Leveling Experience

I'm feeling a little anxious about the upcoming steam rollout as I really want it to do well, but there are several things that feel off to me about the core/leveling experience that I worry about affecting the traction of newer players coming in. I'll admit some of this is easier/more likely to be addressed than others, but I felt I might as well do a full brain dump:

80 levels feels like far too many. Imagine if the game had the exact same stat spread and took roughly the same amount of time to reach the cap, but that was compressed to 40 or 50 levels instead of 80 :

• levels feel like more significant milestones
• boosting characters through levels would be far less tedious
• it would feel less intimidating to level a new toon even if it technically takes the same amount of time
• your gear wouldn't get outdated so fast, freeing you up to invest more in experimenting with stats and wardrobe while leveling
• the distribution of hero points/leveling rewards could be much more normalized/streamlined, and would feel more actually rewarding instead of feeling highly random and kind of trite.
• would provide an opportunity to rebalance core as it's really become too simple/easy with all the power creep and scaling adjustments over the years.
• It's a little more reminiscent of GW1, which is something many players appreciate.

The Hero Panel has some significant UX issues

• there should be some basic organization/categorization of attributes in the equipment panel so that it's more visually intuitive. Maybe "primary" and "secondary" are outdated concepts, but organizing them into something like "offense", "defense" and "support/utility" categories (as an example) can make it much cleaner and easier to read/consume.
• it feels very clunky that wardrobe is combined with equipment in the equipment panel instead of being separated into its own panel (above build). It requires too many clicks from back and forth navigation. Equipment should open by default, and navigating between equipment and wardrobe should be a single click whereas it's at least two today.
• The build panel is mostly fine, but the training panel is a terrible, confusing mess. There isn't even so much as a summary of what each line is intended to provide and players are railroaded to an excessive degree on what and how they unlock new skills/traits. Again, it was far, far better before the "new player experience" changes and it needs to be revisited and cleaned up.
• Since they gave LW5 a title ("Icebrood Saga") they should probably go back and give the former seasons story titles (potentially still prefixing them as LW2, or so forth, to indentify the difference between LW and expansion stories).

Other/Miscellaneous

• Using the same resource to unlock skills and traits in a single panel has always felt odd. Conceptually, this means they compete with each other rather than complementing each other as they are supposed to. Frankly, the launch system of skill points and trait manuals was much, much better. I know it was changed to accommodate elite specs, but it needs to be revisited.
• LW1 still not being present in the game in any significant form is a huge issue with a presumed influx of new players that will be forced to skip all the content that introduced most the major characters and so forth. It's hard for me to understand how they have not figured out a simpler way to do at least parts of it in 6 years.
• Core masteries could really use some additional expansion and refinement.
• HP acquisition is far too backloaded - unlocking new skills and traits takes too long.
• Story progress should probably be account based (other than the PS) since the episodes are repeatable anyway
• I think tracking of NPCs should be better in game than it is. For example, having a minihud for characters that are fighting with you in instances, or a bio section for NPCs in the story journal.
• The POF zones need some aggro/respawn reduction since they are designed as exploration zones and not meta zones.

I'll update if I think of other things.

Some of your points I agree with, but I really don't see why there's anything to be concerned with for the Steam launch. Hundreds of thousands of people coped with the system as it is. New players will either like it or not - I'm not sure any significant overhauls are necessary to appease another influx.

Some refinements for sure

• LS1 should have a better recap. The current one has been worthless since it was added and should have been better.
• I fully disagree with account bound story. Story progression is about character immersion and those who do it once, will have scrolls for most non expac areas to quickly enter any map they would normally be gated behind. Account bound story gains next to nothing.
• Level 80 is what it is. That will never be condensed. I agree it is too many, but there's no point wasting thought on something that will never change
• I do like the idea of the other Seasons having titles (LS1 is often known as Scarlet's War fyi)
• Hero panel could prob do with some cleaning up I guess. I don't really give it much thought as I'm OK with it after all these years and don't see it from a new player perspective

@Randulf.7614 said:Some of your points I agree with, but I really don't see why there's anything to be concerned with for the Steam launch. Hundreds of thousands of people coped with the system as it is. New players will either like it or not - I'm not sure any significant overhauls are necessary to appease another influx.

