Request Toggle for Chararacter Adventure Guide XP

[Mistwraithe.3106]

ArenaNet, can we please have a toggle to disable the Character Adventure Guide XP for players who enjoy leveling at a slower rate as they explore Tyria?

The new Character Adventure Guide achievements give out a lot XP. I haven't been able to find exact numbers but extrapolating from Volume One and looking at how many more there are it looks like 25-30 levels worth. For many level 1 characters that is going to be great. However, we're level 50ish characters who have happily spent maybe 40 hours of gameplay getting there over several months. Most of us have level up boosters but we aren't using them because we are enjoying exploring and we particularly like playing in zones a few levels above our level to increase the challenge (as otherwise it is a bit too easy).

We've only played for a very short period of time since the new Character Adventure Guide came out and in that 15 minutes we gained 5-6 levels, what would normally be 4 hours of fun gameplay for us. It looks the CAG achievements we will catapult us all the way to level 80 in just a few hours, instead of the 20-30 hours of gameplay we were looking forward to. At that point you can't play Tyria zones above your level anymore so there won't be any challenge left in any zone other than level 80 zones.

To put it mildly we think this sucks and it has very much demotivated our desire to play further (hence the very short 15 min session last time).

I can understand the point of the CAG for level 1 characters and I can see it was added so that the new Steam players would reach level 30 faster. But it's disastrous for players like us who were already level 50 and are really enjoying exploring.

We're going to hold off playing for a week or two in the hopes that a toggle is added so we can turn the CAG XP off and continue to level up at our own pace.

Thanks for reading.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Mistwraithe.3106

[aikatara.3462]

Yes, please. I'd like to have an account-wide option to turn off the new feature too. I also enjoy leveling slowly.  I actually deliberatly start at level 1 despite having many level boosts from all the birthday presents. And I have enough tomes of knowledge to level 1 chara to level 80 in one go. I don't use them on purpose because I don't want to speed up the leveling.

And as someone who has a lot (35+) of characters and makes new ones all the time the Character Adventure Guide will now be my permanent companion in the early levels with all these constant pop-ups and ping noises. I turned off UI-Sound for now to at least get rid of the ping-sound, but that isn't a very good solution either, since event notification sounds are now turned off as well. Not to speak of all my level 80s will now run around with achievements popping up on the side all the time for a while. SIGH. This is going to be sooo annoying. I really hope they implement a turn-off option. There is really no point in repeating the new player achievements 30 or 40 times.

Edited August 27, 2022 by aikatara.3462

[Mistwraithe.3106]

2 hours ago, aikatara.3462 said:

Yes, please. I'd like to have an account-wide option to turn off the new feature too. I also enjoy leveling slowly.  I actually deliberatly start at level 1 despite having many level boosts from all the birthday presents. And I have enough tomes of knowledge to level 1 chara to level 80 in one go. I don't use them on purpose because I don't want to speed up the leveling.

And as someone who has a lot (35+) of characters and makes new ones all the time the Character Adventure Guide will now be my permanent companion in the early levels with all these constant pop-ups and ping noises. I turned off UI-Sound for now to at least get rid of the ping-sound, but that isn't a very good solution either, since event notification sounds are now turned off as well. Not to speak of all my level 80s will now run around with achievements popping up on the side all the time for a while. SIGH. This is going to be sooo annoying. I really hope they implement a turn-off option. There is really no point in repeating the new player achievements 30 or 40 times.

Thanks Aikatara.

I think this is a minority issue in that most players don't mind or would only ever have the CAG XP turned on, but for those of us who want to enjoy exploring and leveling up in Tyria it is a serious downer.

ArenaNet should take it as a compliment that some of us really do enjoy the original Tyria zones and want to explore them properly rather than rush through to level 80.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Novus Angellite.6589]

A friend of mine pointed out that the insane amount of XP the adventure guide gives potentially ruins the self imposed Iron Man Challenge (A no deaths challenge for those unfamiliar) for those who wish to give it a go. One of the things that makes the challenge interesting is figuring out where to get good XP without being defeated, and if you should risk it all anyways on that Champion who just spawned because hey... it's good XP! 

