Open world leveling feels too selfish and antisocial

[Touchme.1097]

@"Danikat.8537" allow me to break down your argument in order to show you where I disagree with you.

That's my thinking too. If I started a new game and a friend offered to help me get started but then I found out anything they completed also showed up as completed for me I'd want to stop playing with them and do it solo. I don't play games to get them over with as quickly as possible, I play them to, well, play. I don't want someone to complete content for me or let me skip it because that just means I have less to do.That would be your choice, we are already free to choose if we wanted to complete the game content on our own or by asking players to play with us. I would be ok if the devs changed just how karma hearts worked with an amount of progress needed equivalent to the number of people partying up to complete it.

Early on it also adds the problem that you never learn how to play. If I see a vista at the top of a cliff and I'm not sure how to get up there having someone else do it for me (especially via a method that won't be available to me for a long time, like using the skyscale) teaches me nothing, except maybe giving me the false impression that it's impossible to complete base game maps without late-game mounts. I never find the cave around the corner that leads to a path up the cliff to the vista, I don't know that's a possibility. Later on I'm playing on my own doing my story or whatever and it's directing me to a place I can't obviously reach. Based on what I've learned so far this is content I cannot complete until I get to level 80 and get the skyscale. So now I have to give up on my story and find another way to gain XP because most of the game is unplayable until the maximum level.You made a reasonable point here, however I am going to disagree with you because the changes to the leveling system are not going to add a negative impact and the reason is if someone asked 4 more players to help complete a story chapter, for example "hearts and minds" and the player who needs help was defeated at the start of the story that same person wouldn't have a chance to learn how to do it on his/her own anyway. If someone wants to learn to solo all the game content they can already do that. How different is it for you to take a mesmer portal at the end of a jumping puzzle and having a friend helping you with it? You can already use the teleport to friend to reach places you couldn't reach on your own, how different is it if someone else helps you with it? Again, inconsistent logic...Sadly. All the negativity you are throwing at my suggestion suddendly doesn't make sense and loses all validity

Thankfully that didn't happen to me, but I do know similar things have happened to people in my guild. Their early experience is anything moderately difficult to reach is achieved by a level 80 player doing it on a mount then creating a portal for other people to get up. As far as they know that's how the game works, so they assume anything which isn't obviously accessible is impossible solo at low levels.You can currently ask a mesmer to open a portal for you allowing you to cross places where a certain mount is needed, like the access to the springer ranch in Desert Highlands requiring canyon jumping on the raptor mastery. It would still be entirely your choice to party up with a friend, to ask a mesmer friend to make a portal for you or to do it on your own unlocking the mastery. Again, all the negativity just don't make sense and I am curious to know what is really driving you to be so strongly against my suggestion to make leveling a better social experience.

@"maddoctor.2738"

Right now you are being "slowed" by your friends who don't know how to get hearts and POIs, with such a change you will be slowed as your friends will be far behind in level.False, nobody would feel slowed because the experience would be shared. The current system however has the flaw you so strongly pointed out, and now I wonder how can you be ok with the current system and strongly against the new one I am suggesting here. Math is not something you can interpret, numbers are what they are. If you don't believe me experience it yourself leveling up with a friend

[Oxstar.7643]

@Touchme.1097 said:@"Danikat.8537" allow me to break down your argument in order to show you where I disagree with you.

That's my thinking too. If I started a new game and a friend offered to help me get started but then I found out anything they completed also showed up as completed for me I'd want to stop playing with them and do it solo. I don't play games to get them over with as quickly as possible, I play them to, well, play. I don't want someone to complete content for me or let me skip it because that just means I have less to do.That would be your choice, we are already free to choose if we wanted to complete the game content on our own or by asking players to play with us. I would be ok if the devs changed just how karma hearts worked with an amount of progress needed equivalent to the number of people partying up to complete it.

