Guild Wars 2

Hello all, just figured i’d put a small rant out here. not unusual for me :P

Reasons why i wont level:

#1. Story Quest Staggering: It was better when we had a story quest per level, giving us incentive to find out the next part of the story. (Even though its complete trash, but still.)

#2. Streamlined Starter Zones Removing Zone Events: A few of the good zones i really enjoyed had alot of their unique events removed, like the fire shaman in lake ferritas outside the black citadel.

#3. Skills Unlocked Per Level: Once upon a time Gw2 was not another WoW clone and did things differently, you had to earn everything you obtained down to each little skill book. it felt rewarding and less like you were handed everything, which i won’t do anymore.

#4. EotM Nerfing: While this might not be a big thing for most, EotM was a kitten good place to level for quite a long time then they nerfed the EXP by 25-30% and the levels started becoming once again. a endless grind, one that just isn’t fun anymore. I personally have not entered EotM in a long while and will not from here on out.

#5. Endless Grinding of Hearts to Level: This is some thing i have argued endlessly, Heart grinding to level just isn’t fun after a while. it gets way to repetitive and some thing needs to be done to help there.

#6. Tomes of Knowledge: Here is a subject i know is going to get a few people upset, but let me try to not do so here. I do believe tomes are just killing the leveling experience because players can just sit around and do nothing while obtaining tomes from their monthly to level if they really wanted to.

And this brings me to my last bit of the rant.

#7. Leveling Via Crafting: Lets get this out of the way shall we? Leveling via Crafting is one of the most effective ways to level if you have the money, but also one of the most boring ways. If this is what i have to resort to just to get to 80 without having to endlessly bash my head against the wall doing hearts or grinding out EotM and getting bag farmed. then some thing needs to change.

While i do not believe Anet intended to make things this way, unfortunately it has turned out that way. Largely due to the changes they have made since that September 2014 feature pack.

I agree with these points entirely! I preferred to be honest, having to kill a certain amount of enemies before you unlocked the next weapon skill! I find it annoying to have to use 3 for an entire level!

the idea that gw2 modeling itself to be a WoW annex and actually becoming a Gw2 killer is ironic eh ?

Ricky.4706:

the idea that gw2 modeling itself to be a WoW annex and actually becoming a Gw2 killer is ironic eh ?

While i wish it wasn’t and they would actually do something, we just have to accept it.

#2. Streamlined Starter Zones Removing Zone Events: A few of the good zones i really enjoyed had alot of their unique events removed, like the fire shaman in lake ferritas outside the black citadel.

while I agree that some things in the streamlined starter zones took away a lot of the flavour of those zones (the golem games in Metrica for example), saying that events were removed is not true. there has only been one event that I can honestly say has been removed, and that was the bunny one in Queensdale (I think that was because it used bundles, which were all removed from starter zones). I have seen the fire shaman event in Plains of Ashford a few times recently, so I know for a fact it is still in game.

80 levels was a dumb idea to begin with.

Sages.3496:

#1. Story Quest Staggering: It was better when we had a story quest per level, giving us incentive to find out the next part of the story. (Even though its complete trash, but still.)

I’m still undecided on this one. I’m one of the people who would choose to wait until I was several levels above the next story step and then do several at once, until I was too underlevelled to continue, because I hated doing it in disjoined little bits. And like someone else said it was ridiculous to finish one instance with the NPCs telling you to meet them somewhere urgently and then find you need to get 2-3 levels first.

On the other hand I liked that it was my choice when to start and stop.

Overall thought it really doesn’t bother me that much.

Sages.3496:

#2. Streamlined Starter Zones Removing Zone Events: A few of the good zones i really enjoyed had alot of their unique events removed, like the fire shaman in lake ferritas outside the black citadel.

This bothers me too (and the changes to some of the hearts – like not needing to use a water bucket to water crops in Queensdale).

