Levels, leveling, level caps, and level 20

lol... sooo much to read...

first off, i would like to say that i like the idea of a lvl20 cap. in all honesty, its a great idea and awsome way to take a game. 2nd, for those that seem to think RPGS/mmorpgs are all about exping and nothing more... your wrong IMO, exping is a big part of any RPG, but why only take enjoyment of that? also, in other RPGS, or rather, tipical RPGs, your able to use ALL of the new skills you aquire from lvling. that doesnt happen in GW, from my 2 day experience at the last BWE, the GW system works and is a good thing. yes you lvl up and get a tad bit better, BUT, you get to PICK what new skills/spells you want!!! how can you beat that!!!!???? not to mention the fact theres something like 75 skills (right?, i think that number is correct not sure lol) per prefession and only get to take 8 with you into battle. that alone makes me not care about going past lvl 20. it really doesnt matter what lvl you are in the end, you still only get to use 8 skills so what does it matter if your lvl 20 or lvl 80 in GW. for those of you that "enjoy" exping, i have seen it said that you still get skill points wellll after lvl 20, and im sure that is tied into exp after you cap your lvl. not to mention the fact exp is a key factor in allowing you to move your attribute points around. so there are reasons to still pve, not just going with the story line and seeing what world they have created, but you can also do it so you can mix and match builds and play around with what idea character you want.

for me, the biggest CON about most MMORPGs out there was the hudge amount of time it took to do anything let alone reach the max lvl. i think having a time sink is nice, but it sucks when your not able to play like all the crazy power gamers out there that are able to play 24/7 when your stuck with 6 hrs a night... if that. this game prevents that IMO, and later becomes just a hudge comppetion for the guilds, and thats cool IMO, im not a hudge RPG pvper, i am more of a pve person, but the fact that both are fun in this game just rocks. the missions are cool and tons of fun, i didnt try any pvp/gvg during the BWE, but im sure its just as great.

another thing i had noticed, was when i was runing around at lvl 8, it was still taking a bit of time for me to kill lvl 4 and 5 mobs solo, granted, im sure it was mostly do the fact i didnt have the greatest gear in the world, but it was still a bit of a challenge, nothing HUDGE, but it wasnt like a 1 hit kill at least. and also, even as a big pve'er, i would perfer to run around doing stuff at max lvl asap then having to wait 3 months to reach the max lvl and start seeing all there is too see in a game. exping kills my pve experince, i see exping as a time sink and nothing more, runing around at max lvl and doing fun stuff is when the true adventure starts, and since the max lvl is low and wont take too long, i think this game will always be an adventure in the pve world, at least IMO.

but anywho... i love this game and i only played it twice, i wouldnt want them to change anything at all. its a great game and IMO, there isnt anything wrong with it at all. that and come on... we are talking old school blizzard guys here, the pimps that made warcraft2/diablo/starcraft, some of the all time greatest games ever made, to ever dought their judgement should be punishable by death!

From playing the beta version, I found leveling to be redundent. So 20 is the cap, I just hope they keep Hackers out and farmers out. Also in PvP everyone is at the same level, so it is fair. How about instead of leveling with expansion packs, that they offer new skills and new challenges, and of course new enemies.

Ok,
I understand the whole thing with being able to get to only level 20 but....
(and correct me if I am wrong) if the level stops at 20 and skills still raise is there not a problem there. When you get to level 20 your health and mana (unless elem.) does not increase but your skill level still increases so... would it not be true that a sorc with really high fire would take out anyone in one hit (or maybe a couple) sense the amount of health a person has does not increase. I do not know what the rest of you think but my friends and I love this game but when we found out that we could only get to level 20 we felt if the game would really be worth the time. Sense in 2 beta events i was able to get to level 15 after I hit 20 I would fell kinda dull. By this I mean that many people tell how good someone is by their level and that also shows how much a person loves the game. Also some of the characters classes need changeing.

