Guild Wars 2

Knighthonor.4061:

Beldin.5498:

Vayne.8563:

I do believe (as in this is my belief), that most players log into the game, kill some stuff, farm some stuff and log off, without ever visiting the forums or ever being aware of the deeper issues.

That doesn’t mean that’s said on the forums has not value. But it doesn’t mean that what’s said on the forums has absolute value either.

Just for the numbers .. our german CM postet a while ago that only 1% of the player
post at the forums, and 7% read them.

So really 1% only post .. and i think it don’t really need much proof to say that people
go to the forums either if they have problems with the game like bugs, or simply that
they dislike parts of it .. or they are really dedicated to the game and those are more
often the so called “hardcore” gamers.

I hear this argument all the time. So tired of it. It’s BS!
SWTOR forum had lots of bad talk. But was the the vocal minority? Because that game went F2P within a year after release…
What about Warhammer? That game shut down. Guess that was also the vocal minority on the forum there giving feedback that wasn’t praise.
What about Rift, or Darkfall, etc?

I guess the developers had a reason to ignore that “vocal minority”,,,, and we see that results of it…

He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.

If a player is sad or happy about anything and doesn’t share it on these forums, then the company is sure to assume all is well and base their changes in models and sale numbers.

However people do express themselves, as few as your numbers may suggest. If only 1% of the people go to vote for anything or anyone, all the remaining 99% can not place blame on the choice: they chose to stay silent.

If the company chooses to ignore the player input (as little as it may actually be) then people may very well stop playing; the ones that speak and those who stay silent. Nobody here pays a subscription nor are we forced to play this. If we stay and complain it is because we see reasons still to play. Reasons that are already there or can be made to be.

If we see that our voices are ignored then, well… Life goes on. And so do we.

Edit: grammar correction.

shadow.6174:

Jade Arkadian.9280:

I was a newbie too when the game was on beta i never felt overwhelmed by the game itself.
Compared to other MMO, Guild Wars 2 is pretty simple since you don’t have a massive quantity of skills or abilities .
I would suggest to roll back some changes of the NPE.

Not a beta player here, but I could say the same. At my first days I though GW2 a lot simpler than other MMOs (although I haven’t played many) and I never felt overwhelmed by the game itself too. In fact, I love figuring out things by myself and I hate being locked out just because someone else thinks that I’m not able enough to understand or deal with stuff.

Malkavian.4516:

Honestly, I thought the NPE is decent in trying to introduce new players to the mechanics, but I honestly think that you should give players some credit in letting them figure out the mechanics themselves. If you want to give them a tutorial, we got the very first story instance for them and you could always just make the necessary tweaks to those instances instead.

+1 to this.

Let’s be real here. This NPE was done to make the game more grindy for the Asian release of GW2. What a coincidence of timing to release this NPE huh?

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Well i died today on my level 9 guardian to two or 3 scale monsters. How is that related to NPE? Well, maybe if I had my virtue of resolve (passive regen), first slot skill (sword of justice for example) and most of all my downed skills fully unlocked it would go differently.

But no, game wants to make this easier on me, but taking away my ability to properly defend myself at earlier levels when i screw up with my first 4 skills (cause 5th is still locked at lvl 9).

How is this better then the old system that gave me freedom far earlier and let me battle with with all my downed skills available from the start? You figure it out, i’m writing this off as abomination of a change that should be removed a.s.a.p.

You’re right. Anet really didn’t think this through. Right now you should always stick to content that’s at least 4 levels below your current level or else it will be much harder.

Before the NPE I could easily finish the starter map (for example Queensdale) on a new character without much trouble. I would usually fight against mobs 1 or 2 levels higher than me but that wasn’t an issue, it was doable. Then at the end of Queensdale I’d be roughly lvl 13, that’s 2 levels below the recommended level for Kessex Hills but again, no biggie, with proper gear, weapon swap and all my class abilities available I could easily handle it.

