Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’d like to make a few suggestions about gear and crafting that I think would make more sense than the traditional MMOG crafting model where higher crafting skill equates to higher ‘level’ items. This means that the reward or motivation to craft is entirely based on whether you will be able to make level-appropriate gear for yourself, and distorts the market with items that are useless for either low-level or high-level characters.

Suggestion #1: Remove all level requirements from weapons, armour and jewelry.

Level-based equipment makes no sense from a realism perspective, and only serves as an anti-immersive money sink. The ‘gear treadmill’ is ultimately unsatisfying as a progression mechanic, and so closely linking crafting progression with PvE overall progression makes the crafting content extremely grindy and hardly enjoyable to invest much time or effort into.

Suggestion #2: Make all statistics on weapons, armour and jewelry down-level (or up-level) to match the level of the player who equips them.

This mechanic already exists in the game for when a high-level character enters a low-level zone, and gear that attunes perfectly to the wearer’s level aligns much better with the intent of allowing a character to be equally matched to the content they are attempting. It also avoids the tedium of constantly replacing outleveled gear to ensure optimal play.

Suggestion #3: Add a ‘durability’ or ‘degraded’ statistic to each item that decreases over time and on character death, until the item is destroyed. (Exception: Legendary weapons/armour should not degrade)
Suggestion #4: Remove all repair NPCs from the game. Crafting skills & gems can serve this purpose.

Currently, armour has a chance of being either damaged or broken randomly on each character death, but this can be easily fixed by visiting a repair NPC and paying a small fee. While this is an effective money sink, it doesn’t add anything to the crafting subgame nor encourage long-term equipment rotation.

If equipment now scales with your level, there needs to be an equivalent money sink that also interacts with crafting. My suggestion is to add a durability statistic on each item that represents the ‘wear and tear’ through use. The maximum durability on any item might vary on a number of factors, for example the crafter’s skill and the prestige of the item. Every day that the equipment is not in a bank slot (that is, it is either in someone’s inventory or worn), the item loses one point of durability. Every time the character dies in PvE, all carried items also lose 1 point of durability.

The starting durability would be fairly high, so that you are not constantly in danger of losing your equipment with every death. For example, a newbie crafter producing a simple piece of armour might give the item around 50 durability. A master crafter using a complex recipe might obtain an item with around 300 durability.

Suggestion #5: Redesign crafting levels for equipment-based professions so that higher skill accesses more complex recipes, provides higher durability, and allows more detailed dye patterns.

With equipment no longer level-dependent, there is no more need for each crafting tier to simply replicate the same basic patterns with only increasing, broadening stats. Instead, the craftsperson can focus on collecting different recipe styles, while their skill determines the quality (and as a result the cost) of the items they can make.

• Novice (0-74): Can make basic (white) gear using default skin recipes only. Durability is slightly randomized but mostly between 25-75. Crafted gear has only one dyeable slot.
• Initiate (75-149): Can make basic or fine (blue) gear using default skin recipes only. Durability is slightly randomized but mostly between 50-100. Crafted gear has only one dyeable slot.
• Apprentice (150-224): Can make basic or fine (blue) gear using vendor-bought or default skin recipes. Durability is slightly randomized but mostly between 75-150. Crafted gear has up to two dyeable slots.
• Journeyman (225-299): Can make basic, fine or masterwork (green) gear using vendor-bought or default skin recipes. Durability is slightly randomized but mostly between 125-200. Crafted gear has up to three dyeable slots.
• Adept (300-374): Can make basic, fine, masterwork or rare (yellow) gear using vendor-bought or default skin recipes. Durability is slightly randomized but mostly between 175-300. Crafted gear has up to four dyeable slots.
• Master (375-400): Can make basic, fine, masterwork, rare or exotic/legendary (orange/purple) gear using vendor-bought, rare drop or default skin recipes. Durability is slightly randomized but mostly between 250-400. Crafted gear has up to four dyeable slots. Can create expensive consumables that restore a small amount of durability to worn equipment of their type.

Blue equipment should cost a lot more than white to create, green cost a lot more than blue, and so on.

As an optional further enhancement, discovery could be a repeatable process that consumes a large number of resources (destroys them) for a chance of obtaining a new unlearned skin recipe (or just getting a fluff item instead).

Suggestion #6: (Optional, maybe jumping the shark) Allow extremely rare critical successes at every crafting level to produce an extra special item.

