Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Hours to max level?
Trokarn
Member Posts: 68
I've seen a lot in different threads that GW2 won't have enough content to play very long because it is B2P. But with the information given (though they said the amount of time per level isn't set in stone, yet) it could easily take 100+ hours to hit max level. Obviously this is just speculation, since I have not played the game yet, but this is what brought me to this statement:
They told us that leveling will plateau at a certain level. Also, they mentioned the amount of time for leveling once you hit the plateau and that was 90 minutes. Now lets say leveling plateau's at 20. That means it takes 90 minutes for 60 levels, which equates to 90 hours. Then, I would guess level 1 to 20 takes more than 10 hours, which would put us over 100 hours of gameplay. Then add in other things to do before or after hitting max level like crafting, PvP, making alts or playing end game content, and you have a pretty big game. I could see myself putting hundreds of hours into this game if it is like what we've heard and seen so far.
Like I said this is just speculation but I think this is very possible.
Comments
If theres any indication of how wrong people are about saying there wont be enough content becasue its a btp title, is the orginal. Guild wars has verry.. verry.. many hours of gameplay, each section takes a verry long time to actualy complete. Sure, just as any mmo if you stick to main story line, it will fast track you to max level. The other thigns to do however, is the dificulty. Its not max level that you can judge how long it will take to complete the 'game'.. in fact anet used a title based progression in gw1. They also have this in gw2.. crafting,pvp, getting your prestige armors, completeing story lines and so on..
Gw2 has alot to go with it, PVP for one is a massive scale, which will consume any pvper for many.. many hours expecialy when it comes to the mist. While there is not much information on it, lets se.. how many other games did people mindlessly pvp in just for kills let alone actual objectives, Aion for example.. i can guarentee i spent over 200+ hours just trying to kill people in that game. PVE is a whole diferent monster aswell.. expecialy to people who soak up lore like myself. Lets see, personal story.. takes you threw the game on a track with a new dungeion every 10 levels from level 10.. so 8 dungeions, after your intial run threw that unlockes the explorable dungeon which has many diferent forms.. Flame cathedral anyone? They also have unique sets to that dungeion aswell.. collecters rejoice! Now personal story and basic dungeions aside! Dynamic content... If you think you will witniss that all with under even 200 hours played, well.. your just delutional.. inf fact i belive that the dynamic events give MORE content then normal questing, expecialy with things changeing. oh, not to mention end game dungeions... they did state they have more dunions even after max level, and blah blah blah you get the point.
So lets look at longetivity here, even at 100 hours to max level..more casual players can cut up into an average 2-3 hours a day.. that makes at least 50 days till max level, and thats only if you focus strictly on leveling.. (odds are this wont happen do to many forms of time sinks, and i dont mean the bad kind either.. events,tornaments mini games so on so forth) So, if you want to do the math here, the normal player would reach max by month 2, with the current speculation.. lets double that atleast to witness 1/2 the actual content from once character. so now 100 days, or more. For a hardcore player you could probably cut this down some but in the end you still will have enough to do to keep you busy, reguardless of the level you are.
ok so you seen most of the content now and your max level blah blah lets say in 2 months.. if we ignore timesinks then omg your outa content.. right? absolutely not.. Personal storys is a huge thing with that, each race has multiple stories simply just by picking what backround your character has, and that branches and changes threw your own actions.. and that further gets broken up by your class.. but even focusing on backround, each race has atleast 3 backrounds to choose from from my knowledge.. (human is commoner/ street/ or noble. And char have iron ash and that other legion) so you say 100 hours game time, for one character. at the low ball of it, to witness all the story line were looking at just from backround alone..1500 hours of personal story then.. easily (there will be more to other changes) even if you played 6 hours a DAY you would play gw for 250 days just to see all the base personal stories... and by that time, because of the nature of the btp game style, in order to make decent money Anet nets to put out an expac every year.... so guess what?? for even the hardcore player by the time you would actualy play threw all the content, and expansion will be right around the corner or already passed.