Now, after the NPE, I struggle going through the content designed for my own level. I can no longer do Queensdale in 1 sitting because right now I can barely kill enemies my own level, nevermind enemies 2 or 3 levels above me. I’m forced to do bits and pieces of the other starter maps to level up more quickly and then stick to content that is below a few levels my character level until I reach lvl 31. Only after lvl 31 does this problem somewhat go away, but the first 30 levels are a pain in the butt to go through now. lvl 1 to 15 are the worst.

Well i died today on my level 9 guardian to two or 3 scale monsters. How is that related to NPE? Well, maybe if I had my virtue of resolve (passive regen), first slot skill (sword of justice for example) and most of all my downed skills fully unlocked it would go differently.

But no, game wants to make this easier on me, but taking away my ability to properly defend myself at earlier levels when i screw up with my first 4 skills (cause 5th is still locked at lvl 9).

How is this better then the old system that gave me freedom far earlier and let me battle with with all my downed skills available from the start? You figure it out, i’m writing this off as abomination of a change that should be removed a.s.a.p.

Just adding my voice.

Skillpoint and Vistas hidden behind levels was such a shock to me when a friend joined the game 2 months ago, at least he continued playing but felt very limited and frustrated.

On the other hand, a “not-so-experienced” gamer who joined around the same time did not feel hindered at all. However he DID feel a strong sense of progression?

I was thinking about how after the NPE patch we get (most) stat-boosts and unlocks at steps of 6 levels, 14 steps in total. Which made me think that after the NPE Anet could easily revamp the level system to be a lvl 1-to-15 system instead of 1-to-80.

Right now there really is no reason for there to be more than 15 levels and with the NPE it actually became more confusing because you don’t actually gain anything when you level up until you reach lvl 4, 10, 16, 22, 28, 34, 40, 46, 52, 58, 64, 70, 76 or 80.

So why not change that to lvl 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, make level 15 the new cap and then make gaining a level go a little slower? Make the leveling-up experience more similar to GW1 but with only 15 levels instead of 20. Wouldn’t that make more sense than the leveling-system we have now after the NPE?

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Addressing an issue with bundles that prematurely unlocked utility and elite skills

This is agony… I read about this bug a while ago, I don’t know what is the case now, but it’s like… slam every door shut, lock them, throw away the keys.

I can’t stand the NPE.

As for some more feedback to the first post and seeing many of my baby rangers recently… I really would need to be able to hide the pet when at storage or just idling.

The rangers are not likely to ever level.

ANet said that retaining more players was an important issue, and that’s why they made the NPE.

Given that, the lack of support to refine and adjust the NPE is bad, bordering on horrifying. If this is how they deal with a major game development initiative, then there’s something going seriously wrong somewhere.

Vayne.8563:

I think it doesn’t reflect well on members of the forum that they think four months is a long time for any kind of change. Schedules are already in place to program things. This may very well be your priority, but in reality what percentage of the player base is actually negatively affected. No one can say.

It’s been theorized Anet is working on big projects behind the scenes. People are screaming out for content.

Should they drop every other project to get this fixed in four months?

That’s quite a stretch to equate “I’d like to see some changes or at least discussion of changes in four months” to “Every Anet employee should drop everything they’re working on right now and make the NPE perfect!”

Exaggerate much?

Also, if four months isn’t a long time for changes to come, then you’ve apparently confused Anet with Bioware.

Vayne.8563:

And some of it was fixed right away. It was improved immediately. How come you don’t mention that?

Elite skills used to unlock at level 40, now they unlock at level 31. They lockout for many of the things including skill points is only for the first character you level under the new system.

Changes were made. Why do people ignore that? Why do people say it reflects badly on Anet when they did make changes fairly quickly.

Apparently you didn’t read my post. I said that nothing has changed since the 9/16 patch. The things you mentioned were changed in the 9/16 patch.

Vayne.8563:

There’s an assumption by some that the bulk of the population is affected by the NPE. I’m not convinced of that at all.

I think Anet is simply prioritizing, not around any individual players, but by what they see as important.

