Guild Wars 2

Soraiah.5042:

We lack things that help us deal more damage (which is necessary since there are a lot of characters with higher levels in the starting zones -> events get harder for new characters since a level 80 can almost onehit an enemy with his autoattack)

You can thank a lot of that on the APRIL FOOLS patch that was the trait revamp back in April. Except, it wasn’t a joke, sadly. You see, the way it worked is that they MASSIVELY increased the level before you started getting trait points and trait tiers. So, to keep the difficulty curve of the game the same, the had to make lower level monsters easier, particularly those monsters at extremely low levels since characters previously had traits and trait stat boosts that were now gated at much higher levels. However, level 80 characters kept all of their traits and stats. So, when they moved into low-level zones, monsters which previously took three hits they could kill in two hits. Monsters which they previously killed in two hits they could kill in one hit. Because, you see, the level 80 was the same strength as pre-patch but the monsters themselves were much weaker. Low level characters were also weaker, so they didn’t kill monsters much faster or slower than they did before.

Now, we have skill unlock increases and changes to stats from leveling. Of course, this won’t make it any more awkward to play around downscaled players. Nope. Not a chance. It won’t be any more awkward in any way, whatsoever. Not happening. whistles

Dinasis.5294:

The one thing that just absolutely irks me to no end is the popups for level up rewards, renown quest rewards, and—to a lesser degree—reward chests for world bosses, map completion, achievement rewards, etc.. It gets me on a couple of different fronts. First off, the popup is gigantic— far bigger than it needs to be. Seriously, is there an interface scaling setting I just haven’t noticed in the last two years?

The other side of it is that they’re annoying. All I can think of when I see those things shaking and flashing in the corner of my screen is Crash Different, in particular the line about psychological warfare and terriers (the line starts at about 1:41 and I grant the whole of the video is likely outdated, but for this, it’s relevant). Do I really have to click on it when I’m still in the middle of combat? No, but I want to because I want it off my screen as quickly as possible.

I do have a suggestion for a solution. If I’d brought this up when I really grew to dislike it after the popup was implemented for Renown Quests, I probably wouldn’t have thought of this first, but take a card from Microsoft. Do something like the balloon popup in the Notification Tray on the Windows Taskbar. Have the chests and the reward buttons appear by the minimap as they do now, but when you click on them, have an informative balloon pop up next to them. Fill it with icons for what was awarded, make them clickable to call up the hint system for things like dodging or stat increases, but please, please make it automatically fade away and dismiss it if the user doesn’t keep their mouse on it or dismiss it manually.

Or, you know, they could just do like they always did it BEFORE all of this feature patch nonsense and the general direction that they have been taking this game for quite some time. You could get a mail when you complete a renown heart. You see the little letter fly towards the top of the screen, and you click on your mailbox. You get a nice letter from the NPC telling you how much you helped them out and how much better fed their cows are now (or in the case of the ettins, a very bad Engrish letter about how much you helped the ettins) and you click the little button to collect your coins. If you can’t be bothered to do that when you complete the heart, you would just wait and do it later at any time when you decide to open your mailbox. If you don’t like NPC letters spamming your mail, you could always delete them after collecting the coins. Although, I don’t think any of these letters counted towards your max letter cap, so I always kept them because they were cool.

But, what do I know? The old system couldn’t possibly have been better, more fun, not much more difficult to use, easier on the eyes, and only slightly less intuitive than all the pop-up UI stuff that we have now. I mean, that’s just crazy talk.

I truly pity you if you never got renown heart rewards the way they were meant to be rewarded to you. The current pop-up UI is an insult. It’s not any easier to use (well, ok it is easier to use in the sense that it is so annoyingly obvious that you have to click on it) and it just clutters the screen for no reason.

I wonder if I still have that ettin letter in my mailbox? I hardly ever use the mail anymore.

Actually my engineer is almost as old as launch. I’ll hop on her for a second. OK, here is one. I believe I got this from completing one of the heart quests in Metrica Province:

Chaos Krewe Leader Pachoo
Fine Work

Your assistance with the skritt has been very helpful to my krewe. I don’t know how you managed to keep your composure with the mangy rodents. The skritt are such a nuisance. They’ll never learn that hoarding chaotic material is hazardous to their health.

- Pachoo

King Slacker.1843:

I think the fundamental issue is ANet went 100% after new player metrics with blinders on. They completely ignored retaining current players. No common sense was applied.

I can’t argue with that.

I think if Anet doesn’t fix their fundamental issues, the game is doomed anyways. This strategy was doomed to fail from the beginning.

No. The game had a lot going for it a launch, especially after several months after they had reduced the number of horrendous bugs that were in the launch version. It’s not that Anet’s strategy was doomed from the beginning. It’s that their strategy failed from poor planning or implementation, in this case both.

Arenanet seemed to want to do a lot with the Living Story, but it’s still hardly picking up steam even after limping along so many times in the past. Either through poor writing or poor execution, LS has just failed to interest people with the exception of particular patches which were particularly interesting or (more often than not) had in-game rewards or mechanics which were worth playing while they were there. Even now, the revamped questing UI and the story achievement system have done more for Living Story than the actual STORY.

