Guild Wars 2

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

The NPE is a shambles, GW2 needs better in game guidance on it’s more advanced systems, not dumbing down of basic content.

Keep in mind, World of Warcraft is the first MMO for a lot of players. So they expect something along those lines and mindsets. Vets, or those who played MMOs before WoW, have more experience and know there were games before Warcraft. They tend to be more open-minded because of their experiences with those other games.

We know, if we want a Warcraft experience with a game, we might as well play Warcraft. And, unfortunately, a lot of dead and dying MMOs who tried to copy, found this out the hard way.

Still, I do agree with almost everything you said, OP. +1 to both posts.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Keep in mind, World of Warcraft is the first MMO for a lot of players. So they expect something along those lines and mindsets. Vets, or those who played MMOs before WoW, have more experience and know there were games before Warcraft. They tend to be more open-minded because of their experiences with those other games.

We know, if we want a Warcraft experience with a game, we might as well play Warcraft. And, unfortunately, a lot of dead and dying MMOs who tried to copy, found this out the hard way.

Still, I do agree with almost everything you said, OP. +1 to both posts.

I would hardly say that WoW is the first for most MMO players, but Ultima Online’s format (the game WoW copied) has become the “standard” in MMORPG development, so almost everywhere you find the same trinity, the same UI layout, the same gameplay, but that is why GW2 is so great. It breaks the stale mould that MMORPG’s have been stuck in for a decade.

However people in general find change hard to adapt to, which is why there will always be such polarising views on GW2 and it’s casual nature

Lifestealer.4910:

What is this horizontal progression you speak of?.. because from what i noticed this game has no vertical (ok barely with ascended) and no horizontal progression at all.

Vertical progression is where the endgame is increased stats. Horizontal progression is where the endgame is not through stat increases but some other method of improving your char. In this game it’s armor/weapon skins.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/05/mmo-mechanics-comparing-vertical-and-horizontal-progression/

http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-and-horizontal-progression-revolution

rapthorne.7345:

I would hardly say that WoW is the first for most MMO players, but Ultima Online’s format (the game WoW copied) has become the “standard” in MMORPG development, so almost everywhere you find the same trinity, the same UI layout, the same gameplay, but that is why GW2 is so great. It breaks the stale mould that MMORPG’s have been stuck in for a decade.

I must disagree. While this is true for Generation Xers, and even Baby Boomers, most Millennials first experienced MMOs through World of Warcraft. That game increased the player pool in the millions.

I’m not saying it’s the first MMO or that it’s the first MMO to use a known standard of gameplay, as you imply, but it is the first MMO for most of our younger players.

And that is why newer and younger players are resistant to Guild Wars 2. It follows a different format than World of Warcraft. That’s a big reason for the expansion demand as opposed to free, Living Story updates.

They’re not used to that.

Since Gaile and a few other players in map chat were kind enough to let me know I really have not given enough input for the NPE, allow me to rectify this now. I thought I already had made a post with my input, but I guess I was mistaken. Here is the input you all requested. It is a lot, so it will be spread to multiple posts in this thread.

So the NPE. I once made a character and started leveling it to try things out. For the most part I don’t like it, but it did do some things that I like. To this day I have not tried leveling a new character in order to avoid the NPE. I’ve started farming tomes and now writs of experience as well, in order to circumvent the NPE as much as possible (including the use of scrolls for instant 20). I used to level characters quickly to reach the satisfaction of level 80. Now, I seek to avoid being anything other than level 80 in order to stay as far away from the limitations of the NPE as possible. For me it is mostly bad, but not all bad.

Traits:
I LOVE that it encourages and entices players to explore the world to unlock traits. That is a brilliant way to engage the players. It is even better that you can outright buy the specific traits you want for a small and reasonable fee.

I dislike that you can’t unlock them until a much later level (30 if I remember correctly). It made my character feel a little underpowered considering I couldn’t increase my base power and such a little bit with each level to match the pacing of leveling. Yes, I realize that every few levels you get an even increase to all base stats automatically, but between each increase it left me feeling underpowered. Yes, the large sudden increase is cool and all, but leading up to is feels like an unnecessary chore.

To summarize: the exploration incentive is great. The higher level cap feels more like an annoyance for veteran players than a significant aid to new players. But I am honestly surprised you didn’t also do away with traits all together and just made every class have only one way to play, ‘meta’ or not, since reading to understand how different traits and skills can work together is so difficult (see next point for elaboration on what I mean).

Level gated weapon/profession skills:
This feature… I was trying to like it, I really was. But no matter how much I tried, it always felt the same: needlessly limiting. I had a lot more enjoyment out of killing groups of foes to unlock skills. I also used to get excited when I got a new weapon and had to take the time to get a really good feel for the weapon, which also happened to unlock more skills as I did. By the time I unlocked skill 5, I had enough of an understanding of how the weapon functioned and how to best use it in whatever situation.

