Guild Wars 2

First I must state that I play Guild Wars in a solo, RPG exploration way. I don’t play to level my Character to the top, I do little to no PVP (for the moment), and I play to have fun in the areas I explore, to find new areas, hunt down Veterans and chests, and craft my skills to be self sufficient.
But from what little I have played (Only got one character at level 47, thief), I have found that my Character levels to fast in respect to my proffesions and my exploration of the maps.

What I mean by this is that, the Armour/Weapons etc. I can currently create with my current crafting levels aren’t items which are of any use to me particularly. I have managed to out level my crafting items, and if I dare farm more materials for my professions, I will merely out level it even more.
Plus with my exploration of each area, I tend to spend quite a bit of time in a single area, and will tend to out level the mobs 5+ halfway through my exploration, making combat seem a bit too easy at times, and once I look at my map, I fear that by the time I finish with this area, I will out level the next area of which I wish to carry on to, so much it will be too easy to be of any fun.

I would love to explore most of the map with a single character, with a single hero, with a single story with the same amount of challenge I had at the beginning of the game.
I don’t wish to resort to create other characters to explore the areas of the map at a level which would make them more of a challenge. Either that or back tracking to areas of the world which are meant for levels 10+ below me, ruining my exploration and the challenges I seek.

If I could somehow control the amount of experience gained, with free use and no restriction on the control, the game, for me particularly and others who may feel the same way, would be much more enthralling, and we would be able to drain even more fun and experience from it than we currently can.
The method I would love to see installed in this game is an Experience Speed Control (Or something along those lines… tried to give it a title, failed.)
So for example, there would be four levels of Experience Speed, you would have ‘Normal’, Slow, Very Slow, and Pause.
This freedom of control would give me control over how difficult I can make the game for myself, but also to allow myself to immerse myself more into the game. To immerse in areas in a way of which I won’t be able to at a later level, and to utilize other aspects (Such as specific Armour Tiers and crafting skills) to their full advantage, of which I would otherwise not use as I would out level them, and wouldn’t be able to gather the resources to utilize them without out leveling them in the process.

Having no restriction on the controls would play a large part. I would love to at one moment just think “Oh, my Crafting level in so and so is falling behind, I’ll just slow down my experience for a bit while I catch up”, or “I haven’t explored all of this map yet, but I’m starting to out level the mobs here, and the Armour rewards are becoming pointless, so I’ll just pause my leveling for now and continue exploring”.
I feel like I am missing much of the game when I out level a particular area I am in, and it does damage my experience of the game quite a bit. Especially in my crafting experience. I have somewhat given up on it. I’ve out leveled it so much it’s just pointless even trying to level it up. I was enjoying creating Armour for myself, being self sufficient, but now I can’t experience that. (unless I was a pimp, with a fantastic income of course. Sadly, I can’t stop myself assassinating my clients or employees… being a thief and all, it’s in my blood)

I’ll cut it here, as I don’t want to spend to much time typing this up, so I hope I made my suggestion clear, thanks for reading, and have a fantastic day.

Sincerely,

Sion.

P.s. Sion is pronounced the same as Sean/Shaun, not ‘Si-on.’, like the guy from League of Legends. For Sionysion would sound silly in that regard.

I’m with you, as long as there are also options faster than “Normal” as well, for us altoholics. Yes, there are XP boosters, food, and potions, but they affect kill XP, not your lump sums like events, exploration, renown hearts, end of dungeon, and personal story completion.

Well you are down-leveled which allows you to experience these other areas, even if you have gained levels. I think that pretty much solves your problem, save for the crafting. I have little to say about crafting, I’ve always found crafting to be kind of useless in these games. You can get the same equipment or better by doing fun content like dungeons, rather than sitting at a crafting station forever.

Jemmi.6058:

Well you are down-leveled which allows you to experience these other areas, even if you have gained levels. I think that pretty much solves your problem

The experience of playing in a area which is of your level, compared to playing in an area of which you are down-leveled to can be quite different. (Less of a challenge, the Heart vendors are useless in the areas etc.)

It’s not just those two points (Crafting and the challenge), it’s that I would love to utilize the weapons and Armour which are available to me at that level as well.
For example, I would love to buy the Tier 1 weapons/armour at level 35-40 (What ever it is), but for the moment, grinding the currency to buy them would mean me leveling up in the process and out doing their use. Making them pointless for me to even try getting.
It would be nice to pause my experience, get the full Tier 1 set, and set off again.

There are other reasons, par Armour, Crafting and the Challenge. But it should be quite self explanatory now.

Crafting even levels you quite fast. It may be useful for follow up characters and it was useful in the beginning of GW2, where you could make money with it.

But now it’s only a money sink as in all games. Selling the material you need to build an items earns you the money to buy the item. And all the material you have to “burn” to learn crafting is just a waste.

Keep materials as reserve or sell them when you need money, buy your equipment in the AH. This will be cheaper and will level you slower, and it gives you a larger sortiment of items to choose from (drop-items are usually cheaper than crafting-items)

RebelYell.7132:

I’m with you, as long as there are also options faster than “Normal” as well, for us altoholics. Yes, there are XP boosters, food, and potions, but they affect kill XP, not your lump sums like events, exploration, renown hearts, end of dungeon, and personal story completion.

I personally found leveling to be very quick on each of my five mains (no alts here). Clearing Renown Hearts, on the other hand…

Yeah I just disagree, you can argue that down levelling should work faster I suppose. The tier 1 armour you can still by and then transmute it onto the higher level armour – therefore not rendering it useless.

Everything lower level than you can be experienced by you still, it is the stuff that is higher level that you cannot experience. For that reason, I do not understand why you would want to slow down your levelling. Anyway, I will not be upset if they implement this, I just do not see why they would/should.

Dayra.7405:

. It may be useful for follow up characters and it was useful in the beginning of GW2, where you could make money with it.

But now it’s only a money sink as in all games. Selling the material you need to build an items earns you the money to buy the item. And all the material you have to “burn” to learn crafting is just a waste.

Keep materials as reserve or sell them when you need money, buy your equipment in the AH. This will be cheaper and will level you slower, and it gives you a larger sortiment of items to choose from (drop-items are usually cheaper than crafting-items)

I was hoping this wouldn’t be a reality when the game was being released, and when I played the Beta I didn’t get to level too far, so the Crafting system seemed to be a useful system to use while I leveled.
But after playing it much more on its release, reaching only level 47, I can see it is just as useless for my own leveling as it is on other large MMORPGS.

It’s a disappointing fact which I hope I could avoid with an Experience Control system of sorts. But sadly, this is a rare probability.

Wait a second!

You keep getting higher levels and choose to upgrade your gear… and then you complain that it’s too easy? Did you ever stop to consider the option of just letting the levels come and using gear that’s appropriate for the area, rather than your character’s level? Because that’s how people make content difficult in single player RPGs.

After all, the scaling works in the player’s favor: It scales you down to match the level but keeps the gear grade.