149 replies to this topic

[Waar Kijk Je Naar]

Fenice_86, on 29 November 2012 - 01:20 PM, said:

No need more lvls or stat gears!

Need more skin gears and more skills to choose from!!

Wisdom, right here.

[Gremlin]

DuskWolf, on 29 November 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

Okay, so we've already talked a lot about the moving goalposts of introducing vertical progression to itemisation, adding profoundly obvious grind, and creating a divide between types of players. We've aired a lot of thoughts as to whether that was a good or bad thing. However, there was one thing that was subtly slipped into the AMA that I don't think we've talked about. In some regards, it's the elephant in the room.

The eventual and inevitable increase of the level cap to 90 and beyond.



Source.

Considering that vertical progression through itemisation is in, it's likely that the level cap will be raised with each expansion. This means that you're never going to be able to reach a power plateau to enjoy the game at, and that content will never be balanced around max stats (focusing on skill instead). However, those who like watching numbers go up will likely continue to get to watch numbers go up. And those who like having number-related goals will have that.

So how do you feel about this? And when both vertical progression via items and levels is in, what will GW2 become?

It very much depends on the time frame.
Unless the verticle progression is needed to complete a particular part of the game I doubt it matters.
The game is made up of a series of plateaus I guess thats what we get when we exchange 20 levels for 80.
So we level up and each level gains us easier access to map areas you scale down when revisiting lower areas to make them somewhat playable.
Then there are the artificial plateaus created mostly in players own minds.

Exotic Ascended and Legendary gear apart from the resistance to Agony none of those items matter in the least and they are not plateaus as such.
In this game you grind for Legendary and so on if you wish to and it does not make you any better if you have them or not.

If they raise the cap level I will have to rethink but there is a limit to how often they could reasonably do that.
As I understand it they are simply saying they are not ruling it out thats just keeping their options open rather than saying yes its going to happen.
I am going to wait and see.

[Stellarthief]

Waar Kijk Je Naar, on 29 November 2012 - 03:16 PM, said:

Wisdom, right here.

TBH, I want more of everything...

Once I get that look that really appeals to me, I don't really wanna grind for more skins either.  Would mean I also need to buy more backpack space or bank space.

[typographie]

Stellarthief, on 29 November 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

Without some ugly gear there is not much incentive to look great is there?  It's all about looking better than the next guy

Agreed, but my point is, everyone's idea of "looking better" is different. It would be difficult for Anet to deliberately conspire to make certain gear "ugly" when not every player agrees on what ugly is.

[Stellarthief]

typographie, on 29 November 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Agreed, but my point is, everyone's idea of "looking better" is different. It would be difficult for Anet to deliberately conspire to make certain gear "ugly" when not every player agrees on what ugly is.

Correct.  I think that's also why they have an art team, individual preferences as people and I can imagine they take concept art home and show friends/family and get opinions.

There are many ways to get opinions as to what looks good to what people and they make gear like that. I have to imagine someone at some point found the AC explore medium armor appealing. I find it fugly, but someone musta found it great.

Or, they actually went and found out what people liked, and strived to make the opposite! Would be funny if they did that just to make other things purposely appealing!

[jirayasan]

In my opinion they shouldn't add more levels, just more character progression in form of new Skills, Traits and Weaponskills and new Types of weapons.

[Fizzypop]

The only good thing to come of this is that they'll finally add more skills...maybe mesmers will finally get some pve useful skills instead of 90% pvp skills.

[Capn_Crass]

Rickter, on 29 November 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

...every single mmo ive ever played (WoW, Rift, Aion, LotRO, FFXI, Tabula Rasa, SWTOR, WAR) has had increasing levels and gear progression.

Just a reminder: FFXI had a static level cap and horizontal gear progression from 2003-2010. Personally I think they should have kept it that way.

[Stellarthief]

Capn_Crass, on 29 November 2012 - 04:17 PM, said:

Just a reminder: FFXI had a static level cap and horizontal gear progression from 2003-2010. Personally I think they should have kept it that way.

FFXI was a completely different beast as for most of the games lifespan you couldnt solo a fly. (little exaggeration, but you get the point).

