Guild Wars 2

ok guys im new to guild wars 2, ive played all the previous guild wars but im only a month into guild wars 2 and ive a level 43 norn thief.

2 things id like to ask, 1st of all why level 80, why not 100 etc. are they leaving room for expansion or something.

another thing id like to know is what do all these abbreviations mean, i havent a clue, i swear it seems like your all speaking another language.

if someone could please list all the abbreviations that you’se use starting with op id be really grateful

They are not planning on increasing the level cap as it really won’t do much. The current system is just at 80 since the final zones are level 83. Increasing the level cap would mean the introduction of more vertical grinding which would cause a lot of players to leave. With expansions and introduction of new skills, they are not currently planning on increasing the level cap, but going to give an appropriate skill point reward to allow players to pick from the newer skills as well as the older ones (so that new characters won’t have too many skills at low levels to choose from).

If they were to make the level cap 100 at release, they would have either had to have made at least 8 more zones (if not more), unless they wanted to cop out and just have one zone for each of those level areas.

OP = Opening Post[er]. In this case it would be referring to either you or your post. It can also mean Overpowered, or overly strong.
Context: @OP, You’re wrong.
Definition: Opening Post[er], you’re wrong.
Context2: Thieves are OP, I got 2shot for 15k in 1 second.
Definition: Thieves are overpoewred, I got hit twice for 15000 damage in 1 second. (Not a real scenario unless you were wearing broken gear.)

Common abbreviations you will see:
AC: Ascalonian Catacombs. A level 30-35 dungeon.
CM: Caudecus’ Manor. A level 40-45 dungeon.
CoF [p1]: Citadel of Flame. A level 70-75 dungeon, used for farming gold in p1/p2 (path 1/path 2).
SB: Shadow Behemoth. A world boss found in Queensdale.
Jormag: Claw of Jormag. A world boss found in Frostgorge Sound.
Shat: The Shatterer. A world boss found in Blazeridge Steppes.
Tequatl/Tecuddles/Taquito: Tequatle the Sunless. A world boss found in Sparkfly Fen.
FotM: Fractals of the Mist. An infinite dungeon comprised of mini-dungeons.
LA: Lion’s Arch. Main city to sit in and do nothing.
WvW: World versus World. A place to fight 2 other worlds in a PvE + PvP King of the Hill setting with multiple hills scattered over 4 maps.
BL: Borderlands. Used in conjunction with world abbreviations in/for WvW.
EB: Eternal Battlegrounds. The big, major map to fight in WvW.

Examples of some world names:
HoD: Henge of Denravi.
NSP: Nothern Shiverpeaks.
BG: Blackgate.
JQ: Jade Quarry.
DR: Devona’s Rest.
YB: Yak’s Bend.
BP: Borlis Pass.

Thanks for this, great help

Why level 80…. why not?

Levels are just arbitrary numbers, nothing more. What would be the difference, for example, if they made it to level 16 instead of 80… but have each level take 5 times more XP as they do now, each level were to give you 5 skill points, and instead of 5 trait points for each minor or major trait you needed 1?… the end result would be exactly the same.

When you put a number at ‘100’, it inherently implies completion as in, 100%.
With that subtle nuance, it leaves little room to move. Where do you go from 100%? 120%?

Frankly, I would like to see no number level cap.
I mean, we continue to get skill points after max level (80), and logically, the character should gradually become more and more powerful/skillful—but this isn’t the case.

Why are NPCs e.g. Champions and dungeon bosses so powerful? Why can’t we ever get that strong?

I think it would be great to introduce a hyperbolic curve into leveling up after L80, so that there could be such a thing as ‘more powerful’ players. (An appropriate hyperbolic curve being the key here, and you’d probably want to limit this to PvE)

But Pure Heart, that would make attaining skill points ridiculously hard after level 80.

Also, it would end up making you get weaker as you played longer as you would require gear at your appropriate level to maintain your strength as you will get downleveled, but your gear will stay at level 80.

Esplen.3940:

But Pure Heart, that would make attaining skill points ridiculously hard after level 80.

Also, it would end up making you get weaker as you played longer as you would require gear at your appropriate level to maintain your strength as you will get downleveled, but your gear will stay at level 80.

