Guild Wars 2

Preface: This is all my opinion.

So….. I’m a hopeless altaholic.

http://tinyurl.com/o9oa5wm

I had acquired – through daily login rewards, PVP, and so forth – a large number of Tomes of Knowledge. I had previously greatly enjoyed leveling my characters up the old fashioned way – doing the personal story, crafting, doing hearts, doing skill challenges, and exploring the world. All this time that stack of Tomes had just grown, largely disused. I had a large number of spare skill points laying around I could use to buy components to outfit characters with crafted ascended items and had plenty of karma to spend.

I decided to do an experiment. I had only a few left that were not yet at 80. Professions I wasn’t as good at playing. So I figured I’d try using the tomes on them. But I also noticed some side effects. They have no world completion, none of the world opened up, none of their personal story done, and my karma pool quickly dried up because I wasn’t doing hearts or events anymore. But more than anything… I noticed I cared less about those characters and even debated deleting and remaking those level 80 characters. And that’s really bad because my alts are like my kids, I love every last one of them.

This has forced me to conclude that Instant-leveling items like the Tomes of Knowledge cheapen the game. They allow the player to skip the gameplay experience – skipping what makes the game fun – and now I wish I hadn’t done it. Now my plan is to go and do all those SAME THINGs only as level 80. I might as well have left the Tomes in my bank to start with.

A lot of my guild is telling me they are banking Tomes to insta-level their Revenant on day 1. I would submit that is a really bad idea. If you cheapen the Revenant by not actually playing the game, what will that character really mean? So I’m going to make a prediction, right now. I predict that those who insta-80 their Revenant will dislike the class, and those that take the time to level it up the old fashioned way will enjoy it.

I do think that Arenanet should consider the timeline, however. It’s nonsensical that a character that couldn’t have existed until Rytlock’s trip through the mists in 1327 is suddenly a part of the Zhaitan events in 1325 is utterly ridiculous and ludicrous. But… it’s better than the alternative, in my opinion.

So there you go. That was my experiment and my prediction as a result. We’ll see when Heart of Thorns comes out if I’m right.

Mitha.7039:

So….. I’m a hopeless altaholic.

This has forced me to conclude that Instant-leveling items like the Tomes of Knowledge cheapen the game. They allow the player to skip the gameplay experience – skipping what makes the game fun – and now I wish I hadn’t done it. Now my plan is to go and do all those SAME THINGs only as level 80. I might as well have left the Tomes in my bank to start with.

A lot of my guild is telling me they are banking Tomes to insta-level their Revenant on day 1. I would submit that is a really bad idea. If you cheapen the Revenant by not actually playing the game, what will that character really mean? So I’m going to make a prediction, right now. I predict that those who insta-80 their Revenant will dislike the class, and those that take the time to level it up the old fashioned way will enjoy it.

I have to respectfully disagree with you there. I have enough to insta level 2 characters to level 80 now and am saving them for my revenants. When I made my 16th character (Helga Procella, Human Elementalist) last January, I bumped her up to 80 and then outfitted her after I found I’m just tired of the leveling grind.

Once I did that, I found I really enjoyed playing Helga a lot more as she went into the world. I blew through the story, got that done within a few days. To me, you really won’t know a character’s and it’s build’s potential until you hit that magical 80 mark. So I have no regrets on doing that with Helga.

That is why I know when the Revenant is out, I’ll redo my 17th character (which is a placer just save the name) Loviatar Pohjola and insta-level her to 80. I’ll likely make a 2nd Revenant if I like the class as much as I think I will.

Basically I’m saying is that everyone is different in the likes about the game. If you like to grind out the character slowly, then by all means, all the more power to you! But please understand that there are some of us that are tired of the leveling grind and actually feel that the game gets good only after the characters are level 80.

I’m all for more choices for everyone. If you wish, you can choose to level your character instantly with tomes, scrolls, and money you have on your account already. Or if you wish you can choose to do it all step by step, as if it was your first character. Or you can choose to do some of each method, at your option -doing things you like, skipping things you don’t like.
We need more choices for players, not less. Never less.

Saw this post and had to comment as I have probably had 16+ 80s in my time playing GW2 (deleted more than half though, I am very picky and with GW2’s wonky character select I hate looking at the ones I don’t use so I delete)

First, I think Teleoceras is right about everyone being different. It doesn’t cheapen the game for me. In fact, leveling character after character over and over again cheapens the game for me by making me sick of anything even remotely related to character leveling. I found that by using tomes or crafting all me characters to 80 except for like 2 of them what I was able to do is come back years later and enjoy the low level zones again on my 80s in their full glory. Sure, it’s not challenging but I discovered things I have never seen before because I could just focus on exploring the world at my own pace and goofing around.

