Guild Wars 2

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Raven.9603:

the game is already easy enough for new players, they dont need this and its a huge disservice to existing players who want to level alts.

At this rate, Anet will be forcing everyone to level a warrior first before unlocking other classes, just so casuals arent overburdened by accidentally picking a class that requires a functioning nervous system.

That warrior hate is deeply ingrained.

I can almost feel the resentment oozing from this post.

dont take it personal, it was meant to be a dig at anet for making things harder to unlock. there are numerous threads discussing what is the easiest class in the game, and they all have the same answer. warrior skill floor is the lowest. But I main a ranger and the skill floor for bearbow isnt much higher, if not equally bad.

and i dont hate warriors, i just hate the lack of trade offs. its an armor/health/damage design problem that anet will never fix. healing signet is a bit too strong. evis is too strong, but the adren change could really bring it inline.

Chrispy.5641:

The Complexity of Gw2 is already on a level comparable to Console games with less buttons than a keyboard, and GW2 is nothing compared to GW1, which itself is nowhere near as complex as an MMO like WoW or Everquest.

Exactly!! They might as well dumb it down further and start selling the game for 2$ on iOS or Android.

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

I rarely complain about changes, and i always try to see a good way of utilizing them.
But, i’m sorry ArenaNet, this is just dumb.

Can you even imagine leveling a Mesmer right now? Pushing the traits to level 30 was already a huge hit for new Mesmers, and now the first 10 levels will feel like a godkitten nightmare on top of that.

Then there’s the “dumbing down” argument. Like the poster above me pointed out, literally every game out there requires you to learn 10-15 skills by the time you’re level 20, and they just keep coming. No one complains about them, people just adapt, and learn.
This on the other hand is quite literally an insult to the intelligence of an average gamer. We already have 5-6 buttons to push at most at levels 1-10, and you think that’s too much?
That’s the most unnecessary change to this game i have ever seen.

Paradox.1380:

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

It is not a big deal for you. And what people do here is called feedback, which is necessary for a game’s development. I complain about the game because I care, if I didn’t care I would simply play something else.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

Hahaha oh wow. Is this real life?

How much more dumbed down do things need to be for people? And why keep catering to the lowest common denominator this much which just further alienates people of at least some quality, people that tend to stick around for more than a month.

This really is insulting. Keep spoonfeeding people and they will remain that way and drag down the quality of the playerbase.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

It is not a big deal for you. And what people do here is called feedback, which is necessary for a game’s development. I complain about the game because I care, if I didn’t care I would simply play something else.

I’m all for feedback, and I understand that. Complaining without offering anything of a solution, however is NOT feedback it is whining. There are ways (a stickied thread even) about how to give constructive, proper feedback. That’s why I stated people needed to calm down. The world isn’t going down in flames because they are trying to make their game a little easier to play.

Paradox.1380:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

It is not a big deal for you. And what people do here is called feedback, which is necessary for a game’s development. I complain about the game because I care, if I didn’t care I would simply play something else.

I’m all for feedback, and I understand that. Complaining without offering anything of a solution, however is NOT feedback it is whining. There are ways (a stickied thread even) about how to give constructive, proper feedback. That’s why I stated people needed to calm down. The world isn’t going down in flames because they are trying to make their game a little easier to play.

The solution is: Don’t change something that isn’t broken. I may be overreacting a bit, but levelling alts has been my favorite pass time in guild wars 2 since the very beginning, so these changes hit me hard.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

It is not a big deal for you. And what people do here is called feedback, which is necessary for a game’s development. I complain about the game because I care, if I didn’t care I would simply play something else.

I’m all for feedback, and I understand that. Complaining without offering anything of a solution, however is NOT feedback it is whining. There are ways (a stickied thread even) about how to give constructive, proper feedback. That’s why I stated people needed to calm down. The world isn’t going down in flames because they are trying to make their game a little easier to play.

The solution is: Don’t change something that isn’t broken.

that’s the kicker. According to the players, it was broken.

Don’t blame Anet. blame the people who can’t learn skills.

And seriously speaking I expect much of the player base consists of extremely intelligent nerds!!

Sheldon will not play this game!!!

Azure The Heartless.3261:

that’s the kicker. According to the players, it was broken.

And that is the part that is beyond my comprehension.