It would be great if there was a very tiny chance (<0.1%) of obtaining a very valuable item through your crafting as a result of a critical success. Just like grinding through hundreds of NPC kills offers the side incentive of a very rare and valuable item dropping, it would be equally nice if grinding through crafting recipes had the incentive of a very rare and valuable item that you could potentially be rewarded with, even accidentally. These could be items of the appropriate quality level for your crafting skill (white/blue/green/yellow/orange) but using a very rare or holiday-only skin.

Suggestion 1 & 2: This defeats the purpose of leveling and your gear is suppose to allow you to become stronger than normal. While down-leveling scales you back it only does so to a certain extent, if they make it so you’re automaticly this powerful only in an area some players may have trouble, esp. in Cursed Shore and Malichor’s leap when your forced to level 74 fighting level 79 mobs.

Suggestion 3: Hmmm it works but honestly you can figure that a piece that isn’t damaged will take durability hit then when every piece is damaged one will break so it’ll only be 2/2 1/2 or 0/2 as you dont take durability on hits.

Suggestion 4: No. How often do you see a crafting area in Orr?

Suggestion 6: Items out of thin air appear!~

Suggestion 7: There is a suggestion forum if you want to post there.

More or less you’re suggesting an extreme change… one that if the game does would swivel its entire gameplay and mechanics as well as zones. Its virtually IMPOSSIBLE to do… its a piece of the backbone.

Thanks for the feedback.

RedDeath.2980:

Suggestion 1 & 2: This defeats the purpose of leveling and your gear is suppose to allow you to become stronger than normal.

Does it really defeat the purpose of leveling though?

If equipment stats scaled according to your level (up or down), then you would still get stronger equipment as you increase in level – it would just happen automatically. Instead of repeatedly trashing your old outfit and buying a new one every few levels because you have grown much wiser than your old tunic, you would buy a new outfit either when you can afford better quality, when your equipment has worn out, or if you simply want a different style.

RedDeath.2980:

Suggestion 4: No. How often do you see a crafting area in Orr?

I’m not sure what you are getting at here, sorry. Could you elaborate on where the problem might be?

RedDeath.2980:

Suggestion 6: Items out of thin air appear!~

Well, I was thinking more that instead of producing a run-of-the-mill shortsword for instance, a combination of surprisingly high-quality materials and lucky technique produces an unexpectedly beautiful weapon on a ‘critical success’ or whatever. I accept that the realism for this suggestion is not that high (hence the reference to jumping the shark), but then again, we do have ‘loot’ which appears magically from inside creatures as they expire. It can’t be that much worse. :P

RedDeath.2980:

More or less you’re suggesting an extreme change… one that if the game does would swivel its entire gameplay and mechanics as well as zones. Its virtually IMPOSSIBLE to do… its a piece of the backbone.

Well, I agree it’s a significant change to both crafting and equipment, but I believe the core mechanics are already in place – level-scaling already happens, I’m just suggesting that the concept be more fully applied to equipment.

I personally believe that a more horizontally expanding choice of gear right from the start would make a more enjoyable crafting game. Replacing the traditional vertical gear progression which we currently have with such an improved system would seem more in line with the aims of GW2 too.

I also have a suspicion that if these suggestions were implemented it might help to diffuse some of the issues with the abrupt end of the gear treadmill at level 80. If gear and crafting are both more oriented towards prestige, appearance and expense right from the start and all the way through the ‘leveling’ phase, instead of just at ‘end-game’, maybe there won’t be quite as many dashed expectations from a lack of even higher-level gear to grind for?

Armour degradation without repair would be a major pain in the juvenile cat for anyone who gets unusual skins for their armour. So like, everyone.

LameFox.6349:

Armour degradation without repair would be a major pain in the juvenile cat for anyone who gets unusual skins for their armour. So like, everyone.

Well, I’m not suggesting remove the ability to repair, just the ability to do it through NPCs. Why not pay a weaponsmith to repair a weapon, or a tailor to mend a jacket?

Suggestion #4: Remove all repair NPCs from the game. Crafting skills & gems can serve this purpose.

1&2 is kinda meh to me. A person’s over all stats including gear are what is scaled currently. Yes, you get stats for leveling. So you’re 1&2 would equate to about the same we have now. High levels with more stats than low levels. Plus, what lvl 1-10 can get top gear on it’s own? You’re in the mindset of alts.

3: You must not pug many dungeons, you can die sooo much in those that it’s not even funny. No body would be willing to wear exotic gear in a dungeon. Hell, some jerks run a dungeon naked after a few deaths as is.

4: all that will do is force everyone to have armorsmith on all their characters with 1 optional crafting skill.

5: Doesn’t take into account high end mat requirements for high end gear.

6: I quit Aion because of the crafting and the grind associated with crit crafting. I would quit GW2 in a heart beat if they did something like that.

