The start is really really weird compared to release (first impressions)

TheScavenger

At release, I got the first trait way faster if I recall...now its all the way up to level 13 (okay so not that bad, but I recall it being a lot quicker...maybe this part I'm wrong. It could coincide with...)

 

Can't do map exploration, because a lot of the landmarks (the little square things on the map) usually need a pinpoint location to stand on...so I end up running all around trying to get it.

 

At release, I could just focus 100% on exploration to level and did really good at it

 

Can't do personal story quests until WAY later, my #1 favorite thing to do alongside exploration

 

At release you could do personal story right from the very beginning

 

Crafting was and is pretty useless early on, most items I outlevel so fast anyway so its best to do it endgame when it matters and I can afford it...same at release really.

 

So what is there to do?

 

Run around doing hearts, because events in Charr area seem really rare (my favorite area to explore in...or was anyway)

 

So all I'm doing is hearts...my #1 least favorite part of the game

 

And if I'm lucky, I get an occasional event

 

They really nerfed everything from release for low levels. Can't explore, can't do story...just hearts and the occasional event if I'm lucky to catch it

 

I'll keep playing I guess, but so far I'm utterly bored...

TheScavenger

The weirdest thing is to unlock landmarks (and other map features) on the map, you have to be level 13 or 15...forgot what I was told. So to do exploration is at that level, when you can see everything on the map.

 

Sure I can still do it, but its annoying running in the same little area to get that little landmark that is often hard to get...a lot I found (some are more wider area) like I said, need you to stand in a certain spot. Not all are like that though...but I can't rely 100% on it like I used to and I LOVED exploration in GW2 early on.

MagikarpsGhost

Originally posted by TheScavenger

The weirdest thing is to unlock landmarks (and other map features) on the map, you have to be level 13 or 15...forgot what I was told. So to do exploration is at that level, when you can see everything on the map.

 

Sure I can still do it, but its annoying running in the same little area to get that little landmark that is often hard to get...a lot I found (some are more wider area) like I said, need you to stand in a certain spot. Not all are like that though...but I can't rely 100% on it like I used to and I LOVED exploration in GW2 early on.

Actually i just leveled another toon and was able to get all the vistas and such, they just dont bother telling you about them untill 13. They made these (stupid imo) changes because  people "found the game to dificult to start" but we all know its due to the china release where they put the lvl locks on things. Also tip on lvling, run hearts and events. if you want to farm events go to the norn starting area there are a total of  6 events that spawn there 2 of them are 3 part events (grawl cave and ice carving one) there is also the bear shrine and the stampeed along with the leopard shrine attack. One your around 20 then just continue with hearts and exploring or craft as i did. geting all craft to 400 nets me 13 lvls per craft so 13 x 6 =  78 lvls. THOUGH only do this if you have some gold to spend. I usually will 400 cooking and artificer seeing how they are the cheapest and it gets me 26-28 lvls.

Thomas2006

Events haven't really changed. It still based upon something happening in the map or a number of people being around.

As far as the exploration goes, its still the same as it was at release.

TheScavenger

Originally posted by Thomas2006

Events haven't really changed. It still based upon something happening in the map or a number of people being around.

As far as the exploration goes, its still the same as it was at release.

Not really. I guess like poster above, to unlock all the map features its at level 13...which means for 13 levels I pretty much do hearts and the occasional event that happens (maybe Charr always had rarer events or maybe because there is so much less to do early on I notice events are rare or something).

 

I tried doing exploration at level 1 in Divinity's Reach, and I spent 3 hour trying to find every little landmark...view points are pretty easy to find...but after 3 hours, I still had no idea where most of the other landmarks were. It was so slow, that it isn't really a viable way to level like it was at release...no 100% map completition at all and DR was one of my favorite cities to 100% in to begin with as it was always sorta challenging to get to certain landmarks and view points.

 

They made everything all gated and locked, maybe cause of China or something...but so far all I found to do to level quickly is hearts hearts and more hearts...which is rather boring. Events are fun, but because a lot less choices to level...I notice events happen pretty slow (probably same at release, its just less to do so I notice).

 

At release, I leveled a lot through exploration all the way to level 30....so its definitely very different until you get to level 13 to unlock that part. And yeah, you can still explore...it just takes a long ass time to level with it.

MagikarpsGhost

Originally posted by TheScavenger

Originally posted by Thomas2006

Events haven't really changed. It still based upon something happening in the map or a number of people being around.

As far as the exploration goes, its still the same as it was at release.

Not really. I guess like poster above, to unlock all the map features its at level 13...which means for 13 levels I pretty much do hearts and the occasional event that happens (maybe Charr always had rarer events or maybe because there is so much less to do early on I notice events are rare or something).