Was also aimed originally at a different market and population was also in that different market.

[raspberry jam]

Stellarthief, on 29 November 2012 - 02:32 PM, said:

I have limited access to games websites at work as most are blocked (though almost nothing related to GW2 specifically). So I can only link what I can link.

But regardless, we all have some evidence that the developers "have always" been thinking of increasing level cap at some point.  Safe to assume they are still thinking this.

That is not what I was asking about. I was asking about evidence that they had said anything whatsoever about raising the level cap at any time between:

1. Making public that the (initial) cap would be 80
2. Releasing the game

Edited by Khalija, 29 November 2012 - 10:04 PM.
removed the unwarranted hostility

[MisterB]

raspberry jam, on 29 November 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Source? Because I don't remember anything like that. I do remember all the discussions about whether or not there would be a level cap raise though.

http://www.guildwars...-in-expansions/

I remember Colin Johanson talking about this, as it was one of the things that had me on the fence for a while. I can't track down the original thread linked there, due to Guru's archiving changing the links. The video and timestamp is included in the above link though.

Edit: Video link is down.

Youtube: http://tinyurl.com/c7986zy

Edited by MisterB, 29 November 2012 - 05:10 PM.

[raspberry jam]

MisterB, on 29 November 2012 - 05:00 PM, said:

http://www.guildwars...-in-expansions/

I remember Colin Johanson talking about this, as it was one of the things that had me on the fence for a while. I can't track down the original thread linked there, due to Guru's archiving changing the links. The video and timestamp is included in the above link though.

Edit: Video link is down.

Youtube:

Spoiler

Thank you! At least someone can do this right... It's in the linked youtube clip. So this was known one year in advance... How come this was never mentioned in the pre-beta discussions about raising the level cap in expansions? Weird.

Anyway, ok, they did let us know beforehand and we did actually not pay attention. I kinda wish I had since it would have saved me €120 or however much the CE cost, I already forgot.

[MazingerZ]

draxynnic, on 29 November 2012 - 02:34 PM, said:

To be honest, I regard increasing the level cap as a lesser evil. Higher levels in an expansion tend to be something that's relatively easy to get to, and if it comes with extra trait points, etc, you actually get to do new things with it rather than simply arbitrarily raising your numbers (and raising the numbers of the mobs likewise making it a zero-sum game).

There'd be an expectation of new gear, which will devalue the old gear with nice skins, which is a shame.

Contrast that to Ascended, which at a big stack of items per slot are definitely not something that's quick and easy to get to... and, furthermore, if that trend is carried through, will turn into something you have to grind for all over again every time they raise the cap.

Both are evil and I'm on the fence as to which one is the worst.  With stats, you could start at the baseline of 'lowest possible stats with level 80 gear' and work your way from there on how downscaling works and how hard you throttle people in your code as their gear increases.  It's something you have to watch carefully, otherwise people can twink themselves into being super-effective in downscaled content (see: WoW twink BGs).

The issue I've always had with raising level caps goes back to WoW and the constant rebalancing and re-imagining of the talent/trait lines because the talents/traits were balanced around people only having X number of points and now have X + (new level cap - old level cap).  I'm not opposed to adjusting things, but generally they create more balance issues that are not ironed out for the length of the expansion.

The best and most honest way to go about things is to have caps and then put in content that is more complex.  A lot of people commented on how the boss mechanics in FOTM were much better than the ones put in the dungeons.  They could probably spend more time offering better rewards in the old dungeons and doing a pass on the encounters there.  It is pretty clear that their AI team left much to be desired.  Half the things I encountered were simply silly.  'Charging big attack, get out of the way, oh, you're dead'  was a mechanic I saw too much of.  I think ultimately where they dropped the ball was mob design.

[Capn_Crass]

Stellarthief, on 29 November 2012 - 04:21 PM, said:

FFXI was a completely different beast as for most of the games lifespan you couldnt solo a fly. (little exaggeration, but you get the point).

Was also aimed originally at a different market and population was also in that different market.

