Guild Wars 2

About being able to retaining people more. I personally started during the beta start and there was a lot of activities with the guild and thinks so I did keep attention much longer. Still even before 80 I had moments of “what shall I do?”. On alts I had that much more and so leveling alts for me was even slower. What manly kept me players was the guild. So I can understand that you might have a problem retaining other people.

Making levels more rewarding is for sure a correct way of thinking but locking out skills might not be so much because GW2 already has a very limited set of skills compared to other mmo’s. I do know what I am missing and it’s what many of my complains where about.

However that said one of the thinks you might really want to reconsider are traditional quest. They will keep you going, especially if they have some interesting story’s. Good quest chains will draw you in them and before you know it you are a few levels up and a few maps deeper in the game. There also give you more of a connection with the world because you learn the NPC’s. How I see NPC’s but there are literally that for me.. npc’s. Quest make then ‘that child who found that item that I did bring to the owner who then gave me a balloon to give to that child as thanks’. An extremely limited example but now I know at least 2 npc’s more as person and know something about them.

With the current system you do a quest and move on to the next quest and move on to the next quest. It’s way more a checklist. Same for all the PoI’s, Vista’s. Special nice places in the game don’t become nice special places you come across while leveling, they become checklist you walked to, to the get PoI for your map-completion and so leveling and discovering becomes striping of a list of task in stead of really exploring and discovering. So that well can get old very soon.

Lastly many of the drive to work towards that next level are missing. In other mmo’s even when I am not in a quest-line or ‘discover mode’ I might have seen this guy with that nice mini or mount or ‘item’. (an experience thats already missing because you can see all mini’s (icons) fro the start. If you ask me you should only see the ones you unlocked… Anyways.

Then it rurned out you can get that mini by doing a quest at or near your level so thats what you are going to do. Or get that mounts by dong something specific or you can create that fun item with a craft and need a recipe you can get. By doing all those thinks you keep playing and leveling. Mutch of those elements are non-existing in GW2 or are just not fun. 90% of the mini’s are just grinding gold (or buying them with cash) making getting them just boring in stead of a type of end-game that starts at level 1.

I have been very critical about many of these thinks since about 6 months after released and posted a lot about it on the forums and while I think you do see sort of where the problem is (no good and or fun reason to go into the world and do thing) and try to move into the correct direction (the collections are a good example here) I don’t think the dumping down and locking out levels is the best. Besides as long as the core problem is still there (well anybody who ever read my topics knows what elements knows what I see as the core problems) there will likely never be enough you can do.

There have been a lot of vague mentions of “things that are bugs” but nothing specific s to what is a bug and what is a “feature.” Could we please get an official list of what the leveling experience is meant to be like for a brand new player, verses what it’s meant to be like for a fresh alt after making a level 80?

Im intrigued at the point about it being over a years worth of testing with new players part of colins post.

Im assuming (hopefully correctly ) that this is based on the chinese servers. Question is though did they ever have our system?? or are they non the wiser to there being a “better” (imho) system??

Personally having now tried both (and I really did want to give the new system a go) i severly dislike the dumbing down and hand holding and thats being over level 40. watching the hubby on his new slot and observing whats going on I dont know if im going to bother with the other slot i bought just prior to the update.

I would think that the majority of players are well versed in MMORPG play and really dont need to be spoonfed. You should hear the fairly constant stream of profanities coming out of my husbands mouth as he started a new character yesterday to test out the new system.

In fact half the fun of the game was learning about tactics/weapons/skills/exploring. Finding out what works and what doesnt build wise made me feel more connected with the game. Dumbing down really doesnt help this.

I am hoping that the huge amounts of feedback coming from players who have now tried both systems will be listened to.

A quick and easy fix for me would be the option to toggle the babysitting mode on or off for secondary character slots – fair enough on a first character, i can kind of see what your trying to do (though as I said a lot of players are already well versed in MMORPG’s anyway so dont need it).

I certainly dont think the gating system is productive though – level 8 for tp and cant bank until level 9!!! really – because that wont be at all annoying for secondary characters!!

Great to have as an option for new players but would be better to have it as removable for those who dont want it.

I wish they would clear up ‘misconceptions’ about the Personal Story. The devs haven’t even commented on those changes.

I don’t believe to the bugs excuse, too many problems to be plausible in my opinion, nevertheless I’m glad it seems there will be some changes in the future even if I would have preferred the old system to remain unaltered, it was great for the target you wanted to cater back then, the friendly community not interested in swinging a sword a swinging it again and again and again.

“We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.”
This reminds me of the chinese chaos from months ago:
“We’re not bringing VIP system to the chinese version”
Soon after:
“Here have this Royal Title system in your chinese version” (reference in the pic)

Having almost all the new cool skins gated behind the bltc, and the ever increasing cost of the gold>gems conversion is already enough for the players to bear.

