Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Fencers]

I find Guild Wars 2 leveling a bit more tedious than other MMOs due to volume of ACTION COMBAT RAWR and the speed of travel. The only two major MMOs I feel have worse leveling are Rift and like FF14 v.1. Not sure its fair to mention XIV, because Yoshi P. is my homedog now. But goodness gracious is MMO leveling generally boring.

Really enjoyed SWTOR, TSW and recently Neverwinter leveling. In Neverwinter I got to like level 30 or so before it noticed "Oh, this is how they do questing". Neverwinter felt very GW1 to me in leveling style in that you are basically running a series of interconnected missions. Each of which is nicely compact yet can be run at a fiarly brisk pace.

GW1/TSW do it so very right.

The perception of leveling in GW2 is likely different from reality though. I admit. It's just a far more transparently repetitious game in the "questing" scheme.

Say no to levels in all MMOs. We need to be done with this shit as a genre.

[Razael]

GW1/TSW are about the best leveling experience i've had. GW2 isnt awfully slow, its decent, but repetitive imho.

Edit: I'm actually considering re-playing GW1 as i lost acess to my account (probably hacked because of not playing for a while or something) and couldn't ever get the HoM stuff. Might buy the GW1 lot at a low cost and redo stuffs. It was a fun game.

[sacrypheyes]

leveling may improve in gw2 in they implements lots more events and meta chains so that you could do stuff 24/7 without walking for hours between hearts.
right now, it's clear (to me that is) the number of events and their variety makes it that it becomes quite tedious the more alts you play.

have to say that on that matter i really miss the days in gw1 i could reach "top" level (ie 20) in a day and start doing the "real" stuff knowing i wouldn't have to worry about levels anymore past that point.

[Scyth]

SWToR leveling was the best I've ever experienced in an MMO followed closely by GW2, but that may be just because I'm a huge Star Wars fan and everything in there felt like being a big part of history or something

[Zilong]

SWToR leveling was the best I've ever experienced in an MMO followed closely by GW2, but that may be just because I'm a huge Star Wars fan and everything in there felt like being a big part of history or something

Hahah. must be XD. Not to be mean or anything XD. I love Star Wars but I couldn't swallow the levelling experience XD. My best experience was Dark Ages (not camelot) haha. But that's totally biased :O.

[rhandric]

Fencers, you didn't mention FFXI in the "horrible to level" list of games, shame on you.

[Fencers]

SWToR leveling was the best I've ever experienced in an MMO followed closely by GW2, but that may be just because I'm a huge Star Wars fan and everything in there felt like being a big part of history or something

I don't like Star Wars- don't care about the movies or games. Don't even like sci-fi much. Yet I found the story presentation without equal in the genre.

SWTOR's production value puts to shame a lot of single player RPGs and all MMOs to date. SWTOR was perhaps the epitome of AAA MMO in the post-Warcratft era. So much so, I sometimes felt SWTOR was kinda indulgent at times. As in, "Gosh, Bioware. This VO work and direction for a routine kill wampas quest really didn't need to run 7 grand."

Highly doubt we will see any one sans Blizzard top EA/Bioware's production. No MMO studio is capable of that kind of cash.

I really would have enjoyed GW2 questing more if it was actually present. Though as it is a lot of the phenomenal lore and story built in GW1 is treated like window dressing in the sequel. In contrast to the opulence of SWTOR, it feels like a cheaper and obviously lower budget affair.

The other issue was tonality. The tone of GW2 story, VO and such is so odd and inconsistent. Inconsistent within the franchise history and in context. I recall even RB2 (Rubi Bayer) commenting directly during early beta how inappropriate and odd Norn speech patterns were in game.

The silliness of pulp adventure works spectacularly in SWTOR's quest context. But not so in GW2- which isn't so much pulp serial as young adult lit. The former feels timeless, is timeless. The latter juvenile, coarser and less sophisticated.

