Originally posted by SuperXero89

 

I think that, more or less, the way the OP is encouraging people to play GW2 could be applied to any MMORPG on the market today.  Rather than being entirely focused on hitting the level cap, if players simply played any of those games slowly without such a focus on maintaining a steady leveling pace and rather just ran off and explored and exhausted all the extraneous activities the game had to offer, I think just about any MMORPG released in the last 7 or so years would be seen in a markedly better light.  In that respect, I don't really buy this as an adequate excuse for GW2's PvE content.

 

^That is entirely not true.

Go play AION or WOW and apply that logic. It won't work. Powerleveling in those games rewards you while you trudge through boring content.

And thats part of the point.... GW2 takes a different mindset. Power leveling or even trying to power level will not give you the same reward as typical mmos.

Originally posted by SuperXero89

I've been saying that Guild Wars 2 is only going to appeal to players with a certain mindset, but if players are forming a negative opinion of GW2 based entirely on the way the game directs the players through the zones, they're not the ones "doing it wrong."  

Many valuable man hours were more than likely spent creating a large portion of the vast array of hidden nooks and crannies found all over the world of Guild Wars 2, but if Arenanet doesn't do anything at all to push players towards those areas, they're the ones that failed not the players.  I too explored a bit in GW2 and found some interesting areas.  Sometimes I happened upon a unique DE I hadn't seen before, but other times I just happened upon a whole heap of nothingness.   It's not tunnel vision, because you can't expect players to go rummaging all over the map looking for content when the game itself directs players to certain areas.  If exploring for little else than the sake of exploration itself isn't your thing, and if your the type of gamer that plays in order to see your character become progressively more powerful (ie you play to level up even if you're not exactly a powergamer), you probably will find GW2's PvE lacking.  That is an issue.  

I think that, more or less, the way the OP is encouraging people to play GW2 could be applied to any MMORPG on the market today.  Rather than being entirely focused on hitting the level cap, if players simply played any of those games slowly without such a focus on maintaining a steady leveling pace and rather just ran off and explored and exhausted all the extraneous activities the game had to offer, I think just about any MMORPG released in the last 7 or so years would be seen in a markedly better light.  In that respect, I don't really buy this as an adequate excuse for GW2's PvE content.

If the areas to which players are directed are what is giving players such a negative first impression, perhaps Anet needs to work on making those areas feel less repetitive and formulaic.

I think this is absolutely true. Like it or not, in an MMORPG you're not bound only by how you play the game, but also by how others play the game. And if you're not, well, it means the game has done a really bad job of being an MMORPG.

Sure, in Skyrim, you can do the "don't like it, don't use it" thing. For one, I don't like teleporting to another, far away area on the map. So what do I do? I don't use map travel at all! It's OK, I have no real qualms about it, it's my choice. But when it's an MMORPG, you can't say "oh don't use map travel if you don't" like it; because just the fact that other players are using it affects you, as it should. The flow of the gameworld is different because of its very existence.

As for hearts and player story, yes, their existence constitutes a form of directing players through content. Many many players will use them, and it *will* affect your game experience, even if you don't find yourself competing with them to cap out of habit.

It's not that you have other means of progression. It's that their very existence will somewhat color overall gameplay (ie what the gameworld feels like). Because in the end, as SuperXero89 said, you can totally do "no hand-holding to cap" in other MMOs, too...

For instance, you can just grind on mobs in WOW if you don't like quests. Or even reach cap without doing a single quest and killing a single mob! As this player did: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2353107047

Originally posted by fiontar

I continue to be confused by people that say there wasn't enough content to level. All four characters I played in the BWE were continually being leveled down for content. I got an Elementalist to level 20 and only wnet to the 15-25 zone during the last two hours of the event, because I wanted to see an additional zone. I probably would have hit 20 in the level 1-15 zone if I had stayed there and continued to complete the zone.

The Hearts are worth doing for the vendor unlock, but regular Dynamic Events provide most of your XP. I always started with the Heart Tasks when I discovered one, then would go on to explore the area for Dynamic Events. I also did Personal Story.

There is more than enough content for people who actually explore the zones they are playing in. If someone insists on just doing Heart Quests, which I wouldn't understand, but if they did, it's extremely easy to visit the other race's zones and do the Heart Quests there.

Just grinding Mobs doesn't get you any where, unless they are part of a Task or DE. The kill XP is minimal.