Go back to the GW1 model please. I will never get tired of asking it.
Focus on the actual gameplay, low priority to the levelling phase, build flexibility, expansions.

skepticck.9714:

The cynic in me can’t help but notice that Mr. Johanson wrote “the China VIP system” and not “any VIP system”.

You don’t need to be a cynic. At this point we have a pretty detailed history of careful speech intended to leave room for future surprises.

As ArenaNet has said, “nothing is off the table”.

@gemgenie Look at the “level” of writing and dialogues in the LS chapters – it’s for 10-year-olds. Hence, the dumbing down of the leveling system is no huge surprise to me, really.

PS Lol at Vayne. Dude, seriously, you’re one of the reasons why I keep reading the forums. The amount of laugh that your posts deliver me is just priceless, rofl.:D

butch.8136:

Stop talking about how new players experience these new systems. You don’t know, you’re biased.

Only Anet will know based on the metrics.

doesnt really matter, if the consenus is that the old system was better, for players who may only have experience the old system for a week.

point is looks like they created a system that retains a new type of player, and sacrifices another type of player, which is not an optimal solution to the problem. The system they created is inelastic and poorly adapts to the type of player.

It still remains to be seen if more new players overall will stick with the game, or if they just hit a different demographic.(gained 15%, and lost a different 15%)
then on top of that the next question is how many longer term players will they lose with a more tedious level up system, which they were known for keeping players with under the old system. By long term, i mean people who have leveled a charachter once already.

Before too much criticism/analysis is made about the new leveling system it’s really worth it to actually try it out first.

I created a new baby Mesmer after the patch and leveled it to level 16 at a lazy pace in a few hours. Overall so far it’s seemed a lot smoother and even kind of addictive to level now (without boosts of any kind). At each level getting a little fanfare, some shinies & new unlocks or words of advice does make the process seem more rewarding.

My first ever character in GW2 was a Mesmer so I remember how it was to enter knowing absolutely nothing about the game, let alone the profession. For instance I remember not fully understanding or even using my shatter skills until maybe around level 40-50. I’ll admit it’s a little weird unlocking one at a time but that does allow you to get familiar with each one in turn before moving on to the next.

I do miss the unlocking of weapon skills by using them, but I also remember how much of a pain it was to unlock all the weapon skills of an Elementalist for instance. You end up hanging out in the same attunement for what seems like an eternity just to unlock all the skills, so being able to switch attunements doesn’t even really matter at that stage. And then you have to unlock all the underwater skills….

So far overall I’ve seen an improvement (this is my 10th character) with my leveling experience. I absolutely don’t support the dumbing down of the little touches (feeding cows, watering plants etc.) as they were some of the reasons that really drew me to GW2 in the first place.

So before being too critical of the system check it out first…then be critical.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi there,

As a follow-up to Colin’s post, we want you to know that we’re working kitten fixing bugs in the New Player Experience system. We’re also using this opportunity to make a few changes to its design to take into account the feedback we’ve been reading. We’re aiming to deploy the fixes early next week.

As Colin explained (make sure to read this post and that one if you haven’t!), this is a complex, “big picture” system that has a lot of components. We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

I’ll be very interested in seeing what you do with the redesign work, it’ll be a great metric of the kind of speed you can muster there. If you can deliver a solution to the bugs and some of the issues in that time then kudos to you all.

However, once again I feel I have to say that this would have gone better if you were a bit more open about what you were planning on changing in the game. Redesign and reworking a feature after feedback will always be more expensive than soliciting that feedback first and incorporating it (where appropriate) in the work the first time.

If your first thought is “our company policy forbids that” then, well, a company’s policies should be set up to help the company, not to hinder it. Maybe it’s time for a change of policy?

Pifil.5193:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi there,

As a follow-up to Colin’s post, we want you to know that we’re working kitten fixing bugs in the New Player Experience system. We’re also using this opportunity to make a few changes to its design to take into account the feedback we’ve been reading. We’re aiming to deploy the fixes early next week.

As Colin explained (make sure to read this post and that one if you haven’t!), this is a complex, “big picture” system that has a lot of components. We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

I’ll be very interested in seeing what you do with the redesign work, it’ll be a great metric of the kind of speed you can muster there. If you can deliver a solution to the bugs and some of the issues in that time then kudos to you all.

However, once again I feel I have to say that this would have gone better if you were a bit more open about what you were planning on changing in the game. Redesign and reworking a feature after feedback will always be more expensive than soliciting that feedback first and incorporating it (where appropriate) in the work the first time.

If your first thought is “our company policy forbids that” then, well, a company’s policies should be set up to help the company, not to hinder it. Maybe it’s time for a change of policy?

This is all assuming, of course, that the current policies really are harming the company. “I don’t like the way you are doing things” and “We don’t like the way you are doing things” aren’t objective measures of harm to Anet’s bottom line.