Some refinements for sure

• LS1 should have a better recap. The current one has been worthless since it was added and should have been better.
• I fully disagree with account bound story. Story progression is about character immersion and those who do it once, will have scrolls for most non expac areas to quickly enter any map they would normally be gated behind. Account bound story gains next to nothing.
• Level 80 is what it is. That will never be condensed. I agree it is too many, but there's no point wasting thought on something that will never change
• I do like the idea of the other Seasons having titles (LS1 is often known as Scarlet's War fyi)
• Hero panel could prob do with some cleaning up I guess. I don't really give it much thought as I'm OK with it after all these years and don't see it from a new player perspective

I wouldn't be too quick to assume anything, really. WoW is doing a (long overdue) level squish this upcoming expansion back to 60. Granted, it's different since the game always raises the level cap, but I think there are a lot of benefits to doing this type of cleanup from time to time and I wouldn't assume it has 0 chance of ever happening.

I do kind of think the story should be account bound, but it's one of the weaker opinions I hold out of the above list.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:Some of your points I agree with, but I really don't see why there's anything to be concerned with for the Steam launch. Hundreds of thousands of people coped with the system as it is. New players will either like it or not - I'm not sure any significant overhauls are necessary to appease another influx.

Some refinements for sure

• LS1 should have a better recap. The current one has been worthless since it was added and should have been better.
• I fully disagree with account bound story. Story progression is about character immersion and those who do it once, will have scrolls for most non expac areas to quickly enter any map they would normally be gated behind. Account bound story gains next to nothing.
• Level 80 is what it is. That will never be condensed. I agree it is too many, but there's no point wasting thought on something that will never change
• I do like the idea of the other Seasons having titles (LS1 is often known as Scarlet's War fyi)
• Hero panel could prob do with some cleaning up I guess. I don't really give it much thought as I'm OK with it after all these years and don't see it from a new player perspective

The reason I say it has a zero chance of happenign is because it simply gains little for them to invest time on given the tendrils of levelling ties into so many corners of the game (many are quick to break like dynamic events). It doesn't just affect levelling and events, but so many other parts of the game from stats, armour, weapons, collections, achievements, instances, loot drops - so much is tied into your character being 80 or at various increments that the risk of breaking something significant with the mess of code the game is built upon, is significant. For no real gain that can't be more easily achieved by improving the xp given out. Anet are a tiny company Vs Blizzard and this just isn't something they will consider doing given the time it would take to sort and the sheer volume of stuff on the table (make no mistake, we are talking months if not years to redo the levelling system)

There are benefits I agree, but they are outweighed by the risks and the time and the reallocation of resources. It simply isn't something I could ever see Anet considering let alone implementing. An assumption on my part yes, but one I can state with a rare utmost confidence

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:Some of your points I agree with, but I really don't see why there's anything to be concerned with for the Steam launch. Hundreds of thousands of people coped with the system as it is. New players will either like it or not - I'm not sure any significant overhauls are necessary to appease another influx.

Some refinements for sure

• LS1 should have a better recap. The current one has been worthless since it was added and should have been better.
• I fully disagree with account bound story. Story progression is about character immersion and those who do it once, will have scrolls for most non expac areas to quickly enter any map they would normally be gated behind. Account bound story gains next to nothing.
• Level 80 is what it is. That will never be condensed. I agree it is too many, but there's no point wasting thought on something that will never change
• I do like the idea of the other Seasons having titles (LS1 is often known as Scarlet's War fyi)
• Hero panel could prob do with some cleaning up I guess. I don't really give it much thought as I'm OK with it after all these years and don't see it from a new player perspective

I know there's plenty of minutiae involved in taking it on, but I also am not convinced it's as unreasonable as you think it is. I could see it taking a few months to do for sure, but there should be teams working on game systems like this on an ongoing basis anyway. Think about similar things they've done in the past like the overhauls to the wardrobe or skill/trait systems. And I would as a major facet of a core game improvement experience where they addressed things like difficulty tuning, etc.

