Friday, July 30, 2010

What does a GW2 level actually mean?

I've just finished reading a blog post by Scott from Pumping Irony on the Guild Wars 2 leveling info released by Arena.net earlier today. For those that haven't read it yet, Arena.net have announced the level cap for Guild Wars 2 will be 80. As Scott pointed out, this seems like an awfully diku WoW inspired move by Arena.net. I'm not entirely inclined to agree. What I'd like to point out is that we still don't know what gaining a level in GW2 will actually means. For example, do we gain attribute points per level? I still haven't read any info released from Arena.net that suggests there are even going to be attribute points. What restrictions does the level of your character put on game play? Again, we still don't know yet. How long does it take to reach the max level? Until we get more information, the level cap might as well be 5000. It makes no difference.

What we do know, is that level progression will be linear and not exponential like most MMOs. That gets my tick of approval. Did we learn any other new information from the latest post aside from the cap being 80? Nope, not really. So the only thing I'm upset about with the latest blog post from Arena.net, is that there really wasn't much information in the post.

It would seem odd to me that Arena.net would move away from the winning leveling formula they had with GW1. If I had to guess, I would say that your level will only restrict the XP you get from kills. Same as in GW1. This forces players to move through the story/game if they want to progress the level of their character. Given the amount of design changes so far with GW2, it's best not to assume to much. So in conclusion, I only have to say this:

"Arena.net more info please!"

2 comments:

trollberry said...

'..This forces players to move through the story/game if they want to progress the level of their character..'

Not necessarily true. A high level character can enter a low level zone and have their stats adjusted to be only a few levels above the current zone thereby allowing them to still experience the zone content and (assumption here) receiving levelling progress. It seems unlikely that after designing this mechanic, ANET would then invalidate it with forced zone movement thru levelling.

Crimson Starfire said...

I would of thought there needed to be a secondary driver to move the player through the game other than story. You're probably right though. The ANET designers are always two steps ahead, and now I think about it, it would seem dumb to force players to zone for progression.

I guess better weapons/armour and skills would also act as a driver to push the player through the game.

I'm sure there will be a follow up post from ANET answering leveling questions soon. Cheers.