While I'm sure the WvW and various high end events will keep me occupied for quite awhile, I am a little cocerned that it won't take long to quickly see everything the game has to offer. I'm not overly familiar with their update process as I've never played GW1 beyond level 12 or so and a bit of lvl 20 pvp, so I'm hoping they're fairly good at releasing content in a reasonable time frame. Does anyone familiar with ArenaNet know if by any chance that's one of their strong points?
Thanks.
As it's a buy to play model they generally don't release as many 'content updates' as you would see in WoW or Rift, but rather focus more on making expansions (which in GW1s case where pretty much full stand alone games). This does have the advantage of no sub fee though and with no gear progression you can always just jump back in when / if they do add something new, or after a dynamic event changes the world, or even just to scratch that MMO itch.
As to how long the initial content in GW2 will last, I think it will largely depend on just how good the dynamic events are and just how much some of them can change the world. i.e. If they are as good as Anet would have a lot of us believe you should be able to play through the same area twice and have a significantly different experience. Also the world map looks pretty huge, so it will take a while to explore it (a lot longer than for example Rift at least). WvW should also last a while, as the matches are 2 weeks long, which IMO sounds pretty much perfect (enough to give some meaning without getting stuck in any one sided fights for too long), and having 3 sides should help keep things interesting, and again no sub fee / no gear progression means you can just jump back in for some WvW action whenever you feel like it.
100 hours is pretty fast. I like the flat leveling curve, it didn't appear that they were leveling too quickly when I was watching the videos. But with the downscaling whenever you visit a lower area I'm not sure the leveling even matters.
Obviously there are lots of measures of what makes a gamer casual and I guess if someone was playing only 2 or so nights a week at 2 hours a night, it would take six months to get to level 80. Hardcore without taking time off work doing around 4 hours a day would reach level 80 within a month. I was out of work when Rift came out and it had one of the easier leveling curves I've seen in an MMO and I think at 16 or so hours a day it took me 6+ weeks. If my math is right it means it took almost 6 times longer to get to max level in Rift than it will in GW2. All generalizations ofcourse.
Flat leveling curve is nice, no reason to have levels pushing you upward fast enough than you can consume most of the content at your level.
Yikes.... in Rift it took me 4 days from release to hit 50, andI didn't put in 16 hours a day. You must have spent too long in the noob area lol!
I'm sure they'll scale it better in GW2 so they won't have a hundred of the usual whiners that went straight to endgame just so they could sit in forums complaining about endgame. At least I hope so >.>
There is no stopping for such people. I see a lot of topics where people hit lvl cap in a week and write topics like 'there is nothing to do at 80 game is a fail'.
Content that lasts for a reasonable amount of time (up until the ending) with no grinding/padding artificially extending it is bad why?
I mean, the idea of this game is that it takes a reasonable (no, this may not be for the basement dwellers) amount of time to reach 80. You're not going to spend your life grinding away. And then, once you've hit 80, you create another character. The idea is is that you'll never be able to see even 20% of the content with one character, it's race/profession locked, so it has massive replayability.
Once you've had your fill, you simply stop playing until the next expansion. Because it's not subscription-based, that means they don't need to use various forms of conditioning and peer pressure to keep you in the game 'just another month.' It's actually better for their servers if you don't lose your social life to their game.
I know a lot of MMO players who feel this way, and I'm one of them.
This is one of the huge draws of this game, for me.
I hope to make this game last :P We wait so long (announced 2007 if I remember correctly) and then most try an burn it out in a couple of months.. I mean 5 1/2 years development, I am going to sit back on this one and enjoy it.
All hail the Barn Owl! oh.. and the RED SQUIRREL!!!
Although the game is an alt-a-holics dream, it's also very rare in the fact that players who want to keep playing a character after reaching the level cap still have the entire game they can play meaningfully with that character.
