Steam will be a hard sell

[Linken.6345]

22 minutes ago, Radina.6057 said:

Is GW2s FreeToPlay model still locking you out of Hero Points?

I remember playing through someone I knew from another MMO. She wanted to give it a shot. I was just sitting with my eyes wide open in disbelief when she told me getting hero points was impossible for her because of some restrictions.

Not only does that slow down your character progression, it also kills a fast way to level up your character. Map completions.

 

She stopped by the time she got close to 30. I know lots and lots of people play GW2 as a Maverick, but if you are interested in playing an MMO, having the first dungeon locked behind level 35 is kind of f*cked up. If GW2s focus was on story/solo play that would be okay I guess. But its not. Its much more diverse than that, and has amazing group content to offer. But 99% of it is locked behind level 80.

 

SWTOR doesnt only give you full access to the complete base game as an F2P, with a minor exp malus that still easily lets you level up via story and planet quests, but also tosses you into your first dungeon by the time you leave the tutorial area. You know. Like its actually an MMO.

 

Well. After all some of the devs know that their leveling experience is everything but the dream. Why else would you gift everyone a max level boost with the purchase of an expansion. 
The only problem with that approach is that alot of people are really stubborn when it comes to recommending those boosts. Like you couldnt replay the story, and focus on what you like, instead of being locked into GW2 uncomfortable leveling experience. 
There are just too many people that tell you, no matter what, to level your first character "the good old way".

The hp are locked for everyone it was part of the npe.

If I remember right you have to level your character to 13 for the hero points to pop up on maps and be interactable.

[vicky.9751]

11 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

 

Nothing at start teaches u anything, story wait 10 levels but people loosing interest after reaching level 4 because pressing skill 1 over and over again is not very exciting . If u not someone who know mmos u will feel bored out of ur mind or so confused that u dont even know where to go at start.

I was lucky when i started the game 10 years ago I had the strory i could follow, it was something what gave me a purpose at start.

 

If she has never played this style of game, maybe she just doesn't like mmos. I started mmos when i was 13. This is a fairly easy mmo too, considering there is only 5 main skills compared to like 20+ in FFXIV or LOTRO. 

10 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

show me the arrow direction at start of the story please.  this attitude u show is a great example for bad game design. My answer is a little to rude i admit. point is it doesent matter what game she played before as a new player the game should be fun from the start and its not its dull

So maybe she likes the mobile style gameplay? Auto run and highlighting the path with glitter to quests?

Haha, i doubt we would ever get babied that much by ArenaNet. As far as a steam release, i think it'll be fine. People were hyped to try lost ark when it came out. 

Edited July 17, 2022 by vicky.9751

[Shadowmoon.7986]

This sounds like an astrotuff reason to nerf the keyfarm. I for one am sick of using the steam release as justification of questionable design choices. 

 

[Labjax.2465]

44 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

This sounds like an astrotuff reason to nerf the keyfarm. I for one am sick of using the steam release as justification of questionable design choices. 

 

Wait, what? What in the world does key farm have to do with this? It was already nerfed back in the day when they locked personal story to level and made it once a week key.

[Sparkz.1983]

IMO there's two things in your story you should think of.

1: Your misses is clearly not an MMO player, which is why she struggled with the UI side of things. That's not a criticism of her, but if someone isn't an mmo player then unless they were really intrested in something to begin with they probably wont want to play for long. 

2: Did you think maybe handholding her through stuff e.g telling her where to go takes away the enjoyment of an MMO. This kind of feeds back into point 1 but part of enjoying an MMO, especially for the first time, is the joy of walking around and figuring stuff out.  You've either taken that joy away by telling her where to go and what to do or she was never going to enjoy this in the first place and was playing to humour you.

 

The games not going to be for everyone but honestly it's got a better start than most mmo's. WoW literally drops you at a town and says off you go find some fun. ESO pretty much does the exact same thing as GW2. FF14 walks you around the city talking to NPC's for like 45m before doing anything of substance.