Early on it also adds the problem that you never learn how to play. If I see a vista at the top of a cliff and I'm not sure how to get up there having someone else do it for me (especially via a method that won't be available to me for a long time, like using the skyscale) teaches me nothing, except maybe giving me the false impression that it's impossible to complete base game maps without late-game mounts. I never find the cave around the corner that leads to a path up the cliff to the vista, I don't know that's a possibility. Later on I'm playing on my own doing my story or whatever and it's directing me to a place I can't obviously reach. Based on what I've learned so far this is content I cannot complete until I get to level 80 and get the skyscale. So now I have to give up on my story and find another way to gain XP because most of the game is unplayable until the maximum level.You made a reasonable point here, however I am going to disagree with you because the changes to the leveling system are not going to add a negative impact and the reason is if someone asked 4 more players to help complete a story chapter, for example "hearts and minds" and the player who needs help was defeated at the start of the story that same person wouldn't have a chance to learn how to do it on his/her own anyway. If someone wants to learn to solo all the game content they can already do that. How different is it for you to take a mesmer portal at the end of a jumping puzzle and having a friend helping you with it? You can already use the teleport to friend to reach places you couldn't reach on your own, how different is it if someone else helps you with it? Again, inconsistent logic...Sadly. All the negativity you are throwing at my suggestion suddendly doesn't make sense and loses all validity

Thankfully that didn't happen to me, but I do know similar things have happened to people in my guild. Their early experience is anything moderately difficult to reach is achieved by a level 80 player doing it on a mount then creating a portal for other people to get up. As far as they know that's how the game works, so they assume anything which isn't obviously accessible is impossible solo at low levels.You can currently ask a mesmer to open a portal for you allowing you to cross places where a certain mount is needed, like the access to the springer ranch in Desert Highlands requiring canyon jumping on the raptor mastery. It would still be entirely your choice to party up with a friend, to ask a mesmer friend to make a portal for you or to do it on your own unlocking the mastery. Again, all the negativity just don't make sense and I am curious to know what is really driving you to be so strongly against my suggestion to make leveling a better social experience.

@"maddoctor.2738"

Right now you are being "slowed" by your friends who don't know how to get hearts and POIs, with such a change you will be slowed as your friends will be far behind in level.False, nobody would feel slowed because the experience would be shared. The current system however has the flaw you so strongly pointed out, and now I wonder how can you be ok with the current system and strongly against the new one I am suggesting here. Math is not something you can interpret, numbers are what they are. If you don't believe me experience it yourself leveling up with a friend

Look. You are not going to get a way for players to afk while someone in their party completes the map for them. Nor are you going to get the power leveling the experience from that would also bring. YOU will simply have to wait for your friends, and take the time to help them get faster and better, like a good friend would do. If that's too much to ask of you then maybe you are better off playing solo, or just go watch something on youtube while your friends does it and give encouragement - again, like a good friend would do. But, personally I would never want to rob them of the joy of exploration and learning, its one of this games core strength.

@Touchme.1097 said:

Your post is totally out of topic, I have never suggested the introduction of power completion and will be flagged as spam. Try harder with your flaws, you might get luckier next time

I don't think you understand what spam is =) You're asking for peopel being able to sit down and do nothing while someone else in the party gets them experience points and map completion. That is power completion. And power leveling. Why do you even for a moment think that any changes will be made to the game that removes effort from it? C'mon.

tl;dr - the problem is not the game. The problem is that you seem to be an impatient person, and a bad friend.

PS: How the hell is it more antisocial to actually share the effort with others than just waiting for them to do it, what even...

[TrOtskY.5927]

@Chichimec.9364 said:Dear Anet, change the way everyone plays the game because I don't like waiting for my slow friends. No, I don't think I'm being selfish. Gosh, why would you even think such a thing?

