Guild Wars 2

So many of us have hated the new trait system. It’s worse than the original in so many ways, such as making it harder for those with a lot of alts to keep up. While I like the idea of giving players an option to get traits through gameplay, it seemed like a lot of their choices for activites and the order in which they placed them were anywhere from odd to downright painful. Plus, the increased costs were really unnecessary.

If the organization of the gameplay options were more intuitive and more accessible to most players, or we had broader categories for completing each one, it might have worked. However, as it stands, it needs redoing and so it’s good news that they’re going to do just that.

Of course, HOW they redo it remains to be seen and whether it makes everything worse or better.

kittenahe.3108:

Now i need to wait even longer… This is just absurd.

Posts like these keep the devs as quiet as they are. Thankfully more players seem to be understanding. It’s software development: it happens, it’s fine. :} I’m disappointed but hopefully wed/thu of this week is a possibility despite ANet’s propensity to release on Tuesdays.

Cilph.6758:

How about releasing patch notes early?

They never do that.
Due to the point of this thread.
Sometime things don’t go as planned and thus things might have to get pulled from the patch.

I was about to make a new thread but I guess I can put it in here -

I love guild wars 2 and I love to play it. I also enjoy the rich and vibrant world there is to explore. Unfortunately I am really struggling to enjoy playing new characters, and I believe the main reason for this is down to the restrictions and “progression” that was reverse added to the game with the previous major update.

I don’t define having levelled a character over half way through its levelling progression and still only having access to the first two series of traits. I understand the traits system as it is but locking off the end tiers (Master and GMaster) until 60+ is killing the levelling process for me. So much so I ended up powering through EotM to level my last character and this time I’m powering through sPvP to get tomes as at least this is teaching me the full ability range of the class.

I still enjoy going out into the world but when I try to do anything remotely interesting with my characters < 60 I feel like I’m useless. How is a character or player supposed to develop and learn the skills they need at 80 when half of the mechanics and build variation is hidden away until end game. when by then you should really know how to utilise your build and character.

Surely I’m not the only one that feels the same way?

I have logged out entirely, and back in, several times, fast traveled to major hubs, etc, still unable to swap. Maybe you are now unable to possess these utility skills until level 20? A lot has changed last time I played basic weapon skills weren’t weapon locked, you just kept using them and a progress bar on the next one filled.

Dear ANET,

My guild tag (UA, which stands for Underworld Army) is being exploited by other players, by linking us to Ukraine and its crisis.

We have been getting Ukrainian whispers, kitten messages and other very unfriendly comments.

Can you please change it to Rawr? Please? This is very unpleasant experience for me and my guild’s members. We don’t have anything to do with Ukraine, but this experience is totally destroying once fine guild.

I am looking for your cooperation as veteran costumer and as fan.
Please, don’t just stand with arms crossed, think of your player base and their community experience.

Just block and report the people who abuse you. There is nothing wrong about the UA guild tag.

I think a hearts quest is broken. I have tried dancing for the dolyaks but my heart meter does not increase, all I can do is pick up this stuff, help please?

Paul.4081:

I think a hearts quest is broken. I have tried dancing for the dolyaks but my heart meter does not increase, all I can do is pick up this stuff, help please?

Have you tried to tickle them?
Also,allowing them to lick your face makes them extra happy.

Add me to the list of players who, for the most part, dislike NPE. I have had one account since release and recently added another account with the sale (more character slots for a bargain price). I find the lockout from basic skills and content makes the experience of leveling a new character to be boring and grindy. Instead of enjoying content and exploring, I feel like I should rush my way through the beginning levels of a new character just so I can unlock dyes, vistas, and basic skills. Please fix the design in a manner that will allow players to turn off NPE. It’s not as terrible on my old account where I have level 20 scrolls and tomes sitting around, but it’s downright painful on the second account or if the day comes that I buy enough character slots on my original account that I run out of leveling aids.

