Guild Wars 2

Let me first quickly take the opportunity to say that I think most of this update is marvelous. The Trading Post is so much more well-oiled now and I found it genuinely enjoyable to use.
The addition of miniatures to the wardrobe was, at least in theory, great. I often got annoyed with myself for never remembering to lay mine out. I haven’t seen to what extent the latest patch has fixed the mini-hiding issue (considering megaservers).
The update to the crafting UI has made such a difference. Just last night I tackled the last 80-odd levels of Chef to hit 400, and I was surprised by how much of a difference nesting recipes made. Kudos!

The Personal Story is rather a shambles, though, and the NPE is at best unrefined. I can respect the intentions of the NPE, but I think it’s gone a little too far – admittedly I can’t look from the perspective of a new player, I never really had that viewpoint even when I was new. Still, I’ve thought calmly and rationally about it, and I believe it can fit with some adjustments.
This is based on having leveled a new character to 10 in the new system, and on reading forum posts (but taking everything with a grain of salt – way too much rumour and hyperbole going around…).

This is just my opinion, one of many, but the changes that I believe need to happen, roughly in order of importance, are:

• Undo the changes to the end of the Personal Story’s narrative. I considered the story to be the strong point of the Guild Wars series, but cutting parts out and switching others around in my opinions shows rather a disregard for that, and leaves the end of the Personal Story, well, a tangled mess. So, most important adjustment right there!
• Spread out the Personal Story a little so that we can access it a bit earlier, perhaps around level 5, and give back the option of accessing it early. Player choice and diversity of activities is what makes the game great. More on this below.
• Make profession mechanics available sooner. Seriously, some (if not all!) of those are kitten important!
• Put the bundle items and underwater combat back into the early game. I just don’t see the sense in removing them when they were delivered in an intuitive way which was just fine for teaching new players about them, and they made renown hearts much more interesting.
• Find some system which leaves the first three weapon skills accessible during the tutorial. They’re important to give new players a sense of agency.

As I say, I’ve been thinking long and hard about it, and I think the Personal Story issue (second bullet) is at the heart of why so many players consider the new leveling experience boring. It still takes about an hour to reach level 10, and until then you only have one real option to play.
I also believe that the Personal Story is a large part of what hooks new players, so it would help player retention to have it available to them quickly. Gating it for about 5 levels would be fine, in my opinion – that’s roughly equivalent to how you used to have to do a renown heart first. It gives the player a chance to understand that the Personal Story isn’t the only mechanic of the game. I just think that level 10 is too late.
As for making it accessible when the player is under-leveled, I don’t think this would impact the experience much for new players as long as the content guide didn’t point them to it. A lot of older players, myself included, like to try to get through the story early as a challenge, and it can be especially useful to offset the advantage of having a large group of friends. Like I said above, player choice is a very big part of this game, which is why I think this option needs to return.

I hope you will take this into consideration, ArenaNet. I fear my words carry little weight, as I have no real game design experience, but after giving it a lot of thought this seems to me the best way to adapt the current system.

I can see what you’re saying OP, and I agree with quite a bit of it. What I can’t agree with is the personal story issue.

Let’s look at the whole picture. We both agree the personal story is important to the game. However, now the personal story doesn’t start till level 10, at which point a new character can go through the entire story arc all at once. And leveling to ten is actually pretty fast.

In the old system, people were doing the level 3 story, and maybe level 4 and suddenly they were unleveled. Because the personal story is the only quest actually marked, they felt that the game was somehow broken, that they weren’t leveling fast enough. This isn’t a complaint I’ve seen once or twice, I’ve seen it quite frequently on the player helping player menu.

If a new player doesn’t see the personal story, they won’t know if it’s there or not, and by the time they’re a couple of hours into the game it starts. By then they have an idea of how to play, but they can play an entire story arc. I think that makes the personal story more memorable and feel more contiguous.

Just my opinion of course, but I’ve always felt the story was too disjointed. It was too hard to remember characters from one story to the next and many didn’t make an impact, because you know, you have to stop and start and stop and start, doing a bunch of other stuff in the middle.

I really do believe this is much better for new players.

I agree with Vayne on this with regards to the PS. I have done it 8 times now on 8 chars right through to the end. On my first char I got sick of the stopping and starting because of having to level up to be able to do the quests at the right level.

I got so fed up with it I said to myself “forget this I will wait until level 80”. And that is what I did, I just completed the world map and then went back to it. On every other alt (7 of them) I did the exact same thing, that is complete the world before even starting the PS because it avoided that stopping/starting and it was great for immersion/story telling.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am also a key farmer now and then when bored so I can see where you are coming from if you farm keys. To this I would offer a better solution. Ask Anet to bring in a mini quest or something that could replace the key farms which gives a similar reward at the end. I would be very much for something like that.

I can see what you’re saying there, Vayne, and I have thought about it before. I’m not suggesting ArenaNet go back to the old pacing for the story, but if each instance within a chapter were just one level apart – perhaps some on the same level – I think it would still be possible to do the whole chapter in one go, and one would be able to access it that little bit sooner.

I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have new players unaware of the personal story in the first hour or two. It’s one of the most powerful assets for getting a player invested in the game, and for making them want to keep going. And yes, level 10 is a lot faster to reach now, but my personal experience was that it was still too long to have only one gameplay option open.

AlexisToran.5719:

I can see what you’re saying there, Vayne, and I have thought about it before. I’m not suggesting ArenaNet go back to the old pacing for the story, but if each instance within a chapter were just one level apart – perhaps some on the same level – I think it would still be possible to do the whole chapter in one go, and one would be able to access it that little bit sooner.