I loved playing every single MMO I've played and honestly I've played pretty much everything on the market. That's because I love MMO's, some people just aren't going to like them, and changing the game to be auto pathy handholding, in some attempt to make people who aren't into mmo's enjoy the experience, well that will just make people who enjoy mmo's not enjoy the experience and inevitably kill the game.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Sparkz.1983

[Teratus.2859]

Been a while since I did the start of the game but i'm pretty sure the game tells you to go out, explore and help people for a while and when the story starts you are notified by mail.. so I don't consider these to be "problems" tbh.

If anything it's a good thing the game opens up with this level of freedom at the start, it gives people the chance to experiment with their class and get familiar with the basic gameplay elements, the latter of which is something the game needs to do a bit better at teaching people though tbh.

 

If anything the overall quality of core world content, lacking tutorials and long time bugs etc are far more of a problem, especially when much of the advertising for Gw2 these days, much of it done by players shows off a very different game than the Gw2 you get when you dive into the vanilla game.

It's a simple fact that the game Gw2 is post expansions and living world is drastically different than the game Gw2 is when you first start the vanilla game and this will turn players off when they realize it.

First impressions are very very important and that's what will largely affect the steam release of Gw2.

Improving the Vanilla game is the main and pretty much only thing that will significantly improve peoples first impressions of the game... because that is what they will always play first.

It doesn't matter if Gw2 "gets much better later" if people don't stick around long enough to get to the good stuff.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Balsa.3951]

2 hours ago, Sparkz.1983 said:

IMO there's two things in your story you should think of.

1: Your misses is clearly not an MMO player, which is why she struggled with the UI side of things. That's not a criticism of her, but if someone isn't an mmo player then unless they were really intrested in something to begin with they probably wont want to play for long. 

2: Did you think maybe handholding her through stuff e.g telling her where to go takes away the enjoyment of an MMO. This kind of feeds back into point 1 but part of enjoying an MMO, especially for the first time, is the joy of walking around and figuring stuff out.  You've either taken that joy away by telling her where to go and what to do or she was never going to enjoy this in the first place and was playing to humour you.

 

The games not going to be for everyone but honestly it's got a better start than most mmo's. WoW literally drops you at a town and says off you go find some fun. ESO pretty much does the exact same thing as GW2. FF14 walks you around the city talking to NPC's for like 45m before doing anything of substance.

I loved playing every single MMO I've played and honestly I've played pretty much everything on the market. That's because I love MMO's, some people just aren't going to like them, and changing the game to be auto pathy handholding, in some attempt to make people who aren't into mmo's enjoy the experience, well that will just make people who enjoy mmo's not enjoy the experience and inevitably kill the game.

the not knowing direction is not the biggest issue, it was how low effort the game makes at start to be entertaining. 

As I said her first story mission ended when she just entered the instance because another player killed the robot.

after that it was go there press 1 1 1 1 1 and F 

no immersion no story , people want feel some speed and fun at start.  Challenge is also welcome if the difficulty is right.

 

 

[Ashen.2907]

9 minutes ago, Balsa.3951 said:

her first story mission ended when she just entered the instance because another player killed the robot

I disagree with most of what you've said, bit this point holds true in my opinion. That initial tutorial starting mission should be a personal story instance, not shared with whoever else is starting at the same time. Having someone who is new and trying to figure out what to do paired with veterans who run ahead and kill the boss, leaving the new player completely out of actual participation in the event, is not a good first impression. Having that happen occasionally in the open world is one thing, having it happen in your introductory story instance is another.

[Dr Meta.3158]

I agree that the early levels of guild wars is very lacking the gameplay department but thats RPGs in general. You're supposed to feel powerless in the beginning and powerful in the end.

Other than that, as other people have said, this sounds like an issue with following directions. That's going to be a person by person criteria. However, my best guess is that your friend was expecting you to play with them and was not so invested in figuring out things on their own due to that expectation. 

[Mungrul.9358]

Shoulda stuck to the original game's level cap of 20 😛

I even reckon they could have implemented skill hunting (one of my favourite things from the first game), by having you unlock skills by participating in metas.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

That didn't go over well when it was implemented for a short time in GW2.

[Ashen.2907]

8 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Shoulda stuck to the original game's level cap of 20 😛

I even reckon they could have implemented skill hunting (one of my favourite things from the first game), by having you unlock skills by participating in metas.

