Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

felessan.9587:

Suggestions:

• Unlock personal story at level 1 and every 10 levels after, and re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at level 60

Except that violates the reasoning behind the change, to unlock a chapter only when a player can binge it in it’s entirety.

Assuming, of course, that the change is a good one that should be kept.

Oh, cows. You know, there were some times I’d consider only feeding the cows in Applenook for that heart. Plug leaks? No. Murderise bandit pirate scallies on the rob? Why, no, sir. Feed cows (and okay, some chickens and pigs too)? Yes! A thousand times! Cows rock.

No cow feeding in Queensdale is clearly a travesty which ought to be corrected.

Hm.

These days, I’m mostly playing a different game, where I can raise my own cows and feed them. Which is nice. I wouldn’t consider making a new character in GW2 at this time, and I was a confirmed altoholic. Well, at least I’ll be sober with no need for a twelve-step programme.

Now I just join in for the WvW tournament, and playing with my kid when she wants to do stuff (we killed the Shatterer today; it was Small’s first dragon, and she, unlike most of us who have haunted these forums for that last few years, actually thought it was quite something. So that was nice). I feel rather uninspired to do anything else. I don’t know if it was just the cows that did it, or if the bovines were merely the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake. Poor cows. Who’d’ve ever thought it was too confusing to feed them? *sheds tear for starving cows*

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

But the early hearts being changed…as in the first 1-10 area?

I just don’t see this as something to rebel against. People talk about the “chess” game in metrica being taken out, even though it was ridiculously easy to win at and maybe I’ve spent 10 minutes out of all my time in game doing it.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

I love platitudes that people say but can’t be proven. I mean aside from being factually true, what it’s implying is anything but.

The first Star Trek Pilot was, after all, rejected. But a second was was made.

I think anyone that stops playing a game because they don’t like dancing with cows is someone I wouldn’t care to play with anyway.

I’d say anyone who doesn’t get up to level 20 before they judged an MMO, probably isn’t suited to MMORPGs.

You realize the people who quit before 20 is the people for whom npe was made?

They essentially are trying to target the first impression first hour of play crowf

Yes. The old system with all that cool stuff didn’t keep them. But the NPE wasn’t just about dumbing things down. It was also about pacing, reward and direction. It does feel more rewarding to me, and that stupid arrow definitely provides direction.

You seem to think it was entertaining enough before, but that didn’t hold those people. I don’t think those people mostly left because it wasn’t entertaining enough. Anet at least believes that tests show that they left because of a combination of factors including the ones I listed above.

The arrow is great, but it’s really scatter-brained. It doesn’t provide enough consistent direction to really help you find things to do. Perhaps having a new setting that limits it only to DEs or Renown Hearts would be even more helpful?

The other reason I think people are saying it feels like there’s nothing to do is because it’s not immediately obvious there IS a personal story when you first start out. I just finished the last available story block (;evel 60) on my new alt and saw that the green personal story text disappeared from my screen entirely. There is no mention of “Forging the Pact (unlocks at level 70)” or anything. I’m not sure if that is standard behavior, but that might be why people are feeling like there’s nothing to do and no direction at the beginning.

The personal story gave me that direction when I first started playing and only after a while did I realize that the story and the renown hearts were going to be two separate systems.

Suggestions:

• Unlock personal story at level 1 and every 10 levels after, and re-insert “My Greatest Fear” at level 60
• Put a clear message on screen that the next personal story block unlocks at X level.

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

But the early hearts being changed…as in the first 1-10 area?

I just don’t see this as something to rebel against. People talk about the “chess” game in metrica being taken out, even though it was ridiculously easy to win at and maybe I’ve spent 10 minutes out of all my time in game doing it.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

I love platitudes that people say but can’t be proven. I mean aside from being factually true, what it’s implying is anything but.

The first Star Trek Pilot was, after all, rejected. But a second was was made.

I think anyone that stops playing a game because they don’t like dancing with cows is someone I wouldn’t care to play with anyway.

I’d say anyone who doesn’t get up to level 20 before they judged an MMO, probably isn’t suited to MMORPGs.

Well, thanks to that wonderful leveling speed boost in the 1-15 level range, new players will get to level 20 almost before they know it! Then they can judge, judge, judge, ’til the cows come home!

