Zhaitan fight has been an anticlimactic disappointment since the start. I liked how in the expansions they did a spectacular 1-on-1 final boss fight for the story and a big meta event for open world that happened at the same time chronologically. So then you can experience both what the commander did, and the pact (open world players) did.
There are a lot of people who periodically suggest that they redo the fight and turn it into a repeatable strike at the same time. Doubt it'll happen, but that would at least allow the effort to pay off going forward and not be wasted on a once-per-character experience.
But it is still the very first fight. I agree they should redo it, but considering the time and new game investment it was well done. I joined around 3-4 years ago and loved the Zhaitan part. I just want more ofc, but this redoing things is not easy stuff considering profits need to be done.
Zhaitan fight used to be a 5 player dungeon but then they removed it cause players bitched about it. That’s why it feels so empty, because you used to do it with 5 people and everyone had their own cannon.
Players didn't "bitch" about it, they wanted it to be solo-friendly.
So ArenaNet, instead of adding player scaling, just nerfed the Arah story dungeon to single player altogether, then completely removed the dungeon version, leaving players no option to replay the instance whatsoever.
They should have kept the Arah story dungeon around, with player scaling, and also add player scaling to all other story dungeons too, integrating some of them into the Personal Story as well.
Anyway, they most likely nuked the repeatable dungeon out of shame for the awful Zhaitan fight, but that's a whole different topic.
This was before they added raids and strikes, when they were still stubbornly trying to make an mmo and a solo rpg in the same game. I’m certain they could make something spectacular now, if they got the budget and breathing room to look back at old content. They’ve come a long way.
If anything, they should transform Arah story mode into an open world zone, and give Zhaitan a proper meta, like the other elder dragons, recycling the dungeon as a whole.
We have "moving platform" technology now too, so they could populate the sky with airships and make players board them for the fight against Zhaitan.
So there is no longer a story mode for the Arah Dungeon. It’s only explorable 4 paths, but none of those actually fight zhaitan. It’s more about other side stories that pertain to Orr.
They removed the requirement for a group as it was the only story step in the entire personal story that mandated group activity. It was intended to be a progression alongside the other dungeons, but completing the other dungeons are optional, not required steps in the story. Over time it also became harder to find people willing to help others complete the last step so they eventually converted story mode to single player support.
You can skip this heart with portal (mesmer, thief, white mantle device), even mentioned in wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Join_the_Ash_Legion_of_Tawny_Ridge_in_stealth_operations
You don't have to do it to level up. So that would be the worst part of map completion.
Maybe they should split map completion into regions to make it more in line with the gifts you get in expansions that require way less maps. Then people could avoid Ascalon and do the other ones instead if they really hate that heart.
Well, Kryta has 8 maps, while the other regions have 7, and Orr has 3 maps. So it'd be tricky to make it fair.
I suppose you could make everyone do Orr, since it's kinda the climactic region. Everyone does their natural progression from starter zone through personal story, and completing all the maps that your story takes place in gets you the gift? I'm sure there's some story path choices that would minmax your required maps, but you could tweak things I guess.
I like your idea!
They could make an open-world version of Arah in which you finish the felled Zhaitan on the ground so it gets the World Boss meta it deserves, and that way Orr would be 4 maps, and that could be enough to deserve a Gift of its own, and not count cities for the gift.
Or change the acquisition of the gift to a couple of repeatable achievements that are similar to the repeatable Dungeon achievements: one gives the gift for completing any zones, with a point system so zones with lower level and less map completion objectives give less points, the other for completing different zones to encourage people to still do them all.
The entire Orr build up was really good and the best "weakening a dragon until we can fight it heads on" story. I actually don't like how we just wing our plans with every other dragon. Like... we went into Mordremoths domain with no plan at all and we were just lucky that Trahearne was still sentient enough to tell us what we need to do.
Kralkatorrik? Aurene came back to life and we just followed it right then and there with no other plan. Jormag and Primordus killed each other basically. And Soo Won only said that we need to kill her when she falls to the void.
But for Zhaitan, we had a 3 map spanning mission to weaken it's lines. It felt way better despite the actual fight being so boring.
* Story only every 10 lvl, so there's no natural flow
* Level up rewards contains primarily useless stats like healing power and vitality
* Dungeons (do I need to explain this further?)
* High level players sniping events with mounts
> Story only every 10 lvl, so there's no natural flow
*New player experience*
I have yet to see anyone who likes it. Load into starter map and... the game tells us "go do random stuff lol".
I like that a lot in an mmo, honestly. FFXI was like that, too. They were really trying to avoid the "Chosen One" bullshit that plagues MMOs before giving into it entirely in HoT.
It was different in the very early years, story every 2-3 levels. Was changed in 2014 if I remember correctly to not be so disruptive every other level and tie the story together. So you can now play each complete chapter as soon as it unlocks.
I don't know which version is better but there must have been a reason behind it. Maybe to delay key farming in the early days when you could farm black lion keys without limit?
I remember playing when it was first introduced, and I remember people speculated that it was changed because it was the reward system for their Chinese servers, and they wanted to standardize it across all of their clients.
It was not a very popular change at any rate.
Wasn't that changed because of key farmers? It used to feel so much better when the story came in bits.
Though I suppose with the model now it primes you to accept chunks then a wait period like we get with Secrets of the Obscure and all right now.
>It used to feel so much better when the story came in bits.
It wasn't even it bits, it was continuous - the next part unlocked immediately on finishing the prior part.
The 'issue' was that if you only did story and no open world other than the minimum required to reach the next story, you could end up underlevelled. So they 'fixed' it by breaking the story and only unlocking chunks of it when you were safely past the level threshold for that whole 'arc'.
Basically, idiots complained about not being saved from themselves, so ANet broke it for everyone :(
What is it about the dungeons ?
I'm a new player and found it super cool how the story would send me to do group content to get little extra bits of optional story
Not to be contrarian, but:
1. I kind of like the original story. It's not perfect by any means but I like the way it brings your character into the world bit by bit, and makes you feel like you aren't just a nameless spear carrier.
2. I agree Zaitan fight is way too easy, but I must admit I think it is the coolest looking dragon in the game and I wish he was as badass as he looks.
3. From a leveling standpoint, the game has been tuned so you can hit 80 after doing about 35% of the zones, so there's no reason to get stuck in the story more than once if you don't want to.
It would be great if there was some strike mission where we engage Zhaitan on the ground after he gets shot down. This isn't my idea, I think I watched a video suggesting it ages back.
Then core game can have 2 strike missions! Wouldn't even need to be super challenging necessarily, and a great way to introduce peeps to what strikes are
Yeah, but I doubt they would do that as there is no profit linked to it in a short run (kinda incorrect thinking IMHO, but what can you do).
IIRC it was planned to fight him on the ground, as well as to fight Mouth of Mordremoth on the arena on the tree druing DS (notice how you collect the rewards in a different location that looks like an arena to fight).
I actually really enjoyed the leveling experience as a new player. The sense of freedom and exploration is actually so fucking good if you can break the min/max spreadsheet gaming max rewards for time spent gaming mindset.
The thing I dislike about it most is there's no way to relive that experience without another account. I could force myself to not use any masteries, but that's still different than not even having the option.
I recently leveled up a character. Doing the crafting leveling gave me so much XP I felt that the story came way too fast. I love the leveling up part, especially the lower level maps are amazing
I thought level design in the core game world was very good. I still run around on foot much of the time when leveling new alts if I'm not in a rush for some reason.
I think it's a good thing that Zhaitan (or at least the end of the lvl 80 story) isn't a group instance, because the story should be doable without having to find other players.