Lmfao thisssss

[Yoroiookami.3485]

@Touchme.1097 said:Dear Anet,I am pointing you in the direction of a change into how leveling currently works when interacting with POI, vistas, doing hearts, discovering maps and killing monsters.I find it very annoying when leveling up with friends to slow myself down to let them catch up with me because I am a very fast paced player and I get things done quick.Can you change the way players experience leveling by sharing the contribution in a map when they are both on the same instance of the same map?This way leveling with friends would feel much more enjoyable and less frustrating and selfish as it is now. At the moment every contribution to map and hearts is totally individual even when partying with friends and it doesn't feel right to me.Regards

I completely disagree with everyone who disagrees with your post. I don't fully agree with your post, but the people who responded have no idea what they're talking about. If you're trying to map complete with friends, there will always be one person dragging slightly behind, that's normal. What they could do is increase the amount of experience people get by doing stuff on the same maps while in a party, or better yet - make the hearts complete faster. And no, it wouldn't hurt the 'leveling experience' like some people pointed out. There is no leveling experience. You can get to 80 in a day if you just have some pennies saved up. 80 level boosts are a bad purchase in general, and I will never understand why people buy them when it's so easy to level up. You get experience for yawning in this game. They should definitely focus on incentivising partying up with your buddies to do stuff, which is a reasonable thing to ask.

[Fuchslein.8639]

I won't lie, gw2 is very close to a single player MMO if not exactly that. I know many people, myself included, who play it just for that reason.You don't have to rely on others, other players are often just NPC'like . If you have just a little bit of game experience, you can do just about everything in GW2 on your own. Most of the SP-games I play are harder than GW2.

So maybe gw2 is just not the right MMO for you? Or you should try to approach it differently. Because I have also played the game together with my boyfriend and it was fun ... for a while.

But i wouldn't find it bad if EXP and Loot is shared as in many other MMO's as long as you are in a party.

[Kondor.2904]

I'm not sure about things like Vistas or POI's, but imo they should definitely make it so hearts progression is shared between those in party with appropriate party size scaling. It feels really weird that the only way for you to help someone finish them quicker is by targetting the same mobs and pray you don't 1shot them with crit beofre your friend tags them. And that is IF you need to kill stuff to fill the heart bar.

Considering the amount of achievement items locked behind the hearts, as well as numerous timegates, I think it would incentivise random party ups and communication with nearby players pursuing the same achievements.It feels really unintuitive that you have no kind of shared progress with your party members whatsoever, but random tagging and negligible event contributions promoting close to afk behaviour and artificial event scaling is totally cool and encouraged.

Also, not sure how exactly that would affect the game but they could introduce a mount mastery similar to the wvw mount, where your party members are moving at the same base speed as your mount making it easier for f2p players or those who are yet to unlock their first mount to catch up with events.

[Obtena.7952]

If you CHOOSE to RESTRICT how you play by playing WITH your friends, then it doesn't make sense to complain that the game doesn't cater to your speed of play because of your slow friends. Either you slow down, or they speed up. Anet can't make the game whatever every players wants it to be. When did this idea that developers change the game because of individuals desires even start? It's rampant and it's not sensible.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Touchme.1097" said:I find it very annoying when leveling up with friends to slow myself down to let them catch up with me because I am a very fast paced player and I get things done quick.Then the problem here lies with you.You have a few options when presented with this scenario. You could teach them how to play better,, show them the game and help them to understand the combat system. You could bring them up to speed.You could just show patience and prioritize spending time with your friends over your desire to powergame.Or you can get annoyed and pop on to the forums arguing for ways to carry them as if it were somehow more "social" to do everything for them.It's not.

[Bish.8627]

I ran into a similar issue where I had more hours to play each night than my friends. If you want to do stuff with friends, do the story and story dungeons together. That way you can do the open world at your own pace, then go help them with stuff when they reach it and experience that together.

[Redfeather.6401]

Hey guys before flaming OP can we not agree that party progression for karma hearts would go a long way to making them feel less tedious and making grouping in open world leveling zones a more social experience.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

Party Progression for hearts actually sounds like a good idea. I’ve played with friends before and there’s always one person who is slower, not always for an obvious reason as they are doing the heart the same time I am. It makes the slower person feel like they’re holding up the group if it happens repeatedly. Progress sharing in PvE would reward, possibly incentivize, grouping up to do PvE content. The only caveat is that going solo should not be worse, at least by a noticeable amount.

