Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if this has been discussed before… but here we go.

Right now, I have two level 80s, two level 40s, and four level 20s. I’m working on leveling up some of the level 40s, but it’s taking a miserably long time and it’s kind of boring. I have to switch to my mains to do something fun just to keep myself sane. The only reason it’s boring is because I have to do the same tedious map crawling over and over again on dead, empty, low-population maps for every character.

The joy of GW1 for me was that I could zip every character to max level in a matter of days (or a single day if you had Factions) and spend the rest of the time exploring the content instead of feeling like I needed to level up my other professions if I wanted to shake up the gameplay a bit.

Maybe Factions went over the top a bit, but it was still fun that way. So I guess what I’m wondering is if we could have a system in which your play time and experience earned on max level characters could be transferred or shared with other characters. I know that skill points are valuable for level 80s for other reasons, but I’m not into crafting legendary weapons. I’m more of a casual player.

I think this would be justified because I already played through most of the content (twice, actually) and I pretty much have full exploration on my main. So why should I have to march through it five more times just so I can fully experience all of the gameplay?

I think they’re already planning something like this with the birthday presents. They gave out boosts to level 20 already, so I’m going to guess for the 2nd birthday it’s going to be to level 40, etc. But a yearly 20 level boost is kind of lame, to be honest. I already had all of my characters up to level 20 by the time that came around, so it did little to help.

So yeah. Not sure if this has been discussed before, but I would interested to see what people think, and whether something like this would work or if it would break something. It would kind of be like a pseudo-sidekick system like they talked about during development, but between your own characters. I just want to play my engineer or mesmer and have fun with it without slogging through the same renown hearts all over again. Because, as it is, it seems like most people just level up easy-to-make-effective professions like guardians or warriors and leave engineers and mesmers behind. Not true for everyone, I know, but that’s what I generally see. I think if people could invest in a character they are comfortable with, like a warrior, and level up a different profession at the same time, they might be more open to experiment a bit.

Here are some tips for you:

Level your characters one at the time, clearly you’re not enjoying it (as easy as it is) and like you said you have to switch to your main to keep yourself sane, so doing it one at the time just a bit everyday will help you ease into it.
By the way, you label yourself as a casual but you have then end game mentality, that’s a bit odd.

Pick areas for your characters, Kryta, Magguma Jungle, Shiverpeaks, Ascalon. This way you might stay away from a place for a while and when you get back you’ll most likely find it refreshing, I didn’t like the Brisban Wildlands when I was there with my first 2 characters, but with the 3rd I’ve actually enjoyed it.

Aim to complete the current map you’re in, this will give you a guide line, also, don’t forget to pick every mat and kill every mob while you walk around, the mobs will help you build muscle memory.
Don’t shy away from a fight either, go for those vets.

Could you expand on the difference between “tedious map crawling” and “exploring the content”?

@Dean,

I used to do map completion with all of my characters, but a map gets old after you’ve done it for the fourth time. I think I like the idea of staying away from a map to keep it from feeling stale, but we’ll see. And I guess I’m more half way between casual and active. I liked my casual play in GW1 to be about just getting gear, finding missions I hadn’t achieved a high rating for and going for it, messing around with new builds for the heck of it, etc. Instead of that, unless I just want to spend all my time as a Guardian or Elementalist, I have to be a full time leveler.

Which leads to…

@DigitalKirin

The difference is that I do jumping puzzles, find random dynamic events, hunt for gear, and participate in living story, do PvP, WvW, etc, because I want to. I trudge through maps for completion to get xp because I have to do that to level up. The difference is that I choose to do this content vs I have to do that content.

Why not just do random dynamic events, hunt for gear, participate in living story, do WvW to level up?

DigitalKirin.9714:

Why not just do random dynamic events, hunt for gear, participate in living story, do WvW to level up?

With the events you have to hunt for them around maps, and they themselves don’t give enough XP to level. So you end up doing map completion anyways: trust me, I go for them when I can.

And I am hunting for gear lately with participating in dungeons and such. But most won’t let you in if you’re not a max character, so I end up doing those on my two mains anyways.

The living story tends to be geared towards max level characters. I tried to do it with a level 40 to level up that way, but most of the time I would do so little damage because of gear limitations that it wouldn’t tag kills for myself, so I would end up with silver or bronze participation in events and get very little XP from kills. Plus I was a burden to events like the three knights because I had low DPS and was taking up a charge.

And WvW… same story. Lower than max level, not an active member of any particular guild. So low DPS and no guild mob to organize with. I hang around the large mobs, but my server isn’t great at WvW and it tends to be pretty scattered.