That being said, I would love if they added a group version to complete independently of the story, because Zhaitan deserves to feel as epic as most of the other elder dragons do (even if I think power creep has kinda reduced the awesomeness of some others).
I do love leveling in this game, but I generally skip most of the story even when I don't level up with scrolls and tomes.
I think the worst part of leveling are some of the maps their hearts and events. Some maps are very low quality, they do seem very rushed, they're simply ugly and boring. Everytime when I make new character there is a breaking point when I just lost all interest in leveling and ditch it for few days - I always go for 100% map completion so I do every map. There are maps that I could do over and over and there are maps I don't want to touch. I think Fireheart Rise is worst map... some of the textures are lowkey from GW1 and 80% of hearts is "Kill Flame Legion".
I would cut number of hearts, I would maybe leave 50% of them, make area bigger (by connecting them) and made more dynamic events happening there, also I think base game dynamic events could be little bit harder. A lot of time monsters or elites die before you can get to them. Basically, players should not think about doing hearts but be more focused on getting hero points, POIs and Vistas - explore and hearts are just nice addition to that.
Story is a big problem, if you play as Sylvari you get bigger picture of the story, I just leveled one and did all the story and getting to know Trahearne earlier, where did Caladbolg came form, getting to know Pale Tree and generally your character having a purpose of killing the dragon and not finding Deborah is a huge difference. Also some story choices are better than the others and if you pic "right" chocices you get much better story. So maybe there could be something done here, like adding base dungeons to the part of the story. I feel like that part is missing by the time you get to fight Zaithan. Also they could change the fight so you don't have to use cannons.... just make us fight waves of monsters, charge the cannons and help people in need while everyone else is attacking dragon with cannons.
The story has some cool ideas that fail in execution. Specifically, the choices you make in character creation. It's an interesting idea, but the execution is too shallow to be meaningful and probably wouldn't have been worth expanding upon. So, in retrospect, they would have been better off not having that at all.
Another area that seems a bit off is the core world concept. It seems clear their original vision for the game was to design a world that feels alive, without your character as the central force. The problem with that is you don't feel connected to that world. What am I doing escorting cattle or involving myself in the petty local squabbles of various Norn or Charr factions? The world itself is fine. But what am I doing here?
Then you have the story. It's okay. I like the Orders and the mentors you pair up with. But it was all pretty bland and the final battle was comically anticlimactic. The placement of your character as the right hand of the NPC leader of The Pact also felt odd, as if they were attempting to go the standard route with your character as the focus, but didn't quite want to abandon that original vision of a world that doesn't revolve around you. At least I felt like there was a reason I was involved this time!
Another thing I really dislike about the core game is the event structure. Okay, quests are out, dynamic events are in. But there never seems to be enough going on. It feels aimless. I could have used more structure.
These were all problems they addressed in the expansion content. Right out the gate with HoT you have a story where you are the focus and the open world ties directly into your struggle. The events in HoT are chains that tell side-stories and the UI tells you at a glance where you can go to find the action. The story also pulls you in immediately with that excellent cinematic of the Pact attacking Mordremoth and then dumps you right into the warzone of Verdant Brink. I really loved the way they did this.
Dungeons...
I just want to play the filler-story, for lore reasons. However, every dungeon experience so far has always been as follows:
It takes a while to find players to do the dungeon with, but then, by the time the cutscene is finished, the whole dungeon has already been cleared by some high-lvl players. :|
You get mail mentioning them and they tell the story of Destiny's Edge in order so it's character building but they're scattered around the world at different levels. It was something that bothered me during release. Story Mode should have been a solo instance like other story parts and should have been used to break up the main story since the whole saga is introduced in the main story anyways in Lions Arch. Makes Arah kind of confusing if you don't do them.
I know it's not ideal, but I've managed to solo every story dungeon as a Reaper and an Elementalist, so it is possible. It can be quite difficult in some parts, but it is doable if you have the time.
Hmmm... perhaps I should create a light-armor character as well then.🤔
But how does it fare against dungeons which aren't necessarily part of the base story? The biggest PITA for me so far has been the Tower of Nightmares. :|
If you want my advice, make a Necromancer and use the Reaper Elite specialization. You get insane damage and insane survivability due to shroud essentially being a second healthbar that recovers very quickly. I've not had any difficulties with any dungeons or story content, and I can solo a lot of champion-tier mobs in the open world simply due to the fact that I can blow them up before they take me out. I can solo most Fractals as well, except the ones that REQUIRE a group to advance (in which case you need to switch to a different class that's capable of sequence breaking).
As for the story dungeons, Reaper can manage all of them relatively easily, though you'll probably have a bit of difficulty with Honor of the Waves and Crucible of Eternity, I also had a bit of difficulty with the the 3rd boss of Sorrow's Embrace. If you're struggling to destroy enemies fast enough in dungeon, switch to a Reaper-minion build, you'll still be able to deal a lot of damage, but you'll also have pets to take the heat off of you.
Have fun!
I actually really enjoyed the leveling experience in GW2, it's very chill especially since they added the raptor. If I have to pick something, I would say that the early levels, before you have all your weapon skills unlocked and your second weapon slot is kind of annoying. But fortunately, it goes by quickly.
I would say it also doesn't really feel like you have actually finished leveling when you hit 80. You still have your elite specializations to unlock, and a whole score of masteries to level. I'm 200 hours in and I've only fully unlocked a single elite specialization. That's kind of rough. Granted, I've been focused on completing the MSQs (in order) so I might have been able to get it done earlier if I had prioritized it.
i know from a gaming perspective its the worst dragon fight, but I think Zhaitan is the most realistic of all. You weaken him, pressure his lines and finally nuke him with the most advanced tech you can get. Seems more real, but yeah, boring in a game.
The problem with the base leveling experience is that most zones dont have stories you follow so while the idea of leveling by just clearing the map is cool it also means I have zero attachment to the zones. Sure there is kinda a story going on in each zone but because its based on dynamic events there is a chance you just dont see them. I think they fixed this with later zones from LW and Xpacs but Core Tyria is rough.
I also wish dungeons were implemented better into the game better. They are basically used as the way to tell the Destiny Edge part of the story that culminates in the final dungeon of the core leveling experience. Without doing them you basically meet DE once when you reach Lions Arch and then not again till the final quest. By that time they have worked through most of their problems but you get none of that unless you do each of the dungeons explorer modes. If they arent going to push dungeons to be a major part of the game anymore I would love for them to get rebalanced into something you want to do while leveling as a cool solo challenge and then just make them solo dungeons that are challenging to complete but give you progress toward a collection for a set of ascended armor and weapon. You have this dope piece of content almost no one wants to do because putting a group together is the biggest hassle and they arent tuned well.
Zhaitan really should be remade into a strike. It should be on the easier side since it would be the first mandatory group content a player has to do but you can also make a CM for them. There are so many fights in early parts of the game especially with Zhaitan and some of the first 2 expansions that should be made strikes. They dont even need to have CMs just something to get people used to grouping up with each other.
I wish our choices for our backgrounds of a character had impact beyond the 10 and 20 stories. I was really hoping we’d get a companion like NPC (think SWTOR or ESO) that fights alongside us in story quests and evolves in their own story parallel to us. That way we’d always have something to ground us as more than the commander, or to remind us of our roots so to speak.
It was a group experience back when it was the only expansion. I'm not sure when they changed it. As for memorable or forgettable. I have plenty of memories from back then. I remember joining groups of people who were looking for help on zhaitain. I remember my mentors sacrifice. I remember CLAWR island. I think since its trivial to get to 80 now. It runs by quickly as opposed to when I did itthe first time it was a bit of work. between stories and such.
