Guild Wars 2

Rogue.7856:

Poll: http://strawpoll.me/2555336/r
Out of 1500 Players 82% don’t agree with the new level system with a whopping 41% hating the new system, while only 8% actually like it… Over 5x as many people outright hate the system than actually like it.

I HATE that people keep bringing up this Straw Poll! It’s ridiculous!!

You had 1500 people participate in this poll. Do you actually have any idea how many people that is? I’ll tell you. It’s less than 1% of 1% of the estimated number of purchasers/players of Guild Wars 2 worldwide.

This is a LUDICROUSLY SMALL amount of people that have participated in this poll. Not only that, but most likely the majority of the people that were conscripted into participating in this poll were already biased against it — I.E., the poll was only advertised in forums and threads where people were already complaining about the issues.

This poll is nothing but propaganda. It’s highly stilted in the favor of the people that designed the poll, with people only wanting it as “proof” over something they “already know” about the game.

Please stop using this as a discussion point. There is no merit to this poll, it doesn’t provide anything of value, as it’s highly circumstantial to begin with.

“Investigating issues that prevent players from retaining some skills (heal, utility, and elite) that they had previously unlocked”

Well that’s incredibly disappointing. That was the only way to get me to level a new character.

I really hope you guys rethink the leveling experience. Level 40 for all skills is a bit much. I mean honestly, I leveled an elementalist and I didn’t get Earth Attunement until .. level 24 I think?

I don’t know what else to say.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- 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.

Hope I an’t causing problems. Will we be seeing change to the levels utilities and elites are unlocked. Or the decision is final to keep the way it is now.

I understand design decision keeps changing in a games life cycle. So wonder if the developer changed their decision and just keep the way things is now.

Now about how I would fix the problems I’ve listed earlier:

Add

• An optional tutorial, accessible from the character select screen, which treats:
  • Weapon skills, healing skill, utility skills, elite skills
  • Dodge mechanic
  • Downed mechanic and downed skills
  • Class mechanics
  • Objectives on maps (Renown Hearts, Events, Vistas, Skillpoint challenges, Diving Goggles, POIs and stuff)
  • Gathering and traiding
• Lots and lots of tooltips for all things listed above

Keep

• Rewards for leveling
• New renown hearts
• Faster leveling process (I personally don’t like that but many do)

Remove

• Bundled story steps
• Everything that was accessible before and got locked with the NPE changes

Chris Whiteside.6102:

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Chris

Chris, I feel the need to point out one thing here. The person you replied to, he wasn’t saying we want to dig in when things are still in design phase.

A major point of the post was, “If you had let us in on the extent of the changes just a week before they were implemented (when the patch went live), you could have gotten a lot of the feedback you have now, but two weeks earlier”.

I think that’s a major point there. By that point in time, nothing would (or at least should) have been a “work in progress”. It would have been “ready to deploy”. Just giving us that small look into something that “we’re preparing to push out in just a few days” would have helped substantially for both your side, and for ours.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ohoni.6057:

Note we want to make the fixes and then have a focused discussion about the system (Probably here)

We really want to hear what you think once the system/content is functioning as designed.

Chris

Again, waiting until it’s “functioning as designed” before having the discussion about it just pushes back the point where solutions can be reached. If you’d have discussed these changes with us months ago we could have hashed them out before the patch, and we wouldn’t be in this mess. Let’s say it takes another week to get things “functioning as designed,” and then we spend another couple weeks debating the changes, that’s weeks wasted when you could be working on fixing them now.

You guys already know which elements of the current game are bugs and which are features, so instead of waiting until the bugs have been removed, why not just TELL use which elements are not intended and which are, and we can discuss the issue from there?

This is the core about what we mean when we say we want communication. We don’t want to wait until things are implemented and then discuss them, we want in on the design process BEFORE you waste the time and effort implementing systems that we never wanted in the first place. Think of how many manhours you guys wasted working on these NGE systems that are dead on arrival with the players! How many other great systems could those developers have been working on instead in that time?

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Chris

P.S: If you want to discuss potential future features and systems then you are welcome to partake in the CDI.

Will there be any chance that the team will be looking into replacing using Gold for the purchase of traits (with the use of Karma) from the original Feature Patch? I feel that this is a concern (for many who still experience what many have dubbed the “unlucky account” problem) is part of the forum outrage over the alt system for veterans.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Chris

Chris, I feel the need to point out one thing here. The person you replied to, he wasn’t saying we want to dig in when things are still in design phase.

A major point of the post was, “If you had let us in on the extent of the changes just a week before they were implemented, you could have gotten a lot of the feedback you have now, but two weeks earlier”.

I think that’s a major point there. By that point in time, nothing would (or at least should) have been a “work in progress”. It would have been “ready to deploy”. Just giving us that small look into something that “we’re preparing to push out in just a few days” would have helped substantially for both your side, and for ours.