Fencers, you didn't mention FFXI in the "horrible to level" list of games, shame on you.

I was quite fond of 11. 14 was poop.

I don't mind hard, difficult or demanding leveling. I mind trivial leveling that is drawn out. Because, why am I even doing this stuff?

Not to slam any one game, but I am pretty familiar with Rift for 2 years now. It is hands down the worst of modern MMO leveling; easy, meaningless and drawn out like butter in the expansion. It's a 60 level tutorial for nothing. Absolutely nothing that can not be truncated to at least half as many levels.

That is in my mind the clearest example of where modern MMOs have gone wrong.

Getting a level in EQ felt good. Even if it was level 12 and there was 48 more to go. Doing so in FF14, Rift, Tera-- even Neverwinter, is just an extended grind. What-fucking-ever.

Get your shit together, Funcom. I will play Secret World forever if you just fix it for me, you crazy Sweds, you.

[Valeron]

For leveling, while I really enjoyed the main class campaigns in SWTOR, I found most everything else there really tedious. As a consequence the leveling experience there for me was a mixed bag. But at least it had some interesting parts which most mmos do not. In GW2 I really don't notice the leveling.

I agree with fencers about levels though. But there doesn't seem to be an mmo out there that is willing to take that chance along with making engaging gameplay.

[Fencers]

there doesn't seem to be an mmo out there that is willing to take that chance along with making engaging gameplay.

I will leave the subjective concept of "engaging gameplay" to each player's taste, but the The Secret World doesn't have character levels. Instead offering progression that is tiered via skills and gear.

[Valeron]

I still kind of find the levels there, well the gear levels anyway. I like TSW but just not enough to play through the campaign more than once. Honestly the dungeon grind at the end killed it for me.

PS: Funcom is from Norway, not Sweden

[Fencers]

I still kind of find the levels there, well the gear levels anyway. I like TSW but just not enough to play through the campaign more than once. Honestly the dungeon grind at the end killed it for me.

Well, it's a way of providing an illusion of progression.

I find attaching the progression to actual instance progression far more appealing. Not sure why I needed to level to 80 then progress through ascended ranks, or level to 60 and progress through dungeons then through raids...

Could I not have just done that content without the tutorial? That's what modern MMO leveling is- a tutorial. Not a progression.

PS: Funcom is from Norway, not Sweden

Don't care lol.

My gripe with TSW is that it runs very poorly for me. Literally unplayable. That's why I don't play, I can't.

[Scyth]

Hahah. must be XD. Not to be mean or anything XD. I love Star Wars but I couldn't swallow the levelling experience XD. My best experience was Dark Ages (not camelot) haha. But that's totally biased :O.

Oh I didn't even think you were mean no worries! I know the reason I liked questing in that game is only because of all the voice over and the story. Other than that it just felt like WoW indeed.

Like Fencers said, the way they presented the story in the game was amazing indeed.

[Fencers]

Heh, that's the great irony of SWTOR. Whenever the game was focused on the class story- it excelled in a way few MMOs have ever managed. Like every other part of TOR was by turns awful, underdeveloped &/or not working. Though I suppose it is now obvious the immense cost of that production value is unsustainable in the long term.

If there is a + to the manner of GW2 story and world presentation it is the shorter production pipeline and costs. Perhaps that too leads to a more cohesive game experience unlike TOR [poor supporting systems/endgame] or Secret World [poor performance].

[Lane]

I don't mind hard, difficult or demanding leveling. I mind trivial leveling that is drawn out. Because, why am I even doing this stuff?

Well, it's supposed to be fun. Anyone not designing it for that purpose has failed. :P

Not to slam any one game, but I am pretty familiar with Rift for 2 years now. It is hands down the worst of modern MMO leveling; easy, meaningless and drawn out like butter in the expansion. It's a 60 level tutorial for nothing. Absolutely nothing that can not be truncated to at least half as many levels.