And I’ll take that over random forum opinions on most days.

Again, either forum opinions count or they don’t. You can’t claim that “forum posts that disagree with me are just those of a loud and vocal minority” and then say that “The forum users who agree with me know what they’re talking about. Anet should definitely listen to them!” Though, if you’re just going to keep on pretending that all the posts and polls that show disgust at the NPE don’t exist, then well…. I’m afraid nothing more can be done.

Also what shadow said.

Rangelost.4857:

The NPE did miss the mark, yes. But so did your friend.

If you don’t like the game, don’t play it.

I honestly can’t wrap my mind around the stupidity of this kind of post.

Ok, player doesn’t like it doesn’t play it.
Other player doesn’t like it doesn’t play it.
A thousand players don’t like it don’t play it.
Less income for Arenanet.
Less stuff coming.
More players quit (don’t like it don’t play it).
Even less money for Arenanet.
Servers slowly dying.
More players quit (don’t like it don’t play it).
End of GW2.

Seriously?

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I think it is more to it than a ‘Someone complains, we gotta do something about it!’ matter. They gott to gather information, what is bad and how can we fix it if it needs a “fix”. Just becouse 30 players on the forum complains it doesn’t realy mean that it is so bad as it seems on the forums. The only ones disappointed will be those who are disgusted by the NPE, with new changes maby some players who are disgusted by the NPE will not be that anymore but there will be other players Disgusted by the new new changes.

I like the NPE, the only thing I don’t like is the level gated Poi’s, Vistas, Skill Points, diving spots and other map related stuff, it does not do any good for new players in my opinion.

Meh, you could make the exact same point about the opposite side. “Just because 10 people on the forum say that the NPE is the best thing since sliced bread, doesn’t mean it’s as good.” Can’t have it both ways; either forum opinions count or they don’t. And to insist that nothing should be changed since someone, somewhere, might complain is, well… you could say that about every patch since launch day. That horse left the barn long ago.

And like I said, if it takes Anet 4+ months to gather basic information, then that really doesn’t reflect very well on them, does it?

Gaile Gray.6029:

shadow — You are right, there haven’t been a lot of updates on this topic since the OP. I just wasn’t sure if you’d see the “We’re aware of these things” part. If so, my apologies. And yes, for the most part, changes to NPE are still on the “to do” list. But there’s no lack of understanding by the devs. For instance, our narrative director, Leah, posted about changes that need to be made in relation to the Personal Story.

But here’s the thing: It’s been almost 4 months now, and nothing about the NPE has been changed since the 9/16 patch except for the diving goggles not unlocking bug (ignoring the fact that that bug was introduced my the NPE). Just how long are we supposed to wait? I know I’ve mostly moved on the the games I was neglecting for GW2; I’m likely far from the only person to have done so. If you really think all the disgusted people are going to put up with this NPE kitten unchanged for over a year or so, you’ll likely find yourselves very disappointed.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

level gated downed state:
This makes a little sense considering no other game that I know of has this feature.

Wrong.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Level gated weapon/profession skills:
This feature… I was trying to like it, I really was. But no matter how much I tried, it always felt the same: needlessly limiting. I had a lot more enjoyment out of killing groups of foes to unlock skills. I also used to get excited when I got a new weapon and had to take the time to get a really good feel for the weapon, which also happened to unlock more skills as I did. By the time I unlocked skill 5, I had enough of an understanding of how the weapon functioned and how to best use it in whatever situation.

“I can stun, bleed, block, bleed, leap, bleed, stab really hard, bleed some more, and slash like crazy and bleed even more. Got it. Now, what stat combination is best for my character’s condition damage?” That was my thought process, not “holy crap 5 skills is too complicated! I can’t handle this! Wait, I have a skill on F1 as well? OMG MY BRAIN IS FRIED!” Now, a new player has to wait several levels before they can even begin to understand what a weapon is capable of. If I can do what I did, so can they. Plus, the starting instances can get really boring when playing as an elementalist with only a dagger and one skill with one simple animation making the exact same sound over and over for about 2 minutes until the boss dies. I could not press 1 fast enough and hard enough to make it end because of the limitations you guys set in place.