Ah ok well I didn’t get that sorry Ohoni and thanks Shadow. Let me have a think and I will give you both my opinion. As i am sure you are aware this idea comes with a similar set of issues to.

Chris

Well yes, of course. Anything that is disclosed from the development side is going to have its share of risks. But, I think if it’s planned out and done well, even having something like a “Pre-patch Notes Thread” a day or two before big patches land could help generate feedback.

Granted, I know something like this wouldn’t be useful for every circumstance, but with something like the 9/9 patch, I think it would have been extremely beneficial for word of a lot of the changes to have gotten out before we actually saw them go live.

The new leveling system is a joke, all that needed to happen was to add a little more tutorial to tell people what was going on….that was it.

“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again….Heyyyy I swung it again”

This is now the weapon skills unlock system for the NPE.

“In most games…you go out and have really fun tasks occasionally”

This is now the entire early leveling experience, Press F on everything, whack mobs, with an occasional interesting event.

“and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff”

This is now the entire level 1-80 experience. 1-40 you will never have your entire skill set unlocked, 40-80 you can never actually use a Grandmaster trait until you have finished the leveling curve…

I don’t know about you, but the NPE and trait changes seem like a giant slap in the face, not allowing players to play how they want and artificially extend the leveling experience to feel different.

I would go as far to say that the game is being converted into something designed for people who have never played a game before. I understand that some people don’t have a ton of time, or just aren’t that good at some games, but this is not how you teach people things. You cannot try and teach a person to draw, by never giving them a pencil. Just as much as players will not learn to play, if they aren’t given the tools and skills.

Like playing monopoly, and having dice rolling unlocked 30 minutes in, then unlocked the ability to collect 200 by passing Go! at 1 hour, having the ability to buy/trade unlocked 2 hours in.

MuteTM.6428:

Gaile, Chris,

Please allow us to continue with the personal story if we chose to instead of level locking it.

I play the game with friends, and the personal story, to put it bluntly, is what keeps us occupied. When we’re a lower level than is recommended, it simply becomes a fun challenge, and we like that! To force us to be a specific level, while I can see the point of for cohesion, ruins the do what you want feel of the game, and also turns it into a grind for us, as the personal story is what we play the game for!

Thanks for the time.

I agree, those that want to grind and wait it out for cohesion has were able to do so by themselves by leveling then doing a bunch of story instances. And it’s also ok to keep the “chapters” UI for cohesion, but let us do the story just like before.

If you really wanted to teach the mechanics to a player, do what most games do, a tutorial single player instance where you can demonstrate game mechanics.

Ex: put the player in an arena, have an npc cast an aoe on the player and tell him how to dodge, make him repeat the action a few times and done, you did what you should do to teach them. (same for other things you want to show them)

Want the player to understand skill points, don’t lock them behind levels but as part of the tutorial, make the player commune with a skill challenge and make them buy a specific skill that they can slot right away and use. This would also familiarize them with the icons you find on the map when exploring.

Stuff like level-gating the weapon skills is horrible. Players actually get new skills out of the blue and get “overwhelmed”. The old system showed you progress as you killed stuff, gave you the time to learn the skills as you worked to unlock them.

Unlock skills old way = 1 new skill at the time for the new player
Unlock skill slot at a certain level = 1 new skill per weapon per slot unlocked (a nightmare for new player experience)

And that’s just to list a few.

Most of the changes don’t bother me. I prefer the new way of unlocking the weapon skills by level instead of on use. It was especially frustrating to unlock each new weapon skill on an elementalist prior to the patch.

Changes I would like to see: weapon swapping back to level 7 or at the very latest level 10. I also greatly dislike the change to skill points. I understand not putting them on the map, but if I come across one before level 13, please let me access it. It’s annoying to have to go back for them. They should function exactly like vistas.

Also, slightly off topic, but what’s going on with the bugs to the personal story? As I noted in the bug forum, as well as many others, some of us are stuck on the level 10 portion of the story because it’s bugged or something. Any word on a fix for that? Thanks.

Zietlogik.6208:

The new leveling system is a joke, all that needed to happen was to add a little more tutorial to tell people what was going on….that was it.

“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again….Heyyyy I swung it again”

This is now the weapon skills unlock system for the NPE.

“In most games…you go out and have really fun tasks occasionally”

This is now the entire early leveling experience, Press F on everything, whack mobs, with an occasional interesting event.

“and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff”

This is now the entire level 1-80 experience. 1-40 you will never have your entire skill set unlocked, 40-80 you can never actually use a Grandmaster trait until you have finished the leveling curve…

I don’t know about you, but the NPE and trait changes seem like a giant slap in the face, not allowing players to play how they want and artificially extend the leveling experience to feel different.

I would go as far to say that the game is being converted into something designed for people who have never played a game before. I understand that some people don’t have a ton of time, or just aren’t that good at some games, but this is not how you teach people things. You cannot try and teach a person to draw, by never giving them a pencil. Just as much as players will not learn to play, if they aren’t given the tools and skills.