Sometimes the short-sightedness of some of the GW2 community is really amazing. I can’t believe how anyone could say this is not something that badly needed to be done. There should have been a tutorial or similar functions in the game at launch.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users.

MatthewMedina.5419:

But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

These quotes are reminders that ArenaNet has the real numbers and statistics of the playerbase. We do not. We have our personal perceptions of the game which are certainly biased and may be very inaccurate. ArenaNet would not have wasted the money and time to make these changes if they had not seen hard numbers showing there was a problem with the new player experience that needed to be fixed.

If you are here on these forums, or following the game on some other site or Facebook or whatever, you are not an average player. You are on the most dedicated end of the spectrum. You are here reading posts and learning more about the game than most. We understand the mechanics because we research them and look them up. We read dev posts and the wiki so we know these mechanics in detail. There is a whole audience out there who don’t read forums, they don’t bother with the social media communication, they just play the game.

And these players should not be forced to do research. They should not need to look up esoteric mechanics. They should just be able login and play the game. And that means the game needs to explain itself in a clear and understandable manner.

Don’t think I’m letting ArenaNet off the hook. I said the game desperately needed a tutorial back the beta. I’m very glad to finally see some effort to explain the game mechanics to new players, but I can’t help thinking this would have been accomplished in a much smoother and more effective fashion if the devs had taken the time to consider this critical and important function back during the years when the game was being planned out. A good tutorial is NEVER a waste of time and resources.

The coolest and best game mechanics in the world are absolutely worthless if they are not clearly explained to players. Developers need to spend at least as much time making sure their mechanics are clear and understandable as they spent thinking them up. ArenaNet certainly did not do that with GW1, but the one thing I’ve always said about ArenaNet is that they will learn from their mistakes. It’s good to see they are addressing this deficiency that has always been there in GW2.

tldr: GW2 desperately needed this no matter what some might think. ArenaNet should have had a tutorial at launch but at least their fixing their mistake.

This might already been said but the people who have that much trouble with the parts of the game which are now gated, will they really play the game for long and will they spend any money on it?

It seems like development resources are put into things which won’t generate much money instead of the player which could generate money.

Really fond of this constant communication. Steph’s making posts, Colin’s making posts, I think Chris might have made a few (though I might be getting mixed up with the CDI there). Hopefully it keeps up!

gryph.8734:

Pifil.5193:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi there,

As a follow-up to Colin’s post, we want you to know that we’re working kitten fixing bugs in the New Player Experience system. We’re also using this opportunity to make a few changes to its design to take into account the feedback we’ve been reading. We’re aiming to deploy the fixes early next week.

As Colin explained (make sure to read this post and that one if you haven’t!), this is a complex, “big picture” system that has a lot of components. We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

I’ll be very interested in seeing what you do with the redesign work, it’ll be a great metric of the kind of speed you can muster there. If you can deliver a solution to the bugs and some of the issues in that time then kudos to you all.

However, once again I feel I have to say that this would have gone better if you were a bit more open about what you were planning on changing in the game. Redesign and reworking a feature after feedback will always be more expensive than soliciting that feedback first and incorporating it (where appropriate) in the work the first time.

If your first thought is “our company policy forbids that” then, well, a company’s policies should be set up to help the company, not to hinder it. Maybe it’s time for a change of policy?

This is all assuming, of course, that the current policies really are harming the company. “I don’t like the way you are doing things” and “We don’t like the way you are doing things” aren’t objective measures of harm to Anet’s bottom line.

the harm is evident in spending time and resources first designing a system, then redesigning the same system, and the public problems it has.
like traits.
and the NPE

Both of which flaws could have, and in fact were pointed out before they hit live as soon as people heard the details of the actual changes.

No matter how you slice, it doing something in a way that makes the customer demand change, and then having to redo it, is a bad use of resources.

When i do contract work sometimes, this happens and its highly annoying, its why we often try to make sure the customer knows what they are getting, and what we are agreeing to do.
The one disadvantage to trying to get feedback, is sometimes the customer doesnt know what they want, or gets weary of having to make a lot of decisions. Luckily their feedback is mostly opt in, and of course the devs have to look at the big picture, and sometimes beyond what the customer says.

Still, there current systems dont seem to be working, april and september feature patches are basically coming up as missing the target overall, and both caused more distress than fanfare.

However, i will say if they can iterate on content to the tune of 1-2 weeks on the regular, then i could see the iterative process working pretty well to make the game better overall.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Sometimes the short-sightedness of some of the GW2 community is really amazing. I can’t believe how anyone could say this is not something that badly needed to be done. There should have been a tutorial or similar functions in the game at launch.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users.