With that said, I do think the hero panel items have the most bang-to-buck ratio above and if they try to get anything done for the steam rollout it should be that.

Like your ideas. Here are my thoughts:

80 levels feels like too many. Imagine if the game had the exact same stat spread and took roughly the same amount of time to reach the cap, but that was compressed to 40 or 50 levels instead of 80 :

Totally agree. But the effort to results ratio seems like it would be really off. I'm not a game developer but te me it seems like that would take a lot of work (rebalancing stat distribution and reward during leveling, changing map requirements, going back and changing every enemy to appropriately scale with new levels). I don't think there would be enough of a need to justify that amount of work. Maybe a compromise would be to let people gain 5 levels at a time instead of 1.

The Hero Panel has some significant UI issues

Again, I am with you dude. I just got my girlfriend playing again and she is totally lost. I have to walk her through something simple like changing her wardrobe be cause the menus are nestled within one another and you can't see the wardrobe panel while in your equipment panel. Also it can be confusing to new players how the inventory panel is separate from the hero panel like in other offline RPGs. NOt sure how they could address that aside from taking notes from other RPG's.

• The build panel is mostly fine, but the training panel is a terrible, confusing mess. There isn't even so much as a summary of what each line is intended to provide and players are railroaded to an excessive degree on what and how they unlock new skills/traits. Again, it was far, far better at launch and it needs to be revisited and cleaned up.

Yes. Nothing else to add. Just yes.

• LW1 still not being present in the game in any significant form is a huge issue with a presumed influx of new players that will be forced to skip all the content that introduced most the major characters and so forth. It's hard for me to understand how they have not figured out a simpler way to do at least parts of it in 6 years.

As a person that never got to play the 1st living story, I came in during the second one. It was a little disconcerting to skip to the second one from the PS. I ended up watching the following:

1.) The in game LS video: This was not really a recap. This was a 1 and half minute trailer. Their idea of introducing Destiny's edge 2.0 was showing their face in a video. This was the worst.

2.) Wooden potatoes 1 hour long lost lore of LS 1 Video: This was better. Wooden potatoes always does a great job of recapping the lore. This got me caught up.

3.) A 3 hour movie version of LS Season 1: This was awesome. IT was basically like I was there. Not gonna lie though, 3 hours was very long and I had to divide it up to watching it over a week while doing laundry or walking on the elliptical. I don't see many new players that would be willing to sit through this.

4.) There was a youtuber that had a series called Tyrian Charactereology: This series told the story of each major character's backstory in 10 to 20 minute episodes. This was not not good for recapping the events fo season 1 but definitely helped fill me in on the motives and relationships between the characters. I loved these. I really got invested into the story after this.

It was only after that much content did I feel like I better understood the Living World season 1. I don't see many players willing to do all of that just to get filled in and caught up on the story. Unfortunately, that 1 and a half minute video was the worse. IT was crap. I think there should be a nice 15 to 20 minute video recapping the events and maybe a few 5 to 10 minute videos recapping the most important characters.

• The PS feels extremely outdated and bland; I know they can't afford to dump a ton of time into changing it, but things like removing the awkward dialogue cutscenes could do a lot of good.

Yeah. I wish they could go back and update to the new method of story telling. So much better. But again, the effort to result ratio may make that not worth it.

Story progress should probably be account based (other than the PS) since the episodes are repeatable anyway

Hey! That's not a bad idea.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! WAs a pretty interesting read.

Lol if you think lvl 80 is bad, you never played other mmo's in which you go up to like lvl 150 and every new expansion adds levels and invalidates your old gear and you have to grind your life out for new ones only to be invalidated again next year.