Not to mention that, as other people have pointed out, now if you decide to try out a new weapon after level 10, you’re immediately confronted with “Holy moly!! 5 skills I never tried before? What is this?” Unlike the old system, where you got skills as you used the weapon and thus became familiar with the skills as you played. Kinda shoots a hole in the “We don’t want to confuse new players” mantra.

shadow.6174:

Well, credits must be given when deserved. At least in a thing they seem to have done right…

• 88 people voted about Content Direction system (Objective Compass) (Results here). From these:
  • 32 (36%) thought it Good;
  • 24 (27%) were Indiferent;
  • 17 (19%) thought it Poor or bad;
  • 11 (13%) thought it Terrible.
  • 4 (5%) thought it Excelent.

So… doesn’t it ring a bell? Doesn’t it give a clue about if the new system succeeded or not?

Probably because the compass, unlike the rest of the NPE, can actually be turned off.

timmyf.1490:

You can assume they’re “strange” because you disagree. I prefer to think that veteran players are not the target audience of the NEW player experience.

If veteran players didn’t have to go through the NPE as well, then this might actually be relevant.

Currently the way me and my friends level up character is:

Play PvP until you have 60 or 80 Tomes of knowledge.
Instant level new character to 80
Delete all the soulbound junk

Now before the NPE some of us were doing PvE story, or EotM, but right now the PvE is so insulting, long and boring that doing PvP became the most rewarding and less annoying way to do it.

If that is what Anet intended then it’s a success. If to the contrary they wanted us to explore more of the PvE world it’s a failure, it just made people like me never want to look at it again. It’s would have been ok only if they released the game like this, but not after 2 years when everyone already has 5+ levels 80 and done world completion.

Bellizare.5816:

I wish I had a gold piece for every time I hear a new player ask why the BL merchant at Trading Post Waypoint in Queensdale won’t talk to them.

That seems to be confusing them all.

No, that’s the right way to go. I mean… Can you imagine how confusing it can be for anyone thrown into a new world if they can perform trades? Well that must be as confusing as a ranger using pets, or a mesmer using illusions.

New players can’t handle this. Remember when we started playing? When I found out that my warrior could swing a sword… * whistles * I didn’t sleep for days and had to search the internet for a week trying to find a word that would describe that movement. I was SO overwhelmed with information at the time.

I wish I had a gold piece for every time I hear a new player ask why the BL merchant at Trading Post Waypoint in Queensdale won’t talk to them.

That seems to be confusing them all.

1) Bonus gems with higher amounts bought.
2) Stop all the wanting X-Pac Posts.
3) Stop all the wanting Mount posts.

So, wait, you’re telling me that mesmers and rangers still don’t have access to their basic profession skills when they start? That is four months worth of new players, hamstrung by this system. No wonder traits are still a mess. If it is taking an entire quarter of a year just to figure out how to give rangers and mesmers access to their class mechanics, I have severely overestimated how soon traits can be revamped.

Coming in Q4 2017: Rangers with pets!

It isn’t a very good tutorial-esque system, no.

Point in case, I look over at Rift’s voiced video tutorials explaining important mechanics. Easily skipable by those that could write books on it all, easily refindable by anyone wanting a refresher, short, concise and useful.

Tutorials that expect people to stop and read things studiously are ineffective, especially now in the twitter age.

You have about 1 second to grab attention and, at best, 15-30 to explain important things if your attention grabbing mechanism works at all.

Voices are the best at grabbing attention – make the game talk to people to explain the things that if you don’t know, you’re boned.

One of my main general complaints with the NPE is that there are missed opportunities. I still see posts on other forums where people recommend giving the game a miss because combat is “lame and boring” and “has no depth” and “all you do is use your skills when they’re off cooldown” — for many skills, this is almost the exact opposite of how they should be used. Part of the problem is that the game doesn’t really provide much feedback to tell players that they’re doing it wrong, but the NPE could have at least tried to address that myth.