MatthewMedina.5419:

But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

These quotes are reminders that ArenaNet has the real numbers and statistics of the playerbase. We do not. We have our personal perceptions of the game which are certainly biased and may be very inaccurate. ArenaNet would not have wasted the money and time to make these changes if they had not seen hard numbers showing there was a problem with the new player experience that needed to be fixed.

If you are here on these forums, or following the game on some other site or Facebook or whatever, you are not an average player. You are on the most dedicated end of the spectrum. You are here reading posts and learning more about the game than most. We understand the mechanics because we research them and look them up. We read dev posts and the wiki so we know these mechanics in detail. There is a whole audience out there who don’t read forums, they don’t bother with the social media communication, they just play the game.

And these players should not be forced to do research. They should not need to look up esoteric mechanics. They should just be able login and play the game. And that means the game needs to explain itself in a clear and understandable manner.

Don’t think I’m letting ArenaNet off the hook. I said the game desperately needed a tutorial back the beta. I’m very glad to finally see some effort to explain the game mechanics to new players, but I can’t help thinking this would have been accomplished in a much smoother and more effective fashion if the devs had taken the time to consider this critical and important function back during the years when the game was being planned out. A good tutorial is NEVER a waste of time and resources.

The coolest and best game mechanics in the world are absolutely worthless if they are not clearly explained to players. Developers need to spend at least as much time making sure their mechanics are clear and understandable as they spent thinking them up. ArenaNet certainly did not do that with GW1, but the one thing I’ve always said about ArenaNet is that they will learn from their mistakes. It’s good to see they are addressing this deficiency that has always been there in GW2.

tldr: The game needed this no matter what some might think. ArenaNet should have
had a tutorial at launch but at least their fixing their mistake.

data isnt nearly as usefull as correctly understanding the data, and solving those problems without creating new problems.

give 10 scientists the same data, and the same problem to solve, they will come up with 6 different interpretations, and 8 different solutions, some will be better, and more astute than others.

I dont doubt they have data, i doubt they have the best overall solutions. ( based on the last few releases)
not having the perfect solution is fine, but then you have to streamline your iteration so that you re engineer and adapt quickly.

ColinJohanson.2394:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.

Notice how Colin snuck in the “China” qualifier? VIP system for the west confirmed.

Leablo.2651:

Notice how Colin snuck in the “China” qualifier? VIP system for the west confirmed.

this is why we get developers leashed by PR reps

pls no

[/quote]
(snipped for brevity)
However, i will say if they can iterate on content to the tune of 1-2 weeks on the regular, then i could see the iterative process working pretty well to make the game better overall.[/quote]

You do raise some good points. However, many of them hinge on how you define “better” or “worse.” If Anet loses 1000 players (just as a for instance) but 1200 come on board, it’s not a net loss. I’m not saying I know that’ s necessarily going to happen. It would be the other way around. If Anet loses 1000 players, they may only gain back 500. My point is that Anet has the money you spent on the account to start. In the end, the only thing they give a bloody flip about is getting as many people as possible to play whether or not that number includes you personally.

I think ANet need to see from this how they NEED to talk more with players.

If they talk with us before update this would never happen.
They should add new things not to lock old one. This wont fix any problem.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Sometimes the short-sightedness of some of the GW2 community is really amazing. I can’t believe how anyone could say this is not something that badly needed to be done. There should have been a tutorial or similar functions in the game at launch.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users.

MatthewMedina.5419:

But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

These quotes are reminders that ArenaNet has the real numbers and statistics of the playerbase. We do not. We have our personal perceptions of the game which are certainly biased and may be very inaccurate. ArenaNet would not have wasted the money and time to make these changes if they had not seen hard numbers showing there was a problem with the new player experience that needed to be fixed.

On a general note here yes ArenaNet had lots data that indicated that there was a problem, I gave back feedback about it during the beta too, about the need for tutorials for dodging, conditions and so on.

They had lots of data that identified flaws in the starter game, it doesn’t necessarily have to follow that the solution they implemented was the best solution for those flaws (or even a solution at all). Will the changes turn off more players than they retain? No-one really knows until the data can be gathered again.

There’s a lot to like about the NPE, the grating elements immediately noticeable revolve around the locked content of weapon swap, off-hand, profession abilities and skill challenges.

Makes no sense to me that I can use a Greatsword and a Mace and Shield at level 7, BUT I can’t actively swap from one set to another…I have manually go in my inventory and equip the weapons until level 15… wtf?

The TRAITS being tied to stuff I usually don’t do naturally on my characters is the other side of the problem. If ANET had introduced new “elite” Traits into a system of content challenges, that would have been awesome. But walling off core traits behind paywalls (Skill Points/Gold) and ill-suited challenges undermines the freedom of a player to revel in their character’s progression.

