Guild Wars 2

I don’t get it. Oh, sure, I am a bit tired of the starting areas, but reaching max level seems rather pointless. Unlike most MMORPGs, there are only two types of areas in this game: the ones you are too low level for, and the ones you are the correct level for. If you head into a high-level area and find yourself too low-level, you obviously need to level up to be able to explore there. But… what’s the hurry?

If you go back to a low-level area, you will automatically be downscaled to match that area. Of course this isn’t flawless, as you do keep your skills etc (if you go back to a level 4 area as level 80, you will keep all the skills you aren’t supposed to have unlocked yet.) Even so, going back to a low-level area works really well most of the time. All the XP scale based on your level, so whether you are level 10 or level 60, you still get full XP for dynamic events, hearts and all that. Furthermore, you get plenty of bonuses for doing the map completion, giving you yet another reason to go back to low level areas. But, again, when you do, you get downscaled to match the level recommendation. So what’s the point in leveling up in a hurry?

The only things I can think of is gear and preparing for the expansion. So let’s look at those, shall we?

1. Gear. In this game, gear is nearly pointless. I played around with my Ele for several hours, and started getting annoyed that daggers are so hard to find. But here’s the thing: At the time, I had done Metrica Province, and was finishing up Brisbane Highlands. I can’t remember the last time I found near daggers, but I also don’t remember the last time I wasn’t downscaled. Meaning if I go to one of the other starting areas or the other 15 – 25 area, I already have better gear than I’m going to need. If I set off to a higher level area, I’ll find new gear soon enough. This sticks all the way up to 80. Most classes won’t need near gear all that often, as it is based a lot more on player skill than gear.

2. Preparing for the expansion. I do understand this, but… what’s the hurry? Unless you have gotten tired of every single area in the game, and ESPECIALLY if you are a new player, what’s the rush? What will the expansion do, that we can’t already do in lower level areas? If you already have a character or two at max level, I understand the expansion is tempting. But that’s months away, and there are plenty of other things to enjoy here. If you don’t have anyone at max level, does it matter? The expansion is months away, as I said, and even when it’s released, it’s not going anywhere. It’ll be there waiting for you when you are ready for it.

My advice? Get a character high enough level to unlock a couple of weapon skills, then have fun. Take your time and enjoy the game. This isn’t WoW. Leveling up is mostly useful for getting new skills and getting to higher level areas, but the lower level areas offer a ton of fun, too. Don’t consider this an RPG. Consider this an action game with RPG elements. There’s a difference. Ignore leveling up, and focus more on having fun.

As someone with 16 character slots, leveling up is a chore now. With the amount of level up tomes we get thrown as well, why not just speed to 80? I’m not sure what you want to hear from people who speed level, other than leveling gets tiring after the third character, ESPECIALLY if it’s a class you’ve already played.
A nitpicky remark as well, but unless they changed it, you get more experience playing a zone the same level as your current one. That is, if you’re 40 playing in a 1-15 zone, you’ll still get experience and be downleveled, but it won’t be as much experience as you’d get in a level 40-50 zone. They incentivize playing content that’s right for you, but still sorta hamper your ability to level when playing in lower level zones.
Just a personal observation, but man I’ve been gone for a while. I feel like a year ago people were complaining about the oversaturation of players not leaving starter zones, and now the problem seems to be that no one is in the starter zones because they’re all 80’s.

1. Gear can be quite important, more-so for newer players who haven’t acquired the skills to not depend on equipment so much. With the way scaling works Gear as old kitten levels behind a character’s level really starts to impact them when working in downscaled areas. That’s why we generally advise visiting the Post every 5 levels or so to keep gear current. That’s not a strict habit as some players enjoy the challenge of working with what they get on their own vs bartering with other players.

2. Beyond the obvious locked out content (dungeons, Story instances, etc) the expansion will introduce the mastery system which players will not have access to unless they have a level 80 character. Thus it would be advantageous for a player to have a handful of toons that can be used to tackle the various mastery requirements. Even then, a fresh 80 vs a seasoned 80 (a player who’s had time to practice with his toon) may find it much easier to accomplish some of the achievements.