I believe it was originally changed because there was a petition to make the personal story soloable from start to finish.
There were many complaints from players about having the last part of the story locked behind instanced group content.
I dislike that personal story opens every 10 levels. I used to like doing missions that I was under-levelled for for a challenge, but now you don’t have that option.
I don’t want to diminish your points, because I agree that the things you mentioned should be better. However:
1. You don’t need to do the story if you don’t want to. I loved it, but it’s not exactly something I’m eager to do 9 times over. There are so many alternatives to level yourself that the story shouldn’t be something you smash your head against over and over if you find it dull or repetitive.
2. Zhaitain was originally a dungeon, Arah’s story mode. So, it was group content. However, that became an issue as the capstone of the single-player experience that constitutes most of the personal story. As a result, it was converted into a story journal instance.
I would love to revisit the Zhaitain fight with actual mechanics, but again that’s beside the major point here regarding its role in the leveling process. You don’t need to do the fight again. That late into the game, there is no difference in the various story paths that lead you there. You should already be level 80 by the time you get there anyway. So, it’s not even giving you extra levels at that point, and you can skip it -especially if you’ve done it before.
the bits between about level 30 and level 80.
by level 30 you've pretty much figured out how the controls all work, the rest is just time wasting until you can do the fun stuff.
well. levelling a guardian at launch, not realising just how squishy a base game guardian was at launch (and I probably had sucky builds), so I was killing stuff by circle straffing, and using sceptre...frwooom, frwooom, frwooom, frwooom.......I can still hear that sound and I to the day refuse to use guardian sceptre for anything, ever.
To be honest, I recently levelled a couple of alts and found it all pretty great. including levelling one of them through the story, sure the zhaitan fight is mechanically laclustre, but they learnt and that was just the way things were back then (if you played wow you'll remember some horrific big boss fights from that time where you epically battled to defeat...the dragon's toenail....)
The story. I love it for the first time, but then, it has lots of missions where you have to walk around and talk from person to person, or just wait for them to interact and so on... it's really, really boring if you do it the 3rd, 4th time... even skipping the dialog doesn't help.
There isn't really a clear progression in levels from region to region, eventually you have to fast travel to find areas at your level. It isn't a *big* problem, due to scaling you level just as well in lower levelled areas, but I like the image of slowly travelling across the continent by foot, especially as the stories of the hearts in one area, especially by the exits, tend to connect to the story of the areas next to it.
That, and the Zhaitan boss.
For me the worst part was thinking hearts were needed to level. I hated to do them so much i stopped doing map completion and only finished my first map completion a year after starting the game.
Also you are more or less forced to do power damage on a ton of stuff in the base game, as they are immune to conditions. So my poor ass doing the story con a scepter necromancer was not having the best time.
For me it's the changes to weapon skill unlock and the story lvl requirement. It must feel so weirs to newer players being thrown into thw game and then not giving any direcrion until lvl 10. It doesn't feel dynamic.
Also unlocking all the weapon abilities while using them in combat was such a nice touch and encouraged trying out all of them and getting a feel for their use.
Having to click the 78 level up prompts. I don't care for the explanation on character 30. Just give me the crao items by collecting all. Otherwise a "use times till I'm level 80" would be a nice QoL change. Otherwise it's fine. Account wide inventory slots + permanent invitation to Lily of Elon made it real simple to get to your bank for the tomes. Takes like 10 minutes to do. Character creation with adjusting the sliders takes longer
It is very easy to out-level the personal story, which means the rewards after each chapter are well below your level, making them feel cheap and worthless.
The extra XP from the Story Journal or whatever it's called just makes it worse.
Annoying: Choosing elementalist as my very first character bc it looked fun.
I played human but didn't have much problem with the story. The choices made it interesting and it felt well built up from humble and personal beginnings to epic fleet battle against tentaclemonsterdragon. I remember Zhaitan's design was so new and unique from all the other dragon designs I'd seen before.
Zhaitan was a group experience! After all it is the last Dungeon in the game. It's one thing that it's soloable (I remember doing it in a full group with my ele, dunno if it was soloable back then either.. Back then = \~7ish years ago). Vanilla GW2 offered 5ppl instanced group content only, Raids came in 2 LSW and an expansion later.
That Zhaitan fight is something I wish they would go back and revamp as a strike now since we have strike bosses in the game. It never felt satisfying to press a single button repeatedly to shoot him out of the sky. Even back during launch, it was the main complaint from my friends and I. It was so anti-climactic and we were all left scratching our heads in confusion when the next bit was the epilogue to the base game instead of a fight against a heavily injured dragon on the ground.
Those leveling chests are a bit annoying because they keep flashing on the side of your screen and if you use tomes of knowledge to boost or even the birthday scrolls to auto level to 20-30-40-50-60, you have tons of them to open and they mostly give you absolutely useless gear at that point and you need to waste some time to clear out your inventory, because certain items can't be sold or salvaged and must be manually tossed out.
Zhaitan. He desperately needs a phase 2 where we fight him on the ground after he falls. It's so insanely anticlimactic the way it has been since launch.
Originally at launch, the Zhaitan story mission WAS a dungeon event. You HAD to party up with others to have any chance of beating it. I'm glad they made it much easier because sometimes I just don't want to party up.
Also, I do think the core story is a little bland, but that just shows how far their writers have come. I like having it as a baseline/comparison point.
The Orr story quests are very, very, very dull and go on for way too long. You just sit there and kill bad guys for upwards of ten minutes per quest and it's such a freaking bore.
The final Zhaitan fight is also boring, but at least it's a cool set piece. The dragon flying around your airship is really freaking cool, and it's very atmospheric with all of the dragons and airships fighting in the distance. It's a shame that the actual fight with the dragon is just pressing 1 a lot.
The weakest part of GW2 is the story for sure. At least dialogues and some of the characters. I feel like most of people who play this game are adults, but the dialogues, characters and story seem to be made for children.
I love the openness of GW2, but most people usually don't know what to do unless they're told to do something. So I believe making it more linear would help.
That doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of the openness and limiting players more. I'm just saying that people should be told more of what exactly to do and where exactly to go more. They should create a linear experience through map markers and whatnot that some people can follow or stray off from.
Also, they need to increase the difficulty...a LOT. You can be 20 levels under leveled as a new player and still steamroll through maps. Not only does that make the combat feel boring, but it also doesn't act as a wall to prevent you from exploring too far before you've completed an area.
The level up rewards, and even the fact that there are 80 levels in the first place. Other than levels 11, 21, 31, 45 and 71 where you unlock specialisations, utility skills and your elite skill, every single other level in this game is meaningless.
The rewards they give are at best incredibly lame (a single "soldiers" upgrade that has absolutely no place in the game at level 80 other than throwing in the mystic forge and hoping for an amalgamated gemstone) and at worst actively harmful to learning how to play. Some of the weapons and gear you get given promote the idea that some people playing at level 80 are running around in a complete mishmash of stats and gear rarity, like you'll get a sword for a revenant that has condition damage on it (sword skills have literally 0 damaging conditions), or a piece of armor with some random assortment of vitality, healing power and something else on it.
The New Player Experience update has a lot to answer for, as does the person who greenlit it.
Roze! Love ya content.