Esplen,
I take your point on the Skill Points.
As for ‘getting weaker’ & ‘maintaining strength’, not so; The game environment would remain unchanged even as you progressed over L80 (enemies are not getting stronger). Down-leveling should operate as it does now—my understanding may be wrong—but it wouldn’t matter what level over 80 you were, you get leveled to a few levels above the zone you’re playing in. Also we’ll assuming down-leveling would cease after L80. No problem here. No?

Downleveling scales your stats (in accordance with the strength of your gear) to what it would be at X level.

In a level 20 zone, a level 20 player with level 20 blue gear is stronger than a level 60 player with level 40 blue gear. This is because the level 20 player has gear for his level, although it isn’t the best gear (green), it’s still pretty good. The level 60 player has blue gear which is 2 tiers under the best (yellow) and the gear is 2/3 of his level, thus not giving him full benefit.

When getting downleveled, it dynamically changes your stats by applying a % chance. It figures out the percentage by comparing the Best in Slot of both levels and trying to balance it out. Of course, you’re still going to get some excess stats when getting downleveled, but it’s still a pretty good system.

If you were to progress past level 80, but weren’t able to get higher gear, you’d weaken over time (a level 180 player with level 80 gear would be ridiculously weak, relying only on base stats instead of stats from gear to actually kill mobs).

Luckily, there is a stat floor, meaning you’re not going to be weaker than a naked level X player, but that’s not a very good comparison. I mean, would you rather be stronger than a level 80 naked player or a level 80 player in Exotics (current Best in Slot)?

There is also a stat ceiling (only when being upleveled) which can be found by doing specific things. Getting upleveled to level 80 gives you a stat ceiling of 2500 (bypassed with buffs and signets). A level 80, however, can pass the stat cap of 2500 (however it isn’t possible to reach 2500 from gear alone, which is an advantage upleveled players get).

I’ve actually done a bit of super-amateur game design myself, so I can answer the question.

The thing with the leveling system in the games is that they are usually an afterthought to the content of the game. What game designers will do is make the story, then the environment, then the enemies, and then once those 3 elements are in place they will go about balancing the stats needed for each section, as well as how quickly stats are gained. This establishes the pacing of the game, which is a 4th important element to design around.

Usually, the peak stats that are desired for any circumstance are decided beforehand (stats at maximum level against final/extra boss), and then afterward the developers make a system that slowly grows toward having those stats. This can be accomplished one of three ways:

1) Freehanding. Sometimes they’ll just make the experience equation, and then after some alpha testing the gauge roughly what level it’ll take to reach certain content, and then set around that level the maximum, and give a stat distribution that grows along the way. This method has fallen out of practice, for its simplicity is often times its demise: this type of leveling only works in circumstances where there’s nothing gained in levels but stats, so leveling in general ends up being something tacked on to the game at the end.

2) Ability Resource Management. This is what GW2 does. Leveling up in the game gives you trait points which are invested into traits to give certain abilities. Here, the maximum level determines the overall amount of resources you can invest, and this is chosen as a matter of balance. If the level is too low, then you don’t have enough points to buy a variety of traits to make a variety of builds. If the level is too high, then you have too many points and you just buy every good trait with no sacrifices.

3)Arbitrary build standpoint. Sometimes, for the sake of the sanity of everyone in game development, they’ll set the level cap to an arbitrary number in the beginning. Then, the leveling pacing as well as equipment stats, customization, ability resource pools, and so are determined from there. The advantage to this method is that you can adjust the stats, the experience gain, the resources, everything to all fit into this number, so balancing enemies and plot lines can be done as they are made instead of later on in the process. The disadvantage to this process is that the system becomes inflexible, and should changes be needed in the future it can end up screwing up everything.

This is what is done in general. As it happens, there is no strict manual on how to pick levels while making an RPG, so often times whomever is making the game will just come up with a system on the fly.

Level 80 from what Im aware, is a bit of a MMO trope. I guess maybe it had something to do with how they wanted to pace your leveling.

Esplen.3940:

Tequatl/Tecuddles/Taquito: Tequatle the Sunless. A world boss found in Sparkfly Fen.

Also known as Tequila

Esplen.3940:

LA: Lion’s Arch. Main city to sit in and do nothing.

Haha XD

I have a few more:

DPS: Damage per second
AoE: Area of effect (AoE spell affects an entire area (think meteor shower) and not a single target)
CC: ?