Agreed, except for the metas part. Not a big fan of those in general as individual contribution feels largely meaningless. Its why I prefer 5 or 10 person instanced content. I can see how my contributioms.to the team affect the outcome. Still love the idea of skill hunting though.

[Ashen.2907]

7 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

That didn't go over well when it was implemented for a short time in GW2.

As much a function of how it was implemented as anything else in my opinion. ANet seems to struggle with the translation from grand idea to seeing it in game.

[flyingcats.6194]

What's sad is that the game had perfectly fine learning experience at release. Then ArenaNet decided they had to improve it, and since then it has been awful.

Worst part is how everything is now arbitrarily level-gated, instead of offering natural and immersive ways to discover features. 

 

I recently got two friends into GW2, and they stuck around because I was there to guide them through the early game and explain the unique features to them. The game itself does this very poorly.

Edited July 18, 2022 by flyingcats.6194

[Labjax.2465]

I did some low level leveling the other day and made some rough notes from it, thought I'd share them here since this is about leveling issues. These were things that stood out to me as might cause problems for new players or put them off (disclaimer: I do not claim it's through anything more than my personal lens of things):

- Content guide doesn't seem to account for your level over distance? So it can send you in the wrong direction, toward content you aren't ready for
- Visible locked off abilities remind me of how far I have to go (not good feeling)
- Got a map closing notif while in queensdale... not a good look
- The first ability choice (utility) is not until level 11 (the level after first personal story is unlocked) and then you have 5 different choices for utilities to unlock first. And are confronted with this in the same window that is showing you specializations despite you not being able to do anything with them yet.
- Once you can unlock specializations, you are now having to choose between spending HPs on utilities or specializations with no information as to what or why you should be going for one or the other.
- The order of utility unlock seems very arbitrary and doesn't seem to correspond to the skill's power or usefulness.

 

Recommendations:
- Merge Specialization and Skills (Utilities) trees together in HP panel, so that they unlock in the same ordered way Elite Specializations do. Then introduce specializations much earlier (level 5 or 10) and frontload enough HP gain at that point that player can unlock a whole section from one tree (3 trait options and one utility) as an introduction to specializations. Guide them to doing so in a tutorial popup when they hit that level and encourage them to experiment with the trait set in different places.
- Add setting with default that hides Elite Specializations section in HP panel until it has been unlocked (e.g. you're at level 80) and hides locked abilities on bar, rather than having locked icon and level unlock preview. Player doesn't need this information, they need to be focused on next step in leveling, rather than getting overwhelmed by big picture.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

On 7/17/2022 at 5:05 PM, Labjax.2465 said:

Wait, what? What in the world does key farm have to do with this? It was already nerfed back in the day when they locked personal story to level and made it once a week key.

The complaint is once you hit lvl 2 your personal story disappears until you hit lvl 10. This was done to nerf the key farm. If you want this change reverted, anet is just going to remove the key from the lvl 10 story quest. Right now anet has removed rewards from fractals and raids using random excuses that sound dubious at best. 

[Labjax.2465]

1 hour ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

The complaint is once you hit lvl 2 your personal story disappears until you hit lvl 10. This was done to nerf the key farm. If you want this change reverted, anet is just going to remove the key from the lvl 10 story quest. Right now anet has removed rewards from fractals and raids using random excuses that sound dubious at best. 

I doubt that, since it's now limited to weekly anyway. That's the change that has the most limiting impact. The kind of veteran players who do key farms aren't gonna be slowed much by level 10 lock, I would think.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

12 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I doubt that, since it's now limited to weekly anyway. That's the change that has the most limiting impact. The kind of veteran players who do key farms aren't gonna be slowed much by level 10 lock, I would think.

They nerfed MC in fractal cm even though it was less than 1% of all mc generated. They removed 1 money wing from raids even though very few people do them. If you do not think this wont be an excuse to remove keys from the lvl 10 story quest, when those compete with the gemstore. 

 

[SouthPaw.9705]

Getting new players to come in and stay means something has to be done about the 10 level story progression. Even now it stops me from wanting to create a new character because i have to level up 10 times to get one chapter. It never used to be like this man.