I recently tried turning to crafting to level up. But that takes money, and I get the best money from playing on my max characters… so we’re back to square one.

Thanks for the reply and clarification. To add to what Dean suggested, I’d say this:

Consider map completion Incidental to your goal of enjoying exploring content. When you get the urge to find random dynamic events, choose an area and start running to collect waypoints. Hit up dynamic events that happen around hearts (if you’ve done map completion enough times, you’ll know the ones that help fill out hearts). In other words, cherry pick the best/most efficient events so that you spend less time doing hearts, since it seems you don’t enjoy them as much.

Regarding dungeons: Get friends – even one friend is enough. Start a dungeon run or have your friend start a dungeon run and make sure to put in the comment: “Any Level Welcome”. If you Join a dungeon run, you’re saying that you are willing to comply with their rules. If you Make a dungeon run, you’re the one setting the rules.

Edit: Lastly, don’t be afraid to jump between your max level characters and your lower lvl characters. You don’t HAVE to get to lvl 80 in 3 days. Earn a level here, a level there. “Little, little, makes a lot.”

Or just do some crafting and swap out the char at the end of dungeons to level up to 80 in less than 24 hours of gameplay?

While I am loathe to point it out, the queensdale train was tailor made for leveling alts. You can get your gear and exp quickly, w/o much downtime. If you’d go farming for stuff on main char anyway, do it with your alt instead!
Also, have a friend start your dungeon up, do the dungeon on your 80, and switch in to alt at the end, you get 75% exp for being there just for the final boss fight, or final 10 seconds of dungeon, if you swapped out at say 30% boss health. Most of my alts were leveled this way, 3-5 levels per day on AC/CM since I dont need the skillpoints on my main.

My preference is to sit my characters in Hirathi Hinterlands at the beginning of the Ulgoth chain. From level 43 – 80, I run it once a day. Especially if you have a birthday buff it’s good for one level a day, and often completes dailies, or nearly so. It’s a pretty fun chain in general. Yes it’s doing the same thing, but at least it’s doing events and not map clearing, which can get pretty tedious at times.

I don’t even pay attention to gaining character levels, let alone in a hurry to gain them as fast as possible to get to 80. If I get near 80 I actually start a new character. In fact, if I could turn off XP gain, I would. I play the game and have fun doing whatever with whichever character I feel like playing at the time based on how I made them to look.

It must be a perception thing, because I find my characters level way too fast. I rarely do map completion, only if I decide I want the reward now, or I see I’ve inadvertently come close to completion.

I also always do my dailies, and if possible, finish my monthlies on a character I might want to level up some, as that gives quite a bit of XP.

I do use my main for new or more difficult content, usually, but the reason it is my main is because it is my favorite character to play, so that works out! Lol.

Oh! So, I would not be especially fond of your suggestion. Sorry. =)

Kal Spiro.9745:

My preference is to sit my characters in Hirathi Hinterlands at the beginning of the Ulgoth chain. From level 43 – 80, I run it once a day. Especially if you have a birthday buff it’s good for one level a day, and often completes dailies, or nearly so. It’s a pretty fun chain in general. Yes it’s doing the same thing, but at least it’s doing events and not map clearing, which can get pretty tedious at times.

One level a day? Ouch.

Even on my main character, where I didn’t explore at all, I hit 80 in less than a week and a half.

Exploring is probably the easiest way to level, even though I hate it.

Thank you all for the suggestions, and I’ll be sure to try some of them out. Never really was fond of the concept of the trains, but I guess I’ll give that a go. Besides, I get champion loot. So that’s cool, right?

And to Cedo, with my idea, it would be optional to share exp, either throughout the account or to specific characters. So if you want to keep things the way they are, that would be up to you personally.

Galtrix.7369:

Kal Spiro.9745:

My preference is to sit my characters in Hirathi Hinterlands at the beginning of the Ulgoth chain. From level 43 – 80, I run it once a day. Especially if you have a birthday buff it’s good for one level a day, and often completes dailies, or nearly so. It’s a pretty fun chain in general. Yes it’s doing the same thing, but at least it’s doing events and not map clearing, which can get pretty tedious at times.

One level a day? Ouch.

Even on my main character, where I didn’t explore at all, I hit 80 in less than a week and a half.

Exploring is probably the easiest way to level, even though I hate it.

Well it happens constantly, if you really wanted to it wouldn’t be an issue to do more. It’s a level per run, effectively, but there is only one Daily chest so I only run once a day. I’ve got other things and other games to play too. I’m a casual so that’s how I do it.