Rift was too reminiscent of vanilla WoW minus having any interesting lore to fall back on to give the leveling process even a remote amount of depth.

I am usually a big time OCD quester/map completionist and I gave up on Rift fairly early on, by Scarlet Gorge actually. There was just nothing engaging about the world or what was going on around me. It was pretty, sure, but the quest text was as bad as Cata's and that's saying something. Gloamwood's probably the closest I felt to any sort of history or coherent story, the rest completely failed to either tell me anything about where I was and what was going on or to generate any interest in the area from my point of view.

I ended up leveling literally all of my 50s (six total) exclusively via grinding rift events past level 20-ish because I hated their questing so much. (The mob density and their insistence on sending you back multiple times to the same locales also killed it for me.)

Getting a level in EQ felt good. Even if it was level 12 and there was 48 more to go. Doing so in FF14, Rift, Tera-- even Neverwinter, is just an extended grind. What-fucking-ever.

Never played EQ, but did briefly play Asheron's Call. I didn't 'get' it, to be honest. I quit within a month. Tera's only saving grace is the combat (at least for the first 40 levels) is fun so you don't pay much attention to the only form of quest progression going from killing 10 mobs to 30+.

I'd have to say I still find Wrath & the old world revamp (definitely nothing 80+ in Cata) the best MMO questing I've done. Quest text was lore informative, questing was varied and involved more than "kill/collect X/Y", NPC dialog was entertaining, each zone had its own 'thing' going on so it wasn't just the same old with a different backdrop, etc. All in all it was the most engaging leveling experience I've had in an MMO.

[Razael]

If there is a + to the manner of GW2 story and world presentation it is the shorter production pipeline and costs. Perhaps that too leads to a more cohesive game experience unlike TOR [poor supporting systems/endgame] or Secret World [poor performance].

Funny, TSW while it should run on max settings on my machine according to the Requirements, it ocasionally (more often than i'd desire) suffers from heavy framerate drop, to me i think they didn't optimize very well. GW2 , which in turn has higher requirements, runs far better, and except the lag fests in the dragons and wvw i rarely have framerate drops.

[Valeron]

I really enjoyed the investigative missions in TSW. Probably my favorite part of that game actually. I wish they would implement something like them in GW2.

[Fencers]

Well, it's supposed to be fun. Anyone not designing it for that purpose has failed. :P

Not sure about that, tbh.

I do not strictly view video games as entertainment. So I hesitate to ascribe a nebulous and subjective concept of "fun" to design. Maybe the design isn't suppose to be "fun" in the vulgar sense. What if I am playing The Cat and The Coup, Tail of the Sun or Dear Esther?

What about L.A. Noire or Spec Ops The Line which intend to make players uncomfortable by action?

I know what I find enjoyable. Though not of any real interest to others.

When it comes to what I am talking about as trivial leveling, 'pointless' is perhaps more accurate. And it can be said within the context of gameplay leveling in Rift or WoW is indeed pointless; both games are bimodal.

So honestly, what is the point of leveling in terms of gameplay? I know why these modern MMOs function as they do of course. The question is rhetorical to an extent. The issue of leveling/questing in MMOs is a nice example of how modern MMOs are usually designed poorly.

MMOs are not "good" games by in large.

Rift was too reminiscent of vanilla WoW minus having any interesting lore to fall back on to give the leveling process even a remote amount of depth.

I don't mean to get in a game v. game/game bashing argument. Wholly agree with you the poor state of Rift's leveling/questing scheme.

Anything more to say on it would probably be better off in that subforum.

I'd have to say I still find Wrath & the old world revamp (definitely nothing 80+ in Cata) the best MMO questing I've done. Quest text was lore informative, questing was varied and involved more than "kill/collect X/Y", NPC dialog was entertaining, each zone had its own 'thing' going on so it wasn't just the same old with a different backdrop, etc. All in all it was the most engaging leveling experience I've had in an MMO.

