What I enjoyed/disliked most in my first 11 levels of Guild Wars!

Hello! If you saw my first thread in the questions/awnsers part, you should know who I am! I'm going to post the things I enjoyed/disliked most in my early journeys through Guild Wars. (I have Guild Wars and Guild Wars: Eye of the North but I'm in regular GW)



COMMUNITY

The community in Guild Wars is not bad, (atleast where i've been) i've been able to find help and some people even gave me some stuff without me even asking! (It's dumb to ask for things, and I don't.) Some people are rude, but for me it's going pretty smoothly. 9/10

QUESTS

The quests are awesome, I like the "storyline" of them. They can be simple or difficult, and you can even get henchmen to help you beat them. Another unique feature (that I LOVE!) is the arrows on your minimap. They point you in the direct direction you should be going/target area is (of course obstacles aren't too clear on the map. =/) But overall, using the map can be easy! The quests are awesome. Many of them, too. Easy to quest your way to high levels, instead of constant grinding like I found in WoW. (World of Warcraft) [/B] [B]8.5/10

MISSIONS

The missions can be tons of fun, but also hard. Like the one where you have to scout out the Charr army, and then run away can be very confusing because across the bridge is scorpions, and if you hit them by accident, your henchies will aggro them and bleh you lose. I feel they don't explain it so well in some parts (what you have to do), but the storyline of the missions are awesome and overall fun. 8/10

GRINDING

I love how there is little grinding, and how monsters can appear in groups or out of groups and walk around "freely". I do find it VERY fustrating you can easily get killed and sometimes it can be almots impossible to get past certain mobs. 6/10

ARMOR/WEAPONS

I find the choices very limited, and it is VERY annoying having everyone run around with the same armor. Hard to obtain good armor/weapons, too.

3/10

LEVEL CAP

The level cap is well, horrible. I find it very boring to get halfway done with the level cap in a few days.. 1.5/10
Sorry GW, didn't do too well there.

SKILLS/ABILITIES

I like the wide choices, but having 8 bars isn't really my tastes, but still; for some people I guess it will take more "skill" in PvP.

6/10

OVERALL

I overall rate my journey's so far a 8/10. Many parts are amazing, and other parts okay, eh, and not so good. But overall, it's a great game.



~Ryan

You cannot, cannot, cannot review Guild Wars based on the first 11 levels. The real game begins at level 20. After you hit lv. 20, the game style take a sharp turn in a different direction (albeit it is subjective, I do believe that the pre-20 areas in the original GW campaign are 100x better than the lv. 20 areas.)

Yeah I'm on the fence about the level cap. I don't mind too much grind, but can't imagine it any other way. Its just right, but I had a couple of friends who started the game and hit level 20 got max armor and called it quits and left so much of the actual game untouched.

Unlike most games getting to max level isnt the game.

Only once you hit max level does the best parts of the game really begin. At the end of the day level means so little anyways, adding more levels just means it takes longer to hit max level. Everything must stay balanced so if you get more health stuff starts to do more damage. It all balances out and just leaves it another game you need to spend ages to reach max level.

GW current system is excellent imo.

Having no "uber" weapons and armour is also great. GW is a game of skill>time. The better player isnt someone who has camped boss X for his weapon but the player with the better skills.

Same goes for the limited number of skills, its about putting together a build to counter whatever you will face. When you have all the skills at once you dont have to worry about your build.

Your armor and weapon choice improves once you get farther through the game. At this point you should be either in the latest stages of ascalon or in the northern shiverpeaks, and you really haven't experienced much of the game yet. Leveling is not an objective in guildwars and is merely what happens as you progress through the game. It's much more about your skill choices and the story structure than actual character customization.

Although the real game doesn't really start until you hit level 20. (Hell, at lvl 300(3.8m xp)) The game delivers over and over. There is A LOT to work for. Let it be Obs armour, or Chaos Gloves. Or Destroyer weapons, or finishing that collection of req 8 max weapons you've been meaning to start/finish.

While that's all true, sometimes even getting to lvl 20 can be as much fun. When going for the survivor title (reaching lvl 20/140k xp without dying.) Titles bring yet another branch to follow. There are so many titles at the moment to work on, unless you have been working on them for well over a year now, you'll never max all of them.