 

It would be lovely to toggle it off/on account wide or even just per character. Either for the challenge or because I'm tired of my "Recently completed" being nothing but the adventure's guide as I jump character to character and keep pinging the new "achievements" as I play naturally.

[Handsel.2891]

17 hours to level 80 and I'm a filthy casual so I am usually slower. At least the "end game" crowd won't have time to throw a tantrum.

Edit: ah the confused emoji... I don't know why I missed posting on the forum...

Edited August 27, 2022 by MikeG.6389

[aikatara.3462]

3 hours ago, Luckster.4076 said:

A friend of mine pointed out that the insane amount of XP the adventure guide gives potentially ruins the self imposed Iron Man Challenge (...)

Ah, I love self imposed leveling challenges. I haven't done Iron Man though ... Maybe I should give it a try...  The higher XP gain will definitely influence such challenges. sigh.

5 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

I think this is a minority issue (...)

ArenaNet should take it as a compliment (...)

Yes, it's probably a minority issue. sigh. But I also hope they see it as a compliment and implement a solution for the "odd ones" among us GW2 players who love slower leveling. sigh.

Edited August 27, 2022 by aikatara.3462

[Danikat.8537]

5 hours ago, Luckster.4076 said:

A friend of mine pointed out that the insane amount of XP the adventure guide gives potentially ruins the self imposed Iron Man Challenge (A no deaths challenge for those unfamiliar) for those who wish to give it a go. One of the things that makes the challenge interesting is figuring out where to get good XP without being defeated, and if you should risk it all anyways on that Champion who just spawned because hey... it's good XP! 

I haven't decided what to do with mine yet. According to the rules I wrote when I started I don't have to avoid automatic XP boosts, but that was intended for things like the festival boons which run for a week or two, and I might only play that character once in that time. I could avoid completing some of the achievements, but it seems contradictory to deliberately avoid XP. I'll make my mind up at some point but I'm not sure what that will involve. 

I like the idea of giving players the option to turn off these achievements, but I'd also say for permanent characters that aren't being played as a special challenge don't worry too much about levelling too quickly. No matter how you do it you'll always get to level 80 long before completing everything in the base game (the personal story has several chapters for after you get to level 80). That's one reason down-scaling exists, so you can keep doing what you were after levelling up. It might happen more quickly now but if you wanted to complete maps and/or the story you were always going to be doing a lot of it above the recommended level. 

[Nalk.4026]

Absolutely agree with OP.

Also stuff like getting craft does not seem possible to do again and the list of these "achievments" shows instead of daily which I find personally annoying.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Just checking, do the devs or game designers look at this forum? If not is there another forum or place that requests such as this should be posted?

I realise the dev team might not be interested in this feedback but wanted to make sure it's in the right place anyway.

[Rasimir.6239]

9 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Just checking, do the devs or game designers look at this forum? If not is there another forum or place that requests such as this should be posted?

I realise the dev team might not be interested in this feedback but wanted to make sure it's in the right place anyway.

The suggestion thread at the top of this forum is likely the best place to have somebody from the dev side pick up this idea.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Thanks, I 'll try that.

I was just talking to a friend about this and she pointed out that in WoW Classic right now they have a temporary 50% XP boost going on so people can level up in advance of Wrath of the Lich King coming out. But in WoW you can easily opt out of the boost if you want to level at your own pace.

This CAG achievement XP boost is more like 500%, it's crazy that ArenaNet haven't given us a way to opt out of it.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Further to this thread, our family group had our first general zone explore since about the time of this thread (other recent sessions have been doing the level 40 and 50 dungeons in story and explore mode which strangely didn't trigger these problems, I guess our dungeon activities were limited enough to not trigger much of the CAG).