@Colin accept the fact u didn’t expect the players to hate the gate lvl crap u placed and now u gona tweek it and make it less lvl for this and that its OK to sey we kittened up instead of saying bugs and numbers where mistake

The SOE developers had done focus group testing for the CU/NGE in SWG too. And look how that ended up. Metrics do not tell the whole of the story, statistics can be used to explain EVERYTHING your way, and focus groups often only tell you what you want to hear.

Broom.2561:

The SOE developers had done focus group testing for the CU/NGE in SWG too. And look how that ended up. Metrics do not tell the whole of the story, statistics can be used to explain EVERYTHING your way, and focus groups often only tell you what you want to hear.

I’m willing to concede that there is still room for GW2 to flame out spectacularly. I don’t think it’s happpened yet, and I don’t think it’s a fait accompli. Devs can never be 100% sure how changes will go live until they do go live. I am reserving judgement for the moment.

gryph.8734:

Broom.2561:

The SOE developers had done focus group testing for the CU/NGE in SWG too. And look how that ended up. Metrics do not tell the whole of the story, statistics can be used to explain EVERYTHING your way, and focus groups often only tell you what you want to hear.

I’m willing to concede that there is still room for GW2 to flame out spectacularly. I don’t think it’s happpened yet, and I don’t think it’s a fait accompli. Devs can never be 100% sure how changes will go live until they do go live. I am reserving judgement for the moment.

No, I don’t think they’ve quite reached that point yet either. But it’s a slippery slope, and I for one think the NPE was not the right way to go… it would have driven me out as a new player, and I’m pretty sure I can say the same for the rest of my guildmates.

I have betatested childrens’ games (under age 12), and what they’ve implemented now strongly reminds me of those. A cookie cutter, safe experience in stead of the wow-this-is-cool reaction we had when we started exploring this game in April beta.

Wasbunny.6531:

Before too much criticism/analysis is made about the new leveling system it’s really worth it to actually try it out first.

I created a new baby Mesmer after the patch and leveled it to level 16 at a lazy pace in a few hours. Overall so far it’s seemed a lot smoother and even kind of addictive to level now (without boosts of any kind). At each level getting a little fanfare, some shinies & new unlocks or words of advice does make the process seem more rewarding.

My first ever character in GW2 was a Mesmer so I remember how it was to enter knowing absolutely nothing about the game, let alone the profession. For instance I remember not fully understanding or even using my shatter skills until maybe around level 40-50. I’ll admit it’s a little weird unlocking one at a time but that does allow you to get familiar with each one in turn before moving on to the next.

I do miss the unlocking of weapon skills by using them, but I also remember how much of a pain it was to unlock all the weapon skills of an Elementalist for instance. You end up hanging out in the same attunement for what seems like an eternity just to unlock all the skills, so being able to switch attunements doesn’t even really matter at that stage. And then you have to unlock all the underwater skills….

So far overall I’ve seen an improvement (this is my 10th character) with my leveling experience. I absolutely don’t support the dumbing down of the little touches (feeding cows, watering plants etc.) as they were some of the reasons that really drew me to GW2 in the first place.

So before being too critical of the system check it out first…then be critical.

This is generally how I think about the changes as well.

Weapon related locks seem like jarring bumps in the road of a fairly smooth progression. Something is off with not being able to swap weapons when you gain the ability for off-hands. Additionally, the access to Profession Skills is a kinda a big deal for some Professions; it might bear some fine-tuning.

My bigger concern is how Traits have been removed from the normal leveling process.

I think the core Traits should be put back as they were and a new line of “Elite” Traits can be seeded out into the game world tied to various types of challenges..

Throwing the whole lot into the content gated system was a HUGE mistake which makes the NPE even more annoying as a whole.

a terrible lvlng systwem, window character disgusting, you have heard about the bookmarks as in the browser? You have created a delightful world, and your designers destroy it, let extract resources on all locations regardless of the level, group dungeons are passed players in the invisibility, despite the fact that of all the statistics set used only a set of berserk, why everyone else? system of things terrible, make a production of random as in Diablo and the whole collection process resources for the legendary things in a more sparing collection of improvements for all sorts of the unique things drop, during the study of the world, and many oer things, sry for my english…

ColinJohanson.2394:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.

The question was, is NA/EU getting a VIP system in the future?

And it seems i wasn’t the only one noticing this…

.

Lishtenbird.2814:

…

Are you also absolutely not bringing the NA/EU VIP system to NA/EU?

skepticck.9714:

…

The cynic in me can’t help but notice that Mr. Johanson wrote “the China VIP system” and not “any VIP system”.

AlexPort.9204:

…

hi colin!
just to be clear, becuase it came up in our discussion: you’re not bringing the chinese VIP to NA/EU. but will you make instead a new one just for NA/EU?

thx in advance for your answer!

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi there,

As a follow-up to Colin’s post, we want you to know that we’re working kitten fixing bugs in the New Player Experience system. We’re also using this opportunity to make a few changes to its design to take into account the feedback we’ve been reading. We’re aiming to deploy the fixes early next week.

