Guild Wars 2

T8 Kaineng

My re-evaluation on the removal of White Swords:

Had a bit more time to play with this now, though we’ve had the same match-up from start to end, so I have a very limited perspective on how this affects other servers.

In defence: Most of my server have just given up on trying to defend camps and towers, same with upgrades. We still try to upgrade and defend keeps, though I think this to will eventually change to Garri only. It is simply much more efficient to just re-cap things, leave them paper, let them take, and go recap 5 minutes later. I’ve seen mostly the same from the other two servers in our match-up, unless they happen to be nearby on the way to something else, towers and camps goes un-defended. In our tier there is no way we have enough people to baby-sit all day long, we’re lucky if we have someone to watch Garri most of the day.

Scouting: Largely to few people and little interest to do.

In offence: It is easier to take towers and camps, next to no risk. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been interrupted trying to take a camp even solo these last couple of weeks. Even the north towers are easy to take, since nobody comes to defend them. Got to hand it to Sor though, they sure defend their keeps.

Over all, it is easier to PvE but almost impossible to PvP. Frankly, we’ve started taking N camp, claim it, and upgrade it, and just wait for enemies to come retake it, and hope they are willing to come fight us more. Defenders largely find it easier to just let us take things, and re-cap it when we’re working on next object. I think the most fights I can remember last week was when we took N-camp, left, waited 2 minutes, ran back and ambushed the defenders trying to re-cap. After a couple of times they just left the N-camp alone.

---

I really don’t know how much of this is our match-up or not, but we are seeing much less fights.

I think this change could work if something else was put in to assist us, or changed how the mechanism worked. I don’t think the idea is completely stupid. But I really miss that feeling of racing the clock with the enemy zerg breathing down your neck as you try to cap a tower. There was more risk involved, and that if there was someone nearby camps they could spot and come interrupt you. Now it feels no-risk to attack, and hopeless to defend.

Bloodlust gives 1 point on stomp. In adittion to PPK giving 1 point on kill (no matter how). And killing Dolyak gives 1 point.

Edit: and claiming Sentry gives 1 point

I don’t know if there are anything else that gives Points ? Didn’t know dolyak escort did, that would be pretty nice if it did.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

WvW matches were originally supposed to be 2 weeks long!

They stuck with 1 week, but we’ve seen how zergs win and bandwagoners migrate to top servers.

What some have suggested are stick with a week long matchup, but break each day into 3 8-hour shifts.
You then average out the score from each shift from each day to get a slightly better score than the current one where night capping can help a server win even though they are really the weaker server.

Just chiming in to try to explain this part, since it looked like 2 people misunderstood it slightly.

The main idea for breaking a day into 3 shifts of 8 hours each, is to reward each of those 3 times equally. But at the same time make each “shift” interesting without being overshadowed by a lack of coverage in another shift.

(numbers made up just to show effect) Say you get 3 points for winning a shift, 2 for second and 1 for last place. During a day you can get from 3 to 9 points, so if you have good Prime time you might win that for 3, but lose the night and morning and get 1 for each of those, for a total of 5 points.

It means that losing say for example the nighttime won’t cripple you so much as it does now, but still be worth the same amount of points as any other time.

Tom Gore.4035:

I tried ranger melee with sword mainhand. The autoattack chain roots you! What the f? Whoever thought about that should be shot.

I know this will sound stupid to many of you, but *this* is the main reason I can’t stand playing ranger. Love the class except for that, just don’t like a lot of the weapons/skills for the class, and that Sword was literally the one weapon I was looking the most forward to in this entire game. Had they changed/fixed/whatever with the sword, I’d have loved to play ranger

Other than that, been playing thief in WvW today, and I now officially hate LB power rangers, all that annoying pewpew rapid shots kills my poor full zerk thief so fast :p I should go back to my guardian so I can leap/blind/aegis/bocks until they snap their bow in half and hides in the bushes to cry.

Seriously, it is really nice that ranger got some updates that makes them a viable class in WvW, see them very efficient at single roaming. I’m just tired that LB is the only weapon used, and that I myself absolutely *HATE* the current sword.

MadMan.5109:

The game is called Guild Wars and not BLOB wars.

So the PPK isn’t helping in that at all.

And for the lower ranked servers who are playing against higher tier servers.
They will loose with bigger differents then before, because of population on the higher tiers is much bigger.

So change it back to what it was.