It’s another clear indication that Anet is focused on trying to rope in new players instead of retaining old players.

New players (for the first year, maybe two at most) are their main source of income.

As a player ages, they spend less money (presumably because they’ve done everything in the game, and there is no new content coming out, so gem store purchases level off around this time).

It therefore makes sense to try and do what you can to bring in fresh blood – people who are not burned out on the game, rather than attempt to retain people who are not spending money any more (because the work required to create the content that would keep those ‘veterans’ and get them to spend more far exceeds the work necessary to pull in a new crowd of naive players).

It all makes sense now – Anet is focused on a short life cycle – pull in new players at a constant rate, many of which will spend at least a couple hundred dollars, and abandon everyone who’s played for a year or more.

When viewed in this light, their entire direction and focus makes much more sense.

They have no interest in veteran players, or player retention – it’s all about the short term fix – the player who will spend a bit in the beginning, as they are fascinated by some of the things Anet has done well, like art direction.

It’s like a haunted house at Halloween – as short, thrill filled walk that’s over too soon, but was fun while it lasted.

If you are at “end game” you should just quit – this game is not for you.

To be honest, I thought GW2 was the greatest MMO I’d ever played -until I hit 80…on 7 different characters.

Leveling up through the world was neat – there is so much immersive stuff to see, so much beautiful scenery.

But once you’ve done all that – once you have the bag of potato chips – what else is there?

Nothing.

So you move on. And most importantly, you quit spending cash in the gem shop. I bet Anet has a graph of not only how much money people spend, but where exactly in their GW2 career they spend it, and it probably shows that players spending drops off over time. It’s highest in the beginning (when they are still thrilled with the game), and very quickly tapers, as they realize how little Anet is actually offering.

Therefore, why do anything to retain players? It’s more profitable to rope as many new players, who spend more, and let everyone else out the back door.

I’ve spent roughly $200 on the game in the last year – and played just over 1K hours – that comes out to approximately 20 cents per hour – which is not bad for dollar value. I’d say about 700 of those hours were really fun (the beginning of the game) and about 300 or so were just mindless ‘preparing to have fun’ farming, thinking that new content was coming, so I wanted to level alts and gear up for it – but then it never came. So, even if I only count my ‘fun’ hours, I still get about 27 1/2 cents per hour. How many times have you spent a quarter or less in an arcade? Never, right? So, one could argue I got my money’s worth – I just wish I could get the 300 hours I spent doing nothing back. If Anet had been more honest about their direction, then I would have stopped after leveling my 3rd alt to 80 and moved on. But they can’t be honest about this, because it would discourage some spending (I primarily bought utility stuff, like bank slots, char slots, etc. – I probably wouldn’t have bought the deluxe edition of the game if I knew what I know now, and I would have discouraged my gf from buying any cosmetic items).

The only danger is in if it backfires from negative press.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

It is not a big deal for you. And what people do here is called feedback, which is necessary for a game’s development. I complain about the game because I care, if I didn’t care I would simply play something else.

I’m all for feedback, and I understand that. Complaining without offering anything of a solution, however is NOT feedback it is whining. There are ways (a stickied thread even) about how to give constructive, proper feedback. That’s why I stated people needed to calm down. The world isn’t going down in flames because they are trying to make their game a little easier to play.

The solution is: Don’t change something that isn’t broken. I may be overreacting a bit, but levelling alts has been my favorite pass time in guild wars 2 since the very beginning, so these changes hit me hard.

You don’t know if its broken or not. Just because you understood something doesn’t mean everyone does. I distinctly remember many people complaining about how overwhelming and complicated the early game was because everything happened so fast. I for one was one of those people.

Call me a filthy casual if you want, its probably true. It took me a very long time to grasp this game and all its mechanics. It is very different from the Eastern MMO’s I was playing before.

All I know is its okay to be upset, but if you are already playing and enjoying the game this doesn’t really affect you you can streamline the process and speed level yourself because you know what to do and how to do it. A new player might be blindsided. You cannot put your experiences on someone else’s.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

that’s the kicker. According to the players, it was broken.

And that is the part that is beyond my comprehension.

I cannot believe there are people that call themselves gamers that cannot handle 5 skills at a time.

But then again…

It’s only a matter of time before they release gem store items that allow “advanced” players to unlock weapon skills quicker and more in-line with the old method.

