Guild Wars 2

The new player experience brought a number of worthwhile changes, including a better direction through the starter areas, leveling rewards, and a bit more vertical progression early on.

However, simply gating some features behind levels doesn’t do anything to give greater understanding of the features. The easiest example of this is downed state. While it’s unlikely you’ll die before unlocking it, as it stands you hit the level and it tells you you’ve unlocked it and a minor description. This doesn’t really help people understand what downed state really is or how it works. A better introduction would be a scripted event in the starter mission or something like the dodge tutorial. As the centaur chieftain flees, he deals enough damage to down you, and you have all the time in the world to figure out how to deal with this state. You could have a pop-up showing the player “Use #4, or attack this wounded centaur over here to rally”.

Profession-skills are in a slightly different situation though. Rangers don’t unlock the pet-specific skill until 13, and swapping pets until lvl24 (I think 24?). Keeping these gated doesn’t introduce them any better. Elementalist attunements are the same way. Why not change all the now defunct profession trainers to actually give tutorials on how to Steal as a thief, or how your utility skills as an engineer affects your toolbelt? Now, you have to get a certain level, and poof you have these unlocked now. No better understanding of how to rotate attunements, or when to pop virtues off, or shatter your illusions.

All in all, I’m not upset with the changes (possibly because I have 6 lvl 80s and the other 2 are well on their way there), but really baffled as to how some of these features being level-gated can be viewed as anything but a hindrance to new players understanding how to play their professions.