Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Penarddun.6827:

I was working on my new Thief today, and I just did the first group of personal story quests (the ones that open at level 10). After I finished, I felt very lost and then I realized why. When I had been leveling my other characters, the next personal story step was in the top right of my map, like a goal to aim toward. I could try it at a lower level and if I died, go and gain a level and then try again. This took up a lot of my gaming time because I used the personal story as a framework for my entire leveling experience. Until this change I had no idea how much of an influence the personal story was for me as a leveling mechanic.

I understand the reasons for putting the PS in segments, it does make sense from a writer’s perspective so the player can see the entire mini plot all at once, without breaks. I think that is a good thing. But the change in how it is presented, and the complete lack of a PS after one segment is completed, has caused me to log off right afterwards because I don’t really have a goal at that point and “just leveling” isn’t really a goal for me.

I’m not sure how much of an impact this is going to have on my experience with gw2 in the long run, and there are a lot of other leveling issues that I think need to be addressed first, but it was something that I didn’t expect to be an issue yet is.

I think you’re missing the point though. The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were. They’ve always said that was the main thrust of the game.

By having the personal story there all the time,. what they did was give people the wrong message about the game. Because at some point personal story ends, and then there’s nothing.

They’re retraining people to play the game differently for a reason. I used to see people post all the time about how they felt that they weren’t high enough level for their personal story, and they felt they were doing something wrong by being underleveled. Having it there, as it was, affected those people, in addition to affecting people like me, who feel like it breaks immersion to have to stop doing important stuff to do not important stuff. Save the city…but help some farmers first, because you’re not good enough to save the city.

But again, the thing you’re talking about here is probably the very thing Anet is trying to prevent. That’s why the brought in the new content guide.

Didn’t see this reply until today.

You mentioned “The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were.” That seems like a strange comment since the PS had so much effort put into it. A different origin story for each character, merging into a tri-fold order choice and culminating in the ending story arc. That’s a lot of content. Backbone (I don’t agree with the use of this term, from what I remember of the original GW2 release notes, this game was all about the different types of content provided), or no, there are so many hours of fun from the PS, and that’s what I enjoyed most about the early game.

Also in response to another poster’s statement that the previous PS was too “hand-held.” I did not think of it as hand holding at all. I can explore and roam when I choose. Which I did, when I felt like it. It’s not telling me I can only do the personal story now, it’s giving me story driven content to mask the fact that I have to level to 80. It gave me something to focus on during the leveling process when I didn’t have all my traits yet. I felt like my character wasn’t complete until around level 60 or 70, since I was lacking my end game traits. So the PS helped me not get bored while gaining my final character specs. I didn’t feel like I could do events, dungeons, or WvW because I was handicapped by not having my final build. Had I had all my traits by level 50ish, I may have felt differently about the Personal Story’s impact on my gameplay. But that is a whole other topic.

There is plenty to do after the personal story. I considered the PS early game content. When I reached level 80, I started to do more map completion, really work on my achievements such as diving and jumping puzzles. I started investigating WvW, and doing dungeons with friends, and finally doing some world events (which I find the least fun, personally).

I know some disagree, and that is okay by me. I accept that different people enjoy different aspects of the game. I only posted my original post here to give my personal perspective about the lack of a PS objective while leveling, since this thread is asking for feedback about the NPE. I don’t want to be “retrained.” That’s an off-putting phrase. I play games to have fun my way, not to be trained to enjoy it in a particular way.

I was working on my new Thief today, and I just did the first group of personal story quests (the ones that open at level 10). After I finished, I felt very lost and then I realized why. When I had been leveling my other characters, the next personal story step was in the top right of my map, like a goal to aim toward. I could try it at a lower level and if I died, go and gain a level and then try again. This took up a lot of my gaming time because I used the personal story as a framework for my entire leveling experience. Until this change I had no idea how much of an influence the personal story was for me as a leveling mechanic.

I understand the reasons for putting the PS in segments, it does make sense from a writer’s perspective so the player can see the entire mini plot all at once, without breaks. I think that is a good thing. But the change in how it is presented, and the complete lack of a PS after one segment is completed, has caused me to log off right afterwards because I don’t really have a goal at that point and “just leveling” isn’t really a goal for me.