You guys are being fleeced by professional charlatans.

My son started leveling his Charr warrior from 1-80 on the “old” system at age TEN. You cannot make the case that this game has too hard before. Players too dumb to figure this game will not be drawn to play this type of game in the first place, especially since it costs them money.

And for those of you saying to “calm down” because its not that big a deal, will you still be saying that a year from now when most of the Veteran players are gone and all that is left is level 80 Chinese players that don’t know there is a “dodge” function?

Gotta say this is just weird imo.

I can’t understand doing this at all really. This was one of those not broken don’t fixit kind of things. One of the fun things was training all of my weapons at once at an early stage so I didn’t have to think about it later!

Weird.

Calling people you don’t know dumb…. is the reason people like me are telling people to calm down. I most certainly am NOT dumb… and I had a hard time with the learning curve of this game… No, 5 skills is not hard to handle, but it combined with everything else that just kind of poured on top of you at the start was very jarring.

Furthermore, to anyone else who had trouble at the start of this game I am sorry people are calling you dumb because they don’t wanna take the time to empathize with you. Don’t take it to heart, cause its totally rude.

I wouldn’t call it insulting, most MMOs have some sort of unlock system.

What I don’t understand though, is how to reconcile this with a player using the same weapon for 10 levels, again because he doesn’t know any better apparently and then trying a new weapon for the first time.

Consider that he decides to now try that scepter that’s been in his inv. for the last few days and bingo all 5 skills are unlocked because he’s already lvl 10.

I guess he’ll start having seizures or something from information overload.

Xillllix.3485:

You can still use those level-up scrolls or craft your way up.

Last character I made I used 1 scroll, levelled up from 20 to 40, then crafted 6 professions.
Took 2 days for the levelling, 3 hours for the crafting.

I agree however that is seems like they are dumbing the game down.

the problem here is that I used to LIKE going back through those early areas and stories and leveling that way. I dislike having to now level through crafting just so I can PLAY the game with a proper set of skills.

Still think they don’t need a PTR?

Old players have 1→20 level birthday scrolls, so compared to leveling an alt before those scrolls, we still have it more convenient.

New players can certainly make use of those extra skills, but probably at a reduced efficiency.

The way I see it, this has as much to do with implementing a more gradual character progression. Leveling can sometimes feel pointless due to level scaling, but unlocking new skill slots, or getting new trait points are very clear power-ups that does not depend on level scaling.

Before, the progression beyond level 30 were very slow. Now the power-ups will be spread more out towards the higher levels.

Now, this is an inconvenience for me when leveling my remaining professions, but I understand why they do it.

they sure hit hard this time

Kurrilino.2706:

Kamui.4038:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

hahahahahaha what ?????
Is this for real ???

If that is the case the GW2 comunity is entitled to handicaped passes and must be
allowed to use the blue parking zones at Wallmart

Anet should start handing out free pacifiers.

Kurrilino.2706:

Kamui.4038:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

hahahahahaha what ?????
Is this for real ???

If that is the case the GW2 comunity is entitled to handicaped passes and must be
allowed to use the blue parking zones at Wallmart

So rude. I’ll never understand thinking like this. Why do you attach your experiences on others and assume just because they don’t think, act, or operate the way you do that you are entitled to say such things as to imply people aren’t at your average level of thinking? So what if they aren’t anyway?

just for reference, there is nothing wrong with those of us who have diminished capacities in the mental health department.

Draknar.5748:

Devildoc.6721:

The only bad part about Tequatl’s roll out is that you have a 150 person PuG.

The problem was not the fight mechanics at all, the fight mechanics were great, it’s the fact that it was on an open landscape zone rather than an instanced dungeon.

Expecting 100+ people who just randomly join the map to be on voice communication and work together in teams is a bit of a stretch.

Except Tequatl was never meant to be a zerg fest world boss where everyone shows up at the last minute and hopes to win.

It was supposed to be a pre-planned event, much like a raid, where you prepare ahead of time, establish roles for groups, get on voice chat, etc.

When it was released everyone kept trying to treat it like it was Svanir Shaman or something and complained it was too hard and needed too much communication.

Ask anyone now that actually does Teq and you will know that it is extremely easy to do withOUT voice chat communication. You just need to get in a properly organized map. Look in LFG for taxis to Teq some time. You will be pleasantly surprised how easy the encounter is.