This is basically the model DaoC had and the big difference there was that all the mats were available from the vendor. One of the big stinks people had with artifacts (other than leveling them… hours killing sharks in ML3 dungeon for Malice) was that they suffered condition damage just like everything else. I think DaoC remedied this, but I had quit by that time.

Unless its purely cosmetic I am opposed to the “masterwork” phenomenon if its completely random. It sounds good until what people want is that item then you get RNG mystic forge precursor syndrome over and over where the market gets flooded with the regular items due to people throwing the dice.

At least with the mystic forge the 4 rares get consumed.

Unless you make armor degrade very rapidly this will be more annoying than anything else. If you do make it degrade rapidly this will tick people off who like Anet’s stance that this game isn’t a gear grind.

Personally I’d just like to see more effort needed to craft and nicer skins so crafted armor would be valuable. Imagine if instead of discovery at the forge, I find a lodestone, I take it to a guy who will train me for a price (cash/quest/event – heck personal craft story for all I care). He shows me how to work the lodestone and THEN I can discover lodestone patterns.

“Level-based equipment makes no sense from a realism perspective”

Titanium is harder than steel, fantasy metal X is harder than diamond… you see where I’m going with this. If gear is supposed to represent your character and not your gear’s strength then you could say level 1-10 is average, 20 a world class athlete, 30 similar to Batman, and up the scale of power until you can face bigger and badder enemies. Besides, if the Superman authors cared about realism we’d be deprived of a great character in the American narrative. You’d also have to say good bye to those giant bugs floating around due to the square cube law.

“3: You must not pug many dungeons, you can die sooo much in those that it’s not even funny. No body would be willing to wear exotic gear in a dungeon. Hell, some jerks run a dungeon naked after a few deaths as is.”

If the price of repairs scaled up with rarity like in other games I’d probably run dungeons in masterwork gear! :D

We also need certain quests that simply don’t move on until a certain specific stat quota is met. Like if a game had intelligence and your character was a mage then he’d say, “I don’t have the proficiency to move this boulder” if he lacked sufficient intelligence (higher intelligence = stronger telekinesis and more potent overall magic) whereas a warrior or thief would say, “I can’t push that!” until his strength quota is met.

I think this is too large a change from a systematic perspective to really have a good chance of being pushed through.

Still, I will say that I have nothing against what you proposed. I’m particularly fond of items degrading and being destroyed over time, because I am very, very fond of sinks.

Item sinks (MF), gold sinks (TP tax %), every sort of sink is something that I truly believe extends the life of a game. Currently the repair cost is only just a minor, minor gold sink. Forcing no armor (except legendary) to be permanent will be a very nice sink.

Level requirements, I’m indifferent to. Levels in this game seem superficial enough, so I’m not truly concerned whether they stay relevant or not.

Some points of resistance you’ll meet:

- ANet has a philosophical statement that legendary weapons should not confer any sort of game/combat advantage. As minor as this may seem, infinite durability is still technically a game advantage, though that is debatable if exotics last long enough.

- Players in general hate items breaking. Right now every death feels like a tax. Under your system every hit and every move will feel like a tax. I’m in the minority when I say I love this. Trust me when I say most don’t.

Still, this was a thought out suggestion, and I think a pretty good one. It takes aim at trying to make a currently bland crafting system more interesting.

lets just call the game wow and get over with it.. -.-
seriously now,crafting system is fine,repair mechanic is fine and lvl req for gear is fine,hence u can lvl pretty easy

Personally I enjoyed the level 80 Mad King labyrinth a lot, in the way it scaled my character up even for what was essentially a PvE area. I could do reasonably well with my alts so long as I stayed on my toes.

I don’t need an artificial metric of progress to tell me whether I’m having fun, though I know that’s important for a lot of people coming from other MMOs.

I like GW2 because it has less grind than everything else. I would prefer if it had zero.

Also if we’re going to talk about realism; A moa shouldn’t be able to 1 shot a war veteran Blood Legionnaire, period. This can happen under the current level system.

“You want any crafting skills other than your respective armor and weapon crafting? Nop!”
Not really a problem for me since i’m huntsman and leatherworker, but i do have some swords and i really don’t feel like harassing other people to repair them, Or getting harassed by other people to repair their stuff.
Or be limited in what tradeskills i pick simply because i’d constantly have to look for other people to repair my stuff otherwise.

I’d like my character to be self-sufficient, and i would kitten well like for my Arah armor i worked hard for (or, well, will ahve worked hard for once the gates open again and i can get my last shards /glare) to be mine permanently.