Living Story wasn’t inherently doomed. It just didn’t live up to the goals at some part of the process, and the whole story suffered as a result since it never really recovered from its shortfalls.

This recent patch is different. Rather than failing to branch out into a new area that Anet’s been dreaming of, they are changing the existing game that we are already playing into one that many players including myself find less fun. This is why you see so much backlash. If something like Living Story, Super Adventure Box, or some similar project fails: it only really affects that project and players who were interested in that content. Other players only complain because that time and resources could have been spent on something else. But when you go and change the entire leveling system and it fails and it’s a buggy unbalanced mess, that affects everyone who is not exclusively playing level 80 content. It’s not one of those “Oh I don’t like to fix sign posts, this patch sucks” kind of problems. It is a larger and more pressing issue that affects more players in more ways. It doesn’t help that a lot of these changes are unpopular in the first place….

anzenketh.3759:

Diving goggles are accessible at or before level 11. Lions Arch is level 35.

This doesn’t seem particularly relevant, as since there are no longer hostiles in Lion’s Arch you can waltz in there with a level 2 character with no problems.

ColinJohanson.2394:

balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc.

Yeah. That sort of happens when you implement completely new (seemingly arbitrary) stat thresholds in a game which formerly didn’t have them when said game also has various scaling systems. I’ve been saying it for a long time, Arenanet is too ambitious with a lot of the changes they try to implement, and that’s more true in this patch than any patch released in a long while.

I appreciate that Anet wants to change the game, as there’s always room for improvement. But, the level balancing issues should have been EXPECTED, and even if nobody expected them they should have been discovered in testing for changes this big. Did you guys test leveling up in the new system before it was released on the live servers? Did nobody notice that the level scaling seemed to be off, which is something I noticed within HOURS of semi-casual play?

I’m sorry, but I really can’t see how this patch got released like this unless you guys really just didn’t test it at all, or you just tried to do way too much way too quickly, or both. According to the best evidence so far, the level scaling problem is more of an oversight than it is a bug. It appears to be a failure in planning, and not in the implementation of that planning.

I’d really like to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, but to be honest I just didn’t feel rewarded in the new reward system. I got a couple of shiny trinkets from gaining some levels, and leveling to 15 was much faster (about 80% faster according to my estimation) but other than those few things I didn’t really feel like I was getting much that I didn’t get from leveling up in the old system. Add that to the fact that the fundamental design seems to be not thought out properly before implementation, and some horrendous bugs on top of that. I think Arenanet needs to do a little bit more forward thinking with some of these patches, particularly the ones which alter the entire leveling experience like the April trait overhaul and this current patch, although I don’t remember the April patch causing nearly as many balance issues. Maybe it did, I don’t know. I wasn’t leveling a new character, then. I was playing on 80’s during the April patch.

At least answer me one question: why couldn’t these changes be worked on and released individually over time so the kinks could be worked out? Did you want to “wow” us with a huge update? Were a lot of these changes just copied from the China version of the game, as some posters have claimed? It just seems strange to me to do all of this stat and skill overhaul when each of these things change the difficulty curve of various parts of the game, particularly at mid-level. Couldn’t you maybe have changed the skill unlock levels first, and then if there were no problems with that introduce the new stat changes on level up? I really don’t see the logic in gating all of this skills at once and changing the entire level-up mechanics at once. Is it easier for the programmers to do it all at once? Because, I certainly don’t see how it is easier to actually balance so many changes to leveling all at once.

I know that when the traits were changed, monsters were made easier since lower level characters no longer had access to traits or stats from traits. Were such considerations even taken with these new stat thresholds? It looks like someone just slapped a completely new design on the leveling system without much thought as to the in-game ramification that the new leveling system would have on existing in-game mechanics which someone with even a limited experience in programming could have predicted.

Scutilla.3072:

And that’s like saying a profession can’t jump until 24th level. It’s not advanced class features, it’s basic character controls.

I main a ranger, and I can confirm that pet controls are basic character controls. Mobs can aggro your pet, or you could accidentally get your pet to aggro something if you aren’t careful. So, yeah, it’s like saying that you can’t jump or you can’t strafe or you can’t backpedal, except that it’s not nearly as gamebreaking as any of those would be. But, fundamentally it is the same thing. Ranger profession skills are basic character controls, at least the F1 and the F3 are. The F4 not quite as much, and not really with the F2.

I know nobody likes underwater combat, but that doesn’t mean they should stripmine the underwater content in the newbie zones just so new players aren’t accidentally exposed to it.

I like the underwater combat, because I know everyone else neglects their gear. So, I can take a swim in the pool and LOLsmash their face in WvW mode. Some players who are dangerous to fight on land are laughably easy to kill in the water because they don’t know how to use their skills and they don’t even have exotic weapons. Ranger is pretty strong underwater anyway, so I already have an advantage (hey, who knew, the pre-patch ranger was good at something!)

Shanks.2907:

Don’t worry, guardian feels your pain. Though at least you have some sort of combat movement speed.