How much more play time might one get from a level 80 character? Depends on the player. The solo PVE player will have a good amount of ncontent they would have missed while leveling they can go back to and the nature of dynamic events ensures that revisiting previously visited zones will almost always yield content not experienced before. Social players who are active in a guild, or otherwise enjoy playing with others of all levels , with the human element making each experience unique, may spend many spend exponentially more time playing world content with others after reaching level 80 than they spent reaching the level cap.
Structured PvP has a ton of replay value. More for some that others, but there is huge potential here to extend play time for those who enjoy competative arena based PvP.
World vs World is the trump card. With server matchups changing every two weeks in three faction, server vs. server vs. server objective based warfare taking place accross four massive game zones, the human element there, allies and opponents, could see some characters getting months or years out of participation in that avenue of content.
For those that enjoy dungeons, level scaling works for dungeons the same way it does in PvE. There will be eight Dungeons at launch, each containing a Story Mode Dungeon and at least three explorable mode dungeons. These are essentially wings of a single dungeon, not just rehashes with different encounters.
An alt-a-holic might easily get over 500 hours of play time between level 1 and level 80 playing five seperate characters, (whith much, much less repeating of content than in any other MMO). However, I can also see many single character players getting as much time or more playing a single character, by having so much viable and fun content to participate in after reaching the level cap.
With no subscription fee, that all comes with the box price and players are free to play as much, or as little as they want, when ever they want, with out being forced to pay another dime. It's hard to imagine more value for the buck from any game of any genre.
There is no stopping for such people. I see a lot of topics where people hit lvl cap in a week and write topics like 'there is nothing to do at 80 game is a fail'.
Yes i don't understand what's the big thing with max level anyway. In the end it's all aboout fun content and levelling is just a minor part of it. Personally I loved the lvl 20 level cap in GW1, it was a major way to make the biggest part of the game replayable. Now they're doing that again with scaling - I don't really see the need to do it that way but well, more content = more fun.
Originally posted by fiontar
Although the game is an alt-a-holics dream, it's also very rare in the fact that players who want to keep playing a character after reaching the level cap still have the entire game they can play meaningfully with that character.
Well for me, after Anet's introduction of reputation points in Nightfall and even moreso in EotN severely reduced the potential alt-o-holicism. They could/should have made it more account-wide instead of per character.
This game is really about the PVP, and no levelling is really required for that, so its not really a case of level cap at all, its the same no matter what level you might be as regards to pve. in a way thats a pretty good thing, as i havent seen anything yet to really recommend the game pve wise, pvp however, is the games focus and thats something that it probably handles better than most games out there.. ie .. WoW, SW;TOR, at least compared to any other themepark game i can think of. You don't even suffer an equpment disadvantage in PVP either which is encouraging.
This game is really about the PVP, and no levelling is really required for that, so its not really a case of level cap at all, its the same no matter what level you might be as regards to pve. in a way thats a pretty good thing, as i havent seen anything yet to really recommend the game pve wise, pvp however, is the games focus and thats something that it probably handles better than most games out there.. ie .. WoW, SW;TOR, at least compared to any other themepark game i can think of. You don't even suffer an equpment disadvantage in PVP either which is encouraging.
That's not correct, a true level 80 char and an sidekicked char isn't the same. You will have the upper hand if you are a true level 80. I'm referring to WvWvW as thats my main intrest. I know that all stats and levels will be equal in structured PVP.
This game is really about the PVP, and no levelling is really required for that, so its not really a case of level cap at all, its the same no matter what level you might be as regards to pve.
GW isn't just about PvP. Without PvE GW2 will be just a small niche game.
This game is really about the PVP, and no levelling is really required for that, so its not really a case of level cap at all, its the same no matter what level you might be as regards to pve. in a way thats a pretty good thing, as i havent seen anything yet to really recommend the game pve wise, pvp however, is the games focus and thats something that it probably handles better than most games out there.. ie .. WoW, SW;TOR, at least compared to any other themepark game i can think of. You don't even suffer an equpment disadvantage in PVP either which is encouraging.