 

I tried doing exploration at level 1 in Divinity's Reach, and I spent 3 hour trying to find every little landmark...view points are pretty easy to find...but after 3 hours, I still had no idea where most of the other landmarks were. It was so slow, that it isn't really a viable way to level like it was at release...no 100% map completition at all and DR was one of my favorite cities to 100% in to begin with as it was always sorta challenging to get to certain landmarks and view points.

 

They made everything all gated and locked, maybe cause of China or something...but so far all I found to do to level quickly is hearts hearts and more hearts...which is rather boring. Events are fun, but because a lot less choices to level...I notice events happen pretty slow (probably same at release, its just less to do so I notice).

 

At release, I leveled a lot through exploration all the way to level 30....so its definitely very different until you get to level 13 to unlock that part. And yeah, you can still explore...it just takes a long ass time to level with it.

As i mentioned above, just go to the norn area for events. It is where i go when im tired of the heart grind.

fiontar

After being away from the game for a long while, (I have over 1800 hours total play), I came back to test out the "new and improved" progression back when it went live. My impression was "yet another nail in the coffin of a once great game".

I don't see how it could be seen as having improved the new player experience in any way whatsoever. It's frustrating as a new player experience and, for those who are veterans of the game, it makes leveling a new character feel like trudging through waist deep molasses, while being splashed in the face with buckets of liquid stupidity at every turn.

The changes coincided with the release to the Chinese market, which leads me to the conclusion that ANet has an absurdly low opinion of the intelligence of Chinese MMO players. That the system simultaneously manages to "dumb down" the new player experience, while also making it more frustrating for new players than the old system, is a sign of some sort of perverse mad genius at work.

 

sethman75

Give me a break.

I came back a month ago, the first time since release and i find the starting experience far better this time around.

The start is more balanced and paced like it should have been at launch.

So what that you don't get all your toys at the start, that ruins the game and was a design flaw.

Stop being impatient and play the game, it takes what about an hour or two to get to level 10 where you start the story etc.

MagikarpsGhost

Originally posted by sethman75

Give me a break.

I came back a month ago, the first time since release and i find the starting experience far better this time around.

The start is more balanced and paced like it should have been at launch.

So what that you don't get all your toys at the start, that ruins the game and was a design flaw.

Stop being impatient and play the game, it takes what about an hour or two to get to level 10 where you start the story etc.

the main issue with the current way the lvling is done you no longer get stat increases per level but instead at lvl 10,20,35,50,60 and 80 thus making classes like mesmer and elementalist a bit tougher to level.

sumdumguy1

Originally posted by sethman75

Give me a break.

I came back a month ago, the first time since release and i find the starting experience far better this time around.

The start is more balanced and paced like it should have been at launch.

So what that you don't get all your toys at the start, that ruins the game and was a design flaw.

Stop being impatient and play the game, it takes what about an hour or two to get to level 10 where you start the story etc.

I agree, it was somewhat sad to read the some of the posts above.  It really doesn't take that long to gain the early levels.  I came back to the new leveling experience and found leveling an elementalist much easier this time around in the beginning. It was much smoother and while you can't go bat shit crazy, I had very few if any issues.

Dakeru

No one really said that the changes were all that great.

However, they raised the exp you get up to level 20 so if you feel bored already just from trying to reach that, then this is probably not the right game for you.

TheDarkrayne

I read this post before heading back to the game (expansion hype) and making a new character. I don't really see what the problem is, everything is still there except personal story until level 10 (takes no time to get to 10).

Seriously, you are complaining that it 'tells' you about things differently now. It's all still there. All the POIs and Vistas are still on the map.. have you zoomed in close enough to see them? Getting them to register you've visited them hasn't changed one bit,

observer

The NPE destroyed any freedom that GW2 had for new characters.  You are now gated behind levels for just about everything now, such as, skills, traits, pvp, wvw, vistas, skill points, etc.   All these things could be accessed at level 2 after the starter tutorial, but not anymore.  The only restrictions that i can remember were the utility and elite skills.

CriticKitten

I tried out some of the NPE changes as they were rolled out, I remember my thoughts basically summed up as "this makes me want to never make a new character ever again".

 

I think the biggest issue I had with a lot of the changes was that they used the excuse of things being "too complicated" to lock more and more features behind levels and events.  They took away a lot of the game's freedom because they felt the need to cater to players who couldn't handle a game with greater freedom.

