New player experience suggestions

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Danikat.8537 said:Do you remember the part where you had to unlock each weapon skill individually by using that weapon? Not just each slot but each skill? So on a profession without many weapons/skills to choose from it could be quick, but unlocking everything on an elementalist took ages because you had to do each weapon 4 times over (once for each element). It wasn't directly tied to levels, but it's not like you started the game with all weapon skills unlocked.

I think this system is simpler because you don't have to go out of your way to make sure you unlock skills. As soon as you level up enough to unlock a slot you have access to that skill on all weapons, and you get XP from everything so you'll unlock them all just by playing. But you still have to find or buy that weapon before you can use it's skills, and new players will still need to experiment with each weapon to find out which one they like best, so overall I think it's one of the more trivial changes and I'd be hesitant to say one way is better than the other.

I do. And it was both more fun AND more engaging in terms of teaching weapons to players. The only problem is that there were so few of them that you could easily have it done by level 5.

The truth is I agree with the OP - the original system was honestly a lot better than the NPE they moved to later on. To this day the skill/trait menus are a hot, confounding mess, it makes no sense to combine skills & traits into the same resource pool, etc.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"TheThief.8475" said:I remember when I used to play my first beloved thief in 2013 and

I had already all 5 weapons skills at level 2

! : wasn't it so much more fun than now?

No. Because when you got more weapons later on you have to "Grind" again to unlock their skills. With the current system once you unlock the skills, they are unlocked on every weapon you try ever after. There is nothing more annoying than getting a brand new weapon and having no skills to use. They made unlocking the skills of your first weapon slower, but they did speed up the unlock process for multiple weapons considerably.

Hard disagree. Unlocking the skills on a per weapon basis was actually more fun. It didn't take very long, and it taught you how to use them properly.

[TheThief.8475]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"TheThief.8475" said:I remember when I used to play my first beloved thief in 2013 and

I had already all 5 weapons skills at level 2

! : wasn't it so much more fun than now?

No. Because when you got more weapons later on you have to "Grind" again to unlock their skills. With the current system once you unlock the skills, they are unlocked on every weapon you try ever after. There is nothing more annoying than getting a brand new weapon and having no skills to use. They made unlocking the skills of your first weapon slower, but they did speed up the unlock process for multiple weapons considerably.

Hard disagree. Unlocking the skills on a per weapon basis was actually more fun. It didn't take very long, and it taught you how to use them properly.

I do agree, but looks like veterans are not open to this change-that is anyway not meant for veterans but for new players- (it shouldn't affect their experience)

[Mungo Zen.9364]

@TheThief.8475 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@TheThief.8475 said:I remember when I used to play my first beloved thief in 2013 and

I had already all 5 weapons skills at level 2

! : wasn't it so much more fun than now?

No. Because when you got more weapons later on you have to "Grind" again to unlock their skills. With the current system once you unlock the skills, they are unlocked on every weapon you try ever after. There is nothing more annoying than getting a brand new weapon and having no skills to use. They made unlocking the skills of your first weapon slower, but they did speed up the unlock process for multiple weapons considerably.

Hard disagree. Unlocking the skills on a per weapon basis was actually more fun. It didn't take very long, and it taught you how to use them properly.

I do agree, but looks like veterans are not open to this change-that is anyway not meant for veterans but for new players- (it shouldn't affect their experience)

Anyone creating and leveling a new character will have the same experience of unlocking weapon and utility skills as they level. Even if you are a veteran player, if you roll a profession you haven't played before, you do get the same experience.

I am okay with the current weapon skill unlock system and do not think it needs to change in any way (but I do feel there is room for change and improvement overall, just not a need). As you level up you are being given a variety of different unlocks at each level for the first 20-30 levels and players do need time to investigate and use them. For GW2 this system does help new players with learning not just the weapon skills but it gives players time to explore the UI and other facets of core gameplay. I believe the intent is by having the player return to the various UI elements many times as they level, the player will grow accustomed to how the various interfaces work.

