Guild Wars 2

Kolisch.4691:

Yup. Why should Frodo go through the whole journey to throw that darn ring. He should be allowed to fly on dumbo the elephant straight to Mount Doom and save himself being dragged around in a journey with those stinky, smelly men, little men and that blonde dainty pretty boy.

In fact, I believe that this version would have been more fun

Levels are only meaningless because MMO’s reuse character models and therefore level’s lack a sense of progression.

If you look at dungeon’s and dragons (circa 1987, I have no idea how it’s changed since then), you’d fight things like kobolds at low levels. But at higher levels you never saw them again or they were trash or they’d run away in fear, eventually you’d fight a hydra or dragons, etc… This provided a sense of progression.

In an MMO, you fight a blue kobold from levels 1-15, green kobold from levels 16-30, yellow kobold from levels 31-45, orange kobold from levels 46-60, veteran orange kobold from levels 61-75, and the veteran orange kobold with the kungkittengrip from levels 76-80.

With the first expansion you’d get to fight the pink kobold.

Seras.5702:

Leveling is necessary. But it need not be a long grind. And rather than feeling excluded until I hit the level cap, I instead feel I’ve earned the right to be where I am. Personally, I don’t think 80 levels are necessary, especially in a game that allows PvP & WvW from level 2. But, it’s a nice feeling of accomplishment knowing I’ve fought my way through the world ankitten ow ready for what awaits me in Orr.

As someone above mentioned, leveling is also a tutorial in a sense. Starting out of the box with an 80 you’d have no idea how to play it. You’ve feel overwhelmed and instead of easing into new skills and traits to figure out how they synergize, you’d be given the entire menu and forced to figure it out. It doesn’t sound like a fun way of doing it.

Plus, I like the feeling that I’ve made my character, it wasn’t just handed to me. For people who like the storylines and like to RP, starting with nothing and building your hero is important.

Starting out the box you can go to WvW and play, even if you never played the game before or know whats going on.

That tutorial argument is debunked from that alone.

Leveling/Tutorial, as you call it, should never be something a player is “FORCED” to do. it should be optional. Assassin Creed 3 learned that the hard way.

I’ve been contemplating on the idea of an MMO with no levels for a while and I would like it a lot. You want to go to Orr? Sure, you can. You’ll die a lot, but why not, if you can find your way down there. I don’t see any reason why there should be level gated content instead skill gated ones. In this sense I prefer the good old D&D type of rules – a level 20 warrior has an advantage over a level 3 one, but if the noob gets really lucky, there’s a chance he will beat the level 20 warrior. In the MMO sensibility it will never happen, since levels, hitpoints and character points limit our gameplay.

It already takes a lot of suspension of disbelief that your character is a totally blank slate when you begin – we literally don’t have ANY skills of any kind. It only works in GW2 for the Sylvari, who literally are born right after we finish the character creation. What have the other race characters been doing? Leading very sheltered lives?

Levels in MMOs are just a mechanic that is used to encourage the player to explore and develop their character. In SWG they just had skill development with no levels (you never gained more HP), but that game had a lot of crazy stuff (no NPC merchants, only player merchants), and there was definitely still a grind.

Kolisch.4691:

Yup. Why should Frodo go through the whole journey to throw that darn ring. He should be allowed to fly on dumbo the elephant straight to Mount Doom and save himself being dragged around in a journey with those stinky, smelly men, little men and that blonde dainty pretty boy.

I don’t understand why Gandalf couldn’t talk the eagles into carrying Frodo at least part of the way to Mordor. Ideally fly over Mount Doom and drop it from the air, but at least get him close enough, fast enough, that Sauron would have no idea where he or the ring was.

tolunart.2095:

So if you plan for it you can still reach level cap without ever swinging a weapon after the tutorial “boss fight.” Hey, tag along with some other players and you can probably walk through the tutorial without getting into a fight too.

I experimented with this a while back and you don’t actually need to do anything in any of the tutorials. Just be close enough to get through the various ‘gates’ when they open and within range of the event when the boss is defeated. As long as you know the way you don’t even have to go through the motions, just run to the end.

Adine.2184:

Danikat.8537:

(Edit: Actually you can get games with no built in progression, a lot of sandbox games are like that with everything accessible from the start. But then the fun usually comes from the player setting their own goals and challenges and you need a whole different game for that to really work.)

Even sandbox games have some form of it . The Sims for instance has skill challenges and collections for each sim that when completed there is some kind of bonus involved with it as well as "lifetime reward points " for achiving wants . Then of course there are the player made challenges like the "legacy challenge " or "100 baby challenge " which have rules and point systems in place . So even the sandbox player needs some sort of goal to keep playing the game

True, but it’s not quite the same. It’s entirely up to you which of those goals you go for, it’s not like levelling in RPGs where you have to do it one way or another.