1,1,1,1,1,1 yawns. Oh, I gained a level! I wonder what Nanny Game will let me do now? 1,2,1,2 sigh

Things I like:
Not having to grind out each weapon for skills. I remember this being very tedious on my elementalist for each weapon & attunement. However, I did like that I had the ability to gain access to skills faster.

The content guide compass that direct you to new content. It’s helpful at times when I can’t find that one item I missed for completion of an area.

The level rewards can be a gratifying experience.

Things I dislike:

Pretty much everything else, but particularly all the gated content that really doesn’t seem necessary to gate, such as dyes, wardrobe, hiding map content, personal story, downed state, weapon swapping, underwater combat, and other content that doesn’t require hand holding for someone who has played GW2, or almost any game, for that matter.

The previous way felt organic and natural. You could explore, gain skills at a faster pace if you wanted to use them earlier, follow the beginning personal story when you were the same level as the area where it takes place, and access basic features. Gaining profession-defining traits wasn’t about doing some ridiculous mission or grinding out skill points and gold to be able to purchase them. The current system feels overly simplified and frustrating for experienced players, yet doesn’t seem to add good in-game information about how traits, combo fields, or things that are far more confusing to new players work than using dyes or accessing a vista. Additionally, much of the info comes very late in the leveling process and is very brief and easily overlooked by players just clicking the pop up to get it off the screen. How about instead of focusing on telling someone how the bank works at level 9, you tell them at level 1 what those big red circles on the ground mean when they fight Issormir? I guess that may be too much when you assume that any player with a level 1 character needs a popup that explains movement and isn’t capable of doing anything more than pressing “1” and letting autoattack take over. Such a waste of an opportunity to actually teach a new player how to use their basic skills or combat principles.

I would like to see a lot of the level-gated features come off, the trait system reworked, the personal story fixed so that it flows naturally and isn’t full of problems at later levels, and a solid tutorial or tips that can be toggled off.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Queensdale Map Chat Before NPE

New PLayer: How do I do X?
Vet player: Simple answer.
Other Vet Player: More in depth answer.
Another Player: Also, you can do Y.
Yet Another Player: Z is pretty awesome too!

Queensdale Map Chat Post NPE
New PLayer: Why can’t I do X?
Vet Player: Because you aren’t high enough level.

Not sure if anyone else sees this particular inherent flaw.

This post basically sums up how all the people who are new or just started playing again that I personally play with experience the game now. Although my answer is usually: “New player experience, go complain about it on the forums please.”

Oh, and you know what really kittenz people off, the fact that one of the dye rewards is bugged, you don’t actually get the unid dye

@shadow Ah I misunderstood, sorry

hybrid.5027:

What exactly is the exploit here? That he caught you in a lie thanks to 3rd party software?

I think You didnt get what i mean. That guys start tellin our hp number correctly and start sayin u are not zerker coz u got ……hp (As i said before i couldnt remember waht the specific number of that warior hp. on y previous msg i wrote a number like “24666” but it was just random number.) Actually wasnt the one who not zerker actually being zerker or not is not our problem we were focusin on fast killin. Our problem waas how can he know other party members hp number? i was asking for that.

Just ignore this guy. He is assuming a lot we don’t even know what the situation was with the OP and if he was advertising that he and the rest of the party were or were not zerker. It’s easy enough to tell someone isn’t zerker by the DPS. If you seriously have a problem with it then have everyone link their gear. If they don’t then you can leave; it’s as simple as that. Also going off HP is a terrible idea. How do you know that the someone isn’t full power toughness condition gear? Being able to tell by HP only leaves out so many sets that aren’t bersker but also don’t add Vit.

And this guy using the third party program came in at Lupi meaning a lot of the dungeon was already done for him. Even if the party was not full zerker he would have still gotten through it faster than starting a new party with full zerker from the beginning. Of course player skill is a big factor here but there’s no way to judge whether the party was bad at understanding the mechanics or not of the fight since we have no idea. I won’t be responding to anymore of this debate to whether or not this guys party was zerker or if they even claimed to be all zerker or maybe they knew they weren’t zerker but wanted someone who was zerker. Who cares?