Sword 2, baby. It beats any in-combat mobility that a mesmer has. Of course, you really need a target for it to work, so you can’t always use it like a Mesmer can use Blink.

If you’re good, you can actually run away from enemy mesmers by targeting other things (such as neutral monsters in WvW mode) and once you are out of combat they shouldn’t be able to catch you unless they are using runes for Swiftness. Most professions will still be on your tail, though, except for most of the cloth professions.

Xillllix.3485:

It’s getting quite clear that this isn’t the same Anet that released the game 2 years ago. Somewhere down the line the management changed and they decided to relaunch a “mainsteam” (dumbed down) version of the game, for “new players”

That seems to be what’s going on. I hope it’s not, but that’s really what it looks like from where I’m sitting.

We used to always make fun of this game by calling it Casual Wars 2. It was a joke, mostly. It was meant in jest as a bit of fun to criticize the game while still recognizing that the game had a lot going for it. But, now you could probably call the game Casual Wars 2 without using any sarcasm. Every time I get back into this game, it seems that Arenanet caters to casual players more and more. I wouldn’t mind that if they didn’t change the entire game just to do it. I bought Guild Wars 2, not Casual Wars 2. I wish they had someone who could figure out how to adapt the game for casuals without changing the entire leveling experience, getting rid of fun content, removing options and freedom, and all of the other stuff that we’ve lost over the last half a year.

I mean, seriously, level-gating the personal story? Level-gating Skill Challenge? Well, technically, level-gating the activating of skill challenges. It’s horrible. My personal story feels much less personal when I have to feed a bunch of cows….. uh, entertain a bunch of cows to gain an arbitrary number of levels just to do a story quest which I was able to complete perfectly fine before without having to do all of this other stuff.

Odeezee.7362:

i always thought that Claypool would be a great model for ANet to put in all starter zones to “teach” people the mechanics of the game.

Claypool is way too hard. I couldn’t just press F or spam autoattack to victory. I mean, I actually had to think and use my brain. I actually had to HOLD the 1 key down on my keyboard, and then release it at a certain time. And, let’s be honest, if someone is accustomed to being spoonfed everything, do you really think they would even think to listen to the instructor say “Hold……hold…….FIRE!” They would needed a pop-up to inform them to shoot the rifle when the dude says to fire.

That is way too complicated. What we really need is a true hand-holding tutorial instance, as well as really good tooltips and popups that explain everything in detail for all of the people who just can’t figure out things for themselves, and for those in which Guild Wars 2 is the first MMO they’ve ever played. But, I don’t think there’s any need for it to fundamentally affect the game or the leveling experience as a whole. At most, maybe they would need to turn the starter zones into “tutorial zones” which seems to be what they are trying to do. I might not mind if it brought back a little of what Pre-searing was like in the first Guild Wars. But, so far, I haven’t really seen any positive changes in that regard other than a dodging quest, extremely low level monsters being very easy, and a GPS, and getting rid of champion monsters. And even then, the first Guild Wars “tutorial” instance had difficult monsters, they were just blocked behind a party-wall so a new player wouldn’t just randomly stumble in there and get killed instantly.

Lostwingman.5034:

They removed water mobs from the parts of the game that are leveled before you unlock underwater combat. So if all you’re doing is following hearts (ugh) to level your brand new alt then you shouldn’t run into any underwater mobs.

Oh, I see. So, you do actually have to facetank mobs, but only if you are in an area where you are underleveled like that level three ranger that I saw on YouTube who managed to get into Frostgorge Sound by following the new compass system.

Nerve.9581:

Criticism is unfair now? Fantastic, I AM in the Twilight Zone!

It’s not so much the criticism as much as how it is delivered. We don’t like negative criticism here. All criticism must be positive. You either have to suggest ways that Arenanet can improve the game or you must POLITELY tell them how much the new patch is full of kitten.

Chuo.4238:

Khristophoros.7194:

Anet’s desperate answer is to make the 1-80 drag longer

There never should have been 80 levels. Not even close. 80 levels is ridiculous – the kind of number you get to after several xpacs…

I never wanted to level an alt because of this – and now I REALLY don’t want to level an alt.

^^
This. This this this this THIS!!!!

I was saying that from the beginning. You know how many levels we had in the first Guild Wars? We had twenty levels. Level 20 was the max cap. And you know what? The game worked fine. Sure, there were a lot of issues, but it was due to the design of the stats and the damage formulas and not the level cap itself. The damage ranges and numbers were too small, meaning that even a small increase or decrease in a number made a big difference. This must have been a complete nightmare for the programmers to try to balance the game, and it’s one of the reasons that we have characters with 20,000 hit points in Guild Wars 2 rather than 600 hit points. But, the actual level cap itself wasn’t a problem. It just meant that each level was more significant than gaining a level in GW2

I always thought the level 80 cap was unnecessary. I figured that most of those levels would be filler, which they are, although I guess with this new feature patch they are a little bit less filler since the skill slot unlocks are spread out more. But, a lot of those levels are still essentially filler and they could have been condensed to a similar level cap with similar rewards to the first Guild Wars. Although, it would probably be hard to do that now that the cat is out of the bag and you’d likely have to rebalance a lot of areas of the game, not to mention explain to people why a lower level cap might be better. So, yeah, good luck going down to a level 20 cap (or even a level 60 cap)

Mank.2183:

Ken DeBoer.9268:

What happens if you go underwater before you get weapon skills?