As Colin explained (make sure to read this post and that one if you haven’t!), this is a complex, “big picture” system that has a lot of components. We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

Can you provide us FPS update asap? I can’t wait till next week Thanks.

Shrug – I’m loving these changes playing through as a new warrior. The game seems clearer and there is a lot less overwhelm as a new player.

Only thing that I would like is a toggle for map completion as the direction arrow wouldnt suggest leaving a map until its complete.

Still a lot of things that could be clarified but overall IMHO this is the best

ColinJohanson.2394:

Testing was done predominantly in the west focused on players who played guild wars 2 today, people who played gw2 at launch and left, people who heavily play other MMORPG’s, and people who heavily play RPG’s. We did all of this testing ourselves in the west, I’ll just kill right now that this is a system developed for China. It’s a system developed for the global game, period, because retaining new users at early levels wasn’t just a china problem we needed to solve, it’s a problem in the west too.

God who the heck are those players?

I just want all the goodies/tools/options from the get go.

I just want to drop a quick “thanks” to the devs posting in this thread. Having some insight into the process makes things a lot more palatable, giving us a sense that things are being done for a reason, and not just “because” by some faceless entity.

xerties.7389:

Shrug – I’m loving these changes playing through as a new warrior. The game seems clearer and there is a lot less overwhelm as a new player.

Only thing that I would like is a toggle for map completion as the direction arrow wouldn’t suggest leaving a map until its complete.

Still a lot of things that could be clarified but overall IMHO this is the best

This is an excellent idea! Would love this as an option.

xerties.7389:

Shrug – I’m loving these changes playing through as a new warrior. The game seems clearer and there is a lot less overwhelm as a new player.

Only thing that I would like is a toggle for map completion as the direction arrow wouldnt suggest leaving a map until its complete.

Still a lot of things that could be clarified but overall IMHO this is the best

Pretty sure that was how the arrow was supposed to work.

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

There’s a key group here that everyone’s ignoring that are going to have more problems with this patch than most: Players with lots of mid-level characters getting their foot in the door. While this doesn’t apply to me directly, a lot of my friends play this way and I’m worried for them. There’s a lot of level 20-some characters out there who have already pushed past the initial 15-level area back when it wasn’t such a breeze, and now have to wait even longer for systems that, before, they were just a few levels away from unlocking. That newly minted Level 30 who was saving up skill points for the first elite skill unlock is going to be pretty upset when they log in and have to get another 10 levels first.

Yeah, it’s a small problem relative to the total player base, but that’s not very much comfort to the people left high and dry in the middle of the level system.

Fwiw, I played for about 2 hours yesterday on a level 27 that I had not touched since midsummer. I still had 3 utility skills (not sure if a bug) but was unable to change the #9 skill directly. Given that one of the slots was a speed signet, even if I had been down a slot, it would have meant only that I was slower out of combat. Otherwise, the character played substantially the same as before.

Yes, I have to reach L30 to finish chapter 3 of the personal story, but I was glad to see that my progress was not lost, which I halfway expected. The delay in getting the elite skill is not that big of a deal to me. Elite skills in GW2 have too little effect with too long of a CD for them to be the centerpiece of play.

After the systems get patched next week, I’ll see how the real low levels feel to play, but I don’t believe that the NPE changes affected the 20 somethings nearly as much as the trait changes did. Ommv.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- There is misinformation: Numerous systems that show up in the level up guide that teaches you about things in the game when you gain levels are not locked out, the system simply tells you they exist in the game to help give you a better list of things you can do. Just because it’s included in the level up guide, doesn’t mean it’s actually locked out. You can dodge from level one, jumping puzzle from level one, etc. There also appear to be a lot of folks chiming in who haven’t actually played with any of the system, and are making claims that aren’t remotely true.

Can you clarify what systems are ‘faux-locked’ as it were? Because so far, everything I’ve seen is hard-level locked until a certain level is reached with the exception of Vistas, POIs, Gathering Node markers and dying.

I shall also drop a quick thanks to the devs. I rarely ever post on the offical forums but I want to say that this is the type of dev communication that we desperately need more of. And with more I don’t mean just more often. More openness about why changes was made will allow us to, if not agree with, at least understand your point of view.

That being said I am still severely disappointed with this feature pack, I dislike the majority of the new features and couldn’t give a kitten about the rest of them personally. I think you are taking the game in a bad direction both for yourself and your long time fans, where you seem to put more emphasize on cheap skinner box psychology to retain players rather then focusing on what’s actually fun for your current players.

