Guild Wars 2

I am curious to know what my fellow forum goers think about the lack of level increase. I have never been a big fan of the conventional leveling system in MMOs but I feel like this may not be a popular opinion. I was a bit sad to find out that GW2 had a level cap of 80 when I got it but was relieved to find each level took about the same amount of time. So the big question is…

How do you feel about ANET not raising the level cap with the expansion?

Well I, personally, have no problem with it. Plus, it was expected right from the beginning. It was made clear in their pre-launch build up that the level cap would be a one-time deal. After all, my character is probably level 200, based on the amount of skill points he’s got, minus those I picked up from maps. If the level cap was suddenly boosted, that’d cause problems as far as progress to level 81 is concerned. Mastery and specialization both seems like interesting ways to have lateral progression without increasing the cap and I look forward to seeing how these work, exactly.

Very happy, to say the least. It’s not the only decision they’ve made since launch that I like, though there have not been that many, but it is one that is important to me.

My favorite part of the announcement. It tells me the game is planning to hook us with fun.

I understand the desire for “vertical progression” in an mmo but I have always disagreed with the arbitrary use of a level cap to fulfill it. A gear grind isn’t much better but I can’t think of a better way to implement that style of progression (be it a level cap or gear grind). I have fallen in love with the idea of horizontal progression since GW2 came out. Apparently I am a girly man and I like to play dress up.
cough cough I mean manly man, who does manly dressup stuff.

I am delighted that ANet has decided to not raise the level cap (for now at least). The lack of a new tier of gear/level cap increase was enough for me to be willing to make an exception to my personal boycott of the gemstore and make a one time purchase of gems.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-29-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-expansion-level-cap-gear-tier

According to this article, Colin said that there will never be a level cap increase, or a higher gear tier.

I’m very happy. I never wanted the level cap. I didn’t want ascended gear either, but if it’s the last tier of gear ever, I can live with it.

I would probably have quit if I needed to re-grind my legendaries and those few ascendeds that I have. Increasing level cap in a casual MMO would have been a big no no. I’m glad that they didn’t do it. And if you watch pax from cheering it’s obvious that I’m not the only one with that opinion

I applaud that they are leaving it alone and instead are adding post 80 changes to skills, abilities, and traits. Reminds me of the Incarnate system added to City of Heroes to go beyond level 50 without obsoleting all of your stuff.

But too many MMO players have been conditioned by WoW and WoW clones to expect an ever increasing level and BIS gear grind with expansions. Nothing says a developer cares than making all the gear you worked months to acquire worthless so you can spend months acquiring new gear only to repeat upon the next expansion.

On The Level

“I will commit to you that your max-level characters with your top-tier gear today are still going to be your max-level characters with your top-tier gear tomorrow.”
— Mike O’Brien, Co-Founder and CEO, ArenaNet

“We will never add more levels to the game, we will never add more tiers of gear to the game. The tiers and levels we have today will be the tiers and levels we have for the rest of the life of Guild Wars 2.”
— Colin Johanson, Game Director, Guild Wars 2

While I have various complaints about GW2, it’s still the best game I’ve ever played and has ruined other MMOs for me. So for good or ill, it’s my MMO “home”.

The NPE/trait fiascoes pushed me away for a lot longer than I expected, and I’m still waiting for changes before I start playing again on a regular basis, but the idea of permanently leaving GW2 has never entered my mind.

If ArenaNet would have chosen to raise the level cap for Heart of Thorns, however, or at some time in the future, I would have scrambled my password, deleted the GW2 client from my PC and had nothing more to do with GW2. Ever.

Thus I’m very, very pleased that ArenaNet has promised to never raise the level cap, and is instead committed to other forms of character progression.

An excellent decision, and one more reason to love both the game and the bold, talented visionaries who make it.

There was a red post in the traits thread fairly recently that they will be removing the current trait system and reworking it to be better, so perhaps it will become more bearable soon.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

The trait system is a good way to add an increase in power without relying on the level cap (never mind that it relies on it for unlocking initially). A rework would be really nice. What other games have handled level caps well? I can think of a few that had systems I enjoyed (TSW and GW1 come to mind). Are there any other games that you guys think did it better in terms of the leveling process and the cap across expansions?

I actually don’t care at all whether the level cap stays were it is, or goes up. Think about it, if Heart of Thorns brought the level cap to 85 or 90, you could just use some Tomes of Knowledge to instantly bump yourself up to max, or train a bit of a new crafting discipline for some quick and dirty experience. In the long run, gaining a few more levels is nothing.