I’m not sure how much of an impact this is going to have on my experience with gw2 in the long run, and there are a lot of other leveling issues that I think need to be addressed first, but it was something that I didn’t expect to be an issue yet is.

shadow.6174:

FathomsDeep.1036:

(And btw- goggles are broken from the top down as well as from the bottom up. Low levels are nerfed from using them, and high levels are over-gated, and apparently not allowed to go back. Not sure where I should post that info, in case nobody’s figured it out yet…)

Yes, I have just noted that while exploring Malchor’s Leap. See attached pic.

I just wanted to double check, the goggles not working for level 80 characters is a glitch right? Or is this content on its way out?

I was half way through my goggle achievements and I’d really like to be able to interact with goggles again in the future.

Oh, thank you for all the links!

Yeah, I really WANT to like it because I love the idea of home instances, but I’m not sure if I’d ever really use it…

I saw that it was on sale today for 580 gems, and I was thinking about maybe getting it, but is there really enough in your home instance for it to be worth it?

Do you use it a lot? I feel like the only thing that is there are the nodes (if you bought them). Everything else, like the bank, guild bank, etc aren’t there, so I’m trying to figure out if it’s really worth it.

At the lower price, is it worth buying?

I’ve been to Bloodtide Coast, Frostgorge, and Cursed Shore, and they are like ghost towns.

Is it possible I got switched to a really empty server?

My world is TC, but my guild is on Sorrow’s Furnace. It’s never been this quiet before though.

How do I find/move to a more populated server?

What really bothered me is that utilities were actually removed from my characters. There should have been something that at least kept the utilities there if they were already unlocked on an already started character.

I’m not having fun on my low level characters anymore. I keep trying to play, logging in, and after 5 minutes, I just get frustrated and log back out.

I am having a similar issue. My Human Thief has his feet cut off and he seems larger than he used to be.

However, my Human Mesmer and Norn Guardian (where this is especially noticeable) are much smaller and the resolution is really bad on them.

I thought this thread was constructive when I read it. I’ll post it here so it doesn’t get buried and can be seen by those looking for feedback.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Regarding-Level-Gating

Nokaru.7831:

Penarddun.6827:

This is such a good post, can it be typed out and mailed to Arenanet?

How would Anet go about fixing this issue (assuming they won’t revert the changes)? Could they apply this stat burst model to the monsters in the different zones and personal story so that they match up to the players’ current level?

Thanks for that. The fix is just undoing their redistribution of stats, spacing it out evenly every level as it was before the NPE. The effect of “stat slump” and “stat burst” is a systems issue, so not many people can identify it as the problem. Most will just say, “I found this Personal Story mission hard!” and then it will be dismissed as a “L2P” issue.

If you want to read more about this, here is where I got the information from:

• Stat Slump Stuff
• Downscaling & Stat Slump

Sadly, a lot of discussion about this is being buried by other issues.

Thanks for the links. This might be the most important issue with the patch. It should really have its own thread if it doesn’t already.

Nokaru.7831:

Opinions aside, there are some bold-faced objective problems that have surfaced from their questionable implementations of the NPE. For example: The “stat burst” and the “stat slump.”

• Stat Burst: With the original leveling system, players would receive a small amount of stats each time they leveled, which made their character slowly get stronger each level. With the NPE changes, after level 4 the player will received a large chunk (or “burst”) of stats every 6 levels. This was likely to make certain thresholds feel more rewarding and fun.

• Stat Slump: The problem is that the “stat burst” power did not come out of no where. The power is redistributed from prior levels. The result is that players feel weaker than they did before during certain windows of leveling. This is being remarked as the “stat slump”, which is typically 2 or 3 levels prior to each threshold.

• The problem: If a player tries to fight a creature 1 or 2 levels higher than themselves, the “stat slump” complicates things. A level 9 creature is more powerful than a level 8; but a level 9 player is not necessarily more powerful than a level 8 one. This is because the stats come in bursts for players, but gradually for monsters. As a result, players are reporting that certain Personal Story missions are feeling much harder than they used to. This is a result of the “stat slump”, which is effectively making players feel lower level than they actually are.
  