Then there is the problem with the new trait system. I like being able to customize my characters and the new system doesn’t allow that. For classes I haven’t played the first thing on my mind is “how do I play this properly?”. Getting to 80 as fast as I can is a way for me to instantly start experimenting and I learn so much better that way. For me a character’s right of passage is taking them through all my favorite dungeons and learning how the class works there (though not without visiting meta battle first so I don’t torment any pugs with my ignorance). That said, I’ve deleted most of my level 80s. I don’t think it’s because I’ve rushed them, because my main I crafted to 80, but I think it’s because I didn’t really like them in the first place.

Though I must say WP runs are the worst. Every time I get a character to 80 I have to run through Tyria and get EVERY WP because I like being able to, you know, actually use my characters… it’s stupidly boring and we shouldn’t have to do this every time we level a character. It’s pretty much the only drawback for me though. I haven’t had a problem with karma (1.5m karma screaming “use me, use me!”)

I have nothing against people who like to re-experience a game, but for me I don’t like knowing a character I really enjoy playing can’t join my friends in the silver wastes if I am feeling like it so I like to have them ready. I switch characters a LOT depending on my mood, so yeah, gotta be prepared.

Looking forward to playing around with my revenant in HoT itself so yeah, definitely using tomes.

I will wait until we’re at that point before I decide how to level my Revenant. If the NPE is still much the same I will likely level to at least 20 with tomes, probably more than that. If skill acquisition is not significantly improved, I will get around as much of that as I can. IMO, Anet seriously damaged the leveling experience with those changes. I hope that they are being carefully reworked for HoT.

One’s own personal experience should never be used to generalize across all the other players. That’s completely disregarding the fact that everyone is different and thinking everyone has your likes and dislikes.

I’m looking forward to my instant level 80 Revenant. If I had to tediously level her the old way, I probably wouldn’t play her much at all. Now, she will have the whole map she can go to and be played alongside all my other level 80s as their equal. Not slowly getting her up the the level where I will really enjoy her.

While I will level up a Revenant the slow way, I do not think that those who use tomes or crafting are wrong or think that they will not like the character as much as they could have had they leveled up them up the slow way.

It’s not like they get locked out of content by doing so, they can still go back and do the content designed for lower level characters. If they gear up right away, it also gives them more room for error while trying to memorize a rotation if they want to do so or find out what works for them in the class.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

I’m all for more choices for everyone. If you wish, you can choose to level your character instantly with tomes, scrolls, and money you have on you account already. Or if you wish you can choose to do it all step by step, as if it was your first character. Or you can choose to do some of each method, at your option -doing things you like, skipping things you don’t like.
We need more choices for players, not less. Never less.

I agree with this.

The vast majority of the time I level my characters through gameplay and I’d never consider using tomes or other methods to skip it because, like the OP, I feel that it makes the characters more meaningful and more enjoyable. (Also because the vast majority of the time I make new characters its to try something to do with levelling/playing at lower levels rather than stuff you can only do at level 80.)

But I still like having tomes of knowledge so that the option is there if I ever want or need it, and I can completely understand why other people would want it.

For example back in September when the Feature Pack update messed up the personal story I decided I wanted to play through the entire of the new version, partially just to see it for myself but also to document the changes to illustrate how messed up it is and to let other people decide whether they want to play the new version.

I wanted to get it done quickly for three reasons:
1) To get the information out there as soon as possible.
2) I naively believed that Anet might simply revert the change within days or weeks of it happening.
3) I didn’t want to spend hours levelling a character when I was only interested in doing the story and would be deleting them as soon as it was done, I’d rather spend that time on my other characters.

So I needed to level this character as fast as possible. Suddenly those tomes that had been gathering dust in my bank because extremely useful. I burned through my entire supply (plus a level 20 scroll) in a couple of days (level to 20, do story, use tomes to fill in remaining levels, etc. to allow for the XP from the story steps) and was still a bit short of what I needed.

Since then I aim to keep at least 80 tomes/60 + a level 20 scroll so that if I ever find myself in a similar situation I will have the option of instantly levelling a character. I’ll probably never use them, but at least I can if I want to.

I collect the tomes of knowledge, along with xp bonuses, skill points, scrolls, birthday bonanzas and what have you. One day I will make a killing on Ebay

I have levelled two characters to level 20 through the tomes because I find the early levels a bit tedious – I have 15 characters – but I enjoy the rest of it and they have earned every skill point they have.