You use underwater skill 1… #2 is unlocked level 8, then 14, 17, and 23.

Someone told me that you have to unlock underwater skill 1, and that you have to facetank underwater mobs before that.

Did I get trolled?

I’m still waiting for someone to post a complete list of everything that is level-gated. I’m really not kidding when I say that I’m having serious trouble determining which claims are real and which are made up. Some of the actual changes are so inane that it makes it hard to tell when trolls start spouting fake changes that don’t actually exist. It’s like Poe’s Law, but for Guild Wars.

Emtiarbi.3281:

Twenty levels on a mesmer using scepter without the possibility to change the weapon

But, didn’t they buff the mesmer scepter? For it to be torture, you should really have to use the pre-patch mesmer scepter.

Brother Grimm.5176:

LOL at those that think a rollback is even something they would consider…

Rollback is ridiculously unlikely. Best case scenario is that they implement some method for veteran players to avoid at least some of the new changes without technically changing the new content. Not that I expect that to happen, but it’s conceivably plausible.

Lishtenbird.2814:

You should be happy you’re not a mesmer. We don’t have a speed signet, no out of combat speed traits, and one reliable (but unreliable) source of swiftness on one off-handed weapon.

OMG, mesmer was one of the first professions I ever played in this game. I remember running. Slowly.

You can always equip Signet Of Inspiration and pray to the RNG gods for Swiftness. Perhaps Lyssa will smile on you today.

Lodius.5392:

No… it was an unidentified dye…. I leveled up using “Tome of Knowledge” and it clearly gave me an unidentified dye. I sold it on the TP for 30 silver or so.

Dye farming the new keyfarming?

Also, pretty much EVERYONE does this (or uses Traveler runes) in WvW mode since having speed boost is almost a necessity there. Not only does speed help you in-battle or help you escape from battle if necessary, but there is a lot of running around and you often want to get to your destination sooner rather than later.

Sometimes I don’t use speed in PvE, though.

You can use runes to run faster if your equipment is a high enough level. Also, with the new balance changes, Signet Of The Hunt active is pretty sick with the Maul skill on Greatsword.

Emtiarbi.3281:

Sokia.3710:

I’d rather gain twenty levels on a Mesmer without unlocking a single skill than use FaceplantBook.

Oh no, don’t give them ideas.

Twenty levels on an elementalist without unlocking a single….attunement?

XunlaiSpy.9384:

If the forum users are considered in the minority (as in importance and userbase), I suggest everyone go onto social media and voice their concerns.

I don’t use FaceplantBook, or most other social media sites, for that matter. If Arenanet considers me to be a minority, that is their business.

I’d rather gain twenty levels on a Mesmer without unlocking a single skill than use FaceplantBook.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Just remove downstate completely and it’s solved. I understand why MMO players hate It. I dislike it in PvE and despise It in PvP but don’t break the game to solve an issue people who left disagree with.

Yes, for the love of all that is holy, YES!! No downed state would be so much less frustrating in WvW mode.

World Bosses definitely do not belong in the starter zones anymore. I can’t press F to win.

Maybe they can just revert the starter bosses to how they used to be. Most of them have been buffed over time. But, I remember some of them like Shadow Behemoth being laughably easy. There was no timer, and not all of these portals and adds. You could basically AFK the behemoth’s face to win victory. That’s the kind of boss we need in Queensdale. Why faceroll my keyboard to win when AFK autoattack is better?

ElZillcho.1549:

If you want to teach new players about the game then make a proper toturial area when they create a character with the option to skip for player who already know about this. Think Pre-Ascalon area in the original Guild Wars.

We only wish that Guild Wars 2 had something like Pre-searing.

Roybe.5896:

Errant Venture.9371:

Skill challenges are also level-locked

Skill challenges are level locked BUT if one is started by a higher level character, the locked person WILL complete the challenge and will have the skill point available when they are ready to use it.

I’ve heard the same thing. It’s not the Skill Challenge that is locked, it is only activating the skill challenge that is locked.

Shademehr.1397:

anzenketh.3759:

• Adapt Tier Traits (Unlocked at level 30)
• Elite Skill (Unlocked at level 40)
• Master Traits (Unlocked at level 60)
• Grandmaster Traits (Unlocked at level 80)

This sucks for WvW. I’ve got 8 alts (including the one I just started) and despite being a lowbie, I’ve still been pretty darned useful in WvW. These changes make it a lot more difficult to NOT be rally bait.

As someone who plays mostly WvW, I absolutely hate how a lot of low-level characters are rallybait. I used to start doing WvW at level 40 on most of my alts, and the April patch pretty much ruined that by making it to where you don’t get any good traits until level 60. This new patch will make it SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE for anyone trying to WvW on anything that isn’t close to max level.