Like what was said before, thsi game is skill > time. The more you know, the better you get, the more you're flexable to change your build - the more fun you'll have. If that makes sense.

Don't review the game on the first 11 levels. review it after you get to 500 levels.

Ya, i completely agree with ^

getting to lvl 11 is peanuts, compared to the full game content.

After the first time u get to lvl 20, every time thereafter when you make a new character, lvl 20 is gonna seem like a minor inconvenience in the game play.

It's funny; the things you rated lowest are what I like best about Guild Wars: fixed level cap at 20, fixed weapon and armor attributes(Or do you mean selection/style? If so, there is much more to choose from later), and the 8 skill system. Glad you're enjoying it. I know I have.

Look at it this way. If there wasn't a level 20 level cap, I'd be over level 300. If there is that much content in the game to keep you interested... don't worry about level cap. The game goes on without it.

- In very few games getting leveled is "the game". Level is just measure of where you stand compared to rest of playerbase. I loved the level differences in post-searing Ascalon. You could estimate approximate power level just by looking at numbers on the screen. In later chapters everyone is 20 and you never know if that PUG is going to be a decent player or some noob griefer. Unless you start a systematical discrimination process by looking his titles, armor he's wearing, asking his build.

If level is meaningless why not remove the concept altogether and replace it with some kind of reputation system?

- So if everything balances out why not increase the level cap, so skilled players can tackle harder monsters and weaker players could opt to level up to have easier time through the game?

- For PvP, definitely yes. For PvE, it's the worst flaws of the game that there's no way to improve your character after you've reached level 20, crafted max armor and collected max damage weapons. Experience turns meaningless, gold turns meaningless, treasure hunting is meaningless. After that it's about having ten different weapons and five armor sets on storage, twenty titles when you can display only one which everyone else already has.

- It can also turn to "buildwars" as we've seen many times. Either you got skill X on your bar or you lose with high probability.

....You dare grading GW's armor at lv11....in Prophecies?

EPIC FAIL.

I find it ironic that you review the level cap when you've only level 11.

Good lord, you have no idea what you're talking about. Anyone who complains about the level cap completely misses the point of the game. Especially when you're not even there yet.

In other words - it's not WoW.

- What is the point of the game?

To present fundamentally different gameplay than other online RPG's. Instancing, limited skill bars, the level cap, all of these are what makes Guild Wars what it is. Of course, since Guild Wars 2 is doing away with at least two of these it's apparent that the things that make this franchise unique probably die with this game.

If you dislike only having 8 skills and only able to reach level 20, then sorry but, GW isn't the game for you.

Please review the game when you have at least reached level 20. I can reach level 11 on a Factions character in maybe less than 2 hours.

Don't worry, OP, you have seen nothing yet.

What I meant there is that in a lot of games you need to spend time leveling to advance in the game. So leveling becomes the way of progressing. In GW you level up as you play, at no point will you ever find yourself thinking "hmm these guys are getting hard, best get a few more levels before I go any further".

There are games that do remove leveling. I find they work very well. As you advance the game itself gets harder, while you do not improve enemies do. This means it isnt level but actual player skill that is required to advance.

Because then you are forced into grinding levels to hit the max level. Thats not what GW is about. If a skilled player currently wants to have a harder time they can easily take less members in a group, wear weaker armour, use less skills, use less atrribute points etc. With level the challenge isnt controlled by you.


Again, not what GW is about. It isnt an MMO. Its a CORPG. Its not about time spent, but about player skill. You can get max armour and weapons easily, improving after that is down to the player improving. Not farming a boss till you get a better weapon.


In pve you know what you will face so its always build wars (unless you choose not to counter the enemies you know you will face, then again thats just build wars in reverse :P).
Besides pve can be done with so many different builds. There is never a point where you cant win without a certain skill (apart from some missions where you are given a skill of course).



What you have to remember is GW is not just another MMO. If you come expecting your average MMO you will be dissapointed. GW is the only game I know that has gone this way, it has an area of the market that no one else is aimed at.

Instanced areas
Low max level
No "uber" items
Limited skills


All of these are what has made GW great. It allows skill>time gameplay and I do hope Anet doesnt throw that away with GW2.