On the other hand, that also means that a higher ranked server can get higher score, and change/adjust their glicko rating faster, to get away from the lower ranked servers (so they don’t have to play against them etc). So there are some advantages to be gained even there.

I would love to see some improvements to the NPC’s, especially in the way they behaves and some more variation in different types. But better scaling tower/castle lords, and some tougher normal guards could be interesting.

Liked a good deal of what they did to EotM in that regard.

I think most/all of the WvW centric guilds I can think of from the top of my head on my server at this stage does not require 100%rep. Many likes to rep one guild in WvW, and another in PvE etc, and most of the ones that had 100rep requirements etc have already moved off.

I guess it is just how we like to run things here, most of our veteran players are pretty independent, so thrives better this way.

Cakemeister.5792:

Stick around. BP/AR/DR might be a good matchup.

It might be, looking forward to see how that turns out, though us on Kaineng wants to get our teeth into some of those as well for next week, we like SoR/SF but 3 weeks in same match-up gets stale!

For the most part this is a player skill/build issue. I do best against camps with my Guardian, because I’m the most used to guardian. Starting to do fairly well with thief, but finding that to be much trickier. Seen others take the camps easy with just about any class imaginable.

One of the fastest I’ve seen is Engineer, but that is probably because we got a couple of good Engineers in my guild.

Hi there Osc!

"oscuro"

I believe that structural defenses (oil and cannons) should have “shielding” that apes cannot go over and single target penetration skills do not penetrate. This does not mean it does not take damage, it simply means YOU do not. ACs are one thing. If you cannot survive on an AC, your team is not doing its job, or your siege placement sucks. But cannons and oil require you to be right at the fron, taking 20-30 hits per second depending on zerg size.

I agree on this one, atm it can be near suicide to get on a cannon, and I don’t really see the oil used much outside of desperate last acts of spite in hope to get the last ram.

"oscuro"

Also, I think siege should be able to be healed by any engineer out of combat who has tool kit equipt (similar to healing turrets). It should drain supply from the player, and the amount of supply necesaary to build it is directly proportional to the amount of supply necessary to rebuild. (10 supply put into an ac gives it 30% of its health back.

I do not agree about the Engineer part, but to let the workers and/or other npc’s in the object to repair would be an interesting idea. It would also make them more useful all over. Either that or let all players repair with supply in same way as building.

"oscuro"

Finally, the gate toughness should be WAY higher. Walls should be a little higher, but mainly after reinforcement. Paper gates currently are the easiest way to cap a keep (even if there’l are cannons and oil and ACs. I’m pretty sure a solid wood gate would be a little harder to get through than hitting it with a ram 15-20ish times.

I agree that keeps should be a bit harder to capture, but I don’t really have any good ideas how yet. Frankly I think reworking NPC’s to actually use siege and call other nearby NPC’s, with a few other improvements to their behaviour would do a whole lot to help. Also diversifying with a few more NPC guards, a few with some aoe skills that they can pour over the walls etc could actually be an annoyance for small groups.

On another note I do also feel that most keeps are simply to large, the npc’s are so spread out and all the siege gets separated so much it is hard to defend it. Granted, I am playing on a Tier 8 server, my view probably is Biased.

"oscuro"

Finally, Rams should be different. They should require 4 people to use, and have a much longer cast time, but do more damage per hit. Superior Rams should have roof shielding to protect from AC Fire. This last idea is kind of an out there one, but I like it

Hmm, I think that using 4 players is going to simply be to much trouble, for both ANet and the players. But I like the idea of the roof shielding, but I’d rather have that on the superior one, make the superior siege the same effectiveness but have something extra. Like Superior Ram being a normal ram but with a roof shield. So instead of +X% better, they actually give you a different play-style.

Lots of different reasons for the bronze, most casual WvW’ers usually won’t get any higher than bronze. I myself only started WvW 7 months ago, so I simply haven’t had time to get past mid bronze yet. Also the largest groups you see form us are the "zergs" which is mostly have the newer players and some of the more casuals, lead by a couple of the veterans etc.

Most of our veterans tend to run in smaller groups, either with each-others or mixed in with us bronze’s. But don’t worry, most of the core still remain in Kaineng. But we’re sorta the "roaming server" for a reason, most of the old core tends to skip the zergs and head straight for small groups.

PS: I know you’ve been outnumbered by both of us, but honestly, unless BP and DR are even more depleted than rumors say, you’re not going to fare any better against any of the other servers atm. I agree that 3 weeks in a row on the same match-up gets a bit stale, even if SoR is really getting in gear this week. But it could have been MUCH worse for you guys.