The bottom line is there is no need for a 3rd party program and you will risk a ban for using it period. And OP if you could flag this thread to be closed that would be great.

I love it how “white knighting” has been turned into confetti – thrown around everywhere for no other reason than “because I can”…

I don’t know what moral high ground you’re talking about, but I’m going by the terms of use I agreed to when I bought this game, but whatever, I suppose it’s the cool thing to do these days to neither read the rules nor play by them.

My guess is staff don’t comment explicitly on 3rd party software because stuff that doesn’t interfere with game mechanics is considered okay, but things get iffy when it comes to software that allows one player to see something other playsers can’t see without also using 3rd party software. Does it matter in PvE? Not really. Does it make a difference in PvP? It might, so software that gives the user an advantage should not be used. If there are just the umbrella terms they use now, it’s hard to complain about individual cases when they do get banned by arguing “but that player uses [software X], and he didn’t get banned!”, and it means Anet don’t have to check and approve (or ban) every single possible 3rd party app out there.

And for the record, it’s you who assumes that OP and his friends wanted to “actively ruin” somebody else’s experience. I’m sorry I still believe in human decency -.-

Vayne.8563:

Ashendale.2165:

I’m sorry, kind of double post here.

So now I’m paying attention to the level unlocks on the wiki. I have the urge to delete the game from my computer. No expansion for me like this.

I won’t go into details, but… Fine grade salvage kits only at level 44? Are you people serious? What kind of dumb person allows this? Have you considered not having a bunch of yes-men around you? I recommend pulling a Hemingway. The game is now a long, boring and forceful tutorial up to level 23. I did not pay for this kind of shabby treatment.

You can buy fine grade salvage kits at level 2. The wiki isn’t listing unlocks. It’s listening when you’re told about stuff. That’s all.

In the old system you weren’t told about them at all. But they don’t unlock at that level. They’re not locked at all.

I think people need to stop spreading misinformation.

Most of the things on that list aren’t locked at all.

thats a big problem with the NPE, its messaging is very poor. Its not that people are lying for the sake of lying its that in trying to make thinngs clearer, they made things less clear.
Some things are account unlocks
Some things are charachter unlocks
Some things are just hidden on the map
Some things are told to you in a way that makes people think its unlocks

the system is pretty bad at messaging, and more confusing than not confusing.

OH – just thought of a way for Anet to reduce the pop-up screens for choices. Mostly when we get gear, it’s a choice between the same piece, different stats. Give us one of those new low-level pieces where we can choose the stats. They are already in game. Boom, one less window to worry about.

Btw, is anyone ever really excited to see one drop? I never am. Unless I’m remembering wrong, can’t salvage or sell them, so I just delete almost immediately as rarely are they useful to me right then (wrong weapon type, not a noticeable upgrade) and it’s not worth the bother to save them for alts.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

By the way, if you don’t like what ANet gives you, you can always do what you did before they started giving you free stuff.

That is true, you can just take the rewards and ignore them if you don’t like them. That’s why you hardly see complaints about people getting free items (as well as the compass which you can turn off).

The same is not the case with the stat slump, dancing for cows, PS gating and newly-introduced plot holes, and weapon skills/underwater combat/profession mechanics/downed state gating, etc. That’s what the whole issue is.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Other than that, I really didn’t see all that much different except I got rewarded for leveling. For some reason, getting free stuff failed to annoy me, even on my 5th char to level 24.

There are things the NPR did right – rewards was one of them. I don’t really see anyone stating they have a problem with that. I do have a problem with how the rewards are delivered, but it’s something that didn’t bother me at first. Essentially I am just plain tired of clicking on things to click on things to click open my reward.

Yes, when you have a choice, we need a pop-up window. However, if we don’t have a choice to make, can the window be less obtrusive? Can we have a way to clear these things that doesn’t involve a click? Give us a way to keybind ‘close window’.