I used to play Lotro with my friends and in a span of 1.5 years we had two expansions and level cap went from 65 to 75 then 85. This was from 2011 to 2012. One of them quit at 75 and the other at 85. One of them came back after two more expansions but quit again for good at lvl 100. Since then I played like a lonely puppy to lvl 105, 115 and 120 with more expansions. I had some good times but it all went to crap eventually. The one who quit at lvl 100 couldn't believe the level cap now is 130. We all started together when lvl 65 was cap and life was good. Changing too many things too quick leads to destruction of a good thing. So glad GW2 never pulled that crap. I still wish we were still playing Lotro together like the old days with the old content but those days are long gone. It's similar to the nostalgia most people here feel about GW1 memories.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

• Story progress should probably be account based (other than the PS) since the episodes are repeatable anyway　maybe not for this suggestion. some episodes like in season 2 or HoT give black lion keys see: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest_Key#Rewarded_by　while some give craftable collection things for free (like those Auric Weapons)　

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  　@Einlanzer.1627 said:80 levels feels like far too many. Imagine if the game had the exact same stat spread and took roughly the same amount of time to reach the cap, but that was compressed to 40 or 50 levels instead of 80　regarding levels, the 80 levels we have now is fine, though you can even compress it to a max of 20 like in gw1 and it'll still be ok with the horizontal gearing/progression gw2 uses (well, as mentioned by @Randulf.7614 , things like dynamic events and personal story might break lol)　@Einlanzer.1627 said:

• LW1 still not being present in the game in any significant form is a huge issue with a presumed influx of new players that will be forced to skip all the content that introduced most the major characters and so forth. It's hard for me to understand how they have not figured out a simpler way to do at least parts of it in 6 years.　this i agree with. i had a friend (who only played gw2 for the story until PoF) who was like, "who are these people? why are we friends?" when they started Season 2 a few days after finishing the personal story.. i was like "weren't they mentioned in the Season 1 recap?" and they were like "oh... oh yeah for like a few seconds.. uhhh".　the season 1 recap could be better, either in the form of a better video/flashback or something interactive like a special instance and you view memories of what happened during season 1 per episode by interacting with a hologram version of a significant NPC/character/object of that event all within the aforementioned special instance.

The way that the core maps have leveling distributed would prevent any adjustments with regards to changing the leveling to 80, I'd think. Besides, I like the different level zones. /shrug

We can see, you have an issue with the number 80 and other, miscellaneous stuff.But don't try to hide it behind the completely unrelated $team release, that doesn't work.

I don't see any problem with any of that though. The UI is clean and neat.By the time you reach max level, which really doesn't take long, you have enough points to unlock all core traits and skills,so I don't see any problem there either.If you think level 80 scares people away from the game, what do you think would they do, if they see people with well over 300 mastery points?

I think one would be dreaming if they thought any suggestions aforementioned would/could be realized between now and the Steam launch.I also think often features are viewed from a 'veteran' viewpoint, rather than from one unfamiliar with the game.

If anything, GW2's leveling is faster than most MMOs. Levels go by fast enough as is and to boot, it almost feels like exp is normalized far more than most games. I don't think this is an issue. Especially when you include tomes of knowledge(which a new player will earn at least a couple of. More if they PvP or take longer to level (daily logins) ) and other level boosts.

Leave it to the pros, have fun

this game really doesn't need 80 levels but it was made that way to attract players of other mmos who have a weird fondness of mindless exping for the highest levelthey don't care about story, events or whatever the game provides, they only want to grind and gain levelsI knew people like that, they didn't want to play GW1 because "only 20 levels and you get that in a week? what am I supposed to do after that?"

I kinda like 80 i feel there should be more. I lose a lot of fun after 80. Its why i make alts.I agree the hero panel is clunky as.. very counter intuitive.I never finished LS1 it was way hard and ended in a raid like dungeon so i missed it. Just explaining.

I find the achievements panel the worst wading through that mess is very hard.

Its not even hard to get to level 80. It took me 3 days at launch and now i can do it in less than a day using NO boosts. With boosts mere hrs.

For me the biggest thing making me anxious about the Steam release is the current performance issues with the game.. granted that's not Anet's fault but I fear this will impact a number of new players coming into the game who will likely leave again due to a negative and poor experience which will be really upsetting for those of us who love this game and want to see it grow.

With that said I'll go over a few of your suggestions and give my opinions on them.