“I can stun, bleed, block, bleed, leap, bleed, stab really hard, bleed some more, and slash like crazy and bleed even more. Got it. Now, what stat combination is best for my character’s condition damage?” That was my thought process, not “holy crap 5 skills is too complicated! I can’t handle this! Wait, I have a skill on F1 as well? OMG MY BRAIN IS FRIED!” Now, a new player has to wait several levels before they can even begin to understand what a weapon is capable of. If I can do what I did, so can they. Plus, the starting instances can get really boring when playing as an elementalist with only a dagger and one skill with one simple animation making the exact same sound over and over for about 2 minutes until the boss dies. I could not press 1 fast enough and hard enough to make it end because of the limitations you guys set in place.

The profession skills being locked also feels totally unnecessary. When I first played your game (WAY before release, I might add), the concept of using skills was very easy to understand. The saying was that this NPE was to make the game more user friendly, easier to understand given the (hardly) complex nature of the game, and overall simplified. I really would like to know where you guys got the idea that pressing 1-5 is too complex for people who uses computers on the daily anyway. 12 year old kids can look up pornography on the internet but somehow can’t press 2-3 keys to play a game? Come on.

I jokingly berate people and call them stupid and such, but for the most part the majority of people are intelligent and can figure out “pressing 1 does this, pressing 2 does that. If I press 4 before I press 1 I can get a nice little combo going.” The original Guild Wars even added a feature to make skill descriptions more concise and to the point (it was optional and could be turned on or off in the options window). That meant less words to read and still getting the point across about what a skill did.

To summarize: you ended up treating your players as if reading is such a daunting task whereas your predecessors realized that your players were intelligent people that can read and put 2 and 2 together.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

rapthorne.7345:

I would hardly say that WoW is the first for most MMO players, but Ultima Online’s format (the game WoW copied) has become the “standard” in MMORPG development, so almost everywhere you find the same trinity, the same UI layout, the same gameplay, but that is why GW2 is so great. It breaks the stale mould that MMORPG’s have been stuck in for a decade.

I must disagree. While this is true for Generation Xers, and even Baby Boomers, most Millennials first experience MMOs through World of Warcraft. That game increased the player pool in the millions.

I’m not saying it’s the first MMO or that it’s the first MMO to use a known standard of gameplay, as you imply, but it is the first MMO for most of our younger players.

And that is why newer and younger players are resistant to Guild Wars 2. It follows a different format than World of Warcraft. That’s a big reason for the expansion demand as opposed to free, Living Story updates.

They’re not used to that.

I want an expansion because that’s how GW1 did it. the expansions offered hours upon hours of new content, entire new continents, new classes, etc.

It’s a far more wholesome content addition than the living story (2 years from launch, a few new maps, recycled mechanics, no new classes, no new weapons, feedback going ignored, etc)

level up rewards:
The level up rewards are ‘better’, according to some. All I see, though, is a system that was already good being chopped into smaller chunks, separated, and each part locked behind level gating. It’s the same rewards given out differently. Now every few levels you get info about something else in the game. One level mentions crafting, another mentions underwater combat, and another lets you know that PvP exists. While I’m all for receiving new information, I feel it is better if the information is immediately available for reference via the in-game help window (like how we used to have a question mark icon that is now gone). It’s crazy, I know, but a little reading and a little effort to seek out information goes a long way. When I first played the game, 2 minutes of reading that ‘help’ window and I had all the information I needed. Now, a new player has to wait several levels to receive that same information from the game unless they ask in chat how things work. That takes more than 2 minutes. Shoot it takes longer to beat the boss of the introductory level 1 instances.

To summarize: you fixed what wasn’t broken. It was fine as it was before.

off-hand weapon level gating:
So having an off-hand weapon that only offers 2 additional skills is somehow too complex for a low level character? Maybe for a brand new player who is still learning how to use a computer would this make sense, but to the vast majority of people who are quite intelligent, this is nothing more than a needless limitation. I’m pretty sure people understand the concept of a shield and what it does and how it is used. You press a button, you block attacks.

To summarize: the weapon skill level gating really does nothing more than limit gameplay at early levels. Oversimplification in the form of option limiting is not fun.

weapon swap level gating:
I wont repeat myself too much on this one (read: people are intelligent beings). The original requirement of level 7 was fine as it was. Changing the requirement to more than double the level, yeah I don’t understand the reasoning behind it, but what do I know? I’m just a player of the game who now dreads the idea of leveling a new character and the limitations put in place that weren’t there before.

personal story level gating:
This one is actually okay. It’s kind of neat to be able to power through solid ten-level sections to get a story told. I used to do that sort of thing anyway prior to the NPE. I would level up by doing zone completions and mapping out the capitol cities and do personal story in chunks. You guys just took what I already did and made it the default for everyone. It makes the story telling more coherent.

However, after having already leveled up multiple characters and replaying through the personal stories, I ended up using them purely to get chunks of xp every so often to do zone completions more efficiently. Say I was in a level 25-35 zone, and I was lvl 30 with most of the zone finished. I would bounce around between the other 25-35 zones and fill in the level gaps. Personally I preferred to stay in the zones appropriate for my level and do all the hearts and chain events for xp. When I was 1 or 2 levels off from the level cap of the zone, I would do one or two personal story instances to push my xp bar to those last two levels for that zone. I’d rinse and repeat for each zone, leveling up my characters using a combination of zone completions, personal story in small chunks, the occasional dungeon, and nowadays EotM as well.