Although the bunny event someone mentioned is still there, it’s just separate from the heart. The heart where you have to gather food for the bunnies is down on the road in Breakneck Pass and the event is still up on Hangrammr Climb.

Sages.3496:

#3. Skills Unlocked Per Level: Once upon a time Gw2 was not another WoW clone and did things differently, you had to earn everything you obtained down to each little skill book. it felt rewarding and less like you were handed everything, which i won’t do anymore.

This one I don’t understand. The only skills which have really changed at the weapon skills – which are now unlocked by levelling instead of by spamming attacks.

Healing, utility and elite skills have always been unlocked by spending points gained from levelling up and skill point challenges. They’ve changed the interface for how you spend them (so they’re grouped by type instead of in tiers) and you get points every few levels instead of 1 per level but other than that it’s the same system it always was.

Unless you’re thinking of the brief period when we had to unlock traits by doing specific events or killing specific enemies. Which they changed because (even though it was put in due to player feedback) it was probably one of the least popular changes they ever made.

But the system we have now is actually more like ‘earning’ your traits than what we had before. At launch you had to buy a book to unlock the different tiers of traits (adept, master and grandmaster), but the points were earned automatically by levelling up and could be put into and taken out of each traitline freely. Whereas now you have to permanently spend the points to unlock a trait, and then if you want to change it you need to earn more points.

Sages.3496:

#4. EotM Nerfing: While this might not be a big thing for most, EotM was a kitten good place to level for quite a long time then they nerfed the EXP by 25-30% and the levels started becoming once again. a endless grind, one that just isn’t fun anymore. I personally have not entered EotM in a long while and will not from here on out.

#5. Endless Grinding of Hearts to Level: This is some thing i have argued endlessly, Heart grinding to level just isn’t fun after a while. it gets way to repetitive and some thing needs to be done to help there.

#6. Tomes of Knowledge: Here is a subject i know is going to get a few people upset, but let me try to not do so here. I do believe tomes are just killing the leveling experience because players can just sit around and do nothing while obtaining tomes from their monthly to level if they really wanted to.

And this brings me to my last bit of the rant.

#7. Leveling Via Crafting: Lets get this out of the way shall we? Leveling via Crafting is one of the most effective ways to level if you have the money, but also one of the most boring ways. If this is what i have to resort to just to get to 80 without having to endlessly bash my head against the wall doing hearts or grinding out EotM and getting bag farmed. then some thing needs to change.

While i do not believe Anet intended to make things this way, unfortunately it has turned out that way. Largely due to the changes they have made since that September 2014 feature pack.

I’ve grouped points 4-7 together because they all related to levelling and I didn’t think it was worth addressing them separately.

Taken all together these confuse me. You don’t like the fact that Tomes of Knowledge allow people to skip the levelling process, but you seem to want a quick way to level up and don’t like any of the ones that are available.

What do you want to do to level?

It’s not the quick leveling i am after, it’s the ability to actually enjoy the game again. back when we had champion events in the starter zones where we had a good 10 to 15 players killing them at once. it was alive, it was awesome, and quite frankly.. it was the best leveling experience i had back when the story wasn’t staggered, zone events were actually fun, and skills could be unlocked early so you could get to understand the rotation and try new stuff out.

Now i have to wait till level 10 just to experience the story, i am handed all my skills as i level which makes it feel.. not rewarding at all, and the zone events just.. aren’t fun like they were.

Chuo.4238:

80 levels was a dumb idea to begin with.

Oddly enough I think this is actually one of the biggest problems with GW2.

One thing I really liked about GW1 was the low level cap. People used to say that in most MMOs when you hit the max level you’re done with the main game, whereas in Guild Wars when you hit the max level you’re ready to start the main game. And I think that mentality helped with a lot of things, in particular getting people to see that all of the content was still viable for them and that character development didn’t stop simply because you had reached an arbitrary ‘end’ point.