Like playing monopoly, and having dice rolling unlocked 30 minutes in, then unlocked the ability to collect 200 by passing Go! at 1 hour, having the ability to buy/trade unlocked 2 hours in.

Play how you want in terms of available, broad activities but you’ve always had to play within the confines of their rules.

I’m surprised by the rehashing of the trait changes from April. They have shown by lack of any meaningful response that those changes aren’t going to be rolled back. Continuing to cry foul about it is a waste of your time. Maybe, just maybe they would be willing to alter some of the missions that unlock specific traits but honestly it’s been 5 months and all we’ve gotten was a “yah, well saw the thread”.

NPE it seems they are willing to discuss some of the issues.

If we’re actually going to have a thread discussing the NPE, can it actually be full of constructive criticism and suggestions instead of just rage and hyperbole? This thread looks like it’s already going south, so I hope this won’t be the place to talk about it.

[ suggestion for personal story ]

A) please restore chapter 7 of the personal story to how it was before the patch. ie, the personal “greatest fear” plot line.

B) please restore the “cleansing of orr” plotline to the END of chapter 8, the way is was pre 9/9

C) pleaase split chapter 8 into three chapters:

~Chapter 8: Crippling the Beast, (basically, story steps “Temple of the Forgotten God” through " A Grisly Shipment" / “Ossuary of Unquiet Dead” )
~Chapter 9: Further Into Orr (story steps “Further into Orr” through “Blast from the Past” / “Ships of the Line” / “The Steel Tide” )
~Chapter 10: Victory or Death (story steps “Against the Corruption” through “Victory or Death” )

[Benefits of suggested structure]

~ retains the consistency of the story
~ cleansing of orr storyline is in a level 80 zone, and therefore should retain it’s level status
~ the extra chapters break up the story into more manageable bits for the player, retaining chapter length consistency (each chapter is roughly 3-5 story steps, except "The Battle of Claw Island, which is 7 steps)

What is your stance now that everything takes so much longer to unlock for people that already went through the NPE?
I’m tieing this in with traits.

I feel no character progression until level 30, and even then it’s nominal if I don’t get a trait point.
I’m not making any choises what so ever. It doesn’t matter what weapon you use, you’ll unlock all skills regardless.
Utilities are super spread out and it feels more like a pain than a gain over the old system. It’s not so much looking forward to unlocking them but it feels more like wishing we already had them. You don’t get enough skill points to try out that many different utilities anyway.
It doesn’t feel like every level is giving me something until I get traits. It’s giving me tips and tricks, which I’m already familiar with. Personal story fills this gap a little bit with giving gear, but I’ve personally never enjoyed the PS and without doing that the game feels a lot less rewarding in terms of progression.
The other exception is that at some points it gives you stats… but again, it feels like before those levels you’re missing out on stats rather than feeling more powerful overall. Let’s say before from level 10 to 14, you would gain 25 stats. Instead, you now get 35 stats at 15 and before that point you feel weak. Instead of shifting them forward, you now feel weaker.
It’s never fun feeling weak in the early levels when you’re new.
New people aren’t going to buy level appropriate masterwork gear for appropriate level gaps. Especially before level 50 I think this should be taken into consideration.
I remember I had no clue what my silver was worth and wether it’d be a waste to get items every 5-10 levels.
Trait unlocking has been discussed many times, but personally the biggest issue I still have is that if you make multiple characters you have to unlock them on them individually. The worst part is that you even have to do that for PvP. I feel that’s a major oversight as it goes against what I PvP should be.
Getting traits shouldn’t feel like a chore but as it stands now it’s just limiting new players from experimenting with builds and causing aggrevation that you have to do so many tasks to try something that you might not even like . Even furthering the issue that people copy paste stuff from others.

Fernling.1729:

Behellagh.1468:

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, some other stuff missing from that list:

• Replacing the missing profession mechanics UI for the Elementalist, Engineer, and Guardian professions

• Offhand weapon not unlocking until level 7

• Weapon Swapping not unlocking until level 15

• Utilities 7, 8, 9, and 0 not unlocking until levels 13, 24, 35, and 40 respectively

• Underwater combat not unlocking until level 8, underwater skill 5 not unlocking until level 23

• Most juvenile pets missing from starting zones

• Mechanics of many early heart quests reduced to make them more boring.

• Apples missing from apple orchard

I may still be missing a few, but fixing those need to be a priority as well.

Good luck with that list, the level unlocks are the core of NPE, not bugs.

A lot of people are expecting some kind of legacy feature. Where veterans don’t have to go through the same gating that new players do.

I would expect the info suppression like hiding vistas, nodes and the like from mini and main maps to be removed for vets but not the level gating. XP curve has been adjusted to compensate for the new unlocks.