The level cap is merely the starting point of the real game. You hit 20? Congrats, you just finished your introduction to the game. Now the real game begins, which is about, skills, point distribution, runes/insignias. Everyone is on equal footing, which means you either start thinking on your toes, or get left behind. If you want to be successful at this game, you're going to have to put a little more thought into what you bring to a fight, since you can't just outlevel your enemies until they're easy to overpower. Character builds are the name of the game, not your level.

People here are forgetting that they've probably been ingrained into the way GW works for some time, and are trying to judge the way a new user sees it on the basis of what they have become used to.

Until you've played GW for a while, the realization that max level has zero connection to progress in the game is not intuitive - it is very different from almost every other level based game on the market - computer or table top.

So its very 'obvious' for this new user to feel that they have almost halfway finished the game in only a few days. This person will probably feel they have 'finished' when they reach level 20. It will then take them a little bit of time after that to realize how different GW is.

At least, that was how it went for me. When I got near to level 20 I started feeling the game was wrapping up too early - it seemed like I'd be lacking something to strive for as I went through the rest of the missions. As if only a little way into GW, I had reached what most MMOs call the endgame.

It took me a little bit of time to realize that was not the case.

I like the level cap of GW, but it took me a while to come to that conclusion.

For a new user, the perspective is very different from those of us who have been around for a while. GW probably doesn't sell people on its level cap, but it more than likely keeps them as a result of it. By contrast, the level cap of 60 (now 70 with expansion, and soon 80) of WoW (and likewise of many other MMOs) probably attracts a number of people to the game, but then later drives them away when they start to feel the grind.


I agree with the OP on armor - too much of the look of different armors is too late into the game. But it is better than some MMOs that give you no choice in the matter at all. The only game that really shines in this department is City of Heroes / Villains - where you have an amazing amount of flexibility to design your look.

The OPs comment on grinding is probably a reflection of not yet having mastered the ins and outs of GW aggro and pattern patrols use to wander. Once you learn these things, GW can go from being amazingly hard to seeming too easy at times.

- That's quite an advertisement. Something from backside of the CD case. Did it work for the good or bad since they're seriously considering scrapping the whole concept in GW2?

- Well, Diablo II had instances for which the playerlimit was 8 if I recall correctly. Level cap was fixed at 99 and you could only max attributes for 5 different skills. You could have two skills active at the time - one for left mouse button and one for right mouse button, which you could change with hotkeys. How can you say these features are "what Guild Wars is" when they're 1) not unique to GW and 2) only a way of designing a game, not objective.

I have to say thats one of the reasons I purchased GW.

I think the problem with people being turned off with it however is that a lot of people view it as a standard MMO. Which it isnt.

Its a CORPG, on the surface they do look the same. But when you get down into it they are very different. GW isnt about time spent rather player skill. It lets new players be at the same level playing field char wise very quickly.

Its considering being scrapped (or already has) because there are more customers for the average MMO. Why do you think big game companies play safe with new games? They are in it for the money plain and simple. When something works and sells why try something new?

So the number of people who play standard MMOs is far higher than for games that try something a bit different.

I was suprised about the details of it tbh, GW has sold extremely well. Its a game that came with no following before it, no similar games for people to move on from. It set foot into a new market and has sold 4 million copies. I would have thought that would have shown GW was doing something right.



Just because something isnt unique doesnt mean it isnt a main part of of GW.
And it is a main part of GW, it effects everypart of the gameplay.


*edit*

That was meant to be an edit to the above post, sorry about that. Its 7am give me a break

But did you understand that when it said level cap of only 20 this did not mean the game was short and quick to finish?

I suspect people buy high level cap games because they think they are getting a lot for their money - they won't finish it soon. The same people might look at a low level announcement and think it is one of those game they will finish before they're even done removing the shrink wrap.

You have to be paying more attention when you buy GW to realize that in saying it has a low level cap that the above is not what it is communicating.


Also, I know GW claims it is not an MMO, but it is a massive multiuser online game, and if that is not an MMO, I don't know what is.

massive: really really big, stretch your arms and say 'this big' kinda big.
multiuser: more than one user at a time, buncha people getting together kinda scene.
online: goes on that internet thingy.

Oh yes I was well aware that leveling wasnt a big part of the game.

I also agree with you that some people see max level 100 against 20 and just assume there is less gameplay in GW.

CORPG is often seen as a sub category of MMORPG.
There is a good defenition of both somewhere thats been posted on these forums before, ill see if I can dig it up.