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:80 levels feels like far too many. Imagine if the game had the exact same stat spread and took roughly the same amount of time to reach the cap, but that was compressed to 40 or 50 levels instead of 80 :

I fear this would not work in Gw2, not only would it require huge rebalancing of the player classes and the leveling system it would also drastically effect the core open world game as well with multiple maps also needing to be rebalanced for the new level up process and many of the personal story missions would also have to be rebalanced as would some/all of the dungeons..This would be a monumental amount of work to get this done and I honestly feel like it really isn't worth it.

That said though I personally do not favour the trend of max level 80 that exists in many MMO's.. why 80? why not 50? or 100? it's always been kind of a minor nitpick of mine that i've been forced to accept.Admittedly though this problem has been remedied in Gw2 since the addition of the mastery system, I very much like how the mastery level replaces the player level and even though it's ultimately a meaningless cosmetic thing I do still feel a sense of progression every time I look at that number and think.. "man, I remember when this number was like 80.. and now look at it.. 320, i've come a long way since then" ^^Maybe it's just me who feels that way but I don't mind lol

• your gear wouldn't get outdated so fast, freeing you up to invest more in experimenting with stats and wardrobe while leveling

A good few years ago I would have agreed on this but considering how cheap it is to make and buy level appropriate gear, not to mention all the freebies you get from both leveling up and the personal story bags of gear I don't think this is really an issue tbh.Keeping a character somewhat geared up well isn't that difficult to do as you level.

• would provide an opportunity to rebalance core as it's really become too simple/easy with all the power creep and scaling adjustments over the years.

While I don't support the reason I do support the idea of rebalancing and improving core world areas.The core world maps are going to be everyone's first experience with Gw2 and they are pretty outdated by the standards of newer content.This is made abundantly clear when a new player stumbles across one of those White Mantle Bandit Champions or one of Kralkarorriks Rift events and gets completely obliterated wondering why the game's difficulty just suddenly spiked to a hundred!!

While we're at it too the core game really needs more trainers around to help teach players about certain mechanics like CC and Combo attacks.

• it feels very clunky that wardrobe is combined with equipment in the equipment panel instead of being separated into its own panel (above build). It requires too many clicks from back and forth navigation. Equipment should open by default, and navigating between equipment and wardrobe should be a single click whereas it's at least two today.

I definitely agree with this, I also find this current setup to be needlessly clunky.I think the Wardrobe, Outfits and Dye sections should all be combined into a new tab called Fashion, Costumes or just Wardrobe and yes it should be placed above Build where you said.This would be far more convenient and specific.

• LW1 still not being present in the game in any significant form is a huge issue with a presumed influx of new players that will be forced to skip all the content that introduced most the major characters and so forth. It's hard for me to understand how they have not figured out a simpler way to do at least parts of it in 6 years.

I've been barking up this tree for far too many years now XDI am absolutely 100% in support of bringing back or remastering living world 1 as replayable content.. I don't care what it costs or even if new content has to be put on hold to do it.. I absolutely hate the giant hole in the Gw2 storyline that the absence of living world 1 has caused for several years now.Story continuity is important to me and not being able to replay this content bothers me immensely.

• Core masteries could really use some additional expansion and refinement.

Agreed, I'd also like a few more too..I have a lot of collected mastery points that have utterly no use and have been sitting there for years.. give us something to spend them on please.I know some might point out we have so many spare ones because we gone and done so much extra stuff and yes I get where they are coming from, not everyone has a surplus of mastery points on hand but that's exactly the point here.If they added new optional mastery's that only become unlockable after all the initial ones are completed then that would be a big incentive for people to go back to all the older content and go achievement hunting for mastery points so they could get these new optional mastery's.. it gives people new optional goals and that's a good thing to have in this game.They don't even have to be anything special.. they could even be gimmicks like allowing us to use that hookshot vine mastery from Draconis Mons in the core world towns or grant small benefits like increasing the duration of food, boosters and banners by a couple of minutes or something.

• The PS feels extremely outdated and bland; I know they can't afford to dump a ton of time into changing it, but things like removing the awkward dialogue cutscenes could do a lot of good.