So now my suggestions,
1. Increase the level.
2. Make it so that when you enter a pvp contest you could only fight people your own level. This way it controls how high people wana level so that they still have the abilty to fight others.
3. Make the warrior have more health the the other class and make it have the abilty to raise its health higher. For that is the whole point of a warrior to go in and take hits and fight up close. But if it has the same amount of health as lets say a monk then what is the point of going warrior.
4. Have a point to joining a guild. Meaning like many others very good rpgs they have a special meeting room that only the members of that guild can enter and there they can talk and play tiny games like chess and checkers just to pass some time. I do not think this would be so hard for a game company to make thinking that it is in simple games like RuneScape.
5. Have a special chat that can be heard in all districts so that a person does not have to keep jumping around to find a item they need. But still have the districts because that was a very good way of reducing lag time.

Other then these 5 points I think that this games is very good. But if they added a few more things like these into the game it would easily (in my mind) become better the some of the best games out there like World Of Warcraft and EverQuest.

Hopefully you take all these into though.

Signed,
A HUGE FAN.

Their skill level does not continue to increase as you level past 20; you gain more skill points to use towards purchasing skills for your professions.

Guild Wars has been made to break away from the traditional MMORPG mold, where you have to spend countless hours on the leveling treadmill, just grinding away and grinding away until you finally hit a level where you can be competitive with more experienced players. The point of the level cap is so that people can max out their attributes quickly and move towards focusing on perfecting their build, since the game is based more on how well you run your character, rather than how good your character is based on level.

I've put in well over 100 hours of gameplay just from Beta Events so far; 2/3 of that time was PvE, the other 1/3, and an aspect which I found very addictive, was the PvP portion of the game. Once you hit The Tomb of the Primeval Kings, that's when most of the fun started for me, besides soloing The Falls and absolutely annihilating Thorn Stalkers The game is nicely balanced between PvE and PvP it feels, and I highly doubt that you would lose interest after hitting level 20.

Also, Warriors do have the ability to increase their Health when they want to enter the midst of a battle. They're called Endure Pain, and I believe there is another one which increases Health, but for some reason I can't access the GWG homepage to check on the skill.

If you're doing PvP and you're looking for people of your own level, then head to D'Alessio Arena, Fort Koga, Tomb of the Primeval Kings, or The Crag. Besides myself, I have yet to see anybody who was lower than Level 20 fighting in those arenas (I was Level 19, it was close enough).

I know there have been threads here that have talked about adding other options to the Guild Halls where Guild members hang out. And I also believe that one of those suggestions involved chess and/or checkers. So who knows, we may yet find those tidbits in the game.

As for the level cap, that will not change, so I wouldn't worry much about it.

What did you mean by some of the classes need changing? Please elaborate on this.

P.S. Sorry about this post being so choppy, I wrote the first sentence, posted, and then just went back and forth between editing and checking to see if anything else had been posted...

I'm not sure, but I don't believe that Epyon knows about the Guild Hall. Because it is the perfect place for players to talk or whatever. And Guild Battle. I guess if your Guild was large and organized enough, you could manage some Human Tic-Tac-Toe games or something. In fact, now that I think about it, my guild is doing that. No matter how stupid they think it is, they're doing it or I'll kick them out

LOL human tic-tac-toe....

well, IMO, it seems like people think that true content in MMORPGs is in the exp grind, and i think thats bad. also, IMO, the best EXP grinding game out there with a HUDGE end game to it is DAoC, just waaaay to much exping for my taste. but thats what im starting to love about GW, just knowing i only have to exp to lvl 20 and can pvp and go around seeing everything there is to the game with little to no problem makes me one happy camper. i get more enjoyment from playing with friends then exping, and i think ill have alot more fun runing around after lvl 20 with my friends then while trying to reach that goal. but thats just me.

In many other MMORPGS or even MUDs for that matter I always felt I was always on the task of getting gear or such to be able to do something else.

What I like about GW's you can actually feel that you are done with that and can focus more on what to do to have fun: PvP, PVE with friends etc.

Freyas you are correct,

The game is geniously thought up in a way that the developers can easily balance. Unlike most MMORPG's that promise levels upon levels, than have gameflaws and unbalances and quest issues, GuildWars is trying to do away with all of that.

