tandem with the PStory. I don’t/didn’t see any need to change the structure.

As far as the key farm is concerned, it’s naive IMO to think this change wasn’t motivated at least in part by it, which arguably takes some money out of or removes certain impetus to spend into ANet’s pockets. I’m far more inclined to think they claim issues with PStory/level + new players as the smiley-face “political” reason (valid in its own right or not) with the key farm nerf being a shadowy “we won’t admit or address this part” rider that kills two birds with one stone.

They must make a good proportion of their gem store income from BLKs, so some sort of change to this was inevitable. I don’t blame them, I just don’t agree this is not at least one of the basic motivating factors to this sort of change.

I just wish they hadn’t essentially yanked the entire carpet out from under players by making BLKs the rarest drop in the game (would be amusing to see the chances of those against the chances of precursors) and just made them rare enough that an active player could expect to see at least a couple times a week. But I suppose there are lots of complicated reasons for them being made nearly absent from standard game play.