Say, something that’s been puzzling me. Why did the devs bother to replace feeding the cows with ‘entertaining’ the cows? What purpose does that serve? Just more useless fluff that will give new players the impression that there’s more to the game than wandering around killing stuff.

New Player: Entertain the cows? When there’s stuff to kill? Ain’t nobody got time for that! Hoo wah! /e thud and blunder

As for Star Trek, yes, indeed, somebody (Lucy, perhaps) was impressed enough by the first pilot, The Cage, to arrange for a second. Roddenberry and pals submitted two scripts for the second Star Trek pilot: The Omega Glory and Where No Man Has Gone Before (a third, Mudd’s Women, was not ready in time). If, instead of those two, they’d submitted something like, say, Spock’s Brain, or something that featured green-blooded pointy-eared aliens dancing with hungry bovinesque creatures, what do you think would have happened? Well, I guess we’ll never know for sure, but I strongly suspect lenses would not be flaring where no lenses have flared before!

https://utopiancow.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/spock-cow1.jpg

Vayne.8563

I’d say anyone who doesn’t get up to level 20 before they judged an MMO, probably isn’t suited to MMORPGs.

This is exactly how I feel. So I wonder WHY THE HELL is arenent investing time in to players that obviously are not interested in the game and that are not suited to MMORPGs. Because that is what the NPE is here for, correct. To try and sway those that won’t stay. I think right there you just made the case that many against the NPE have been trying to make. Thank you Vayne.

The people that like the game are playing. You don’t need to change the game in to something else. These players have already shown that they are profitable. So why not give them more of want made them like the game. So that they keep showing you how profitable it is to keep them happy.

My friends and I had just joined maybe two weeks or so before the 9/9 patch hit, and we were pretty hooked for that two weeks.
And then the patch hit and they levelgated weapon skills and story quests, and my friends quit pretty much immediately. I tried continuing to play but leveling alts is downright miserable now and getting any further on my high level character widens the gap from my friends who quit and won’t return until something is done about the gating, and any friends I had intended to refer the game to. I would have recommended this game to more people before the patch, but I can’t do it in good conscience now.
If I’m not the target audience for these changes, who is? Levelgating weapon skills is by far the worst feature they implemented and has made the early game an absolute chore. Levelgating story quests seems completely arbitrary and makes the questing/grinding between them really boring. This change is one I understand the least.

If they are really so attached to the idea of gating everything this way they should at least limit it to the first character made per account (which is an idea that has been brought up before, I’m just backing it.) I would rather they get rid of it altogether because I can’t imagine that first experience being enjoyable for ANYONE, but if it MUST be this way don’t force it on every character.

Please give me a good reason to return to this game, instead of just returning to the forums. I understand this is not the most constructive post but I’m really hoping that, at the very least, my dissatisfaction will add to the urgency of addressing the gating problem, instead of brushing it off. :/

Vayne.8563:

shadow.6174:

Vayne.8563:

I’m simply saying that as a thing to complain about, it’s pretty low on my list. It affects people’s games for a good five minutes and that’s about it.

The biggest issue I have with it is that it sets a silly tone for a game that was previously fairly serious. But then I had the same problem with the lot of the stuff in the game. It’s hardly possible to think of this game as serious and dark when I’m sandwhiched between a guy with a quaggan backpack and another with a hylek hoodie.

Yes, I see what you mean. These things aren’t a big deal like several other bad changes regarding NPE. And yeah, it sounds like with NPE the game lost even more its seriously, even though it already was loosing some as you said.

Over all, I think the NPE is a positive change…not every bit of it, but over all. Maybe it’s 80% positive to me. The patch as a whole was more than that. It got over-shadowed by a huge reaction from the fan base, which I consider to be an over reaction.

Much of the stuff that was said about it wasn’t true at all, and by the time the true stuff was known, Anet had already made changes to it.

To me, the speed of leveling to 15 easily outweighed anything that I disliked about the changes and other things I got along the way made up for it in other ways.

The trait changes need a lot of work (but I don’t consider them part of the NPE). Furthermore, the personal story needs work, because apparently (I haven’t tested this myself), it got screwed up.

But the early hearts being changed…as in the first 1-10 area?

I just don’t see this as something to rebel against. People talk about the “chess” game in metrica being taken out, even though it was ridiculously easy to win at and maybe I’ve spent 10 minutes out of all my time in game doing it.

