GW2 Veterans. Sell the leveling game to me.
Title. I got the game a while back and boosted a character to 80. Obviously had no damn clue what I was doing so I rolled a new one. It's taken me weeks to get to level 40 and I'm kind of over this game. I've looked up guides for fast leveling and they all say the same thing: hearts, yellow mobs, events. But all of those things feel the exact same. I hear great things about this game but so far it's just been a slow painful grind. When does this get good?
Posted Jun 5, 2022, 11:33 PM UTC
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If you do not like the leveling up to 40 then you will not like it until the end. The fun in leveling comes from the combat, the personal story every 10 levels, the exploration (map completion gives good stuff and caters to the completionist mentality), how dynamic the world is with events (event chains actually have a narrative, they are the main source of XP for you and teach you about the world) and from how hassle-free hearts are as quests (no talk to NPC, do , walk back to NPC etc. You just show up, do the stuff, immediately take the rewards and move to the next). You are not supposed to rush the leveling as well. The leveling is actual content.
If none of these peaked your interest it will not change afterwards. Although weeks for 40 levels sound really weird. 40 levels you should be able to do in a few days or a most a week? It makes no sense. If you have been trying to level by killing the random mob over and over again you are doing it very very wrong. This game is not an old school MMO. You do not grind 100 wolves to level.
See, I dunno about that. After having both boosted and manually leveled a character to 80, I feel like leveling is a completely pointless time-waster you just kind of have to suffer through to get to the real game. There is nothing that leveling actually gains you. All the things you do while leveling you can still do once you're at 80, just with an actual build. In other games the choices you make during leveling are usually what define your character but there just aren't any choices to be made here. Once you hit 80 you'll have more than enough HP to unlock all skills and are even expected to to be able to start unlocking elite specs.
There's also nothing the leveling really teaches you. If it properly taught you about the importance of dodging (beyond just telling you that dodging exists), about what conditions and boons do, what combo fields and finisher are and stuff like that then sure leveling would just be a very long tutorial but you don't even get any of that. The game briefly tells you that these features exists now as you hit certain levels but that's about it. Leveling from 1-80 will have you no more prepared for the rest of the game than straight up boosting to 80 and practicing your build rotation on a dummy for a few minutes will.
Maybe because it's about the journey not the destination, mmos are a weird genre where so much of the playerbase won't do something without some kind of ingame reward as incentive, you don't see anyone playing a single player rpg and asking "where are the rewards? I'm halfway through the leveling and i'm not receiving enough rewards" the reward is having fun in the game.
Now if you aren't having fun and you think the endgame is where you would have fun then boosting is completely reasonable but saying "There is nothing that leveling actually gains you" is weird when unless you are breaking tos and selling gold or legendaries there is nothing in this or any other game that playing of said video game "actually gains you" if anything it's a net loss because you spent money and hours sitting on your ass not grinding real life.
I think you misunderstood me, which is fair (or maybe you didn't, which is also fair). I didn't mean "I don't gain anything tangible from doing this so I hate doing it" I mean that there is virtually no difference between me doing this while leveling and me doing this while already at 80, other than maybe outscaling the content harder than with a level appropriate character. But even then most people tend to agree that nothing before Heart of Thorns is particularly challenging to begin with.
You say that it's about the journey and I absolutely agree. I'm very much a "content enjoyer" as it's sometimes called and I was actually sitting on two level boosts and still wanted to level a character to 80 manually first for the experience of doing it. But my point is that there is virtually no difference to the journey if you do all that content while leveling a character or after boosting to 80 and going back to do the maps and personal story. I'd even go as far to argue that the latter is a better experience because you'll have a full build to enjoy the game with and even the option to experiment with different (non-elite) specs whereas during leveling you're kind of stuck with a gimped build for most of it, especially if you ended up spending your early HP on something you hate playing.
I don't want them to remove leveling or even make it quicker but it just kind of miffs me that if somebody asks me "should I use a boost or should I just level myself" I can't really find a single good argument for not just straight up boosting. Even for completely new players, I'd probably just tell them to maybe level a character to about level 10-20 and then just use the boost since at about that point you've probably experienced everything unique to leveling manually.