That’s why I said the mistake was in making it open landscape content..

Had it been behind an instance portal where guilds could form up their organized raid, go in, and fight, it wouldn’t have gotten criticized at all.

You’re also forgetting about how it was all overflows, people on low pop servers guesting to high pop servers, people on the map who weren’t even doing Tequatl they were just leveling in the zone or whatever, etc. It was a mess.

Less people are clammoring to do the content now so it’s easier to get on an organized map that knows what it’s doing.

I’ve done the fight successfully a few times, I do appreciate the mechanics and complexity, I just think making it open world was a bad idea, I was only able to complete it weeks after it was released when the initial hype for it died down and people learned what they were supposed to do and there were less people flooding the zone so you weren’t on a guaranteed fail overflow even an hour before the fight.

I don’t care. I have a massive stacks of scrolls of knoledge, experience and tomes of knowledge.

If they ever add Tengu I’m going to get me 4 more characters slots, make one for each house, and push those suckers to level 80 right after creation.

The target audience is now officially not the gamer itself, but kittens.
This game is the easiest(!) MMO I have ever played. Its newb-friendly, easy to understand the mechanics and you level up so fast you dont even have the chance explore the entire map without hitting level 120++, just that it caps out at 80.

1) Downstate at level 5 is no good for new players. They get used to one system and then suddenly have to adept and probably go like “Wait, wut happening.. I can throw stones?” Instead of letting them learn this feature from level 1 on. And no, a “Did you know” window wont help. Who reads tutorial windows anyway?!

2) No Wardrobe at level1…. WHAT?! That is the most important thing to me. The first thing I would do after the tutorial sequence was going to have a look at what skins are available for the character. This determines wether I want to play the class or not. Now I have to waste even more time before I get the chance to look at the available options.

3) All skills unlocked at lvl10 instead of kills per weapon is fine to me. On most classes it would take longer to unlock all weapons now as it would after the patch. To think players are to dumb to read 5 (FIVE!) skill tooltips is insulting. This game has only 5 active skills at a time.. kittening five skills. Other mmos have like 30+?

4) What was that about having to unlock vistas and point of interests on the map now? Thats probably okay for new accounts, but certainly not for alts. I leveled a character to level 6 by fully exploring all major cities – cant do this anymore.

Back when I started GW2, my friend would join me in the starter zone in his full exotic gear and tell me to follow him. “Sure thing buddy…” After 5 minutes I begged him to slow down because I diddnt know what the kitten was going on and why I’d get random XP everywhere.
So yea, probably a good change for fresh accounts, NOT for alts.

5) Until level 9 you wont see ores and trees on the map anymore… haha, this is so dumb I dont know where to begin with. As stated above, after my friend dragged me around the map for 5 minutes just after me entereing the game world I created a NEW character and took a close look at everything myself. I quickly noticed I was going to need gold. Level 5-10 I did nothing else than farming copper ore and trees. I was shocked that I would level that fast farming materials since I initially wanted to wait for a third friend of mine who bought the game with me… well, I left him behind that day.

So yea, new players cant even get some easy silver now.. Sad, really really sad.

6) As for the ranger in the video, no pet command until level 6? You might aswell remove the pet entirely please. Enjoy your pet eating AOE attacks left and right while you try do doge around and get that copper ore, or wait – I almost forgot…

Don’t get me wrong A-net. I loved this update so far, I even seem to be among the only ones that welcome the warrior nerfs and I main a warrior. But those changes are just absolutely horrible. Glad I probably wont need to go through low level content anymore.

On a side note, its sad to see people think this game is hard, or was hard. Infact the hardest thing was to open the game-box if you even recieved a physical one.

Just curious when all the new players become vets and want to level alts?
I bet they will get bored having to play the dumbed down areas.

Paradox.1380:

Calling people you don’t know dumb…. is the reason people like me are telling people to calm down. I most certainly am NOT dumb… and I had a hard time with the learning curve of this game… No, 5 skills is not hard to handle, but it combined with everything else that just kind of poured on top of you at the start was very jarring.

Furthermore, to anyone else who had trouble at the start of this game I am sorry people are calling you dumb because they don’t wanna take the time to empathize with you. Don’t take it to heart, cause its totally rude.