I have to agree i've thought about this a lot as well.Originally I liked the cutscene dialogue thing but Anet quickly abandoned this format when it became evident it wouldn't work for the living world.Ever since HoT introduced open world dialogue interaction and that became the norm for this game I have wished that Anet would go back and rework the personal story into this same format, they have the dialogue on hand so that isn't an issue.. they just need to get rid of the cutscenes.The bigger problem would be to do the same thing for living world season 1 and 2 since much of the story in those seasons was told via text box's.. this would mean getting voice actors to come in and record a lot of new.. old dialogue to get that in the game..It's ultimately a small and trivial thing to most people but this would be one improvement to Gw2 that I would absolutely love to see happen one day.

• Story progress should probably be account based (other than the PS) since the episodes are repeatable anyway

I wouldn't mind so long as it is an optional thing I can opt out of.. personally I prefer running new characters through their individual storylines and choosing different things depending on their personalities etc.This would be lost if I were forced to have an account based storyline, specially if the personal story remains unrepeatable.

• The POF zones need some aggro/respawn reduction since they are designed as exploration zones and not meta zones.

Agree with this too, I've had my fair share of annoying issues with ranged enemies aggroing on me from really far away, locking me in combat and going "invulnerable".. this can get insufferably annoying at times and has on several occasions made me rage quit the game for the rest of the day XD

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:I'm feeling a little anxious about the upcoming steam rollout as I really want it to do well, but there are several things that feel off to me about the core/leveling experience that I worry about affecting the traction of newer players coming in. I'll admit some of this is easier/more likely to be addressed than others, but I felt I might as well do a full brain dump:

80 levels feels like far too many. Imagine if the game had the exact same stat spread and took roughly the same amount of time to reach the cap, but that was compressed to 40 or 50 levels instead of 80 :

• levels feel like more significant milestones
• boosting characters through levels would be far less tedious
• it would feel less intimidating to level a new toon even if it technically takes the same amount of time
• your gear wouldn't get outdated so fast, freeing you up to invest more in experimenting with stats and wardrobe while leveling
• the distribution of hero points/leveling rewards could be much more normalized/streamlined, and would feel more actually rewarding instead of feeling highly random and kind of trite.
• would provide an opportunity to rebalance core as it's really become too simple/easy with all the power creep and scaling adjustments over the years.
• It's a little more reminiscent of GW1, which is something many players appreciate.

The Hero Panel has some significant UX issues

• there should be some basic organization/categorization of attributes in the equipment panel so that it's more visually intuitive. Maybe "primary" and "secondary" are outdated concepts, but organizing them into something like "offense", "defense" and "support/utility" categories (as an example) can make it much cleaner and easier to read/consume.
• it feels very clunky that wardrobe is combined with equipment in the equipment panel instead of being separated into its own panel (above build). It requires too many clicks from back and forth navigation. Equipment should open by default, and navigating between equipment and wardrobe should be a single click whereas it's at least two today.
• The build panel is mostly fine, but the training panel is a terrible, confusing mess. There isn't even so much as a summary of what each line is intended to provide and players are railroaded to an excessive degree on what and how they unlock new skills/traits. Again, it was far, far better at launch and it needs to be revisited and cleaned up.
• Since they gave LW5 a title ("Icebrood Saga") they should probably go back and give the former seasons story titles (potentially still prefixing them as LW2, or so forth, to indentify the difference between LW and expansion stories).

Other/Miscellaneous

• Using the same resource to unlock skills and traits in a single panel has always felt odd. Conceptually, this means they compete with each other rather than complementing each other as they are supposed to. Frankly, the launch system of skill points and trait manuals was much, much better. I know it was changed to accommodate elite specs, but it needs to be revisited.
• LW1 still not being present in the game in any significant form is a huge issue with a presumed influx of new players that will be forced to skip all the content that introduced most the major characters and so forth. It's hard for me to understand how they have not figured out a simpler way to do at least parts of it in 6 years.
• Core masteries could really use some additional expansion and refinement.
• HP acquisition is far too backloaded - unlocking new skills and traits takes too long.
• The PS feels extremely outdated and bland; I know they can't afford to dump a ton of time into changing it, but things like removing the awkward dialogue cutscenes could do a lot of good.
• Story progress should probably be account based (other than the PS) since the episodes are repeatable anyway
• I think tracking of NPCs should be better in game than it is. For example, having a minihud for characters that are fighting with you in instances, or a bio section for NPCs in the story journal.
• The POF zones need some aggro/respawn reduction since they are designed as exploration zones and not meta zones.