  Furthermore, when a player levels up in an area they are downscaled in, there is a high chance they will actually become weaker. This is because downscaling will reduce their stats, and leveling up doesn’t necessarily increase them to offset it. While this has always been a possibility due to gear, it is now magnified due to base stats not increasing with each level.

This change to leveling is so fundamentally dysfunctional with how the rest of the game works that it really starts to raise questions in the confidence of ArenaNet’s actual understandings of their systems. It’s likely it isn’t the entire company’s fault though, only a few powerful (and ignorant) people.

This is such a good post, can it be typed out and mailed to Arenanet?

How would Anet go about fixing this issue (assuming they won’t revert the changes)? Could they apply this stat burst model to the monsters in the different zones and personal story so that they match up to the players’ current level?

Having a one time popup telling the player how to drop a bundle would have been a simple solution.

wiredrawn.7298:

They will also hiss when a quest/activity npc says come back later and they don’t understand what the hell that means … are there quests/objectives I need to complete, nobody thinks I need to level to fulfill this odd npc feedback.

Yeah, when an NPC says come back later, I have never in all the games I’ve played over the last 20 years imagined this is part of the NPCs dialogue because my level is too low.

I would assume either 1) The NPC doesn’t actually have content yet, maybe this is something that will be programmed into the game in the future, or 2) I have to accomplish some quest related task in order to open up the dialogue. In both situations I leave and forget to come back to that NPC.

Same with something like diving goggles, if I’m not allowed to use them, my mind will put them into “non-interact-able scenery” and I may not think to attempt to interact with them again for a long time, if ever.

Is my reaction so unusual? Out of the norm?

Having the Personal Story in blocks has its merits. But I preferred when it started immediately at level 2. It was a great introduction to your character and the story. I don’t particularly like grinding 10 levels when I start a new character to start their story, that in itself ruins the progression for me. Give me something from the get go to become invested in and then maybe I won’t mind exploring/grinding a bit later down the road.

I can understand some causes to why the PS changes were implemented though, but changing heart quests (which are optional), because it’s too hard to pick up a sparkly thing off the ground and feed it to an animal is laughable, sorry, but that’s my opinion. The hearts that just have you kill mobs is so boring to me. I prefer hearts that have you do something that isn’t related to fighting. I also really enjoyed the hearts that morph your character. It added diversity, so I didn’t get bored. I thought the original intro levels were fun and had no complaints about them at all. I also thought the early levels were some of the best in the game, which is why I enjoyed making alts. That is no longer the case. I guess according to some, I must be in the minority.

I did give the new system a decent try. I leveled a new character to 10 and then played on another character whom I had at 15. I didn’t like it. The experience was lackluster. So for the last several days instead of playing the game, I’ve been reading the forums in hopes that something will be reverted in regards to the early maps and leveling so I can fully enjoy the two character slots I bought in the sale right before the patch launched.

You’d think though at this point in the life of gw2, a tutorial really wouldn’t even be necessary. There is so much information on the internet, that if someone was confused about, well anything in the game, they could just google it. It takes less than a minute to bring up an answer to just about any possible misconception in gw2.

My human male thief has his feet and lower legs cut off as well.

NewTrain.7549:

Well, we don’t have a representative sample. We have this poll, created by someone who has stated he did it to show that the forum’s response to the NPE is disproportionally negative compared to players’ actual feelings. The poll failed to show that, and actually confirmed that a significant portion of the players are displeased.

I wonder if Anet is looking at this poll or not. I hope they are.

I have two friends who play gw2, one is a veteran (played over 2 years), the other started the game 3 weeks ago. Both are displeased, but ironically the newbie is more upset with this NPE than the veteran. But I can understand that, she still needs to level characters, while the veteran does not.

It’s illogical to have to get a skill point from a mob that is level 3 when you are level 7. I thought the skill point challenges were supposed to be level specific in difficulty. So you could determine when you wanted to attempt them, based off if you wanted a challenge or not.

Djinn.9245:

Yep, they nerfed the wonderful heart where you turn into a fern hound in Caledon. I loved that heart!

Nooo! That was one of my favorites, if not the favorite heart in the game.

That was one of the first hearts I ever completed and I was so impressed by the uniqueness and ingenuity of it, that was when I realized I had made a great purchase in gw2 and started really getting into the game.