True, but not really relevant to my point that FFXI proves that a game can thrive without vertical progression and constant power creep. The lack of "endgame escalation" was a large part of the draw of FFXI; today's content wasn't made obsolete by tomorrow's, and effort you put into something today would still be relevant when the next expansion came out.

Too bad Abyssea screwed that all up.

[xarallei]

To be honest I don't really care about more levels. And it's not like they ever said they would never raise the level cap. As long as the leveling curve remains the same I'm fine with it.

[Senatic]

xarallei, on 29 November 2012 - 05:54 PM, said:

To be honest I don't really care about more levels. And it's not like they ever said they would never raise the level cap. As long as the leveling curve remains the same I'm fine with it.

They've said that, and I'm paraphrasing, "We always expected to raise the leval cap at some point", and they've also said that it is very possible they'll raise the cap for expansions. So it is indeed likely that will happen.

Edited by Senatic, 29 November 2012 - 06:00 PM.

[MazingerZ]

xarallei, on 29 November 2012 - 05:54 PM, said:

To be honest I don't really care about more levels. And it's not like they ever said they would never raise the level cap. As long as the leveling curve remains the same I'm fine with it.

The issue with raising the leveling cap is the additional trait points.  The game and traits are balanced around 70.  I think everyone considers the talent system in WoW a joke now.

Hell, it's so easy to level in WoW now, you could probably just move the goalposts on when you start getting talent points instead of re-imagining the system every five levels.

[Briar]

Levels? I really don't care the game is set up as that levels are a natural and fluid thing to achieve


Its when they decide that :Okay now you are level 100 your level 80 Ascended items that you grinded for weeks for are now worthless - Time to grind for level 80 Acended Gear!

Edit:

At this point I will just quit the game. I grind stats to have fun doing other things I do not grind stats to grind stats

Edited by Briar, 29 November 2012 - 06:06 PM.

[Zhahz]

I actually don't think this is a terrible idea because all the cosmetic stuff you've earned should always retain value.  It's the kind of thing that trivializes time spent on gear grinds though usually.  I consider getting into all exotics now to be pretty easy so it wouldn't be a big deal if some day there was a bump to 90 and new exotics to obtain similarly.  But, spending weeks/months grinding out instances for gear and having that trivilized by a level bump is kind of a drag and one of the reasons I wanted to get away from gear tiers and gear grinds and one of the reasons GW2 was appealing (when ANet was spewing what turned out to be lies about how gear was going to work in GW2).

Gilles VI, on 29 November 2012 - 10:22 AM, said:

How do I feel about it? I'd prefer a system like in GW1 where max lvl never raised, but I understand why they do it..
Only hope is they implement it in a good way.

1000 ectos and 1000 T6 rares required per level...seems to be about par for the course.  Enjoy your grinding.

ANet is obsessed with the mystic forge, which is one of the biggest steaming piles in all of MMORPG history.

I could see them ditching xp for leveling and just having players dump megatons of garbage into the forge for levels.

Edited by Zhahz, 29 November 2012 - 06:39 PM.

[MisterB]

Come to think of it, their stated intention of raising the level cap with expansions or in the future also carries the implication of adding higher tiers of gear due to the item system being tied to levels. I wish I'd made that connection before I purchased...

Edited by MisterB, 29 November 2012 - 06:46 PM.

[Fizzypop]

Stellarthief, on 29 November 2012 - 04:21 PM, said:

FFXI was a completely different beast as for most of the games lifespan you couldnt solo a fly. (little exaggeration, but you get the point).

Was also aimed originally at a different market and population was also in that different market.

God do I ever get sick of this argument. One the person you quoted was merely saying they didn't have gear progression so there is ONE game he did play that did not start with it and spent a good majority of it's time without it. Two little differences between games doesn't mean that they are aimed at a different market or even a different genre. Games aren't meant to be copy and pasted so of course they will be different. Third if games never ever did anything different you'd end up with the same trash recycled. Oh course that does explain the game industry as of right now >.>

Edited by Fizzypop, 29 November 2012 - 07:17 PM.

[rick1027]

MisterB, on 29 November 2012 - 05:00 PM, said:

http://www.guildwars...-in-expansions/

I remember Colin Johanson talking about this, as it was one of the things that had me on the fence for a while. I can't track down the original thread linked there, due to Guru's archiving changing the links. The video and timestamp is included in the above link though.