The startup for most MMORPG's are usually their demise, so I think the level cap 20 is a great idea. Besides, GuildWars is more about skill than level. That is proven all the time in PvP. It isn't the highest lvl that wins, it is the player with the best skills and ability to use them. Even my monk could stand toe to toe with a fighter for a given amount of time. In other games I would have been dead in seconds.

PvP aside, is there enough content in the game right now to keep someone interested after months and months at level 20? How many total missions exist in the game as is? About how frequently will they release new chapters?

I do plan to PvP quite a bit, but I want to make sure that's not the only thing left to do after several months of play in GW.

I hate the leveling treadmill in MMORPG's as much as the next guy, but I also like the fact that new levels means access to more of the games content that I couldn't get to before.

Depends on the player. Some people are still doing Diablo 2 runs this very moment--how many years later?

If you are like me and really only want to go through a piece of content once ideally, you'll probably get between 50 and 100 hours of play out of what is shipping if you explore it all with one character.

That is more than the average RPG game of the same price so that seems more than fair. You can always pick up the expansions and get more

there are 25 missions (non pvp) to start
there are 60-70 explorable areas (non pvp, not small) to start with additional content to be added by streaming in

fron GW

Guild Wars, in contrast, is based around your skill as a player. Our maximum level is twenty and you hit that very quickly, after about 20-30 hours of play. ,We call that 'The Point of Ascension'. Almost all of the content in the game and in the future Chapters is only available to Ascended characters, which means we don't have to worry about providing different levels of content. All the good stuff will be available to everyone. It's not our intent to force people onto the levelling up treadmill, so the level cap in Guild Wars is almost meaningless.

EDIT
new chapters of equivalent content to the entire original game are scheduled about twice a year

Hey... I never got to play the beta... i was always busy on weekends =p..

Anyway.. i hear the games level cap is 20... Do you guys think they will ever raise it? cuz, ive never heard of any game with a level cap so low...

no they won't...ever. They said they will keep it at 20 cause it will allow them to balance all future content.

fron GW

Guild Wars, in contrast, is based around your skill as a player. Our maximum level is twenty and you hit that very quickly, after about 20-30 hours of play. ,We call that 'The Point of Ascension'. Almost all of the content in the game and in the future Chapters is only available to Ascended characters, which means we don't have to worry about providing different levels of content. All the good stuff will be available to everyone. It's not our intent to force people onto the levelling up treadmill, so the level cap in Guild Wars is almost meaningless.

Please go to this link for details regarding the level 20 cap.

And please see this link before making any more threads.

so everyone can get everything at level 20...

Hrm... is the game stat based? where you choose your own stats?

It doesn't hurt to use the Search button or to actually read up on a game before you start asking questions. There's no need for this thread.

Go to those links, there are many many posts waiting to be read by you explaining what you are concerned about and that will help you immensely.

I say lvl 20? Great!

as long as they keep lvl 20 fun, and i dont mean PvP fun. Some of us like the PvP but still like to Explore and do quests.
I think the way they should do it is make lvl 20 the cap but, have quests that give NICE "lewt" and can only be done with a group of say 4 or 5. That way you can become better then your enemy by not only your skill of PvP but by how well you and your "Guild" enteracts out side of PvP.
If they dont do this i think the game will become boring after a wile becauls...well heres what im talking about...say your bored of the PvP thing and want to explore, well if you do explore that gives your enemys more time to get better at PvP, and if your trying to have the best PvP guild in the game you need to PvP ALL the time to get better. Well that get Boring sounds like "Grinding" to me. If you had these quest out side of PvP that gave NICE items and i mean NICE, that way you can still have fun out side of PvP and still be getting better at PvP

that my 2 cents hope they read it :P

Though it's good to have the lvl cap at 20, for the game I think they are leaving things open so that in future expansions, as time passes again and your character enters a differant age of the world. Again like pre/post shearing when you character goes to this new age of the world you won't be able to go back, this leave things open to rasing the level cap for an expansion, and still keeping things in each era competative.