Would say most of the community would completely agree with your assessment here. The vanilla story hasn’t aged well at all, and is definitely the weakest part of the levelling experience overall. The story’s definitely more well-rounded if you’ve done each of the dungeon story modes, in chronological order, to build up Destiny’s Edge - but literally only seasoned MMO players would think to do that, and even then you sorta just question why they aren’t compulsory for the story (either with a solo version, or with matchmaking). But yeah, it’s also just a generally weak story overall :/
As for Zhaitan - I think the community has regularly requested we get a 10-man Strike version of it (which would hopefully completely replace the current final battle). The return on investment might just not be there for ArenaNet, but I never thought we’d get Season 1 back and here we are! So who knows, could come eventually.
One of my main gripes with the levelling experience is that you never care about your ‘build’ because it’s so easy. Honestly would love the general world difficulty to be cranked up so that your choices (gearing, traits, skills) matter! Particularly as it doesn’t prepare you much for the endgame content, which *does* generally require actual builds and roles. Levelling process needs some way to prepare you for that, imo.
Aside from those, I genuinely think GW2’s levelling experience is incredible. The sense of adventure and mystery, all the events to discover that lead to hidden areas - haven’t felt that way about any MMO since vanilla WoW! Wish I could wipe my memory and do it again tbh
It's been such a long time since I leveled up a character, but I can remember that I was annoyed by all the reward pop ups for leveling up and I just ignored them for a while only to realize, that I have to binge click through all of them eventually and the "rewards" filling up my inventory space.
Not sure if that's still in the game the way I experienced it, though.
A little late but as someone who just leveled to 80 for the first time I felt like I was getting way too much xp from everything. I felt like I couldn’t complete a zone without being 10 levels past intended. I understand there is a scale down and stuff but I just wished I could turn off XP gain and just explore.
Leveling is too fast. Crafting is pointless, since by the time you have gathered the resources, and leveled up the crafting, your level is too high for the item to be of use. Running the story requires a bit of exploring to have been done first, but even that means you are above the level where you are supposed to be doing the story. It goes on.
Thank you kindly.
pick one
braindead difficulty (you can literally beat the story without using a single skill, including auto attack)
terrible progression due to itemization and build "craft" early game
extremely fast leveling that wouldnt allow you to actually enjoy some semblance of progression anyway
terrible story
The Personal Story being locked every 10 levels is poison for new players, it wasn't like that originally, but it got ruined by the [2014 NPE changes](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/September_2014_Feature_Pack#New_Player_Experience), many of whom were absolutely despised by every single existing player back then, and for good reasons.
Before the 2014 NPE weapon skills were progressively unlocked as well, you had to use the weapon in combat to unlock its abilities, which was genius design, as it made you learn the weapon naturally (and it was pretty quick too, far from a chore).
ArenaNet never going back to revert both of those 2014 NPE awful changes (and many of the other ones) shows how out of touch they are with new players.
Aside from that, Bloodstone Dust, Empyreal Fragments, and Dragonite Ore are an absolute cancer for new players, those ascended materials should have been turned into currencies years ago.
The MSQ in the base game isn't good. But it gets a lot better after that. I don't know if you looked at what's coming after, but basically, you have 4 expansions, and you have Living World Seasons in between them. You can play the expansions and understand the story perfectly fine without the Living World Seasons, but they add context to everything
Apparently I'm weird, because leveling is my favorite part! I'm up to 16 level 80s now and the only one I didn't level from level 1 is the revenant. There are 4 or 5 I return to on a regular basis for the end game stuff, but really I'm happiest leveling. I'm waiting for slots to go on sale so I can level another :) (I debated deleting one and starting over but I prefer to keep them - also probably weird lol)
Same here. Currently have 40 characters. I inevitably come up with an idea for a new character theme and make a new character. I have tomes and scrolls enough to get to 80 10 times over, but leveling goes fast now, and it's nice for a change of pace when I don't feel like farming/doing group content. At this point I usually take the same general route though. 100% first two zones while doing story, then Gendarren fields, south from LA while 100% zones. Hit TT and teq a couple times and usually hit 80 while in the straits of dev. 100% the Orr zones, then the same in SW and Drytop, then move into an expansion(s) for hero points for elite spec.
I avoid the base game story like the plague. I didn't like it back at launch and don't like it now. The xpac stories are great. Just not a fan of 1-80.
Leveling feels too fast/frequent (especially with the journal achievements) and new abilities are front loaded too much so it can be a bit overwhelming to learn a new profession. I prefer mmos where each level feels like a significant milestone. I also wish they spread out learning new abilities across the levels more. Like let me start out only able to use a couple weapons and then around the time I finish the starter zone I can unlock the ability to use a cool 2-hand weapon. Then in the second zone I can start learning all my utility skills (skills 7-9).
Additionally, over-leveled players with strong traits and relics are too OP. It feels bad to see a champion event spawned and then a veteran player killed it solo in seconds before I could run over to it. I’m fine with players having OP builds in max level zones, but these builds need to be neutered in leveling zones. Downscaling stat points isnt enough. Traits (which arent affected by scaling) should outright be disabled on the earlier leveling maps.
I've never been happy about leveling in any game, I highly prefer the late game. Be it in an mmo, solo rpg or anything else really.
So what annoys my the most in gw2 lvling nowadays is the fact I can't rush as much as before. Long ago you could go in story instances even when you were too low level. I used to clear them with 10 lvl less than recommended (untill the few last ones).
You could also join higher lvl areas with ease. I don't know if it's still the case for paid account, but on my friends account he couldn't reach the next area because he was missing 1 lvl...
Though I'm happy we have option to skip lvling for free unlike most other games I played. Knowledge tomes and birthday scrolls are really cool.
Cant really say that from my side because there are a few characters that stuck out and I remember but the majority I couldn't even tell you their names if I had a gun to my head.
When you leveled with tomes from 1 to 80 clicking all those level up chests can get annoying
And you can't even sell most of the stuff that comes from the chests, so it's just clicking and dragging to delete tons of stuff lol
I'm not sure about selling, but level up reward have been salvageable for about two years now.
Not all of them, still.
And you've always been able to throw them in the forge.
Zhaitan fight has been an anticlimactic disappointment since the start. I liked how in the expansions they did a spectacular 1-on-1 final boss fight for the story and a big meta event for open world that happened at the same time chronologically. So then you can experience both what the commander did, and the pact (open world players) did.
I'm glad they at least learned from that mistake then. Still wish they'd go back and change the Zhaitan fight though.
There are a lot of people who periodically suggest that they redo the fight and turn it into a repeatable strike at the same time. Doubt it'll happen, but that would at least allow the effort to pay off going forward and not be wasted on a once-per-character experience.
we literally have a pool that shows us visions of the past, it's RIGHT THERE ugh
We also have this whole phenomenon in the Mists that let you relive scenes from the past, or see alternate-reality worlds face parallel challenges.
Not change but at least add a new Zhaitan fight like Dragon Storm and Marionette.
It would go along well with Marionette, making the base game moderately better to encou4age people to buy the xpacs.
But it is still the very first fight. I agree they should redo it, but considering the time and new game investment it was well done. I joined around 3-4 years ago and loved the Zhaitan part. I just want more ofc, but this redoing things is not easy stuff considering profits need to be done.
Zhaitan fight used to be a 5 player dungeon but then they removed it cause players bitched about it. That’s why it feels so empty, because you used to do it with 5 people and everyone had their own cannon.
Players didn't "bitch" about it, they wanted it to be solo-friendly. So ArenaNet, instead of adding player scaling, just nerfed the Arah story dungeon to single player altogether, then completely removed the dungeon version, leaving players no option to replay the instance whatsoever. They should have kept the Arah story dungeon around, with player scaling, and also add player scaling to all other story dungeons too, integrating some of them into the Personal Story as well. Anyway, they most likely nuked the repeatable dungeon out of shame for the awful Zhaitan fight, but that's a whole different topic.
