Guild Wars 2

I had a lengthy chat today with a long time gw2 friend. We both started our gw2 adventure in BWE1 and have played ever since.

Even so, I did not realise just how passionate he was about the game and how much he loved it. It wasn’t something we talked about much in the past, we just played and enjoyed the game.

I saw today he was leveling a new character so I asked him what he thought about the new patch. “It SUCKS big time” he replied. Oh? How so? I asked. Well this is a short of it what he said.

This is GW2! I loved GW1 and I love GW2! I love it b/c gw games are not about stats and gating. They’re about the skill, the journey and play how you want.

They needed a tutorial, so why haven’t they added a tutorial? Why have they gated the very things I love about this game? At lvl 17 I was told I have unlocked combos and that was it! Nothing to tell me what they are or how they worked. All they needed was a tutorial and leave the game as it was. Instead, I get to unlock my 2nd utility at lvl 24, woopie and now, I’m not getting my elite skill till 40!

One really poignant thing he said, “It made me cry when I had to dance for the cows instead of feeding them”. I assumed he was referring to the very first heart quest you do in the Human Starter area and upon hearing that, I kind of felt sad with him there.

I tried to explain this was not intended for him and me as vet players and since we got lots of lvl 80’s it shouldn’t affect us, but his reply was that this affects everyone! Instead of spending all that dev time designing this stuff, they could have added more stuff to the game along the tutorial like more elite skills that could have been locked and allow the new players to discover and simply adding more fun leveling content, not gating content. I couldn’t really argue with that, even though I personally haven’t played a new character since the patch and cannot offer my own opinion about it.

However, from talking to my normally docile friend and from all the outrage on the forums I have read, I think that what Anet should do, is simply remove the gating and introduce tooltips at various lvls. There should be a new button at top left screen called tooltips (perhaps denoted by a question mark?) with search options once activated, so people can go back and revisit these tooltips in case they pop up at the wrong time, like while they’re fighting or w/ever. But the very first tooltip should be about the tooltip itself and to notify the player of its existence.

2nd thing, there should be an option to disable these tooltips for vet players or anyone for that matter.

Oddly enough, another guildie of mine, also long term player, has been leveling not 1 but 3 alts and I asked him about it as well. He basically likes it all, like the directional compass thing but he also didn’t like the gating aspect of it.

On another note, I just brought a freind across from Lotro to gw2. It took me quite some time to get him to come over and he loves the game. His says the game is perfect, the only thing he doesn’t like is the downscaling lol. It’s something totally new for him, but I assured him he will get used to it. I didn’t like it at first either, but I’m well used to it now and forget it’s even there.

However, he was already lvl 40 when the patch hit, so not sure how he’s gonna feel when he rolls a new character. Time will tell I guess.

Anyway, this was just one little experience form a section of your playerbase Anet, so I hope some of this feedback is useful to you.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment as long as its constructive plz.

IMO leveling alts always sucked. What’s supposed to be fun about re-doing the entire storyline with a different beginning? I only got my second level 80 thanks to the Queensdale train, and after that I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe one day I’ll get my other 3 toons up to 80, but why, when I already have a max level guardian that I love to play?

Andred.1087:

IMO leveling alts always sucked. What’s supposed to be fun about re-doing the entire storyline with a different beginning? I only got my second level 80 thanks to the Queensdale train, and after that I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe one day I’ll get my other 3 toons up to 80, but why, when I already have a max level guardian that I love to play?

I have an empty character slot I bought recently on sale. Dunno why, I have 9x lvl 80’s lol all with 100% map completion and all. I got it just in case they add a new class or something.

I thought about lvling another char after the new patch just for the experience, but I don’t feel like replicating yet another class….got 2 rangers atm.

Tbh, I’m tempted still, as leving new chars was my fav part in gw2, but doing it for the 10th time without it being a new class? Not really.

This everything about this. I’m in the exact same boat as your friend, and I’m passionately trying to speak out against this pointless change to a good system.

I can’t stand playing my low level alts it just sucks so bad. -_-

Just about everyone who has posted their thoughts after trying it out has come the same conclusion and that is the skill locks, and level spacing of the unlocks, leave a lot to be desired. Particularly for veteran players, but I’m not convinced new players need their elite unlocked so late either. I’m really interested to see how it should have been when the Anet guys get back to us about it.

Skill related stuff and the cosmetic changes to early maps have really been given the thumbs down.