 

Of course, this is nothing new.  I can think of two major parts of the game that were "dumbed down" long before it even released:

1. Renown Hearts were added, along with the "Guide" system, primarily because players struggled to understand how to find things to do in a "dynamic world" and felt that the game didn't offer enough guidance.  The guide system was later further supplemented with Heralds because players couldn't figure out how to find the Living Story content.  And that in turn later led to future Living Story content being redesigned to where it essentially pointed out each and every step on the map (because players couldn't figure out where to go without being explicitly pointed to it).
2. The changes to traits and skills back in the beta is another stand-out example.  Skills used to be bought for variable amounts of skill points and you could buy any skill you wanted at any level, provided you had the points for it.  They changed it to use a "tiered" system because players apparently couldn't handle having lots of choices at once and it got them confused (no, really, that's what the devs said their reasoning was).

 

A lot of the NPE feels like they felt a further need to "dumb down" the material for their audience by artificially locking features until they were "old enough" to be ready to learn the next new thing.  It felt like they didn't trust their audience to be able to handle learning more than a few things at a time.  I understand that a game can't just throw you into the mix without a clue as to how to play, but sacrificing build freedom for an "easier" experience as a new player isn't a good trade off.

Viper482

Originally posted by sethman75

Give me a break.

I came back a month ago, the first time since release and i find the starting experience far better this time around.

The start is more balanced and paced like it should have been at launch.

So what that you don't get all your toys at the start, that ruins the game and was a design flaw.

Stop being impatient and play the game, it takes what about an hour or two to get to level 10 where you start the story etc.

Nice opinion, I will tuck this away with all the other opinions that I don't agree with. So give US a break, to each their own.

I am with the OP. I have all 80's except one class now, and I wanted to do my final class old school with no crafting. All the others were maxed prior to the changes and I just came back. The leveling now beyond sucks compared to how it used to be. I rather run EOTM nonstop than dredge through these zones at a snail's pace with little in the way of traits or skills.

Viper482

Originally posted by Dakeru

No one really said that the changes were all that great.

However, they raised the exp you get up to level 20 so if you feel bored already just from trying to reach that, then this is probably not the right game for you.

That's absurd. I have every class maxed out except one prior to these changes and i could not stomach the new system for leveling my last class.....is the game not for me either???

Bladestrom

Mmorpg are cOmplex beasts and your not going to like every aspect. Relative to your entire playing time you will probably spend 1% of you time levelling through the early levels that are affected by the changes. Perspective.

Flo13

After 2 years of roaming with a small team in wvw I took a break. Almost 1 year now with no will to play again.

Was a great action combat and nothing else.

Too many pve updates with few changes in wvw. Broken stealth and revive mechanic, lag, few viable but exploitable builds in pvp.

 

aesperus

I'll say this again here, since this is not the first thread on this topic.

The new player experience (for those of us who already understand the game) does indeed suck for the first 15-20 levels. This system is basically not for us. It's for the players that are trying the game out for the first time, or never bothered to learn how to play it to begin with.

Getting to lvl 20, though, is easy as hell. If you find it taking a while you aren't really exploring your options, but rather letting the tutorials dictate your pacing. (Which again, is what it's supposed to do for inexperienced players).

For the rest of us, you still have some degree of freedom with how to lvl. There are a couple preliminary gates to work out, but they're all gone by lvl 20. Furthermore the game provides easily obtained scrolls of experience which instantly lvl your new characters to lvl 20 (effectively bypassing the experience altogether).

While I wish systems like this weren't necessary, my experience with other plays says otherwise. Many never learned how to dodge properly, how to manage their skills, etc. etc. This kind of forces their hands on this, but it's a start. And again, for the rest of us, this content is easily skippable.

- To put it into perspective I started playing this game again a few months ago after a long break. Since then I've basically acquired some 20+ scrolls of 'insta lvl 20", in addition to other scrolls which grant you flat lvls or chunks of exp. I don't play the game every day, or even all that much overall. But the stuff is just handed to you. From dailies / monthly rewards. From bonus chests / achievements. They're not that hard to get. Heck if I could donate some of these away to you guys I would. Sadly they're account bound and I have no idea what i'm going to do with all of them.

curiousbug

They did alot of stupid changeds,but i dont get whats you have problem with

(Mostly i dont like level skill lock and other minor things)

At release, I got the first trait way faster if I recall...now its all the way up to level 13

What?You unlock first trait at level 30 now,but you dont really need it.