• Continuing with the “one-size-fits-all” complaint from my last post: mesmers now get a sword as a starting weapon. This means that the very first skill they learn after the tutorial is Blurred Frenzy. While that skill might not look complicated, it’s incredibly easy to misuse, and simply knowing what it’s there for requires theoretical knowledge of the game.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Traits:
I LOVE that it encourages and entices players to explore the world to unlock traits. That is a brilliant way to engage the players. It is even better that you can outright buy the specific traits you want for a small and reasonable fee.

Ideally that would be nice. Practically it’s horrible — things that are “encouraging” the exploration are severely mismatched to the level where it becomes “unlocked”. Basically most of traits are now an end-game content, because you won’t have enough gold and skill points to unlock them, especially on first primary character. And you won’t be able to actually do the things that it asks for non-pay-to-unlock method of obtaining it (bonus: horribly buggy events now block your ability to get a trait that theoretically is obtainable.).

Another bad aspect that I’ve encountered just yesterday — as an Elementalist you’re basically locked to fire for a while. The staggering “attunement” roll-out is just sad. No swiftness, no earth, not even water at the beginning. Yuk

I should also point out that since the NPE, there have been two instances that the voice scripts do not play during the Personal Story, namely the final dialogue cutscene between your character and Trahearne on the Battle of Fort Trinity and at the beginning dialogue cutscene between your character and Romke’s spirit in Romke’s Final Voyage. Plus I noticed that when I play the cinematic of the Fractals of the Mists, Dessa’s voice is missing.

Honestly, I thought the NPE is decent in trying to introduce new players to the mechanics, but I honestly think that you should give players some credit in letting them figure out the mechanics themselves. If you want to give them a tutorial, we got the very first story instance for them and you could always just make the necessary tweaks to those instances instead.

Well, I’m going to leave some feedback. I feel like that mostly everything i will put on this post has been already said but well :P

• On personal story changes:
  Well, as stated on the first post, the removal of some parts of the personal story for the sake of simplicity did also introduced some plot holes which should be fixed somehow. Some characters like Sayeh al’Rajihd (That Largo girl) are not properly introduced when meeting them.
  As well playing the wrecked version of Lion’s Arch is completely lore breaking since it’s supposed to happen before Living Story S1.
  Though personal instances don’t give you any kind of loot, I like the new rewards for completing each step.
  For future updates i would like to see not only fixes but also some option to replay past chapters just like the S2.
  And knowing it’s not really a top priority, please, change that Zhaitan battle on Arah Story Mode. Pawning an elder dragon by just spaming 2 2 2 2 2, its really unepic.

• On trait unlocking
  Though traits are not mandatory to most profession while exploring the world and leveling up, the new way to obtain them all is not good at all IMO.
  First off, some traits are linked to very specific events which are actually almost invisible to new players unless they google for it. There are not even map markers which might give you a hint about obtaining certain traits on the zone.
  The alternative to this is paying a fee to unlock a certain trait which migh be pretty cheap for a veteran player but pretty expensive for a new player (most newbies I met told me that 1 gold was almost a fortune to them).

• On NPE overall
  When it was introduced, I found it ruined somehow the game treating low level players like dumbs, i just couldnt understand why you changed something that was ok to me.
  With the NPE, mostly a lot of trivial features were locked to new players (underwater combat skills, wardrobe, dyes, vistas, skill points, gathering etc..).
  I was a newbie too when the game was on beta i never felt overwhelmed by the game itself.
  Compared to other MMO, Guild Wars 2 is pretty simple since you don’t have a massive quantity of skills or abilities .
  I would suggest to roll back some changes of the NPE.