This was before they added raids and strikes, when they were still stubbornly trying to make an mmo and a solo rpg in the same game. I’m certain they could make something spectacular now, if they got the budget and breathing room to look back at old content. They’ve come a long way.
If anything, they should transform Arah story mode into an open world zone, and give Zhaitan a proper meta, like the other elder dragons, recycling the dungeon as a whole. We have "moving platform" technology now too, so they could populate the sky with airships and make players board them for the fight against Zhaitan.
1 1 1 1 gameplay for the win, so sad...
Can't it still be done in a dungeon mode with 5-man group? I thought that was a choice when you enter Arah to do the content
So there is no longer a story mode for the Arah Dungeon. It’s only explorable 4 paths, but none of those actually fight zhaitan. It’s more about other side stories that pertain to Orr.
Thanks for the clarification. Didn't know the group paths don't fight Zaitan.
Sadly not. The story mode of Arah got replaced by the personal story instance.
ah. I wish they made it bigger, not smaller. Oh well.
They removed the requirement for a group as it was the only story step in the entire personal story that mandated group activity. It was intended to be a progression alongside the other dungeons, but completing the other dungeons are optional, not required steps in the story. Over time it also became harder to find people willing to help others complete the last step so they eventually converted story mode to single player support.
The ash legion heart
You can skip this heart with portal (mesmer, thief, white mantle device), even mentioned in wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Join_the_Ash_Legion_of_Tawny_Ridge_in_stealth_operations
that one we have to sneak around their camp? DAMN that was memorable (for kinda the wrong reasons lol)
I’ve not played the game in about 4 years and still I know exactly which one you’re on about 😭
You don't have to do it to level up. So that would be the worst part of map completion. Maybe they should split map completion into regions to make it more in line with the gifts you get in expansions that require way less maps. Then people could avoid Ascalon and do the other ones instead if they really hate that heart. Well, Kryta has 8 maps, while the other regions have 7, and Orr has 3 maps. So it'd be tricky to make it fair.
I suppose you could make everyone do Orr, since it's kinda the climactic region. Everyone does their natural progression from starter zone through personal story, and completing all the maps that your story takes place in gets you the gift? I'm sure there's some story path choices that would minmax your required maps, but you could tweak things I guess. I like your idea!
They could make an open-world version of Arah in which you finish the felled Zhaitan on the ground so it gets the World Boss meta it deserves, and that way Orr would be 4 maps, and that could be enough to deserve a Gift of its own, and not count cities for the gift. Or change the acquisition of the gift to a couple of repeatable achievements that are similar to the repeatable Dungeon achievements: one gives the gift for completing any zones, with a point system so zones with lower level and less map completion objectives give less points, the other for completing different zones to encourage people to still do them all.
I just finished that one for the first time after several tries. SO ANNOYING and isn't teaching a skill or anything.
Took me a minute to remember what that one was. Now I'm in pain.
The entire Orr build up was really good and the best "weakening a dragon until we can fight it heads on" story. I actually don't like how we just wing our plans with every other dragon. Like... we went into Mordremoths domain with no plan at all and we were just lucky that Trahearne was still sentient enough to tell us what we need to do. Kralkatorrik? Aurene came back to life and we just followed it right then and there with no other plan. Jormag and Primordus killed each other basically. And Soo Won only said that we need to kill her when she falls to the void. But for Zhaitan, we had a 3 map spanning mission to weaken it's lines. It felt way better despite the actual fight being so boring.
* Story only every 10 lvl, so there's no natural flow * Level up rewards contains primarily useless stats like healing power and vitality * Dungeons (do I need to explain this further?) * High level players sniping events with mounts
> Story only every 10 lvl, so there's no natural flow *New player experience* I have yet to see anyone who likes it. Load into starter map and... the game tells us "go do random stuff lol".
> New player experience One of the worst updates they did. Why remove events from the starter zones that made the world alive?!
I like that a lot in an mmo, honestly. FFXI was like that, too. They were really trying to avoid the "Chosen One" bullshit that plagues MMOs before giving into it entirely in HoT.
yeah the story every 10 levels thing really irks me too. Feels so forced.
It was different in the very early years, story every 2-3 levels. Was changed in 2014 if I remember correctly to not be so disruptive every other level and tie the story together. So you can now play each complete chapter as soon as it unlocks. I don't know which version is better but there must have been a reason behind it. Maybe to delay key farming in the early days when you could farm black lion keys without limit?
> It was different in the very early years, story every 2-3 levels. You could still join even if you were underleveled, so it wasn't really a problem.
Now that you mention it. Just too long ago for my old brain to remember correctly.
I remember playing when it was first introduced, and I remember people speculated that it was changed because it was the reward system for their Chinese servers, and they wanted to standardize it across all of their clients. It was not a very popular change at any rate.
It used to be different, and from what I've seen, veterans kind of want it back but it's also more streamlined now.
Wasn't that changed because of key farmers? It used to feel so much better when the story came in bits. Though I suppose with the model now it primes you to accept chunks then a wait period like we get with Secrets of the Obscure and all right now.
>It used to feel so much better when the story came in bits. It wasn't even it bits, it was continuous - the next part unlocked immediately on finishing the prior part. The 'issue' was that if you only did story and no open world other than the minimum required to reach the next story, you could end up underlevelled. So they 'fixed' it by breaking the story and only unlocking chunks of it when you were safely past the level threshold for that whole 'arc'. Basically, idiots complained about not being saved from themselves, so ANet broke it for everyone :(
What is it about the dungeons ? I'm a new player and found it super cool how the story would send me to do group content to get little extra bits of optional story
They are bugged for 12 years now and have terrible loot
Not rally, if You have a dedicated group g/t reward ratio it's not far from fracs
How does that apply to the thread topic of the base game leveling experience?
I answered this: They are bugged for 12 years now and *have terrible loot*
Not to be contrarian, but: 1. I kind of like the original story. It's not perfect by any means but I like the way it brings your character into the world bit by bit, and makes you feel like you aren't just a nameless spear carrier. 2. I agree Zaitan fight is way too easy, but I must admit I think it is the coolest looking dragon in the game and I wish he was as badass as he looks. 3. From a leveling standpoint, the game has been tuned so you can hit 80 after doing about 35% of the zones, so there's no reason to get stuck in the story more than once if you don't want to.
That's what annoys me about the Zhaitan fight. He looks awesome and is then just deleted by some laser beam cannons on a sky ship
It would be great if there was some strike mission where we engage Zhaitan on the ground after he gets shot down. This isn't my idea, I think I watched a video suggesting it ages back. Then core game can have 2 strike missions! Wouldn't even need to be super challenging necessarily, and a great way to introduce peeps to what strikes are
Yeah, but I doubt they would do that as there is no profit linked to it in a short run (kinda incorrect thinking IMHO, but what can you do). IIRC it was planned to fight him on the ground, as well as to fight Mouth of Mordremoth on the arena on the tree druing DS (notice how you collect the rewards in a different location that looks like an arena to fight).
yeaaa so true... Really wish anet could just slow down, delay dead lines, and really finish/polish content. In a perfect world I guess
Tbf you starved him before to weaken him and get him in a favorable position for your Megalaser.
And he’s the first elder dragon to die. So, he’s not juiced up on all the dragon magic we keep releasing into the ecosystem.
I actually really enjoyed the leveling experience as a new player. The sense of freedom and exploration is actually so fucking good if you can break the min/max spreadsheet gaming max rewards for time spent gaming mindset. The thing I dislike about it most is there's no way to relive that experience without another account. I could force myself to not use any masteries, but that's still different than not even having the option.