I have never read a single piece of lore in World of Warcraft. And I was there in the beta as part of the EQ guild & GM invitation Blizzard did back when like Ellwyn Forest wasn't even fully complete.

Despite this, I did enjoy the revamp leveling in Cataclysm [keeping in mind I have no conception of Warcraft lore]. From a gameplay POV, the questing was lean. Where Blizzard excel is in moving a player around their theme park zones super effectively.

It's fair to say Blizzard know how to design an MMO in an academic & practical sense.

Think quite a few game devs fall short -- even if I find those other non-Blizzard games more enjoyable. Which I do because WOW is horrible lol. XD

[Zilong]

Funny, TSW while it should run on max settings on my machine according to the Requirements, it ocasionally (more often than i'd desire) suffers from heavy framerate drop, to me i think they didn't optimize very well. GW2 , which in turn has higher requirements, runs far better, and except the lag fests in the dragons and wvw i rarely have framerate drops.

Yeah..XD it's actually funny. Because it reminds me of the time of the screams for optimization! XD (not that it wasn't needed haha). When I first played TSW I was rather disappointed with the looks...even more because on my machine (which is high end) doesn't let me go much more than the "medium" XD.

I really enjoyed the investigative missions in TSW. Probably my favorite part of that game actually. I wish they would implement something like them in GW2.

Im actually thinking of trying TSW again. I joined beta and 1 week after release but dropped (Other games and specially gw2 when it came later). Idk hahah.

[Valeron]

You just have to look past the sub-par combat, funky animations, and poor character models to really enjoy TSW. Which is an odd thing to me, as Age of Conan had some of the best of those three aspects in the business. It seems to be reversed for TSW even though they use the same game engine.

[Lane]

I do not strictly view video games as entertainment. So I hesitate to ascribe a nebulous and subjective concept of "fun" to design. Maybe the design isn't suppose to be "fun" in the vulgar sense. What if I am playing The Cat and The Coup, Tail of the Sun or Dear Esther?

I think you're the only other person I've ever seen mention Tail of the Sun. o_O

What about L.A. Noire or Spec Ops The Line which intend to make players uncomfortable by action?

I know what I find enjoyable. Though not of any real interest to others.

I'm not sure how you could not classify video games as entertainment in some form. Sometimes I watch "Let's Play" series on YouTube for video games I would love to see, but am incapable of playing. Amnesia was one of those. I am way too sensitive to suspense in horror games. While I love watching others play, I get too anxious/nervous to play them myself. Maybe that's not "fun" to some people, but I find it entertaining.

When it comes to what I am talking about as trivial leveling, 'pointless' is perhaps more accurate. And it can be said within the context of gameplay leveling in Rift or WoW is indeed pointless; both games are bimodal.

So honestly, what is the point of leveling in terms of gameplay? I know why these modern MMOs function as they do of course. The question is rhetorical to an extent. The issue of leveling/questing in MMOs is a nice example of how modern MMOs are usually designed poorly.

Well, I've always chosen to look at the leveling process as the game. It's why I've never understood people's reasoning for wanting to be max level ASAP. To me, that's like getting hold of an RPG/aventure game and saying, "Yeah, I really don't care about actually playing this game at all, I just want to skip to the end level." It doesn't really compute. Why even bother playing at all if you just want to skip over 90% of it?

Maybe I have the wrong mindset when it comes to MMOs. Every game to me is a journey of some sort. Sometimes they add things at the end of the journey to keep you playing. It could be a bonus dungeon, or mini games, or game completion objectives you can't access until you've "beat" the game, or in the case of MMOs continuous content/perpetual grind additions. It doesn't change that levels 1-X are the game to me. What comes after that is what's supposed to keep me wanting to play (and usually doesn't). I suppose anyone who only cares about instanced group content then, yes, the leveling process in an MMO would always be tedious and pointless.