GW2 Itemization

1. They never said the whole game was soloable. I don't know why anyone would even want an online game such as this to be entirely soloable. Just play oblivion. There are many games out there that have a better single player, offline experience than GW.

2. Not having profession-specific armor doesn't really make sense, either aesthetically or stats-wise. Did they really say this is happening?

Because finding parties sucks and Oblivion doesn't have co-op mode.

They didn't say the whole game would be soloable, but they did say that you wouldn't need a party for the missions and dungeons...so I'd say that's soloable.

Yes they did. Maybe we'll see armor drops?

It strikes me as odd here.

Oblivion is nothing like GW. Yet people use this argument all the time.

And just because people dont group with random players doesnt mean they shouldnt be playing an online game.

A lot of players will go solo and in teams, but they will only play in a team with friends.
Some people are there for PvP and when in PvE dont want to be playing with others.
Some people dont have the time to group and so just go solo or grab AI. (whatever applies to the specific game)

And also, some people just dont want to play with others. An online game does not have to be played in a group with others, its just there are others in the game.

I'm starting to have a distinct feeling that GW2 will share a lot of the design elements we saw in EotN.
Character progression in EotN didn't restrict story progression.
The story used a hub type map with multiple plot line paths, dungeons and zones emanating from the Eye of the North area. Those types of elements along with the companion system make me believe they want grouping with friends to be as convenient and accessible as possible.

It sounds like they want us to be able to group with friends without worrying about leveling to keep up with each other, while still facilitating some kind of character progression, and not have to travel great distances to unlock the areas where your friends are, while still having many areas to explore.

It's not so much that Oblivion is similar to GW - on the contrary. It's just that, well I figured that most people play GW for the online element; being able to play with other people. I mean let's face it - their are RPGish elements of GW that are simply lacking. If GW was an offline game, I doubt I'd ever play it once I beat the game once. For me, the real value of it is that it is a free online game, where I can interact with and play with others. If you truly like the RPG and gameplay elements of the game regardless, then that's a different story.

Nothing written in stone yet but on the wiki it has been stated that the plateau of power will be cut off at a certain level. So if the plateau is lvl 30 and you are lvl 60 that means you are no stronger than a level 30 which is kind of silly. There is really no reason to be a higher level than the plataeu of power then other than for show which means absolutely nothing in a game.

As far as items we all have no idea how they are going to be handled. You definitely won't be seeing people spamming max lvl swords req 9 for sale anymore :P

That sums up this thread.

Depends on what you mean by "soloable". Guild Wars is already "soloable" because of henchies/heros.

Anet wants to make their games playable by the most people possible. I'd expect much of GW2 to be "soloable" in one way or another, even though it's been said GW2 will not have Henchies/ Heros.

The game wasn't originally meant to be soloable.
The henchmen were there to make full groups more accessible.
I suppose certain things like trying to hench THK way back when, eventually lead to changes that allowed people to solo with henchies. Then they went full nilly with heroes, because what they heck.

I'm kind of expecting/fearing this too, that there's still not going to be any incentive to actually gain experience. Like, getting access to a new armor set or new mini pet every million experience isn't going to do it for me.

I don't think anet will screw up on this no limit/high limit level.

My speculation is that it will be like 1-20 in GW1 just over a larger leve spread, say 1-50.

After that the level has no further effect and is in essence a title, which may or may not have links to possible pve skills etc as the norn/asura/dwarf/vanguard rank titles do now.

Maybe...

I think the curve will just get flatter and flatter.

So, lvl 1-30 might make a huge difference each lvl stat wise (e.g. +40 hp each lvl) . But 30-60 is much less (e.g. +20hp each lvl) and 60-90 is less (+5hp)
until you have to gain 10 more lvls to get +1 hp.

E.g. at lvl 150 you reach 3000hp and you have to get lvl 170 to get 3001hp.

Power will change less as you get higher and higher up.

Obviously those who play more will be more powerful, but not by much.

Oooh sounds good - and no one could forget to eat either ~ if you are fighting walking pies all day

Maybe one could spawn after you have played one hour and two after two hours and so on and so on until well too many spawn for you to live anymore.

and a new title - Pie eater

I did, in fact, read somewhere, {can't remember don't recall} a dev state that if you liked EoTN, then you will like GW2--EoTN being an indication of what Arena Net plans to do on a full MMO RPG scale. So yes, your feelings have merit.

I really like what EoTN has done, and would love to see this system on a massive game-wide scale. Likely, levels will just give attribute points for a single character to spend on Multiple Classes, rather than just One Primary, multi secondary. "Need a monk??, Oh yeah, I leveled my monk attributes last week, I'll just switch my warrior gear out and I can heal tonight ... . "

I kinda feel, since they stated that parties won't be required for missions and dungeons, that monks will be much more than healing. Since the Paragon's probably gonna go, I'd assume that Monks would in their place not only provide some healing, but a lot of buffs as well.

How is this likely?

Yup it would almost be like how GW is now. After level 20 there is no reason to be any higher unless you want to gain more xp going for survivor or you need more skill points. Pretty much the point is that if their isn't any benefit such as getting new skills,armor,items etc for additional levels then no need to be any higher than what the cap is going to be. I just hope they make the level cap respectable and not go crazy like 100-150 with a plateau of power being level 30 or something, that would be kind of silly in my opinion.

This is what I would like to see actually. It would be a perfect system that allows completionists and grinders to "complete" and "grind" themselves for titles, while allowing casual players to "max out" at a relative normal pace that precludes them from grind.

After a certain level, attribute points, or the similar proxy in GW2 (if it even works this way of cours), are no awarded anymore, but a level and inverse-exponetially increasing amounts of health and energy still are.

That would be a nice touch that can give some grinders a somewhat more tangible "elite" status while not really affecting the general gameplay. This of course should probably (and looks like it would) be capped for PvP play, to a similar vain of how it is now.

After a certain curve breakpoint, maybe a higher level character has access to vanity items non-hardcore players would not care as much about, such as our precious 15k armors. This would be a way to tangibly (again with that word!) give "rewards" to grinders/completionists/elitists without unbalancing the game.

Though I give this leveling-idea a two thumbs up, it of course matters on how the game is implemented. If skills are affected by higher HP or E that can be used more efficiently by a hardcore grinder, then clearly that would break the casual nature of general combat, and would make this system ridiculous in one way or another.

But I kinda like the idea so I think it would be fun to continue to develop as a character while being able to maintain a casual world.

When talking about the unlimited level cap, ANet said something about "flattening the power curve." Here's a crappily done image done in about 23 seconds in Paint to show what that means:

No I get the idea, its what I would like to see implemented. Of course the rest of the game has to revolve around it. 5 excellent ideas separately do not always together a good game make.

There needs to be some incentive to level though, that also doesn't disadvantage the casual player that "maxes" out at the point break, or as I said, the "attribute point" break.

Logarithmic curve.

Things keep increasing, but exponentially slower as it goes up.

OR - levels get exponentially harder to get (Diablo 2-style).