To summarize: you made doing what I already did mandatory for everyone.

level gated downed state:
This makes a little sense considering no other game that I know of has this feature. Most players are used to just dying when their health reaches 0. I don’t really have any complaints or issues with this one (especially since I know better than to bite more than I can chew as a low level and thus will likely not go down until much later anyway). At least it’s not behind a much higher level gate.

level gated underwater combat:
Considering underwater combat is just a small portion of the game, it kind of makes sense to have it introduced at a later level. At the same time, though, it kind of discourages early exploration. I’m indifferent on this one.

Sadly, this is not Guild Wars 1. But I’m not going to turn this thread into another discussion on an expansion.

Let’s just let that horse stay dead for now.

afterthoughts:
Yes, I realize that this level gating stuff isn’t so bad since the first few levels are usually achieved rather quickly, but I still feel the level gating after the NPE’s implementation is unnecessary. It might be useful as an option for the first few characters on a new account that does not have an 80. I think it would be wonderful if veteran players like myself were given the option to turn off all or parts of the NPE (really, just the level gating of weapon skills, profession skills, off-hand use, downed state, underwater combat). The level gating of the traits is tolerable as it is now, but I liked it better when I could start tinkering at lvl 11. The original level gating was fine as it was, but I digress. Thank you for bringing back elite skills to a level lower than 40. 31 is still odd to me compared to the original 30, but that’s what tomes are for, right? Thanks for letting us interact with vistas and skill points again.

Yes, I know I’m just repeating what many others have already said, but I’m just doing as Gaile (and other players in map chat) asked.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Why do players lump the Traits revamp in with the NPE? So odd.

The trait changes (still) aren’t obvious unless you level a character created after the change. Thus, the player response has been more of a slow burn than a brush fire like the gem exchange deal, which garnered immediate attention. I’d guess there are still players out there who remain unaware of the effects of the trait system redesign.

Perhaps some of these players created new characters around the time NPE was implemented, and therefore conflate the trait system redesign with it.

You too? Man, how many other people are going to make NPE posts today besides myself? I thought it has all already been said lol. I’m glad to know that at least I am not alone in my feelings about the NPE. For a while there I thought it was little old me against the NPE.

Well said,

But help me understand why a developer would ask a random player for input. Maybe there is backstory I don’t know about but from the outside looking in I don’t get why this situation occurred

Traits:

Putting this in this thread because I think it was by far the best Traits system: http://web.archive.org/web/20101202160501/http://guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/traits-overview/

Level gated weapon/profession skills:

I agree, the changes to the weapon skills doesn’t make any sense at all. The old system allowed more experimentation and faster unlocks. Their reason for the change was that sometimes you had no skills with a weapon unlocked if you first used a weapon after some levels. But unlocking the skills didn’t take more time than killing a couple of enemies anyway so I can’t understand that change at all.

level up rewards:

You are wrong here. You get way way more (and better) rewards now. You get extra crafting materials, gem store boosters, even high rarity items from the level up rewards (at later levels). The new system offers way more rewards than the old one (because the old one didn’t have any rewards at all)

One more thing to add that the NPE changed is how low level enemies have abilities marked under their names like “Poison” or “Bleeding” yet they inflict no conditions (remnants of their pre-NPE abilities) it’s a minor thing, just a text, but I think it might be even more confusing for new players. “Hey it says that it applies poison, it hit me yet I see no poison effect!”

I’m a relatively new player here. I started last August (about a month before NPE was released). I’ve been monitoring this thread ever since the September but I kept quiet about the issue so far because I didn’t want to reiterate things already said. Now, I think it’s about time to speak up in order to pressure Anet to do something about this.

I leveled my main to 60 pre-NPE and maxed him out post-NPE. I also leveled an alt to 50 after NPE’s release. To me, a new player at the time, the experience was horrible.

Things I am annoyed with

• Hiding content from me. One of my best experiences as a new player was finding out what the marks on the map mean. My early discovery of a vista was the reason I felt compelled to explore the world of Guild Wars 2. Personal grievances aside, I can’t see how something so simple needs to be hidden at all.
• Grouping the personal story into chapters. Apparently some people really like abstaining for 10 levels and completing the personal story in chunks but I am not one of those people. I rush into the story as soon as they become available. This change is really annoying because the previous system could have easily catered to both types of players but Anet chose to dictate a norm. I think this is a general problem of the NPE: a disregard of play-style preferences.
• Universal unlock for weapon skills. I loved the previous system. It gave me time to learn each weapon. I do not understand how the new system is more new-player-friendly if you’ll get 5 new unfamiliar skills as soon as you decide to switch weapons.