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, some other stuff missing from that list:

• Replacing the missing profession mechanics UI for the Elementalist, Engineer, and Guardian professions

• Offhand weapon not unlocking until level 7

• Weapon Swapping not unlocking until level 15

• Utilities 7, 8, 9, and 0 not unlocking until levels 13, 24, 35, and 40 respectively

• Underwater combat not unlocking until level 8, underwater skill 5 not unlocking until level 23

• Most juvenile pets missing from starting zones

• Mechanics of many early heart quests reduced to make them more boring.

• Apples missing from apple orchard

I may still be missing a few, but fixing those need to be a priority as well.

Hey! Those aren’t bugs, they’re features!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Chris

Chris, I feel the need to point out one thing here. The person you replied to, he wasn’t saying we want to dig in when things are still in design phase.

A major point of the post was, “If you had let us in on the extent of the changes just a week before they were implemented, you could have gotten a lot of the feedback you have now, but two weeks earlier”.

I think that’s a major point there. By that point in time, nothing would (or at least should) have been a “work in progress”. It would have been “ready to deploy”. Just giving us that small look into something that “we’re preparing to push out in just a few days” would have helped substantially for both your side, and for ours.

Ah ok well I didn’t get that sorry Ohoni and thanks Shadow. Let me have a think and I will give you both my opinion. As i am sure you are aware this idea comes with a similar set of issues to.

Chris

I understand that there are a bit of risks, such as we not experiencing the content live per see, and actually give a solid feedback.

But even still, if we can have a sneak peek, an insight to what’s to come, we can voice out our concern sooner, and even if fixes won’t be made or can’t be made. You guys will be aware of our worries, and when the content hits, maybe we all might even reached to the same consensus, and fixes and improvements can be rolled out earlier. It is literally a win win situation.

We aren’t asking you to share information and details when it is in design machine, but give us a pre patch list of all the core things that will change, that are ready and will be deployed, like the PvP balance previews. An example of the NPE would be a week earlier something like this would be posted:

“We will makes skills be unlocked at levels XX and XX, make sure that veterans won’t have to experience this with their alts. Improve the flow of the personal story and divide them by chapters of 10 levels, etc etc”

This way, it finally hits, we will know what’s design, what’s working as intended and what was misconception. And we will have plenty of time to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ohoni.6057:

Note we want to make the fixes and then have a focused discussion about the system (Probably here)

We really want to hear what you think once the system/content is functioning as designed.

Chris

Again, waiting until it’s “functioning as designed” before having the discussion about it just pushes back the point where solutions can be reached. If you’d have discussed these changes with us months ago we could have hashed them out before the patch, and we wouldn’t be in this mess. Let’s say it takes another week to get things “functioning as designed,” and then we spend another couple weeks debating the changes, that’s weeks wasted when you could be working on fixing them now.

You guys already know which elements of the current game are bugs and which are features, so instead of waiting until the bugs have been removed, why not just TELL use which elements are not intended and which are, and we can discuss the issue from there?

This is the core about what we mean when we say we want communication. We don’t want to wait until things are implemented and then discuss them, we want in on the design process BEFORE you waste the time and effort implementing systems that we never wanted in the first place. Think of how many manhours you guys wasted working on these NGE systems that are dead on arrival with the players! How many other great systems could those developers have been working on instead in that time?

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Chris

P.S: If you want to discuss potential future features and systems then you are welcome to partake in the CDI.

I get the impression you guys aren’t exactly talking about the same thing, I doubt he was asking about what the devs do in the sense you take it but more in what “intents” you guys have such as “we plan on changing how wep skills unlock to make the experience easier for new players” where we could then give you the immediate feedback that it would actually make things more confusing or harder on new players.

And instead of guessing what would make the new player experience “better”, asking players, just like the current CDI about Guild QoL. I think a lot of what is currently happening could’ve been avoided with a simple CDI that would’ve shown the clear disconnect.

I understand that you guys also want to surprise us and make us go “cool!”, butI think I can safely assume that there is a lack of experience in some areas with all the dev posts that say “we’re learning”, “its been a good learning experience”, etc. Also, from the videos, it seems like quite young talented people are at the head of major features (like the wvw wxp trait lines) but seem to lack the experience to understand what their userbase’s (an important stakeholder) priorities are. And I’m saying this not to throw rocks at them but to emphasize that good communication is even more so important.

The degree of required communication is directly proportional to the experience of the devs, for instance, map designers need to poke the forums a lot less, their experience on top of their talent allowed them to create this incredibly beautiful world and interesting new map (dry top) and only came to the forums for event balancing and other small tweaks.

I know I’ve been going long now, but for instance, dry top has the perfect example of a tutorial at the beginning of the zone. Much better than the existing changes for the NPE.

