Guild Wars 2

So with the latest discount I urged a friend to get the game as I was getting back into it myself. And what I found was….upsetting? Disturbing?

Low-levels are a mess. From a launch message of ‘you can jump right in and PvP from level 1’ to everything being locked.

Skill 2 unlocked at lvl 2
Skill 3 unlocked at lvl 4
Lvl 6 you learn how to dodge
Skill 4 unlocked at lvl 7 (along with your off hand)
Skill 5 unlocked at lvl 10 (along with vistas)

Skill buying and skill points locked until lvl 13
WvW locked until 18, PvP until 22

My friend got bored at level 7 of there being nothing but grinding on mobs, pressing the same 4 buttons. So we quit out of the senseless boring low-level grind. I bought a load of mats and helped them craft-grind to lvl 18.

Now I know why lvl 20 boosts are showered on all of my characters.

I felt so ashamed having encouraged my friend to play the game only to realise that 99% of it was locked away because they were too low level and hadn’t unlocked it yet, hadn’t joined early enough to get it. Gone was the game that I had joined where it was ‘go and do whatever you want’ in exchange I’d found a game that slowly drip-fed you content like water torture more than an actually having fun.

It’s like ANet doesn’t trust its players to be able to pick up on everything. If that’s the case make the intro event the tutorial it was. Railroad people for 5 minutes to teach them, not 10-15 levels. Where lvl 1-20 is your weakest content you don’t want to be keeping new players there.

Locked things:
Dodging (by virtue of not telling players about it for ~6 levels)
Underwater Combat (note for Asura this unlocks long after the quest that used to get you to use it)
Mail
(Guilds?)
Skills
Skill Points and Challenges
Vistas
Traits
Trading Post
Crafting
WvW
PvP

I look forward to adding more things that are locked.

I hope they fix this soon, I’ve given up with the game for now because I’m suffering from this a lot, ended up giving in on the one-time event because the events were bugged or couldn’t be seen due to the number of people waiting for them. I appreciate that they’re trying, but in a game where they’ve proudly tried to make sure that being with other people they’re not doing very well. I don’t understand why they haven’t tried implementing a ‘generic model’ fix where instead of things not being visible they just stick a ‘there is something here and it has this name’ marker. Be it an NPC, Player, Hostile Mob banner or w/e I know they’re trying to be immersive, but there’s nothing less immersive than invisible zombies (for instance) gnawing your face off or dying almost instantly as a previously invisible zerg starts appearing about you at the game engine finally struggles to load about 1% of them.

I know Anet don’t care if I play their game or not, but it’d be nice if they pretended to give a damn about such major issues. Or at least made sure we know they give a damn. One-time events should definitely be put on hold until this is resolved.

I don’t know if this is the same issue, but right now about 80% of things in Lion’s Arch are now invisible due to the high-population from the Halloween event. Standing still and waiting reveals some, but never all, of the people present.