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Guild wars 2 Gear and leveling
tavoc
Member UncommonPosts: 257
Ok, i was reading another post with a bunch of ill informed people about the way leveling is and how gear will be in guild wars 2. So instead of posting in there and having this lost, i figure that it would be better just to post it here.
1. Leveling...
For a while now the lot of us that read up on it already know about the leveling palteu and so on.. However Most of you that never played GW dont realize that these games are COMPLETELY different from your every day mmo. Levels DO NOT matter. It is a staple.. They added the extra levels ( The original only had 20, GW2 Has 80) To make sertain players happy due to them fealing that the magical 'ding' being a fealing of progression.
Sure, every level or so you will get skill upgrades, unlock new skills and so on so forth but thats just the basics!
The truth is that leveling in GW2 will be less about that number and more about atributes and skills. Currently there are 4 (there is more, but i will cover the basiscs) froms of character progression.
A) Leveling : Well eveyone knows about this so we will move on.
Traits : This is where Guild wars steppes away from your general staple in mmo's today. Through out the game you wil end up completeling class specific chalenges, they will give you , in which you will spend (and can change at any city, i dont know if you will be able to swich things around on the fly in the open world yet, they have not commented) to put twords makeing your class more promanent in a specific field!
C) Titles: Yet another thing most people are used to in mmo's.. (thoe i know quite a few that dont have them) You gain titles by gaining faction or completeing hard chalanges in the game (or threw hom if you played gw1) you can obtain these titles anywhere, Rangeing from easy to hard (any gw1 player remember getting your ale hound? not hard but sure as hell took a while.. )
D) Prestige armors: I will cover this more in the next section, but for those who wont read that think of it as "heroic" or "fabled" armors
Guild Wars 2 Is not a gear based game!!!!!!! Say that 100x.. it will sink in lol
2. Gear!
Now this is somthing that i know alot of you will have a hard time grasping.. Guild wars 2 is not about getting that magical armor to drop from your raid, which can not be compared to anything else untill xpac time...
The armor and weaponry in guild wars 2 are much like guild wars 1.. you work your way threw the game, occasionaly upgrading to newer armor untill you reach cap.. Wait.. did i say cap?? YES I DID! once you get max armor and weapons.. guess what? ITS MAX!! After that all armor is about skins (otherwise knows as prestige armors), You work your but off for those sets but in the end they alwayes have a pretty damn good looking skin to them, and are unique to those armors.
Also to clear up a little confusion for non gw1 players.. You dont just pick up a heroic piece of armor that comes with stats already set in stone.. You can change them. (now i know they are carrying over the runes/ insignias/ inscription system from gw1, but i heard that there is going to be more too it in round 2) Basicly You get your armor, and thats awsome (pre grats!) which normaly comes with some generalized stats.. Well now you get to customize it to fit your play style! Runes, Inscriptions, and insignias can be abtained threw instances, loot, bought from vender or from the AH, each ones different by stats and some of which are verry.. verry.. expencive to personalize your gear to what best suits YOU! (oh and can somone confirm or deny fhat they are carrying over the req system or base attributes aswell? i belive i saw the regular attribute system in some of the demo's but i forget.. also i didnt get a chance to realy study the gear close enough to see if there will be any low or high req gear of the same model..)
That basicly sums that up.. Theres a hell of alot more too it than what i just discribed to you, theya re getting verry advanced in these areas and each month seems they are adding more progression chalnges and sytems. Enjoy, and i hope this helped a little
PS: just a little edit here, There is also a attribute system in the game, In which every level you will be asinged points to place where you want instead of the game decideing for you. As of now there are 4 diferent attributes..Power, Precision, Toughness, and vitality. Just another way of customizing your character, also adding to progression
Comments
Hey there,
Very informative post for those who have not yet played Guild Wars, however you have to remember what the devs have already said (I don't have a direct link or source sorry) gear will matter more in GW2 than it had in GW1. With that in mind, you can presume that LvCap equipment in the sequel might not have the same standards or work the same way as it works currently in the first game.
It is very hard to speculate at this point since we have so little information as to what will be available to the players once the level-cap is reached. Although Arena.Net wants this game to be as different from other MMOs as it can, maybe there will be a light gear-grind involved or maybe an other form of advancement will be introduced, we won't know until they tell us more.
Cheers!