The thing is that leveling speed really shouldn´t matter at all, if you only play the game to level you are missing the point with the game.

Of course that 2 of the starting zones weren´t even up at the BWE doesn´t help anyone who want to speed level without repeating the same content but it still really isn´t the point of the game.

If you only play to level up you will tire of the game in 4-6 weeks (or even earlier).

I personally didn´t even notice when I leveled and at times noticed that I locked up stuff a lot later.

Originally posted by caremuchless

Originally posted by SuperXero89
 

I think that, more or less, the way the OP is encouraging people to play GW2 could be applied to any MMORPG on the market today.  Rather than being entirely focused on hitting the level cap, if players simply played any of those games slowly without such a focus on maintaining a steady leveling pace and rather just ran off and explored and exhausted all the extraneous activities the game had to offer, I think just about any MMORPG released in the last 7 or so years would be seen in a markedly better light.  In that respect, I don't really buy this as an adequate excuse for GW2's PvE content.

^That is entirely not true.

Go play AION or WOW and apply that logic. It won't work. Powerleveling in those games rewards you while you trudge through boring content.

And thats part of the point.... GW2 takes a different mindset. Power leveling or even trying to power level will not give you the same reward as typical mmos.

It is still somewhat true, you miss a lot in every game when you powerlevel. The difference here is that GW2 focused more on making the entire game fun isntead of just the endgame compared to many other games.

Well, it is true about AION and L2, but just because the insane amount of grind they have.

Still, you need a better goal in GW2 than to hit max level and gain the gear with best stats.

Although, one serious benefit of the level scaling system is that if you do choose to powerlevel and miss a ton of stuff on the way up, you can always go back and explore and complete content later. Instead of missing out on things permanently because you outleveled them and they are trivial, in this game you can choose to smell the roses on the way up, or get to max and then use the whole world as "endgame".

The genius of the design is probably going to take years for people to fully appreciate.

Originally posted by 1carcarah1

Those same kind of people who was asking about rushing to lvl80 were also following hearts, grinding mobs, going for personal story cause there werent enough hearts to level, and then when BWE ended, they got angry cause the game didnt delivered what ANet promised. 

"GW2 leveling is nothing especial. There are hearts instead exclamation points and lots of grind." As lot of them said.

spot on.

Originally posted by MMOExposed
I disagree with the OP. WvW is much more fun as a max level character with all skills and full action bar unlocked

Well, you guys did want your carrot so bad, so there you go, chase those skills!

I think there is a great gameplay decision made by Arenanet that is subtle:  Because of the design of DE's you can't 'blow through' content as fast as you want, without having to grind.  If you take your time you will level properly.  If you rush you will miss something and have to grind.  The videos I've seen about DE's show many are so subtle that only partial rewards are recieved because parts of the chains are missed.  GW2 is about 'slow and steady', rather than 'run, rabbit, run'.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by fiontar

I continue to be confused by people that say there wasn't enough content to level. All four characters I played in the BWE were continually being leveled down for content. I got an Elementalist to level 20 and only wnet to the 15-25 zone during the last two hours of the event, because I wanted to see an additional zone. I probably would have hit 20 in the level 1-15 zone if I had stayed there and continued to complete the zone.

The Hearts are worth doing for the vendor unlock, but regular Dynamic Events provide most of your XP. I always started with the Heart Tasks when I discovered one, then would go on to explore the area for Dynamic Events. I also did Personal Story.

There is more than enough content for people who actually explore the zones they are playing in. If someone insists on just doing Heart Quests, which I wouldn't understand, but if they did, it's extremely easy to visit the other race's zones and do the Heart Quests there.

Just grinding Mobs doesn't get you any where, unless they are part of a Task or DE. The kill XP is minimal.

The thing is that leveling speed really shouldn´t matter at all, if you only play the game to level you are missing the point with the game.

Of course that 2 of the starting zones weren´t even up at the BWE doesn´t help anyone who want to speed level without repeating the same content but it still really isn´t the point of the game.

If you only play to level up you will tire of the game in 4-6 weeks (or even earlier).

I personally didn´t even notice when I leveled and at times noticed that I locked up stuff a lot later.

The thing I found during the BWE is that I stopped caring about my level so much. I didn't look down to see if I'd leveled, because it didn't matter. The only time I thought about it was when I checked to see if the game thought it was a good idea for me to tackle the next leg of my story. In the world, it didn't matter what level I was unless I got over my head. If I ended up in a level ten event of fighting level ten guys, I was put on a level with them so the fight was still as it should have been. So every fight was interesting and challenging; what level I actually was didn't matter to me.