Not enough content? bull
There will be a ton of events in Guild Wars 2, underwater content, personal story, dungeons, world pvp and structured pvp. Guild Wars 2 is not about how fast you reach max level, it is about having fun when you first log into the game until you have to log back to the real world. With other mmos it is all about getting to max level asap and then having fun.
GW2 has a flat leveling curve thus leveling to max won't take longer than a week if you play casually. Much like in GW1, its like the others said, GW2 is about the gameplay and content exploration and not the race to the cap. They put a high level cap(80) for people like you who need a measure of progress like high levels in order to enjoy a game.
I hope you dont mean a week real time.. im willing to bet most people wont hit max level untill after the first month real time, if not 2.. and that solely off of jumping in game and trying to hit max level asap.. there is just way too much to do
I've also heard the "90 minute" reference in regards to levels, though I don't remember where.
Even if it's less, there's NO WAY you will hit max level in a week of casual play. I don't think you'll be able to get to 80 in 10-20 hours like you could in GW1.
I'd prefer the short quick jump to max, but I can understand why they are extending it.
Anet's philosophy behind the flat leveling curve is that they only see leveling as a means to an end. They feel that hitting the level cap isn't the be all end all of the game. They feel that it is a nice thing when you hit the level cap, but they don't want people playing just to hit the level cap.
most likely years instead of hours or days.
DUH.
The 90 minute reference was somewhere in the Q&A portion of http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
When it comes to games like WoW, I just want to be max level, I want all my talent points and skills. When it comes to GW though, I'm the opposite. I've only played GW Factions to completion, and I understand why they capped it at 20, but hitting it halfway through the storyline really didn't work for me. I would have preferred to reach max level right before taking on Shiro at the end.
I'm glad they're stretching it out to 80 in GW2, not because I like big numbers, but this game will be less about the endgame and more about the journey and replayability, and I like the feeling of achievement that leveling gives.
I agree with the OP's assessment that it'll probably take 100 hours+ to reach max level.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I think you mean a minimum of 8 dungeons, theres bound to be beginner dungeons for each of the 5 races
Personally, for length of time it will take me to reach max level... probably 9 days after release, but it will be done on one of my alt characters. Then with my main, I will take my time and actually role-play through the game and absorb all the minute details of the lore. By the time I'm done with that, I should have found a way to power grind my other alts to max in under 3 days.
So in DCUO, I think it takes about 25~ish hours. And all of it is very much story driven. And once you hit 30, say you're able to do the lvl 30 missions as smoothly as possible. Mean you get groups within minutes and you're able to finish each end mission in about 20-30 minutes. I'd say this gives a good 30 hours of story driven gameplay.
Switch back to GW2, say we ONLY want to play the personal story to hit lvl cap. Are you telling me that each race will have about 100+hours of story driven gameplay?
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
NO! They have already said that you cannot reach max level just doing the personal story, you will need to do DE or PVP to level. If I can find the Dev quote I will link it.
From http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/19/guild-wars-2-exclusive-dungeon-reveals/
(a new dungeon will be available roughly every 10 levels, with additional ones at end-game)
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I guess I'd like to know how many hours long is the personal story.
In SWTOR there is 8x 200+ hours of story gameplay.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
I don't think there will be a shortage of stuff to be done. If the world is based on GW1, it is probably huge. It has different starting areas for each race and coupled with the dynamic events there will be always something to do in each zone, which means you may play a lot in one area and still not run enough of dynamic events you haven't seen.