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The "other" form of advancement is Traits. And yes it is too early to speculate about armour seeing as we don't have enough information about that but what we have observed from GC'10 videos is that gear does not have its own stats apart from the base armour stats. Players will have to get runes (or something along those lines) in order to modify their gear to their liking. The Shatterer fight drops a blue rune if I remember correctly and is part of a set you can get.
This is not a game.
Of course, getting runes and traits to customize your character will be key to making it grow stronger past the initial 80 levels but do you mean that it wil be the only thing to affect the amor stat bonuses and that the equipment itself is just an empty shell with basic armor ratings on it? You're the first I see to mention this and I find it quite interesting.
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This is what I've noticed from the videos from GC'10 and the latest fan day videos but we will have to take a closer look later on.
Click the image to enlarge. It shows what I'm talking about. It is taken from the IGN preview video from the fan day.
This is not a game.
@OP
Saying levels do not matter is a little too strong a wording for me. The game only scales you down in power, it doesn't scale you up automatically. This lets people challenge themselves if they want against higher level DEs, and provides a progression across the zones so you're not just immediately challenging elder dragons.
I agree that their importance is deemphasized, and I like how they say it's just a way to gauge progress. Hopefully we can all appreciate the journey without rushing to an endgame. I just can't really say they don't matter at all.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
The only way I can see them really mattering is if the skill trainers require a minimum level. Whereas before in GW1 doing a skill run would pretty much get you to max and get you all the skills as well, I wonder if it will be similar in GW2, or if everything is applicable as long as you can make it to the area. (even if the area is above your current "level" and has generally "tougher" events).
Hmm, I didn't come to my mind when I had looked over the screenshots but it does make sense. I do remember the devs saying that we could customize the gear to our liking but I had always thought we were to add certain stats on top of the ones provided by the items much like enchantments in other MMOs.
I'm curious to see how they'l share loot drops between upgrade items and actual gear in the event system and storyline rewards.
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They do require minimum levels to unlock the different tiers. You can see it in the video that is footnoted. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skill_trainer
Traits are the unlockable ones and are similar to the elite skills of GW1. I'm not seeing any evidence that those would require a minimum level to unlock except for the problem of getting to it, but I don't know that we know yet whether that is the case.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Well technically from what I remember being answered at one of their earlier confrences, scaling up can actually occur through the use of "sidekicking". So, if you have a high level buddy who you want to play with in a high level area, they can sidekick you up in level. In my opinion, I am kind of against this idea since it can sort of defeat the purpose of leveling, but I believe we have yet to see how it will really be put into action. So, who knows..
Gear will matter more but it's all about finding the balance which ArenaNet is doing. They don't want this game to be gear and level based. But they do realize that have a good selection is important. It's not GW esque, but it's not all the other MMOs either.
thx!
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
I am hoping that the way it works is that in PvP you all have the same stats. (Which I am pretty sure I read somewhere that you do) I do like character progression at max level on the other hand so I hope that the PvE game allows gear to become more substantial. I think that is one of the reasons many of my friends,myself included, quit the original GW. Not being able to advance your character isn't fun =/ That was also before things like achievements though, so that will help in GW 2. Bragging rights are a pretty big part of what makes MMOs to many people. So I guess if they still have some form of that it will fine.
About gear and equipment in mmorpg's i always vote in favor of a diablo loot sytem drops. Means thousands generated items that most of them will never be seen on other players be worn combos of stats randomized in every item etc. If that wont be the case i just hope for many tiers so players dont cap their progression fast as it happens in wow for example where in every season u get only dungeons tier 1 heroic dungeons tier 2 raids tier3.
Concerning rpg's in general players continual improvement is one of the most ethistic factors in an rpg and if it is shallow ,small ,or ends fasta anwy player's intrest about the game itself starts to diminish.
And that is a negative issue for gw2 as well
P.S. Dont mix how important is gear for player's stats. Instead think how long the improve gear proceedure lasts.When it ends a big ethistic part of an rpg fades away.
It was said that gear will be more important in gw2 than in gw1.. However they still are followinhg the same tradition they set in gw1, will just be harder to get max armor. in gw1 you would get 1/2 way threw a segment and take x amount of x material to a merchant and a little plat and BAM max armor. Please dont misunderstand me on that, you wont be playing 3 weeks and have max armor.. and now there are multiple ways in getting it, will just take time.but they are still folowing max is max end of story, along with mutiple versions of max armor.