The problem is the core game story is mostly irrelevant until the Zhaitan arc where the choices you make (order) become irrelevant and it unifies the plot. Consequently levelling is a bad experience (which is exactly why there is a revamped New Player Experience (NPE) due this year with faster levelling), and the story is pretty boring and can be forgotten until about the half-way point. So as to your point, there is little fun here at the moment.
Levelling by playing the story just gives you a level 80 character, something you can boost for and the game doesn't fundamentally change. If you level to 80 with tomes or a boost and then replay the story you can see how little the story actually gives. Playing the expansions for the first time gives you gliding, mount unlocks, skiffs, jade bots etc, and if you replay it you can still get achivements, skins and the later stories have multiple play-style paths/options.
You compare it to single player RPGs, but these unlock gameplay mechanics and new gamemodes - something that doesn't happen in the GW2 core game story but is present in the post-LWS2 story.
So in summary, there are literally gameplay unlocks from the story in HoT and beyond (masteries) which are not present in the core story.
It is all a matter of taste. But for most people that played this game leveling was really great. I personally leveled 5 characters normally and had fun in all of these runs.
Exactly. Can't you see. It is the same kinda of content: meaning is it the same style of gameplay. Leveling is not much different of an experience than later open world content (although later content is more complex and refined) so it is basically still part of the same game not some thing you have to do to get to the other parts that are entirely different. Gw2 leveling is closer to an offline RPG. You would not rush to level 30 in the Witcher or skyrim for example since you would be skipping the actual game. If you do not like leveling there is very good chance you will not like open world GW2 in general.
And you are wrong about leveling not teaching you. The game does a very bad job in teaching for sure. But leveling and gradually unlocking the various things about your build, gradually looking at things in the UI (which is overwhelming) is way way easier than boosting. That is the reason why almost every single person boosting immediately is completely lost. Being eased into things is always better for most players no matter how bad the tutorializing is.
You can't speak for "most people" and there is evidence this is not the case as there is a revamped New Player Experience (NPE) due this year, with A/B testing currently in place with faster levelling. They wouldn't be doing this in time for a Steam release if the majority of players enjoy the current experience.
GW2 open world is very different in core Tyria compared to HoT, PoF and EoD maps with meta events and a lot more group content and a lot less small events. On top of that each expansion expanded gameplay with masteries (gliding, mounts, jade bots, skiffs), so the game becomes a blend of all of these things which are just not present during the levelling.
For example, EoD's final map has organised groups using Healers, Quickness givers, and has composition in squads. There is no comparison to this in core GW2, even events like Triple Trouble aren't close to the cohesion needed and Triple Trouble is the exception of an addition to core Tryia that was designed to signficantly increase difficulty.
Boosted players are lost because the game doesn't provide a cinematic bridge when boosting to explain the context of either the Silverwastes (when first using a boost) or the context of the personal story (when consuming a boost). So not only are you left on a map with no context as to where you are (as it doesn't reveal the map areas) you also have no context as to how the map works and why you're playing it.
I would prefer them to move the boosted player map to Shing Jea Island, with the training area with dodges and mechanics explained which would require a lot less context for a player to be dropped into than the Silverwastes. Shing Jea as a map has very little in terms of the overarching EoD story in the open world and I feel it was designed as a introduction to new players as this design note isn't shared with the other EoD maps (Echovald has key story built into the metas, the final map is pretty much only story and Kaineng City has a bunch of lore around jade).
Unfortunately, unless they change EoD to give a different consumable (like a "EoD Level 80 booster") this will never happen as buying PoF+HoT or a booster from the gem store (if you don't own any expansions) can not give you access to an EoD map.
Boosting specifically warns you it's for people who want to jump in and deal with it, not for people wanting a slow introduction.
Likewise, it doesn't drop you into the Silverwastes to teach you anything about playing. It drops you there because they want to impress you with level 80 content, and it doesn't really spoil anything. Playing the Silverwastes lacks context, but that's just kind of how the Silverwastes feels anyway (LS2's lead up to it is pretty weak).
Boosted players are "lost" because they unlocked a ton of stuff all at once... but people kind of ridiculously overstate this lostness. Of course you're lost for a while after boosting. It's not that hard to figure out, though, and you can do it at your own pace which definitely doesn't take anywhere remotely as long as leveling (leveling holds you back way more than it paces content, and often holds you back on the wrong things), and that's the truly important mistake people against boosting generally make: you really are no worse off for boosting.