Although I was mainly thinking of a fairly obscure Artificial Life sim called Creatures. You get a game world and the ability to hatch a small selection of virtual pets to put in it and absolutely no instruction on what to do with it other than hatch some and see what happens. Some people have been playing it for thousands of hours over years, experimenting with all the different possibilities and are still discovering (or inventing) new things to do. And many peoples experiences will be completely different because they’re interested in different things, Person A might spend most of their time doing things Person B has never even considered, even though they’re playing the same game.

Mirta.5029:

Imagine a completely new person walking their way into Orr. Imagine the rage that would be generated by the said person on the forums. Levels serve their purpose as a tutorial with increasing difficulty.

In that case, I would make Orr be balanced around three players. It requires fighting from tooth to nail if you want to solo Orr.

What made pre-nerfed Orr fun is that you were forced to party up.

Knighthonor.4061:

Seras.5702:

Leveling is necessary. But it need not be a long grind. And rather than feeling excluded until I hit the level cap, I instead feel I’ve earned the right to be where I am. Personally, I don’t think 80 levels are necessary, especially in a game that allows PvP & WvW from level 2. But, it’s a nice feeling of accomplishment knowing I’ve fought my way through the world ankitten ow ready for what awaits me in Orr.

As someone above mentioned, leveling is also a tutorial in a sense. Starting out of the box with an 80 you’d have no idea how to play it. You’ve feel overwhelmed and instead of easing into new skills and traits to figure out how they synergize, you’d be given the entire menu and forced to figure it out. It doesn’t sound like a fun way of doing it.

Plus, I like the feeling that I’ve made my character, it wasn’t just handed to me. For people who like the storylines and like to RP, starting with nothing and building your hero is important.

Starting out the box you can go to WvW and play, even if you never played the game before or know whats going on.

That tutorial argument is debunked from that alone.

On the contrary, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Out of the box, go right to WvW and see if you are even remotely effective, can contribute anything to your world, are anything other than a hindrance, or know anything about how your profession works. You can’t start a game anew and expect to understand the nuances of it right away. Even if you do roll a brand new ranger and immediately get the whole “I stand here and pew-pew and my pets goes there and ka-chewy chomps” you don’t understand which traits and weapons and playstyles work well together without playing for hours. In an effort to not bombard you with everything at once and ease you into the class, we’re given leveling.

It’s also a fun way to feel like you’re building a hero, rather than being handed a tool.

The one thing I’ll concede is that GW2 doesn’t need 80 levels. At 50-60 you’ve pretty much gotten your profession down.

I have mixed felling about gw2’s leveling system at times its too fast and I feel that I have an overpowered character to quickly. I rather have easier to get Best in Slot gear (Ascended legenedaries) than lv 80 in two days (2 week for my first ever character, Yumiko Emi Ishida my Elementalist) I have one more lv 80 (Guardian) and one lv 62 (engineer) and I haven’t even reached (engineer) or finished Orr (guardian)maps or Frostgorge for that matter!

I rather have a medium level grind like a bridge between western and eastern mmorpgs, and make the levels mean something to your character (lore tie-in to personal power level perhaps?) in their personal growth and development rather than just more stats more numbers!

PSO 2 (Phantasy star Online 2) actually makes a good use for levels as its also your clearance level (lore driven mechanics to gating content based on progression) for teh organization you work for (ARKS) to get to more dangerous areas, not just your skills as a player/more numbers. Its grind is not too steep, but not easy street like in GW 2. It can take a day or week to gain one level (after 45) depending on playtime hours invested, or you could(with smart play, get 3 levels down in a day, but you will not max out like here in 2 days.

It can be like here if you don’t do it smart, you could be lv 60 for weeks or 80 in 2 days.

PSO 2 though, the level curve is steep enough to not have you at lv 60 (max cap so far and 65 wednesday) in both classes without being a cheater/hacker. Equipment has a stats requirement not a level requirement which reflects the physical capabilities (more lore practicality of stats of levels) of the player character and how they are built but you can still get very decent or near best gear with time.

Yet gear and RNG and drops are tailored right to not be hard to get making the game fun and not worrying about farming/grinding unlike GW 2 atm.

I agree on all accounts. GW 2 needs a better balance between levels an gear and content.

Different MMO’s have different forms of progression for skill expansion. Most known and most seen is the level system. There are games that have no visible levels. Those games usually are sandboxes as someone already stated.