Things I hate

• Locking skills based on level. Creating a new character has become frighteningly tedious. For the first mission, all I can do is press 1. Please do not underestimate me; it does not take the average person more than a minute to understand AUTO-ATTACK. I guess the problem is that it’s horribly slow. I’ve already done all there is to do with my currently available skills but the system refuses to give me the next thing and forces me to grind.
• Stat Increments. I hate it because it’s very deceptive. As said in previous posts, player level and monster level indicate different things. Someone already said it really convincingly with numbers so I don’t feel the need to elaborate.

Things that are obviously wrong

• The personal story changes. The plot line is obviously messed up. I stopped doing the story when I finished The Source of Orr. I hated it. I didn’t know what the kitten was happening. What other eyes? Who’s Sayeh al’Rajihd? Why does she know me? What Temple of Abaddon?
• Missing fear story arc. I was really looking forward to the effects of my choice in A Light in the Darkness. But I defeated the Sovereign Eye and there was still nothing. Then later, I find out that some of the character references that I wasn’t aware of were pointing to characters found in this arc. It’s horrible. You could’ve at least fixed the text boxes. I seriously doubt that that’s too hard to do.

While I would love for all these issues to be addressed, I think it’s more important to fix the ones that are obviously wrong. If it takes a lot of time and resources as you say, then please tell us what you have so far.

I decided to make my first post on the forum to agree with the op. I took a break from the game a while back and came back to try to get at least one 80 character(casual player). It has been a really frustrating experience because of everything the op mentioned. I took a break from the game because I couldn’t get my friends to try the game. Now with these changes, I would not want to recommend the game because leveling has become a chore. ArenaNet is insulting players by lvl gating content instead of just making a proper help section built into the game. If you want to hook people into a game you try to give them as much fun as possible as early as possible. Pressing 1 and watching your character auto attack bandits for hours is not fun.

“Fun is what you make it”. Run with that. Seriously.

And here above, ladies and gentlemen, from CaelumTerra we have the input most of us have been pointing out:

New and old players hate this dumbing down and hand holding (not to mention limiting our choices).

But I’ve read some people that actually like this. No problem. No. Problem. Watch:

(queue character creation screen)

“Would you like to start out playing Guild Wars 2 how it was originally, or would you like us to tell you what and when you can do something? Play it your way? Or ours?”.

(/end character creation)

And here you would put back the code you ripped off the game, so anyone that actually liked what you made so well, can play.

Stop fixing what isn’t broken. There are still bugs in the dungeons that came out with the game.

Warcry.1596:

Well said,

But help me understand why a developer would ask a random player for input. Maybe there is backstory I don’t know about but from the outside looking in I don’t get why this situation occurred

I do believe I was there.

It was at the wurm yesterday. Gaile was there and some players took the opportunity to start complaining in map chat about the NPE. It was pointed out that she wasn’t there in her official position as Arenanet Forum Communications Team Lead and that complaining to her about the game in map chat while waiting for the event wasn’t the most appropriate thing to do since she was not working at her titled job right then and that the most appropriate thing was to post needed information in the forum for her to see when she was gathering information.

That doesn’t mean though she was asking for someone to make a separate new thread or to repost old information that he had already posted before.

I agree with 99% of what you said OP. The only point I disagree with you on are the level up, and personal story rewards. I quite like them and think they are great. Since the NEP I’ve stopped leveling alts. Thanks to the daily login rewards I’ll have my 3rd level 80 my the end of this daily reward cycle. The feast of my 5 alts range fom level 21-42, and thanks to the NEP, I’ll probably just tomb my way through my other alts, the ones under level 30 anyway. I would love a way to turn off the NEP level locked weapon skills. It’s the one thing I hate the most. I could live with the rest of it, just not the level locked weapons skills off hand and weapon swap.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

So the NPE. I once made a character and started leveling it to try things out. For the most part I don’t like it, but it did do some things that I like. To this day I have not tried leveling a new character in order to avoid the NPE.

Usually the best feedback comes from people who have done something A LOT, not just a little and quit.

You wouldn’t take a GW2 review seriously if the reviewer only made it to level 17, right?

I just want to add something to this thread. It is relevant since it occurred recently.

A friend of mine picked up the game about a year ago – played it for about 10 levels and had to put it down because of too much work and RL stuff interfering.

Recently ( past 2-3 days) he’s been able to get back into the game and we started playing together.

The NPE thing really threw him off. Skills he previously had access too as well as things he could previously do were gone.

Now this person has had very limited experience with gaming having only played one game prior to GW2 – that game being a MOBA – Dota 2.

GW2 is the first MMO he’s played. He’s not experienced and his biggest gripes with the game came from controlling the camera.

All that aside he couldn’t see how the new NPE system is in any way helpful by restricting and boxing you in.
It wasn’t easier for him, just more frustrating.

Luckily he got a level 20 exp scroll and fixed the issue that way – but honestly – whoever is giving good feedback on the NPE must be very strange.

Harper.4173:

Luckily he got a level 20 exp scroll and fixed the issue that way – but honestly – whoever is giving good feedback on the NPE must be very strange.