Originally posted by MMOExposed
I disagree with the OP. WvW is much more fun as a max level character with all skills and full action bar unlocked

WvW isn't all there is to GW2. 

Of course, you're entitled to feel that way but if you tunnel vision like that, you're missing out on much of what the game offers. 

The beauty of GW2 is that you can rush to level cap and do WvW and only WvW and not be penalised for it. 

Originally posted by Roybe

I think there is a great gameplay decision made by Arenanet that is subtle:  Because of the design of DE's you can't 'blow through' content as fast as you want, without having to grind.  If you take your time you will level properly.  If you rush you will miss something and have to grind.  The videos I've seen about DE's show many are so subtle that only partial rewards are recieved because parts of the chains are missed.  GW2 is about 'slow and steady', rather than 'run, rabbit, run'.

 

 

 

I actually think that the reality is that GW2 lets you level in either style.  It is definitely possible to rush through the game if that's what you want.

Think about it...people that thought there weren't enough hearts task to level obviously did not try going to the other race's starting zones via portal.  With a few of my characters, I was able to easily level up primarily on hearts tasks and just random events I encountered by traveling to another race's starting area.  And when GW2 goes live, there will be FIVE race starting areas.

Add onto this the fact that you will always be rewarded for completing a lower level heart because of level scaling, and all of a sudden you have PLENTY of content available for you if you just want to rush through the game.

Anyway...there's a lot of disdain on these forums for people that don't feel like smelling the daisies, and honestly I think that's silly.  Sometimes I just feel like getting a new skill or whatever and I will do whatever will get me that skill the fastest.  Other times I want to savor the game and not rush things.

I think both are valid playstyles, and I think it's great that GW2 fully supports both.

@Creslin: No this is not a stupid post born out of some weird disdain I might have for powerlevellers. 

The fact is that you will miss out on a lot if you don't explore, if you don't talk to that NPC in the distance (because they might trigger an event). I'm not implying that this will be detrimental to your game experience... but if you're not going to do the content that there is, you shouldn't be allowed to say the game lacks content. (In that case, it simply lacks content you want)

Here's a post from another forum that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Leveling in Short Order: A Quick Guide for Leveling from 1-15 and beyond

There is a popular adage that you don't want to, "work hard, but work smart." The same is true for Guild Wars 2. I was able to reach level 30 in short order by applying a few quick and easy techniques from playing the game, and these very same techniques were something a casual player or hardcore player could easily apply:

1) Don't neglect the waypoints. Waypoints offer up to 300 experience per capture. They multiply your teleport options and increase the location options on death.

2) Points of Interest are points of interest for your experience bar. POIs grant upwards of 150 experience for each capture. They will also inevitably lead you to dynamic events as they tend to appear around points of interest on the map.

3) Dynamic Quests are dynamic for a reason. DEs can offer between 400-600 experience for each gold medal. A goal medal is typically awarded for being active and by dealing damage on quest-related foes. At present, gold medals do not account for reviving or offering boons to players, but hopefully this will be adjusted in the future. DEs also allow for the possibility of quest chaining, especially at higher levels. 

4) Hearts heart you. The heart quests offer as much experience as a dynamic quest. They also typically come in two varieties, which I dub as the kind heart and the dark heart. Kind heart quests usually involve answering riddles, putting some resource in a receptacle, or fetching something for someone or something, old school mmo fetch stuff. Dark heart quests usually involve murder and mayhem. 

5) The killing blow gets the gold. While exploring and questing you will of course be attacked by a host of different shit and you should respond in kind. Each kill should get you about 40 experience points. Higher level creatures offer a bonus as well as what I call good performance, though this has yet to be completely confirmed. Good performance is when you perform well in combat: not getting hit so often, and killing your enemy quickly and efficiently. You also get about 80 xp per revive, if I recall correctly.

6) Go sink the titanic. You aren't limited to ground combat or quests either. Be sure to explore the deep. There's lots of shit down there, not just on land.

7. Achievements for the completionist. If you complete the daily/weekly achievements of killing 7 different kinds of monsters, or any of the others located here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement, you could get anywhere from 300-600 per achievement. These obviously recycle depending on whether it's daily, etc.