Changer the Elder.2948:

“Profession skill F4 (Unlocked at level 24)”

… do you seriously mean to tell me I cannot swap my pet or attune to earth attunement before level 24? If that’s true, it’s excessively stupid O.o

Yes this is true.

Swapping pets was an extremely helpful tactic for a ranger in early levels. As was the Earth attunement for the Elementatlist. Also, it allowed for someone to associate as an earth elementalist, character-wise.

You know, all the fun stuff.

It was a messy implementation. I’m just surprised the company didn’t realize how many detailed updates would be needed to make this giant of an overhaul actually not have major issues. It’s like building the game from scratch. It can’t be done just a little bit. Imagine trying to change the foundation of a house this way. It would topple.

MikaHR.1978:

Maliel.8362:

Is “leveling alts” code for keyfarming?

For most of the complainers – yes.

No, I’ve never “key-farmed” before. I just like having multiple characters and being able to play at low levels and still enjoy the game. Now it feels like I have to rush to level 40. And giving me a level 40 scroll for all my characters wouldn’t really fix my problem. I like the early maps, I enjoyed the process of leveling and the story progression pre-patch.

You won’t be able to do WvW with your friends if they are not on the same world. That is the problem I’m having too. I’m on Tarnished Coast (don’t want to leave), but they are all on Sorrow’s Furnace, so yeah. We can’t WvW ever.

After trying to play a new character myself and reading all the forum posts I keep envisioning someone trying to chop out foundation bricks and stuff new ones in that have a different shape, causing the entire building to become unstable.

This NPE is messy, no other word for it. It disrupts the professions, makes the early maps awkward and constantly breaks the immersion that the NPCs, beautiful graphics and landscapes used to create.

Maybe higher level mobs now give less experience, causing a logarithmic curve in leveling. Fast at low levels and slow at higher levels?

Oh… okay. Thanks for the info!

ReV.6097:

and the whole attitude to every alt you make is a repetitive rinse and re-wash that will repel people when they make a second character.

Exactly, alts always had a repetitive nature to them because of similar starting areas and the stories merging at the Order choice and then at the final story arc but at least the start of the personal story allowed it to feel a little different when starting a new character, but having to wait for the only different content till level 10 and then 20, just made it even more repetitive. No thanks.

Also going back to only using 2 or 3 skills, that just causes bad habits to form, because you get used to playing in a mind-numbing way.

On a side note, the rest of the updates are pretty great, especially the guild updates. I was looking forward to getting a joint guild bank with friends from other worlds for a long while now. And the trading post is definitely better. It will take some getting used to, but I can see it has been vastly improved.

I’m curious how different the reaction would have been had this update come out with everything but the leveling changes (and the removal of goggle interaction and underwater combat) in early levels. I bet it would have been a pretty big success and Anet would have gotten some great publicity.

The increased level gating of weapon skills, utilities and especially the F1-4 skills really destroyed the morale of the community, understandably, and the success of an otherwise nice feature update.

I had proposed GW2 to be added to the games we play at my computer tech club in school. I was really pushing the members to buy it. But these are experienced gamers so I had to retract my proposal because I’m embarrassed to recommend it in its current state for new players.

What about people who don’t have any level 20 scrolls left, who want to make an alt? What are they supposed to do? I just bought 2 character slots a couple weeks ago and only have 1 level 20 scroll left.

The personal story for me was a life safer when I was bored of leveling with hearts, and I could do it when I personally felt that lull and needed some fast experience from the PS.

I hope this also includes this huge arrow that shows above my (lvl 80) character’s healing skill everytime she is low on health (regardless of the compass/tutorial settings).

It get’s kinda annoying over time, because – believe it or not:

• I know how to heal after more than 2 years of playing this game
• I can decide for myself when I want to use my healing skill AND
• I definitely don’t see a reason for an arrow indicating I should use my healing skill while it is on CD

Apart from the unnecessary hand-holding aspect, this arrow distracts a lot from what else is happening on screen, because the eyes focus on it on reflex (the arrow is sliding from mid screen to the healing skill and jumps on it -> impossible to not look at it).

I couldn’t believe this was true so I went to Queensdale with my level 80 and lo and behold there’s an obnoxiously large arrow bouncing really high above my heal skill.