My guild has a handful of new players – mostly LOTRO players who were bullied into getting GW2 by old clan-mates. They all have nothing but positive feedback about the systems so far. I haven’t heard a single complaint about leveling taking too long or being boring. They’re just enjoying the game.

You can assume they’re “strange” because you disagree. I prefer to think that veteran players are not the target audience of the NEW player experience.

timmyf.1490:

Harper.4173:

Luckily he got a level 20 exp scroll and fixed the issue that way – but honestly – whoever is giving good feedback on the NPE must be very strange.

My guild has a handful of new players – mostly LOTRO players who were bullied into getting GW2 by old clan-mates. They all have nothing but positive feedback about the systems so far. I haven’t heard a single complaint about leveling taking too long or being boring. They’re just enjoying the game.

You can assume they’re “strange” because you disagree. I prefer to think that veteran players are not the target audience of the NEW player experience.

The person in the example he gave had never played an MMO before GW2, and had only made it to level 10 here. Hardly a veteran.

I’m really tempted to stop referring to this as the NPE as and start referring to it as NCE (New Character Experience). What we’re talking about is leveling and character growth. The stuff to teach new players has been bundled into it so tightly that the vets can’t escape it, and yes, we dislike being treated like new players whenever we make an alt.

And the trait revamp always gets merged into this, because it is a big part of the NCE. From most of the accounts I’ve seen, the current NPE really is doing a better job than the old NPE for introducing the game to beginners. Of course, it still has a lot of room for improvement, but there always will be. The big down side has been the equation NPE=NCE.

To me, the mistake was in making the first 15-20 levels go the fastest. These are the levels most crucial to new players. These are the maps most able to teach them how the game works. Take your time here and use this as the real teaching space. Starter zones are starter zones for a reason. This is also the only level range we vets get to completely skip. So why not take as much of the NPE as possible and put it here? Let these levels take the longest to complete. Let new players move through the pseudo-tutorials at their own pace, instead of power-leveling them and pushing them forward. And then make the 21+ game more vet-friendly.

The VPE (Veteran Player Experience) shouldn’t be restricted to level 80. That’s not how we all play.

Back when the NPE was released Anet said they were going to make changes because of the backlash. Have any of those changes actually made it into the game, or are there still people waiting on them?

I could be wrong, but seem to remember reading that.

Fernling.1729:

Back when the NPE was released Anet said they were going to make changes because of the backlash. Have any of those changes actually made it into the game, or are there still people waiting on them?

I could be wrong, but seem to remember reading that.

Well, the original title of this thread was “Changes coming to NPE” but besides what was said in the first post, nothing else has been announced as far I know.

The NPE feels like it was designed by people that never played the game but had read a lot about it once.

The new trait unlocking scheme feels like or was designed by someone over at Blizzard that intentionally wanted to wreck GW2.

Seriously, as bizarre and occasionally just plain out of touch as the npe can be, the new trait system is still far worse in terms of feeling like a deliberately malicious attack with no apparent benefit at all.

I think the bursts of stats with several levels between of no adjustments is just plain weird and not acceptable.

Many someones thought this was great, however, and not only built it, but released it.

I cannot imagine what they were thinking when they did.

I cannot imagine what they are expecting how they essentially destroyed all prospects for encouraged versatility for new players by absolutely discussing them from being able to play with trait combinations and experiment without a massive grind investment…or by living in spvp.

All in all, it reeks of incomprehension of their own game. The hardest thing for me to imagine as being true, after the npe and trait changes?

That any of them have ever played the game Rio ant meaningful extent. I’d believe they’ve played certain bits for testing purposes. But as actual players?

Nope. I’d they claimed otherwise, is be hard pressed to believe a word of it. Nobody could possibly play this game enough to have any credible sense of what works be good for it and then do things like that.

It’s like watching supposedly pro drivers design a car in ways that are absolutely stupid for the prose is actually driving it.

Armchair devs need to know that their metrics and spot testing didn’t add up to anything remotely as worthwhile as staying a character under the same rules as any other plate and playing it like a normal player has to for a fair while.

You can’t do that? Takes too long? That’s what the testers (that you clearly don’t heed for much) are for?

‘Kay. But you’re silly, and worse, bloody incompetent until you do, and most of the players will have a far more realistic idea if what the player experience actually is.

How to fix it? Play your own game. No fudging. No perks or self granted Dev benefits anyone buying a retail copy doesn’t get.

A few thousand hours playing your own game and using your own systems will be worth more than every metric you aggregate, wrote probably by orders of magnitude.

And no, you don’t do this already. That’s as painfully obvious as anything could be. It’s as desperately obvious as would be the claim of someone that said they’d driven lots of times, but then built a car that distribute the pedals evenly between all the seats and hid the steering wheel in the trunk.

It’s almost terrifying to imagine what you’ll do next.

Go play your game. You need the experience very badly.

Also, typing walls d text from my phone is a bad idea and I should stop.

shadow.6174:

Fernling.1729:

Back when the NPE was released Anet said they were going to make changes because of the backlash. Have any of those changes actually made it into the game, or are there still people waiting on them?