I think it is a good idea for another huge battlefield type map.

I would rather like to see some different types of maps though, to encourage different play-styles.

On the other hand, my greatest wish lately has been to make Queens-Dale a WvW map, so I can gank all the kittens in map-chat -_-’

Just pointing out that the Norn Elites (Bear and Snow Leopard) was unfortunately (though understandably) reduced in effectiveness a while back. So their rush/run ability is now much slower, and enemies can now catch up to it.

It was a sad sad day for my Norn Guardian, as I had finally found *1* elite I actually liked on the character! Back to the "We got no other elite worth taking so I’m taking this" elite again. Sigh, Renewed Focus.

Glicko is unfortunately slow in adjusting, which is part of why these Exoduses becomes such bad experiences, as whoever is left got to deal with the weeks of hanging before the ratings adjust properly. This is because a server shouldn’t fall a bunch of ranks because half a sever takes vacation over xmas etc. Still no fun for those in your situation.

With some luck, you and FC will swap spots next week, I think they’re sick of playing the rest of us T7/8 as we’re to weak for them anyways.

Since I have absolutely no metric to guess you current population/coverage etc I have no idea where you would fit in, but if you’re smaller than FC and larger than SF you will fit in well in T7/8. We’re looking forward to see you guys!

Having fun is winning, winning does not mean you have fun.

"The objective is to win. The goal is to have fun."

Alysia.4635:

I love downed state. And also the rally feature, why do you want to remove?

the moving camera after downed is really annoying, i confirm.

Others can probably explain the problem with down/rally better than I can, but I’ll try.

In PvE I don’t mind it at all, it works quite well there to be honest, gives you a chance to get back up and back into the action etc. And even in several things in WvW it doesn’t work that bad, like 2-3 of you taking a tower or camp, and one gets downed etc, kill npc and back up. Certainly feel heroic.

Problem comes when you’re in group fights in PvP or WvW. For example in a 2 vs 4, you manage to get 3 of them down, but their last guy got your ally downed, and is a fraction faster on the stomp than you are, and all 3 downed enemies “Rallies”. Completely changing the fight, into something you’ll likely lose, from a good chance of winning.

this works even stronger in zerg vs zerg, where the larger team again have an advantage, they can just focus and spam 1 to almost instantly kill a body, no need to stomp, and all their downed players rally. Making it even further hopeless for the smaller team to stand a chance. This also completely removes Attrition from smaller groups vs zerg, because even if you down 5+ people, if they toss enough CC and damage on 1 of your guys, they’re all up, even without the need to hard rez.

Personally don’t have anything against the downed skills and the “band aid” self heal option etc. But I do think that the removal of “Rally” or a limitation to 1 rally per kill, would be a good change.

A lot of players not liking the Rally automatically lump downed state together with it as well. A lot of PvP players dislike both downed/rally because they want their fights pure or clean from backseat participation or such.

PS: In the 2vs4 example I’m usually the downed one on my team, just so nobody got the wrong impression on that :p

The downed state will never be removed (ANet doesn’t like to cut away features they have worked a lot on, and just think of all the skill and animations etc that would be removed, it is also a very unique feature of GW2).

More realistically would be to remove "Rally" on kills. So you have to heal up manually. And that alone could change how it plays to a very enjoyable experience, where people downed are downed, no need to rush stomp before they get a kill to rally etc.

Well, depending on POV of course. But that would fix what I’ve seen most people actually dislike about the downed state.

Synosius.9876:

Dinobot golems…

Where do I sell my soul ?

Grimlock 4 lyfe!

Aeolus.3615:

with the actual number of player i bet they could even remove the “shard” instances of every map to single instance where every one could see each others….

Nope, because of things like the world bosses, enough players keep jumping into specific maps at specific times, so it is not uncommon with 2-3 map instances even in off hours. Queensdale is a prime example of this, often been “kicked” because the instance have been depopulated 2-3 times in a row until I get back to the main shard. Simply because of the crazy amount of players that run in circle after the world bosses that spawn somewhere every 15 minutes.

That was entirely off topic…

Please vote YES for /ajax chat channel on Kaineng!

Aeolus.3615:

Remove PVD, player now cant damage structures.
Decrease players damage to siege like 70-80%.
Decrease damage from siege to structures.

I would love to see a test with removing Player vs Door damage, so you would need siege to damage a door.