This was after I tried to get killed by a mob, which took me 5 minutes to just stand there and take the hits from until finally it got below the threshold. How are Queensdale mobs this weak? And I’m just a glass cannon mesmer. I thought the downleveling system was supposed to help with this. Wasn’t the whole point of this system that high level characters could still enjoy low level maps?

There is really no way to turn off the arrow?

In game tutorials should always have a “turn off” option and even new players should have the opportunity to turn these things off if they choose. That includes everything, hints, bouncing arrows, explaining features and markers in the game, everything. Most games with tutorials let you turn them off for a reason. They can be incredibly annoying and a complete immersion breaking addition.

Filaha.1678:

Finally, the next step of Trahearne’s desire to take credit for everything is realized: Removing the player character entirely!

… ahem.

Did you exit out (log out) and come back in and still happen? Or just the one try?

Just the one try. I entered in and finished through in one go. It happened right before I started toward the ship to go get Trahearne. Honestly, I was scared that if I logged out and tried again it might glitch even more and I wouldn’t be able to complete it and lose all the rewards.

I was going to wait, in lieu of the recent bugs, but I figured the very last instance and cutscene of the story line wouldn’t be affected…. and after months and months I finally got a party together to do Arah, so I chanced it. This is my main character and first time completing the story, so I’m disappointed it glitched on me.

In the personal story it shows an item, in Victory or Death it is Aarda’s Pistol, it says it is a trophy, is it supposed to show up in your inventory or is it just part of the graphics of the UI?

It doesn’t really make sense that it has a tooltip if it’s not an item you get in inventory.

Am I missing something?

I just finished the Arah Dungeon story and went to go to complete Victory or Death by going back to Fort Trinity. When I got within the instance, my character disappeared. I was still able to run around the map as some strange 3rd/first person perspective, but my character model didn’t show up. I still had to jump over things and got stuck because I couldn’t see where my character was on the screen.

You can see it missing in the screenshots below. Was this intended?

Swapping weapons are also really necessary for early game content. Otherwise all the cool downs are thrown off. You used to be able to swap to another weapon and still have other skills that weren’t on cooldown. Now the only option is AA.

I think there is a huge divide now within the gamer community. 5 or 10 years ago, less people played games, and before that it was even more of a niche. So as games really get into the mass public view and it becomes a go-to form of entertainment, like television, companies will want to appease the majority. It makes sense on a financial level.

MMOs are always hard though, because you need to have game upkeep. An indie company can make a single player game, make a decent profit and then move on, with minimal to no updates. It’s a shame gw2 didn’t take more of a pay for an expansion model direction like gw1. This is actually why I sometimes prefer a pay to play monthly fee, because then there is more of an incentive to keep veteran players.

I’m just glad there are a lot of awesome titles coming out this year and next. A lot on the rpg front too, which is unusual.

I still cannot fathom locking away content like diving goggles. If I read a “Come back later” on a diving goggle (Assuming I even read the text and didn’t just think “oh there’s nothing to do here,” click close), I’m probably just going to assume it isn’t inter-actable and never attempt to look at it again.

And when customizing an elementalist, if you pick earth attunement and then get into the game and only have fire abilites, how is that supposed to make a player feel? That their favorite attunement is locked behind the F4 key untill 20+ levels away. Ridiculous.

It seems like they tried to simplify early content by using massive streamlining for characters and professions that by design are unique. Theoretically they would need a tutorial/leveling scheme designed for each profession. Which of course would be way too much work.

Every game has a life cycle. I’m personally upset because I didn’t realize such a drastic change would happen at this time, and just bought some gems and items in the recent sale.

I assume monetizing will occur and cash shops will become more necessary to enjoy game content… but never that early levels of the game would have a complete overhaul like this.

The one thing I found beyond refreshing about this game originally were the early hearts where you had to do stuff like feed a cow. And the underwater content in the beginning. What made it fun was all the different types of interactions, and the open world feel where even as a level 5 or 10 character you could enjoy the fullness of the game. Now that that is gone, my desire to make alts is nonexistent.

At this point, I’m probably going to drop the game, even though I have gems unused, and just look for an alternative. There’s always an alternative. And if there isn’t one now, a new company will use this opportunity and use what was good in gw2 and make an alternative.