I could be wrong, but seem to remember reading that.

Well, the original title of this thread was “Changes coming to NPE” but besides what was said in the first post, nothing else has been announced as far I know.

ah, I was the first reply to the thread too. I knew I heard it from somewhere lol.
I’m curious as to what we will see changed to the NPE. I’m guessing some kind of legacy system.

With respect, Gaile, I was not complaining to you specifically in that map chat. I didn’t even know you were there until after you addressed me specifically. I had literally just zoned into the map not long before that. Other players were already talking about it, and I just threw in my 2 cents because it’s map chat and I had some time to kill before the event started. I usually avoid addressing ArenaNet employees in chat directly because I know that sometimes you too just want to play the game and enjoy, and I because know it’s not appropriate.

timmyf.1490:

Zera Allimatti.2541:

So the NPE. I once made a character and started leveling it to try things out. For the most part I don’t like it, but it did do some things that I like. To this day I have not tried leveling a new character in order to avoid the NPE.

Usually the best feedback comes from people who have done something A LOT, not just a little and quit.

You wouldn’t take a GW2 review seriously if the reviewer only made it to level 17, right?

Right, I’m sorry. I didn’t specify how long I played that new character for. While I don’t remember the exact time frame I played with the NPE, I can honestly say it was long enough to understand the points I made. You don’t have to level all the way up to 80 to see all those points I made. I played that character to the 20s without a scroll. That’s long enough to unlock most of the skills and get a decent feel for the leveling. Sure, I could have played to at least level 40 and unlock my elite, but all I had to do was mouse over it and see it tell me that I had to wait until level 40 to unlock it. There was no need to play up to that point. Since then the requirement for the elite has changed to 31 though. I played that character shortly after NPE was first released back in September because I had heard how bad the new leveling was and I had to see it for myself.

Bring back the old trait unlocking system please.

I don’t understand the changes to the trait system.

There is unbelievable frustration when My friend and I (he bought the game recently on my recommendation) played and unlocked the traits.

My character (who I made just before my long hiatus) has access to all the traits and I’m free to experiment with my builds and try out different weapons and things like that. For my friend to try out a new weapon or build, he has to spend an ungodly amount of time running around the map to unlock the supporting traits, or spend all his money and skill points to buy them. So needless to say he’s perpetually broke, and trust me, being broke or having to wiki dive to figure out how to trigger events is not adding to his fun.

For that matter, it takes a lot of balls to put some of those traits into the WvW areas. Because neither of us are PvP players, but we had to haul our kitten into the eternal battle grounds to try and take a hylek camp so he could get the trait he needed.

And let me tell you, getting our kitten stomped into the ground by a wandering horde, having the mission completed by another world causing us to forfeit our progress, having to check back 2-3 times to see if the camp was open again, was not fun.

It’s also not fun to try and do the dailies (which before could be done anywhere, you know gather 10 things etc etc) and get our kitten kicked all over the place trying to kill the great worm south of lions arch. Especially after we wiki dived to figure out how to make the kitten thing spawn. It was so not fun in fact, that we’ve stopped doing the dailies altogether. The PvE ones are ridiculously specific and difficult oftentimes, and we DONT WANT TO PLAY PvP at all, let alone just to get the daily reward.

And if we are not doing the daily missions, they are not exactly performing their intended function of playing daily are they?

So if you wanted your new player experience to be frustrating and restrictive, congratz. You succeeded with flying colours.

Stop trying to force me to explore in the areas you want, I want to explore the areas that look cool to me.

Stop trying to force me into PvP, we are not interested.

Stop restricting new characters build options behind huge gold walls. Being broke isn’t fun.

Now that I think more about it, something just occurred to me.

Who made the decision that the NPE should be massively restricted. Every change seems an attempt to force New players and characters to play the game the way you want it to be played, whereas the old system game endless options

Why are you trying to make your game less fun and explorable? Did it come down from marketing? Are you guys trying to up the Skinner box value of the game? Because if I Wanted to play WoW, I’d go ahead and play WoW. You can’t beat WoW by copying it.

Go ahead and let marketing know that for me will you? Maybe mention ToR or the dozen other MMOs that fail on a yearly basis due to WoW-envy will you?

Havoc.3865:

Now that I think more about it, something just occurred to me.

Who made the decision that the NPE should be massively restricted. Every change seems an attempt to force New players and characters to play the game the way you want it to be played, whereas the old system game endless options

Why are you trying to make your game less fun and explorable? Did it come down from marketing? Are you guys trying to up the Skinner box value of the game? Because if I Wanted to play WoW, I’d go ahead and play WoW. You can’t beat WoW by copying it.

Go ahead and let marketing know that for me will you? Maybe mention ToR or the dozen other MMOs that fail on a yearly basis due to WoW-envy will you?

Not sure where you get the idea that ArenaNet is trying to compete with Blizzard. Given the large differences between this game and that archaic software, I can safely say you should leave that other game out of this discussion. While the skinner box value is more prominent these days (the AP leaderboards, for example), this is not a competitor against WoW. That’s what Rift is for.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Havoc.3865:

Now that I think more about it, something just occurred to me.