Can't do map exploration, because a lot of the landmarks (the little square things on the map)

Really confusing.You talking about poi?They added option,so now you can highlight those objects

Can't do personal story quests until WAY later

You just need to be level 10 now,thats not WAY later

Run around doing hearts, because events in Charr area seem really rare (my favorite area to explore in...or was anyway)

You can go to other races low level maps

So all I'm doing is hearts...my #1 least favorite part of the game

Hearts give you alot of exp,so you can get to level 10 really fast

 

 

Gaia_Hunter

Originally posted by curiousbug

 

Run around doing hearts, because events in Charr area seem really rare (my favorite area to explore in...or was anyway)

You can go to other races low level maps

 

 

It is curious because one of my friends used to  go to plains of ashford for the 5 events daily.

My GF would go to Queensdale.

Another person in here commented about the wayfarer foothills.

I kinda like Caledon forest.

Nanfoodle

The hearts help you find the start of a chain of events. When you finish the heart stick around and watch what the NPCs do. If one runs off or something else happens. Follow them and you will get the next event in the chain. Most people miss this when I played. 90% of the people would run off when the heart was done and a few of us would get to see the rest of the content. 

CriticKitten

Originally posted by aesperus

-snip-

In other words, exactly what I said: this system is designed to be more restrictive in order to "dumb down" the content for people who couldn't figure out basic commands like dodging, or had trouble navigating a skill menu which let you choose from more than a dozen skills at once.  You said it nicer than I did, but we're effectively saying the same thing.

And my immediate follow-up question to this line of thought should be obvious: Should a game compromise its system of en masse customization and freedom in order to achieve "mass appeal"....when the "mass" being "appealed" to is a crowd of people too stupid to figure out how to double-tap a directional button to dodge-roll?

You apparently feel that it should.  I do not.  While I can understand the desire to appeal to as many people as possible, there comes a point, I feel, at which all games have a certain "bar" to entry.  That is, a point at which you pretty much can't play the game fully if you can't reach this level of thought.  That bar, for me, is "can comprehend simple directions, and presses buttons to experiment with what they do".

If a player legitimately struggles with the most basic controls of the game, my solution to that problem is not going to be "let's lock features of the game away from all of our players in order to teach little Jimmy how to perform basic actions one at a time".  My solution is more along the lines of "maybe little Jimmy should try a game with less complicated controls".  If you can't handle dodging in a game built around it (a game that hardly made any secret out of how its dodging works), perhaps you should be looking elsewhere.  The real world works no differently.  I once sat in a class full of students who sought a technical job after college, many of whom didn't know how to make tabs in Microsoft Word.  Perhaps if you can't figure out how to perform functionality that is as basic and integral as that, even after graduating from high school, you shouldn't be pursuing a technical degree....because you're bound to end up fired from that job in the long-term, since you don't know what you're doing.

And yes, I'm fully aware of how "elitist" and "awful" that sounds.  I don't care.  I once argued against the very existence of this phenomenon of "dumbing down" content to appeal to players who are too stupid to handle a more difficult game....but in recent years it's become increasingly harder to deny that games are doing this.  And I can't say I care for it.  I'm not against tutorials, but I feel that games shouldn't have to compromise their core principles just to make these tutorials "easy" enough for most people to understand.

Dakeru

Originally posted by Viper482

Originally posted by Dakeru

No one really said that the changes were all that great.

However, they raised the exp you get up to level 20 so if you feel bored already just from trying to reach that, then this is probably not the right game for you.

That's absurd. I have every class maxed out except one prior to these changes and i could not stomach the new system for leveling my last class.....is the game not for me either???

If you have that many then you could simply use a level 20 scroll to bypass the restrictions?

askdaboss

Originally posted by CriticKitten

Originally posted by aesperus

-snip-

In other words, exactly what I said: this system is designed to be more restrictive in order to "dumb down" the content for people who couldn't figure out basic commands like dodging, or had trouble navigating a skill menu which let you choose from more than a dozen skills at once.  You said it nicer than I did, but we're effectively saying the same thing.

And my immediate follow-up question to this line of thought should be obvious: Should a game compromise its system of en masse customization and freedom in order to achieve "mass appeal"....when the "mass" being "appealed" to is a crowd of people too stupid to figure out how to double-tap a directional button to dodge-roll?

I don't mind a bit of content gating/simplification, but if I believe what I've been reading so far - they have indeed been pushing the envelope a bit far.

 

Apparently also the storyline has been messed around with, and now some parts don't make much sense any more for new players (as in: events do not happen necessarily in their chronological order any more... Maybe because people would struggle to follow 2-3 plot lines at the same time? I have no idea why they made that change).

 

Some of the decisions made at Arenanet make you wonder... the game is still great, but this NPE seems so weird.

mayito7777

I find of  hard some of the jumping puzzles, some are easy others are so hard that I quit the game after failing so many times.