I see a lot of posts that mention the early levels are coming really fast now, does that mean it’s going to take a logarithmic curve and level 41-80 is going to feel beyond slow in comparison?

The one thing I really liked about this game is it seemed that the amount of time it took to complete an early level was the same it took to complete a higher level. That’s actually what made the game feel less grindy for me. Running through early levels super fast and then stagnating is beyond frustrating and what caused me to leave many many other mmos.

The restrictions from level 15 through 40 are the worst.

I feel bad for the elementalists. I have one, and I happened to really like the earth skills, it’s ridiculous they have to wait until level 24 to use them now. I also see no reason why I can’t swap a pet on my ranger. It’s one button and it helped me a lot to stay alive in earlier levels.

This “tutorial” phase is way too long. 10/15 levels tops. When it comes to skills and basic game mechanics you shouldn’t have to wait more than 15 levels to start using them.

This person’s video review is very poignant. This is from a new player’s perspective but as someone who has been playing for a year, I agree with everything he says. He does mention the new features he likes in the middle of the video too.

I wonder if part of the reason they did this was to avoid having players make new characters just for the rewards/keys/mining/etc. Now no one is going to want to make a new character unless they are specifically speed running straight to 40 to actually use in WvW or something.

The leveling system changes are a major issue. They take away all the fun of alts and low level characters. I don’t buy a game to have to work and “grind” for ~40 levels to be able to enjoy the major mechanics.

They could have allowed skills to be unlocked by account, so if you are already level 40+ on one character, you don’t have to deal with gated skills.

It’s up to the parent what they let their kid watch/play. Besides, there’s nothing that violent in Gw2 that a 6 year old would be bothered by. Commercials and the news are far worse. I was playing Monkey Island 1 and 2 at age 5, and that game had more questionable content than this one.

With all the changes, it seems like Anet is looking to cater to the younger, below 5 years old crowd anyway.

So getting to enjoy the unique and fun fighting mechanics of the game on low level alts is gone now? I loved the leveling system on this game. I don’t want to have to grind up to level 20 or 40 or whatever to enjoy the system.

And no, I never saved scrolls of knowledge, etc. I just have new character slots I bought and are now useless. I feel gypped. :/

I have read posts assuming they would eventually add a Tier 7, as crafting skills go further up… why not?

I’m curious about the wording. Maybe it means nothing, but I’d like to know that the “orichalcum” one would increase to include all if that ever happened.

Has anyone ever asked ANet about this?

I noticed that some of the permanent tools on sale right now say they can be used for “Used to harvest all…” and some say “same effectiveness as an orichalcum…”

Does this mean if higher tier materials are released, the second type will no longer work on it? Because currently, they are all the same price, so having that type of difference would be a major issue when deciding which one to buy.

I would like to get on based off which skin I like the best, but if I’m spending 1000 gems, I’d like for it to be guaranteed to work with all materials.

Has there been any information regarding this difference in item details?

Thanks for the help!

It is frustrating. Instead of getting into how my characters looked early on (which would have eventually led me to buy lots of clothes and makeover kits from the gem store), I just ignore any sort of customization of my character and play the game for the exploration, story and dungeons.

Which is great, because it saves me lots of money. Clearly Anet’s marketing fell short with certain gamers’ personalities. But I can see how anyone super into customizing their characters in MMOs would be extremely disappointed with the current restrictions.

You can usually get a decent amount of transmutation charges (although I have all mine saved because I never use them). But I think having to deal with knowing you are paying for a skin change is unpleasant and makes experimentation stressful and something to be avoided.

IMO, it’s better to just ignore all customization entirely.

I finally got the hint completion achievement to trigger. I started up yet another Thief, and played without ever touching the F1 key. Eventually after leveling a few levels, the Thief skill hint triggered and then I got the 83/83 achievement trigger too.

Weird thing is, I still am missing one hint according to the list, the Travel to WvW one. So that section still says 80%.

This just started happening to me about 15 minutes ago. I was doing an event (the toxic spore one) in Brisban Wildlands alone, so not that big of a battle. And the sound cut out when the colors got all funny.

How are so many things broken all of a sudden…

Oh wow, thank you! This is exactly the type of database I was looking for.