I try to be as objective as possible about these things. There were a lot of good things in this patch. The PS and LW now align with each other (though apparently the former still needs some adjustment). leveling from 1-15 is faster, etc.

My two biggest complaints by far, which I feel like are pretty unanimous complaints and things that obviously worked better before – are weapon skill gating and the trait system. Also making it all but impossible to die in the early levels, which I actually feel is more hurtful than it is helpful to new players and makes a very bad first impression on people who have played MMOs before.

Unlocking weapon skills through use was both a more fun and a more helpful mechanic. Did they just change it for the sake of symmetry? The change literally makes zero sense from both a thematic and a functionality perspective.

Traits were more than fine before. World questing to unlock new fancy things should have been a system used for new skills. They should never have gutted and overhauled the trait system.. It feels very heavy-handedly as a minor investment to artificially increase content scalability with minimal effort.

With all that said, virtually none of the early game changes made in the last two major patches needed to happen. They were a huge waste of development effort that was done without proper consultation when most people would very clearly prefer to see a lot more new content being worked on. People are getting frustrated by that.

Vayne.8563:

But the early hearts being changed…as in the first 1-10 area?

I just don’t see this as something to rebel against. People talk about the “chess” game in metrica being taken out, even though it was ridiculously easy to win at and maybe I’ve spent 10 minutes out of all my time in game doing it.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Vayne.8563:

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Vayne.8563:

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Changes are sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the supposed better (which end up being worse).

I invited a friend of mine to test GW2 during this free “weekend”. He is an avid WoW player but decided to try a game without subscription. He was so eager to play… Until he tested.

1. " So I have to wait to unlock skills? That’s stupid. " I explained. " Right, I didn’t know I was too dumb to read a description or try more than two skills at a time… "
2. " I am dancing in front of a cow… I feel stupid. " I explained about the bundles being too complex. " I can use a credit card but not a bundle when a message pops up, right. But it’s good: I can’t use more than two skills so… "
3. " No stats bonus while leveling? There’s no need for leveling then. " I explained the stats burst. " Ok, so you’re strong, then weak, then super weak, then strong, then weak, then super weak. Why don’t they just buff stats at lvl80? "
4. " There’s no story? " I explained level gated story parts. " I didn’t realize this game was made for kids between 3 and 4. "
5. " I’m bored, I’m only level 6 and I have nothing left to do… "

And that’s how a new player received NPE.

Yes, I’m sure with you explaining all that to him, and obviously you weren’t at all biased, you’ve definitely got a case study there.

My friend came back to the game, which he left because he didn’t like it. He’s level 15 today and likes it much better. The difference is, I didn’t tell him a bunch of stuff about how much better it used to be.

The real test will be the bulk of the people after the free trial who go on to buy the game. If it’s more than previous trails (significantly more) than Anet was right.

I didn’t tell him anything biased, but rather how things work. Just because I’m not praising the NPE the way you do doesn’t mean I’m all against it.

He might be one in a million, but the NPE won’t attract people from other games, ANet must be aiming for a totally new audience.

I don’t buy this at all. My friend is currently playing DDO and he played Guild Wars 1 before. He’s not totally new.

First of all, there are five starting areas. The cow thing is one event in Queensdale and you can complete it without ever dancing for a cow.

Your friend from WoW who said he had to wait to unlock stills was stupid is really strange, because you don’t get a billion skills up front in WoW either, you get more skills as you level. So I don’t get that at all.

If it’s all the same too you, I’ll wait for some actual evidence instead of your anecdotal evidence of one, offset by my anecdotal evidence.

He happens to prefer human characters, is it strange? I don’t like Charrs, Asura, and Sylvari. I assume I can’t enjoy 100% of the game if I don’t like every class and test every place? The cows are one event, but more generally the first most people do.

I don’t play WoW, so besides writing what my friend told me, I can’t really say if he’s right or wrong.

As I said, he might be one in a million and we’ll only know what results “NPE + free weekend” give later on.