The game at the beginning is overwhelming because the tutorial is not good enough.

That’s the real issue.
The modifications to traits before and leveling now are not a real solution. It’s not a matter of “people need time to get used to skills and mechanic”, it’s a matter of “people need information to better understand how skills and mechanics work”.
Both new players and people that want to level an alt are going to have a harder time.

its not the players that need the dumbing down, its the guy in charge that doesn’t play MMOs that is catering to himself. How these guys get in to decision making positions is beyond me but it obviously is not because they know what is best for the game. More and more I feel like this is just another SWG being flushed down the toilet with the CU/NGE. Its funny that whoever is in charge did not learn from the biggest mistake in MMOs ever and is actually making the exact same mistakes like they are reading smedley’s playbook.

A simple tutorial that can be skipped on any following characters after completing once is all that was needed. Not an entire revamp.

Its all too late now though. They wasted all their resources revamping the game for China and they are not going to stop until US/EU are caught up. So when they finally get done slowly rolling out the changes this year, then they will finally start trying to fix all this broken crap sometime in 2015/2016. Of course they will keep the lights on because China will subsidize and megaserver will keep zones populated up until there is only one instance of every map.

I was fine with the revamped trait system – bar a few strange unlocking requirements – but locking skills even further behind levels just seems off to me. Learning weapon skills by using the weapon in combat felt intuitive to me, acquiring skills on weapons you’ve maybe never used before by leveling up does not feel intuitive to me – perhaps it is normal in other games, I wouldn’t know, but I prefer the current unlocking system.

As for utility slots, the original 5-10-20 progression felt fine to me because they gave you something to play with before you get traits, the 13-24-35 progression feels odd to me – it feels like someone spun a wheel with numbers and threw darts at it to choose which levels will unlock a utility slot.
The levels 30-36 will possibly feel too packed; you get your first minor trait, then 5 levels later your final utility slot and 1 level later you get the option to choose your first major trait.

I don’t mind unlocking the elite slot at level 40 since you already get your first trait point at level 30, and chances are – if you are trying a profession for the first time – you wouldn’t have enough skill points for an elite skill at level 30 yet anyway (that’s how it went for all my characters at least).

Just my thoughts on the subject.

EDIT: After giving it some more thought, it looks like the utility progression is based on giving something new every 11 levels starting at level 2. Then however, it doesn’t quite make sense to me why elite slot is at level 40 instead of level 46 if they wanted to give a new skill slot every 11 levels.

Paradox.1380:

Kurrilino.2706:

Kamui.4038:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

hahahahahaha what ?????
Is this for real ???

If that is the case the GW2 comunity is entitled to handicaped passes and must be
allowed to use the blue parking zones at Wallmart

So rude. I’ll never understand thinking like this. Why do you attach your experiences on others and assume just because they don’t think, act, or operate the way you do that you are entitled to say such things as to imply people aren’t at your average level of thinking? So what if they aren’t anyway?

just for reference, there is nothing wrong with those of us who have diminished capacities in the mental health department.

I have nothing against people who might have mental or physical problems. And I believe they could use extra help. But this just makes no sense.

First this ‘extra help’ should only be for those who actually have a problem with the current system, because for everyone else it has the exact opposite effect, it just makes things more tedious. Anet should have made this tutorial system optional, there should be a check box at character creation saying “I am an experienced player and do not need extra guidance”, I believe some games actually do this already.

Second, this straight up makes no sense. With less utility/weapon skills and traits you are a lot less powerfull, which in turn makes the game harder.

Paradox.1380:

Kurrilino.2706:

Kamui.4038:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

hahahahahaha what ?????
Is this for real ???

If that is the case the GW2 comunity is entitled to handicaped passes and must be
allowed to use the blue parking zones at Wallmart

So rude. I’ll never understand thinking like this. Why do you attach your experiences on others and assume just because they don’t think, act, or operate the way you do that you are entitled to say such things as to imply people aren’t at your average level of thinking? So what if they aren’t anyway?

just for reference, there is nothing wrong with those of us who have diminished capacities in the mental health department.

What are you talking about ?????

skill 1-5 where cursor hovering explains you exactly what the skill does.
I have handicapped people around me and i call them real good friends.