I think GW2 would have worked much better with the same number of maps, story missions, dungeons, items etc. etc. but just 30 or 40 levels.

You’d start getting hero points much sooner (maybe not at level 2, but before level 11) but wouldn’t have enough to unlock everything by the max level so you’ll still be looking for hero challenges and getting new skills and traits after hitting the cap.

Likewise all the maps above level 30 or 40 would be at that level, but some like Orr and Frostgorge would still be harder than others because the enemies would have better AI and more mechanics to deal with.

I think it would encourage people to focus less on levelling up and then abandoning most of the game for a few dedicated ‘end game’ activities and more on simply playing whatever they want to play.

I don´t know about you OP, but XP are basically following me wherever I go. Be it crafting, tomes or even wvw.
Eotm was, in my opinion, the near fatal blow to wvw that laid it low and should just be removed or made into a real PvE map.
I agree that the leveling experience could use some more maps and some events back, but the champ train in queensdale was just embarrassing for GW2.

Well no denying the champ train, but there was a time champ bags only dropped in dungeons and stuff. the champ train ruined the starter zones, thats true. back when the champs didn’t reward anything but EXP and a challenging experience is what im speaking of. there is no need to remove them.

Well if you’re not bothered about the champ bags you can still do those fights, all they did was change them from champions to veterans.

So they’re a bit less of a challenge, although a lot more of a challenge than when the train was going and there were so many people at each one that the only challenge was doing enough damage to get credit for the event, now there’s only people who are in the area when the event starts so it’s much more of a real fight.

Levelling in PvE the way ArenaNet intended is fun for me.

Sages.3496:

#4. EotM Nerfing: While this might not be a big thing for most, EotM was a kitten good place to level for quite a long time then they nerfed the EXP by 25-30% and the levels started becoming once again. a endless grind, one that just isn’t fun anymore. I personally have not entered EotM in a long while and will not from here on out.

Sorry but when was EotM nerfed? :o Back in January I leveled my Necro in EotM to 80 in 2 days without boosts. Did I miss the nerf? Also, I agree about the story missions but I actually like the Tomes.

I agree with 6 & 7. More with 6 since you can just PvP the tomes in less than 10 minutes.

I don’t know I get through level 1-10 in like an hour. I have level 20 scrolls from other characters anyway. Saying the first hour or two of your leveling experience is going to stop you from leveling another character is fair enough.

But I think very VERY few people feel as strongly as the OP.

I’ve leveled characters since the NPE and I think I enjoy getting through the first 15 levels faster than before anyway.

And I absolutely prefer the story arcs to be presented in an unbroken fashion.

i had once the idea that a player who has atleast 1 character on level 80 and done the world completion at least once to 100% shall be asked at character creation “At least one of your chars is lvl 80 and got the world completion. Do you want to create this new char on level 80 or start all over at level 1”

that would make the game more open for veterans who quickly want to have a new char to play a certain game mode with a level 80 char right now and also leave room for people who want to do it all over.

i dont believe that the game will have any negative impact by that because if i level as quick as i can, i will do it alone in pve or run in eotm. i wont seek other players on level 1 to play with , as i want to get along quick. so low level player activity wont be affected.

the most negative thing that can happen is actually that I will end up to play the game mode i want directly with other people together.

I’ve played since gw2 first came out, leveling was definitely more enjoyable for me back then, than it was this time around, fortunately I had leveling scrolls – but with the old way, I use to play way above my level, and I had fun doing it, sort of my newbie hard core mode, now all the gating kinda makes me feel like i’m being punished, limited, forced to wait. i actually use to have fun doing a bunch of stories at a time and leveling up using a variety of ways, that freedom is gone now and it feels more like i’m on a leash.

I suppose anet felt challenged by obsessive players that try to finish the game in one day and complain there is nothing left to do, they sorta kittened the casual crowd that don’t follow that elitist way of life.