But basically because of the core GW mechanics such as instancing it cant be classed as an MMO.

No need to grind for game basics.

Max level, max armor, max weapons are all easily attainable. Getting all skills is not, but getting what skills you need to be an effective player in PVE is.

This means you can spend your time playing the game rather than trying to get the stuff you need to be able to play at the same level as everyone else.

As for GW2, last I heard while the level cap was gone, how that would affect game play was still unknown. I am hoping that the idea is simply to give players a way to show how long they have been playing the game, and not have much bearing on the available power of a player beyond a certain low level (like 20 )

Get out of the mentality of other RPGs. This is Guild Wars' best feature.

All your points a fair, but I would really like to start GW again without knowing anything about it, like you just bought it for the first time. I like GW, but the best thing about it was exploring the amazing world and discovering everything for the first time.

- In games where level system is done well, you never have to spend time killing same monsters over and over to be able to compete in next area. Level system does its supposed job: measures how far you are (expected to be) in the game!

- A bit like chess computer where you can adjust how far ahead the AI reads? Or more like stupid AI with overwhelming numbers and stats which you must outwit with few staple strategies and skills.

- 600 health Monk / Famine farming illustrates the concept of skill system beautifully. You can reduce any challenge enemies are going to throw at you to one or two characters with well-defined builds. For the common folk PvE respresents a predictable equation where you have skill power versus monster health. Tactics: kill the healer or most powerful damage dealer first. Once those are dead, hit whatever. Never care about conditions, hexes, interrupting or even bother looking what skills the monsters are using. Some bosses are the only times when you have to stop and revise your build.

- To finish a mission in 18:00 minutes or 16:30?

- Exactly. It doesn't matter what you run in PvE. But I was talking about PvP by "buildwars".

- What do you think of the reasoning in following statement: "Because there has been a shooting incident in school, government is prohibiting gun licences for anyone under the age of 18."? It's a direct analogy to this situation. Because no one likes to have spawncampers in persistent areas, does that mean persistent areas shouldn't even exists and we should play single-player game because it's lesser of the two evils? Rather than attempt to fix the problems in persistent areas?

- Doesn't this mean exactly that your possibilities are limited by how versatile and powerful the profession you're playing was designed? If Ele does more damage than Assassin, Assassin is never picked to party. It's never "some Assassins could outclass Elementalists in damage with dedication", which could be possible without level cap. If half of your profession skills are left behind in skill balances what can you do besides sit here whining for buffs?

Popular and good have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It's clear enough that classical MMO's (unplayable dreck IMO) are a lot more popular than something unusual like GW, so it sounds like they're probably going that route. Bummer.

Actually, I would have to say that most of those points continue as you go on.

Of course your usefulness and potential is defined by your class selection. This is how it is in every class-based RPG. If you chose an Assassin hoping to do a Elementalists job, then you just chose the wrong class to play.

Raising the level cap changes nothing, and does not make Assassins able to do an Elementalists job any better, be it 30, 50 or 100; once they both get there their roles and usefulness to the party shall remain the same.

Your complaint is not about level cap but about class and skill balance, which is a whole other sack of potatoes to peel. You don't fix skill imbalance by jacking up character levels.

Oh yes I completely agree. But it only takes it being a bit off and suddenly you have to spend 5 hours grinding till you hit your next level. Infact its often done that way on purpose because its a cheap and easy way to extend the game.

However when you dont have a high level system there is never that risk

It really depends how games choose to do it. GW Factions for example went with the throw increasing number of enemies approach.
Others games take the approach of making enemies more powerful/more skillful or change enemy groups. For example at low levels you might face a whole bunch of melee units, later on you would face teams of healers, casters and melee units. Meaning over time you have to counter more and more.

The reason there is simple. The AI doesnt change. When you know something will react in the same way everytime you can obviousely build to counter it. This is the same for all games however, not just GW. Not even just the genre.

For example in an fps if once you have done a mission several times you might know that throwing a grenade 2 steps behind a certain car, aimed slightly to the left of a lampost will hit the enemy AI who are about to ambush you.

In GW its the same, you know where your enemy are, you know what skill they will use. If you know that, you know how to counter them.

