Level cap - GW2 - Page 19 - Guild Wars Forums

Bryant Again · Jan 04, 2009, 07:24 AM // 07:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by cellardweller

Not more content, content that is more versatile. Take BG2 for example, there's no replayablitity to the de'Arnise castle because every time you do it you're at a different level and have different gear...

That's actually your replayability right there. The fact that it's seldom the same opens up a lot of options, varying the play environment in a wide variety of methods.

And it's less in "comparing performances" and more in "comparing experiences" - and that's something you can do in both.

cellardweller · Jan 04, 2009, 08:22 AM // 08:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

That's actually your replayability right there. The fact that it's seldom the same opens up a lot of options, varying the play environment in a wide variety of methods.

And it's less in "comparing performances" and more in "comparing experiences" - and that's something you can do in both.

Find me the person with 6k hours racked up in bg2 and I'll concede.

Avarre · Jan 04, 2009, 08:33 AM // 08:33

Replayability isn't the same as grind-lengthened gameplay.

Bryant Again · Jan 04, 2009, 08:59 AM // 08:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by cellardweller

Find me the person with 6k hours racked up in bg2 and I'll concede.

You'll easily find a few here. I can keep doing this from Oblivion all the way to Doom and even from our little forum here, and all they're showing is that a dedicated following can indeed make a game last forever. We're not going to find much "proof" here.

cellardweller · Jan 04, 2009, 10:44 AM // 10:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

You'll easily find a few here. I can keep doing this from Oblivion all the way to Doom and even from our little forum here, and all they're showing is that a dedicated following can indeed make a game last forever. We're not going to find much "proof" here.

Even amongst that forum I'd be surprised if there were people who had put 6k hours in because the game simply doesn't support. I'm saying this as someone who as spent ~50hrs perfecting the bg2 speedclear.

Having never played oblivion I can't coment on that.

With doom on the other hand, I'd happily believe that people have put thousands of hours into because it has exactly the same appeal as GW. There is balance PvP and static PvE that lets you play against other people in - something that I get the feeling you don't get based on your "compare experinces" comment earlier.

Crom The Pale · Jan 04, 2009, 12:52 PM // 12:52

I find there are 3 things that create replayability in most games.

1) Fun, if its fun once then it can be fun twice...
2) Change, if we can do things differently each time through we go through multiple times
3) Power, some people just want to be able to crush foes that once gave them trouble by returning with a much stronger character.

Of those 3 we have two that lead to multiple play throughs and one (#3) that generally only has a player going through twice. The level system is tied to the third item, the first two have little or nothing to do with the characters level.

The biggest problem with GW's replayability is the very static nature of the storyline. This limits what we can change to our builds and possibly finding a shortcut or "cheat" through the missions.

If they had continued to release new chapters every 6 months then GW would likely live forever, though I wish they had released fewer skills with Factions/Nightfall/GW:EN and focused more on quality/new skills rather than renaming old skills just to fill out the numbers.

Given GW's model of no monthly fee Expansions would have been far better than stand alone chapters.

Wildi · Jan 04, 2009, 01:12 PM // 13:12

lvl cap 1 pls so people learn to understand why low lvl cap really sucks

Bryant Again · Jan 04, 2009, 04:49 PM // 16:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by cellardweller

Even amongst that forum I'd be surprised if there were people who had put 6k hours in because the game simply doesn't support...

It does, just not for you. Those people will acknowledge that, as well. They know that the game won't be so loved by others, just like you should understand that speedrunning isn't terribly appealing for most.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cellardweller

With doom on the other hand, I'd happily believe that people have put thousands of hours into because it has exactly the same appeal as GW. There is balance PvP and static PvE that lets you play against other people in - something that I get the feeling you don't get based on your "compare experinces" comment earlier.

Funnily enough, while it has the same "appeal" as Guild Wars, it's not living for the same reasons: there is a near infinite amount of user-developed content. Apparently the static PvE wasn't enough for most.

That last comment in your passage made zero sense. What I said earlier is that it's not about people competing against each other but more about just talking about how they've played and in what. You're saying that people can't share their experiences in Doom with one another.

DreamWind · Jan 05, 2009, 04:14 AM // 04:14

Back from my vacation. Back to the forums.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Because doing the millions of hours of grind doesn't get you anything and you don't miss out on anything when you don't do it. Ursan's situation was different.

I put an emphasis more on the gameplay itself. As long as you can't beat everything within the campaigns without any thought or actual builds - replacing that instead with "grinded up titles and stats - I'm good. As long as it still requires actual input and coherent build organization to complete the most challenging and difficult areas in the game, I'm fine.

To me the situation is no different whatsoever. In my view, both are things that dumb the game down to something that it shouldn't be.