Again, you seem to believe that if it’s different from your point of view, it’s not true/logical. Fact is, most people aren’t like you or your friends. I don’t see why my friend shouldn’t give reason A not to love the game since you believe reason A is biased. Also, you ask for evidence but you provide as much evidence as I do: “my friend thinks/my guild believe” and that’s all. I would be quite surprised to see any of your guildmates come here and discuss the problem. I would gladly give you any evidence you want as soon as I will have any evidence supporting each and every of your argument in every topic on the forum, because besides some “I believe that it’s good because I’m not like you and coincidentally my friends like the game more too” chattering, you don’t provide much subject matter.

Vayne.8563:

Yes, I’m sure with you explaining all that to him, and obviously you weren’t at all biased, you’ve definitely got a case study there.

“A new player didn’t like the NPE so their friend must have sabotaged their ability to like it because otherwise that person would have obviously loved the NPE”

I think you should take another break from the forums, Vayne. Your white knight is showing.

1. (armor) I felt like I was being mocked, I’d carefully make my gear for the next level 30,40,50,60 & stopped, because the game kept handing me gear better than what I could craft!

2. (cow) please change this back to ‘feed’ the cow, anything has to be better than what I saw when I was “entertaining the cow” which was boarder line illegal in most if not all countries.

Changes are sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the supposed better (which end up being worse).

I invited a friend of mine to test GW2 during this free “weekend”. He is an avid WoW player but decided to try a game without subscription. He was so eager to play… Until he tested.

1. " So I have to wait to unlock skills? That’s stupid. " I explained. " Right, I didn’t know I was too dumb to read a description or try more than two skills at a time… "
2. " I am dancing in front of a cow… I feel stupid. " I explained about the bundles being too complex. " I can use a credit card but not a bundle when a message pops up, right. But it’s good: I can’t use more than two skills so… "
3. " No stats bonus while leveling? There’s no need for leveling then. " I explained the stats burst. " Ok, so you’re strong, then weak, then super weak, then strong, then weak, then super weak. Why don’t they just buff stats at lvl80? "
4. " There’s no story? " I explained level gated story parts. " I didn’t realize this game was made for kids between 3 and 4. "
5. " I’m bored, I’m only level 6 and I have nothing left to do… "

And that’s how a new player received NPE.

Crystal Reid.2481:

frifox.5283:

22. Triumphant Distortion (?)

• Triumphant Distortion (possibly all distortion and invuln?) prevents you from receiving the hammer buff to attack the seals on the Cliffside Fractal.

Late reply, but figured you could use an update to know we are reading these.

This was a bug with how the hammer itself was unlocking Skill 4, and not any one particular profession’s ability fault. We’re investigating this now to make sure the fix works globally for all professions.

You have my sincere gratitude for letting us know what you all are working on and acknowledging an issue, complete with explanation even! This is great to see :-)

So I finally make it to the top of Not So Secret to get my last dive done and hit this bug. Mind you this is a lvl 80 with 1310 hours over the last 586 days (and one of 6 level 80s).
What a sorry piece of execution – to break something as simple as diving goggles. Anet should be refunding those of us who have to buy another character slot, just to use a level 20 scroll, just to unlock something that was unlocked 2 years ago!
kitten poor Anet. Really, kitten poor.

The Chaos Staff sits way too high when stowed away on my back. Compare it to a bunch of other similar-sized staves in the picture. It is the only one that disappears off the top of my screen. And that’s with my feet disappearing off the bottom! Just imagine how for off the top of the preview it will go when they get that bug fixed!

Do you suppose you could take it down a few notches, please?

Gaile Gray.6029:

If you’re considering how the GW2 Team can best hear your input about the game — such as what you’d like to see in the future, how things are working now, etc. — I personally don’t think a survey is necessary. Honestly and truly: These forums are a huge and very effective medium for communication. They are read daily by members of the team — probably more people than you think! — and the forums, as a whole, give us a much better view of what’s important to Guild Wars 2 players than most surveys would do.

Too we have interaction here that’s incredibly effective. Yep, I’m thinking CDIs and I’m glad they’re back! (Even if I marvel how Chris is able to keep up the pace! )

Surveys are difficult to devise in a way that makes them unbiased and statistically accurate. That’s not to say it cannot be done, and the idea of surveys linked to an active game account certainly sounds better to me than those random Internet surveys, like “Who’s your favorite singer,” which get gamed through fan groups, artist management companies, publicists, agents, and the use of “ballot-box stuffing” methods, like vote, clear cache, vote again; vote, change computers, vote again; vote, set up 100 fake e-mail accounts, vote again.