Eh, some rage and hyperbole is justified, I think… When I found out that the Metrica Inquest/shark event chain has been removed, I was dumbfounded. This was THE hook for new players in this place. A sudden shark in their faces. Not even that dangerous, to be honest, but flashy, something taken straight out of James Bond movies. The evil scientists and their pet monster…

What is left instead? Instead of feeding cows, running around with water, turning into a repair golem? Some generic combat without most conditions and pressing F for 10-15 levels. I mean… How does that even compare?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality

To be honest at least in my mind and to most everyone I’ve spoken to herein lies the problem. Trust is earned, you (Anet and or NCSoft not you personally )don’t trust your player base enough to tell them what’s coming down the line, why should they trust the direction you’re taking? I feel bad for everyone who wants to talk about their work and everyone dieing to hear about it and to me this policy is what is hampering all real honest and meaningful communication,and propagating the angry responses you see from many players.

A lot of MMO’s and other online games have open Public Test Servers, or a variant thereof. That’s how the player base sees a lot of these changes beforehand, and can comment on what they like or what they don’t.

I know it’s been talked to death by this point, but I think there’s a lot of merit to it. I know I used to play both League Of Legends and World of Warcraft a lot, both of which had public test realms.

(LoL’s is gated so that only certain players have access, but it’s at least enough that news sites can gain access and let the community know what’s being changed ahead of time.)

Just a little sneak-peak like that for GW2 would be wonderful. I know that the public test servers have helped immensely for WoW and LoL. I see a lot of things posted up on the PTRs that end up getting tweaked/reverted, because they’re actually able to get the player base to see what’s going on, and they can bring up points that the devs might have missed, or show that “X” change isn’t actually working as well as they would have expected.

Perhaps the developers should consider why people were exploiting bundles to prematurely unlock utility and elite skills. Maybe, just maybe, the rate at which utilities unlock needs to be revised. I doubt players would be as desperate for a workaround if this change was entirely a good thing.

Also, it has already been covered in this thread, but the stat slump is a very frustrating issue for leveling. Please try to come up with a substantial fix for this.

One of my biggest issues though is that as a “veteran” player, any alts I make are still being treated as newbies with unnecessary locked content (vistas, gathering nodes, and skill points especially). The “too confusing for new players” reasoning for locking these is completely voided in the case of alts.

Behellagh.1468:

Fernling.1729:

Behellagh.1468:

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, some other stuff missing from that list:

• Replacing the missing profession mechanics UI for the Elementalist, Engineer, and Guardian professions

• Offhand weapon not unlocking until level 7

• Weapon Swapping not unlocking until level 15

• Utilities 7, 8, 9, and 0 not unlocking until levels 13, 24, 35, and 40 respectively

• Underwater combat not unlocking until level 8, underwater skill 5 not unlocking until level 23

• Most juvenile pets missing from starting zones

• Mechanics of many early heart quests reduced to make them more boring.

• Apples missing from apple orchard

I may still be missing a few, but fixing those need to be a priority as well.

Good luck with that list, the level unlocks are the core of NPE, not bugs.

A lot of people are expecting some kind of legacy feature. Where veterans don’t have to go through the same gating that new players do.

I would expect the info suppression like hiding vistas, nodes and the like from mini and main maps to be removed for vets but not the level gating. XP curve has been adjusted to compensate for the new unlocks.

This is what I’m thinking also, and would make more sense.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Plot holes and story inconsistencies that may have been introduced with story realignment

A question if you will.

Does this mean they’re reworking the dialogue, which WILL NOT fix all the plot holes and inconsistencies, or does this mean that they’re reverting the changes?

I don’t think anything beyond reverting the removal of the fear arc and the switching around of chapter 8 should be done in this situation, as I can point out probably a half a dozen things that will not work even if they fact-check all dialogue, NPC spawning, NPC models, and objectives.

Easy fix

1) Remove all Level gating.

2) Restore PS the way it was

3) Restore Traits to original design

This would please nearly everyone, I’m very unhappy with the latest patch and the general direction of the game at present. Some major work is needed fast if I am to stay invested and recommend this game.

A well done to the devs who put alot of time and effort into this game and the content they have been putting out, I personaly feel that the senior designers and managers need to understand what their playerbase wants and the design decisions as of late have been extreamly poor and a major change of course is required.

Nokaru.7831:

If we’re actually going to have a thread discussing the NPE, can it actually be full of constructive criticism and suggestions instead of just rage and hyperbole? This thread looks like it’s already going south, so I hope this won’t be the place to talk about it.

You mean like the trait change? We are carrying with even more unlocks now.

Do you think they need more people talking about they don’t want unlocks?

They probably make the decision anyway, and not sure if anything will change their mind.

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Yeah, but as I’ve said, that policy needs to change. It’s like saying “I’m sorry, but we’re just going to be deleting all of your characters when they hit level 53, and there’s nothing to be done about that, I don’t know how to make this any clearer.”