You see what you do is continually seperate the game into bits and pieces. I look at the big picture of Guild Wars. Adding things to the game that dumb it down like Ursan, whether I use it or not, still dumbs it down. Adding grind to the game, whether I do it or not, still adds grind to the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

What Ursan did was completely change what was required of you to succeed in the game. Good games require skill, and Ursan promoted little: it completely threw out team and profession organization, was linked to a title putting a *very* huge emphasis on "time", and overall required little knowledge besides "don't pull big groups".

You do know that the added endgame grind also does everything you just mentioned? It doesn't require skill, it puts heavy emphasis on "time", and it requires very little knowledge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

I don't see the introduction of all this new "grind" terribly damaging because there was already "grind" at the start with high-end armors and rare weapons, and the "grind" that's been implemented into Guild Wars is pretty much the same as those achievements in a lot of those 360 games.

I already explained this earlier. The additions were WORSE because they were changes directly against the core of the game. That doesn't mean the original things that were capable of bring grinded weren't bad, they were just far less bad. Heres an example: skill unlocks have been a requirement from the beginning. That is a bad thing. What is worse however is if Anet added MORE things to the game that were bad, showing they either haven't learned from older mistakes or simply no longer care about the original game premise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

I don't find titles to be a problem because they a very short extension for the game for a segregated and selected group of players, while Ursan provided a different and drastically simpler way to play the game in its entirety. Ursan changed the gaming landscape, titles added more to that landscape.

I disagree. I don't think they added anything to the landscape, at least not for me. For me they took away from the landscape.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Over the holidays, one of my good friends from my horde guild in WoW was asking about GW. He asked if it had the same form of grind WoW had, with all of the rep grinds and etc. I told him that yes, there was a system very very similar to WoW rep grinds with the Factions and EOTN groups. But then I mentioned the fact that all gear and weapons are equal, regardless of rarity and whatnot. After I gave him a long description and explanation of how gear works in GW, he easily said "oh...but that's not grind".

"Grind" to him meant having to do exceedingly tedious tasks repeatedly in order to get to the "good stuff". An example of that would be requiring you to be a Sunspear Castellen before you're even allowed to leave the starting isle in NF.

Your friend is simply comparing grind to his experiences with games that have much more grind. That as we know, is a bad way to judge. I could care less how much grind is in other games...all I know is that Guild Wars used to have LESS grind and now it has MORE grind. Guild Wars is supposed to have little grind, and ideally NO grind.

There is also some perception that grind is only grind if it is mandatory to experience the content, which just isn't true. Yes that is the worst kind of grind, but that isn't the only grind out there.

Anet has essentially went from having a PvP based endgame to having a grind based endgame. Saying "it is only optional grind" is irrelevent (still) because we are talking about the endgame. All endgames are optional, but we are talking about what makes up the strength and replay value of that optional endgame.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

If it's because "it works" then what specifically about it "works", and why wouldn't a higher cap work just as well? How would that imply that a higher cap wouldn't work?
If it's because it didn't want an emphasis on leveling, then why have a level at all?

Good question. I wouldn't mind having no levels. Most PvP games don't have them anyways.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

A lot of people here are saying they want the level cap to be high and to take a while to max. Why they want that isn't fully shown, but it's unfair to assume they all want it to "take longer to grind out". Some might just want it as a marker to show how long and far they've progressed through the game.

I don't think its unfair at all. Why else would people want a bigger number? They want that number to take longer to achieve the max. They want the number to mean more than it already does.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

No it doesn't, it means that someone with 10 hours a day to spend playing should not be able to gain any concrete stat advantage over someone who plays for a couple hours a week. Guess what, that's how the game was released, and that's still how the game is today, at least in PvP.

Stop right there. First you are wrong about the game always being this way. Skill unlocks are a perfect example of something that always required time (and should have never existed). Also, why only PvP? I thought GUILD WARS was supposed to be this way, not PvP only. What if I want my PvE this way? Higher level caps is all but guaranteed to throw skill>time out the window unless you actually believe that max level will be similar in power to lower levels.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

The inference from "skill > time" to "no grind anywhere, even optional grind" simply does not hold; that is your interpretation of it, but it clearly was never ANet's.

It was Anet's intention to continually add grind to their game? I bet you can't get them to say that on record!

Not to mention, I think the inference that skill>time means no grind holds perfectly. Just think about it for one second. Grind=Time>skill.

[DE] · Jan 05, 2009, 04:20 AM // 04:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wildi

lvl cap 1 pls so people learn to understand why low lvl cap really sucks

You're totally right. Skill over time? Pffffttt who wants to bother with skill, I just want to be level 500 so I can roll all those lvl 400 noobs who couldn't grind as much as me!