They should just remove levels…the way scaling works right now, they could change a few things around and be just fine. Gain exp for traits etc, but there is no need for a 1-80, a level 80 deer shouldn’t 1 shot you regardless of your “level”

Sages.3496:

It’s not the quick leveling i am after, it’s the ability to actually enjoy the game again. back when we had champion events in the starter zones where we had a good 10 to 15 players killing them at once. it was alive, it was awesome, and quite frankly.. it was the best leveling experience i had back when the story wasn’t staggered, zone events were actually fun, and skills could be unlocked early so you could get to understand the rotation and try new stuff out.

Now i have to wait till level 10 just to experience the story, i am handed all my skills as i level which makes it feel.. not rewarding at all, and the zone events just.. aren’t fun like they were.

I fully agree with this. It was an awesome time. I didn’t personally spend much time in the champ trains, but I would see them moving around, and join them if they were close. Really felt the action, and the sense that the whole world was worth exploring if some players would even farm the starter zone. I think somehow going back to that time would be best for PVE.

Sorry to interrupt your melancholic and nostalgic “good times are over” postings, but for someone who joined roughly a year ago, I want to mention (to everybody outside the game who’s reading the forums) the game’s PvE/Levelling is still fun and also rewarding with the bonusses each level. It might have changed but is still on top of the MMO average.

I actually like having Tomes of Knowledge. I rarely use them and only ever on temporary characters I’ve created for a specific purpose (my thinking with my permanent characters is that I’m planning on playing them a lot so if I’m not willing to play them to level up I need to reconsider).

But it’s nice to have the option to skip a level, or 12 levels, or 80 levels if I want to.

Levelling in GW2 is much quicker than in most RPGs (MMO and single-player) and I actually enjoy it, but if I want to try out an idea I can’t do in PvP or at low levels it’s nice to be able to skip straight to what I want to be doing.

I love leveling. I actually sometimes wish I wasn’t lvl 80 so I could do it again. There is more of a sense of progression (masteries are also nice, but I finished the HoT ones). Plus, just playing the game and gaining traits/utlities as you go sort of forces you to try new things until you “unlock” the things you may think you already want.

I have several times completely changed how I thought I wanted to play a profession just because I found something else more fun while getting there. I kind of miss that experience.

Not to put gas on a burn, but, if they really wanted us to have grind levels for every alt we make, they would not give us tomes of Knowledge. You can’t complain that it’s not fast enough, and then in the same post claim it’s too easy.

As a vet leveler due to playing self-imposed permadeath rules (way over 200 restarts) I cannot agree more with all of these points. It would be great if I could level and earn gold just from killing stuff I run into (yes I know you can do this but the XP and gold is woeful and it would take many months to level to 80 just by killing random mobs).

Sages.3496:

#1. Story Quest Staggering: It was better when we had a story quest per level, giving us incentive to find out the next part of the story. (Even though its complete trash, but still.)

I like the ‘whole chapter unlocked at once’ idea. However, I wish chapter 1 was unlocked immediately like before, rather than when you hit level 10. The change created some story gaps that ArenaNet never cared to fix, causing a bigger dissonance than before.

I also disagree that it was trash, let alone complete trash. There were bad moments, yes, that has improved greatly with S2/HoT, but trash? Not really. I’ve seen far worse out of MMOs.

Sages.3496:

#2. Streamlined Starter Zones Removing Zone Events: A few of the good zones i really enjoyed had alot of their unique events removed, like the fire shaman in lake ferritas outside the black citadel.

He’s still there, just as a veteran instead of a champion.

TBH, such a difficult champion so close to where players start was a bit much.

But there were a lot of unique things lost. Like the Golem RC battles in Metrica…

Sages.3496:

#5. Endless Grinding of Hearts to Level: This is some thing i have argued endlessly, Heart grinding to level just isn’t fun after a while. it gets way to repetitive and some thing needs to be done to help there.