For that matter, it seems that there are some huge downscaling issues in PvE. Can anyone confirm whether or not there are any huge upscaling issues in WvW? Because, I’d really like to make a level 2 ranger with certain equipment and see if I could just LOLkill everyone with mainhand axe. If downscaled characters are arbitrarily weaker than level-appropriate characters, I figured upscaled characters might actually be stronger than level 80 characters. I’m seriously thinking about testing that out. I might do that when I get off the forums.

In regards to uplevels, so many times I’ve been in a group, and you’re about to kill an enemy but they rally off of one of your low level allies who has already been downed. You don’t want to tell them to leave because in small groups even a low level could CC people (or at least they could back when they could learn all of their weapon skills) and in a zerg numbers can often be the deciding factor especially since the low levels can attack from range and hopefully not be targeted. So, you’re basically stuck with players who you KNOW will be rallybait, but you can’t really do anything about it because you might need them. It’s not even really their fault anyway because you used to be able to WvW with some effectiveness at level 40 or even 30 back when you could actually get trait points. But now that it’s basically impossible to get any good traits at that level, much less several, uplevels are massively less effective than they were a year ago especially if they are a profession such a mesmer which relies fairly heavily on traits. I guess if you are a mesmer you could always be a portal bot for your golems. But, that would only further be cementing your role as a mule who is useless in battle.

stof.9341:

At which level can you ask your pet to stop attacking?

Hopefully, level 1. You know, like it used to be in Guild Wars 2, and Guild Wars 1.

Actually, I’m not entirely certain if you could get a pet at level 1 in the first Guild Wars as I always did the starter quests before doing the ranger quests. But, I think the only thing necessary to get a pet and all of its basic commands in the first Guild Wars is to do the first quest that gives you your first couple of skills, and then walk over to the NPC that gives you the pet quest. I’ve never actually tried it.

illo.5106:

I’m quite happy about the recent changes – not about everything, but all in all they did a pretty good job. Didn’t notice so far anyone in my guild or in mapchat complaining heavily…

I’m sorry, but…. a good job? No. Even if you like every single content change in this patch, this patch is still not a good job. Arenanet tried to do way too much at once, and it shows. This might just be the buggiest version of the game since launch (but not as buggy as launch). Not being able to change skills, the interact function not always working properly, profession trainers in low level areas telling level 80 characters that they need more experience before learning traits, the HORRIBLE scaling issues…. I’m sorry, but this is in no way a good patch. Even if you like the fundamental changes to the game, they still needed to be done gradually over the course of a few months or more. Some of the bugs were so bad that I was literally laughing at how bad they were. At least that was something that this patch had in common with launch: laughing at how horrendous the glitches are.

The launch bugs were a lot funnier, though, especially the ones that were less game-breaking. Anyone remember shooting up out of the water with an engineer? Man, that was some funny stuff. In this patch we mostly got some basic game functions not always working properly and a compass that doesn’t work.

Things that were removed:

- Appropriate downscaling algorithm

- Items from some karma vendors (such as some vendors in Queensdale no longer selling gathering tools or salvage kits)

- No more champions in starter zones (not that they hadn’t almost all already been removed already)

Surprise? NO… I….. I can’t believe that post is serious. They were SURPRISED that people had trouble understanding downed state? What? This game had pretty much NO TUTORIAL and very little explanation for any of the basic mechanics. I discovered what my downed state skills were by furiously reading the tooltip every time I went down in hopes that I would be able to figure out what the skills did before I died. Is there even a way to view downed skills in-game without actually BEING downed?

The only way for a casual gamer to find out how to use downed state is to use the wiki. That’s probably still true since there is still no TUTORIAL for downed state, as far as I’m aware. The only changes that they’ve made is that they’ve level-locked the skills. So, instead of furiously trying to find out what four skills do before you die, you’ll be furiously trying to figure out what one skill does before you die and then furiously trying to figure out what another skill does before you die and then furiously trying to figure out what another skill does before you die and then furiously trying to figure out what another skill does before you die. It’s a little bit simpler, I guess? I mean, you are learning one thing at a time spaced over many levels rather than trying to learn one thing at a time four times in a row very rapidly. But, I really don’t see how it makes that much of a difference. Unless there is some way to actually practice using the downed skills, you’re still not going to be very good if you get downed.

How is this better than what we had before, exactly? Is there a new downed state tutorial that I completely missed while leveling my alt? All I noticed was an extremely easy to locate dodging quest, a new GPS system, and some attempts to explain things every time you gain a level. Wouldn’t it be better to add a tutorial level where you actually GET DOWNED and you are taught what the skills do and what they are for? Even Guild Wars Factions had a tutorial level which introduced players to basic game mechanics like Death Penalty. Is it really that hard to add an hours worth of tutorial content to introduce players to downed state, dodging, and underwater combat? And I’m talking about a real tutorial and not trying to introduce the concepts into the starter instance which is actually a story quest regardless of how many times people refer to it as the tutorial instance. Wouldn’t it be better to have a real tutorial instance somewhere in the game?