I have also heard rumours that they are working on a chapter called 'The Shearing' from what we have been able to work out is this is so you can play our the attack on Ascalon. Weather you will need to do the first part again is unknown. However I feel it will be like PvP mode where you can take a template and defend the city in a constant onslaught.

gabby

gabby, see post 294 by Loviatar above, he is quoting from Arena.net and what they have said about the level cap. Thank you.

I was going of the support request which I get the impression they have not ruled it out for future expansions.

Currently the level cap is set to a maximum of 20. Once you reach Level 20, you will continue to acquire skill points and refund points, but your health and mana points will be capped. At this time, there are no plans to raise the level cap. If we do make a change, or if we have a higher level cap in future chapters of Guild Wars, we will be sure to share the news in an interview, on our various fansite forums, or we will make a post about it on our official site, www.guildwars.com. Please keep an eye on the site for future updates.

Link to the support article

Teh impression I get is that for this stage of the game it will remain at lvl 20, however they have not tied themselves to this for future expansions.

gabby

fron GW

Guild Wars, in contrast, is based around your skill as a player. Our maximum level is twenty and you hit that very quickly, after about 20-30 hours of play. ,We call that 'The Point of Ascension'. Almost all of the content in the game and in the future Chapters is only available to Ascended characters, which means we don't have to worry about providing different levels of content. All the good stuff will be available to everyone. It's not our intent to force people onto the levelling up treadmill, so the level cap in Guild Wars is almost meaningless.

It would seem that there are conflicting messages coming from the GW camp. I think the best answer here is we just don't know what the future will hold, we can jsut make prediction and debate untill it happens.

gabby

It is incredibly unlikely that they will ever increase the level cap in Guild Wars.

I assume that someone who reaches the level cap or ascension will eventually have approximately 150 different skills available to them and 200 skill points to distribute between those skills. I assume that experience earned after reaching level twenty will only be used for redistributing the skill points already earned to different skills, making some stronger by making others weaker. Only eight different skills can be taken into combat at any given time, I pretty much am sure of that. This is where the player skill part comes in. Example ----- It will happen quite often that two different players will pick the same combination of the two classes out of the six classes, one main class and one subclass. For the purposes of this example I assume that only 40 out of 150 skills will be developed to their maximum which would amount to 5 skill points to max out a skill. In that case there are 40 C 8 or 40!/(8!*32!) or 76904685 different combinations, independent of order, to pick 8 skills to play with during a given fight. In that case even if two player in addition to having the same combination of classes also maxed out the same combination of skills the chances of them picking the same eight skills to fight with would be (8!/76904685)2 or 2.75*10-7 and assuming the chance of winning an average lottery is 1 in 14 million your chances of picking the same eight skills to fight with during the same battle that both players are involved in are about four times better than winning the lottery or 1 in 3.5 million but still worse than the chances of getting hit by lightning which is 1 in 2 million. The point is that when two players are fighting each other it is more than likely that they will pick different sets of eight skills. The player that chooses the better set of skills to use against his opponent will win. I assume that there is not uber skill that will beat any other skill just as there is not uber sword or uber armor or uber rune and so fourth. I assume that that aspect of the game will be balanced and a player will win because he picked a combination of skills that work well against whatever combination of skills his opponent chooses and also work well together. In my opinion this game will be more like a match of rock paper scissors where rock is beaten by paper that is beaten by scissors that is beaten by rock. This means that whatever combination of eight skills I pick to use there will always be another combination of eight skills that will beat it and another combination of eight skills that will beat the second combination of eight skills but maybe would not do so well against the first combination of eight skills so on and so fourth to infinity. That is why skill is required, one has to get into his opponents mind and do the opposite to beat them. The order in which these skills would be used during a fight would also matter which would only add to the player skill element. In contrast to RPG’s where characters can be developed to level 160 and skills can be made super powerful the only strategy one would have to use in a battle would be to max out one or two skills which annihilate everything in site and keep using them in every battle, or get the most powerful armor and weapons and keep using that. And the level 20 cap insures that one does not have to spend a great deal of time to be on par with everyone else, in order for a character to be competitive all that character has to do is be level 20, the level at which many combination of skills are available to everyone, that way no one has an too much of an advantage for playing longer or killing more monsters. If this game is anything like I think it is it will be pretty coool.