The problem here are that 90% of hearts are just the same thing. Kill ambient mobs, press F at interactive objects, carry a bundle from point A to point B. There are very few hearts that are more engaging than this, which is pretty negligible.

Sages.3496:

#6. Tomes of Knowledge: Here is a subject i know is going to get a few people upset, but let me try to not do so here. I do believe tomes are just killing the leveling experience because players can just sit around and do nothing while obtaining tomes from their monthly to level if they really wanted to.

Though no one would. That’s insanely long. However, making a new character after a long time/doing some PvP and using tomes to powerlevel through… yeah.

But honestly? Tomes or EotM – they’re effectively the same thing. Why are you advocating for bringing one back, and bashing on the other, when there’s practically no difference between the mindless button mashing of no real work to level within hours?

Sages.3496:

#7. Leveling Via Crafting: Lets get this out of the way shall we? Leveling via Crafting is one of the most effective ways to level if you have the money, but also one of the most boring ways. If this is what i have to resort to just to get to 80 without having to endlessly bash my head against the wall doing hearts or grinding out EotM and getting bag farmed. then some thing needs to change.

Crafting was never meant to be “the go to way of leveling”. In fact, it has always been about as effective as farming ambient mobs – highly ineffective.

nottsgman.8206:

#2. Streamlined Starter Zones Removing Zone Events: A few of the good zones i really enjoyed had alot of their unique events removed, like the fire shaman in lake ferritas outside the black citadel.

while I agree that some things in the streamlined starter zones took away a lot of the flavour of those zones (the golem games in Metrica for example), saying that events were removed is not true. there has only been one event that I can honestly say has been removed, and that was the bunny one in Queensdale (I think that was because it used bundles, which were all removed from starter zones). I have seen the fire shaman event in Plains of Ashford a few times recently, so I know for a fact it is still in game.

It was more than just the bundle thing – having an event right where players spawned in caused a huge amount of lag during the release and ArenaNet took this and went “oh noes!” for regards to the China release.

Honestly, they should add it back, even if what you do is scare the bunnies rather than carry them.

My 2 cents worth – Champ trains were nice but how does a new player learn to play gw2 when they can run around with train in QD and just get some hits in ? Thats not learning but if they wish they can do champ trains in higher levels . Personal story – it was set that way due to the abuse of key farming , hell within 20 mins i could farm a key on a lvl 4 ele , delete then repeat – please remember bl keys are one way anets makes some money .
Tomes … If you dont want to use them – dont , how easy is that .. oh and leveling without crafting and tomes – its possible with correct methods to level from 0 – 80 in a short time ( unsure exactly the fastest time but ive done it in 14 hrs ) .
Unsure on how long you have played for but anet actually dropped the amount of levels you can get from 0-400 in 1 craft , i believe now the max is 6 levels and i cant recall the old value so even now if you do all 8 crafts ( not scribe ) you can only raise 48 lvls . Alot of players with several lvl 80 alts who make a new chr dont want to spend a week getting new chr to 80 – im one of them but due to limit ingame cash i wont go and blow gold on crafting an alt to 80 . Some games ( gw1 springs to mind ) players used to get powerleveled by other players to reach higher levels quicker – im glad gw2 has gone against that and made it so that you cant do it , well u can to a small degree but its done so you cant really do enough dmg to a foe 10 lvls or higher than you , and yes ive had fun watching a guildie at lvl 5 enter Hot and get zero xp , even gathering failed and wp/zones etc xp tho it was funny watchin him get 1shot by a boar.

1) Im not sure but i still think that you cant do a lvl 50 story quest if you are lvl40…

2) Im not aware of many events being removed..still plenty to do around tho there are no more low lvl champions that made the famous queensdale champ farm

3) This is only a “problem” during the first 20-30 levels which are..lets be honest..they go fast fairly quickly

4) EotM leveling was a grind by it self..it was a okay thing for me to do for a few lvls but i have never considered doing it from 1-80..thats just too much for me.