• On PvP changes
  I know it’s not directly related to NPE, but I think that ranked matches should be locked to new players untill they meet a certain condition(Ie: Win 5 unranked matches or osmething like that).
  Actually ranked matches are a very unfriendly place for new players. Not only because it may lead the team to an awfull defeat but also they can be verbally arrassed by some rude player that might get mad because their lack of skill (I really hate that..thats not reason to insult other people).
• On new dailies
  The new system is not really bad considering you are awarded for each daily achievement you do and you only have to accomplish 3 of them in order to have those 10 AP (BTW, I find that 10 AP for a daily is way too much…you can earn up to 3650 AP in a year just by doing dailies)
  The real problem of the new system is that most new daily objective have become way too specific and it’s not something that you will do on your regular daily gameplay unless you aim for it.
  PvP objectives that involves a specific class to win a match are something that should be removed or changed. Firstly it makes the population of that class greatly increase for a while, something very unconvenient for ranked solo games matchup (ie: on PvP, you don’t want to have more than 1 thief on your team unless they are godly good)
  Then it is something that most players won’t accomplish since it requires to have a character of that class.
  Regarding the rewards, well, PvP and WvW rewards are ok but some PvE are trash (Ok, I know that triggering a Vista in Ascalon is not a big deal but as a lvl 80…what I am supposed to do with an XP scroll!?)
  About the login reward, well, it’s something that leaves me indifferent. I don’t think they are better but I just preferred the old monthlies which awarded you with a bunch of laurels in one shot (very handy to buy ascended stuff).

I should really be sleeping right now, but here some of the things I’ve personally felt were problematic with the NPE:

• Warriors with healing signet equipped are prompted to activate it when low on health, even though this is unlikely to actually help.
• The conditions tutorial always calls attention to a utility skill as a defence against conditions, even when there are weapon skills or healing skills that might be more useful much of the time.
• I feel like the explanation of rallying given at level 5 needs to be redone.
• Unsalvageable, unvendorable equipment that has to be deleted once it ceases to be useful. This is especially bad since not all such equipment is ever useful, such as on a character using the crafted account-bound exotics at a given level.

You’re probably not going to read this on page 19, but I haven’t advanced a level on my alt (level 20 mesmer) since NPE was released and I’m not going to. I don’t want to be locked in to one build for 10s of levels, and I don’t like constantly dieing because I can’t access both high-dps builds but also CC-builds when faced with more than 2 enemies.

Now that I think more about it, something just occurred to me.

Who made the decision that the NPE should be massively restricted. Every change seems an attempt to force New players and characters to play the game the way you want it to be played, whereas the old system game endless options

Why are you trying to make your game less fun and explorable? Did it come down from marketing? Are you guys trying to up the Skinner box value of the game? Because if I Wanted to play WoW, I’d go ahead and play WoW. You can’t beat WoW by copying it.

Go ahead and let marketing know that for me will you? Maybe mention ToR or the dozen other MMOs that fail on a yearly basis due to WoW-envy will you?

I don’t understand the changes to the trait system.

There is unbelievable frustration when My friend and I (he bought the game recently on my recommendation) played and unlocked the traits.

My character (who I made just before my long hiatus) has access to all the traits and I’m free to experiment with my builds and try out different weapons and things like that. For my friend to try out a new weapon or build, he has to spend an ungodly amount of time running around the map to unlock the supporting traits, or spend all his money and skill points to buy them. So needless to say he’s perpetually broke, and trust me, being broke or having to wiki dive to figure out how to trigger events is not adding to his fun.

For that matter, it takes a lot of balls to put some of those traits into the WvW areas. Because neither of us are PvP players, but we had to haul our kitten into the eternal battle grounds to try and take a hylek camp so he could get the trait he needed.

And let me tell you, getting our kitten stomped into the ground by a wandering horde, having the mission completed by another world causing us to forfeit our progress, having to check back 2-3 times to see if the camp was open again, was not fun.

It’s also not fun to try and do the dailies (which before could be done anywhere, you know gather 10 things etc etc) and get our kitten kicked all over the place trying to kill the great worm south of lions arch. Especially after we wiki dived to figure out how to make the kitten thing spawn. It was so not fun in fact, that we’ve stopped doing the dailies altogether. The PvE ones are ridiculously specific and difficult oftentimes, and we DONT WANT TO PLAY PvP at all, let alone just to get the daily reward.

