Guild Wars 2

Nobody but marketing thinks level gates make sense for GW 2.

Why? Because they make the game feel linear and mechanical. Guild wars 2 otherwise is designed around exploration/discovery/etc and the combat/progression fit that same running theme. Now you add a crazy super fun bonus unlock with loot thrown at my face every time we level in order to keep us playing because that’s what your marketing data told you. Try adding more interesting content, rather than a lazy way to bring in new people. Such as when a few people at Anet decided using basic behavior analytic trickery (How well did you implement your reinforcement schedules?) in order to bring in more people. I know, profit margins and all that, right? What mad mess that’s gotten us all into. But hey, Guild Wars 2 isn’t looking for a new job. It doesn’t have to fluff up its resume by doing things that add marketability. And you don’t need to cross the event horizon into the boring and sterile world of statistics to drive design decisions. Statistics can only test what’s already out there, and the MBA using them to provide “numerical evidence” for decisions is probably skewing those statistics, because statistics are easy to skew within a system that supports the biased interpretation of those statistics.

Anet (guild wars 2) doesn’t know who it wants to be, because it’s trying to squeeze the game into a standard consumer model for the genre while having an identity. You can’t have both.

Yet surprisingly no one has voiced the same concern about time gating content in a casual game.

My concern is that level gating has absolutely been in this game since launch, and no one said a word about it. All of a sudden “no one thinks level gating makes sense”.

Tell me OP, did or did not your weapon swap unlock at level 7 before the September Feature Patch? Did or did not you get skills unlocked at certain levels.

Level gating has been in the game since day one.

You might argue that the change to level gating is bad, but the actual level gating itself…it’s a bit too late to start complaining about that. If it was such a bad idea, I’m pretty sure we’d have heard complaints about it two years ago.

Either I’m in marketing, or your opening statement is a case of hyperbole. As far as I know, level-gating has been present in the game since launch. Lol, I can remember dying awfully fast in Beta when I first ventured into Gendarran Fields with my barely over Level 10 character. Ha! I also remember eagerly awaiting getting my character up to Level 30 so I could use my free DDE Elite Skill.

I never gave level-gating much thought, except looking forward to each next level. I think people often have trouble with change. New things? Great! Change what’s familiar? Not so much. /shrug

The new level rewards are going to generate a sense of anticipation in new players, along the lines of, “I wonder what I’ll get this time?” This, I believe, is a good thing for their interest in the game, though it panders to human tendencies toward addictive behavior. Veteran players are going to look at the rewards and think, “This stuff is not worth it.” — but veterans have previous experience at level 80 and can access exotic gear fairly easily — so green and even gold gear looks lackluster.

What the NPE does not do, really, is provide a better teaching experience than the old leveling did. It may have changed a few things for the better (though I’d be hard pressed to say what those are), but it changed some things for no gain — or made them worse.