Since the successful explosion of WoW and it’s EQ esque systems…many games have tried to duplicate that success. From what I can tell, the majority of the theme-park side of the house will usually use levels. edit; want to add that it’s probably the easier system to put in.

I don’t mind the way levels work here. Sure, some here have said that having level cap at 30 would have been just fine because that’s the point you earn your elite skill. Well, I think it ended up being not only about giving a visible cue to progression, but supporting the system you only see when you open your “Hero Tab” and then selecting Traits. Yes, the trait system now has some support and reasoning behind getting from post tutorial level 10 to level 80. 70 traits points to craft your build.

In GW even though they have only 20 levels, there was the attribute system that kind of worked like the trait system we have as far as distribution. It wasn’t the type of thing that had traits that gave secondary effects or anything, the skills themselves did that. The progression after 20 was about gaining xp to gain levels past the cap to gain skillpoints (like here), which were used to buy capture signets. Those were for capturing “Elite” skills. Those skills were hugely apart of build creation so you had to hunt for them.

GW2 is just had a different vision.

Another reason I think level 80 is here, well…We all know MMO players likes dem BIG numbers!!!!

Leveling is really unnecessary and sets a bad precedent if your intention is to scale the game horizontally. I would much prefer a tutorial that equips you in terms of gear, gameplay, and story and then simply launches you onto your further adventures.

That said, I don’t look for it to disappear from this game any time soon, especially since they’ve chosen to scale the game vertically anyway.

TheDaiBish.9735:

So, for example, let’s take a Warrior with a Mace. Using Skull Crack to interrupt the enemy x number of times would eventually add the additional effect of using less adrenaline / would add a 2 second Daze after the stun wears off / deal Critical Damage ect. Hell, maybe players could unlock all of these additional effects depending on what they interrupt (say, if target is moving, or target is under the effects of Immobilize ect), and then slot them as they wish.

That would be doing one of those things the devs have said they didn’t want. It would mean people play more are pretty much automatically better than people who play less.

Another example could be fighting an NPC with a particular weapon, and the NPC has a skill that you can learn off of him. Successfully countering that skill allows you to learn it. So, say an NPC has the skill Finishing Blow (deals Critical Damage if target is on the floor) for Greatsword. A successful counter would be avoiding the knockdown and then attacking him while he’s still in the animation process.

It’s progression that shows effective use of skills, and understanding how to counter said skills.

That is also not doable because of WvW. All those things needs to be replicable in WvW. I don’t know when they decided this but at some point it was decided that if someone plays the game just for WvW they should be able to do so and not be disadvantaged. There are already some disadvantages to playing just WvW but your suggestion would make it a lot worse. That is also similar to how skill acquisition was described prelaunch so it’s not like they haven’t thought about doing something like that but were obviously reasons that forced the change.

Khisanth.2948:

That would be doing one of those things the devs have said they didn’t want. It would mean people play more are pretty much automatically better than people who play less.

I didn’t know that they removed ascended gear from the game. Huh.

Mirta.5029:

Imagine a completely new person walking their way into Orr. Imagine the rage that would be generated by the said person on the forums. Levels serve their purpose as a tutorial with increasing difficulty.

Literally the whole point of levels in MMOs. You don’t learn and perfect your class from level 1.

I do think they are somewhat unnecessary though, I mean in GW1 I leveled so fast I was still learning a metric ton of things about my characters way way beyond lvl 20.

Gw2 is not L T W ( Log in TO win )

Mathias.9657:

Mirta.5029:

Imagine a completely new person walking their way into Orr. Imagine the rage that would be generated by the said person on the forums. Levels serve their purpose as a tutorial with increasing difficulty.

Literally the whole point of levels in MMOs. You don’t learn and perfect your class from level 1.

I do think they are somewhat unnecessary though, I mean in GW1 I leveled so fast I was still learning a metric ton of things about my characters way way beyond lvl 20.

But you dont need levels to learn how to play.

Levels simply force players to go at the developers pace.

But people learn how to play at their own speed. Specially when most of the game skills are unlocked early on in the first playthrough. On my Guardian, I unlocked the skills that interest me the most earlier on, and used that all the way to max level. I didnt need more learning than I already gained from earlier levels. Hey I was even learning to play by jumping straight into WvW to fight, yet I was nothing but a low level.

that argument that you “need” levels to learn how to play, has simply been a moto used by companies to milk pockets for subs. MMOs now days are moving away from subs (mainly GW2 in this discussion).

We dont need somebody to tell us how long it takes for us as individuals to learn the game. We dont need Content gated by time sinks.