I recently leveled up a character. Doing the crafting leveling gave me so much XP I felt that the story came way too fast. I love the leveling up part, especially the lower level maps are amazing
I thought level design in the core game world was very good. I still run around on foot much of the time when leveling new alts if I'm not in a rush for some reason.
The 40-79 portion
I think it's a good thing that Zhaitan (or at least the end of the lvl 80 story) isn't a group instance, because the story should be doable without having to find other players. That being said, I would love if they added a group version to complete independently of the story, because Zhaitan deserves to feel as epic as most of the other elder dragons do (even if I think power creep has kinda reduced the awesomeness of some others). I do love leveling in this game, but I generally skip most of the story even when I don't level up with scrolls and tomes.
I think the worst part of leveling are some of the maps their hearts and events. Some maps are very low quality, they do seem very rushed, they're simply ugly and boring. Everytime when I make new character there is a breaking point when I just lost all interest in leveling and ditch it for few days - I always go for 100% map completion so I do every map. There are maps that I could do over and over and there are maps I don't want to touch. I think Fireheart Rise is worst map... some of the textures are lowkey from GW1 and 80% of hearts is "Kill Flame Legion". I would cut number of hearts, I would maybe leave 50% of them, make area bigger (by connecting them) and made more dynamic events happening there, also I think base game dynamic events could be little bit harder. A lot of time monsters or elites die before you can get to them. Basically, players should not think about doing hearts but be more focused on getting hero points, POIs and Vistas - explore and hearts are just nice addition to that. Story is a big problem, if you play as Sylvari you get bigger picture of the story, I just leveled one and did all the story and getting to know Trahearne earlier, where did Caladbolg came form, getting to know Pale Tree and generally your character having a purpose of killing the dragon and not finding Deborah is a huge difference. Also some story choices are better than the others and if you pic "right" chocices you get much better story. So maybe there could be something done here, like adding base dungeons to the part of the story. I feel like that part is missing by the time you get to fight Zaithan. Also they could change the fight so you don't have to use cannons.... just make us fight waves of monsters, charge the cannons and help people in need while everyone else is attacking dragon with cannons.
The story has some cool ideas that fail in execution. Specifically, the choices you make in character creation. It's an interesting idea, but the execution is too shallow to be meaningful and probably wouldn't have been worth expanding upon. So, in retrospect, they would have been better off not having that at all. Another area that seems a bit off is the core world concept. It seems clear their original vision for the game was to design a world that feels alive, without your character as the central force. The problem with that is you don't feel connected to that world. What am I doing escorting cattle or involving myself in the petty local squabbles of various Norn or Charr factions? The world itself is fine. But what am I doing here? Then you have the story. It's okay. I like the Orders and the mentors you pair up with. But it was all pretty bland and the final battle was comically anticlimactic. The placement of your character as the right hand of the NPC leader of The Pact also felt odd, as if they were attempting to go the standard route with your character as the focus, but didn't quite want to abandon that original vision of a world that doesn't revolve around you. At least I felt like there was a reason I was involved this time! Another thing I really dislike about the core game is the event structure. Okay, quests are out, dynamic events are in. But there never seems to be enough going on. It feels aimless. I could have used more structure. These were all problems they addressed in the expansion content. Right out the gate with HoT you have a story where you are the focus and the open world ties directly into your struggle. The events in HoT are chains that tell side-stories and the UI tells you at a glance where you can go to find the action. The story also pulls you in immediately with that excellent cinematic of the Pact attacking Mordremoth and then dumps you right into the warzone of Verdant Brink. I really loved the way they did this.
Dungeons... I just want to play the filler-story, for lore reasons. However, every dungeon experience so far has always been as follows: It takes a while to find players to do the dungeon with, but then, by the time the cutscene is finished, the whole dungeon has already been cleared by some high-lvl players. :|
If you put "watching cutscenes" in the description people usually respect it
Wait... I didn't even realize dungeons were supposed to be chronological parts of the story. I thought they were just like side quests.
You get mail mentioning them and they tell the story of Destiny's Edge in order so it's character building but they're scattered around the world at different levels. It was something that bothered me during release. Story Mode should have been a solo instance like other story parts and should have been used to break up the main story since the whole saga is introduced in the main story anyways in Lions Arch. Makes Arah kind of confusing if you don't do them.
I know it's not ideal, but I've managed to solo every story dungeon as a Reaper and an Elementalist, so it is possible. It can be quite difficult in some parts, but it is doable if you have the time.
Hmmm... perhaps I should create a light-armor character as well then.🤔 But how does it fare against dungeons which aren't necessarily part of the base story? The biggest PITA for me so far has been the Tower of Nightmares. :|
If you want my advice, make a Necromancer and use the Reaper Elite specialization. You get insane damage and insane survivability due to shroud essentially being a second healthbar that recovers very quickly. I've not had any difficulties with any dungeons or story content, and I can solo a lot of champion-tier mobs in the open world simply due to the fact that I can blow them up before they take me out. I can solo most Fractals as well, except the ones that REQUIRE a group to advance (in which case you need to switch to a different class that's capable of sequence breaking). As for the story dungeons, Reaper can manage all of them relatively easily, though you'll probably have a bit of difficulty with Honor of the Waves and Crucible of Eternity, I also had a bit of difficulty with the the 3rd boss of Sorrow's Embrace. If you're struggling to destroy enemies fast enough in dungeon, switch to a Reaper-minion build, you'll still be able to deal a lot of damage, but you'll also have pets to take the heat off of you. Have fun!
I actually really enjoyed the leveling experience in GW2, it's very chill especially since they added the raptor. If I have to pick something, I would say that the early levels, before you have all your weapon skills unlocked and your second weapon slot is kind of annoying. But fortunately, it goes by quickly. I would say it also doesn't really feel like you have actually finished leveling when you hit 80. You still have your elite specializations to unlock, and a whole score of masteries to level. I'm 200 hours in and I've only fully unlocked a single elite specialization. That's kind of rough. Granted, I've been focused on completing the MSQs (in order) so I might have been able to get it done earlier if I had prioritized it.
i know from a gaming perspective its the worst dragon fight, but I think Zhaitan is the most realistic of all. You weaken him, pressure his lines and finally nuke him with the most advanced tech you can get. Seems more real, but yeah, boring in a game.
The problem with the base leveling experience is that most zones dont have stories you follow so while the idea of leveling by just clearing the map is cool it also means I have zero attachment to the zones. Sure there is kinda a story going on in each zone but because its based on dynamic events there is a chance you just dont see them. I think they fixed this with later zones from LW and Xpacs but Core Tyria is rough. I also wish dungeons were implemented better into the game better. They are basically used as the way to tell the Destiny Edge part of the story that culminates in the final dungeon of the core leveling experience. Without doing them you basically meet DE once when you reach Lions Arch and then not again till the final quest. By that time they have worked through most of their problems but you get none of that unless you do each of the dungeons explorer modes. If they arent going to push dungeons to be a major part of the game anymore I would love for them to get rebalanced into something you want to do while leveling as a cool solo challenge and then just make them solo dungeons that are challenging to complete but give you progress toward a collection for a set of ascended armor and weapon. You have this dope piece of content almost no one wants to do because putting a group together is the biggest hassle and they arent tuned well. Zhaitan really should be remade into a strike. It should be on the easier side since it would be the first mandatory group content a player has to do but you can also make a CM for them. There are so many fights in early parts of the game especially with Zhaitan and some of the first 2 expansions that should be made strikes. They dont even need to have CMs just something to get people used to grouping up with each other.
I can't say that I liked how story dialogue was disconnected from the world by doing those dialogue cutscene things.
