Level cap - GW2

That's actually your replayability right there. The fact that it's seldom the same opens up a lot of options, varying the play environment in a wide variety of methods.

And it's less in "comparing performances" and more in "comparing experiences" - and that's something you can do in both.

Find me the person with 6k hours racked up in bg2 and I'll concede.

Replayability isn't the same as grind-lengthened gameplay.

You'll easily find a few here. I can keep doing this from Oblivion all the way to Doom and even from our little forum here, and all they're showing is that a dedicated following can indeed make a game last forever. We're not going to find much "proof" here.

Even amongst that forum I'd be surprised if there were people who had put 6k hours in because the game simply doesn't support. I'm saying this as someone who as spent ~50hrs perfecting the bg2 speedclear.

Having never played oblivion I can't coment on that.

With doom on the other hand, I'd happily believe that people have put thousands of hours into because it has exactly the same appeal as GW. There is balance PvP and static PvE that lets you play against other people in - something that I get the feeling you don't get based on your "compare experinces" comment earlier.

I find there are 3 things that create replayability in most games.

1) Fun, if its fun once then it can be fun twice...
2) Change, if we can do things differently each time through we go through multiple times
3) Power, some people just want to be able to crush foes that once gave them trouble by returning with a much stronger character.


Of those 3 we have two that lead to multiple play throughs and one (#3) that generally only has a player going through twice. The level system is tied to the third item, the first two have little or nothing to do with the characters level.

The biggest problem with GW's replayability is the very static nature of the storyline. This limits what we can change to our builds and possibly finding a shortcut or "cheat" through the missions.

If they had continued to release new chapters every 6 months then GW would likely live forever, though I wish they had released fewer skills with Factions/Nightfall/GW:EN and focused more on quality/new skills rather than renaming old skills just to fill out the numbers.

Given GW's model of no monthly fee Expansions would have been far better than stand alone chapters.

lvl cap 1 pls so people learn to understand why low lvl cap really sucks

It does, just not for you. Those people will acknowledge that, as well. They know that the game won't be so loved by others, just like you should understand that speedrunning isn't terribly appealing for most.

Funnily enough, while it has the same "appeal" as Guild Wars, it's not living for the same reasons: there is a near infinite amount of user-developed content. Apparently the static PvE wasn't enough for most.

That last comment in your passage made zero sense. What I said earlier is that it's not about people competing against each other but more about just talking about how they've played and in what. You're saying that people can't share their experiences in Doom with one another.

Back from my vacation. Back to the forums.

To me the situation is no different whatsoever. In my view, both are things that dumb the game down to something that it shouldn't be.

You see what you do is continually seperate the game into bits and pieces. I look at the big picture of Guild Wars. Adding things to the game that dumb it down like Ursan, whether I use it or not, still dumbs it down. Adding grind to the game, whether I do it or not, still adds grind to the game.

You do know that the added endgame grind also does everything you just mentioned? It doesn't require skill, it puts heavy emphasis on "time", and it requires very little knowledge.

I already explained this earlier. The additions were WORSE because they were changes directly against the core of the game. That doesn't mean the original things that were capable of bring grinded weren't bad, they were just far less bad. Heres an example: skill unlocks have been a requirement from the beginning. That is a bad thing. What is worse however is if Anet added MORE things to the game that were bad, showing they either haven't learned from older mistakes or simply no longer care about the original game premise.

I disagree. I don't think they added anything to the landscape, at least not for me. For me they took away from the landscape.

Your friend is simply comparing grind to his experiences with games that have much more grind. That as we know, is a bad way to judge. I could care less how much grind is in other games...all I know is that Guild Wars used to have LESS grind and now it has MORE grind. Guild Wars is supposed to have little grind, and ideally NO grind.

There is also some perception that grind is only grind if it is mandatory to experience the content, which just isn't true. Yes that is the worst kind of grind, but that isn't the only grind out there.

Anet has essentially went from having a PvP based endgame to having a grind based endgame. Saying "it is only optional grind" is irrelevent (still) because we are talking about the endgame. All endgames are optional, but we are talking about what makes up the strength and replay value of that optional endgame.

Good question. I wouldn't mind having no levels. Most PvP games don't have them anyways.

I don't think its unfair at all. Why else would people want a bigger number? They want that number to take longer to achieve the max. They want the number to mean more than it already does.