#5. Endless Grinding of Hearts to Level: This is some thing i have argued endlessly, Heart grinding to level just isn’t fun after a while. it gets way to repetitive and some thing needs to be done to help there.

5) Doing the same hearts to level in a zone you already seen before a 100 times can get boring yes…but so can doing quests in a lvl you already seen a 100 times before in any other mmo..

#6. Tomes of Knowledge: Here is a subject i know is going to get a few people upset, but let me try to not do so here. I do believe tomes are just killing the leveling experience because players can just sit around and do nothing while obtaining tomes from their monthly to level if they really wanted to.

6) You get 10-16 tomes of knowledge per month..Youll need to play something else for 5-8 months in order to get a character from 1-80 with that..Otherwise you can “farm” them lots of pvp, or tons of writs of experiences from pve dailies.

Its a nice lvl boost from time to time, otherwise youll have to pvp a lot and keep them for a very long time in order to spam 80 of them for a instant lvl 80 character..

Also: You dont have to use them if it ruins your lvling experience

7) Yes its quite expensive but it isnt expensive cause people use it to lvl up….
Again,this is something i used only a few times in order to boost my self trough the last 2-3 levels

Here is how i still have fun leveling after 2400 hours of gameplay.

Gw2 is a game that gives you certain freedoms while leveling. Using those freedoms you can have a boring,fast,effective or repetitive,fun,fresh leveling experience.

I leveled my last character with a set of rules, a challenge if you will.

1) Can only use shiverpeak zones
2) Can not buy any items from TP or use anything from the bank
3) Can go to any city (and guild halls)
4) Must get to lvl 80 and kill Claw of Jormag with 0 deaths

These simple rules completely changed the way of my leveling:

1) I never facerolled any zone with my rare up to date full zerker gear (besides the first lvl…)

2) I was almost constantly at the mob level,and sometimes underleveled, and because of the 0 deaths rule it actually changed my build significantly,changing the gameplay completely considering most people go for the kitten kitten full zerker fire ele staff, warrior gs ect builds

3) I was checking all heart vendors to see if i can improve my gear,they were important for my gearing and survival, same goes to all the loot i got from mobs.

4) I participated on all events, and lingered around for just a bit more while talking with the npcs to see whats going on around me. I need all the exp i needed and it also got me a bit more involved into the world around me instead of just spaming swiftness from point 1 to point 2…

5) Every level up is a small victory, and i got super excited at lvl 65-70 knowing that im reaching my ultimate goal very soon… never have i felt happier geting lvl 80 (with 0 deaths)

6) Geting lvl 80 made me super happy and felt great, and killing claw of jormag at lvl 80 made me feel as a real achiever. I became more “close” to that character and it means much much more to me compared to a instant lvl 80 character that spent 600gold on crating or ate 50 tomes of knowleges and a scroll. And continuing to play with that character felt more enjoyable than with any other..even tho im doing some of the “same old” content ive been doing for years now

So yeah…there are plenty of other ways for one to lvl up. It might not be the most efficient and fastest way..but it sure is the most fun way..and isnt that what the game should be about?

if for some crazy reason everyone’s character was wiped, and they had to start over from day 1…. do you think most of the people that didn’t leave would start over ?

that would be the real gauge of how modern day gw2 is performing.

would gw2 hot survive a total reset ?

Ricky.4706:

if for some crazy reason everyone’s character was wiped, and they had to start over from day 1…. do you think most of the people that didn’t leave would start over ?

that would be the real gauge of how modern day gw2 is performing.

would gw2 hot survive a total reset ?

Not a chance IMO.

Ricky.4706:

if for some crazy reason everyone’s character was wiped, and they had to start over from day 1…. do you think most of the people that didn’t leave would start over ?

that would be the real gauge of how modern day gw2 is performing.

would gw2 hot survive a total reset ?