Fun is what makes the players stick around. Not grinds. Look at SWG, it was the most popular MMO pre WoW next to EQ1 yet had no levels and did the two faction thing long before WoW was even thought of.

Even EQN is getting rid of Levels. its an old concept and time to get rid of it since those old days when Sub was king, are gone.

In most MMOs now days, the majority of players that play these MMOs now days, Never make it to max level because of just how boring it is to be forced to do something just so you can unlock something you enjoy later on rather than doing what you enjoy from day one.
That was the appeal of WvW if some of you forgot, since it was marketed as being doable from level 1 ( well level 2 now)

That there show just how much people value being able to play the game from day one and doing everything that they enjoy from day one and not being forced to grind to unlock gameplay that they enjoy.

Most MMOs should be doing this by now, but its slowly getting there.

That whole themepark need level argument is also debunked. TSW has a leveless system yet is also Themepark. So is EQN getting rid of Levels, and its totally Themepark outside of Landmark which will be a separated sandbox MMO all together.

“levels in MMOs are meaningless” is a very easy to disprove statement.

Leveling is the gauging method of learning part of the game, where you go from easier situations to harder ones in order to slowly make you better.
Even in FPS games you’re usually pit against players who have the same game experience/ratios as yours; this is absolutely no different from leveling.
Whether you realize it or not, the vast majority of players do need this part as they only get better after several hours of learning – so it is undeniably and statistically meaningful to have a learning part.
Whether this learning part is guaged through numerical levels, skill-ups, ability unlocks or whatever other system has been created in videogames to accomplish this, it’s still the same pasta, just with a different flavor.

Even in games without any learning curve system, where you’re pit against people immediately after being given very basic tutorials, we can see that the community naturally creates a learning curve – with “noob” rooms, “casual” rooms, “normal” rooms, and “pro” rooms.

There is no getting away from the necessity of a learning curve, and the necessity to split the community between novices, averages and veterans – you can dispute the validity of the leveling system itself and suggest alternatives, but a slow learning system needs to be there, and in case there isn’t, the community will create it.

Funny how my one good post here made this move to suggestions…

plz stahp moving this thread around mods, i don’t need all the notifications

Red Falcon.8257:

Leveling is the gauging method of learning part of the game, where you go from easier situations to harder ones in order to slowly make you better.

If only this was true in this game, but it isn’t in this game (it probably applies to every MMO, though).
You can even see people trying to gauge a player’s skill via AP and/or pinging gear since level isn’t sufficient (not that these are any better).
The problem is that this game is that it doesn’t seem to offer any gradual increase in difficulty.
Either it’s easy or it’s hard (or “hard”). Perhaps it’s better to say, the game tends to have difficulty spikes rather than a gradual increase in difficulty.
Most enemies (at least in the open world) are just standing there waiting for you, saying ‘please press 1 and wait for your loot’, then you learn a different game when you play dungeons.

Sadly, the average player probably needs lots and lots of hand holding on learning what skill is appropriate and when, how to kite (yes, I’m serious on this, sadly), taking advantage of line of sight, stacking, blast finishers, focus firing, etc.

I don’t think levelling is meaningless at all; I think character development is critical; in the same vein as dying clothes or otherwise changing appearances. The best levelling games are those that allow you some control over the direction your levelling takes, e.g., Skyrim and related games.

Not all mmos have levels! Ultima Online had no levels. What they need to do is make it where skills gain based on how much you use them. They also should take out classes all together. This way you make a new character and your class is formed by what skills you use. You should be able to mix and match any skills. But only a set number of skills can be raised to maximum. Like in Ultima Online you could raise 7 skills to 100 per character. Guild Wars could have a system where all skills are available to you with a brand new char but you are weak in all of them. If you want to raise your necromancy then you would simply cast necromancy spells and the more you use the skill the more powerful you become in it unlocking more powerful spells in this area. No levels would be needed for this at all. I believe Archeage is going to be just like Ultima Online with no levels at all. The point is that I don’t like levels or mmos forcing me to pick a class because I want to create my own class based on how I play my Character.

Even a system like Skyrim is better then what we currently have!

Guildwars 1 did it best, but as others say people wanted levels so they added levels, i blame Anet for a lot of bad in GW2, but this is solely on players asking for this..

If i’d have had my way Guildwars 2 would have 20 levels like Guildwars did, it was perfect.

Character development can be handled so many ways, leveling is a poor way of doing it.

Hand Solo.9185:

Not all mmos have levels! Ultima Online had no levels.