Stop right there. First you are wrong about the game always being this way. Skill unlocks are a perfect example of something that always required time (and should have never existed). Also, why only PvP? I thought GUILD WARS was supposed to be this way, not PvP only. What if I want my PvE this way? Higher level caps is all but guaranteed to throw skill>time out the window unless you actually believe that max level will be similar in power to lower levels.

It was Anet's intention to continually add grind to their game? I bet you can't get them to say that on record!

Not to mention, I think the inference that skill>time means no grind holds perfectly. Just think about it for one second. Grind=Time>skill.

You're totally right. Skill over time? Pffffttt who wants to bother with skill, I just want to be level 500 so I can roll all those lvl 400 noobs who couldn't grind as much as me!

I'd like the level cap to be 20 if it's Prophecies-like leveling. 50 if it's Factions-like.

Infinite levels sounds TERRIBLE, people would never be the same unless you stopped getting better gear at 20 or 50 or something, so higher levels wouldn't have an advantage.

Are you senile or something. GW may be unique, but it is still an RPG and character development/growth has ALWAYS been a part of RPGs in the Video game world. Also, those "other" PvP games aren't RPGs either, they're FPS, RTS, action games, which GW isn't one of those games either. Oh yeah, most PvP FPS games ARE going the way of levels now, either as a way to unlock new features or as a way to match ppl of differing skill levels up. So that argument doesn't make any sense to me.

It is one of the core aspects of guildwars which is lost when content is level dependent. If trying to perform optimally isn't a fundamental appeal of the game then why do we even have a whole forum section full of people having discussions about optimising builds?

Every peice of doom content is static, whether developer or user created. It doesn't matter if you're playing it for the first time or the thousandth, you still have to overcome the same obstacles with an avatar with exactly the same power level.

You dismissed the "compare performances" when this is exactly the thing that makes pve enjoyable for the pvpve player.

You'd have a point if everyone didn't hit level 20 in a day and then spend thousands of hours at max level.

Then they added title linked skills which added virtual lvling into the game. Also b4 that people just grinded gold for vanity items and non skill related title developement. These all were character developement, but just optional.
You can hae a low lvl cap as long as u have things for people to strive for, may it be achievements or titles. Allot of pve players feel they are not done with character until they hit God, and once they hit that, their play times start dropping off, because their title bar won't move anymore.

Just get things back to what it was like in prophecies and most of us will be happy regardless of lvl.

Couple of problems with what you are saying.

A. Guild Wars has a level cap that is fast to reach...
B. Why do you need levels to see character development?

Fine. Then why do I keep seeing people throwing out random higher numbers with no other explanation other than they want it?

If it is unlimited, there has to be a TRUE cap where you stop getting more HP and attribute points, like you know how you can keep leveling in GW after 20, but the ONLY thing you get is 1 Skill point everytime? Well anet could just remove the 20 restriction and then youd get +1 to your level "number" and 1 skill point.

I didn't say anywhere that you needed levels for character growth, I just made the point that RPGs, in the video game industry, have always contained a few major ingredients, one of those are Character development/growth, the others being focused on equipment and story. However, I have yet to see an Online RPG (don't mention EVE online, it's an MMO, but CCP doesn't classify it as RPG, just a MMO) that can successfully use a form of character growth other than levels as the lack of level increases required grind rather than decreasing it.

Also, those forum member talking about being able to "compare performances" is way off. PvE = Player versus Environment not Player versus player. As such I'm looking for ways to better enjoy MY time in PvE and could care less about any power balance between other players, all I care about is making sure the PvE environment is as fair and fun as it can be, but not to put all the restrictions on it that are involved with PvP. PvE RPG play is ALL about getting your character stronger, getting new equipment and skills, and learning new strategies that you or your party can use to defeat an enemy or proceed further, NOT about comparing your performance to another - that's generally referred to as PvP.

You said I was wrong when I said levels aren't needed, then proceeded to go on about character growth being required. You didn't elaborate on why levels are needed.

Give me examples where lack of levels somehow increases grind. Meanwhile I'll give you plenty of examples where high level cap increases it.

The problem is that Guild Wars was built to be a PvP game and everything in it was built for PvP purposes. Hell even the PvE was originally for PvP purposes. You should be happy though, as Guild Wars 2 will probably be much more like your type of PvE.

Being mindless with Ursan got you everything, game completion and all. It got rid of the need to learn the game, to synergize with your teammates, to learn your class.

Being mindless with the grind will get you nothing.

