Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2’s dynamic level system is one of the more unique in the genre, one of the few things that makes it truly stand out from the sea of WoW clones. The recent changes to it, IMO, were a step in the right direction: content was so easy before when you outleveled an area that it wasn’t even enjoyable to do (for me, at least) and the rewards were DEFINITELY not worth doing (that I can’t imagine many people disagreeing with).

With the rewards being upscaled to at least attempt to be worth doing at level 80 (a little more work here would be nice, but its a good GOOD start) and the downleveling making content below your level actually challenging, I realized that GW2 could do something with their expansion that would really set it apart from the others.

Why not make the new content for the game go from level 30-80 again, giving new zones for everyone? The content will remain challenging and new for all involved, but it would give new players a chance to experience this right alongside the 80s, while still rewarding the 80s and challenging them just like any high level content would. And what rule states that just because WoW decided the only way progression can be measured is in how many +1s you get to your armor/level, that GW2 has to abide by that rule and follow it religiously?

If you want progression, even as much as I despise the idea of new gear… add a new tier of armor or something so the people who like arbitrary number increases can get their +1s. But as for the rest? Focus on story, content, gears, dungeons and skills that can be used by ALL players first, and become one of the few MMOs that puts out an expansion that caters to more than just the max levels of the game.

Well for gw1 the campaigns covered lvl 1-20 (20 being max) so if their expansions follow on like GW1 did you would see areas for lvl 1-80. But they only did that on gw1 because they always came with new classes which started in the new zones so they had to be lvl 1 areas.

Thus if we are lucky to get new races with the expansions theres a good chance we will get new starter zones for those new races.

Ascended gear was added to fill the gap between exotics and legendaries…hopefully there will not be another tier.

But we already know level increases are coming…they stated so almost year prior to launch.

That said, I do agree. Horizontal progression is always the better option. They truly need to ensure that the MAJORITY of the zones in the future are at max level.

Vorch.2985:

Ascended gear was added to fill the gap between exotics and legendaries…hopefully there will not be another tier.

But we already know level increases are coming…they stated so almost year prior to launch.

That said, I do agree. Horizontal progression is always the better option. They truly need to ensure that the MAJORITY of the zones in the future are at max level.

I’m 99% certain you are right and we will get level increases, regardless of who does and doesn’t want it, and then will be told after the fact just how much Arenanet perceives us as loving the idea. HOWEVER, taking into light how much of their original vision for the game got chunked, and that level increases were mentioned around the same time as other things that got left in the dust (no grind, account bound dye, etc), I still hold hope that this, too, will be a previous vision for the game that they leave to the wayside.

Tbh, I haven’t really noticed it that much on my L80 Ranger (Rangers have hardly ever had stellar dps on our side anyway, badum-tish), but a couple of my friends are none too happy about this change, including a L80 Elementalist running a D/D + staff build. Apparently for her, map completion in lower level areas like Blazeridge Steppes is excruciating now, with some events dropping groups of players like flies. Her own damage there has supposedly gone down from 600-800 to around 200-400 (I think with only rare weapons).

More content would certainly be nice, but I really think ANet should fix what’s broken first before going down the new content road. Besides, an expansion along the lines of the ones GW1 got (Factions, Nightfall, etc) would itself offer new L30-80 content, which I assume is down the line as there are 4-5 more EDs to stomp on.

As for new gear, we already have Ascended items to reach for. I really hope ANet stops at Ascended, but if they do go even higher, I hope it doesn’t happen for a long, long, LONG time.

Just my two coppers.

For the new zones that are released with an expansion, they should probably focus mainly on adding level 8 or higher zones, but also add a few low and mid-level zones so that even players who are rerolling alts will get to experience some new zones and content..I am apprehensive about doing too much to revamp older zones by replacing older content. I think most changes should be additions, rather than replacements. It’s like would World of Warcraft did with cataclysm when they replaced a lot of the content on the older continent. That just meant many of the older quests could no longer be completed and were gone forever. That’s a shame because I would love to go back and redo certain things and also it puts a lot of the previous work to waste. So rather then replacing dynamic events or replacing certain NPC dialogue, I would just like to see additions being added.