MF: can refer to the “Molten Facility” (a temporary dungeon from back in April/May) or “Magic Find”
AR: “Aetherblade Retreat”, another temp dungeon from last month

JP: Jumping puzzle

DR: Divinity’s Reach (human capital city) and also something else that I can’t think of right now

About the level 80: anet has stated that they might raise the maximum level in the future, so it might become level 100 someday.

cc: crowd control, (used for single target as well) effects that impair your movement and skill usage (cripple, immobilize, daze…)

dr: diminishing returns, generally used in mmos to describe a mechanic that reduces the amount stacked (very high) numbers in stats (e.g. strengh, vitality) add less to your other stats or skilleffects (e.g. damage/health) after a certain threshold, in gw1+2 it’s used for a mechanic that reduces the amount of loot you get for repeating the same content over a prolonged period without breaks (or for dungeons several times a day)

FotM (class): Flavor of the month, used for a class that is very popular at the moment due to being stronger than others

sup(p)s: supplies in wvw

wp: waypoint

If you don’t understand a term, just ask – mmospeech is like a language with many different dialects ;D

Welcome to the game – have fun!

POI – point of interest

HoM – something to do with GW1 and rewards that “carried over” …?

AR: Agony Resistance, an attribute currently only used in the Fractals of the mist. To resemble the protection against the agony condition (which does damage up to a percentage of your health).

I see someone said OP means Opening poster, and thats for the forums.

From my experience, OP can also mean “Original post” which is referring to the first post of the thread. So the OP here can be YOUR first post ricochman, where you ask for help.

Also, when INGAME, OP is always used as “Over powered” meaning it’s to good and better than everything and should be adjusted a little. But so you know, alot people use OP to much, its usual used by cryers. Let see you kill me on your thief, i would say “THIEF IS OP!” But its not. Because this has a bad side aswell. Thiefs are very squishy. Squishy means they die very fast if caught

Esplen.3940:

Downleveling scales your stats (in accordance with the strength of your gear) to what it would be at X level.

In a level 20 zone, a level 20 player with level 20 blue gear is stronger than a level 60 player with level 40 blue gear. This is because the level 20 player has gear for his level, although it isn’t the best gear (green), it’s still pretty good. The level 60 player has blue gear which is 2 tiers under the best (yellow) and the gear is 2/3 of his level, thus not giving him full benefit.

When getting downleveled, it dynamically changes your stats by applying a % chance. It figures out the percentage by comparing the Best in Slot of both levels and trying to balance it out. Of course, you’re still going to get some excess stats when getting downleveled, but it’s still a pretty good system.

If you were to progress past level 80, but weren’t able to get higher gear, you’d weaken over time (a level 180 player with level 80 gear would be ridiculously weak, relying only on base stats instead of stats from gear to actually kill mobs).

[snip]

Well, I didn’t know it worked that way—however, I don’t believe it would be difficult to add some logical math/condition to prevent this phenomenon.

Pure Heart.1456:

Esplen.3940:

Downleveling scales your stats (in accordance with the strength of your gear) to what it would be at X level.

In a level 20 zone, a level 20 player with level 20 blue gear is stronger than a level 60 player with level 40 blue gear. This is because the level 20 player has gear for his level, although it isn’t the best gear (green), it’s still pretty good. The level 60 player has blue gear which is 2 tiers under the best (yellow) and the gear is 2/3 of his level, thus not giving him full benefit.

When getting downleveled, it dynamically changes your stats by applying a % chance. It figures out the percentage by comparing the Best in Slot of both levels and trying to balance it out. Of course, you’re still going to get some excess stats when getting downleveled, but it’s still a pretty good system.

If you were to progress past level 80, but weren’t able to get higher gear, you’d weaken over time (a level 180 player with level 80 gear would be ridiculously weak, relying only on base stats instead of stats from gear to actually kill mobs).

[snip]

Well, I didn’t know it worked that way—however, I don’t believe it would be difficult to add some logical math/condition to prevent this phenomenon.

Which removes the whole purpose of the dynamic part of the code.

Esplen.3940:

Pure Heart.1456:

Esplen.3940:

Well, I didn’t know it worked that way—however, I don’t believe it would be difficult to add some logical math/condition to prevent this phenomenon.

Which removes the whole purpose of the dynamic part of the code.

But only for players above L80—which is the whole point, because the idea was that characters over L80 would perpetually be getting stronger. Anyway it ain’t happening, Anet have chosen their system of capped power for all characters so bleh.

Oh yeah – apart from Molten Facility and Magic Find, MF also stands for Mystic Forge.