The first time you head into the Mists, there’s a tutorial area that covers capture points, reviving downed allies, and finishing downed enemies. If sPvP didn’t have skills and traits unlocked and everyone already at 80, these activities would have also been an easy way to unlock weapon skills as you completed them.
As it was in PvE, there was no direct, "Hey, this is what the ’downstate’ mechanic is. And here’s how you can get credit for activities that have a zone to stand in/defend", but -- in my opinion and I wager a significant percentage of others’ -- the skill unlocking on weapons was fantastic. As I swapped to a different weapon and tried it out, I slowly got to see all of its available skills. Requiring kills was, to me, a way to let the player see the first skill, get comfortable with it, move on to the next, and so on down the line.
I feel like taking the best from these two approaches would have been leagues better than dumping skill unlocks behind levels.
danakin’s description of a dodge-based tutorial and an event that forces the downstate on the player to introduce that skillbar are terrific and exactly in line with teaching the game mechanics -- and similar to the tutorial zone for the first time you head into the mists. These are the kinds of tutorials that force players into situations to understand and be aware of game features. And, ultimately, awareness of what the game mechanics are and how the UI operates are the primary goals in helping new players.
Not showing vistas or PoIs on the map immediately and tucking away the downstate AND unlocking its skills behind later levels are examples of great ways to not encourage players to explore these elements. Instead of moving from pressing 1 into 2 through 5 as a weapon is used, learning the weapon(s) through use, a new character can only press 1 until specific levels of experience are reached, regardless of use (for example, explore a city -- which one might not know to do with PoIs and vistas missing -- and get a few levels, suddenly weapon skills despite not having done any combat; how is that learning?). Sure, some of the weapon skill unlocks don’t take long, but why even have them stratified at all like this? Why does going in the water mean nothing until level 8?
The profession skills make even less sense. The very skills that are meant to be at the core of the character are pushed until later? What? Elementalists are locked into less attunements, rangers can’t even control their pets, guardian auras and the diversity of different shatters are slowly unlocked rather than allowing for any experimentation?? That doesn’t seem to make any sense. I would sure hate to see what this does to a new character in WvW. Can you do anything other than press 1 with upleveled stats?
Tossing these changes on top of the arguably confusing and, in my opinion, downright terrible trait unlocking system paints the leveling experience as a process of slowly removing arbitrary handicaps wherein the game engine decides when a character is ready to access things rather than a process of exploration and evolution wherein the player expands and grows as he or she plays the game and progresses at his or her own pace.
I’d love to see a user experience study (or run one, myself, if I had the resources) comparing before and after this change; participants could be asked questions about their experience playing for a few levels (however many they could get in, say, a mere hour), the way the UI and mechanics were introduced, etc. Ideally the population would consist of individuals who had not played the game before, to attempt to remove any bias toward one system or another. I would be interested to see how much of my distaste is echoed in their responses vs. not (i.e. if being a veteran player reduces the appeal).
To that end, I would be immensely mollified if it turns out that these level-gated unlocks and slow, plodding progression steps were only imposed on new accounts and not applied globally, especially if an account has a character at 80.