Anyway, just wanted to add a couple of pennies about the subject, fwiw.

I honestly believe that they are read often and things are discussed internally but that’s where the issue lies, no final information is ever given to the players. I don’t blame anyone specifically just the policy of not trusting us with any real information about the future of the game. It’s getting very old for a lot of people and it’s disturbing to a lot of your player base so frankly and please don’t take it as an attack on you, all the pep talks given won’t really help until real information is shared, at least for me and everyone else who’s asked for the same openness.

PS. welcome back into the lion’s den….where’s the froggy?

The only fair way for them to do a survey would be to have it in game. I don’t know what % of the game population visits the forums and actually participates but I am guessing it’s actually fairly low. I mean they could even give a small incentive to complete the survey in game, like a karma booster or something else relatively trivial as a small nod for players taking the time to fill out the survey.

Metrics crits Player Desires for 5.2 million damage.

Gaile Gray.6029:

The devs have been reviewing your feedback on the New Player Experience. While some bug fixes have already been made, the team will be making other updates in the future to address:

• Plot holes and story inconsistencies that may have been introduced with story realignment
• Replacing the missing profession mechanics UI for the Ranger and Mesmer professions
• Investigating issues that prevent players from retaining some skills (heal, utility, and elite) that they had previously unlocked
• Addressing an issue with bundles that prematurely unlocked utility and elite skills

Other aspects of the NPE are being examined, and your constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated.

I know come rathe rlate into this but i want post what i wrote in antoher thread, which describes HOW you programmer of anet can improve the NPE,like hwo tomake an tutorial and such. warning though since i only copy and paste there will be some word chioches not so eliterate:
yeah the problem is NOT thats its not avilable. you don´t NEED to dodge or pay attention to condis at all. THATS the problem. by the time they enter the 15-25 zones they probably forgot the only time they needed to dodge. and they ahd to dodge into an AOE circle, teaching it´s okay to do so.
Anet should have not jsut removed thing, they should have redesign the approch to basic combat features. Like a mini boss in a heartquest that has a knock back and an NPC yells for help and also warns them to DODGE his mighty weapon swing, in addition to the pop ups telling whihc key to press.
after this mini boss you can have normal mobs having abilities you can dodge but they are not a game changer. they jsut exists to give the new player a constant use of a newly learned ability. same with condis: either a boss or an Aoe that causes cripple (because it only slows a palyer down and does no dmg) needs to be dealt with. a frinedly NPC could help the player out be periodicly removing the conditions always saying something when he does so, drawing the palyers attention to the fact that he has conditions. with the rewrd there can a hint that certain skill can remove condis. and when the palyer moves on he find more mobs each with different condis. atm the moment they only cause one or two condis but the player would have after learned about condis constanly situation where condis can be applied. He gets thought to play the game properly without throwing only pop ups in his face. The player learns the game by playing it. that is the best indicator of a very good game.
To weapons skill: level gating is still dumb. instead they could have re arranged some hearts in the starting zones to train with their weapons.
for exsample the one heart in queens vale where you “practice” to handle weapons. move that closer to the beginning and actually let players “learn” their weaponskills. you get free weapons for it (whihc disappear after you finshed all weapons skills) to leanr all possible skills but you only need one or two weapons the new players allready has.
like that new players are ACTIVLY encouraged to pay attention to skills and learn playfully to use them. they learn what weapons they can use with their class and actually their class in of itself. again the player learns to play “BY PLAYING THE F*****G GAME” (quote Arin Hanson aka Egoraptor)(seriously anet i recommend his video on megaman X. it´s a really good look how to make the players learn your game also its funny)
And that allone can awake the sensation of accomplishment. By playing the game and learning the basics, knowing how you can approch enemies in of it self can be a big reward for all newcomers.
From that point new comers will look into the utility skill they unlock, test them and find their own way to use them, build a build on their own.
And then come the traits. the want to explore the world for its traits allone has begun and newcomers explore the world, learn the lore from NPCs and players and continue on becoming better players, become low level pugs that don´t suck in doungens and much more.
does this what i describbed sound 1000x better then what the NPE is right now? doesnßt this sound like…..the manifesto?