[Obtena.7952]

@Redfeather.6401 said:Hey guys before flaming OP can we not agree that party progression for karma hearts would go a long way to making them feel less tedious and making grouping in open world leveling zones a more social experience.

Maybe ... but the OP isn't complaining about 'tedious' ... considering he's going through OW for another round with his friends. Grouping for party progression on hearts actually doesn't do anything to address the OP's problem.

[SinisterSeven.2781]

@Touchme.1097 said:Dear Anet,I am pointing you in the direction of a change into how leveling currently works when interacting with POI, vistas, doing hearts, discovering maps and killing monsters.I find it very annoying when leveling up with friends to slow myself down to let them catch up with me because I am a very fast paced player and I get things done quick.Can you change the way players experience leveling by sharing the contribution in a map when they are both on the same instance of the same map?This way leveling with friends would feel much more enjoyable and less frustrating and selfish as it is now. At the moment every contribution to map and hearts is totally individual even when partying with friends and it doesn't feel right to me.Regards

i disagree with the suggestion.

the basis is, the group should be staying closer together to reap benefits from ally skills. despite what the situation is, i think its unfair to ask a game change from the devs because your party is lacking cohesion for any given reason.

from a game balance design, that would screw everything up. that would mean you could just afk in a squad and gain credit for everything that everyone tags, generating another set of problems.

on those reasons i think this is a bad suggestion.

[kharmin.7683]

This feels like another one of those threads requesting that Anet find ways to force people to play together. No thank you.

[Bobzitto.8571]

@Touchme.1097 said:Dear Anet,I am pointing you in the direction of a change into how leveling currently works when interacting with POI, vistas, doing hearts, discovering maps and killing monsters.I find it very annoying when leveling up with friends to slow myself down to let them catch up with me because I am a very fast paced player and I get things done quick.Can you change the way players experience leveling by sharing the contribution in a map when they are both on the same instance of the same map?This way leveling with friends would feel much more enjoyable and less frustrating and selfish as it is now. At the moment every contribution to map and hearts is totally individual even when partying with friends and it doesn't feel right to me.Regards

So your idea of making the leveling less antisocial and selfish is by allowing you to, by your entire self, run around the map in your mount grabbing every map discovery possible while your friends earn XP from that. I don't think you know the meaning of the words you are using. Or how such a change wouldn't be mindlessly boring to anyone partying up with you. I can agree that heart contribution should be shared between party members but anything else is just you WANTING to be selfish and antisocial because you can't be bothered to play with your friends on their level.

[Oxstar.7643]

To adress the suggestion of party completion of hearts... while I am not against letting others contribute to a hearts completion as long as they are in your party, I think such a feature must be limited to parties only. Squads running around power completing hearts would make it too easy imo, and also remove much of the exploration factor. Of course, this would be limited to hearts. Not points of interests, not vistas, and not waypoints.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

@Touchme.1097 said:Dear Anet,I am pointing you in the direction of a change into how leveling currently works when interacting with POI, vistas, doing hearts, discovering maps and killing monsters.I find it very annoying when leveling up with friends to slow myself down to let them catch up with me because I am a very fast paced player and I get things done quick.Can you change the way players experience leveling by sharing the contribution in a map when they are both on the same instance of the same map?This way leveling with friends would feel much more enjoyable and less frustrating and selfish as it is now. At the moment every contribution to map and hearts is totally individual even when partying with friends and it doesn't feel right to me.Regards

Let's ignore PoI, Vista, HP/MP or anything a player needs to interact with in the game world. It wouldn't make any sense to allow a player to get inclusion for something they need to be present for to click an object.

As well, let's ignore XP gain, since we would want to avoid any kind of XP leeching. If you don't perform an action that nets an XP gain, you shouldn't get the XP. Same as if you didn't tag the event champ, you don't get XP or loot.

We can also throw in anything Achievement related, if you didn't actually perform the actions to net the achievement, then you don't get the achievement.