Umm nope. GW2' most famous and talked about feature is dynamic events which is 100% pve.
This game is really about the PVP, and no levelling is really required for that, so its not really a case of level cap at all, its the same no matter what level you might be as regards to pve. in a way thats a pretty good thing, as i havent seen anything yet to really recommend the game pve wise, pvp however, is the games focus and thats something that it probably handles better than most games out there.. ie .. WoW, SW;TOR, at least compared to any other themepark game i can think of. You don't even suffer an equpment disadvantage in PVP either which is encouraging.
That's not correct, a true level 80 char and an sidekicked char isn't the same. You will have the upper hand if you are a true level 80. I'm referring to WvWvW as thats my main intrest. I know that all stats and levels will be equal in structured PVP.
I think Phry is referring to PvP characters here. These aren't sidekicked, they are are created as a lvl 80 character. Just like in GW1, you will be able to do this in GW2 (last I checked), but this pvp character will be limited to PvP areas only, and can't partake in any of the PvE content.
Basically, for those that just want to PvP you get a generic looking lvl 80 that you can test different builds out on, etc. However, if you want the super cool looking badass character, you will need to start one from scratch.
- That said, I'd disagree that this game is all about PvP. As with GW1, they are doing a very nice balance of both. PvP / WvW is huge in this game, but so are Dynamic Events / Dungeons / challenges / etc. It's really a game that looks to have well implemented features across the board, instead of focusing most of their efforts on one small aspect of the game and tacking on the rest. PvP if you want, PvE if you want, they are both very rewarding and have a lot of replayability.
Comments
As it's a buy to play model they generally don't release as many 'content updates' as you would see in WoW or Rift, but rather focus more on making expansions (which in GW1s case where pretty much full stand alone games). This does have the advantage of no sub fee though and with no gear progression you can always just jump back in when / if they do add something new, or after a dynamic event changes the world, or even just to scratch that MMO itch.
As to how long the initial content in GW2 will last, I think it will largely depend on just how good the dynamic events are and just how much some of them can change the world. i.e. If they are as good as Anet would have a lot of us believe you should be able to play through the same area twice and have a significantly different experience. Also the world map looks pretty huge, so it will take a while to explore it (a lot longer than for example Rift at least). WvW should also last a while, as the matches are 2 weeks long, which IMO sounds pretty much perfect (enough to give some meaning without getting stuck in any one sided fights for too long), and having 3 sides should help keep things interesting, and again no sub fee / no gear progression means you can just jump back in for some WvW action whenever you feel like it.
I think GW2 will be the perfect game to jump in when you have an hour or 2 to play ...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
For GW1 what was it a campaign every year?
Yikes.... in Rift it took me 4 days from release to hit 50, andI didn't put in 16 hours a day. You must have spent too long in the noob area lol!
I'm sure they'll scale it better in GW2 so they won't have a hundred of the usual whiners that went straight to endgame just so they could sit in forums complaining about endgame. At least I hope so >.>
There is no stopping for such people. I see a lot of topics where people hit lvl cap in a week and write topics like 'there is nothing to do at 80 game is a fail'.
Content that lasts for a reasonable amount of time (up until the ending) with no grinding/padding artificially extending it is bad why?
I mean, the idea of this game is that it takes a reasonable (no, this may not be for the basement dwellers) amount of time to reach 80. You're not going to spend your life grinding away. And then, once you've hit 80, you create another character. The idea is is that you'll never be able to see even 20% of the content with one character, it's race/profession locked, so it has massive replayability.
Once you've had your fill, you simply stop playing until the next expansion. Because it's not subscription-based, that means they don't need to use various forms of conditioning and peer pressure to keep you in the game 'just another month.' It's actually better for their servers if you don't lose your social life to their game.
I know a lot of MMO players who feel this way, and I'm one of them.
This is one of the huge draws of this game, for me.
I hope to make this game last :P We wait so long (announced 2007 if I remember correctly) and then most try an burn it out in a couple of months.. I mean 5 1/2 years development, I am going to sit back on this one and enjoy it.