Ultima Online was an entirely different beast. It was much closer to what EVE is today than your typical theme park MMO. Built from the ground up around providing players with the mechanics and environment to create content themselves, both in PvP and PvE, players weren’t separated based on their playstyle, forcing everyone to adapt arrange themselves around being ganked or scammed. People had jobs in that game, they provided services. Protection form thieves, crafted gear, materials and other necessities. You can’t really do that in todays gaming climate anymore with so many immature children creating a toxic environment, especially in PvP which provides an easy space grief in.
UO had skill levels that could be maxed out, which indeed made you more proficient in a certain craft, like normal levels do today. However, you had a finite amount of skill points you could spend, and there were a lot more disciplines than you had skill points for to max out, ending in you making meaningful choices what you want to specialize your character in. The closest system GW2 has in that regard are trait points.

Leveling has always been meaningless.

I’ve always argued that leveling is a cheap gimmick used to prolong boring gameplay systems. Most developers don’t even question the leveling systems. They just assume that it’s a normal part of game design and is expected from the genre. Some people even attribute leveling to RPG and argue that if it has no leveling it’s not an RPG.

Calae.1738:

Leveling has always been meaningless.

At the very least it’s an indicator of how long a person has been playing the game.
It’s also a cheap and easy way to give your average player a little “high” whenever they level up, although that feeling drastically reduces in intensity the more you experience it.
Lastly, a generation of gamers has been conditioned to expect long term stat progression through conditioning by pretty much every modern multiplayer game, be it PvE or PvP. Designing a game without an easily identifiable progress meter for players would make a large portion of potential customers feel like the game is not rewarding enough, even if other, less direct methods of progression are available.

Player Character.9467:

mjharrison.3209:

Xcom.1926:

The thing is players like progression and players want progression. Leveling is a form of progression. A lot of times what players say they want is not what they actually want.

As has been said many times in this thread, removing levels doesn’t mean removing progression; the progression comes from other places.

But then you just have a different type of level. Instead of gaining exp per action you might unlock stat/skill points per challenge but that would direct playstyle in a certain direction and get too much “QQ I wanna just do open world kill lvl 2 rabbit 3 million times and hit cap”. It all boils down to the same thing under a different name tho anyway.

You can’t please everyone.
The biggest mistakes current games do, they are trying to please everyone and in effect doesn’t please anyone.

Tiger.7506:

Gw2 is not L T W ( Log in TO win )

It is actually. Most of the ascended pieces are given by logging in… it doesn’t provide a challenge, just a grind.

Sirendor.1394:

It is actually. Most of the ascended pieces are given by logging in… it doesn’t provide a challenge, just a grind.

“Most of the ascended pieces are given by logging in…” Overstatement of the year right there. Someone likes to completely exaggerate things to try and make a point.

My girlfriend does that, too…..

ASB.4295:

Calae.1738:

Leveling has always been meaningless.

At the very least it’s an indicator of how long a person has been playing the game.
It’s also a cheap and easy way to give your average player a little “high” whenever they level up, although that feeling drastically reduces in intensity the more you experience it.
Lastly, a generation of gamers has been conditioned to expect long term stat progression through conditioning by pretty much every modern multiplayer game, be it PvE or PvP. Designing a game without an easily identifiable progress meter for players would make a large portion of potential customers feel like the game is not rewarding enough, even if other, less direct methods of progression are available.

I agree 100%.

We have many gaming stuidos to thank for the operant behavioral conditioning of an entire genre. It’s going to take some genius game design to un-brainwash these people. Then again, it may be no longer possible to do so.

Calae.1738:

ASB.4295:

Calae.1738:

Leveling has always been meaningless.

At the very least it’s an indicator of how long a person has been playing the game.
It’s also a cheap and easy way to give your average player a little “high” whenever they level up, although that feeling drastically reduces in intensity the more you experience it.
Lastly, a generation of gamers has been conditioned to expect long term stat progression through conditioning by pretty much every modern multiplayer game, be it PvE or PvP. Designing a game without an easily identifiable progress meter for players would make a large portion of potential customers feel like the game is not rewarding enough, even if other, less direct methods of progression are available.

I agree 100%.

We have many gaming stuidos to thank for the operant behavioral conditioning of an entire genre. It’s going to take some genius game design to un-brainwash these people. Then again, it may be no longer possible to do so.

You don’t unbrainwash people. You just try to get to the new people. Or old enough people, that want something diffrent (for real) and are willing to try something new.

Levels are indeed meaningless (you level, but the mobs level with you – so levels are really only an illusion of progress), but at least ANet did a fine job in dealing with their problems (leveling down, so earlier areas don’t get obsolete as with many other MMOs), so I don’t care about them.