It's not that those games have more grind, it's that the grind in there doesn't only give you benefits but is entirely mandatory to experience the game. Not only because it gives you desired boosts but because it is literally thrown in your way.

An example would be if in order to enter the Deep you'd have to be rank 5 Luxon, or in order to leave the Crystal Desert and proceed to the Fire Islands you'd have to have a certain amount of experience points. In a more broader example, it would be akin to taking all the grind GW currently has and inserting and spreading it out in your play through the campaigns.

The fact that there is an epic amount of grind that when completed gets you next to nothing, served as a "hey, bored?" afterthought when you're done with the real chunk of the PvE game, it becomes entirely different than grind seen in most MMO's. When you make it a optional, you make it an achievement - and since we've yet to see in this thread how 360 achievements are damaging to all of their games, it's concluded that these titles are equally unharmful.

Which brings us to the question of how all this "grind" is harmful in the first place, and the only thing we can presume is that it goes against the core of the game. The problem there, though, is that those beliefs are pretty much entirely open to interpretation so we're pretty much at a wall. The plus side I personally get is that Guild Wars now caters to multiple playstyles rather than not, and that's something ANet really needs to see further success down the road.

They do, but not with the consequences you keep seeing as unavoidable. They want the level cap to show something rather than nothing, be it skill or time-played or whatever. They may want it to matter it, but they may not want it to be the biggest thing to matter.

Strawman.

I still can't beat the game by grinding up my stats and titles and rolling my face on the keyboard. Granted I can rollface2board but that's because I've been playing since release and know my shit, not because my character's been grinded to the max. I do see ANet not wanting time spent doing mundane tasks to increase your chances of success, but I don't see any mention of ANet never adding their equivalent to the 360's achievements.

That would have to be under the assumption that the content is dependent on level in one of the "wrong ways" I listed. There are many solid games that are able to have some dependence on level *and* still retain a skill threshold.

And for many that's not terribly enjoyable. First time through of course, but repeated playthroughs and speedruns only appeal to a select few.

But that doesn't excuse the crappiness of what you personally might face for GW2. It's not often you run into something like GW1, with such an easy method to replay missions and what not. I wouldn't imagine this easily mimicable in GW2, but I would expect them to stick with implementing HM again, so there's that for you.

I'll be honest - I'm a newbie to Guild Wars, having only been playing for a few weeks and having yet to even get a character to level 20 (so close on my A/R though!). But the low level cap and the relative ease to get to it is part of why I love the game so much. I hate the time wasted in trying to grind to a high level. Over the summer I tried out FFXI and I quit for that very reason - it took me a week simply to go up 5 levels. It was boring, plainly put.

I like the low level cap in GW and how you reach it fairly early in the game because it does something that most MMOs don't - it puts an emphasis on actually playing through the plot. Most of your xp and levels will come from quests and missions, so you have to play the plot to even level up at all. A lot of people grind and farm to get money and armor - but you don't have to do that. It's not like in other games where it's like "...sigh...need to go up 10 levels before I can do anything...*goes off to grind for a week*".

I wouldn't mind a higher level cap for GW2, but not too much higher. 40 or 50 at the top range would be ideal, in my opinion, but I wouldn't be bothered if it stayed at around 20 or 30.

Despite being new at the game, your knowledge far exceeds your experience, and I fully agree and second your informed opinion.

Having a low level cap puts emphasis on content in the game, not level grinding

I liked the early GW system of easy maxed characters and high vanity grind. There's definitely a lot of space for grind that has no effect on gameplay, which lets the grinders have their fun, and the players who don't want to are not disadvantaged in any way.

Well I love the grind and the being needed because of my rank and pve only skills myself. It puts me at an advantage as we all know some of these pve only skills are top dawg. I was getting tired of everyone being pretty much the same. Anyone can press buttons 1 2 3 and run around in a circle, but, grinded ranks and special skills can't be had by all easily and that puts me more in the limelight which I enjoy being in and wanted more by other pugs and groupings. So, I definitely want more separation of character just like in real life where the more effort I put into my job the more rewards I will receive over others, these are called "MERIT" raises or incentives. That's what will always be needed in these online MMO's. So, more levels more grind and the one that does the most receives the most.

Being mindless with grinding gets you a lot actually. Just because it doesn't help you complete the game doesn't mean it doesn't give you anything. You still don't need to learn the game, synergize with teammates, or learn your class when grinding. Personally I don't think grind should get you anything in a game advertised as skill gets you everything.