Who made the decision that the NPE should be massively restricted. Every change seems an attempt to force New players and characters to play the game the way you want it to be played, whereas the old system game endless options

Why are you trying to make your game less fun and explorable? Did it come down from marketing? Are you guys trying to up the Skinner box value of the game? Because if I Wanted to play WoW, I’d go ahead and play WoW. You can’t beat WoW by copying it.

Go ahead and let marketing know that for me will you? Maybe mention ToR or the dozen other MMOs that fail on a yearly basis due to WoW-envy will you?

Not sure where you get the idea that ArenaNet is trying to compete with Blizzard. Given the large differences between this game and that archaic software, I can safely say you should leave that other game out of this discussion. While the skinner box value is more prominent these days (the AP leaderboards, for example), this is not a competitor against WoW. That’s what Rift is for.

What I remember from wow is being severely restricted, and having to buy every single skill individually, much like the new trait system. I didn’t play it for very long and I didn’t go back, so sorry if my memory is spotty.

I’ve hear they made a bunch of changes too, but like I said, I never went back.

You’re probably not going to read this on page 19, but I haven’t advanced a level on my alt (level 20 mesmer) since NPE was released and I’m not going to. I don’t want to be locked in to one build for 10s of levels, and I don’t like constantly dieing because I can’t access both high-dps builds but also CC-builds when faced with more than 2 enemies.

Gaile Gray.6029:

shadow — You are right, there haven’t been a lot of updates on this topic since the OP. I just wasn’t sure if you’d see the “We’re aware of these things” part. If so, my apologies. And yes, for the most part, changes to NPE are still on the “to do” list. But there’s no lack of understanding by the devs. For instance, our narrative director, Leah, posted about changes that need to be made in relation to the Personal Story.

Farm Flats and Havoc — Have you posted in the Traits thread? You’re welcome to add your thoughts there, as well, if you care to do so.

Zera — thank you and understood. The mods merged your post into the main thread to keep things tidy, concise, and easily reviewed. Thanks for sharing.

naisonod — If you did that on a phone, I’m impressed! And to your point, I can promise you that we do play our own game, so changes made are made with game experience, not on a whim or without a full view. I take on board you don’t care for the changes, but I did want to clarify that things aren’t switched by people who live in a vacuum.

I remain suspicious! My own hyperbole aside, it really is bizarre to me. I have no idea what all the factors are that go into deciding exactly what gets implemented and what doesn’t, though I continue to scratch my head at what I do know.

What is wrong with an incremental stat progression at each level? What is supposed to be better in what seem to be arbitrarily assigned bursts every handful of levels?

Why was the acquisition of traits put behind such a grind or pay wall? As far as I can tell, that didn’t make gaming life better for anybody, and actively made it a lot worse for arguably many.

Neither of those in particular seem to be the sorts of changes made by anyone that’s played the game and gone ‘this would be a great change to make’.

There are reasons for everything, and I cannot for the life of me intuit what the reasons might be if those reasons were supposed to in any way be to our benefit as players.

If they were not, then my frowny face will be immense, though I, at least, tend to better accept decisions that I can understand even if I don’t like them.

Addendum: posting from my Galaxy S5 from an airplane. You’re getting my nonsensical babbling from 35,000 feet.

Now if they’d only invent sonic screwdrivers.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Farm Flats and Havoc — Have you posted in the Traits thread? You’re welcome to add your thoughts there, as well, if you care to do so.

I would appreciate a link , I can’t find the talents feedback thread.

Just the dailies and NPE threads.

Havoc.3865:

I would appreciate a link , I can’t find the talents feedback thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/first
71 pages of people bemoaning how awful the April update was, enjoy.

I should really be sleeping right now, but here some of the things I’ve personally felt were problematic with the NPE:

• Warriors with healing signet equipped are prompted to activate it when low on health, even though this is unlikely to actually help.
• The conditions tutorial always calls attention to a utility skill as a defence against conditions, even when there are weapon skills or healing skills that might be more useful much of the time.
• I feel like the explanation of rallying given at level 5 needs to be redone.
• Unsalvageable, unvendorable equipment that has to be deleted once it ceases to be useful. This is especially bad since not all such equipment is ever useful, such as on a character using the crafted account-bound exotics at a given level.

Well, I’m going to leave some feedback. I feel like that mostly everything i will put on this post has been already said but well :P

• On personal story changes:
  Well, as stated on the first post, the removal of some parts of the personal story for the sake of simplicity did also introduced some plot holes which should be fixed somehow. Some characters like Sayeh al’Rajihd (That Largo girl) are not properly introduced when meeting them.
  As well playing the wrecked version of Lion’s Arch is completely lore breaking since it’s supposed to happen before Living Story S1.
  Though personal instances don’t give you any kind of loot, I like the new rewards for completing each step.
  For future updates i would like to see not only fixes but also some option to replay past chapters just like the S2.
  And knowing it’s not really a top priority, please, change that Zhaitan battle on Arah Story Mode. Pawning an elder dragon by just spaming 2 2 2 2 2, its really unepic.