To a certain degree I can understand this, retaining new players is important for your buisness but like many others I also feel like after 2 years if the veteran players are not a priority for you guys then perhaps I will move on. This feature pack shows you’re not really interested in keeping me as a player, but would rather churn me out and get fresh meat for the grinder. If this patch had come a year ago it could have been understandable, but focusing on brand new players in a 2 year old game where there has been little real end game content ever added to the game just goes to show how much interest you guys actually have in retaining those players who stuck with you for so long already. This makes me sad. Ask yourselfs, what was the last real endgame PvE content you added to the game? Dungeons are a joke for experienced players, even fractals lvl 49 are easy (And still has bad rewards for the effort spent on them). Where is the truly challenging end game content for your hardcore players? There is none. Never was, and in 2 years you haven’t thought to add any. But for new players you completely revamp the leveling system at this point in the games life span.

To quote a favorite tv-show of mine. “Because our friendship is fundamentally asymmetrical. I clearly like you more than you like me.”

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We understand that this is an important topic for the community and appreciate that players have been talking about it. We’ve been triaging bug reports, developing fixes for them and discussing what design changes we will bring to you next week. We’ll continue to both work on the next updates and read the feedback from the community on this topic!

Thank you

The problem isn’t bugs, we’ve been dealing with those since beta (some have been present since release).

The problem is assuming players are morons, and making the game experience a chore. Stop making gameplay changes that annoy people (GATING IS BAD) and stop assuming the majority of players are two steps away from a lobotomy, and the rest will sort itself out.

Kaleban.9834:

and stop assuming the majority of players are two steps away from a lobotomy, and the rest will sort itself out.

I hate to break it to you but . . . most everyone is two steps away from a lobotomy or procedure like it. One of those steps is serious head injury, which isn’t as uncommon as you think.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

There’s a key group here that everyone’s ignoring that are going to have more problems with this patch than most: Players with lots of mid-level characters getting their foot in the door. While this doesn’t apply to me directly, a lot of my friends play this way and I’m worried for them. There’s a lot of level 20-some characters out there who have already pushed past the initial 15-level area back when it wasn’t such a breeze, and now have to wait even longer for systems that, before, they were just a few levels away from unlocking. That newly minted Level 30 who was saving up skill points for the first elite skill unlock is going to be pretty upset when they log in and have to get another 10 levels first.

Yeah, it’s a small problem relative to the total player base, but that’s not very much comfort to the people left high and dry in the middle of the level system.

Fwiw, I played for about 2 hours yesterday on a level 27 that I had not touched since midsummer. I still had 3 utility skills (not sure if a bug) but was unable to change the #9 skill directly. Given that one of the slots was a speed signet, even if I had been down a slot, it would have meant only that I was slower out of combat. Otherwise, the character played substantially the same as before.

Yes, I have to reach L30 to finish chapter 3 of the personal story, but I was glad to see that my progress was not lost, which I halfway expected. The delay in getting the elite skill is not that big of a deal to me. Elite skills in GW2 have too little effect with too long of a CD for them to be the centerpiece of play.

After the systems get patched next week, I’ll see how the real low levels feel to play, but I don’t believe that the NPE changes affected the 20 somethings nearly as much as the trait changes did. Ommv.

you were bugged, you were supposed to only have 2 utilities, the second utility is unlocked at level 24. the last at 35. at level 21 on my mesmer, i was missing f3 and f4. you also unlock being able to do skill points at 13, and get skill points in big sums, you get 8, at level 20. this means you probably as an old player have 10-15 more skill points (which at this points translates into utility options) available at level 27 than your average player would have.

the traits is a big effect as well, but the unlocks and setbacks are also noticeable. Note that both of these changes were unified in china, the real point was to gate what we used to have behind leveling, so as to create a greater desire to level, and a feeling of not being complete, so that new players feel they should continue.

I understand the need, but there are better ways to do this, they may have been more costly, but they would improve the game for all players, and not mess up the game for others in the process.

MatthewMedina.5419:

I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

And in doing so you’ve effectively lobotomized any new alts made by veteran players, players who you’d already been retaining. I don’t understand how this system was greenlit to apply to veteran player accounts in the way that it was. If I wanted to roll an alt right now I’d be itching to get my gear/skills set up the way I know they can be, but I’d be tethered to the NPE like a toddler leashed by a doting parent. I know what the game is about, where I can go, what I can do, how I can build, what traits I want. Why did you lock it all away from me as though you decided I was too stupid to use a game I’ve been playing since Headstart?

I used to love this game, you know. I have 8 80’s and I used to play every day. But every step this game takes toward thinking its players need serious hand-holding, the further away I push myself from it.

This latest handhold rubbish has made me sure that I wont ever bother logging in again.A dumbing down of the game that serves no purpose.

Something that appears to have been overlooked is that, not every character should be a level 80. We require low levels as a supply chain for goods. Right now, I have old low levels which have been extremely useful. This patch froze all the utility skills as I cannot select a utility skill that I unlocked long ago. What kind of treatment to existing players is that???? Existing characters should not have been affected at all by this patch.