Also something that I’ve seen another talk of is that if you click it and don’t read it all at that moment, or have to get it out of the way because you got attacked by a wandering hylek, there is no way to go back and revisit it. I would welcome a section in the hero panel that lists level rewards, much like the achievement panel list the daily log in rewards. Of course, I want it implemented better than the daily rewards because … ugh, the placement of that was horrible.

Bran.7425:

While free stuff is nice it is almost like anet was trying to convince themselves that certain stat set are good (by handing them out for free) instead of provide the player with more optional piece to chose stats from.

Not to mention the dye reward at level 6, which is always the same three dyes every time. So past the third character, it’s a useless reward.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

However, this thread is primarily veterans complaining about the NPE, not new people making their way to the forums to post. While it’s possible that the new players dislike it at the same % as veterans, it’s not possible to use post count of positive/negative on this thread to tell.

Actually many new players (and returning players) have commented in this thread too.

And that count was originally from a challenge from Vayne stating that the number of people here who support the NPE are almost the same as the number of people who dislike it. The count…ended up not agreeing with him.

And he just said I ignore facts. That’s hilarious, especially coming from someone who is known not to read the posts he responds to.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’ve leveled 5 chars to level 24 on a new account. Truthfully I didn’t see the big issues and the insult to my intelligence so many speak of. It was mildly annoying to not be able to interact with skillpoints and have to backtrack, but that was the first hour of each chars life and maybe 3 skillpoints. /shrug. The main problem I can see is locking new people out of PvP/WvW who want to do that and don’t know about the workaround. Other than that, I really didn’t see all that much different except I got rewarded for leveling. For some reason, getting free stuff failed to annoy me, even on my 5th char to level 24.

While free stuff is nice it is almost like anet was trying to convince themselves that certain stat set are good (by handing them out for free) instead of provide the player with more optional piece to chose stats from.

Vayne.8563:

No one left the NPE in masses. He’s a quote about the Star Wars NGE, so people won’t be misled by this nonsense. It’s from this article.

“http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/26/a-star-wars-galaxies-history-lesson-from-launch-to-the-nge-5/”

“Almost every system in the game – from combat to crafting, all the way through to classes – was fundamentally shaken by this patch. The NGE took what had been a skill-building character advancement system and transformed it into a level-based system with very specific classes. One of these classes was even the Jedi, meaning that players could create force-using characters from the very start. No more holo-grinding.”

Now the trait system, which was NOT part of the NPE and not released with the NPE did affect unlocking traits in the whole game, but combat hasn’t fundamentally changed here. The professions at 80 haven’t fundamentally changed here. The leveling rewards surely don’t kill the game.

No, saying this is like the Star Wars NPE is completely 100% disingenuous. These aren’t for the most part far-reaching changes and MOST of them don’t kick in on the second character you level.

Once you level your first character you can get skill points right away, you see vistas right away and yes, you can easily go into PvP right away through the crossed swords.

90% of the affects on your first character.

I can’t help it if many people lump the trait changes into the NPE and the trait changes are going away anyway.

And yes, lots and lots of people left Star Wars Galaxies over the NGE and everyone knew it. I’ve been playing this game since the feature patch and I don’t believe there was a significant drop in population.

There was a single casualty from my guild who came back when Anet made those first round of changes. I’m sure that there are people who left, but there was no mad race away from this game.

In my mind the trait system is far worse than NPE which large does affect only lower levels and largely goes away after you level one character through it.

That was NEVER true of the NGE.

No…he was saying that the effect of the changes on the game, the backlash, the developer reasoning behind the changes (to maximize the player base at all costs, despite the game having a respectable and decent number of players already), and the developer response afterwards (pretend that the complaints about the changes don’t exist, so that everyone will just get tired and go away) were the same as the NGE, not that every change between the NGE and the NPE was literally the same.

Vayne.8563:

But this forum would have you believe that NO ONE likes the NPE. That thread proves that at least some people do like the NPE. That’s not annecdotal evidence because it’s an opinion not a fact. If someone says they like something they don’t have to prove it. That’s ridiculous.