• On trait unlocking
  Though traits are not mandatory to most profession while exploring the world and leveling up, the new way to obtain them all is not good at all IMO.
  First off, some traits are linked to very specific events which are actually almost invisible to new players unless they google for it. There are not even map markers which might give you a hint about obtaining certain traits on the zone.
  The alternative to this is paying a fee to unlock a certain trait which migh be pretty cheap for a veteran player but pretty expensive for a new player (most newbies I met told me that 1 gold was almost a fortune to them).

• On NPE overall
  When it was introduced, I found it ruined somehow the game treating low level players like dumbs, i just couldnt understand why you changed something that was ok to me.
  With the NPE, mostly a lot of trivial features were locked to new players (underwater combat skills, wardrobe, dyes, vistas, skill points, gathering etc..).
  I was a newbie too when the game was on beta i never felt overwhelmed by the game itself.
  Compared to other MMO, Guild Wars 2 is pretty simple since you don’t have a massive quantity of skills or abilities .
  I would suggest to roll back some changes of the NPE.

• On PvP changes
  I know it’s not directly related to NPE, but I think that ranked matches should be locked to new players untill they meet a certain condition(Ie: Win 5 unranked matches or osmething like that).
  Actually ranked matches are a very unfriendly place for new players. Not only because it may lead the team to an awfull defeat but also they can be verbally arrassed by some rude player that might get mad because their lack of skill (I really hate that..thats not reason to insult other people).
• On new dailies
  The new system is not really bad considering you are awarded for each daily achievement you do and you only have to accomplish 3 of them in order to have those 10 AP (BTW, I find that 10 AP for a daily is way too much…you can earn up to 3650 AP in a year just by doing dailies)
  The real problem of the new system is that most new daily objective have become way too specific and it’s not something that you will do on your regular daily gameplay unless you aim for it.
  PvP objectives that involves a specific class to win a match are something that should be removed or changed. Firstly it makes the population of that class greatly increase for a while, something very unconvenient for ranked solo games matchup (ie: on PvP, you don’t want to have more than 1 thief on your team unless they are godly good)
  Then it is something that most players won’t accomplish since it requires to have a character of that class.
  Regarding the rewards, well, PvP and WvW rewards are ok but some PvE are trash (Ok, I know that triggering a Vista in Ascalon is not a big deal but as a lvl 80…what I am supposed to do with an XP scroll!?)
  About the login reward, well, it’s something that leaves me indifferent. I don’t think they are better but I just preferred the old monthlies which awarded you with a bunch of laurels in one shot (very handy to buy ascended stuff).

I should also point out that since the NPE, there have been two instances that the voice scripts do not play during the Personal Story, namely the final dialogue cutscene between your character and Trahearne on the Battle of Fort Trinity and at the beginning dialogue cutscene between your character and Romke’s spirit in Romke’s Final Voyage. Plus I noticed that when I play the cinematic of the Fractals of the Mists, Dessa’s voice is missing.

Honestly, I thought the NPE is decent in trying to introduce new players to the mechanics, but I honestly think that you should give players some credit in letting them figure out the mechanics themselves. If you want to give them a tutorial, we got the very first story instance for them and you could always just make the necessary tweaks to those instances instead.

Jade Arkadian.9280:

First off, some traits are linked to very specific events which are actually almost invisible to new players unless they google for it. There are not even map markers which might give you a hint about obtaining certain traits on the zone.

For the record, if you click on the telescope icon next to the locked traits, it will show you where you need to go.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Traits:
I LOVE that it encourages and entices players to explore the world to unlock traits. That is a brilliant way to engage the players. It is even better that you can outright buy the specific traits you want for a small and reasonable fee.

Ideally that would be nice. Practically it’s horrible — things that are “encouraging” the exploration are severely mismatched to the level where it becomes “unlocked”. Basically most of traits are now an end-game content, because you won’t have enough gold and skill points to unlock them, especially on first primary character. And you won’t be able to actually do the things that it asks for non-pay-to-unlock method of obtaining it (bonus: horribly buggy events now block your ability to get a trait that theoretically is obtainable.).

Another bad aspect that I’ve encountered just yesterday — as an Elementalist you’re basically locked to fire for a while. The staggering “attunement” roll-out is just sad. No swiftness, no earth, not even water at the beginning. Yuk

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Jade Arkadian.9280:

First off, some traits are linked to very specific events which are actually almost invisible to new players unless they google for it. There are not even map markers which might give you a hint about obtaining certain traits on the zone.

For the record, if you click on the telescope icon next to the locked traits, it will show you where you need to go.

It gives you general area, and unless you actually lucky the event will not be there. For example Defeat the Branded Devourer Queen for trait X is usually either bugged, or not running when you get on the map (and you have to wait for the whole chain to restart, so without googling you will have no idea on how to get to the Queen critter)

Also good luck trying to defeat Grub in WvW As in, if there are people, they usually do some other stuff than doing the grub.