I'll update if I think of other things.

this is cake compared to what other mmo expect of you i been playing ff14 and god that game is a slog.

Compared to classic WoW's 60 levels and retail WoW's 120, GW2's 80 levels feel lighting fast. ANet shouldn't and won't spent any dev time on reducing the number. GW2 leveling is second to none; I hate it in pretty much every other MMO. GW2 is king of alting IMO.The Hero panel could use some improvements, sure, but it's perfectly usable as-is. Some (more) tutorials would be good though.I agree with the personal story being meh, I skip it as much as I can on alts.

The number of levels has nothing to do with the feel you get while levelling. Leveling a character through 50 levels of FF XIV core was a much, much greater slog than getting through 80 levels of GW2 ever was (once you get out of core to FF XIV expansions, it goes way better, but the first 50 levels are a real pain - a feeling i've never had in GW2).It's not the numbers that matter, but how you get them.

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:80 levels feels like far too many

I don't see any problem with the number of levels. The only issue with levels is how they gate personal story with it, especially the idea to block the first instance until you reach level 10, giving players zero motivation to play.

Other/Miscellaneous

• LW1 still not being present in the game in any significant form is a huge issue with a presumed influx of new players that will be forced to skip all the content that introduced most the major characters and so forth. It's hard for me to understand how they have not figured out a simpler way to do at least parts of it in 6 years.

They still don't bundle Season 2 with a purchase to ease the entrance into HOT after Core... expecting a re-release of Season 1 is a fantasy at this point. At the very least they should give players that complete the Core game a -reason- to go to Southsun Cove. Those Young Karka are the first "graduation" enemy, the first tough enemy introduced in this game because we all know core is an absolute joke. Oh and Reef Drakes are also great, but those are much more rare in Southsun

• The PS feels extremely outdated and bland; I know they can't afford to dump a ton of time into changing it, but things like removing the awkward dialogue cutscenes could do a lot of good.

If they remove those how do you expect them to tell us the story?

@maddoctor.2738 said:

• The PS feels extremely outdated and bland; I know they can't afford to dump a ton of time into changing it, but things like removing the awkward dialogue cutscenes could do a lot of good.

The same way it is in modern Personal Stories: The player and the NPC awkwardly stay around and talk.But I actually prefer the cutscenes. At least we were able to skip them.

Why are there so many " I hate x aspect of the game, so I will try to use steam as an excuse to get it changed" threads? To be honest you do not want anet to mess with leveling system again, they only made it worse when they made the awful "New Player Experience" update. If the old forum existed you could see how it was almost universally panned.The only change I would want see is a revert back the vanilla leveling and personal story, and the removal of the new player experience update.

@xoxin.8326 said:If anything, GW2's leveling is faster than most MMOs. Levels go by fast enough as is and to boot, it almost feels like exp is normalized far more than most games. I don't think this is an issue. Especially when you include tomes of knowledge(which a new player will earn at least a couple of. More if they PvP or take longer to level (daily logins) ) and other level boosts.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that I was complaining about leveling speed when I couldn't have made it more clear that's not what I was complaining about in the OP.

@"Shadowmoon.7986" said:Why are there so many " I hate x aspect of the game, so I will try to use steam as an excuse to get it changed" threads? To be honest you do not want anet to mess with leveling system again, they only made it worse when they made the awful "New Player Experience" update. If the old forum existed you could see how it was almost universally panned.The only change I would want see is a revert back the vanilla leveling and personal story, and the removal of the new player experience update.

Yes, I actually agree with this. But I still think there are too many levels.