8. You also get xp for crafting, this wasn't working the last go around, but ANet mentioned it will moving forward. As nothing feels like a grind, I could see the crafting xp to be considerable if you advance a bit in any skill or two.

If you want a laundry list to check off, then these steps are great. But ignoring whatever the game has to offer at level 10 because there is something better at level 80 is just wrong (there really isn't). There are other MMOs if you're looking for that. 

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Roybe

I think there is a great gameplay decision made by Arenanet that is subtle:  Because of the design of DE's you can't 'blow through' content as fast as you want, without having to grind.  If you take your time you will level properly.  If you rush you will miss something and have to grind.  The videos I've seen about DE's show many are so subtle that only partial rewards are recieved because parts of the chains are missed.  GW2 is about 'slow and steady', rather than 'run, rabbit, run'.

 

I actually think that the reality is that GW2 lets you level in either style.  It is definitely possible to rush through the game if that's what you want.

Think about it...people that thought there weren't enough hearts task to level obviously did not try going to the other race's starting zones via portal.

I agree with you.  However, there are SO many people complaining that 'DE's suck', 'there is very little in the game except traditional quests', and 'I had to grind to make level' that I pointed out that every section had plenty of points to level up in IF you played the game slowly rather than trying to speed level to 80.  There are plenty of points in other parts of the game to recieve by playing, but in some people's eyes doesn't that mean grinding to level?  Although, choice is good...doesn't making a choice to do this, force you to do things you might not like to do to gain levels (like grind)?

Originally posted by pharazonic

@Creslin: No this is not a stupid post born out of some weird disdain I might have for powerlevellers. 

The fact is that you will miss out on a lot if you don't explore, if you don't talk to that NPC in the distance (because they might trigger an event). I'm not implying that this will be detrimental to your game experience... but if you're not going to do the content that there is, you shouldn't be allowed to say the game lacks content. (In that case, it simply lacks content you want)

 

Here's a post from another forum that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Leveling in Short Order: A Quick Guide for Leveling from 1-15 and beyond

There is a popular adage that you don't want to, "work hard, but work smart." The same is true for Guild Wars 2. I was able to reach level 30 in short order by applying a few quick and easy techniques from playing the game, and these very same techniques were something a casual player or hardcore player could easily apply:

1) Don't neglect the waypoints. Waypoints offer up to 300 experience per capture. They multiply your teleport options and increase the location options on death.

2) Points of Interest are points of interest for your experience bar. POIs grant upwards of 150 experience for each capture. They will also inevitably lead you to dynamic events as they tend to appear around points of interest on the map.

3) Dynamic Quests are dynamic for a reason. DEs can offer between 400-600 experience for each gold medal. A goal medal is typically awarded for being active and by dealing damage on quest-related foes. At present, gold medals do not account for reviving or offering boons to players, but hopefully this will be adjusted in the future. DEs also allow for the possibility of quest chaining, especially at higher levels. 

4) Hearts heart you. The heart quests offer as much experience as a dynamic quest. They also typically come in two varieties, which I dub as the kind heart and the dark heart. Kind heart quests usually involve answering riddles, putting some resource in a receptacle, or fetching something for someone or something, old school mmo fetch stuff. Dark heart quests usually involve murder and mayhem. 

5) The killing blow gets the gold. While exploring and questing you will of course be attacked by a host of different shit and you should respond in kind. Each kill should get you about 40 experience points. Higher level creatures offer a bonus as well as what I call good performance, though this has yet to be completely confirmed. Good performance is when you perform well in combat: not getting hit so often, and killing your enemy quickly and efficiently. You also get about 80 xp per revive, if I recall correctly.

6) Go sink the titanic. You aren't limited to ground combat or quests either. Be sure to explore the deep. There's lots of shit down there, not just on land.

7. Achievements for the completionist. If you complete the daily/weekly achievements of killing 7 different kinds of monsters, or any of the others located here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement, you could get anywhere from 300-600 per achievement. These obviously recycle depending on whether it's daily, etc.

8. You also get xp for crafting, this wasn't working the last go around, but ANet mentioned it will moving forward. As nothing feels like a grind, I could see the crafting xp to be considerable if you advance a bit in any skill or two.

 

If you want a laundry list to check off, then these steps are great. But ignoring whatever the game has to offer at level 10 because there is something better at level 80 is just wrong (there really isn't). There are other MMOs if you're looking for that. 