Don’t like the less damage to siege from players, I think there are other ways to make this more viable, like the above mentioned “shield” that you have to destroy the siege before the player takes damage (perhaps only from ranged attacks, so melee still hurt).

No, we don’t want even less damage from siege to structures, that would just make it even more boring to tear down walls and doors as it is. If you make it even slower than it is, then small groups will grow beards while trying to take down a tower door. Without the swords atm, if you’re not there to defend it or happen to be near, all that would happen is that you’re making small groups spend longer time on sitting ramming 1 button.

Seriously already ANet, make the stupid ram auto attack ! >_< It is a great time to go fetch more to drink or some potato chips, but you’re stuck there hitting 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 over and over…

I really like the idea of Lions Arc being server specific, as it would function as a community spot. Unfortunately this will never happen, because it would kitten of the PvE players. (Even if we left the other cities alone).

Perhaps having a WvW hangout map similar to the Heart of the Mists, that could also take the idling spot out of home Borderlands? It have some advantages and disadvantages. But a place where you also don’t get kicked after 15 minutes for inactivity, and doesn’t really care about lag since it’s just a service/craft spot.

A /server would not be a bad idea, all the pve people would just turn it off anyways.

PS: We on Kaineng need a own /Ajax chat channel, so we can tune in and out of listening to Ajax Blue as we need. He is absolutely hilarious to listen to when it is quiet in EBG, but it can be a bit much if you’re trying to pay attention to what the CMD is saying

In general like PPK.

Our main fear has been that players will run or hide in towers more often. But thankfully not seen much of that the last 2 weeks. But that might be because we got awesome opponents these weeks!

Maskaganda.2043:

Argos Helios.4965:

Collision detection between players.

No…really.

Player collision would be great but I don’t think we’ll ever see it. Same reason as aoe cap, the servers are already under stress in very big battles, my guess is it would get much worse with all the extra calculations. Based on past experience, both of those would greatly improve wvw, if not for technical limitations.

I don’t know about the engine limitations. But a few other things to keep in mind:

If you change this, you will also have to change this for the entire PvE section of players, and they will scream bloody murder. (I think it would actually be a better change for PvE than WvW, because they would have to spread out for boss fights etc like the shatterer. Make those boring fights slightly more interesting).

It doesn’t have to be full collision detection, you could probably just make an effect where you get say 25/33/50% slower movement while you’re technically “inside” someone else. And a whole lot of players would probably get frustrated with the lesser mobility, and spread out more.

Full Collision detection would either have to be ignored for dodge rolls, or dodge rolls would be impossible in lot of situations, or limited. And we already have trouble getting new players to dodge as is.

Haha!

My guild been running a little holiday event today, where we tried to get as many as possible on engineers online, and run around and bring gifts to both SF and SoR! Supply drops and grenades for everyone!

If you ran across a big group of mostly engineers, and happened to kill a human engineer in Santa red Winter Explorer costume, with a toybag backpack and a cork-gun, I hope you got something good from the loot bag, happy wintersday!

Instead of "no downed state", how about "no rally" ? That seems to be the main issue in larger fights. One stomp and 3-5 people automatically returns, and can turn the tide of a fight.

It would be interesting to see AoE hit a few more targets, nothing drastic say 7-8, that should still work without to much engine problems and lag. (Granted, I’m slightly biased on that since I play on low tier server, so not much lag).

Also if you remove AC’s what else is there to deal with large groups ? It is just about the only thing we got that can hit multiple enemies over the normal skill caps, and can create "no enter" zones to force people away from gates etc. Heck if they want to find a way to break up zergs, make the AC even better against packed up players (but perhaps weaker against 2-3).

Iron Curtain: I would definitively like to see an event where the walls are invulnerable to PvD, to see how that turned out. SiegeDisruptors would be a thing, but perhaps people would start learning to actually siege from a distance again.

Collision detection: That could be really interesting, imagine how many people would fail to dodge out of an AC because of that! But on the whole I’d rather avoid it, it you just want a knee-jerk way to remove zergs, activate friendly fire.

Structure upgrades price reduction: This really should be a thing, even before the no white swords test lots of upgrades was just a waste of gold and supply. People are losing money from playing WvW if they upgrade a lot, since there is small returns. Instead of upgrading the rewards, might as well reduce the costs. I am also of the belief that the structures in WvW should work closer to the EotM variants, that starts tougher from the start, and rather have less upgrades, that includes the home keeps always having a WP.