Yes, like 50 likes vs 240 dislikes in this thread. This count isn’t looking good for you.

I’m sorry, kind of double post here.

So now I’m paying attention to the level unlocks on the wiki. I have the urge to delete the game from my computer. No expansion for me like this.

I won’t go into details, but… Fine grade salvage kits only at level 44? Are you people serious? What kind of dumb person allows this? Have you considered not having a bunch of yes-men around you? I recommend pulling a Hemingway. The game is now a long, boring and forceful tutorial up to level 23. I did not pay for this kind of shabby treatment.

Shaaba.5672:

Have a new guardian and I’m doing the last heart for map completion in the beginning zone. I get downed, but think, np – There’s not much health left on this guy, I’m a guardian – I got this. Except not really. I don’t have my downed skill 3 opened up yet and I get really really close, but ultimately die. At level 17 I still don’t have all my downed skills unlocked? That’s just … not right.

Of course not. At level 17 you’re still to dumb to have access to 2 out 3 possible skills on your downed state (not counting 4th skill; I have no idea why not lock that one too. It’s not like you need to be alive to play the game how you want). It’s too overwhelming, I tell you. You just got access to weapon swapping, so more skills will make your brain melt or something.

Why not lock the whole game until 80? Skills, traits, personal story… Everything. That way we can say it’s truly an NCSoft game. Grind away.

Edit: I went to check, since I refuse to level anything with this new system, I had no idea. Apparently, you only get skill number 3 at level 22. Underwater skill 5 is only at 23, when before I could get it… Well, by playing the game…

Have a new guardian and I’m doing the last heart for map completion in the beginning zone. I get downed, but think, np – There’s not much health left on this guy, I’m a guardian – I got this. Except not really. I don’t have my downed skill 3 opened up yet and I get really really close, but ultimately die. At level 17 I still don’t have all my downed skills unlocked? That’s just … not right.

Not sure if this will get read by any powers that be, but what the hey…

I am new to this game but am a MMO vet. For me this NPE is very frustrating. My sincere hope for those who are new to the genre is that it does what Arenanet hoped.

I feel handcuffed. I purchased the game based on this past weekends sale, but I have read up on it for a little while before that. I must have missed reading articles on the NPE.

So why do I feel handcuffed? Well, with an exception to combat (and that is big!), the style of gameplay is familiar to me. I “get” what I’m supposed to be doing, but because everything is level locked I can’t. Most of you are saying don’t heart chase…okay, but right now that’s all I can do. If I look at it objectively that IS all I can do. Yes, I am now aware of harvesting and crafting, but in game I haven’t been told that yet (unlocked). The only things that are giving me XP are hearts and exploration. So that’s what I do.

This is frustrating because when I read about the game I was looking forward to gaining XP in a myriad of ways including WvW. but, I can’t because it’s level locked.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I am really enjoying the combat so far I might have chalked up the $15 as a loss. But, for now I’ll wait for them to unlock then I’ll judge.

I guess I’m just tired of hand holding in MMOs. Just make a Tutorial that gives you an idea of what is about to occur, one I can skip on alts, and then let us loose to discover it all. Right now I feel forced to unlock things so I can then play.

/shrug

So, after nearly a year…. I started a new character. A necro in prep for the greatsword. Great. Now I’ll get to see what this NPE is all about.

Uh, no. **** this sideways with a pineapple on fire.

I gave up on the NPE. I’m waiting on HoT and the revamp of the NPE before I go about unlocking the skills/traits on the necro I made. As a vet player, this is just torture to try to unlock all these skills and traits. It makes me really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really miss the old way now

Vayne.8563:

Here’s a post on reddit where someone asked new players how they feel about the leveling experience. Most of the responses are overwhelmingly positive.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2yhpai/new_players_how_is_the_leveling_experience/

It’s interesting to me, Vayne, that you’re perfectly willing to accept anecdotal evidence when it supports your theories.