The fact that grind is considered an achievement is just sad to me. Now I get a lot of people saying "who are you to determine what is fun for other people" and that is true. But honestly I don't care because I don't believe it should be in the game. We have already been over why the 360 games are different from Guild Wars (on many levels).

I'm not buying this "open to interpretation" thing. I think the original intentions of Anet were pretty clear, and I think its pretty clear that the intentions changed. Yes Guild Wars now caters to more playstyles, but was it built to be that way? Should the game of chess change itself to be open to more playstyles?

The consequences are nearly unavoidable. First i'm about 90% sure there will be more grind with a higher level cap. Now you can sit here and name the few legit ways to get around this (which you have done nicely in a previous post), but lets be real. What are the chances that Anet could raise the cap to 100 or whatever and not add grind? Now what are the chances they could raise the cap and not increase grind from the current lv20 cap? Try ZERO % chance...because there is currently ZERO grind to get to 20. Now what are the chances Anet could do all of that and then not give us "optional" grind as a way to increase our level? Try NEGATIVE % chance.

Yet another consequence is level inbalance or even level elitism (of course the latter I personally don't care but it will arise). But level inbalance will occur. If Anet is genius they might be able to work around this too, but I am doubting it.

Thats because the game is mostly easy. Yes I know there are people who have a tough time, and thats fine, but what about the people who don't? Guild Wars PvE has never had dynamic challenge or smart AI. I suppose for Guild Wars 2 PvE to be successful that is the first thing they should do. Level caps are so far after that its not even funny.

I agree with what you are saying somewhat. My problem with the whole thing is that Anet changed the endgame by adding the stuff. In reality it does effect the game landscape because we now have a different Anet sponsered endgame.

I say make the Level cap at 155.....its actually not THAT bad to have a moderately "high" level cap....the key is to not make getting the last 20-30 levels a trip through hell.

This is y i loved this game more than wow. Characters are easy to max, but all high end gear is vanity only, when in wow high end gear was like virtually making u 2-3 lvls higher than blue/green geared player. As a guy who like caster classes, i loved inscriptions being added in nightfall because it finally allow caster weapons to be easily made. Personally what i'm afraid of with GW2 is that it will a gear dependent game like WoW.
One things i've never to hardly hear from guildwars is the casual/hardcore fights. These plague the WoW forums because of the nature of raiding, and how it was the only way to get gear. I'm afraid this would happen if gw2 is a wow clone.

There's subjectivity kicking in again, meaning a barricaded and barbed wall in terms of an argument.

If it doesn't help me, if it's just a flashy title or something completely based around vanity, then to me it's nothing. All those people can grind their little hearts out because it's not just doing nothing to my gameplay, it's also doing nothing to theirs.

We're not comparing the 360 library to the game Guild Wars. We're comparing an intensely similar feature found both in Guild Wars and within nearly every game in the 360 library. While it's done in a bit better fashion on the console games, the same principles still apply: they're completely inconsequential to your gameplay experience, greatly hindering any want or need to pursue them and allowing their completion over any frame of time.

Because of this, these features have seen an overwhelmingly large amount of support. Don't do them? Don't fret. Do them? Well, good for you.

That's the boon/blessing of online games: they always change. Whether for the best or for the worst is rarely determined.

Way too much speculation all fueled by a lack of faith and with not enough info. We still don't know how or when the power curve starts to flatten, how content is scaled, the incentive for reaching that high number, or how fast you progress through those levels. Since we know jack-shit about any of that, we're not in much of a position to speculate besides giving out biased views and predictions. It also doesn't help that what we classify as "grind" is wildly different. The only way I would classify a higher level cap bringing in grind is if they spread that content as much as they could, having areas draw on far too long.

And ANet is already a step ahead of the leveling imbalance with the sidekick system in implementation, and there's little you can do to fight against elitism.

You've simply reached the skill threshold. There's not a whole lot you can do about that for parts of a game that pit you up against AI (which is a couple billion of them).

Personally this is what I'm hoping for except everyone will be able to go everywhere to at least try to get them. That's the problem with major mmo/mmorpgs is they make the really great stuff only for groups of people to get to. I'd like to see unlimited weapons and mods where everyone can get to them at least and then only time determines who gets what when the most.

Exactly the same argument some people used in favor of keeping Ursan. "It doesn't affect me so why nerf it". Or "I am using it and it doesn't affect others so stop whining". Titles DO have an effect on the entire game...maybe not as much or in the same way as Ursan, but it has an effect that I have outlined throughout this thread.