Since the OP is level 11 I chose to go with pve.
PvP is a much more complex issue anyways. In some metas it can come down to buildwars, even then assuming a high player skill that doesnt always decide the outcome of a game.
In other metas buildwars is less of an issue.

But as I said PvP is a much more complex issue and I am not in a position to pretend I know all the ins and outs of it. Besides there are plenty of other threads on the issue

Well first I would ban guns for everyone like we do over here.

Spawncamping isnt the only issue however. While its deffinately a big problem it isnt whats keeping me from enjoying persistent areas.

I like being in my own area, I like being able to go in with friends, guild members or even just h/h.
I like not having other people in my area.
I dont like having a 12year old swearing or insulting everyone.
I dont like not being able to go afk incase someone pulls some enemies into me.
And yes, I also dont like having to camp a mob.

Simply put, I dont like the very core of persistent areas. So persistent areas cant really be changed in anyway that would suit me. There isnt 1 right way to have it. Thats why its nice to have games that appeal to different people.


Well first of all I must ask is, is someone who "dedicates" more time to leveling better than someone who is a better player? GW is all about skill>time.

Besides the classes are all useful in their own way. I will admit it was much better with the original classes as the new ones are often fairly specific or step into areas other proffesions already have covered.

But I would always take a GW like system and hope that the devs know how to keep the classes balanced and useful over a system where grind = a more powerful character.


Time for another of my over used arguments in that the average gamer is in there mid 20's (This was a few years back and some newer results suggest it could even be early 30's now).

So when you make a game where only people who can dedicate a lot of time to grinding simply to be equal in power to another player you can cut off a huge portion of gamers. GW has managed to appeal to the casual gamer because they dont need to spend time getting the best equipment, they dont need to spend ages leveling, they can jump in and within a fairly short period of time only have skill level deciding who is the better player.

- If we're advocating the idea of skill-based system, two things in current GW don't make any sense:

1) If good PvE playing is so severely limited to dealing best DPS to most possible enemies at the time and surviving with protective enchantments, what is the point of having multiple professions with overlapping roles? As for PvP, was it a good idea to introduce Dervish with gimmick skills like immunity to conditions or permanent 33% speed boost? Or an Assassin which can ignore tactical elements like positioning, kiting and blocking with do-or-die stats?

2) Why aren't skills balanced properly so that there's actual competition what to take? There are also some skills like Revive Animal, Dryder's Defenses and Persistence of Memory with no practical purpose anywhere in game.

... I'll assume you mean the limited amount of skills you can play at once, but this point on your list caused me to want to interject that it's actually the massive skill lists that cause the game many of it's problems, particularly with balance.

Ok ill just start by saying either im misunderstanding you or you didnt understand me (I have money on it being me).

I think the limit to 8 skills is a good thing.

A lot of the skills however are pretty much useless, either because it will only really work with set other skills that still results in a poor bar or its a weaker version of a similar skill.

However, every time skills are changed these have to be taken into account as well, because what today is an awful skill could be combined with a new buffed skill to form some overpowered combo.

Take the buff to keystone signet for example, it suddenly brought a lot skills into play that before wouldnt have been looked at and it caused a lot of problems because of that.

Pleas don´t call GW a RPG. It is closer to a first person shooter.

It would probably fit into the category of third person shooter rather well, at least the PvP side. I think many people play the PvE side like one as well, though it has the content to be more than that.

As far as the armors looking the same (OP), he has a good point,e ven later in the game. I had thought about t some as I played WoW as well since it has a large selection of armour. However, as I play WoW, I know there is a curve. Initially, people start out with similar armours and get similar pieces. In the middle to the top they differentiate themselves with a wide variety of armours. However, once you get into high-level end-game raiding, you will notice that 99% of the armour and trinkets being used it pre-selected by the guild. You can end up in a raid where each class has identical armour, well rather each job role.

I do wish there were more sets of armour. I like the idea of everything being in sets and mixable as opposed to a whole lot of individual pieces that don't go together.

As far as the leveling, I think they would have done good to have forgone leveling altogether so there wouldn't be this misconception about a lack of game. For example, in God of War, you don't level (though you do power up your skills). Nobody really considers God of War to be lacking content because there is no high level cap. In fact, because it is not there at all, most people don't even think about it.

If you think the lvl cap is bad, try going for ledgendary survivor. Tht was u get up to 1337.500xp!