AidinSwiftarrow · Jan 05, 2009, 04:32 AM // 04:32

I'd like the level cap to be 20 if it's Prophecies-like leveling. 50 if it's Factions-like.

Infinite levels sounds TERRIBLE, people would never be the same unless you stopped getting better gear at 20 or 50 or something, so higher levels wouldn't have an advantage.

EagleDelta1 · Jan 05, 2009, 04:44 AM // 04:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Good question. I wouldn't mind having no levels. Most PvP games don't have them anyways.

Are you senile or something. GW may be unique, but it is still an RPG and character development/growth has ALWAYS been a part of RPGs in the Video game world. Also, those "other" PvP games aren't RPGs either, they're FPS, RTS, action games, which GW isn't one of those games either. Oh yeah, most PvP FPS games ARE going the way of levels now, either as a way to unlock new features or as a way to match ppl of differing skill levels up. So that argument doesn't make any sense to me.

cellardweller · Jan 05, 2009, 09:10 AM // 09:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

It does, just not for you. Those people will acknowledge that, as well. They know that the game won't be so loved by others, just like you should understand that speedrunning isn't terribly appealing for most.

It is one of the core aspects of guildwars which is lost when content is level dependent. If trying to perform optimally isn't a fundamental appeal of the game then why do we even have a whole forum section full of people having discussions about optimising builds?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Funnily enough, while it has the same "appeal" as Guild Wars, it's not living for the same reasons: there is a near infinite amount of user-developed content. Apparently the static PvE wasn't enough for most.

Every peice of doom content is static, whether developer or user created. It doesn't matter if you're playing it for the first time or the thousandth, you still have to overcome the same obstacles with an avatar with exactly the same power level.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

That last comment in your passage made zero sense. What I said earlier is that it's not about people competing against each other but more about just talking about how they've played and in what. You're saying that people can't share their experiences in Doom with one another.

You dismissed the "compare performances" when this is exactly the thing that makes pve enjoyable for the pvpve player.

Avarre · Jan 05, 2009, 10:34 AM // 10:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleDelta1

Are you senile or something. GW may be unique, but it is still an RPG and character development/growth has ALWAYS been a part of RPGs in the Video game world.

You'd have a point if everyone didn't hit level 20 in a day and then spend thousands of hours at max level.

Shadowmoon · Jan 05, 2009, 03:38 PM // 15:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

You'd have a point if everyone didn't hit level 20 in a day and then spend thousands of hours at max level.

Then they added title linked skills which added virtual lvling into the game. Also b4 that people just grinded gold for vanity items and non skill related title developement. These all were character developement, but just optional.
You can hae a low lvl cap as long as u have things for people to strive for, may it be achievements or titles. Allot of pve players feel they are not done with character until they hit God, and once they hit that, their play times start dropping off, because their title bar won't move anymore.

bel unbreakable · Jan 05, 2009, 06:22 PM // 18:22

Just get things back to what it was like in prophecies and most of us will be happy regardless of lvl.

DreamWind · Jan 05, 2009, 08:10 PM // 20:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleDelta1

Are you senile or something. GW may be unique, but it is still an RPG and character development/growth has ALWAYS been a part of RPGs in the Video game world. Also, those "other" PvP games aren't RPGs either, they're FPS, RTS, action games, which GW isn't one of those games either. Oh yeah, most PvP FPS games ARE going the way of levels now, either as a way to unlock new features or as a way to match ppl of differing skill levels up. So that argument doesn't make any sense to me.

Couple of problems with what you are saying.

A. Guild Wars has a level cap that is fast to reach...
B. Why do you need levels to see character development?

Quote:

Originally Posted by bel unbreakable

Just get things back to what it was like in prophecies and most of us will be happy regardless of lvl.

Fine. Then why do I keep seeing people throwing out random higher numbers with no other explanation other than they want it?

Bob Slydell · Jan 05, 2009, 08:59 PM // 20:59

If it is unlimited, there has to be a TRUE cap where you stop getting more HP and attribute points, like you know how you can keep leveling in GW after 20, but the ONLY thing you get is 1 Skill point everytime? Well anet could just remove the 20 restriction and then youd get +1 to your level "number" and 1 skill point.

EagleDelta1 · Jan 05, 2009, 09:04 PM // 21:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Couple of problems with what you are saying.

A. Guild Wars has a level cap that is fast to reach...
B. Why do you need levels to see character development?

I didn't say anywhere that you needed levels for character growth, I just made the point that RPGs, in the video game industry, have always contained a few major ingredients, one of those are Character development/growth, the others being focused on equipment and story. However, I have yet to see an Online RPG (don't mention EVE online, it's an MMO, but CCP doesn't classify it as RPG, just a MMO) that can successfully use a form of character growth other than levels as the lack of level increases required grind rather than decreasing it.