Hey thank you for the good hints! 

judging from the nature of the replies so far in the thread, i kind of wish that arenanet removed the hearts altogether and tied the map area unlock percentage as a buff/bonus to the amount of experience you would normally receive. for example, if you've unlock 4% of the world map, you get a 4% increase in the amount of experience. it would most likely require some adjustments to the normal experience numbers and i probably wouldn't apply it on top of any xp potions, but you get the idea. i just think the hearts main focus should be to get you to explore the game world, not hold you over or lead you to another area for the next nearby event. if you are out and about just exploring, you are going to stumble onto an event sooner or later anyway and wouldn't need the hearts in the first place. it makes about as much sense as saying a child can't find anything to do after being dropped off on a disney cruise ship/themepark.

I made the mistake of rushing to max level (90) in SWG and missed out on so many things along the way. I have vowed to never do that again. As a matter of fact, it took me 3 years to hit max level in WoW after that. I take my sweet time now and enjoy the content.

Originally posted by Roybe

I agree with you.  However, there are SO many people complaining that 'DE's suck', 'there is very little in the game except traditional quests', and 'I had to grind to make level' that I pointed out that every section had plenty of points to level up in IF you played the game slowly rather than trying to speed level to 80.  There are plenty of points in other parts of the game to recieve by playing, but in some people's eyes doesn't that mean grinding to level?  Although, choice is good...doesn't making a choice to do this, force you to do things you might not like to do to gain levels (like grind)?

In most cases of people complaining about lack of content. They were only doing 1 thing:

They were looking for hearts, and only hearts, and completing those exclusively. Some would do the personal story as well, but that's not really meant to be an exp suppliment. In addition to this, most of these players did not venture into the other race's zones, and they seemed to all be under the assumption that you shouldn't be taking on content that's higher lvl than yourself.

For those of us that have a more rounded understanding of the game, it's pretty clear how such an approach could lead to a disasterous conclusion. They are effectively ignoring 80-90% of the content, because in their minds they are following the shiniest objects on the map, and that's how MMOs are played, right?

You could also perhaps see why this would be considered a grind, as well. Instead of looking for adventures & tasks, they are following a checklist of 'this zone has these 5 things to do, that zone has these 5 things to do' and so on.

- The beautiful thing about GW2 is that it doesn't force you to play any one way. However, this is one of those cases where you are trying to force the game into something it's not. It would be like playing RIFT, only by doing daily's, only to turn around and complain that there are no quests.

Originally posted by jayce

judging from the nature of the replies so far in the thread, i kind of wish that arenanet removed the hearts altogether and tied the map area unlock percentage as a buff/bonus to the amount of experience you would normally receive. for example, if you've unlock 4% of the world map, you get a 4% increase in the amount of experience. it would most likely require some adjustments to the normal experience numbers and i probably wouldn't apply it on top of any xp potions, but you get the idea. i just think the hearts main focus should be to get you to explore the game world, not hold you over or lead you to another area for the next nearby event. if you are out and about just exploring, you are going to stumble onto an event sooner or later anyway and wouldn't need the hearts in the first place. it makes about as much sense as saying a child can't find anything to do after being dropped off on a disney cruise ship/themepark.

Personally, I agree. However, think about it from Anet's perspective.

They are trying to make a game that has a lot of freedom in it. In doing so, they have forced themselves to abandon certain good ideas in favor of keeping the whole design concept intact. If you put too many buffs into map completion, then soon enough map completion is the only way to lvl, and there goes all your freedom of choice.

What I would rather see them do, is revamp the starting experience. Introduce tutorial events for new players, and if they want to keep hearts, start phasing them out. If nothing else, remove them from the map, and give players the ability to make their own map markers (that persist through logout) so they can make their own notes / pins about what they've discovered in each zone.

I found that going from DE to DE was a very fast way to lvl. Some of the Des lasted for over an hour and where always alot of fun. I did some of the personal story stuf but mostly I wondered around and did DEs. I was lvl 18 before the BWE was over and only spent between 15-20 hours in thegame since i was also playing the early release for Tera that weekend also.

I really like the DE system since I have always really disliked doing quests. There isn't anything about the questing process that I like. With the DE i show up take part for as long as I want and leave when ever I want no muss no fuss just plain fun.

Bouncing from DE to DE is probably going to be the fastest way to lvl if you ask me. Best of all the DEs can be triggered by any player. Also you can look at the map to figure out where the DEs are ongoing.