I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have new players unaware of the personal story in the first hour or two. It’s one of the most powerful assets for getting a player invested in the game, and for making them want to keep going. And yes, level 10 is a lot faster to reach now, but my personal experience was that it was still too long to have only one gameplay option open.

First of all, the personal story is not probably a selling point for a good number of people, maybe even most. I don’t have numbers, so I can’t say. But there are many people who don’t like the personal story at all, don’t do it, find it boring. So I don’t think bringing it in two hours into a game is all that bad.

More to the point, I know of no one that plays MMOs that doesn’t expect things to unlock as you level. I mean the first dungeon doesn’t unlock till level 30 and at least some people play MMOs for dungeons. Should we have the first dungeon at level 3.

There’s a lot going on when you start this game for the first time. And Anet wants the attention focused events, more than the personal story, I think. Because events are always there and were meant to be the meat of the game.

they should just use the old ps style, but get rid of the level requirement and just put the level as a recommendation instead.

if i can do a lvl 10 ps when i am lvl 8, why not?

Was there ever an explanation given for supposedly chopping out an entire section of the personal story?

I agree with you OP. The system – whilst it has it’s good points, it also has it’s flaws, but with some adjustment. By making the new leveling system more palatable (giving more weapon skills early on), they can make the game as a whole more enjoyable.

The key word Anet is looking for is balance.

CalamityO.2890:

I agree with you OP. The system – whilst it has it’s good points, it also has it’s flaws, but with some adjustment. By making the new leveling system more palatable (giving more weapon skills early on), they can make the game as a whole more enjoyable.

The key word Anet is looking for is balance.

Great word…balance. Couldn’t agree more.

Vayne.8563:

AlexisToran.5719:

I can see what you’re saying there, Vayne, and I have thought about it before. I’m not suggesting ArenaNet go back to the old pacing for the story, but if each instance within a chapter were just one level apart – perhaps some on the same level – I think it would still be possible to do the whole chapter in one go, and one would be able to access it that little bit sooner.

I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have new players unaware of the personal story in the first hour or two. It’s one of the most powerful assets for getting a player invested in the game, and for making them want to keep going. And yes, level 10 is a lot faster to reach now, but my personal experience was that it was still too long to have only one gameplay option open.

First of all, the personal story is not probably a selling point for a good number of people, maybe even most. I don’t have numbers, so I can’t say. But there are many people who don’t like the personal story at all, don’t do it, find it boring. So I don’t think bringing it in two hours into a game is all that bad.

More to the point, I know of no one that plays MMOs that doesn’t expect things to unlock as you level. I mean the first dungeon doesn’t unlock till level 30 and at least some people play MMOs for dungeons. Should we have the first dungeon at level 3.

There’s a lot going on when you start this game for the first time. And Anet wants the attention focused events, more than the personal story, I think. Because events are always there and were meant to be the meat of the game.

It’s not for everyone, nothing really can be, but for some it’s the driving aspect of the game. People who are there for the story might stop playing if they don’t see it for two hours.

The point is to give players options. By the time you’re level 5 you’ve probably done at least two renown hearts. You’ve seen that side of what the game has to offer, you should be allowed to try out the personal story.

The game shouldn’t make anything mandatory, and if the player decides that the personal story isn’t interesting to them, they’re free to go back to exploration. There’s even an option to exclude personal story from content direction. But the game ought to make it clear early on that they have options.

It’s not for everyone, nothing really can be, but for some it’s the driving aspect of the game. People who are there for the story might stop playing if they don’t see it for two hours.

The point is to give players options. By the time you’re level 5 you’ve probably done at least two renown hearts. You’ve seen that side of what the game has to offer, you should be allowed to try out the personal story.

The game shouldn’t make anything mandatory, and if the player decides that the personal story isn’t interesting to them, they’re free to go back to exploration. There’s even an option to exclude personal story from content direction. But the game ought to make it clear early on that they have options.

-Raises hands

I’m that one person who cares about the story experience apparently. I am leveling a new character because I just enjoy re-rolling, well I did. Here’s the problem with story in the first 10 levels its not so apparent, but as you get a higher level there are even longer gaps between “Story Sessions” then there ever was before. When I complete a story arc and still have 7 levels of grinding before I can see what happens next it turns the leveling experience into more of a chore then it ever was for story driven people. Before wasn’t perfect, but it was far superior in that you had a constant mixture of things going on between story leveling and doing events in the immediate vicinity, (felt more guided) and was never more than a level or two from the next part of the story.

I shouldn’t even attempt to touch how much I hate having the very few skills available locked behind level gates. The first several levels you wind up using the same 1 skill or two, and it doesn’t allow you to quickly to jump in as a new player and experiment with several classes before committing for any real length of time. This is detrimental to new people who aren’t sure which class will match their play style as their going to feel more obligated to play through with a class that might not be the best suited to their play style.

What this new experience really does is exaggerate the biggest problem in this game, it’s lack of overall content. Stretching skills across as many levels as possible, and story chapters when there’s so little to begin with. It makes the game seem very disjointed and lackluster.

I think finding the right balance will take a bit of work but ANet needs to balance how the story is delivered for the new players and the vets, rolling new characters.

Balance, so much balance.

I do think that a lot of the playerbase has overreacted to the changes though. The only sensible way to test if your changes are good or not, is to run them live and see what people think of them. So long as ANet listens to player input and takes it on board for changes, then it’s cool.