WRONG

20-40 hours to cap and most skills picked up after that
read something about the game before putting the finger effort into something thaat long

how about that? i just want to know if my assumptions are correct because i maybe want to buy the game

For players who didn't try the beta keep this in mind:

-yes it is true that of the 150 skills you might only get 40 of those by the time you hit L20,

-BUT, I personally found that I was only interested in about 25% of the skills and always had many more skill points than skills I wanted.

The trick is to just be careful and only buy skills after you are sure that you want them. Best idea is to go to forums and look at builds then very GENERALLY emulate one of them while adding your own spin and personal way.

Bottom line is that, if you are careful, you'll not feel the pinch of running out of skill points.

Don't forget, you can only use 8 at a time and even if you have two entirely different bars for PvE and PvE you'll still have a lot of skills you never use even with only 40.

The skill points are to buy skills. You need to have gold and a skill point to buy a skill.

Before level 20 skill points are a bit more abundant as they come from completing missions as well as exp and leveling.

After Level 20 you only get one skill point, possibly more via quest, by maxing out the exp bar.

The attribute points are not skill points, max is 200 that you have to distribute, get massaged around as you need, based on the type of play or build you using. There are 25 refund points to allow for moving your attbribute points around like that.

Once they are exhausted they are gone until you get more. You get them by getting exp, every 250 exp you get another refund point. 6,250 exp to get 25 more refund points and re-adjust your attributes to accomdate a build or mission you want to endeavor.

Hope this was helpful.

also from fansite friday

Oh, and lastly, heres an additional bit of good news about skills: The majority of skills will be available as quest rewards. This does not mean to say that they will be available only as such a reward, of course; you will still be able to get skills in other ways. But if you go on a quest, you may receive a skill as your reward.

I played in the E3 demo last year and loved it, but the question is.....how long does it thatke to get too 20, and what is there to gain after 20?
Can anyone elaborate, BTW Im preordered

If you played nonstop for about 2 days leveling as quickly as possible, you'd get to level 20 quite easily (from personal beta weekend experience... except that much of my time was broken apart by PvP).

After you hit level 20. The game begins. It has been said that levels 1 through 19 are more of a tutorial than anything else. You continue to go questing, unlock new areas, get new items, weapons, and so on, as well as the glorious world of PvP.



As for the quest rewards, that's great to hear! Now I don't have to worry about my skill points as much. Phew.

I like the innovation of the level caps, skill caps, etc. It changes the focus of the game play.

What I think worries people is content abundance. They feel the levele cap = end of most content, which is traditionally the idea.

From what I see in Guild Wars, is the content should be vast, and dynamic (yeah!). I found the storyline was a lot more cohesive than WoW, partly due to the fact that it is more focused. I'm a PVE type of person, and I want to have a lots of game to play, so hopefully thhe 25 missions (main quests) will last me long enough for the next expansion; or, perhaps the Guilds will help fill-in some time as well (though PVP bores me after a while).

Now if the emphasis is on game play, I must say that some of the game play is bland. This is mainly combat. I found it quite boring, but it is about as boring as the other MMOs out there, so it is on par with the others. I'd really be interested in seeing a more hands-on combat system. Or the current system refined a little more to give it more lasting appeal. I haven't played the game long enough to make a final judgement, but my initial impressions were "not very innovative".

Not to mention the horrible collision detection (which they stated they were working on tweaking)! However, that's getting off-topic.

I will put my 2-cents in for the folks who haven't played the game, the environments are really pretty. I love the autumn-forests with the red and orange leaves. (some of the leaves will occasionaly fall from the tree!). I really liek hving the outside world to myself (and friends). It's nice not have people constantly trying to invite you into their group or challenge you to duels while you are trying to complete a quest.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to play too much on opening day due to all my school papers being due in the next couple weeks, but oh well, athere's no monthly fee to pressure me into playing every day.