If anyone asked, I would have suggested unlocking a characters capacity sooner would have been better, not later. Removing low levels from WvW is in my mind a horrible choice. Heck, I leveled several of my characters fully in WvW. In the day’s before EotM and champ trains. I learned to play by doing.

Swoo.5079:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Testing was done predominantly in the west focused on players who played guild wars 2 today, people who played gw2 at launch and left, people who heavily play other MMORPG’s, and people who heavily play RPG’s. We did all of this testing ourselves in the west, I’ll just kill right now that this is a system developed for China. It’s a system developed for the global game, period, because retaining new users at early levels wasn’t just a china problem we needed to solve, it’s a problem in the west too.

God who the heck are those players?

I just want all the goodies/tools/options from the get go.

Well I am for a start – that describes me exactly and from my point of view the patch has been fantastic

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We want it to benefit all players and improve your game experience overall.

Thanks!

If you truly want to benefit players and improve the game experience then add the best features of GW1 and the defining features of your flagship title: Guild halls and GvG.

ColinJohanson.2394:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.

Well, at least there is this. I’m very relieved to hear we will not be getting this. I guess for the rest, I’ll wait and see. I don’t like NPE, but after your post I do better understand why you did it. Hopefully, once the bugs are cleared veteran players will at least be free of most (if not all) of these unlocks/gating for our alts.

Um, but please do address the mini culling issue soon. That’s another huge problem, especially for those of us who used real money and bought minis from the shop.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Wanted to pop by and give another update on where we stand, as well as to help provide some information on some of the more common misconceptions we’ve seen floating around as well:

- There are bugs! We’ve seen the content direction system (the little arrow) pointing people at super high level maps when it shouldn’t, some systems/features not unlocking as intended for all characters on your account once your first learns them, some systems level gated that aren’t intended to be, balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, our team is working to figure out what happened here and fix these as quickly as possible.

- There is misinformation: Numerous systems that show up in the level up guide that teaches you about things in the game when you gain levels are not locked out, the system simply tells you they exist in the game to help give you a better list of things you can do. Just because it’s included in the level up guide, doesn’t mean it’s actually locked out. You can dodge from level one, jumping puzzle from level one, etc. There also appear to be a lot of folks chiming in who haven’t actually played with any of the system, and are making claims that aren’t remotely true.

- There are some things happening at the wrong levels. Things like utility skills and elites are intended to come at approx. the same time they used to in actual game time, we sped up leveling for levels 1-15 and had them slide back in levels a bit to offset that pacing, they are not currently where we want them to be in the level up system. This was an oversight, and will absolutely be fixed.

- Not all of these changes were made as ways to teach the game, some of them are to provide a better sense of pacing, reward and progression. Early on we want to give a sense that you’re rapidly gaining new abilities, rewards, and learning new things as you level up. We added the level up reward messages, and the actual rewards themselves, and took abilities you’d usually use around that point in total game hours and presented them as unlocks (or things we teach that are already unlocked) to help give a better sense of pacing and progression.

With the addition of the new rewards, messaging, and level up screen to make leveling more exciting: we also wanted to make sure you had that feeling of excitement more often early on in the game, and presented new learning on a more regular cadence. So we greatly sped up leveling from levels 1-15. Many of the things unlocked at later levels are earned at about the same time period you used to start using them in the old system in actual real game time, we just staggered them out across the levels since we sped up leveling to make the game feel more rewarding early on.

- In general, this system is intended to be not only better for new players, but our hope is by the time it’s all in place you’ll find via the better rewards from levels 1-80 via the level up guide, the better rewards from personal story, the faster leveling from 1-15, and the ability to toggle the content direction system to help you with map complete will make this a better for experienced players as well.

- Over a years worth of testing with new players found we were absolutely able to keep them both more engaged, and more likely to return to keep playing Gw2 as a result of the intended system. That is at the end of the day, a win for all of us since all of you need more people to play with! However: if we find in the live environment that isn’t true and we’re not retaining new users better, we’ll absolutely both share that information with you, and continue to iterate to make it better. We keep very real time metrics of player retention for new users, and we’ll know very quickly how effective the work we’ve done is. I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users. Before we do some of the other things we want to do with Gw2, we had to fix this, period.

- Finally, I want to add that a few things (hello traits!) are things that can be improved for players who make multiple alts, we’re aware of this, and though company policy prevents us from discussing what’s in development: I can say we know Gw2 can be an even better game for people who love making alts in the long run, more info: when it’s ready™.

I love when I read a post like this, assuaged a few big concerns for me.

Just let people put 2 lvl 20 scrolls in the forge, some stones or coins or a goat and out comes a lvl 40 scroll.

New players can’t get it and it solves the whole issue

(or 1 scroll and make it lvl 500 craft, whatever)