I guess Arenanet is just catering to a different group of players, now. I liked the freedom I had before to do my personal story at any time that I wanted, or to attempt any skill challenge that I could manage to reach. It actually made the skill challenge….well, challenging. Sure, things were overly complicated and there was a lot of stuff to figure out. But, I was willing to put the time in to figure all of that stuff out because the game was fun. I was willing to figure out whether or not the Shovel or Boulder had any use. I eventually figured out when I should be shattering illusions and when I should leave them standing. I figured out (quickly) that champion monsters were instant suicide at low levels unless you had a large group to help you (hence the term: Group Event)

It looks like it just may be the case that Arenanet is remaking this game for an audience of which I am not a part of.

I still find it almost unbelievable that they didn’t know that downed state was confusing. Downed state, dodging, had pretty much no in-game explanation, and certainly no tutorial. You rarely even get a chance to practice downed skills because when you go down you will probably be defeated shortly unless you are already familiar with the game (in which case you don’t need a tutorial)

The fact that they were surprised that downed state was confusing to new players explains A LOT of things. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that they didn’t realize that some players would have a lot of trouble figuring it out. Guild Wars 2 is not my first MMO, and even I found the basic game mechanics sadly lacking in explanation, particularly the downed state. And, I already knew about downed state before playing the game because I followed beta footage posted to YouTube.

Charleston Chew.1209:

For me, you and people of your mindset is what is killing the game. No matter what % of the populace you make the game will be better for me (and in my opinion for anyone of my mindset) when/if you leave the game.

Well, thanks for actually having the reproductive organs to admit that. If this is really the direction that Arenanet wants to take this game, then I will leave this game to you and the other people who like this kind of content. As for myself, I definitely do not feel that this is game that I bought, and if I had known on release that Arenanet would take this game in this direction I seriously would have considered getting something else. Not that I regret my purchase. I had a lot of fun with this game. But, I’m not convinced that I would have bought it over something else that released in 2012 had I known the long-term direction that Arenanet would take with this game.

Kuldebar.1897:

ANet can salvage the system if they revert some of the locked skills/abilities, examples:

• Weapon Swap

• Off-Hand

• Skill Challenge

Skill Challenge and Personal Story are a PRIORITY to revert, just after fixing the scaling issues. It’s not much of a Skill Challenge if you have to wait until you are strong enough to do it. Because, waiting until you are stronger makes the Skill Challenge so much more challenging. And, to do my Personal Story I don’t like being forced to go do a bunch of impersonal heart quests and events just to reach an arbitrary level.

Actually, I’ve heard that you can still DO the skill challenges at any level, you just can’t ACTIVATE them. Because, you know, that totally won’t confuse new players at all.

Turn off tutorial? How about turn off the entire 9/9 patch? Or at least, turn all of it off except for the balance changes. For that matter, I’d like to turn off some of the April “features” as well.

Vietkrabz.5620:

I got a little bit, centimeter by centimeter, I reported it ASAP. But I heard something where some people get the full 10 levels for maxing at 0-500, being still new to this game I thought the end of the leveling from 300-400 or 500 would be the most exp, boy I was wrong

Crafting experience is always uniform, regardless of what level you are. Gaining a crafting level will always give you 2% of a character level (I think)

At least, that’s how it DID work before the latest patch. I haven’t even touched crafting in the last two days.

Vayne.8563:

Some of the gating is apparently supposed to be only for new characters.

I’d like to know what.

Eric.7569:

Give it a few days and see how things look then. Word is some of the leveling stuff is unintended. See if that’s true or not before writing it off completely.

Too many bad changes. They would have to revert quite a bit of it to get me to play this game again. And, fixing the scaling issues is necessary. But, they’d have to change a lot more than that to get me to come back.

Actually, I think Leatherworking and Cooking are still faster than Weaponsmithing. I might be wrong. It’s been a little while since I did a lot of crafting.

Eric.7569:

I LIKED things being dangerous from the very beginning. I do not the reduced difficulty of the starting areas, not at all.

Just level up more. As long as you are downscaled, the monsters actually become more difficult as you level because the new level-gated statboost break the downscaling system. You’ll be getting owned by Luminescent Grub in no time.

eyestrain.3056:

After playing a while more I notice that even though all 5 of my weapon skills are unlocked, I still only have 3 underwater skills. This is the kind of inconsistency that is confusing.

Yeah, the inconsistency was extremely jarring. My necromancer had very few underwater weapon skills unlocked, but I had underwater Death Shroud 1,2,3, and 5 unlocked (but not skill 4). The level-up texts didn’t help very much in some cases, and the constant text and pop-ups at level-up were as distracting as they were helpful. I completely failed to notice that I could equip a secondary underwater weapon, as I don’t remember seeing it in a level-up thing and I was too busy trying to fix bugged skills to notice. I only noticed that I could equip a secondary underwater weapon when I went to my hero panel to equip a stronger dagger and I noticed in the UI that I had the option to equip a secondary underwater weapon.