Edit: Video link is down.

Youtube: http://tinyurl.com/c7986zy

thanks kindly for that link id been wondering too. must have missed that the first time around if anyone finds anymore id love to see them

[Dasryn]

Protoss, on 29 November 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

And GW2 players still are a niche crowd.

nope.  GW2 was marketed very ambitiously and it has a huge playerbase.  for the mmorpg genre, GW2 was high profile.

Protoss, on 29 November 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

The only difference was that GW1 catered to this niche crowd by offering it something that couldn't be found anywhere else on the market, while GW2 caters to its niche crowd by offering it things that can easily be found in other games out there. Not only that, other games actually do this better.

this makes a lot of sense, you really put things in perspective for me.  this argument alone sums up everything i think.  no sarcasm.

[Dasryn]

i never considered level 80 as a final level cap. . . that makes no sense.  traditionally, in an rpg, the max level is 99, so why would they make it 80?  80 is such an off number in regards to max level in an rpg.

its unfamiliar.

therefore, i always assumed ANet was going to raise the level cap per expansions.

and i was right.

[Gilles VI]

Zhahz, on 29 November 2012 - 06:37 PM, said:

1000 ectos and 1000 T6 rares required per level...seems to be about par for the course.  Enjoy your grinding.

ANet is obsessed with the mystic forge, which is one of the biggest steaming piles in all of MMORPG history.

I could see them ditching xp for leveling and just having players dump megatons of garbage into the forge for levels.

Yea cause the mystic forge is in any way required to level or just to get max gear..

/sarcasm

[Black Autumn]

MazingerZ, on 29 November 2012 - 05:59 PM, said:

The issue with raising the leveling cap is the additional trait points.  The game and traits are balanced around 70.  I think everyone considers the talent system in WoW a joke now.

Were it my game, I'd probably introduce new trait lines, dependent upon how many levels were being introduced.  If too few to support new trait lines, I'd try to figure out some new supplementary system to use alongside the extant one.  At the very least, I'd put in a slew of new Utility skills or maybe have each of the new 5-10 levels provide a static bonus based on class...there are a lot of options.

I've no crystal ball nor am I a game designer, though.  I'm kinda interested to see what they do.

[ThiaTheMuse]

I hate to sound like a broken record but...SEVEN YEARS! That is how long GW1 has gone without raising it's level cap. Sometimes this game feels nothing like GW1 - in all the worst ways.

[Robsy128]

Protoss, on 29 November 2012 - 11:27 AM, said:

That statement alone has made me question the point of hunting down horizontal-progression based items. I went into GW2 with the idea of easily buying max gear and then playing for years, grinding pretty. It's how I played GW1 and I had insane fun with it.
But if the power plateau will be raised, I start to wonder why the hell would I be farming pretty if, when a new expansion comes out, I'll need to replace it - not because something would be prettier, but because the new items will be objectively better. This makes GW2 similar to how I play D3 - I would like my character to look amazing, but if ugly gear will have +1 better stats than the prettiest gear in the game, I'll be wearing the +1 gear. And while I absolutely adore D3, vertical progression based games have nowhere near the potential to keep me entertained as long as horizontal progression based ones do.

So that put a bit of a halt to my motivation to play GW2 - the game just isn't fun enough if I can't play Barbie in it.

And that is why we have transmutation stones

[Dove]

Honestly, in a game with a linear level curve, I think it'd cause more problems than solutions to add extra levels in expansions. 5 levels would take like 2-3 casual hours to churn through, and for what gain? Introducing extra gear levels? If they're going to do that they might as well just do it, and obviously they are.

[n00854180t]

My problem with extra levels isn't the levels themselves, it's the new gear that will come with them. Why should I spend 200 hours grinding for an upgraded Ascended back piece when they're simply going to obsolete it by making level 90 (or 85 or whatever) Ascended items with better stats?

Grinding for two hundred hours per item every 3-6 months in order to actually be able to play the game with maxed gear is not my idea of fun.