It’s just a toxic policy, and you can never have a fully healthy relationship with the community until it is disposed of. I give you a great deal of credit for trying anyway, but it’s like boxing with both hands behind your back.

P.S: If you want to discuss potential future features and systems then you are welcome to partake in the CDI.

Where is the CDI page for the NGE?

And for the record, the earlier we get news, the better, but even days or weeks in advance is better than nothing.

Ohoni.6057:

Where is the CDI page for the NGE?

It’s NPE and not all changes planned will result from or cause a CDI to be started. It’s their game not ours. They appreciate our input but there are other sources of input such as their usability testing for new players which we can’t really provide because we aren’t new players anymore.

Our first dungeon is a level 30 dungeon.

If we try to play that dungeon at level 30, we are missing 2 skills since skill 9 unlocks at 35 and 0 unlocks at 40.

We vets also have to wait until level 40 before we bring a new character into WvW so we have all our skill slots open where previously we hit WvW at level 30.

Take away the misconceptions due to poor wording about some of the “locked” content that isn’t locked and you may find that gating the skills is likely the biggest complaint from many vets.

I’d get my weapon skills unlocked on my chosen weapons before level 3 and that counts getting the my secondary set unlocked before I was able to weapon swap. I’ve got level 80 alts that don’t have all their weapons skills open because I don’t use all their different weapons.

My suggestion would be to put the old level requirements for the utility and elite slots back and “maybe” do the weapon skills as level 2 for 2, level 3 for 3, level 4 for 4, and level 5 for 5. That means you get weapon skill 5 and your first utility skill at level 5.

CrAzZyKiLLa.7483:

Easy fix

1) Remove all Level gating.

2) Restore PS the way it was

3) Restore Traits to original design

This would please nearly everyone, I’m very unhappy with the latest patch and the general direction of the game at present. Some major work is needed fast if I am to stay invested and recommend this game.

A well done to the devs who put alot of time and effort into this game and the content they have been putting out, I personaly feel that the senior designers and managers need to understand what their playerbase wants and the design decisions as of late have been extreamly poor and a major change of course is required.

No, it wouldn’t please everyone. Using your opinion as canon is never a good idea.
A lot of the underlaying ideology for the changes are very well thought of. The implementation is under discussion and there will always be people who don’t like them. But right now some of the things simply feel out of place.

If you’re unhappy with something at least try to give some constructive criticism instead of ‘’no, i don’t like it put it back’’.

Funny, I’ve always heard that players under level 80 and not kitted out with exotics if not better are entirely worthless in dungeons and WvW. At least that’s the attitude I’ve seen.

On the “New Players” that was used for making this NPE, did ANet even once think about whether or not those “New Players” may have been fanboys for another MMO and saw GW2 as a threat so they purposely gave ANet bogus feedback hoping ANet would make the changes and then alienate their WHOLE player base?

Behellagh.1468:

Funny, I’ve always heard that players under level 80 and not kitted out with exotics if not better are entirely worthless in dungeons and WvW. At least that’s the attitude I’ve seen.

well you have better excuse to kick them now.

I think the problem is their whole idea of making everyone play together, and reuse material.

It puzzles my mind why Anet want new players and people with thousand of playing hours to play together. Obviously there is the point that you can’t find people to play with.

Ohoni.6057:

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Yeah, but as I’ve said, that policy needs to change. It’s like saying “I’m sorry, but we’re just going to be deleting all of your characters when they hit level 53, and there’s nothing to be done about that, I don’t know how to make this any clearer.”

It’s just a toxic policy, and you can never have a fully healthy relationship with the community until it is disposed of. I give you a great deal of credit for trying anyway, but it’s like boxing with both hands behind your back.

And on the flipside the community needs to recognise that there is a limit, or a boundary if you want, to how far they can go with expecting answers from questions. People may not be happy with it but it’s there.

Personally I find it kind of odd that there are so many merchants in the starting zones, and all that they sell is bags.

4 and 5 slot bags.

How about some basic salvage and gathering tools again?

I’m glad to hear this system is not set in stone and can be fixed based on our feedback.

I’m also hoping the ‘fix’ for the rangers profession mechanics means we’ll be able to at least name our pet from level 1 (it’s a small thing, but it bothers me every time I see it) and preferably use F1 and F3 from the start as well so we can actually fight instead of having the AI dictate targets.

zenleto.6179:

Ohoni.6057:

As has been detailed many times we will not be disclosing work in progress. I don’t know how to make this any clearer. As uncomfortable as this may be this is the reality.

Yeah, but as I’ve said, that policy needs to change. It’s like saying “I’m sorry, but we’re just going to be deleting all of your characters when they hit level 53, and there’s nothing to be done about that, I don’t know how to make this any clearer.”

It’s just a toxic policy, and you can never have a fully healthy relationship with the community until it is disposed of. I give you a great deal of credit for trying anyway, but it’s like boxing with both hands behind your back.