First time on the forum but I have been playing since beta.
But this feature pack has really frustrated me.
I started a character and I kinda felt insulted by the simplicity of the starter world. I mean, I can’t even help anyone get out of down till a certain level. I can’t even be downed until a certain level. I can’t go collect skill points anymore until I am a certain level. This doesn’t give me any challenge. There is no fun in following around a little pointer instead of actually exploring the world. The world is also to simple. The world of Guild Wars 2 used to have little, fun hearts to do and interesting places to get to.
I also don’t understand why they changed the story system. That is what made me love this game. I don’t even feel motivated to play my mid-level characters because of this. I have a level 45 that can’t start the next chapter of the story until level 60. Why would this make the game easier to learn? By taking away one of the best aspects of the game?
The first thing that that got me on my new character was the weapon skills. I don’t feel like I’m being rewarded when I level. I felt rewarded when I actually had to learn my skills. I actually liked going out and learning all the weapons for my class. Plus the levels to unlock the other skills are ridiculous.
I haven’t fully explored these new features this because these that I mentioned has turned me off from the game. I mean, I like the other updates, you know the trading post and the wardrobe, but the new player experience and the chapter stories are making veteran players angry.
I have been trying to get my friends to play Guild Wars 2, but now I wouldn’t recommend it to them. They would probably think it is boring like I do.

Sorry if it sounds like I am ranting but this really frustrates me. I don’t want to stop playing the game I love because of this.
Thank you

I do agree with you there, Penarddun. Hearts do need to be improved upon rather than cut off certain bits as they are easy enough to accomplish to the point where the fun factor wanes quickly.

Regarding the whole locking of the story mission every 10 levels, I don’t mind it myself as I always have more stuff to do to attain those levels with ease. But I am thinking that instead of locking the story missions, why not just make them more difficult to accomplish if you are not at the ideal level much like before the patch?

Penarddun.6827:

phys.7689:

one hour is too long for a player to play with no compelling narrative.

^ this right here.

I finally convinced a friend of mine to give the game a try. She decided to play through the trial. She didn’t get past level 7 because she said it was boring. I told her to just keep at it, but she said there’s nothing to do.

I don’t understand why the decision to push the start of the personal story to level 10 was made. If there was a problem with key farming, just don’t put in a key as the reward for early stories. Make keys not be rewarded until level 20 or something. But the story itself is a way to retain players during the first few levels. It gives your character meaning and continues feeding off the customization done during character creation.

Agreed, even though i’m familiar with the game i felt lost without having the option of doing story. My first hour or two of my new character I did more random killing yellows for xp than ever in my gw2 experience. I wasnt even unlocking skills. It just seemed to be the thing to do, and was slow and unpromising for the rest of the game.

phys.7689:

one hour is too long for a player to play with no compelling narrative.

^ this right here.

I finally convinced a friend of mine to give the game a try. She decided to play through the trial. She didn’t get past level 7 because she said it was boring. I told her to just keep at it, but she said there’s nothing to do.

I don’t understand why the decision to push the start of the personal story to level 10 was made. If there was a problem with key farming, just don’t put in a key as the reward for early stories. Make keys not be rewarded until level 20 or something. But the story itself is a way to retain players during the first few levels. It gives your character meaning and continues feeding off the customization done during character creation.

Hearts are not a hook into the game. The hearts have always been boring to me. Sure a few of them were amusing, like the sylvan hounds in Celadon Forest. I do remember that one fondly (which is changed now). But for the most part the hearts are dull. And Anet just added more of them and made them even more simplistic. I think a better solution would be to reduce the amount of hearts per map, but make the tasks to complete them more interesting. Make the hearts into mini quests/stories themselves. But in order to do that there needs to be less of them per map. They should be special, not just “how can I finish this as fast as possible to complete this map.”

I have this distant memory about a time where ArenaNet’s philosophy was to make the concept of “levels” less important. It is a system that’s illogical: you’re killing stuff, doing stuff, learning stuff, and your character’s ability doesn’t improve. Then suddenly you reach a threshold of experience and BAM, suddenly you are a whole lot better than 5 seconds ago. This concept is outdated, and ArenaNet knew this.