Yes, you have a lot to figure out, and you're not going to play optimally for a while, but that's perfectly ok because you actually can still play open world stuff just fine and do what you want at whatever pace suits you.
You nailed it
Three expansions and a grip of bonus maps from the Living Story make this antiquated. When you wanted to get to fractals and speed run dungeons it was the largest amount of pve content. WvW was out of bounds for under 80s as well. For me the WvW became the big chunk of game play for me and in the years before books dropping from these newfangled reward tracks made it excruciating to get another class to play in WvW. There is shit tons of post 80 content now.
You’re right. Not sure why this is the default advice always given to newer players. I understand why boosting-80 right away may be frowned upon but frankly I’ve not seen a significant delta between preparedness of manual leveled players and boosted ones, when it comes to game knowledge.
Seems like a lot of the advice is sort of canned and given as if the game is still circa 2014 timeframe and certain elements don’t exist.
I think OP would have a lot more fun playing his booster class and unlocking useful QOL masteries before trying to level again the “real” way.
I’ve been doing hearts and events mostly. If world bosses are up when I’m playing I do world bosses. Even still it takes me about an hour or two to get a level.
An hour per level makes sense. You can make it much shorter with boosts and food. Also 40 Hours does not imply weeks of gameplay for most people too so that is why it sounded wierd.
I can get a level every 10 minutes using bonus experience and boosts. The longer something is alive in the world, the more bonus experience accrues. When you kill something watch the bonus pop up. If it's not at least double the base XP just stop killing stuff in that area.
Pretty much doing nothing but killing, you can get a level every 10 minutes. Add food and utility to your repertoire and learn to pull mulitple mobs at the same time and AOE them down.
I'm not saying you should do nothing but kill, but you can. The real trick is to keep moving, since the stuff you killed will respawn with no bonus at all, and whatever bonus is there is just from your food and your utility.
Don't forget to take a celebration booster if you have one from log in rewards (free to play players don't get this). This gives you another 10%. You can get 15% from food, 10% from utility and 10% from the celebration booster. Join a guild and use the guild buff (if you own HOT), to get another 10%. Use any banners you find for another 10%. All those things stack.
You'd be surprised how fast you can level if you follow the bonus XP trail. Stay away from hearts and focus more yellow creatures than enemies that attack you. Check on hillsides, in caves, underwater. Anywhere away from heart areas usually works okay.
Edit: If you're on a US server I can show you in game. Send me a message here and we can set something up.
Are you running food/utilities and are you mining/lumbering/gathering? These things help you level much more, as well as boosters and the guild hall tavern buff, (if you belong to a guild that has them).
dont forget you can get PvE levels through crafting and playing pvp/wvw too. (with "tomes of knowledge". one tome=1 level) for me the secret always was to mix up things, when I still leveled the old way.
also always have a cheap food and nourishment active. (the little blue apple and wrench symbols over your skill bar) they give you 20% (10+10) experience from kills and only cost a few copper on the TP.
If you focus on how long it takes, you'll never enjoy levelling, in any game. Actually, that applies to basically anything in life lol.
The levelling experience is basically just an easier, simpler version of the endgame Open World (OW) experience. You are locked out of more difficult areas until you're more experienced (you, and your char), you get a drip feed of skills and mechanics to give you time to understand them, you have to re-gear quite often, and combat is significantly more forgiving. But otherwise, it's still the singleplayer OW experience.
I'd say, forget about your level (as long as you're not fighting things 2+ above your level) and just focus on learning your skills, enjoying the lore and story, understanding the world, doing Map Completion, exploring and discovering new mobs/towns/jumping puzzles/etc... in general, just try out new mechanics and things you come across.
If you want more challenging content, I 100% feel you, as that was my only issue with parts of levelling. In that case, you can try soloing harder enemies in events, or if you prefer group content, you can give Dungeons a shot. I've heard you can also try Fractals before level 80 as they scale you up, but I've never tried this and can't find any sources on it, so don't quote me on that.
If you have any questions or thoughts on this, I'd be happy to hear them 🙂