And on the flipside the community needs to recognise that there is a limit, or a boundary if you want, to how far they can go with expecting answers from questions. People may not be happy with it but it’s there.

I think the policy is in place so if there is any change, they won’t kick their self in the tongue.

I think the developer previously says they are going to rethink the level gating for utility and elite, but I think they changed that idea again.

Bellizare.5816:

Personally I find it kind of odd that there are so many merchants in the starting zones, and all that they sell is bags.

4 and 5 slot bags.

How about some basic salvage and gathering tools again?

Agreed.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

On the “New Players” that was used for making this NPE, did ANet even once think about whether or not those “New Players” may have been fanboys for another MMO and saw GW2 as a threat so they purposely gave ANet bogus feedback hoping ANet would make the changes and then alienate their WHOLE player base?

That seems pretty far fetched.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Other aspects of the NPE are being examined, and your constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Please Review-
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y#t
Notable Points:

• Stat Burst: With the original lvling system, players would receive a small amount of stats each time they lvled, which made their character slowly get stronger each level. With the NPE changes, after lvl 4 the player will received a large chunk (or “burst”) of stats every 6 lvls.

• Stat Slump: The problem is that the “stat burst” power did not come out of no where. The power is redistributed from prior levels. The result is that players feel weaker than they did before during certain windows of leveling. This is being remarked as the “stat slump”, which is typically 2 or 3 lvls prior to each threshold.

• The problem: If a player tries to fight a creature 1/2 lvls higher than themselves, the “stat slump” complicates things. A lvl 9 creature is more powerful than a lvl 8; but a lvl 9 player is not necessarily more powerful than a lvl 8 one. This is because the stats come in bursts for players, but gradually for monsters. As a result, players are reporting that certain Personal Story missions are feeling much harder than they used to. This is a result of the “stat slump”, which is effectively making players feel lower level than they actually are.
  
  Furthermore, when a player lvls up in an area they are downscaled in, there is a high chance they will actually become weaker. This is because downscaling will reduce their stats, and lvling up doesn’t necessarily increase them to offset it. While this has always been a possibility due to gear, it is now magnified due to base stats not increasing with each level.

This change to lvling is so fundamentally dysfunctional with how the rest of the game works that it really starts to raise questions in the confidence of ANet’s actual understandings of their systems. It’s likely it isn’t the entire company’s fault though, only a few powerful (and ignorant) people.

Poll: http://strawpoll.me/2555336/r
Out of 1500 Players 82% don’t agree with the new lvl system with a whopping 41% hating the new system, while only 8% actually like it… Over 5x as many people outright hate the system than actually like it. Your losing players everyday, voicing this system as “the nail in the coffin”. I’d link every topic but it would literally take me hours of digging through the forum and copying each one.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Anet they had over 10,000 testers who said the game was to hard and needed dumbed down to a level never seen before,

A good portion are probably mobile gamers. Instead of focusing on loyal players, the ones that advertise the game to others, they have instead chose to turn a blind eye to us. This makes it really hard for me to recommend the game to anyone in its current state as they clearly don’t care about players that actually care about the game.

• Colin Johnson – Game Designer GW2
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY&feature=youtu.be @ 1:18
  ‘When you play the combat in our game you say, "Wow that’s increadible! I’ve never seen anything like that!" Most games you go out and you have really fun tasks occasionally that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. {Sarcasm:“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again! Hey! I swung it again! That’s great!”} We just don’t want players to grind in GW2. Noone enjoys that, noone finds it fun, we want to change the way people view combat.’

So they pretty much go back on their vision and everything they stood for over the last 2 years… At the very least allow toggling leveling changes. There is nothing “New” or “Rewarding” from the new system. Please take it back and give me back my ability to play the game freely. It’s insulting and bad taste to even call it that.

How can you call crippling the early game abilities and putting them behind a level requirement a reward? Did you not learn from your China release!? How is locking story until your 10 levels up a reward? Or locking each and every aspect of the game behind level requirements going to help anyone? If anything you have made it harder for EVERYONE!

How could you not take into consideration the 50 page topic complaining about the trait system for 4 months?! (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/page/47#post4372835). And now this!?!

Extremely upset and disappointed… Disappointed you couldn’t stay true to your word. I’m done with alts or any characters before level 40… you absolutely ruined the new character experience that you claim to have focused on. For 2 years it was just fine, not sure what good came from these unnecessary changes.

There really needs to be some clear, concrete statement made on whether the new weapon/skill/attunement/etc locking is meant solely for new accounts, for the first character made on an account after the 9/9 patch, etc. I’ve seen devs mention that things aren’t/weren’t unlocking like they should be and that some changes were supposed to be account-bound (meaning we would only have to deal with them once) and not per character. Knowing that some of this new hand-holding which the majority of veteran players don’t need (and quite frankly, if you’ve played X amount of hours or have X amount of level 80s already, it’s your choice if you want to ignore tutorials and the like) would go a long way toward settling people. I’d like to believe that the devs know we aren’t all so clueless and new to a game like GW2 that we actually need this kind of stuff on one character, let alone every.single.new.alt.