I'd argue that the features are altogether different, as some games were built on them and some weren't. But if you are using popularity as the sole determining factor on what should or shouldn't be in the game, then you win. I can't argue with that. All I can say is, there are a lot of things that are popular that would be TERRIBLE for the game. I could probably think of 100 things that fit that category (titles being one of them).

Its determined by each individual. My determination is that the game changed for the worse.

You are giving Anet far too much credit. You are also giving the players who want higher level caps far too much credit. You are looking at the potentials, I am looking at the probables. Yes both Anet and the players might not fit the probables, but is it probable?

Yes you can...dynamic AI. But that isn't the point. The point is that the AI in Guild Wars has always been one of its worst points. For Guild Wars 2 PvE to be any good I think that the AI is the first thing that needs to be fixed.

Similar argument, nearly entirely different context. You're right that it has an affect, but one that's much more open to interpretation.

How else are we going to deal with something so ludicrously personal to taste? When we're dealing with something like Ursan it gets a bit easier to handle since the benefits and what it does to the game is simple to outline, but not with something that bases itself around vanity and personal achievement.

You yourself said that anything ANet adds is determined by each individual, and unfortunately with online games and with an issue like this there's always going to be someone at a loss.

"And you're giving them far too less!"
"No u!"
"No U!!"

Yeah...

That's roughly five trillion times easier said than done. The closest a game developer has ever been to this was Monolith with FEAR, and still it didn't provide a solid amount of replay value sans PvP.

If it's an AI, it's going to hit a wall sooner or later. If it's a "comp", it's going to be exploitable and predictable. You simply cannot even begin to recreate the amount of spontaneity of tactics that exist within the human mind.

It's largely similar to adding too many skills: the more factors you include, the more you have to pay attention to, and you can only pay attention to so much.

Again...same thing that was said about Ursan. "Who said it has an effect"...or "The effect isn't that big". I don't buy that these things are open to interpretation. They either have an effect or they don't.

We deal with what is or isn't good for the game. Should we have left Ursan in the game based on popularity? Ursan was also something destructive that based itself largely around vanity and personal achievement (seeing as it was the easiest way to accomplish both).

Yes...and in this case the people who bought the game for what it was are at a loss because of what it is. Personally I don't think titles should be in the game. That doesn't mean I'm selfish...its means I want the game to stay the way it was. Personally I don't think the level cap should be raised. That doesn't mean I'm selfish...it means I want Guild Wars gameplay to remain similar (with improvements for new generation of course) because I liked its uniqueness.

I just go by the facts. I see that Anet has made several positive steps. What you aren't seeing is the negatives that arguably outweigh the positives.

Let me rephrase...BETTER AI. Guild Wars is known in some circles for having pretty bad enemy AI. Even on harder levels, the only reason the game is even "hard" is because the numbers get bigger, not because the enemies are "smarter". Actually there was a rather large thread on the subject where most people agreed with that. I'm just saying that raising the level cap makes no sense when there are more important matters at hand and the current level cap works as intended.

We shouldn't assume that level cap and game play are tied together. A level is just a marker to show the character developement and possibly the distance progressed through the story.

One of the largest problems GW had was its mission designs. Most all of them were brute force missions, have more power than your foes and kill them all. The missions didn't require much thought beyond following a linear path and killing everything you encountered.

Imagine if missions had more tasks in them that were not linked to killing monsters? Then the missions would be playable at any level with equal challenge. Replay value comes from this, not from what level or how powerful you and the mosnters are. Think about a mission where part of the goal was to locate items X/Y/Z and their spawn points are random. A stronger character might have an easier survival during such a mission but would have no impact upon the actual goals of the mission.

A level cap should have little or no impact on how you play the game. Think about this, what if you gained levels not from exp but from entering new cities. So each level represented the cities you had reached. Now you tied this with cities that require a mission/quest to be completed for entry as well as those that can be found through pure exploration.

A higher level doesn't have to relfect the strength of the character. We have other factors here, skills unlocked, skills that level, gear, profession, character class...

As long as there is a symatry of balance throughout the game the level cap is quite meaningless.

Uncapped imo. I could care less about elitism anymore, and to hell with PUGs. Guild Wars is a solo game that you can't pause and it has a chat feature.

Get a good guild that knows how good you are as a player and level won't matter so much, especially with the way they plan to curve it. You'll be able to find a group if your guild doesn't blow.