All hail the Barn Owl! oh.. and the RED SQUIRREL!!!
Although the game is an alt-a-holics dream, it's also very rare in the fact that players who want to keep playing a character after reaching the level cap still have the entire game they can play meaningfully with that character.
How much more play time might one get from a level 80 character? Depends on the player. The solo PVE player will have a good amount of ncontent they would have missed while leveling they can go back to and the nature of dynamic events ensures that revisiting previously visited zones will almost always yield content not experienced before. Social players who are active in a guild, or otherwise enjoy playing with others of all levels , with the human element making each experience unique, may spend many spend exponentially more time playing world content with others after reaching level 80 than they spent reaching the level cap.
Structured PvP has a ton of replay value. More for some that others, but there is huge potential here to extend play time for those who enjoy competative arena based PvP.
World vs World is the trump card. With server matchups changing every two weeks in three faction, server vs. server vs. server objective based warfare taking place accross four massive game zones, the human element there, allies and opponents, could see some characters getting months or years out of participation in that avenue of content.
For those that enjoy dungeons, level scaling works for dungeons the same way it does in PvE. There will be eight Dungeons at launch, each containing a Story Mode Dungeon and at least three explorable mode dungeons. These are essentially wings of a single dungeon, not just rehashes with different encounters.
An alt-a-holic might easily get over 500 hours of play time between level 1 and level 80 playing five seperate characters, (whith much, much less repeating of content than in any other MMO). However, I can also see many single character players getting as much time or more playing a single character, by having so much viable and fun content to participate in after reaching the level cap.
With no subscription fee, that all comes with the box price and players are free to play as much, or as little as they want, when ever they want, with out being forced to pay another dime. It's hard to imagine more value for the buck from any game of any genre.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Yes i don't understand what's the big thing with max level anyway. In the end it's all aboout fun content and levelling is just a minor part of it. Personally I loved the lvl 20 level cap in GW1, it was a major way to make the biggest part of the game replayable. Now they're doing that again with scaling - I don't really see the need to do it that way but well, more content = more fun.
Well for me, after Anet's introduction of reputation points in Nightfall and even moreso in EotN severely reduced the potential alt-o-holicism. They could/should have made it more account-wide instead of per character.
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
This game is really about the PVP, and no levelling is really required for that, so its not really a case of level cap at all, its the same no matter what level you might be as regards to pve. in a way thats a pretty good thing, as i havent seen anything yet to really recommend the game pve wise, pvp however, is the games focus and thats something that it probably handles better than most games out there.. ie .. WoW, SW;TOR, at least compared to any other themepark game i can think of. You don't even suffer an equpment disadvantage in PVP either which is encouraging.
That's not correct, a true level 80 char and an sidekicked char isn't the same. You will have the upper hand if you are a true level 80. I'm referring to WvWvW as thats my main intrest. I know that all stats and levels will be equal in structured PVP.
GW isn't just about PvP. Without PvE GW2 will be just a small niche game.
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
Umm nope. GW2' most famous and talked about feature is dynamic events which is 100% pve.
I think Phry is referring to PvP characters here. These aren't sidekicked, they are are created as a lvl 80 character. Just like in GW1, you will be able to do this in GW2 (last I checked), but this pvp character will be limited to PvP areas only, and can't partake in any of the PvE content.
Basically, for those that just want to PvP you get a generic looking lvl 80 that you can test different builds out on, etc. However, if you want the super cool looking badass character, you will need to start one from scratch.
- That said, I'd disagree that this game is all about PvP. As with GW1, they are doing a very nice balance of both. PvP / WvW is huge in this game, but so are Dynamic Events / Dungeons / challenges / etc. It's really a game that looks to have well implemented features across the board, instead of focusing most of their efforts on one small aspect of the game and tacking on the rest. PvP if you want, PvE if you want, they are both very rewarding and have a lot of replayability.
Why does it matter?
Nothing changes once they hit level 80.