While I have enjoyed games with weapon leveling systems that asked you to use the weapon in combat to gain skills or levels of ability, I generally have found them to be short grinds with little benefit to the over all game. What I would enjoy (not necessarily in GW2) is a system where you need to do a series of short quests to acquire and learn a new weapon, thereby creating a built in training scenario for how the weapon works (think "slay 30 beasts", "use special ability 5 times on a target" etc).

I would think that, if you wanted to improve the new player experience, that tying more of the experiences to guided quests would be a strong start. Think of quests to use CC to Break 5 Bars or Dodge 10 attacks. We don't have enough guided experiences masked as quests that ask the new players to use skills or even investigate what skills do.

[javier.9786]

I miss the feeling i had the 1st time I played gw2, you must master the weapon in order lo unlick the skills, that was fun and less overwealming.

I'm comming back for a leave of 2 years of gw2 and I start a new character, elemental as its the closest to wow shaman. I get to lvl 50 in 5 or less days and it was hard to get used to 40 weapon skills for staff and trident, not to talk about the conjured weapons, only 30 sec to read the 5 weapons skills and make an idea.Btw I was wondering why do I die so fast so I check the elemental forum and it leaves me with the thought that maybe elemental are the worst class of the game (?)

[Linken.6345]

@"javier.9786" said:I miss the feeling i had the 1st time I played gw2, you must master the weapon in order lo unlick the skills, that was fun and less overwealming.

I'm comming back for a leave of 2 years of gw2 and I start a new character, elemental as its the closest to wow shaman. I get to lvl 50 in 5 or less days and it was hard to get used to 40 weapon skills for staff and trident, not to talk about the conjured weapons, only 30 sec to read the 5 weapons skills and make an idea.Btw I was wondering why do I die so fast so I check the elemental forum and it leaves me with the thought that maybe elemental are the worst class of the game (?)

Hardest to master yes, worst of the game no.Maybe check this thread out.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/122839/best-elementalist-build-for-open-world-pve-path-of-burn

[Vayne.8563]

@TheThief.8475 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:Do you remember the part where you had to unlock each weapon skill individually by using that weapon? Not just each slot but each skill? So on a profession without many weapons/skills to choose from it could be quick, but unlocking everything on an elementalist took ages because you had to do each weapon 4 times over (once for each element). It wasn't directly tied to levels, but it's not like you started the game with all weapon skills unlocked.

I think this system is simpler because you don't have to go out of your way to make sure you unlock skills. As soon as you level up enough to unlock a slot you have access to that skill on all weapons, and you get XP from everything so you'll unlock them all just by playing. But you still have to find or buy that weapon before you can use it's skills, and new players will still need to experiment with each weapon to find out which one they like best, so overall I think it's one of the more trivial changes and I'd be hesitant to say one way is better than the other.

No I don't remember this part, may be one of my pause periods, anyway if you compare what we have now with something worse, it may feel good, but just compare what we have now, to the initial release, this is what I'am comparing in this post, imo was much better.Whats your opinion?

Both the current iteration and the original had their problems.

In the original version of the game, you could run from green star to green star and do your story as soon as you got to it, as long as you were high enough level. You didn't have to wait 10 levels. This had two effects. The first was you sometimes had to stop doing story in the middle of an arc TO level. The other is that people were trained to follow stars on the map, which is how other games work and not this one.

This game has always been about setting your own goals. And doing it the old way didn't teach that at all. The leveling experience before was good for me, but not good for everyone. The leveling experience now is better for some people and not better for others. Anything that Anet does is pretty much going to annoy a segment of the playerbase.

That said, changes were made to keep people playing. They didn't like the retention rate, which is why they changed it. They tested the oritignal system on 1000 people and used the results to create the new system. Wrong or right, the old system wasn't working for the game. Of course, we have no real clue if player retention went up or not.

