I’ve been worried since they said they would change it, i was even thinking about writing down about it, but now it’s confirmed by the news section: Doing every day stuff that rewards experience, will no longer reward experience.
Farm a Ore node? Some wood? Plant? It won’t give a thing anymore in future. Capture a keep/tower in wvw without being able to kill somethign (stand in circle)? Your 28000/56000 experience just got completely removed by Anet with nothing replacing it.
Event reward after level 80? Sorry, you no longer get 18000 experience per event in Orr/Silverwaistes. Found a point of interest? no more experience. Complete a map? Scrap that 25000 experience!!!
Doing all of this to RNG Based loot (drops from mobs, shards) is a complete mistake. This garanteed part of progression past level 80, gave a sense of garanteed loot. Yes skill points could feel useless after a while, but not for everyone. When I killed a Doe that is yellow and I know people didnt kill for a while, it gives me joy to get 500+1200 experience from it.
Also one of the reasons i farm quite a lot of achievement points is for the experience bonus. It felt as a progression to speed up later progression, and being quite worth it. Now the 28% experience bonus i accumulated is completely useless, unless i’m not level 80.
Overall, everything will now feel like personal story: mobs barely give loot, have more rng then ever (shards = rng now too), and things that used to give garanteed skill point progression are taken away.
This is a step back from ‘do what you want, where you want, and always be at least a bit rewarded for it’. Mark my words, people will feel faster bored then they do now. People might not realize it, but killing mob after mob, that even when it doesn’t yield loot, even doesn’t give experience wich it used to? Bad.
Second problem: hiding skill points behind RNG. Rng no matter how well intended, can screw things over. Experience, Karma and small coins gains from events used to be a steady, always 100% certain, income. You knew if you take the sentry you get some karma, wxp etc. It’s garanteed, even if it’s relatively small. And if you keep doing event you will get skill point. That gave a feeling of safety. Now some people will get 50 spirit shards a day (Zerg farming guilds, but only the lucky people with good rng in that guild). Other people will get almost no skill points. For something as crucial as skill points this should not be the case. It also doesn’t make sense. Every time you kill something, you practise ‘combat’. That yields experience cause your character gets smarter. Making now one mob give you experience (and progress), and a lot of others, not give you experience, and mixing this into a random mix, is not good.
Solution: Make a Skill point Mastery track. This track can be activated anywhere, and will never be complete. Instead this track will copy the old experience system after level 80, and reward Spirit shards, when a Tier is complete and reset. If you want to farm masteries like the hylek language masteries, then you choose that, and (temporary) won’t get skill points from doing stuff. But in wvw, you used to get craploads of skill points just by playing ppt. Some people like to roam, get sentries, defend etc. These people will get a massively huge/big nerf to skill point continuum. The new meta: farm enemy zerg a lot, or you won’t get Spirit shards. Roam? Blah you don’t get them.
Please overhaul it, so that spirit shards and old Exp system can ‘coindide together’. I don’t want Diablo, or free to play (but pay to win) mmorpg playstyle where everything is RNG related, making the game feel chore and grind after a while.
When i’m in wvw, and i get a level up, it makes me happy, cause i got something usefull (even though a bit to much of it), that I can always use later (siege) etc.
Like why should I do event at all? I often did them just to grab the experience. Now that will be gone, same with mobs. The game will feel empty, and purely loot based wich is NOT good. Old exp system was perfect, don’t fix what ain’t broke. merge both system so they live happy together please, thanks.
I know some will say ‘you really care that much about experience’? You may not but i do. Even in gw1 i had way to much skill points, but those 641 skill points on my ritualist feel like an achievement, and i could always buy stuff with it (buff stones). Same in guild wars 2. Now the urge, need, or feel of reward to do events is gone. And so it will hasten boredom, will hasten quitting game. The experience system was good, in that while repetive, always garanteed you get something (meaningfull, if you think about superior siege, and all the pve skill point applicaitons) usefull. That garanteed loot/progression is gone now, wich is not good.
No excuse anymore for not giving ‘hide mounts’-option
No thanks to unidentified weapons.