I don't know the diversity of areas on later levels, but if they have anything close to the different number of races, this means even alts will have a different experience from the beginning to the end of the curve along with your main character never feeling like it had to "grind" to level up. Of course, if you play a lot, you will run out of fun things to do, but isn't it true for every MMO? Since it's B2P (meaning revenue comes mostly from game sales), it doesn't look like will have a cash shop to devalue gameplay for extra revenue and you won't ever have to question yourself if there is enough gameplay to last you for another month or that money could be reallocated into something else for that month.
my quess is somewhere beween 100 and 160 hours when power leveling. Altoholics will benefit alot from this possibility to reach max lvl in a reasoable time!
yea would be nice to know how many play hours there is in the personal story line, as I understand it tho the story line is not meant to drag you through the game, but an attempt of making character building more engaging, with the little twist of NPCs in your home personal instance interact with you accordingly, and actually have alot of the personal story play out in your personal city instance.
would be extremely suprised if it get anywhere close to 200 hours.
If you read my wall of text, or looked into it. You would know that there is alot of personal storry in gw2. Expecialy because your story changes as you go based on personal desisions, which means ods are you wont see it all anytime soon.
I had a comparasin of just the basic backrounds you choose per race, each has 3 (most known are the humans growing up in the streets, a commoner, or a noble) so even if you have to leave personal story and do d/e's you would have to atleast make 3 humans to see al types of story, but that will make it hard because of desisions. so even if its 100 hours to max level (and im not counting 'endgame' you are looking at 300 hours a race just to see all of the personal story, so 1500 hours all together just to see all base stories in the game.
Also, it will most likely take a hell of alot more time than 100 hours if you do anything else inside the game besides try to reach max level. Events/Dungeions/minigames/ EXPLORING (they said it would take atleast 15 minuts to run from one map to the next minimum,and thats if you just ran strait threw, so just exploring will take you a while to unlock all of tyria. I realy dont think we will ever have a problem with content, expecialy since were looking at 1 expac a year out of them so they can make money.
At the same time, in an other thread:
"How long are you planning to play GW2? 75%: A year or more!"
I must ask are you butt hurt or something? It's a serious question as you appear to be ripping on this game for the most ridiculous reasons. For starters that graph is has no barring for your point what so ever as it simply shows the increase of time time to reach the next level and has zero is not a comparison for leveling times to max levl for gw2 and other. Second it's a freaking mmo, longevity of the game has nothing to do with time taken to reach max level as most of the time will spent a max level. Third Gw2 level will be far more replayable than almost all mmo's before it bar swtor due to the dozens of different combinations of personal story which gives extra incentive to alt.
I actually don't need to hit max to enjoy a game. I have no intention to race to cap, I'm interested in the journey. I don't think I will end up hitting cap for a long time, which is completely fine with me. I definitely think it will take more than one week, however, for a casual player to hit max. Unless you mean a week of gameplay, I.e. 168 hours. Then I agree that casual players would very likely hit max in under a week of gameplay.
Edit: On the graph that was posted, I thought Anet showed a graph before that showed leveling time increasing to a certain point and then plateauing instead of all the levels taking the same amount of time, like shown in the graph in this thread. I may be wrong, but that's just what I remember from one of their videos.
and of course you dont mention the fact that gw2 only acts like that after a sertain level, getting from lvevl 5-6 is not not like from 41-42... they havent released the level yet but basicly you will have a level curve untill a specific level, lets say 40 for example. after level 40 you will have the same amount of time between levels.. which means if getting from 41-42 takes 2 hours then getting from 67-68 should also take 2 hours... simple as that.. the whole game isent like that
I find it mildly amusing to see that people think that an endless grind to the max level equals longevity, and it certainly does not equal quality (*COUGH* DARKFALL *COUGH*). There are other things to do in GW2 you know? Things that are actually fun.
Alright a week of casual play may be generous, but still this game will not take long to reach max level at all. I imagine that they'll have a system similar to GW1 in that getting from 1-10 is pretty quick, but then afterwards its still quick, but it slows a bit. Like a previous poster said, once they hit max with their first toon and learn the tricks of the game, then their next toons will be hitting max within days.
Why are you in such a hurry. Days? I hope it takes months.
Any btw not paying a subscription fee doesn't mean it has less content, that subcription fee you're paying goes in the publishers pockets not back in the game.