So making this specifically about Heart completion now, what would be the minimum inclusion for someone to benefit from your desired changes? Let's assume that my members of the party need to be standing in the active Heart area at least. If I am in a party and I do nothing to contribute to the Heart but stand there, should I still get Heart completion and access to the associated Vendor? If I didn't do anything other than stand there, then I shouldn't be getting XP or Loot nor progress towards Achievements, so just the Heart completed cause my party did the hard work?

And, how is any of this more or less anti-social than the current system?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:

@Touchme.1097 said:Dear Anet,I am pointing you in the direction of a change into how leveling currently works when interacting with POI, vistas, doing hearts, discovering maps and killing monsters.I find it very annoying when leveling up with friends to slow myself down to let them catch up with me because I am a very fast paced player and I get things done quick.Can you change the way players experience leveling by sharing the contribution in a map when they are both on the same instance of the same map?This way leveling with friends would feel much more enjoyable and less frustrating and selfish as it is now. At the moment every contribution to map and hearts is totally individual even when partying with friends and it doesn't feel right to me.Regards

Let's ignore PoI, Vista, HP/MP or anything a player needs to interact with in the game world. It wouldn't make any sense to allow a player to get inclusion for something they need to be present for to click an object.

As well, let's ignore XP gain, since we would want to avoid any kind of XP leeching. If you don't perform an action that nets an XP gain, you shouldn't get the XP. Same as if you didn't tag the event champ, you don't get XP or loot.

We can also throw in anything Achievement related, if you didn't actually perform the actions to net the achievement, then you don't get the achievement.

So making this specifically about Heart completion now, what would be the minimum inclusion for someone to benefit from your desired changes? Let's assume that my members of the party need to be standing in the active Heart area at least. If I am in a party and I do nothing to contribute to the Heart but stand there, should I still get Heart completion and access to the associated Vendor? If I didn't do anything other than stand there, then I shouldn't be getting XP or Loot nor progress towards Achievements, so just the Heart completed cause my party did the hard work?

And, how is any of this more or less anti-social than the current system?

Don't forget that some Renown Heart NPCs offer items associated with achievements and/or collections. So, those Renown Hearts should not be included.

With the way the game is set up, I think this isn't a good idea. Pretty sure the Devs will agree.

[Farohna.6247]

@kharmin.7683 said:This feels like another one of those threads requesting that Anet find ways to force people to play together. No thank you.

This. There is plenty to do together with friends or really anyone without adding more or forcing it.

[ugrakarma.9416]

technically is a hell implement this, and from my experience from other mmos, shared rewards open a pandora box of exploits.

[Bellbirds.1679]

You're asking for the system to be changed because your friends don't have expac features such as mounts, but doesn't that rob them of the original game experience? With mounts the vanilla game feels tiny, as it was not built for them. Is insisting your friends give that up not somewhat selfish? Why not join them on foot and experience the vanilla game with them again?

[Veprovina.4876]

You know you can level with them even if you're higher level than them right? Even if you're level 80, you still gain mastery experience, and if that is full, you gain experience for spirit shards...

The system works fine, just slow down and play with your friends at their pace, nothing bad's going to happen.

[Sobx.1758]

@Bish.8627 said:I ran into a similar issue where I had more hours to play each night than my friends. If you want to do stuff with friends, do the story and story dungeons together. That way you can do the open world at your own pace, then go help them with stuff when they reach it and experience that together.

That or create 2 characters -one to play solo and one to play with friends only. (if you want to have the same map completion % as them)

[Pacificterror.7805]

I don't understand the point of partying up with someone if you're not going to be playing with them directly. Why should someone benefit from an arrangement like that? I'm baffled.

[Andy.5981]

So shared map completion/experience/rewards. Call me cynical but it wouldn't be used by multi-boxers in a squad to park multiple characters in a safe spot in the zone whilst one character did the map and from which they all reaped the rewards, including the possibility of multiple black lions keys for the same person, would it?