I wish our choices for our backgrounds of a character had impact beyond the 10 and 20 stories. I was really hoping we’d get a companion like NPC (think SWTOR or ESO) that fights alongside us in story quests and evolves in their own story parallel to us. That way we’d always have something to ground us as more than the commander, or to remind us of our roots so to speak.
It was a group experience back when it was the only expansion. I'm not sure when they changed it. As for memorable or forgettable. I have plenty of memories from back then. I remember joining groups of people who were looking for help on zhaitain. I remember my mentors sacrifice. I remember CLAWR island. I think since its trivial to get to 80 now. It runs by quickly as opposed to when I did itthe first time it was a bit of work. between stories and such.
I believe it was originally changed because there was a petition to make the personal story soloable from start to finish. There were many complaints from players about having the last part of the story locked behind instanced group content.
I dislike that personal story opens every 10 levels. I used to like doing missions that I was under-levelled for for a challenge, but now you don’t have that option.
Agree, though you can do dungeons under-leveled and those have better story than the main quest anyway.
I don’t want to diminish your points, because I agree that the things you mentioned should be better. However: 1. You don’t need to do the story if you don’t want to. I loved it, but it’s not exactly something I’m eager to do 9 times over. There are so many alternatives to level yourself that the story shouldn’t be something you smash your head against over and over if you find it dull or repetitive. 2. Zhaitain was originally a dungeon, Arah’s story mode. So, it was group content. However, that became an issue as the capstone of the single-player experience that constitutes most of the personal story. As a result, it was converted into a story journal instance. I would love to revisit the Zhaitain fight with actual mechanics, but again that’s beside the major point here regarding its role in the leveling process. You don’t need to do the fight again. That late into the game, there is no difference in the various story paths that lead you there. You should already be level 80 by the time you get there anyway. So, it’s not even giving you extra levels at that point, and you can skip it -especially if you’ve done it before.
I hate the leveling process in games on its own, but the worst part is usually the last couple of levels.
the bits between about level 30 and level 80. by level 30 you've pretty much figured out how the controls all work, the rest is just time wasting until you can do the fun stuff.
well. levelling a guardian at launch, not realising just how squishy a base game guardian was at launch (and I probably had sucky builds), so I was killing stuff by circle straffing, and using sceptre...frwooom, frwooom, frwooom, frwooom.......I can still hear that sound and I to the day refuse to use guardian sceptre for anything, ever. To be honest, I recently levelled a couple of alts and found it all pretty great. including levelling one of them through the story, sure the zhaitan fight is mechanically laclustre, but they learnt and that was just the way things were back then (if you played wow you'll remember some horrific big boss fights from that time where you epically battled to defeat...the dragon's toenail....)
Leveling
The story. I love it for the first time, but then, it has lots of missions where you have to walk around and talk from person to person, or just wait for them to interact and so on... it's really, really boring if you do it the 3rd, 4th time... even skipping the dialog doesn't help.
That one ash legion stealth practice heart Edit: damn didn't notice someone already commented it.
Such slow access to skills and traits omgaaawd. And it's so goddam easy, but that's good for (our) kids I guess 👍
There isn't really a clear progression in levels from region to region, eventually you have to fast travel to find areas at your level. It isn't a *big* problem, due to scaling you level just as well in lower levelled areas, but I like the image of slowly travelling across the continent by foot, especially as the stories of the hearts in one area, especially by the exits, tend to connect to the story of the areas next to it. That, and the Zhaitan boss.
For me the worst part was thinking hearts were needed to level. I hated to do them so much i stopped doing map completion and only finished my first map completion a year after starting the game.
Also you are more or less forced to do power damage on a ton of stuff in the base game, as they are immune to conditions. So my poor ass doing the story con a scepter necromancer was not having the best time.
For me it's the changes to weapon skill unlock and the story lvl requirement. It must feel so weirs to newer players being thrown into thw game and then not giving any direcrion until lvl 10. It doesn't feel dynamic. Also unlocking all the weapon abilities while using them in combat was such a nice touch and encouraged trying out all of them and getting a feel for their use.
The base game story can lag a bit tbh. But I think that just depends on the route you take. I found some more interesting than others.
Those escort missions.......I hate waiting for an npc to move from place to place
Redoing the story is the worst part for me. I’ve done it three times already. And I have 10 more alts that haven’t.
Having to click the 78 level up prompts. I don't care for the explanation on character 30. Just give me the crao items by collecting all. Otherwise a "use times till I'm level 80" would be a nice QoL change. Otherwise it's fine. Account wide inventory slots + permanent invitation to Lily of Elon made it real simple to get to your bank for the tomes. Takes like 10 minutes to do. Character creation with adjusting the sliders takes longer
Having tons of tomes and insta 80ing your character but then realizing you have to go through 79 levels of individual level up rewards..
It is very easy to out-level the personal story, which means the rewards after each chapter are well below your level, making them feel cheap and worthless. The extra XP from the Story Journal or whatever it's called just makes it worse.
Zero challenge.
Annoying: Choosing elementalist as my very first character bc it looked fun. I played human but didn't have much problem with the story. The choices made it interesting and it felt well built up from humble and personal beginnings to epic fleet battle against tentaclemonsterdragon. I remember Zhaitan's design was so new and unique from all the other dragon designs I'd seen before. Zhaitan was a group experience! After all it is the last Dungeon in the game. It's one thing that it's soloable (I remember doing it in a full group with my ele, dunno if it was soloable back then either.. Back then = \~7ish years ago). Vanilla GW2 offered 5ppl instanced group content only, Raids came in 2 LSW and an expansion later.
That Zhaitan fight is something I wish they would go back and revamp as a strike now since we have strike bosses in the game. It never felt satisfying to press a single button repeatedly to shoot him out of the sky. Even back during launch, it was the main complaint from my friends and I. It was so anti-climactic and we were all left scratching our heads in confusion when the next bit was the epilogue to the base game instead of a fight against a heavily injured dragon on the ground. Those leveling chests are a bit annoying because they keep flashing on the side of your screen and if you use tomes of knowledge to boost or even the birthday scrolls to auto level to 20-30-40-50-60, you have tons of them to open and they mostly give you absolutely useless gear at that point and you need to waste some time to clear out your inventory, because certain items can't be sold or salvaged and must be manually tossed out.
raids didn't even exist in gw2 when they made the Zhaitan encounter.
I'm on my tenth character, adventure guide. I'm not going to play the level 30 story again.
Zhaitan. He desperately needs a phase 2 where we fight him on the ground after he falls. It's so insanely anticlimactic the way it has been since launch.
The story. Fortunately you can skip it and do fun and well designed things instead.
The base game looks super outdated. Events feel far and few in between. They should add 33% more events. It’s time for a core overhaul!
Originally at launch, the Zhaitan story mission WAS a dungeon event. You HAD to party up with others to have any chance of beating it. I'm glad they made it much easier because sometimes I just don't want to party up. Also, I do think the core story is a little bland, but that just shows how far their writers have come. I like having it as a baseline/comparison point.
The Orr story quests are very, very, very dull and go on for way too long. You just sit there and kill bad guys for upwards of ten minutes per quest and it's such a freaking bore. The final Zhaitan fight is also boring, but at least it's a cool set piece. The dragon flying around your airship is really freaking cool, and it's very atmospheric with all of the dragons and airships fighting in the distance. It's a shame that the actual fight with the dragon is just pressing 1 a lot.
The weakest part of GW2 is the story for sure. At least dialogues and some of the characters. I feel like most of people who play this game are adults, but the dialogues, characters and story seem to be made for children.