That’s what made GW2 and even GW1 quite great. There were so many ways to progress and improve, that were not linked to character level at all. Remember the skill points in GW1 for instance — you got one per level, but you got way more of them by doing missions. (In GW2, skill point events do this trick too.) You even learned skills by doing quests, removing the need to get skill points in the first place.

In GW2, this was implemented very nicely as well. The way everything unlocked gradually was perfect, and the pace was perfect as well. This was especially true with the way weapon skills unlocked: you (the player) learned to use the weapon gradually by using it for the first time on your character, and this made the learning experience quite smooth.

Now, I wonder if ArenaNet still has this philosophy. I made a new character a couple of days ago, and it seems absolutely everything is tied to character levels. That’s a 180 degrees turn if I’ve ever seen one.

Now, I am usually not against change, but going back to a concept that was considered to be completely outdated (not because of trends, but simply because it had been clear that the concept was illogical) already when GW1 came out? I disapprove, and I think I’m not the only one.

Kreejaffa.3682:

I have a friend who is an old GW1 player who decided tonight that he was going to give GW2 a try, since it was a free trial and all.

I listened to him as he made a character, and played through level 6. He stopped at level 6 and said he was no longer interested.

Along the way, the main things he disliked was how dumbed down some of the hearts were. As a human, when he got to the farm, he found it quite silly to dance for a cow. I explained you used to be able to pick up feed sacks and feed the cows. He complained how there were so few weapon skills, and how boring it was to attempt to kill things so far.

He made it to the heart at Claypool, and this is where he pretty much got fed up. He again was saying it was very boring, and nothing was there to keep your attention. No story to drive you. I explained to him that the personal story has been split up into chapters now, unlocked every 10 levels. Shortly after completing the heart at Claypool, he exited the game.

From all that I gathered from listening to him, the level gating on the skills made combat boring, the hearts themselves were too simplified to keep his attention, and because the story is now locked into chapters every 10 levels, there was nothing there to keep him interested or going. He was just roaming around aimlessly, with no sort of focus.

Basically, what would have been another member of the community has probably been lost due to the changes brought on by the NPE.

yes, i figured this would be the case. I think they didnt realize, is a new player, especially the type who is going to leave quickly, needs a hook. The redesign of the game has no hooks.

Virtually nothing in the begining of the game is engaging anymore. In fact it always had this kind of problem, but NPE enhanced it.
moving story to level 10, basically makes starting the game about doing, doing a bunch of stuff you have no idea if you want to do, for no real reason

now, if the pure joy of playing the game/interacting with the world was high early, people may get distracted by the joy of playing and not realize it. But the npe dramatically decreases the chances of this, by making everything too easy, depthless. The pacing of new or interesting mechanics is too slow, the combat is to easy, the world people are interacting with is too simplified.

one hour is too long for a player to play with no compelling narrative.
if monsters were designed better, with more danger, than perhaps you could still get some thrill out of fighting an enemy with only two attacks, but it isnt, they stand there, and die.

i think if they wanted to improve player retention they should have focused NPE less on slowing down everything, and more on engaging the player. The more interesting something is, the more likely people will stick around to learn the ins and outs.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Broom.2561:

From my experience of playing a new character, without ‘helping’ by providing armor / gear / etc. a new player has no access to

1). Offhand weapons (warhorn) level 1 still drop, while they cannot be used till level 7. Pointless.

2). Tameable pets have mostly vanished from the low level zones. Wayfarer Foothils used to have juvenile ice drakes, brown bears, snow leopards, wolves and ravens. Only the ravens are now left. I found snow leopards and ravens in Hoelbrak, but no juvenile brown bears, ice drakes or wolves. This is a severe impoverishment of ranger gameplay, and makes it harder to experiment with different pets.

3). Hearts have been dumbed down to the point of utter boredom. I really see no point in e.g. removing combat skills while changed to snow leopard form or removing bundles. It also seems to me the difficulty of mobs has been decreased dramatically, to the point of being almost no-risk.

4). Unlocking weapon skills now involves no actual use of the weapon at all, you just need to equip it. I do not think this contributes to people actually learning the possibilities of each weapon and it’s frankly boring. Please note I call it boring both from a veteran perspective AND from a ‘new to guild wars but veteran gamer’ perspective. I cannot really judge it from the perspective of someone entirely new to MMOs, although I do rather think that if this had been my first MMO, I’d have hated it too.