"Mishi"

I mean how to prevent the blob from getting in quicker then a small havoc group should be the main focus. Not increasing wall/gate hp to promote blobbing and deter havocing.

Agreed, but not really any good suggestions. The idea of no player damage vs door, siege only, is the closest I can come up with, lots of zergs don’t have the patience if they get repeatedly Siege Disrupted.

Your server would help, as well as what types of play you’re interested in.

For Zerging, I’d go with Guardian or Warrior, but at easy to learn and are wanted in zergs.

For Roaming solo: Thief is the best one, but also Ranger and Warrior can do well. This is harder to learn in general, not because of the classes, but because of soloing in WvW can be frustrating.

Small Groups: Most anything can work, the group composition matters more.

But if you’re on a Tier1 server, you will probably not get much chance to solo roam, and if you’re in Tier8 server you’re only going to see small zergs 1-2 hours a day. So it depends on server and play time etc.

An all over recommendation, Warrior works for everything, and is easy to learn.

*Gets all teary eyed*

Our guys are hoping we get another week up against SoR, we’re starting to plan out strategies to deal with your big groups >:) It has been really fun, though I’ve mostly been playing on my level 10 up-leveled engineer this weekend, so I can’t say I have participated much, except playing rally-bot once they realize I’m an up-level :p

I have no idea how to explain it, but back when I first met SoR after you fell down to bronze first time, I could sort of feel it when playing against you that your people where not happy, not enjoying themselves. No idea how, just got the feeling. Now I just keep feeling that you guys are having fun. And that makes it so much more fun to play against you Keep it up!

I’m also looking forward to meet BP (Fresh meat and all that!) and see where they will settle down, kinda suspecting that they will push us up to Tier7 with AR+FC, which might not be so bad...

Frankly, the WvW daily’s so far have been a lot easier than the others, you can often get 2-3 of them solo in a few minutes. As opposed to the PvE ones where you usually have to run at least half the different parts of the game.

Remember that you can also combine them, so pick 2 easy ones from WvW and 1 from PvE for daily.

Honestly not a fan of the "take a keep" one either, but I think the "defend something" is even worse right now, because of the recent change. It isn’t to hard to hold a tower for some minutes to get the defensive event, but if you can’t find a tower under attack in the first place.

And yes, I completely miss-understood that Veteran Creature killer one to, still not to hard to chase down one of those, but it seems weird since almost every single guard on the map is a Veteran creature, but doesn’t count.

I’d take Home Alone traps over half the Tower Upgrades we currently got

T8 NA

Haven’t played enough to really make an opinion yet. What I have seen is that it is way to easy to take keeps from enemy servers, and that they rush to get waypoint and no other upgrades in order to try to spot attacks. Defense is harder but our server (Kaineng) was never to good at that in the first place, so no real difference.

We don’t really have any large enough guilds to split up and run different teams, and we where already used to small groups go and take/cap stuff. I did notice that one of our enemy servers split their main zerg (SoR, GSCH, love you guys!) and ran a couple of groups of 20-30 players to take smaller objectives, before gathering up to take down our Garri combined, was fun to watch and play against.

But outside of a few hours in prime time, none of us servers down here have enough people to do anything like this for the rest of the day. Cheers!

Are you seeing more soloers?
-Nope
Are you seeing more havoc groups?
-Nope (we already have lots of those)
Are you seeing more or less upgrades?
-Less, no points upgrading tower, camp (save fat yaks), keep (save wp).
Are you seeing more or less upgrades on particular structures?
-Less, no points upgrading tower, camp (save fat yaks), keep (save wp).
Are you seeing more roaming scouts?
-Scouts ? What’s that ? Welcome to T8
Are the main zergs smaller? If so any idea why?
-Zergs ? What’s that ? Welcome to T8
Are you seeing more stationary scouts?
-Can’t remember ever seeing one.
Are you doing more scouting than normal?
-No
Are you seeing more or less fighting than normal?
-Unfortunately, less.
Are you seeing people communicate more/less?
-No real change (which means not much, most of our groups work well independent)

I just want to say that I love you.

Semi related, if you arrange this properly with the other server, just take turns hiding on the upper floors while the other is capping, no need to bother with all the walls. Condi Thief p/d still your best bet for safely take down the champs without to much hazzle, especially as you’ll be doing this over and over for hours, so give yourself some leeway for errors

I know many will dislike this idea, but for the lower tiers, where we simply can’t fill the maps as is, it would actually be beneficial to cut the BorderLands down to a single copy. And just tweak the Citadel and south Spawn points to have same services. Let red keep the Citadel side (they usually need the advantage).