But to assume someone who is able to turn on a home computer,
and handles windows well enough to install games,
is not able to read what a skill does is insulting.
To me and also to these handicapped people.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Anet thinks 5 weapon skills, healing skill, 3 utility skills and 1 elite skill is too much for people here to cope with.

Meanwhile in other games:

Haw! My friend tried Hunter and quit because “it has too many buttons.” That’s been my main since I started. =P

Yep looks like someone made some bad decisions for this part of the feature pack. On one side they want the players to enjoy the time in the low levels with exploring the content, but on the other side many players will now rush it more then ever so they don’t feel restrictet in the game mechanics anymore.
And in my opinion totally new players to this genre will just feel lost at the beginning, because there is no guideline through the world anymore until they reach lvl 10.

I don’t know what to say……………

GW1 vet with billions of hours played.
We had 10 changeable skills available and were asking for more.
Now they tell me i am to stupid to handle 5 fixed ones without any
special skills attached to it….. wow

I think they aren’t taking it far enough! But I’m not just going to complain about it. Here’s my solution.

All those armor choices – even just the visual/style aspects – just think how overwhelming that must be to new players. So I say they should do away with the three armor types. One type is all we need. Not heavy, medium, and light – just armor. And everyone should have the same armor (of the same appearance and color) until at least level 80. This will stave off the inevitable confusion about why certain characters can’t wear certain armors.

Meanwhile, they should do away with dyes altogether. Just another mind-boggling mess evidently designed to cause consternation among new players. /e smh

And then when you get into all those different stat combos on armor and weapons – who came up with that? Holy quinquepedalian trail mix, Batman! How dreadfully confusing must that be to new players? I dare say it’s edging dangerously close to being actually frightening. They certainly don’t want to scare away new players!

And all those professions? Why so many? New players will look at that and say, “What? Elementalist? What’s that do? Engineer? Mesmer? What are those things? How am I supposed to know what I want to play!” So there should only be one profession, ideally capable of using only one weapon, with one set of stats, at least until level 80, and maybe even after that. As an added benefit, that should (theoretically) take care of any further balance issues.

So, anyway, there are some ideas to help give new players of GW2 the best new player experience ever! Hope it helps.

Paradox.1380:

Kurrilino.2706:

Kamui.4038:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

hahahahahaha what ?????
Is this for real ???

If that is the case the GW2 comunity is entitled to handicaped passes and must be
allowed to use the blue parking zones at Wallmart

So rude. I’ll never understand thinking like this. Why do you attach your experiences on others and assume just because they don’t think, act, or operate the way you do that you are entitled to say such things as to imply people aren’t at your average level of thinking? So what if they aren’t anyway?

just for reference, there is nothing wrong with those of us who have diminished capacities in the mental health department.

People don’t understand disabilities, healthy people in particular are cruel about them I agree. If people could see the true person behind the posts they’d understand. If it weren’t for my oxygen machine and red face, people might think I was perfectly healthy.

I don’t understand it either, I’ve seen people actually become even worse when they see me coming than if they were dealing with a healthy person out in public.

This really stinks of executive meddling. Some marketing twit at ncsoft has to be behind it. No way can I believe the players or the Anet designers wanted these changes.

edit: changed monkey to twit, because I like monkeys.

Chrispy.5641:

The Complexity of Gw2 is already on a level comparable to Console games with less buttons than a keyboard, and GW2 is nothing compared to GW1, which itself is nowhere near as complex as an MMO like WoW or Everquest.

I’d argue that GW1 was more complex than EQ/WoW. The limited action system forced you to plan out your build for the content you’re doing and to synergize with your teammates.

WoW is more gear driven and the only real “complexity” to it is the efficiency of your keybinds.

Tachenon.5270:

I think they aren’t taking it far enough! But I’m not just going to complain about it. Here’s my solution.

All those armor choices – even just the visual/style aspects – just think how overwhelming that must be to new players. So I say they should do away with the three armor types. One type is all we need. Not heavy, medium, and light – just armor. And everyone should have the same armor (of the same appearance and color) until at least level 80. This will stave off the inevitable confusion about why certain characters can’t wear certain armors.