Then what's the point of leveling up? The whole point of having a level cap is give people a clear goal to reach: the max level. But if all of sudden the level cap becomes ∞, then the goal dissappears and people won't want to get a higher level as much. (Also, there arise questions with the unlimited level cap, if our( the players') level doesn't have a limit, what about the monsters' level? Will they also not have a level cap either? Or will they have a level cap? And if they do have a level cap, where is that cap going to be?)

Including these two together due to similarity:

Not everyone bought the game for the same reasons and not everyone see titles the same way. Some still have the game they bought at release, some don't.

The effects are there, but what's open to interpretation are what those effects are, be it positive/negative/whatever. Since the effects of titles are so wildly personal and subjective, there's not going to be a clear-cut answer.

Ursan changes values, appearances don't. Wearing high-end armor doesn't make me deal more damage. My bar is not improved when I max out all the cartographer titles.

You're going by assumptions. Past performance is only an indication of future performance when the person is entirely unaware of their mistakes.

Any level will work, I've yet to see someone blame for a problem in the game.

And how does increasing the level cap insinuate they're ignoring anything?

There shouldn't be a point to earning NUMBERS. The level system should be a way to track how powerful your character is so you're able to do certain areas of the game effectively.

The GOAL should be to enjoy a game, not chase after numbers. That's the whole goddamn point of a game, is to ENJOY IT.

Monsters shouldn't have a level. They should just be scaled according to the level of difficulty a particular area should have.

Everyone needs to stop worrying about this. It's not going to ruin the game if they don't program it exactly the way you want.

I advocate complete removal of levels entirely in favor of some new, innovative way of character progression. I'm not going to presume to tell everyone how this system should work, since I'm no game programmer. I'll just trust the people who make and sell successful games to figure it out.

Then what if there is a mix of levels between players? What if they varies from level 10,000 to level 10 to level 1million? How should the system scale the monsters then?

You say that the goal is to enjoy a game, not grinding it, and I agree, to a degree. Because you can't enjoy something without work for it, you can't, say, just have all the rare items automatically without killing the monsters that drop it. The level is almost like a level, it maintains the balance of having fun the game. And having a level doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing either. The satisfaction that you get what you killed a monster 20 levels high is quite enjoyable, after all, you just beat someone better than you.(You'd be an idiot not to feel happy about it) And down to the very basics, let me ask you this "What makes GW or any other MMO work, in a fundmental way?" the answer? "Level". Level is the base which all the MMO base the rest of their gaming structure on, without it the entire MMO edifice would simply collapse. (Just imagine GW without a level cap......the horrors it will bring...)

So you are just telling the programmers this "whether there is a way or not, you are gonna find a way 'cause I don't like it". That is so stupid, you are favoring something YOU don't even know if it will exist or not.

I don't see your point here. Frankly to me the reasons people bought the game don't matter. What matters is that the game is NOT the same as release. Instead of focusing on the reasons why the game was made, the game instead shifted focus into others reasons people bought the game and tried to become something its not. Titles and higher level caps are just examples of that.

I've gotten you to admit that titles have an effect. Now we are getting somewhere. Now can you give me any legitimate positive effects?

Except for titles linked to attributes and character strength, but I guess we can pretend those never existed.

And I see your point that appearances doesn't change values, but my point is that appearances HAVE value. The entire reason Ursan was stupid was more than the fact that is was stupidly overpowered, but also because people were abusing it to gain APPEARANCE related stuff. Everything in Guild Wars is appearance related, and thus has a changing value. The addition of titles mean titles immediately have a value. Raising the level cap means that number immediately has a value. Some people may even make that "value" their ONLY value (which raises other questions about the game).

So some people at this point would say "who cares". Well...I care in a game where skill is supposed to be the only value (see Prophecies box). Then some people would say "well all that added endgame stuff doesn't get you skill so skill still matters". Sure...but if that stuff is going to exist at all (which I argue they shouldn't)...SKILL should get you them. Instead what we have today is a system where skill today means almost nothing because you can get almost everything without skill.

Are you claiming that Anet is aware of their mistakes even though they continue to make them? (see recent skill update for 1 example...I have more if needed)

It doesn't necessarily. The current level cap WORKS AS INTENDED though. Their idea to raise the level cap tells us that their intentions there are clearly different from the current successful formula. It tells me that their entire GAME intentions are different. It is a huge gamble to me...bigger than a lot of people are talking about.