“But what about the gear treadmill!? What happens to all my Level 80 gear I worked so hard for!?”

I dunno, maybe 80 gear levels up with you if it’s exotic or higher tier. Maybe there simply is no gear above 80, even if your character level increases.

“But won’t a Level 90 player be more powerful than a Level 80 player!? Isn’t this the dreaded Vertical Progression!?”

Who says you have to gain more stats past 80? Maybe you don’t get stronger at all, and it just unlocks higher capacity for those Mastery points, or it gets you access to the specializations.

“Oh, so I have to grind XP levels in order to play the new fun content, now!? So it’s all just a big grind-fest after all. Thanks, Obama!!”

Please. First of all, if you have a serious problem with gaining 5 or 10 levels, I don’t know how you ever made it to 80 in the first place.
But second, maybe you don’t even gain levels past 80 through the regular experience bar. Maybe levels get bumped up by accomplishing certain tasks, events, story chapters, or discovering areas on the map. Like, instead of talking to Old Man Charrington to learn how to hang-glide, you talk to him and he boosts you to level 81, which in turn gives you the hang-glide ability. This is all just arguing semantics, and a phobia of higher “levels” is just an irrational fear of simple number on your character menu.

“Levels” don’t necessarily have to mean anything. ArenaNet made the rules, they can break them any time. They decide what a “level” means at any given time, and a promise to never go above Level 80 is neither a good thing nor a bad thing to me. A guarantee of “no vertical progression” is only as good as what they install in its stead. If my Ranger has to grind out 5 million xp in order to unlock Druid at level 90, that doesn’t seem all that fun. But if the alternative is to fight a daily-locked world boss for 5 million Maguuma Jungle Bananas that I need to trade to unlock Druid, that’s even worse.

So, what exactly is the point of more levels if they do nothing? There is no point. They’ve already made their decision on it, the topic has been beaten to death, so yeah, you can stop now.

I didn’t really care either way. I would prefer to have a level cap increase with new gear as easily obtainable as exotic than ascended though.
I could grind 10 characters to max level and full berserker exotics before I could gear a single max leveled character in ascended.

GW2 would have worked awesomely without levels at all. I think something like that would have been cool.

Thank goodness they aren’t going to ever do that “hampster on a wheel” nonsense of raising levels and gear with every expansion. I much prefer the way they have it, increasing the profession’s depth by the new Mastery system.

I am very happy that there isn’t going to be lvl increase.

I’m very pleased that there is going to be no more level increases or gear tiers. While I still would have preferred if Ascended had never been introduced, like Vayne, I can live with it being the last tier, seeing as how it serves several important purposes in keeping the economy healthy.

We will still be able to “progress” via specialisations and Masteries, although we still need more information on how these will work.

Alteraphim.4629:

I am curious to know what my fellow forum goers think about the lack of level increase. I have never been a big fan of the conventional leveling system in MMOs but I feel like this may not be a popular opinion. I was a bit sad to find out that GW2 had a level cap of 80 when I got it but was relieved to find each level took about the same amount of time. So the big question is…

How do you feel about ANET not raising the level cap with the expansion?

Best decision they’ve ever made. Level cap increases are just an illusion of progression, not actual progression. Horizontal progression is actual progression because the mobs never scale up in level, you just gain more abilities to deal with them. The only way to gauge “progression” in most games with a new cap is to go back to zones with the old cap and kill grey mobs., but in GW2 that doesn’t really work because of downscaling. It also causes content replacement rather than content expansion. I guarantee you when this expansion is even a few months old, there will be people in FGS, Silverwastes, and Orr, because that content will still be valid level cap content. Those tier 6 materials you can mine there or get as drops will still have uses. We will just have new zones on top of what we already have to ALSO do content in.

Horizontal progression also allows for more differentiation between different characters. When everything is vertical, all characters of the same class are essentially the same, in TBC WoW all warriors in Tier 6 guilds basically all looked the same, had same talents same gear, the only thing different was their races.

Here we have cosmetics that allow for individuality, and different utility skills/builds (yes many people use cookie cutter builds but I often find myself substituting a utility or heal slot skill that is not used in the cookie cutter because I find it fits my playstyle better), and now masteries and specializations will further differentiate people. Not every ranger will want to go druid.

I think the two most forward thinking MMO’s on the market right now are GW2 and TESO, both games are going for alternate advancement/horizontal progression systems instead of level cap raises.

Deliriously happy the level cap will remain 80.