Well when you are done and get to the lvl 20 cap u can jsut start over as a new proffesion, try out new things.

I played SWG (Star Wars Galaxies).... I was shelling $15.00 a month for it. I played for about a week and mastered the best profession singulary in the game (Teras Kasi Artist).... But I was bored.... Want to know why? It wasn't because I accomplished what I wanted, and got bored. It was because of the jedi. The jedi takes forever to become, and so many of them exist. They rape every class in the game. I HATE jedi. They ruined the game, and it made me feel powerless I really only wanted to play 2 more monthes when I needed 3 monthes to become one. I cancelled my account immidietly after mastering Teras Kasi Artist.

Guild Wars should be different.. Reasons:

1. NO FREAKING JEDI! W007!!!111one!!11oen
2. There is no spoon
3. No more high-level college students raping us
4. Remind me of Neverwinter Nights online.... it was the greatest. With a similar level 20 cap and required skills (And Strategy) it was based on D&D. I was one of the best of the sever (Which consisted of 5 servers connected to eachother) I would usely rape the arena on a daily basis. To keep us entertained, people would create areas and dungeons, submit them to GM's, and we could play them. I made a newbie dungeon myself, but never got to submitting it. I quit after the 3rd expansion, I didn't feel like learning all the 10 new sub class stacker setups (It hurts my brain thinking about it!) Hopefully, Guild Wars will re-satisfy my love for the original, real, RPG!

I completely agree, and with SWG going to the new combat system is it one hundred percent pevle based and group dependent. No group no xp cause you can not kill anything that is close to your level and if it is not close to your level no xp. I think a lot of SWGers will be coming here.

Yes, SWG was great for the couple monthes.... but after that it went down the toilet. I just ordered guild wars last night (And got the preorder items!) It should be shipping very soon! Yay!

Even though I haven't played the game yet, I think I'd vote no. I really like the gameplay structure from what I've read about it so far, and I think I'm gonna prefer new content/professions/races over more levels and abilities.

I am new to GW (only been beta testing it for the last 3 months) but I have a very long history with MMORPG games, been on most of them and just wanted to say this.....


Enough with the level cap issue. I am not trying to name call anyone or try to appear as anything other than someone that has been sitting here reading this LONG post. There were some GREAT posts here on both sides and all had some really great things to say. But when the night rolls in all can be boiled down to this.................

(no offence is meant by this statement)
IT IS A GAME, SHUT UP AND PLAY IT!

What I am trying to convey is that a game is meant to be plaied and not argued over. Just try it and see how you feel. Either you will like it or not, and if you don't then do not play it, if you do then GREAT and keep playing.

I am seeing all of the same things being said and resaid over and over. Just take it for what it is, this is a "new" kind of game so just try it. I mean for Hades sake, CHESS only has a limited number of pieces and 1 kind of board to play on and there are still PLENTY of folks that play it all the time. (Before anyone stops to correct me on this or any point please get over yourself and don't. I am trying to make a point so please do not read more into this than what is on the surphase here.......)

This post is up to 13 pages of this and it just strikes me that you can "point Vs Counter Point" this to death. Just PLAY THE GAME and see if you like it. It is not all that hard to do, you just buy it and try it. If you do not like it then stop playing, if you do then that is great too!

...................sigh.................... I am VERY sorry to anyone that may have taken this personally as it was not intended to be done that way. I am SURE I could have found 1001 different ways to phrase this so it would not offend, but in the end I am sure I would have offended SOMEONE reguardless.

I just hope that you can see past my short comming for not being a truly articualte person (let alone a BAD speller) and just putting it out there as I see it. I am just worried that all of this kind of nitpicking will prevent someone from at least trying it out. I happen to feel that the folks that made this game worked their BUTTOCKS off and created something REALLY COOL and I would love for lots of folks to share in this tryuly cool game!

My thanks to all that read this and again I am deeply sorry if any take offence.

Yours
Gramalkin