[TheThief.8475]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@TheThief.8475 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:Do you remember the part where you had to unlock each weapon skill individually by using that weapon? Not just each slot but each skill? So on a profession without many weapons/skills to choose from it could be quick, but unlocking everything on an elementalist took ages because you had to do each weapon 4 times over (once for each element). It wasn't directly tied to levels, but it's not like you started the game with all weapon skills unlocked.

I think this system is simpler because you don't have to go out of your way to make sure you unlock skills. As soon as you level up enough to unlock a slot you have access to that skill on all weapons, and you get XP from everything so you'll unlock them all just by playing. But you still have to find or buy that weapon before you can use it's skills, and new players will still need to experiment with each weapon to find out which one they like best, so overall I think it's one of the more trivial changes and I'd be hesitant to say one way is better than the other.

No I don't remember this part, may be one of my pause periods, anyway if you compare what we have now with something worse, it may feel good, but just compare what we have now, to the initial release, this is what I'am comparing in this post, imo was much better.Whats your opinion?

Both the current iteration and the original had their problems.

In the original version of the game, you could run from green star to green star and do your story as soon as you got to it, as long as you were high enough level. You didn't have to wait 10 levels. This had two effects. The first was you sometimes had to stop doing story in the middle of an arc TO level. The other is that people were trained to follow stars on the map, which is how other games work and not this one.

This game has always been about setting your own goals. And doing it the old way didn't teach that at all. The leveling experience before was good for me, but not good for everyone. The leveling experience now is better for some people and not better for others. Anything that Anet does is pretty much going to annoy a segment of the playerbase.

That said, changes were made to keep people playing. They didn't like the retention rate, which is why they changed it. They tested the oritignal system on 1000 people and used the results to create the new system. Wrong or right, the old system wasn't working for the game. Of course, we have no real clue if player retention went up or not.

I'm curious, indeed, to know if it improved XD

[Vayne.8563]

@TheThief.8475 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@TheThief.8475 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:Do you remember the part where you had to unlock each weapon skill individually by using that weapon? Not just each slot but each skill? So on a profession without many weapons/skills to choose from it could be quick, but unlocking everything on an elementalist took ages because you had to do each weapon 4 times over (once for each element). It wasn't directly tied to levels, but it's not like you started the game with all weapon skills unlocked.

I think this system is simpler because you don't have to go out of your way to make sure you unlock skills. As soon as you level up enough to unlock a slot you have access to that skill on all weapons, and you get XP from everything so you'll unlock them all just by playing. But you still have to find or buy that weapon before you can use it's skills, and new players will still need to experiment with each weapon to find out which one they like best, so overall I think it's one of the more trivial changes and I'd be hesitant to say one way is better than the other.

No I don't remember this part, may be one of my pause periods, anyway if you compare what we have now with something worse, it may feel good, but just compare what we have now, to the initial release, this is what I'am comparing in this post, imo was much better.Whats your opinion?

Both the current iteration and the original had their problems.

In the original version of the game, you could run from green star to green star and do your story as soon as you got to it, as long as you were high enough level. You didn't have to wait 10 levels. This had two effects. The first was you sometimes had to stop doing story in the middle of an arc TO level. The other is that people were trained to follow stars on the map, which is how other games work and not this one.

This game has always been about setting your own goals. And doing it the old way didn't teach that at all. The leveling experience before was good for me, but not good for everyone. The leveling experience now is better for some people and not better for others. Anything that Anet does is pretty much going to annoy a segment of the playerbase.

That said, changes were made to keep people playing. They didn't like the retention rate, which is why they changed it. They tested the oritignal system on 1000 people and used the results to create the new system. Wrong or right, the old system wasn't working for the game. Of course, we have no real clue if player retention went up or not.

I'm curious, indeed, to know if it improved XD

It didn't improve for me, but I don't think the changes were aimed at me. That's sort of my point. The original new player experience worked for players like me, but I don't think of myself as mainstream.