How do I feel about the time and effort I put into getting the stats and looks of all my characters to my liking not getting flushed down the toilet every time an expansion comes out?

Let me answer that by throwing some more money at ANet.

I’m really happy about it.

I actually enjoy a lot of the stuff that’s available to do whilst levelling in GW2 (and other RPGs), and I understand the need to introduce new skills, stats and mechanics gradually (both to learn them early on and to provide variety later) but I’m not a fan of the limitations involved.

I was really excited when I got to level 80 because it meant the game really opened up and became a lot more free-roaming. I didn’t have to worry about anything being above my level, or where I should be going to get the best XP. I could just do whatever I wanted, in whatever order I wanted to do it.

If that changed I’d probably keep playing, but I’d much rather just be able to jump into the new content and play as I have been, instead of having to level up all over again.

Vayne.8563:

I’m very happy. I never wanted the level cap. I didn’t want ascended gear either, but if it’s the last tier of gear ever, I can live with it.

This. It almost makes ascended palatable.

Happy.
Level increase is a pointless cliche overdone time sink content for an expansion, given almost every1 already familiar with the game already. It serves no purpose. Efforts should be invested on other contents.

I’ve never really understood the attraction of getting new levels that require you to get new gears to fight mobs that are scaled to your new level. One one hand, it’s character progression, but on the other hand it’s a unthinking sort of progression. Ratcheting up like that makes the old areas trivial and in non scaling games, not even playable as there is no reason to go there.

Extremely happy. I would have quit if I had to regrind new gear on all my alts.

Progression is a strange beast and I have often felt it gets in the way of the important things in a game, i.e. the fun.

While some might find progression fun, and if it is done right it can be, but I have to ask why? Is it the gaining of more power or is it simply so you have a long term goal? But the problem with any kind of progression system, is there is (9 times out of 10) an end. Once you get to the end of that progression then what?

When I used to play FPS games, back in the days of Team Fortress 1, there was no progression. Only winning the match. Your only focus was on that one important goal. Winning the match. Not trying to level up, or gain a new skill, or progress a rank, or unlock a title. The only thing that was important was winning. And you know what? It was amazing fun regardless of there not being any progression.

Since then of course, even FPS games these days have their own progression systems added, and with them came the main problem I have always had with all progression systems in multiplayer games. And that is progression is often a personal thing. So while you are playing with others, all supposedly striving for the same goal, you are there thinking about progressing your character. If done right, this is not a problem, but it often comes with this risk and it is a difficult thing to balance.

Another problem with it is, not just that it takes your mind off the team’s goal, but it can also take your mind off other (more fun) aspects of the game. Because you are focusing on progression you might not notice, or truely appreciate and enjoy, the content you are playing. Personally, I feel the activities you take part in, such as the combat, events, etc, should be the only real focus we have. The trouble is, progression is a lot easier to create than trying to create content that will remain fun and engaging for a long time.

I am not saying I have the answers to how to create a long lasting progressionless game, though it is something I have been trying to develope for a long time. And nor am I saying that Anet has got it wrong. Far from it, I think they have got it more right than many other companies. Out of all the MMO’s I have played Anet has developed some of the best progression systems in the business, and I think that is primarily because they are not a progression of power but rather a progression of options. It still has its problems, but I think Anet do a great job of managing those problems by added really fun content. And personally I am over the moon that they have kept to their ‘no raised level cap’ philosophy that they stuck with throughout GW1.

It’s very clear that vertical progression is not a good fit for GW2 or its community. I’m glad they recognized that. It’s probably time that that paradigm shifted for MMOs in general, because, honestly -

Vertical progression really does more harm than good to a game at the end of the day, mostly due to the how much it trivializes anything outside of current expansion content and makes it obsolete. It also has a tendency to hit the reset button on class balance.

See, I totally get why there are no level cap increases, and at the end of the day, I appreciate it.

That said, I can’t deny that little sense of satisfaction from another level popping It’d be nice to impliment that somehow. Getting new skill points isn’t quite as thrilling.

- does happy-dance around his gaming chair -

I’m very happy with no level increase. It wouldn’t be any use. The levels as is are ok. I could see further unlock of traits. Or specialisations, but not again a gear grind for no win in stats. The actual stats you gained by getting ascended have been nerfed into oblivion. Which makes your ascended armor the same as realease time exotics.
Only you do not pay 5 ecto’s 5 t6 and some mats to make it…

Due to people wanting more crafting levels and on we now need 6 ascended insignia’s t7 crafting mats, which are timegated and overly expensive. laurels and guild commendations to buy ascended rings… and pay 40 gold for pink stats on our weapons… instead of 4 gold for orange.