No. But not because of the leveling experience as much as the fact it would be throwing away years of everyone’s time and effort.

so one could say we are holding on to what we’ve done, not what we are doing ?

gw1 would have survived.

Zietlogik.6208:

They should just remove levels…the way scaling works right now, they could change a few things around and be just fine. Gain exp for traits etc, but there is no need for a 1-80, a level 80 deer shouldn’t 1 shot you regardless of your “level”

That would actually have a big impact on the other end. Level 82+ mobs take much longer to kill than level 80.

StormageddonBK.9842:

As a vet leveler due to playing self-imposed permadeath rules (way over 200 restarts) I cannot agree more with all of these points. It would be great if I could level and earn gold just from killing stuff I run into (yes I know you can do this but the XP and gold is woeful and it would take many months to level to 80 just by killing random mobs).

Actually, with the boosters, and once you’ve got a streak going, killing neutral mobs (not white ambient mobs) can garner a hideous amount of xp in seconds. I can attest to that because that’s how i finished Advanced Logistics in about 2 hours. Outside of the CoF farm.

I find leveling less enjoyable than it used to be but that is at least partially due to the fact that I’ve already leveled 8+ characters already. Classes may handle situations differently but not to the degree where it would be noticeable after multiple characters with different builds. I also do not find much benefit in learning how to play with an incomplete character.

Sages.3496:

Hello all, just figured i’d put a small rant out here. not unusual for me :P

Reasons why i wont level:

#1. Story Quest Staggering: It was better when we had a story quest per level, giving us incentive to find out the next part of the story. (Even though its complete trash, but still.)

#2. Streamlined Starter Zones Removing Zone Events: A few of the good zones i really enjoyed had alot of their unique events removed, like the fire shaman in lake ferritas outside the black citadel.

#3. Skills Unlocked Per Level: Once upon a time Gw2 was not another WoW clone and did things differently, you had to earn everything you obtained down to each little skill book. it felt rewarding and less like you were handed everything, which i won’t do anymore.

#4. EotM Nerfing: While this might not be a big thing for most, EotM was a kitten good place to level for quite a long time then they nerfed the EXP by 25-30% and the levels started becoming once again. a endless grind, one that just isn’t fun anymore. I personally have not entered EotM in a long while and will not from here on out.

#5. Endless Grinding of Hearts to Level: This is some thing i have argued endlessly, Heart grinding to level just isn’t fun after a while. it gets way to repetitive and some thing needs to be done to help there.

#6. Tomes of Knowledge: Here is a subject i know is going to get a few people upset, but let me try to not do so here. I do believe tomes are just killing the leveling experience because players can just sit around and do nothing while obtaining tomes from their monthly to level if they really wanted to.

And this brings me to my last bit of the rant.

#7. Leveling Via Crafting: Lets get this out of the way shall we? Leveling via Crafting is one of the most effective ways to level if you have the money, but also one of the most boring ways. If this is what i have to resort to just to get to 80 without having to endlessly bash my head against the wall doing hearts or grinding out EotM and getting bag farmed. then some thing needs to change.

While i do not believe Anet intended to make things this way, unfortunately it has turned out that way. Largely due to the changes they have made since that September 2014 feature pack.

Most of your post makes zero sense.

1. And how does it not give us an incentive now, I am confused O.o. Some of it makes little sense pacing-wise (like Eir mentioning going to AC AFTER you unlock story mode AC), but your exact point I don’t get

2. That’s plain not true. Which events were removed? The Shaman from Ashford? This one? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_the_Flame_Legion_Shaman

3. Again, I don’t exactly see your problem here?

4. EotM was never nerfed? When did they nerf it?

5. Why would you heart grind? Why not just freaking explore? Nobody is forcing you t grind hearts. Nothing has changed here since launch!