It was ridiculous. In just under 2 hours of gameplay one player gained 8 levels (54 -> 62) and another gained 11 levels (66-77). The massive experience gain from the CAG was universally panned, they hated it. As one person said, it completely removes any feeling of achievement from gaining the levels when the CAG is handing out experience like candy. It also meant that after starting in an area of a zone where our lowest level characters (both around 54) were under-leveled to add a bit more challenge, by the end they were over-leveled for the whole zone. And we hadn't even finished exploring that zone!

I genuinely despise how the CAG gives out rewards. Worst change Arena has made to the game since we've been playing it by a country mile.

Edited December 8, 2022 by Mistwraithe.3106

[DeanBB.4268]

Well, I'm a big fan of it, but I've been playing since the beginning and have over 100 characters. I'd be ok with the option to turn it off, but make it a permanent choice, otherwise people would just save all that XP for masteries. I guess that'd only be for core masteries, but still.

[Khisanth.2948]

On 8/27/2022 at 6:27 AM, Danikat.8537 said:

I haven't decided what to do with mine yet. According to the rules I wrote when I started I don't have to avoid automatic XP boosts, but that was intended for things like the festival boons which run for a week or two, and I might only play that character once in that time. I could avoid completing some of the achievements, but it seems contradictory to deliberately avoid XP. I'll make my mind up at some point but I'm not sure what that will involve. 

I like the idea of giving players the option to turn off these achievements, but I'd also say for permanent characters that aren't being played as a special challenge don't worry too much about levelling too quickly. No matter how you do it you'll always get to level 80 long before completing everything in the base game (the personal story has several chapters for after you get to level 80). That's one reason down-scaling exists, so you can keep doing what you were after levelling up. It might happen more quickly now but if you wanted to complete maps and/or the story you were always going to be doing a lot of it above the recommended level. 

There is a relatively easy way to avoid most of these on a new character

- don't use any emote

- don't vistas in starter zones

- don't talk to any scouts in the starter zones

That will leave volume 1 at 13/14 and the rest of the volumes will remain locked

None of  those things

[Sobx.1758]

Yup.

[Khisanth.2948]

52 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

Well, I'm a big fan of it, but I've been playing since the beginning and have over 100 characters. I'd be ok with the option to turn it off, but make it a permanent choice, otherwise people would just save all that XP for masteries. I guess that'd only be for core masteries, but still.

Mastery exp can only be earned on a lv80. A lv80 gets massively reduced amount of exp from these. Level 80s get 3% per achievement for all volumes. That is roughly the exp gained from failing an event. So that would be the equivalent of completing 45 events or failing 90. If you add in exp from the mobs during events it would be an even smaller number of events.

[DeanBB.4268]

Good to know, nice to think Anet considered this when designing it.

[Armwvingtoobman.5896]

Sorry to resurrect this, but SAME. I found this thread while googling to see if they added an option for this. 

 

For me it's not even the fast leveling that I don't like, it's the constant pop ups. I only play MMO's for the open world leveling experience. I love the grand, painterly aesthetic of GW2, the music, the discovery. But once they added the adventure guide, all I could ever see were explosions of glitter any time I did anything. 

 

I was only my second vanilla playthrough while I was waiting for the living story season 1 to finish coming out before doing expansion content, and I was enjoying the game maybe more than I'd ever enjoyed any game. I was absorbing the kitten outta that game. Every single haven or town I'd go to, I'd approach from different angles while panning my camera around, because I was amazed at how the game seems to look like an intentionally composed work of art from any of an infinite variety of angles. But then they shoved the glitter in my face. 

 

I've been thinking of coming back, since I know the adventure guide won't impact expansion content, which I haven't done, but it left a strangely bad taste in my mouth about the direction the game seems to be going. A game where I can never really enjoy some of my favourite zones anymore(like Queensdale or Caledon Forest) is just kind of a buzzkill. 

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Yeah. I still really dislike it. My wife inadvertently finished volume 2 last Friday while doing something totally innocuous, that then gave her the XP from the many volume 3 items she had (unknowingly) already completed and that immediately boosted her (first and only) character from level 77 to level 80. Talk about anti-climatic! Instead of working up to finally being level 80 and unlocking Masteries, it was "Oh. What happened? I guess I'm there then?". A complete downer instead of exciting.