All I’ve seen is a lot of “we’re going to make some changes/we’re looking into it” followed by “we’re not discussing it until it’s as designed”. The uptick of dev activity is refreshing, don’t get me wrong, and certainly is working toward regaining consumer trust, but there is a long ways to go and people who are unhappy are not going to suffer un-fun game mechanics for weeks while you fix it to be “as designed”. Which for all we know might be even less fun for those of us who genuinely like to make alts.

Nokaru.7831:

If we’re actually going to have a thread discussing the NPE, can it actually be full of constructive criticism and suggestions instead of just rage and hyperbole? This thread looks like it’s already going south, so I hope this won’t be the place to talk about it.

….to late for that. It already is!.

Trouble is, many of us existing players actually like complexity. That’s what keeps us making alts, keeps us trying new builds…

The NPE works directly against this. The trait change works directly against this.

There’s a fundamental mismatch here, and I’d love to hear ArenaNet talk about it. Or even acknowledge it…

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Trouble is, many of us existing players actually like complexity. That’s what keeps us making alts, keeps us trying new builds…

The NPE works directly against this. The trait change works directly against this.

There’s a fundamental mismatch here, and I’d love to hear ArenaNet talk about it. Or even acknowledge it…

Exactly… They are completely ignoring this to the core. I simply don’t get the logic here.

Asmodeus.5782:

Eh, some rage and hyperbole is justified

I find it unhelpful since there are solvable issues that can be discussed rationally. There’s plenty of other threads that are out there where people can vent their frustration. I’ve seen many identifiable and fixable problems become buried by those kind of posts. I know it’s not our job as consumer’s to have to frame our feelings constructively. It just would help a lot.

The Reason for the Anger:
Even though the NPE is controversial for a variety of reasons, at the heart of this matter is the fact that it should have been the priority of the NA/EU NPE team to minimize the jarring difference between the old leveling experience and the new leveling experience as much as possible. It’s safe to assume that due to the large scope of the changes, players would be unhappy with something, so as little as possible should have been changed. Whether or not we will see any sort of dialogue on this remains to be seen. In my opinion, this is the source of the rage:

Fixable Problems:
What we can do is focus on fixable problems by seeing what the NPE changed and then propose something else. Here is an incomplete list of things that you can look at individually and propose improvements for:

• (1) Changes to the 1-15 zones
• (2) Changes to the Personal Story (Keyfarming, My Greatest Fear deletion, etc.)
• (3) Weapon Skill Unlocks
• (4) Utility, Elite & Profession Unlocks
• (5) Various Account-Based Unlocks (UI for WvW, sPvP, etc.)
• (6) Miscellaneous Unlocks (Downed State)
• (7) Stat Unlocks (Resulting in “Stat Burst” & “Stat Slump” Effect)

For example: With regards to (7), it is a big problem but it is easy to fix. The stats which are gained every 6 levels should instead be distributed every single level.

This is something that should not be compromised on. Distributing stats at every level is the way to fix this problem; anything less, such as every 2 levels or every 3 levels is simply a worse fix with the only justification being the intangible benefit of providing a “more rewarding leveling experience” with a “burst” of power. To that, I reply that the loss of power experience right before such bursts outweighs the benefits of the feeling of empowerment.

CalamityO.2890:

Nokaru.7831:

If we’re actually going to have a thread discussing the NPE, can it actually be full of constructive criticism and suggestions instead of just rage and hyperbole? This thread looks like it’s already going south, so I hope this won’t be the place to talk about it.

….to late for that. It already is!.

I think it is very constructive to tell the developer that we really hate it, and hope they just stop with have all this gated level unlock.

The thing is some people just think it is a hate thread and nonconstructive.

I find it sad that most of you focus solely on the problems with gating, completely omitting the content removal/simplification issue. I guess my priorities are kinda skewed.

laokoko.7403:

CalamityO.2890:

Nokaru.7831:

If we’re actually going to have a thread discussing the NPE, can it actually be full of constructive criticism and suggestions instead of just rage and hyperbole? This thread looks like it’s already going south, so I hope this won’t be the place to talk about it.

….to late for that. It already is!.

I think it is very constructive to tell the developer that we really hate it, and hope they just stop with have all this gated level unlock.

The thing is some people just think it is a hate thread and nonconstructive.

Yes I truly don’t see the problem in expressing how much we dislike something. I don’t want to sugar coat it… I absolutely hate all the gated content added, and it was already noted how much we hated the trait system and they clearly didn’t get the message. I want them to know that I feel its unacceptable to keep any of the gated changes and level locking story content. It’s unnecessary and limiting what we can do in the game.