Guild Wars 2

On The Level

Although Mike O’Brien did leave the door open for a level cap increase at some point, the realities of the design and nature of Guild Wars 2, and the player community it has attracted with the Manifesto, are such that raising the cap would probably be disastrous.

The introduction of Ascended gear has given us a taste of what to expect. Despite being slowly phased in to become the “new normal”, just adding another gear tier caused such a massive uproar that I believe ArenaNet was truly shocked by it, and are treading very carefully as a result.

Raising the level cap by any amount, and under any pretext, would make the controversy over Ascended gear look like a drop in the bucket by comparison.

I was somewhat dismayed by Ascended gear, given GW2’s oft-purported commitment to horizontal progression, but it wasn’t a dealbreaker for me. Raising the level cap, on the other hand, would probably be a bridge too far.

I still have two lifetime LOTRO subscriptions that I don’t use anymore because GW2 ruined LOTRO for me. One of the things I got sick of in LOTRO was the constant level cap increases that would, in a stroke, render all the gear on all my many alts obsolete.

Being repeatedly set back to square one gets old quickly and devalues the benefits of a persistent game environment. Why not just play on an Etch-a-Sketch? Or more germane to GW2, why not just start fresh in a different game, if we have to start over anyway?

In my case, if confronted with a GW2 level cap increase, I would be forced to consider starting the gear grind over in GW2, which has added little persistent content in the past year (the most persistent aspect of the Living World is all the worthless junk it has left behind in my bank vault), versus going back to LOTRO, which has added a great deal of persistent content I can play at my own pace, whenever I want. In that scenario, GW2 loses, given the spectacular disappointment the Living World has been so far.

Add sliding level caps to GW2 and it becomes more like the “generic” MMOs it’s supposed to be superior to. It would then find itself competing against other games that do “generic” better (such as LOTRO) on their home turf, and would not compare favorably.

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tl;dr version: Thanks to the persuasiveness and appeal of ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto, the GW2 community is extremely sensitive to and hostile toward vertical progression schemes. Raising the level cap would most likely be GW2’s equivalent of the infamous “New Game Enhancements” of Star Wars Galaxies.

I don’t recommend going there.

Shockwave.1230:

I would be very disappointed if Gw2 had it’s level cap increased. It would be like ANet finding a loophole in order to continue with vertical power progression while not doing another tier of gear.

They’ve been very clear that they intend to continue vertical progression. No new tiers was a meaningless statement to calm down the reaction against Ascended gear.

Anyone who is waiting for the vertical progression to plateau is waiting in vain.

Nar.8327:

Sube Dai.8496:

Nar.8327:

There are a million ways to do progression without raising the level cap and forcing everyone to go replace all of their hard-earned gear. New skills are a step in the right direction.

I hope we never see a level cap increase. If we ever do, I hope it isn’t accompanied by higher-level gear. If I wanted the endless pursuit of better gear, I’d be playing a different game.

Didn’t stop them from doing ascended.

I’m willing to forgive them from that mistake if they can show me that they’ve learned from it. Time will tell.

If they had learned from this mistake they would have learned a year ago, when there was a huge uproar about the ascended introduction and a big chunk of the playerbase left this game. And look at where we are now: more and more mandatory gear grinding. Unfortunately, its pretty clear that (unlike it was advertised) this game has become a gear treadmill one. So either people deal with it, or quit it.

I think if you read this thread, caiomacos, you’ll notice that your so called gear treadmill is far from mandatory. Whatever their reasons, many players are choosing not to make any ascended gear, or only to do so for one or two characters. At any rate, I think ANet has indeed caught on that raising the level cap or adding further gear progression would be a disaster. I highly doubt they’ll do it again. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-many-Chars-will-you-gear-w-ascended/first

Berelious.3290:

I think if you read this thread, caiomacos, you’ll notice that your so called gear treadmill is far from mandatory. Whatever their reasons, many players are choosing not to make any ascended gear, or only to do so for one or two characters. At any rate, I think ANet has indeed caught on that raising the level cap or adding further gear progression would be a disaster. I highly doubt they’ll do it again. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-many-Chars-will-you-gear-w-ascended/first

In a strict sense, nothing in the game is mandatory. Devs cant force players to do anything. People could play naked or on whites if they choose so. But thats completely changing the sense in which I used the word “mandatory”.

If you read the topic you linked, you will realise that most people will not make ascended not because they dont want ascended (in fact, they do – mostly to play on an even field than anything else), but because they dont wanna go through the huge ammount of grind required to get them. They have, you know, lives outside the game; and their time is better spent doing something else. GW2 is a game, not a job. People are supposed to have fun on it, not feel forced into some content they dont like just so they can enjoy the content that pleases them on its full extent.

Going back to the use of the word “mandatory”, anything that provides statiscal advantage is a mandatory progression. Sure, people could choose to play at a disadvantage, but the way I see it if you are forced to grind just so you can play at the same conditions as any other player, its a mandatory grind.

caiomacos.1694:

Berelious.3290:

I think if you read this thread, caiomacos, you’ll notice that your so called gear treadmill is far from mandatory. Whatever their reasons, many players are choosing not to make any ascended gear, or only to do so for one or two characters. At any rate, I think ANet has indeed caught on that raising the level cap or adding further gear progression would be a disaster. I highly doubt they’ll do it again. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-many-Chars-will-you-gear-w-ascended/first

In a strict sense, nothing in the game is mandatory. Devs cant force players to do anything. People could play naked or on whites if they choose so. But thats completely changing the sense in which I used the word “mandatory”.

If you read the topic you linked, you will realise that most people will not make ascended not because they dont want ascended (in fact, they do – mostly to play on an even field than anything else), but because they dont wanna go through the huge ammount of grind required to get them. They have, you know, lives outside the game; and their time is better spent doing something else. GW2 is a game, not a job. People are supposed to have fun on it, not feel forced into some content they dont like just so they can enjoy the content that pleases them on its full extent.

Going back to the use of the word “mandatory”, anything that provides statiscal advantage is a mandatory progression. Sure, people could choose to play at a disadvantage, but the way I see it if you are forced to grind just so you can play at the same conditions as any other player, its a mandatory grind.

Amen.