Overall, levelling multiple toons to 80 gets very tiresome after the first one or two.

because leveling up is boring, I just want to do wvw and get cool gear. this is an mmo, if this somehow had a map like skyrim then everyone would love leveling up but it doesn’t. it just starts getting repetitive and predictable

Leveling was fine the first 6 times I did it. The last 2 times (to get a full roster of characters) was pretty boring.

I imagine, for most people, they don’t like leveling because they want to jump into WvW without being upleveled.

TLDR

Responding to your topic, because you start doing many things at level 80 just like you can start going crazy after age 18 or 21

Conditioning from nearly every other MMO that puts the “good stuff” at max level.

I might create a separate post for this; but first I’ll try extending the OP point a bit. How do you turn your xp off so as to focus on an area / level / zone / skill you haven’t quite got on top of yet. Sometimes it feels like you don’t want to level because you haven’t finished the previous one.

Everything is better once you’re 80, especially after the NPE. You can use the traits you want and skills you want. If you’re map completing it’s much faster, a lot of people have done it to a point they don’t want to sight see anymore. You can also jump into dungeon groups and WvW and be useful and have a lot more fun.

because at level 80 you can finally unlock your chosen professions true potential. this is the only thing, apart from recommended map access, that makes any difference.

The game doesn’t begin until level 80. You don’t have access to your full character’s potential and you can’t invest into real development of your character through skills and traits and armor and weapons until you reach max level.

At the same time, at max level you can go back and experience all the low level content enjoyably because of the level scaling in PvE.

Being max level gives you more freedom to do whatever you want, where ever it is in the game.

It used to be fine until the NPE and trait changes. After those changes the first 40 or so levels are just a waste of time.

Levels in GW2 are just a gating to content.
Max level can do all the things. Can even wear bad equipment to play in low level areas like a lowby would be.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think we might fall into two categories.

• The “race for the roses” type of gamer, players who rush through content as quickly as possible to get to the top level, end game, etc.
• “The “stop and smell the roses” sort of gamer, players who take their time and probably engage more in the environment, story, personal interaction, etc.

“Different strokes for different folks,” as the old saying goes. I fall into the second category and I admit it, sometimes it makes me a little sad to know how much some people miss by not savoring the moment, as least with one character.

Then there’s people rushing to do the new rewarding and challenging endgame conten… oh, wait.

My uninterrupted game time goes into WvW. I have no use for an upleveled character in WvW.

at 80 you get grandmaster traits

some classes are horribly gimpy without certain grandmasters, but youll never know it unless you get to 80 and figure out a good build, because everything is perfectly viable at 79-

I will be honest gaile… the biggest reason I see people rushing to get to 80 used to be so they wouldn’t have to spend gems to get the FREE content that was promised them with the living story…. the fact Anet charges for that content is really a major factor in that. (and IMHO is not right for it to be a pay to play since it was supposed to be part of the free updated content that was the selling point of the game to begin with.)

CorrynnStarr.7942:

I will be honest gaile… the biggest reason I see people rushing to get to 80 used to be so they wouldn’t have to spend gems to get the FREE content that was promised them with the living story…. the fact Anet charges for that content is really a major factor in that. (and IMHO is not right for it to be a pay to play since it was supposed to be part of the free updated content that was the selling point of the game to begin with.)

That’s not it. You have to be level 80 to play it but you don’t have to be level 80 to get it. All you have to do is log on when the free content is available. If your char is too low level at that time it will be added to your account for free and then you can play it whenever it is level 80.

I would say that it’s because there is nothing you can’t do once your max level anyways, so why bother doing it when your not level 80? I to will rush to 80, outfit the hell out of my characters and then go back, oneshotting to complete low level areas, etc..

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think we might fall into two categories.

• The “race for the roses” type of gamer, players who rush through content as quickly as possible to get to the top level, end game, etc.
• “The “stop and smell the roses” sort of gamer, players who take their time and probably engage more in the environment, story, personal interaction, etc.

“Different strokes for different folks,” as the old saying goes. I fall into the second category and I admit it, sometimes it makes me a little sad to know how much some people miss by not savoring the moment, as least with one character.

It is every bit as easy to savor the moment on a level 80 character as it is on a level 14 character. There is nothing in the game that prevents reading text, interacting with NPC’s, following DE chains or anything else just because you are level 80.

Not savoring the moment is a completely different issue to leveling quickly.

