Gear shouldn't have levels

IMO, many things in this game would work better if levels were removed from gear, and bonuses to attributes, armor, and attack values were derived instead from character level + gear rarity. For one, I think it's easy to make the case that mundane gear drops are too prolific in the game, and that a.) causes inventory management issues, and b.) makes acquisition of gear less exciting than it should be. This would present an opportunity to rethink various reward systems in the game and improve significantly upon them.

The more important thing, though, relates to the leveling experience. When gear has levels, gaining a single level above your gear's level makes your gear suboptimal, which essentially means that it's never worth your time or energy investing in your gear in the ways that make the game fun before you hit level 80 - like trying out different sigils, runes, and experimenting with different builds using different attribute combinations. Personally, I think that's a crying shame, and it also just makes dealing with gear from 1-79 less interesting than it should be.

The level if the gear itself is the determining factor in knowing what items it will salvage into. A level 30 masterwork chest may salvage into cotton while a 55 masterwork chest into linen. So even beyond just leveling up characters the level of the gear itself does serve a purpose.

Yes, Level accounts into the materials it produces, to implement such a system would require a good rework of the system to get that up and running. Considering what they might have planned for Season 4 living story, I don't see this idea being mostly a highlighted topic especially since a lot of people want build templates, and imagining the backlog of other things they want to do.

There is joy and fun to be found when you're leveling up and get some gear with better stats drop, no need to remove this part of the game.There is a mini economy in rare gear for leveling.Gear needs levels for salvage.

It's a game, looking for efficiencies is not always the best policy, the journey is important too.

I've often thought I'd like to play an RPG with no levels. You'd still unlock skills and things gradually over time but there wouldn't be a numeric marker of your progress and obviously no level requirements on gear, maps, quests etc. I think it'd be an interesting way to approach a game.

But it would have to be a new game. Changing an existing one would be a huge amount of work. Even just removing levels from gear in GW2 would require changing the whole way the crafting system works (and salvaging) and therefore have knock-on effects on everything else that uses those materials.

It's an interesting idea, but sadly I don't think it's practical at this point.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:The more important thing, though, relates to the leveling experience. When gear has levels, gaining a single level above your gear's level makes your gear suboptimal, which essentially means that it's never worth your time or energy investing in your gear in the ways that make the game fun before you hit level 80 - like trying out different sigils, runes, and experimenting with different builds using different attribute combinations. Personally, I think that's a crying shame, and it also just makes dealing with gear from 1-79 less interesting than it should be.

I actually feel the opposite - because I know I'm going to have to swap it out sooner or later I feel more free to try out things I wouldn't normally use. Of course it means I rarely have a full matching set, but at least I can pull together enough random pieces to get a sense of how it's working. Or I can use a weapon I'm fairly certain I won't stick with for a few levels and then swap it out.

Whereas at level 80 I want to get on and get a full set of exotics, and I want to make sure it's a good choice so I'm not wasting whatever currencies I use to get it. So either I take advantage of the earlier experimentation or I fall back on a 'safe' (but likely boring) choice.

I could see a system like that being beneficial, but I think it would serve by to deflate the value of all gear, unless they seriously nerfed the drop rates, which would cause other balance issues. It would be kind of cool if there was a system to level up your gear though. Not in rarity, just in level. So if you got a sword you really liked as a level 10, you could pay a certain amount of silver or materials to craft if up to level 11 with you. It would be easier to balance since there would be a cost involved, but would still allow people who wanted to optimize their gear while leveling to do so.

I think dev time would be better spent giving players tools to help inventory management (ideally not always tied to gem store purchases, though I'm sure the devs and their families have grown accustomed to eating and stuff).

For example:

• Quicker and easier TP selling would be nice.
• Extra loot when encumbered going into a piece of mail instead of languishing on the corpse / in the chest (nothing worse than inventory management in the middle of a fight!) -- if not the mail then somewhere else you can go to physically pick it up later (with limits on how much that can fit)
• Not a huge fan of boxes inside boxes...

@pah.4931 said:I think dev time would be better spent giving players tools to help inventory management (ideally not always tied to gem store purchases, though I'm sure the devs and their families have grown accustomed to eating and stuff).

For example:

• Quicker and easier TP selling would be nice.
• Extra loot when encumbered going into a piece of mail instead of languishing on the corpse / in the chest (nothing worse than inventory management in the middle of a fight!) -- if not the mail then somewhere else you can go to physically pick it up later (with limits on how much that can fit)
• Not a huge fan of boxes inside boxes...

The bags within boxes within chests is ridiculous and just a lot of unnecessary clicking. I agree.

I would like to know more about how you would prefer gear acquisition with no gear levels? Do we still get a butt ton of random gear drops that have no level? Do we get no gear drops? Do we only get crafting material? How would this be better in the long run for people like myself who primarily have level 80s?

I've long had this thought, but I can't see it working in GW2 now. The game's come too far, and it's too much work to change it for little benefit.

If it had been in from the beginning, I would have set it up so that each tier of rarity increased the number of stats it gave with AC/Damage being constant. Common would give no stat bonus, Fine one, Masterwork two, and so on.

As I said, though, it's far too late to do something like that in GW2. It would require tearing down and rebuilding too many core systems of the game, then re-balancing it all over time. Let's save the idea for GW3.