One of my character has 6% map completion and over 900 hours…to each his/her own. I love all my 19 characters, there are only a select few that I insta-leveled to 80 and never touched again…

I have enough tomes and writs to level 3 (maybe even 4) characters to 80.

I primarily use map completion to level my alt characters and have done every profession plus a bunch of repeats. I know that I’ll complete about 50% of the world before I’m 80.

If I use these tomes on a character I plan to use an elite specialisation on (e.g. sword ele), I’ll get the full world to experience the weapon/profession combo. This means I can enjoy the “feel” for that particular character for longer. For me this will not “cheapen” the game, but the exact opposite.

One other point that should be made is that PvP rewards tomes of knowledge because you do not receive any exp in that game mode. This balances things a bit and means that folk who want to get to 80 just by playing PvP can.

I agree that receiving tomes from log-in rewards is a little cheap, but you get so few over time that it’s not all that bad.

I probably wouldn’t be playing without these things.

Character leveling, for me, is mostly a one-time deal. It’s interesting to see the first time through, maybe catch up on some missed things a second time, or re-live some glorious moments every so often, but frankly, it gets old, and I think it gets old really, really fast.

I believe I’m 10 or 12 80’s deep now, and I can comfortably say that after leveling 6 or seven the “normal” way, I had absolutely no interest whatsoever to keep making characters and grinding them up. Unlike more traditional MMO’s, where the leveling process gets faster each repeated time you do it (better gear/skills/builds, better spots, guild runs, new tricks/more experience, etc., the leveling process in GW2 is pretty similar in its speed (except EoTM), and most of the systems in-game hold you back too much from doing anything out of the ordinary like a true professional – I can’t do things way behind my character’s intended potential and get way-beyond-normal rewards for them – instead, I get no kill/event credit per the mechanics of the game.

Consider PvP players, too, who were sold the game on the basis they could level up entirely through PvP. Tomes are and have been the system used to let players level their characters through PvP, as the completion of matches alone does nothing for PvE experience gains.

You base your conclusion on personal experience. It can therefore only be applied to yourself. As a heavy alter myself (23 80s) I’ve levelled many characters differently. After a while though the levelling experience gets stale. It is then nice to have other options to get to 80.

for me it makes no difference to how much I like my character by how I levelled them. My favorite one has less than 30% map completion and has been levelled in a combination of tomes and EotM.

Keep in mind that there are more gamemodes. I like to WvW a lot, and an undergeared, underlevelled character is severely hamstrung in WvW.

IMO, for SOME people it can cheapen the experience. For others, it can accelerate the process of getting a character to a point someone wants. I, for example, just use them for the skill points since all 6 of my characters are level 80 already, and unless they say “you get a free character slot with HoT” I wont have any new characters to use them on.

As far as not learning the character, that changes depending on the player. Some of us have an idea of what we want to do with a character, and most of our learning is aimed at tidying up that playstyle and learning the… quirks, of it.

The biggest question for me is, how on earth did you use your karma? I’m sitting on just short of 6mil of the stuff and nothing to spend it on except them cloth gloves to convert to gold…

Reverence.6915:

The biggest question for me is, how on earth did you use your karma? I’m sitting on just short of 6mil of the stuff and nothing to spend it on except them cloth gloves to convert to gold…

If you’re a completionist and a skin-hunter (like me), it’s very fast and easy to drop all your karma on cultural weapons and temple armour.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Reverence.6915:

The biggest question for me is, how on earth did you use your karma? I’m sitting on just short of 6mil of the stuff and nothing to spend it on except them cloth gloves to convert to gold…

If you’re a completionist and a skin-hunter (like me), it’s very fast and easy to drop all your karma on cultural weapons and temple armour.

I already have all the skins though. A full set of temple armour only costs in the range of 250k. You can get that in a few hours doing some world bosses and surrounding events.

Reverence.6915:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Reverence.6915:

The biggest question for me is, how on earth did you use your karma? I’m sitting on just short of 6mil of the stuff and nothing to spend it on except them cloth gloves to convert to gold…

If you’re a completionist and a skin-hunter (like me), it’s very fast and easy to drop all your karma on cultural weapons and temple armour.

I already have all the skins though. A full set of temple armour only costs in the range of 250k. You can get that in a few hours doing some world bosses and surrounding events.

How in the world do you get 250k karma in a few hours by doing some world bosses and surrounding events? Teq will get you about 15k karma, true, but the others, not near as much. The Teq one only gets you so much because it has all those containers of karma that you get out of the chests.

I figure most of the events will get you 300-400 karma. If you manage to get 1000 karma per world boss/pre-events at 4 world bosses per hour, then that will take you about 45 hours, if you do 4 Teq events for about 60k karma.