Meanwhile, they should do away with dyes altogether. Just another mind-boggling mess evidently designed to cause consternation among new players. /e smh

And then when you get into all those different stat combos on armor and weapons – who came up with that? Holy quinquepedalian trail mix, Batman! How dreadfully confusing must that be to new players? I dare say it’s edging dangerously close to being actually frightening. They certainly don’t want to scare away new players!

And all those professions? Why so many? New players will look at that and say, “What? Elementalist? What’s that do? Engineer? Mesmer? What are those things? How am I supposed to know what I want to play!” So there should only be one profession, ideally capable of using only one weapon, with one set of stats, at least until level 80, and maybe even after that. As an added benefit, that should (theoretically) take care of any further balance issues.

So, anyway, there are some ideas to help give new players of GW2 the best new player experience ever! Hope it helps.

So much text in this post, I don’t think I can keep up.

One of the big issues IMO is the high level cap. It should have been closer to what GW1 was and at most around level 40.

ArcheAge is looking more and more enticing now.

jamesg.7128:

I wouldn’t call it insulting, most MMOs have some sort of unlock system.

What I don’t understand though, is how to reconcile this with a player using the same weapon for 10 levels, again because he doesn’t know any better apparently and then trying a new weapon for the first time.

Consider that he decides to now try that scepter that’s been in his inv. for the last few days and bingo all 5 skills are unlocked because he’s already lvl 10.

I guess he’ll start having seizures or something from information overload.

Oh man, you’re right. That’s 5 skills all at once when they switch, Anet don’t you see your players are going to foam at the mouth from too much at once! You have to spoonfeed us Anet, and make the airplane noises!

Creeper.9360:

One of the big issues IMO is the high level cap. It should have been closer to what GW1 was and at most around level 40.

No…it should be increased to about 100. Give us more things to do and maybe stick around longer.

Paradox.1380:

Call me a filthy casual if you want, its probably true. It took me a very long time to grasp this game and all its mechanics. It is very different from the Eastern MMO’s I was playing before.

Paradox here brings a very interesting point of view. Are these changes being made because of asian or western feedback? Because we have different types of players that are accustomed with different mechanics.

Kurrilino.2706:

Paradox.1380:

Kurrilino.2706:

Kamui.4038:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Official point of view:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

hahahahahaha what ?????
Is this for real ???

If that is the case the GW2 comunity is entitled to handicaped passes and must be
allowed to use the blue parking zones at Wallmart

So rude. I’ll never understand thinking like this. Why do you attach your experiences on others and assume just because they don’t think, act, or operate the way you do that you are entitled to say such things as to imply people aren’t at your average level of thinking? So what if they aren’t anyway?

just for reference, there is nothing wrong with those of us who have diminished capacities in the mental health department.

What are you talking about ?????

skill 1-5 where cursor hovering explains you exactly what the skill does.
I have handicapped people around me and i call them real good friends.

But to assume someone who is able to turn on a home computer,
and handles windows well enough to install games,
is not able to read what a skill does is insulting.
To me and also to these handicapped people.

I am talking about not just the skills…. The skills is one part of it. Personally I don’t care about skills being gated behind leveling since its no different than any other game I’ve played.

But what I am talking about is the hard time I had (and yes I have some mental issues most people call me “slow” and its the best I can used to describe what I have). Its NOT about the skills its about the combination of that on top of everything else that just kind of piles up and becomes hard to understand. hard to know where to go, hard to find where to level up, hard to understand crafting.

Barring any Guides or knowing where to look for them I would have been totally lost. Thankfully I have a lovely boyfriend who taught me most of what I know now.

lastly, I’m not assuming anything about anyone. I don’t attach my experiences to others. But I am going to thoroughly enjoy making a new alt today and seeing just how much easier it is for me to grasp.

When will anet understand that we are not chinese and that things which work for that market will have difficulty translating to EU/NA markets? If anything, our model should be retained and rolled-out to the chinese market as it’s obviously more advanced. Why do the clients have to be merged anyway? (oh ofc, monehhhhhh…).

Neko Dudley.2495:

This really stinks of executive meddling. Some marketing monkey at ncsoft has to be behind it. No way can I believe the players or the Anet designers wanted these changes.

That’s what I keep thinking. No actual gamer or game developer that actually plays games would think these are good changes. Players don’t want a “new game experience” we want more stuff to do in the current game experience. Chasing away your current playerbase and tainting your reputation is not going to get you players to replace the ones you lose.