[sorudo.9054]

i do love the old system, however, let me indulge your interest with a redesign.

the weapon skills unlock like normal, you use them and more get unlocked.but the more skills you unlock the faster others unlock, after 3 full bars unlocked the others can be unlocked with one single attack.that way the "grind" is allot less and you can still use all of it before level 6 (like the NPE forces you to do), allowing even new players to experience the game early on without ridicules restrictions.

another part i would like to change is when utility skills are unlocked, even while i agree that level 11 is a good number, they pushed the elite skill to lvl 31 while it was on lvl 30.i would like to see the elite skill slot to be usable at lvl 25, the sooner they know how elite skills work the better.another thing that kinda annoys me more than it does good is the locking down slots, unlock all slots(except elite) at lvl 11 would only fuel players to experiment with builds early on.

and one last thing, allow the removal of NPE for veteran players, this does require at least 1 level 80 character but it removes the annoyance that veterans are treated like babies.

[TheThief.8475]

@"sorudo.9054" said:i do love the old system, however, let me indulge your interest with a redesign.

the weapon skills unlock like normal, you use them and more get unlocked.but the more skills you unlock the faster others unlock, after 3 full bars unlocked the others can be unlocked with one single attack.that way the "grind" is allot less and you can still use all of it before level 6 (like the NPE forces you to do), allowing even new players to experience the game early on without ridicules restrictions.

another part i would like to change is when utility skills are unlocked, even while i agree that level 11 is a good number, they pushed the elite skill to lvl 31 while it was on lvl 30.i would like to see the elite skill slot to be usable at lvl 25, the sooner they know how elite skills work the better.another thing that kinda annoys me more than it does good is the locking down slots, unlock all slots(except elite) at lvl 11 would only fuel players to experiment with builds early on.

and one last thing, allow the removal of NPE for veteran players, this does require at least 1 level 80 character but it removes the annoyance that veterans are treated like babies.

I would like to see a rework of the old system too, i'd just decrease a bit the exp, since it is actually useful to unlock skills gradually as you use them, for example, i got an ele to lv80 using only a staff, got a PvE build from metabattle, scepter + warhorn, and it has been a mess to understand something about it XD.

Gradually unlocking may help to understand better each skill you unlock. I don't actually remember how much time we used to spend to unlock the 5 skills, but i think that unlocking all skills for a weapon in 1-2 minutes would be okay(for example 4 kills to unlock skill 2 and 3 - each - and 6-7 kills to unlock skill 4 an 5 -each), could help to learn, while not annoying the player too much.

I partially agree with the removal on NPE for veterans, but only if they have already unlocked that weapon skill. For example if you have unlocked all staff skills on an elementarist, then you delete it and create a new one (elementalist again), you will have staff skills unlocked, but not the other weapons. This would help learning the skills the first time you use them.

[sorudo.9054]

@TheThief.8475 said:

@"sorudo.9054" said:i do love the old system, however, let me indulge your interest with a redesign.

the weapon skills unlock like normal, you use them and more get unlocked.but the more skills you unlock the faster others unlock, after 3 full bars unlocked the others can be unlocked with one single attack.that way the "grind" is allot less and you can still use all of it before level 6 (like the NPE forces you to do), allowing even new players to experience the game early on without ridicules restrictions.

another part i would like to change is when utility skills are unlocked, even while i agree that level 11 is a good number, they pushed the elite skill to lvl 31 while it was on lvl 30.i would like to see the elite skill slot to be usable at lvl 25, the sooner they know how elite skills work the better.another thing that kinda annoys me more than it does good is the locking down slots, unlock all slots(except elite) at lvl 11 would only fuel players to experiment with builds early on.

and one last thing, allow the removal of NPE for veteran players, this does require at least 1 level 80 character but it removes the annoyance that veterans are treated like babies.

I partially agree with the removal on NPE for veterans, but only if they have already unlocked that weapon skill. For example if you have unlocked all staff skills on an elementarist, then you delete it and create a new one (elementalist again), you will have staff skills unlocked, but not the other weapons. This would help learning the skills the first time you use them.it isn't just the weapon skills, if the NPE is removed all limits should be removed, allowing you to play a new character without being limited like a baby does it's steps.