Since tomes are available I will never again worry about leveling any character. I expect I won’t create one until I have 80 levels sitting in the bank and can pop them all off at once. Then I’ll play. I’ll read, I’ll savor, I’ll team up with friends, I’ll laugh, I’ll PLAY, but I won’t LEVEL. Because there is never a reason to be at any other level other than 80.

The only reason I play this game is to level up, one I hit 80 I finish up world completion then make another character to begin leveling up again. There is little for me to do at 80. I especially enjoy having the option to level up through WvW.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think we might fall into two categories.

• The “race for the roses” type of gamer, players who rush through content as quickly as possible to get to the top level, end game, etc.
• “The “stop and smell the roses” sort of gamer, players who take their time and probably engage more in the environment, story, personal interaction, etc.

“Different strokes for different folks,” as the old saying goes. I fall into the second category and I admit it, sometimes it makes me a little sad to know how much some people miss by not savoring the moment, as least with one character.

Or it could be that you can still do level 1 content at level 80 … and you don’t have to struggle as much.

With the NPE, and the fact that you barely get any trait points (or traits to go with them) until lvl 80, i am not surprised if people rush – especially if they already have a character at level 80.

Sad to say, but leveling up was much more fun before the NPE change.

First character was fun to lvl in open pve, then it got rather boring, although I always enjoyed the first 30lvls when lvling other characters. I even didn’t use my bday scrolls until NPE (I still rage when my lowbie can’t even get a skill point in starting area).

NPE rage inc..
Thanks to NPE, I am constantly low on skill points, sometimes I can’t craft stuff. I play gw2 every day for few hours and when I want to craft asc, I either keep logging to my characters till I find one with 20sp or I go pve to get some. I admit, I am an alt-holic, but NPE is just way too punishing for people like me.

So now I lvl with bday scroll, then cooking + some tomes to 30, from there dungeons which I like. When feeling lazy I hop to eotm but I tend to fall asleep and run off cliffs there really quickly.

Chris McSwag.4683:

With the NPE, and the fact that you barely get any trait points (or traits to go with them) until lvl 80, i am not surprised if people rush – especially if they already have a character at level 80.

Sad to say, but leveling up was much more fun before the NPE change.

Agreed. When I came back, it was like, what!? What does that change bring me, really?

So, lots of people like to level & I imagine they are happy when they get xp boosts. For people who want to stay low until they have levelled their professions, or developed their play, or explored anything they want…: Would it not make sense to just give the xp boosters that are being dropped or given out a coin value / disenchant value or both? Then people can take their play in the direction that they want.

At level 80 is when you can start customizing your character and trying out different builds and experience the true potential of your class.
You won’t bother much with your character before lvl 80, bcause it just doesn’t make much sense, since you would need to change gear anyway every 5-10 levels.

Some things, like SW, only unlock at 80. I can always do the low-level content later as I will be downleveled (but my weapons and traits will stay the same). For my first characters it was fun getting to 80 and exploring new areas but now I just want each new character to 80 ASAP so it can play with the grownups.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think we might fall into two categories.

• The “race for the roses” type of gamer, players who rush through content as quickly as possible to get to the top level, end game, etc.
• “The “stop and smell the roses” sort of gamer, players who take their time and probably engage more in the environment, story, personal interaction, etc.

“Different strokes for different folks,” as the old saying goes. I fall into the second category and I admit it, sometimes it makes me a little sad to know how much some people miss by not savoring the moment, as least with one character.

I (and it sounds like many of us) completely enjoyed it the first few times. Eventually though new characters just feel like you are going though the motions.

Not that there are not still places to explore even at 80, but those zones would be instant death at lower levels. How many <20 level characters do you think would survive going across cursed shore for example, no matter how much the player knew the game?

For me it’s simillar to the usual runner, first time you level as a new player, you get to see new stuff, meet new friends wow at how everything is so cool and well designed and interesting, oh my god is that a dragon? Wow we just killed a dragon, yeah that was awesome man!
It gets less and less awesome everytime you do it all over so by your character number 4 you just want it to be over, soon. It becomes a neccessary grind that fortunately in GW2 can be avoided by investing into crafting professions and using the birthday lvl 20 scroll and books for +1s.
Sure some people wanna hang and enjoy the location, but the thrill is mostly gone. =’(