Feedback:User/4thVariety/No Leveling Up

I am writing this in response to Eric Flannum's quote on UfragTV, in which he said GW2 players will be free to go to a high level area and get stomped by high level monsters, as well as other comments about GW2's increase in levels.

Being annoyed with leveling up in RPGs, I suggest the classic combination of leveling-up linked to numerical growth of health, stats and damage to be removed completely from GW2. Players should start at maximum health, maximum mana, maximum attribute points. Guild Wars is already working perfectly, with 85% of the map having been made for max-level characters. From my point of view as a fan, there is no reason to dilute this by introducing more levels. If anything, the 15% low level areas are the oddity not representative of the GW experience. I do not miss the tutorials and low level stuff, I did not in EotN, I will not in GW2. At the moment I can enjoy playing GW with all of my friends without worrying about who is at what level and which level does the area require. We are all 20 almost all of the time. If we loose, it is due to GW's unique RPG properties and not due to some pseudo JRPG 'you have to be this level to advance' game mechanic. Not that this would mean our characters had the same amount of power. But the most annoying thing (i.e. stats grinding) ruining the ability to play together in other RPGs is already removed in GW. Why reintroduce it?

Combat is fine the way it is now in most parts of the game. It would be a great loss, if suddenly an arbitrary game about numbers would be a big factor in battles, in addition to selecting skills and executing them in combat. Getting to max level in MMOs is nothing but a slavish grind introduced to maximize subscription time. A game without subscription should free its players from those shackles. The ugly process of leveling up is not improved by being unable to correctly evaluate one's own strength due to workaround sidekick modifiers etc. If my strength is constantly matched to the highest level character in my party, then why even start having players of different statistical strength?

In my experience, GW is a game in which the player does not grow by getting more health each level. The player grows by unlocking more skills and getting better at making use of them. I reckon many players will want to see a number representing their awesomeness. But please do not make that a number representing hitpoints, damage, mana and other battle-stats. Make it a number true to GW, count the skill points and the player's progress of unlocking secondary classes and attribute lines. Because if that number is high, it will translate into a player with a lot of skill options, i.e. strength to adapt to circumstance. From a battle-stats point of view, it is no problem if all players start at max 'level'. On the contrary, there will be less problems matching the spawn to the level of the players present in an area. There will be less problems distributing a power curve on the map and matching it to the advancement of the players. There will be no “level-tunnel” forcing people to complete the map in a particular order. There will be no problem with expansions taking away from the difficulty of the original game by pushing players to stats being unbalanced in older areas. Most importantly, there will never ever be a problem of friends unable to play an area because they did not grind up their level enough, or their “stats-pusher” decided to rage- or grief-quit.

If the game is supposed to be harder the further people venture from their starting area, then there are plenty ways of accomplishing that, other than creating a mathematical construct punishing the player who invested less time in grinding up his stats. Having a bunch of characters, I do know that growth in GW does not stop at 20, it starts at 20. Adapting other secondary classes, getting into new attributes to specifically target areas, that is the real growth of a GW character. Even grinding PvE skills is part of it. Measuring that with GW2's levels is a useful refinement of GW1. But trying to leverage more mathematical progression straight from a JRPG into GW2 would be a step back from GW.