5). I was drawn to Guild Wars 2 because it had so many different things you could do to level, which suited my guild, which is a mix of PVPers (world pvp mostly), crafters, explorers and loot hunters. Your new player experience skips most of this in favor of PVE combat, the thing that frankly interests most of us the least, and only points to all the stuff that brought us here in the first place in a later stage.

Yes, you DO point it out after a few hours of play. But at that point, you’ve already created an impression of what the game is about. Which is at this point PVE combat boredom.

6). I was unable to use the krait obelisk shard in my home instance at level 9, which is apparently level 10+ now. Seriously?

All the rest has already been said before, probably some of this has been said too.
The game now looks as if it caters to 6 year olds.

Just an FYI…a character always needed to be Level 10 to use the Krait Obelisk in the Home Instance. That has nothing to do with the NPE. =)

I honestly wouldn’t know, since I can’t really recall when I brought my pre-NPE noobies to the obelisk. I do think it’s irritating and superfluous though. The mere fact I HAVE an obelisk shard would imply I’m veteran enough to have obtained one and could be expected to know what SP are about. I could conceivably load up the character with skill scrolls to get SP. Admittedly, I’m not sure if that still works, but I’m pretty sure I did for the SP daily on other new characters before this. But even then, I would not be able to use the skill slots that are reserved for higher levels. Wasn’t going to waste any on a test character I was going to delete, though.

Either way, however irritating this may be, it’s an issue that only affects veteran accounts, not new players. Just put it out there because it really IS irritating.

I have a friend who is an old GW1 player who decided tonight that he was going to give GW2 a try, since it was a free trial and all.

I listened to him as he made a character, and played through level 6. He stopped at level 6 and said he was no longer interested.

Along the way, the main things he disliked was how dumbed down some of the hearts were. As a human, when he got to the farm, he found it quite silly to dance for a cow. I explained you used to be able to pick up feed sacks and feed the cows. He complained how there were so few weapon skills, and how boring it was to attempt to kill things so far.

He made it to the heart at Claypool, and this is where he pretty much got fed up. He again was saying it was very boring, and nothing was there to keep your attention. No story to drive you. I explained to him that the personal story has been split up into chapters now, unlocked every 10 levels. Shortly after completing the heart at Claypool, he exited the game.

From all that I gathered from listening to him, the level gating on the skills made combat boring, the hearts themselves were too simplified to keep his attention, and because the story is now locked into chapters every 10 levels, there was nothing there to keep him interested or going. He was just roaming around aimlessly, with no sort of focus.

Basically, what would have been another member of the community has probably been lost due to the changes brought on by the NPE.

Problem is, this is such a mess and over-all poorly done to such a degree that a roll-back or admitting it would never happen.

They should remove any “gates” they have introduced so players can experience everything at will. And if something puzzles them, well… That’s why there’s a “players helping players” forum, and wiki, and tons of useful websites with loads of info.

The whole NPE thing did the absolute opposit of what it was set to achieve. Instead of explaining, you just barred content and game mechanics, making the lack of said mechanics confusing. Imagin someon who heard this game has underwater combat in it. But for them… There isn’t. Until lvl3 (iirc) so then, they take a dive (just kidding, goggles are way too much for a lvl3) into a lake and see they only have 1 skill. What they understand from that is, that there isn’t any underwater combat, just an over-hyped feature used to get them to play. And then they quit. Because the game is stupid. not the player, who may be a total newcomer to mmorpg, but the game.

By thinking that GW2 is the industry’s answer to uni. level calculus class, you made the mistak of treating every new player like a 6 years old. And let me tell you something: it’s not. GW2 wasnt the obtuse and complicated game you thought it was. But it is now.

Sure, there are things you need to get used to and things that are quit different than other mmorpg, but that’s called a learning curve. And that curve could be made easier to get, but not with your gated method. There are things out there called class quests that helps you understand your character mechanics better; and quests that explain skills and so on. Wouldn’t it be better to create a lvl2 quest that you do underwater, like an obsticles course which, at its end would reward the player with an underwater weapon of their choosing + the 5 weapon skills?

I’m sorry, but this NPE feels like something you thought up in ten minutes and implemented after a particularly hard hangover.

Always been a bit unreliable… Do wish they’d remove the kick from game feature if you passed the finish line.