For us down in Tier 8 atm, we would still have problems filling 2 maps (EBG+1 single BL map). Tier8 atm would probably have trouble filling EBG alone. And it would somewhat remove the annoyance of having 3 identical maps.

Obviously, don’t do this for higher tiers that can still field enough numbers.

This should also be fairly cost efficient, as you would only need to do small tweaks and changes to existing map, at worst only move and change some services around and add more to the south spawn points.

At worst, might add another Keep similar to SMC somewhere in the middle (Probably around the Lost Temple Blood-lust), and do something more exciting with the North west+east areas (Skritt and Centaur retirement offices) to make better use of the space of the map.

Another alternative, is to add the old Borderland (with the orbs of power and water/quaggans) as well as EotM as extra maps, and randomly assign them each match as Borderlands, but that would create all kinds of silly (aka fun!) and not be very competitive (Personally don’t think WvW really needs to try that hard to be competitive anyways, so many factors anyways).

On another note, if they are first redoing the BL maps, I really do like the idea of having 3 maps that surround EBG that you mentioned above.

If they truly want to diversify WvW though, they should instead of having 3 identical/similar maps, create a set of different sized and styled maps, so players can go do what they actually want. Example:

EBG = Big fights
Borderlands = Skirmished and havoc squads (might set the user cap on the map, per side, to say 40 to demonstrate this)
New Skirmish map = For roaming and small group fights with smaller objectives
New Siege map = Basically wall to wall fighting, great for GvG’s that like to battle siege.

Etc, you get the idea. Instead of having more maps that encourage the same play style, they should diversify it with different maps, so players can go find the play style they want to.

/rant off.

If you learn to use a guardians mobility well, you can learn to get away from some fights. The basic GS/S+F meditation build can pack 1 leap and 2 teleports for good distancing. But the teleports requires targets, that can be hard to find in a hurry.

Back before they completely nerfed the Norn racial elites, Snow Leopard was a fantastic escape solution for my Norn Guardian, and I still weep for its loss.

I’ve been solo roaming and 2 man roaming a lot with Healway build (pretty tanky), and it works, but takes a while. And the bonus is that several typical builds designed to take out roamers have trouble penetrating a decently played bunker.

I’d guess that Warrior, Thief, Ranger and Mesmer are probably the most popular roaming professions ? Dagger/Dagger Elementalists seems to enjoy it as well.

Short version, I agree whole heartedly.

I must admit I don’t know how the weapon/armor/equipment works relating to level adjusting. So I haven’t thought about how that impacts things yet.

Anyways, as game is with the heavy use of level-adjustment, you almost never play you actual level, and almost always the “right level”. So I don’t see any point with having actual levels either. You could just as well make everyone “effective” level 80 (in stats) from the get go, and change the current “levels” to just skillpoints and trait points as you pointed out.

I would have done it like this:

Since at level 80 all stats are 916 or so in base before modifiers, use this as stats from level 1 and never improve them from levels. (Or set them to 900 or 1000 for simpler math).

Levels give: the util slots, weapon changing and other profession abilities like normal, skill points, and trait points up to 70 total. Keep the shiny number on the screen, as I think 90% of players would go berserk if they didn’t see that.

Make all weapons/armor/equipment essentially equal to level 80 gear in stats. And thus remove level requirement.

This would require them to go over and adjust all enemies/areas etc to fit with the new power curve, but it shouldn’t be very hard or a whole lot of work. After all, most of it is just altering the basic stats over the templates. (They really also should add some more “grunts” to the mobs, so not 90% of the monsters takes time taking down).

You will still have progression: Traits, SkillPoints, and the usual unlocking etc. And ou still have stat tweaking through equipment and trait lines.

And it still means that higher “level” areas have harder enemies, as they to would have bonuses from trait stats and equipments (or the monster equalent stuff). So going in as a starting character into a harder zone will still make you feel weak, but not getting oneshotted repetedly. You will just feel that you lack the weapons/tools to take on things (util slots, trait stat bonuses, having refined your build more etc).

TL;DR: Love it Nurvus, agree 99%, with only a few small tweaks!

The one and only reason I can see for actually keeping levels “as is”, is because 99% of players in MMO games expect levels, and a whole lot of them see leveling as the main aspect of such games. (Which again is just why I to loved the GW1 system so much).