So, basically, I had underwater skills that unlocked at a different rate than regular weapon skills which unlocked at a different rate than Death Shroud skills which unlocked faster than underwater Death Shroud skills, and somewhere along the line I could equip two underwater weapons but I have no idea when that happened. I tried reading the new level-up text, but all it really told me was what was unlocked now that had been locked. It didn’t really explain very much. The only really helpful thing was that it gave me some loot. I got a salvage kit, and a back piece, I think. So, I got some cool toys from a couple of levels, but other than that I didn’t notice any huge improvements over the previous system. Some of the level-up texts were useful, but some of them weren’t very useful and some of them were a bit confusing. When I’m in the middle of a mob and I randomly level up, I can’t be bothered to spend an entire minute poring over text. They need to tweak the new leveling UI to be more user-friendly. Maybe they could have an option to where you become invincible when you level up but you also can’t damage mobs. This way you could actually spend time reading all of the text properly without having to run way out of aggro range of any mobs.

My recommendation: stop playing the game, but check back up on it in six months or a year. I’ve been on the verge of quitting this game many times. Arenanet can make some pretty bad changes to this game sometimes, although I’ve never seen them do anything this horrendous before. But, things might get better. I wouldn’t expect them to get better any time soon, though. My recommendation is to find another game to play for at least six months, then come back and see if Arenanet has made this game fun again.

I’ve heard so many stories like this. I’m actually going to call my friend tomorrow. I told him to buy the game months ago. I don’t think he ever did. I’m going to tell him NOT to buy it. I’m going to tell him to just keep playing WoW since he seems to love WoW so much. And, trust me, the last words that I want to hear coming out of my mouth tomorrow night is “keep playing WoW”

I recommend adding a Gem Shopaholic title.

KeikaStrife.6147:

That really is a pity, because that sounds like it would have been fun. Maybe not getting randomly owned by mobs of high level players out of nowhere (I had enough of that in TERA) but everything else…. :/ Man.

It was fun. I’m not talking about players, though. Champions are just really strong monsters. There used to be quite a few of them, even in the very low level areas. You’ll be walking along and say “Hey, I want to kill this Champion Bandit Lieutenant” so you waltz in there thinking you are all tough and you get killed by some bandit cannon.

So, a couple of levels later you see that the event is up and you say “Hey, I want to kill this Champion Bandit Lieutenant” so you waltz in there and kill the cannon even though it takes you down to very low health. You heal up, kill the bodyguards, and then the Lieutenant kills you….quicker than the cannon did.

So, a couple of levels later you say “Hey, I want to kill this Champion Bandit Lieutenant” and you notice that three other people are about to fight him. So, you wall waltz in there and take out the cannons and the bodyguards. Lieutenant is sitting there. You rush in and you die, along with the other three people you joined.

Of course, once they added “champ bags” people just farmed the champions for the loot bags, so there was always a huge group of players there to kill them. But, in earlier versions of the game, it was almost impossible to kill a champion with less than three players unless one of those players was a really high level or you messed with the AI by obstructing their line-of-sight, or something. Champions were ludicrously powerful, which was fun. They removed all of the champions from starter zones because once they added loot bags people realized that they could run-around killing champions non-stop and get good loot, and often karma and experience as well. So, basically, new players weren’t even exploring anything because they would get just as much experience following a huge group of players around and pressing the 1 key on their keyboard. Champions were a lot more fun before the special champ loot bags, because there was rarely ever a large group of players assembled to fight them.

I’m guessing that the other reason that they removed champions from starter zones was that most of them were simply too powerful. For example, in Queensdale there was maybe only one champion that you could defeat by yourself unless you were massively overleveled for the area. So, what it meant is that most champions would just sit there and kill any player that got close unless there was a sizable group of players who got together to kill it. I could see how this could be considered a bad idea to have in a game which has no real tutorial or tutorial-like area. You could literally be level six and run into a monster which could kill you in two hits. It seemed really punishing because we had armor repair costs and waypoint fees back then.

Resubian.5823:

This new system makes the game feel like an MMO in its early beta stages, not an MMO that has been around for 2 years.

It is like being in a beta. In fact, on 9/9 the game was almost as buggy as it was at launch. And, this game had a LOT of bugs at launch.

Snowmoon.1758:

To be fair, anyone who has played mmos should know that no company
is ever perfect and epic screw ups can happen. The QC definitely has failed
on this one for sure. Heck they may even have just copy pasted everything
blindly from the china client.

All I am asking is to just give them time to resolve this.

Fair enough. But, I still want to know why they thought this was a good idea. From what I hear, the China client wasn’t received well, either.

Relshdan.6854:

vE.
lol…..so many angry map/say chats after a ranger knocks mobs/ champs out of AoE.

As someone who used to play ranger a lot, it’s pretty much impossible to use PBS in PvE. It seems that no matter when you use the skill, or how rarely, someone will pretty much always use their strongest channel or AoE right when you fire the shot. I got to the point where I would almost never use it, and then I’d see someone about to take a hit and I’d think “now is the time to use PBS” and as soon as I press my button some warrior starts channeling Hundred Blades.