Also, those forum member talking about being able to "compare performances" is way off. PvE = Player versus Environment not Player versus player. As such I'm looking for ways to better enjoy MY time in PvE and could care less about any power balance between other players, all I care about is making sure the PvE environment is as fair and fun as it can be, but not to put all the restrictions on it that are involved with PvP. PvE RPG play is ALL about getting your character stronger, getting new equipment and skills, and learning new strategies that you or your party can use to defeat an enemy or proceed further, NOT about comparing your performance to another - that's generally referred to as PvP.

DreamWind · Jan 05, 2009, 10:27 PM // 22:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleDelta1

I didn't say anywhere that you needed levels for character growth, I just made the point that RPGs, in the video game industry, have always contained a few major ingredients, one of those are Character development/growth, the others being focused on equipment and story.

You said I was wrong when I said levels aren't needed, then proceeded to go on about character growth being required. You didn't elaborate on why levels are needed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleDelta1

However, I have yet to see an Online RPG (don't mention EVE online, it's an MMO, but CCP doesn't classify it as RPG, just a MMO) that can successfully use a form of character growth other than levels as the lack of level increases required grind rather than decreasing it.

Give me examples where lack of levels somehow increases grind. Meanwhile I'll give you plenty of examples where high level cap increases it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleDelta1

Also, those forum member talking about being able to "compare performances" is way off. PvE = Player versus Environment not Player versus player. As such I'm looking for ways to better enjoy MY time in PvE and could care less about any power balance between other players, all I care about is making sure the PvE environment is as fair and fun as it can be, but not to put all the restrictions on it that are involved with PvP. PvE RPG play is ALL about getting your character stronger, getting new equipment and skills, and learning new strategies that you or your party can use to defeat an enemy or proceed further, NOT about comparing your performance to another - that's generally referred to as PvP.

The problem is that Guild Wars was built to be a PvP game and everything in it was built for PvP purposes. Hell even the PvE was originally for PvP purposes. You should be happy though, as Guild Wars 2 will probably be much more like your type of PvE.

Jan 04, 2009, 08:33 AM // 08:33	#363
Avarre Bubblegum Patrol Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Singapore Armed Forces	Replayability isn't the same as grind-lengthened gameplay. __________________ And the heavens shall tremble.

Jan 04, 2009, 12:52 PM // 12:52	#366
Crom The Pale Furnace Stoker Join Date: Nov 2006 Guild: Ageis Ascending Profession: W/	I find there are 3 things that create replayability in most games. 1) Fun, if its fun once then it can be fun twice... 2) Change, if we can do things differently each time through we go through multiple times 3) Power, some people just want to be able to crush foes that once gave them trouble by returning with a much stronger character. Of those 3 we have two that lead to multiple play throughs and one (#3) that generally only has a player going through twice. The level system is tied to the third item, the first two have little or nothing to do with the characters level. The biggest problem with GW's replayability is the very static nature of the storyline. This limits what we can change to our builds and possibly finding a shortcut or "cheat" through the missions. If they had continued to release new chapters every 6 months then GW would likely live forever, though I wish they had released fewer skills with Factions/Nightfall/GW:EN and focused more on quality/new skills rather than renaming old skills just to fill out the numbers. Given GW's model of no monthly fee Expansions would have been far better than stand alone chapters.

Jan 04, 2009, 01:12 PM // 13:12	#367
Wildi Krytan Explorer Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: PvE is the Metagame	lvl cap 1 pls so people learn to understand why low lvl cap really sucks

Jan 05, 2009, 04:32 AM // 04:32	#371
AidinSwiftarrow Frost Gate Guardian Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Lion's Arch Profession: R/Mo	I'd like the level cap to be 20 if it's Prophecies-like leveling. 50 if it's Factions-like. Infinite levels sounds TERRIBLE, people would never be the same unless you stopped getting better gear at 20 or 50 or something, so higher levels wouldn't have an advantage.

Jan 05, 2009, 06:22 PM // 18:22	#376
bel unbreakable Frost Gate Guardian Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: scotland Guild: shadow hunters of light Profession: W/Mo	Just get things back to what it was like in prophecies and most of us will be happy regardless of lvl.

Jan 05, 2009, 08:59 PM // 20:59	#378
Bob Slydell Forge Runner Join Date: Jan 2007	If it is unlimited, there has to be a TRUE cap where you stop getting more HP and attribute points, like you know how you can keep leveling in GW after 20, but the ONLY thing you get is 1 Skill point everytime? Well anet could just remove the 20 restriction and then youd get +1 to your level "number" and 1 skill point.