We could buy EXOTIC end game stuff for 10 gold at start, or get it free from dungeons and karma…, but due to pressure from some we pay 900 for ascended… and to compensate for the introduction all damages were nerfed 10%.
GG for all people wanting “new tiers.” the most of you still use the old skins for the better part, you still use the same builds but now it’s 30 times as expensive. No gain in the end.

If it would happen stuff had gotten lvl 100 how much would you have payed for your level 100 armor? Again a mark-up 30 times as much? So a nice armor set for 27k gold? this time all mats timegated for a week?

Just be glad you can play the game.

I do not pity the TP flippers who were expecting more and more. So you can buy all new legendaries at release of HoT? Well nice for you.
I just hope you find anything more interesting to do in the coming couple of years as you instantly destroyed all long term goals of playing HoT… GG to you 2

The point is not that there is no increase in level cap. The point is that there is no new gear level.

If there was no new level cap but better armor was tied to mastery points, there’d still be vertical progression.

I’ve played Anarchy Online for quite some time. They had max level 200, which never changed. And with their first expansion they introduced “shadow levels” which basically was an increase in level cap, although they were parallel levels. And with their second expansion they introduced “alien invasion levels”. Which meant that you had character level decsriptions like 200/20/30. Theoretically they did not increase their level cap…

So the question is whether the masteries will act like some sort of parallel levels. We don’t know yet, but I am hopeful that they are not.

yanipheonu.5798:

See, I totally get why there are no level cap increases, and at the end of the day, I appreciate it.

That said, I can’t deny that little sense of satisfaction from another level popping It’d be nice to impliment that somehow. Getting new skill points isn’t quite as thrilling.

I totally get what you are saying here. Gaining another level means you are increasing in power and that rush of enjoyment is very addictive. However, I truly feel this same feeling can be achieved without progressing a level.

For me, one of the more exiting feelings of gaining a level is when you gain a new skill, ability, trait or whatever, not from gaining more hitpoints or dealing more damage. It comes from gaining more tools to play with, and they can be aquired without gaining more levels. And that is why I feel horizontal progression systems are far superior to vertical systems.

Also, progression doesn’t have to be linked to the power/ability of your character. And it is that direction I think Anet are going to be taking us with their new mastery system. Progression doesn’t have to be tied to your character’s abilities in combat. Hell it doesn’t even have to be tied to your character at all. Progression could be upgrading your guild hall, increasing your ability to traverse a zone, improving the capability of a mount (the new hand gliders spring to mind here), improving relations with NPCs, among other things.

I think there will be a lot of progression in HoT, and the associated feeling of reward and achievement, without needing to increase the level cap.

@Halvorn – I agree, vertical progression is not just about gaining levels, it is about gaining in power (health, damage, armour, etc). I do not believe Anet will add any progression into HoT (or any other future expansion) that increases your characters power in combat. I truly believe your combat stats will not change, only your toolset will increase.

The specialization systems are effectively like new professions. They will follow the same restrictions the current professions follow, and will have the same stats, gear and power that the current professions have.

I think masteries will be a different set of progression systems not related to combat. At least not in direct player vs player combat.

How do I feel about no level cap increase, and no new tiers of armor, and a solid statement from Colin that they will “never” add those things for the life of the game?

I absolutely freaking love it!

(as long as they stick to that commitment)

yanipheonu.5798:

See, I totally get why there are no level cap increases, and at the end of the day, I appreciate it.

That said, I can’t deny that little sense of satisfaction from another level popping It’d be nice to impliment that somehow. Getting new skill points isn’t quite as thrilling.

Basically mastery points are going to replace that feeling. You’ll be able to unlock mastery points and specialize. You’ll still be progressing, just not in levels.

I imagine over time that might be a better feeling than leveling.

Masteries seem like a way to throw in grind and traditional MMO vertical progression without negating previous progress.

I don’t mind.

Raising the level cap breaks the game, especially if it only applies to people who buy the expansion.

It’s nothing more than a dirty trick used to manipulate the players into thinking they are being given more content, when the reality is that they are simply doing the same content over again just to get back to where they were before.

I have absolutely zero respect for game companies that employ this tactic as it is unethical in every respect and insulting to those who have an average or better level of intelligence.

That said, I am incredibly relieved to hear that Guild Wars is treating us with respect and not trying to trick us onto the 1990s hamster wheel model.

I’m glad they didn’t. I’m not looking to regrind all my gear back.