Point is, gw2 is still a SKILL based game instead of gear based. So for example, if you suck and are wearing max armor in pvp, somone wearing mid grade armor can still slaughter you. Instead of person with best gear = win.
Also, a few posts up somone said something about shareing loot. To clear that up for you, no matter what you do in the game you get your own personalized loot table when mobs or bosses die, (AKA you get your own body even if 20 people killed that one boss). This also applies to gathering, instead of like in wow/aion *insert mmo here* that node will stay there forever, however.. when your max alotted loot is taken from it you cannot gather from that node for a period of time, but somone next to you can run up and still gather that node.. because HIS loot is still there!. (So your qustion about that blue rune you saw durring the shatterer fight was specifily for him. Will folow the same table inside dungeons.. you kill that boss a chest will appear and eveyone gets their own loot, along with Karma or whater its called that you can spend on set items from that instance vender)
Hope that cleared up a little more, i have been folowing gw2 since i found out about its release.. ive red the interviews, know the offical posts and whats speculated to come.. any more questions i would be happy to answer! See ya
I don't think GW 2 really needs to focus on items for sure. The game is going to be more gameplay focused then progression focused, which can work out fine in the end. Just gear that makes you look cooler then other people works for me.
When I think of GW 2 being skill based I don't really think of it in the same way as other people. I think of it as skill based in the sense that the game is based on collecting skills rather then gear. (Atleast, thats how it was in GW1) Every game out there is skill based to an extent, GW 2 is just less gear centric then other MMOs are.
For those that don't know, gear will play a slightly more important role in Guild Wars 2, but definitely not as much as it does in games such as WoW.
This topic interests me. But after reading every post here, it seems apparent that there just isnt any solid info out yet. A lot of presumption and speculation in here. I look forward to hearing ArenaNet go into much greater detail. Im sure they are still working out the system themselves atm.
There are plenty of interviews about this already for those who assume this is all speculation.
They've already stated that armor plays a bigger role not because of the armor itself, but how it is customized. Those customizations will do everything some upgrading skills, adding to abilities, protecting against another class' abilities, etc. The armor itself is largely just about the skin. Anet stated they did this so people DID NOT FEEL FORCED to participate in dungeons, which are supposed to be highly challenging. The end result of the dungeon is armor that, most likely, looks absolutely amazing and is specific to the dungeon. But otherwise, you will be able to attain comparable gear outside of the dungeon just from playing through the rest of the game's content (personal story, dynamic events, etc.).
They're following the GW1 mold more closely than some realize. They did that with the first game's gear to even the playing field, so people in PvP won through SKILL and not gear. They want to recreate this in GW2. This is one of the prime reasons why no one should feel they need to play through GW1 for the rewards that transfer to GW2, the gear those of us who have the points will get is the same as ingame gear, the skin itself is just exclusive. It will also 'grow' with the character so it's not outdated by 80, but similarly a level 80 character can do a dungeon that opened at say, level 30, and get gear relative to their level. So really, it all evens out.
Those of us who played GW1 know this system well. Obsidian and Vabbian armors are coveted because of their look, the difficulty in obtaining them, and as a sign of prestige. They are NOT wanted for their stats, which are exactly the same as all other level 20 armor.
EDIT - By the way, while this is the current system, there's no saying it can't change in the future. You never know if 6 months after release they introduce gear with powerful stats on it, but it would be very unlike Anet to do so. We can only really talk about the system as it is now, and currently it's made to be very plain and customizable by the user. Basically, they're putting the power in our hands.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
In other words, Id like to see someone crafting, or obtaining, or modifying gear in a video much like the videos we have seen of underwater combat, questing, etc.
There is a video of someone killing the shatterer and finding a Crest of the legion (Crests = runes or upgrades) in the chest he drops when he's defeated to which the stats matched what they already had on their gear. To that end I believe the stats are mainly applied by these "crests".
This is not a game.
Pretty damn close.
This is not a game.
I'm really excited about GW2 and know they will get the gear right. I will miss running content to get new skills, I loved that about GW1.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
The traits are all to find though, and there are about a hundred by profession, and none of them can be bought, so you will have to travel and search a bit to unlock them.
Sweet!
Remember Old School Ultima Online