And if we are not doing the daily missions, they are not exactly performing their intended function of playing daily are they?

So if you wanted your new player experience to be frustrating and restrictive, congratz. You succeeded with flying colours.

Stop trying to force me to explore in the areas you want, I want to explore the areas that look cool to me.

Stop trying to force me into PvP, we are not interested.

Stop restricting new characters build options behind huge gold walls. Being broke isn’t fun.

The NPE feels like it was designed by people that never played the game but had read a lot about it once.

The new trait unlocking scheme feels like or was designed by someone over at Blizzard that intentionally wanted to wreck GW2.

Seriously, as bizarre and occasionally just plain out of touch as the npe can be, the new trait system is still far worse in terms of feeling like a deliberately malicious attack with no apparent benefit at all.

I think the bursts of stats with several levels between of no adjustments is just plain weird and not acceptable.

Many someones thought this was great, however, and not only built it, but released it.

I cannot imagine what they were thinking when they did.

I cannot imagine what they are expecting how they essentially destroyed all prospects for encouraged versatility for new players by absolutely discussing them from being able to play with trait combinations and experiment without a massive grind investment…or by living in spvp.

All in all, it reeks of incomprehension of their own game. The hardest thing for me to imagine as being true, after the npe and trait changes?

That any of them have ever played the game Rio ant meaningful extent. I’d believe they’ve played certain bits for testing purposes. But as actual players?

Nope. I’d they claimed otherwise, is be hard pressed to believe a word of it. Nobody could possibly play this game enough to have any credible sense of what works be good for it and then do things like that.

It’s like watching supposedly pro drivers design a car in ways that are absolutely stupid for the prose is actually driving it.

Armchair devs need to know that their metrics and spot testing didn’t add up to anything remotely as worthwhile as staying a character under the same rules as any other plate and playing it like a normal player has to for a fair while.

You can’t do that? Takes too long? That’s what the testers (that you clearly don’t heed for much) are for?

‘Kay. But you’re silly, and worse, bloody incompetent until you do, and most of the players will have a far more realistic idea if what the player experience actually is.

How to fix it? Play your own game. No fudging. No perks or self granted Dev benefits anyone buying a retail copy doesn’t get.

A few thousand hours playing your own game and using your own systems will be worth more than every metric you aggregate, wrote probably by orders of magnitude.

And no, you don’t do this already. That’s as painfully obvious as anything could be. It’s as desperately obvious as would be the claim of someone that said they’d driven lots of times, but then built a car that distribute the pedals evenly between all the seats and hid the steering wheel in the trunk.

It’s almost terrifying to imagine what you’ll do next.

Go play your game. You need the experience very badly.

Also, typing walls d text from my phone is a bad idea and I should stop.

I’m really tempted to stop referring to this as the NPE as and start referring to it as NCE (New Character Experience). What we’re talking about is leveling and character growth. The stuff to teach new players has been bundled into it so tightly that the vets can’t escape it, and yes, we dislike being treated like new players whenever we make an alt.

And the trait revamp always gets merged into this, because it is a big part of the NCE. From most of the accounts I’ve seen, the current NPE really is doing a better job than the old NPE for introducing the game to beginners. Of course, it still has a lot of room for improvement, but there always will be. The big down side has been the equation NPE=NCE.

To me, the mistake was in making the first 15-20 levels go the fastest. These are the levels most crucial to new players. These are the maps most able to teach them how the game works. Take your time here and use this as the real teaching space. Starter zones are starter zones for a reason. This is also the only level range we vets get to completely skip. So why not take as much of the NPE as possible and put it here? Let these levels take the longest to complete. Let new players move through the pseudo-tutorials at their own pace, instead of power-leveling them and pushing them forward. And then make the 21+ game more vet-friendly.

The VPE (Veteran Player Experience) shouldn’t be restricted to level 80. That’s not how we all play.