I mean, it’s like the game is designed to hate PBS in PvE. You’re probably better off never using it unless you are solo. Out of all of the times I’ve used PBS in a group, it has almost always hindered the group more than helped. It can be very useful in WvWvW mode, though. But in PvE it’s almost entirely useless.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t mind the hate so much as I mind people running with something which was proven untrue and repeating it like it’s fact (“Heh, can’t gather or salvage until it’s unlocked.”)

Blame Arenanet for that one. They apparently didn’t list all of the game changes in the patch notes. I encountered several things in-game that I don’t remember reading anywhere in the notes. So when people started saying that salvaging was locked, or that diving goggles were locked, or that jumping puzzles were locked, or that the wardrobe was locked, or that the trading post was locked, I had no way to verify whether it was true or not because I’m not willing to delete one of my characters to open up a free character slot to create a new avatar to test all of the claims out. And no, I don’t have a ton of gems sitting around to buy another character slot just to test out what craziness Arenanet may or may not have put into the game.

So, if someone would finally make a comprehensive thread about what is level-gated and what is NOT level-gated, then maybe you would hear less nonsense. And no, I have not seen a single thread like that. Every post I’ve seen that claims to list all locked content has not been a complete list.

Moyayuki.3619:

And what i hear about Ele attunements just terrifies me.

Do they really only start out with Fire Attunement? Does the elementalist still start out with scepter? Autoattack is hilariously weak on scepter in Fire Attunement. I remember when I first started my ele I was so annoyed at how long it took to kill everything, and that was with having access to Water Attunement. On the bright side, that dragon’s tooth skill is extremely powerful, and it’s only the second skill. So, maybe it won’t be so bad.

Is it true that you don’t unlock Earth Attunement until level 24? Because, Fire Attunement and Water Attunement are boring, and I only really found Air Attunement fun on scepter/dagger or scepter/focus. Leveling an elementalist would be boring now since I’d basically be camping Water Attunement and spamming scepter 2 for a long time.

I’d be more concerned with ranger, actually. Do you seriously have to unlock profession skills? Being able to “heel” your pet is almost necessary on a ranger, as it can aggro things that you don’t want it to aggro and the only way to get it off of something once it attacks is by using F3 or F4. So, now, you’ll just have to be really careful with your positioning to make sure that some random monster doesn’t attack your pet or you don’t accidentally aggro something that you don’t want to fight. Can you at least still STOW your pet, or is that level-gated as well?

Khristophoros.7194:

Unfortunately this is just how GW2 is. It cannot retain players and there’s no way to fix that. So my suggestion to Anet is go back to the standalone expansion pack model. You’re not gonna keep this game alive with the current business model because it will never have enough player retention. Changes like this are almost death throes. You can’t keep this up.

Most of the players I’ve talked to actually WANT expansion-style content much more than they want Living Story type stuff. People want new zones and new weapon types. They want new professions. They want Tengu as a playable race. Personally, I want skritt as a playable race, but I think it’s safe to say that that’s a longshot, especially with the direction the game is currently going.

KeikaStrife.6147:

I only started playing this game within the last 30 days, so I cannot boast any measure of dedication to this franchise.

I’ve been playing GW2 since a month after it launched. I LOVED the first Guild Wars. Even Guild Wars 2, which I was a huge critic of, had a lot more going for it than most other MMO’s at the time.

I was so excited about this game and now I get to uninstall it…. ugh….

It’s a pity you never got to play the “real” Guild Wars 2. You know, the one that we had before April of this year. This game had a lot going for it. In fact, several months after this game launched, I might argue that it was the best MMO on the market. I’m talking MMO in general, not just action-combat MMO’s. We had questing that was streamlined that was generally more interesting than quests in most MMO’s. There was WvWvW, and we had jumping puzzles which were LIGHTYEARS beyond jumping puzzles in any other MMO I had ever played or read about. But, it didn’t take long before strange design decisions started happening and the game was taken into a direction that I did not find interesting or even fun in some cases. But the game still had a lot going for it (particularly WvWvW mode) but it seems that all of the “fun” stuff in the game keeps getting removed or changed every few months.

You never experienced trait points at level 11, getting stomped by champions in low level zones because you don’t know how ridiculously strong they are. You missed a lot of the stuff that made the game truly fun. Sure, this game was a buggy mess at launch, but there was a lot of fun within the mess. The mess that they’ve made now is just a mess.

Also, QUEEN’S GAUNTLET. Those were the days, man. Queen’s Gauntlet. Even the Super Adventure Box which is really popular but I never really cared about. It’s just a glorified minigame, but it’s a pretty entertaining minigame. So much cool stuff that could be in this game, and instead we get level-gating underwater combat. What Arenanet should have done was add a “Queen’s Gauntlet” type of section, but with kid-gloves instead of hard bosses. They could use this to have a REAL tutorial section that actually teaches players how to dodge and use skills. Some profession trainer could teach you skills and you could have mock fights and stationary targets. I think even the original Guild Wars games had something like this. Well, maybe not the very first GW. But, I seem to remember the other campaigns having target practice where you could learn the range of your skills, etc.