There should 100% be a toggle to turn it off. It's just bad, bad design the way it is.

[captrowdy.9561]

I wonder how much dev work would go into coding it or whatever. If it takes a lot of work it’s not worth it. These poor devs read these forums and probably face palm a lot. 

[Knighthonor.4061]

This is such a minority issue. Most new players quit before reaching endgame which is why Anet speed the process up. Levels are meaningless Grandfathered feature from old sub based grinder MMOs. Every thing scales down. So just get to 80 and play all the content in the order you want or in its original order. Nobody is sstopping you.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Danikat.8537]

I've found it more jarring on characters who existed before the system was put in place, because they're more likely to have saved up credit for several achievements and so get big chunks of XP in one go. On new characters created after this was introduced it's less noticable, especially if you're using the achievements as a guide and so unlikely to complete lots of the later categories before unlocking them.

Incidentally I solved the problem of giving my challenge character an advantage by not using emotes or talking to the scouts in starter maps. She's already not allowed to use waypoints so that's 3 achievements from the first category which won't be completed and that means the later categories won't unlock. She still got the rest of the achievements from the first category, but it didn't make as much of a difference as getting all of them would. (Not that she'd do everything from the later ones anyway, this is a no-deaths challenge so I'm not going to take my chances with things like world bosses if I don't have to.)

 

13 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Yeah. I still really dislike it. My wife inadvertently finished volume 2 last Friday while doing something totally innocuous, that then gave her the XP from the many volume 3 items she had (unknowingly) already completed and that immediately boosted her (first and only) character from level 77 to level 80. Talk about anti-climatic! Instead of working up to finally being level 80 and unlocking Masteries, it was "Oh. What happened? I guess I'm there then?". A complete downer instead of exciting.

There should 100% be a toggle to turn it off. It's just bad, bad design the way it is.

That's pretty much how it felt for me getting to level 80 the first time. This was before level-up rewards were added so I didn't even get a pop-up and I was behind on the story so it didn't unlock a new step, I just noticed at some point I'd gained 2 levels since I last looked and was now 80. My main thought was that now I'd have to figure out what stats I wanted on my armour so I could get a full set of exotics. (The only time I even took a screenshot for it was my 5th character, and then only to commemorate the fact that it took me 134 hours, across 1,547 days. I called it 'Slowest Ever 80'.)

I know in many MMOs getting to the max level is a big deal, but in GW2 it's more like the end of an extended tutorial. You can now go wherever you like without worrying you'll be too low level and it's worth getting a full set of equipment with matching stats, upgrades and skins you like because you won't be changing it as often. But other than that nothing really changes and I suspect most people continue doing the same thing they were doing before, because there's no reason to stop.

(The part I do remember is having to trek all the way down to Orr to get exotics from the Temples when I hadn't even been into Timberline Falls yet, just finishing buying what I needed at one of them before the Temple was attacked and the merchant became inaccessible, and the irony that a few days later Super Adventure Box came out so I spent my first month as a fully geared level 80 doing something where levels and gear are irrelevant.)

[Justine.6351]

sadface...

I too just googled it and found this thread. Wanted to make a level one character in wvw but kept getting huge chunks of exp from the adventure guide.

[thorrand.6548]

On 3/18/2023 at 3:01 PM, Armwvingtoobman.5896 said:

A game where I can never really enjoy some of my favourite zones anymore(like Queensdale or Caledon Forest) is just kind of a buzzkill. 

You can though. gw2 has always been about giving you the freedom to decide what to do. If you can't immerse yourself because of popups above the minimap then you're simply not trying hard enough. I leveled up with my wife after the adventure guide. I didn't use any mount she didn't already have at that point and went through it all in chronological order while getting full map completion in the process for every map we unlocked. It was an amazing experience not at all hindered by a feeling of leveling too fast since we scaled anyway and not because of the popups in the right as it just became white noise. Also the adventure guide does have an end