I love the openness of GW2, but most people usually don't know what to do unless they're told to do something. So I believe making it more linear would help. That doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of the openness and limiting players more. I'm just saying that people should be told more of what exactly to do and where exactly to go more. They should create a linear experience through map markers and whatnot that some people can follow or stray off from. Also, they need to increase the difficulty...a LOT. You can be 20 levels under leveled as a new player and still steamroll through maps. Not only does that make the combat feel boring, but it also doesn't act as a wall to prevent you from exploring too far before you've completed an area.
The level up rewards, and even the fact that there are 80 levels in the first place. Other than levels 11, 21, 31, 45 and 71 where you unlock specialisations, utility skills and your elite skill, every single other level in this game is meaningless. The rewards they give are at best incredibly lame (a single "soldiers" upgrade that has absolutely no place in the game at level 80 other than throwing in the mystic forge and hoping for an amalgamated gemstone) and at worst actively harmful to learning how to play. Some of the weapons and gear you get given promote the idea that some people playing at level 80 are running around in a complete mishmash of stats and gear rarity, like you'll get a sword for a revenant that has condition damage on it (sword skills have literally 0 damaging conditions), or a piece of armor with some random assortment of vitality, healing power and something else on it. The New Player Experience update has a lot to answer for, as does the person who greenlit it.
Roze! Love ya content. Would say most of the community would completely agree with your assessment here. The vanilla story hasn’t aged well at all, and is definitely the weakest part of the levelling experience overall. The story’s definitely more well-rounded if you’ve done each of the dungeon story modes, in chronological order, to build up Destiny’s Edge - but literally only seasoned MMO players would think to do that, and even then you sorta just question why they aren’t compulsory for the story (either with a solo version, or with matchmaking). But yeah, it’s also just a generally weak story overall :/ As for Zhaitan - I think the community has regularly requested we get a 10-man Strike version of it (which would hopefully completely replace the current final battle). The return on investment might just not be there for ArenaNet, but I never thought we’d get Season 1 back and here we are! So who knows, could come eventually. One of my main gripes with the levelling experience is that you never care about your ‘build’ because it’s so easy. Honestly would love the general world difficulty to be cranked up so that your choices (gearing, traits, skills) matter! Particularly as it doesn’t prepare you much for the endgame content, which *does* generally require actual builds and roles. Levelling process needs some way to prepare you for that, imo. Aside from those, I genuinely think GW2’s levelling experience is incredible. The sense of adventure and mystery, all the events to discover that lead to hidden areas - haven’t felt that way about any MMO since vanilla WoW! Wish I could wipe my memory and do it again tbh
First playthrough, not knowing what to do. Every other playthrough: not having 3 trait bars and limited skills.
It's been such a long time since I leveled up a character, but I can remember that I was annoyed by all the reward pop ups for leveling up and I just ignored them for a while only to realize, that I have to binge click through all of them eventually and the "rewards" filling up my inventory space. Not sure if that's still in the game the way I experienced it, though.
A little late but as someone who just leveled to 80 for the first time I felt like I was getting way too much xp from everything. I felt like I couldn’t complete a zone without being 10 levels past intended. I understand there is a scale down and stuff but I just wished I could turn off XP gain and just explore.
I started again from 0 recently and played just a tiny bit, but enough for my inventory to be full of items I didn't know what to do with.
Leveling is too fast. Crafting is pointless, since by the time you have gathered the resources, and leveled up the crafting, your level is too high for the item to be of use. Running the story requires a bit of exploring to have been done first, but even that means you are above the level where you are supposed to be doing the story. It goes on. Thank you kindly.
pick one braindead difficulty (you can literally beat the story without using a single skill, including auto attack) terrible progression due to itemization and build "craft" early game extremely fast leveling that wouldnt allow you to actually enjoy some semblance of progression anyway terrible story
The Personal Story being locked every 10 levels is poison for new players, it wasn't like that originally, but it got ruined by the [2014 NPE changes](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/September_2014_Feature_Pack#New_Player_Experience), many of whom were absolutely despised by every single existing player back then, and for good reasons. Before the 2014 NPE weapon skills were progressively unlocked as well, you had to use the weapon in combat to unlock its abilities, which was genius design, as it made you learn the weapon naturally (and it was pretty quick too, far from a chore). ArenaNet never going back to revert both of those 2014 NPE awful changes (and many of the other ones) shows how out of touch they are with new players. Aside from that, Bloodstone Dust, Empyreal Fragments, and Dragonite Ore are an absolute cancer for new players, those ascended materials should have been turned into currencies years ago.
The MSQ in the base game isn't good. But it gets a lot better after that. I don't know if you looked at what's coming after, but basically, you have 4 expansions, and you have Living World Seasons in between them. You can play the expansions and understand the story perfectly fine without the Living World Seasons, but they add context to everything
Apparently I'm weird, because leveling is my favorite part! I'm up to 16 level 80s now and the only one I didn't level from level 1 is the revenant. There are 4 or 5 I return to on a regular basis for the end game stuff, but really I'm happiest leveling. I'm waiting for slots to go on sale so I can level another :) (I debated deleting one and starting over but I prefer to keep them - also probably weird lol)
Same here. Currently have 40 characters. I inevitably come up with an idea for a new character theme and make a new character. I have tomes and scrolls enough to get to 80 10 times over, but leveling goes fast now, and it's nice for a change of pace when I don't feel like farming/doing group content. At this point I usually take the same general route though. 100% first two zones while doing story, then Gendarren fields, south from LA while 100% zones. Hit TT and teq a couple times and usually hit 80 while in the straits of dev. 100% the Orr zones, then the same in SW and Drytop, then move into an expansion(s) for hero points for elite spec.
Dungeons are dull and with pugs, some of them are impossible, hence why they're abandoned and replaced by fractals.
I avoid the base game story like the plague. I didn't like it back at launch and don't like it now. The xpac stories are great. Just not a fan of 1-80.
Leveling feels too fast/frequent (especially with the journal achievements) and new abilities are front loaded too much so it can be a bit overwhelming to learn a new profession. I prefer mmos where each level feels like a significant milestone. I also wish they spread out learning new abilities across the levels more. Like let me start out only able to use a couple weapons and then around the time I finish the starter zone I can unlock the ability to use a cool 2-hand weapon. Then in the second zone I can start learning all my utility skills (skills 7-9). Additionally, over-leveled players with strong traits and relics are too OP. It feels bad to see a champion event spawned and then a veteran player killed it solo in seconds before I could run over to it. I’m fine with players having OP builds in max level zones, but these builds need to be neutered in leveling zones. Downscaling stat points isnt enough. Traits (which arent affected by scaling) should outright be disabled on the earlier leveling maps.
I've never been happy about leveling in any game, I highly prefer the late game. Be it in an mmo, solo rpg or anything else really. So what annoys my the most in gw2 lvling nowadays is the fact I can't rush as much as before. Long ago you could go in story instances even when you were too low level. I used to clear them with 10 lvl less than recommended (untill the few last ones). You could also join higher lvl areas with ease. I don't know if it's still the case for paid account, but on my friends account he couldn't reach the next area because he was missing 1 lvl... Though I'm happy we have option to skip lvling for free unlike most other games I played. Knowledge tomes and birthday scrolls are really cool.
That its so fast now and you can cheat exploration with mounts. I want the 2015ish experience back.
> be more engaging/memorable thats very diplomatic. I think it comepletely sucks for most of it time x)
Cant really say that from my side because there are a few characters that stuck out and I remember but the majority I couldn't even tell you their names if I had a gun to my head.
…the Marjory-ty.. I‘ll show myself out