6. 6 and 4 together make no sense whatsoever. So you want it to be easy, but you don’t? And since when is giving veteran players a way to level fast to cap a bad thing? I personally never use it and nobody is forcing me, so what’s the problem?

7. What? Most effective? Are we playing the same game?!

It seems you are being nostalgic, since 90% of your complaints are just… non-existent.

Andulias.9516:

4. EotM was never nerfed? When did they nerf it?

Yes it was, they removed the champ bags for killing champs. I believe it was at the HoT launch?

Levelling is fun for the first few times but then it gets boring. I hate the heart quests. They are so annoying, and after completing the map thrice it even gets more boring. But then again that’s with every content in any game. I levelled my last two chars with tomes. Plain and simple. I get a kittenload through fractals, so I really don’t care about this. Usually to fully develop a new char with elite specialization takes about 2-3 hours; tome/scroll up to 80, go to guild hall, then I do all the easy HPs in Auric Basin, Verdant Brink and Tangled Depths. Voilà.

Ricky.4706:

if for some crazy reason everyone’s character was wiped, and they had to start over from day 1…. do you think most of the people that didn’t leave would start over ?

that would be the real gauge of how modern day gw2 is performing.

would gw2 hot survive a total reset ?

i dont think the problem would be to start over, but the problem would be that they lost everything they had for the last 3 years.

tons of people “started over” as new players, new f2p players ext.

and lots of other people ,me included, still make new characters and “gear them up” from scratch (2400h)

StormageddonBK.9842:

Andulias.9516:

4. EotM was never nerfed? When did they nerf it?

Yes it was, they removed the champ bags for killing champs. I believe it was at the HoT launch?

Huh? We still get bags from champs, we do not get a bonus chest AFTER capping but they never gave exp in the first place… :o So LEVELING in EotM was not nerfed.

The only thing that made leveling bareable to me was the freedom to gain all of your desired skills and utilities early, allowing you to set up some effective leveling build.
The days where you could go for a 5 signet warrior with a crit rate of 100% due to the non level based precision buff are long gone, though.
The whole leveling process feels so needlessly slowed and dumbed down nowadays. Would have to force myself to actually play and grind to get another character to 80 without the use of ‘Tomes. It doesn’t help that the story and all choices are the same old stuff to me now.

How do you make people pick up and actually “play” new characters without removing the Tomes and Scrolls and kittening off almost everyone?
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see additional new story choices and paths? And I am not even much of a story guy myself. Giving the veterans a new reason to make new characters of the same race would still be nice.
They could also give us some “unlocked” mode for new characters where you get your skills from the start or get other buffs or boons or whatever.
New events could take place in each zone as well as new or reworked heart quests to make it more interesting.

All of that sounds like too much work and a bad ressource investment on their part, in the end. As all of us want to see new lvl80 content before any rework to low level areas or stories.

I wish I could get level tomes from jump puzzle chests. I could level up with things I like doing, that way. I might even be able to tolerate the items that can be changed to tomes when there’s 20 but tomes are much nicer.

And fourth birthday could finally give those level 80 scrolls. Right? Right?!

I don’t care what else is in the game but I want my tomes and scrolls.

I will never level a character again via the “old” way, I have ToK, a lot of them. I don’t think I’ve leveled a character in the traditional way in along time. I think my Warrior and maybe my guardian got to 80 by playing. my other 8 characters all got ToK to 80. I hate the NPE that much.

Chuo.4238:

80 levels was a dumb idea to begin with.

Guild Wars 1 did it right. 20 levels still was a challenge if you played the missions for the first time but it didn’t become a grind to level up, since most of the leveling up was storydriven.

In Guild Wars 2 going through 80 levels seems like endless. Right now the best way to level is just to stack up your tomes of knowledge and skip all PvE content altogether. Guild Wars 2 leveling is unbearable.

And I forgot mentioning how kittening annoying NPE is… that alone is reason enough not to go through the leveling.