Guild Wars 2

TL:DR By looking at the very core game mechanics already in the game, you can create a system of progression that doesn’t invalidate existing ways of getting Exotic Armors and Items. Want to know more? Read more =)

The Basic Facts (of life)
- With the announcement of Ascended items comes just days ahead of its release, they are here to stay.
- By the time that any meaningful code changes could be implemented, ANet would have to invalidate peoples hard work within the existing system.
- The existing system only affects Rings and the Backslot.

My Argument for change
The basis of my idea stands the typical MMO model on its head. I firmly believe that traditional stat based progression breaks all MMO’s eventually. In a very large glaring example, “The Great World of Panda” has seen an almost exponential rise in a characters Hit points since its original vanilla release. Its also a system that invalidates all the players work to gain “x y z” gear because in the next major patch a new Dungeon will appear with “x y z +1” gear. This shouldn’t be news to anyone that has played most of the mainstream MMO’s.

Such a system would adversely affect GW2. All existing content of collecting “Exotic” items (dungeons, crafting, karma farming) will eventually become meaningless. The concept that all content is “End Game” content will come to an end. All of which would get passed over in favor of the “new patch” content. Dead zones develop because of this. And eventually, the game starts dying because nobody wants to replay levels 1-79 because its all “crap”.

Thankfully, at this MMO’s heart its still Guild Wars and there’s a way to fix it. All we need to do is look at past concepts and bringing them forward to the new format of Guild Wars 2.

The Plan
When creating a new challenge area, whether it be a Dungeon or Explorable area (or both!), two things need to be considered for “Item Progression”: Cosmetic Items and Encounter Stats

Encounter Stats? what?

Encounter Stats would be a blanket concept for things like Agony. They are specific to an encounter. Whether it be a specific Boss, Dungeon, Sub-Dungeon, Exploration Area is left to the content designers.

Cosmetic Armor Items are simply items with new looks. Because who doesn’t like finding a way to look unique?

How would it work? Lets look at each part separately:

Encounter Stats
Oh the Agony! =)

With future content, the base concept of “Agony” and “Infusions” is the RIGHT way to go. The trick is to change a few things about them to make it more progressive to the mentality you helped create with Guild Wars 1 (with help from other MMO’s like City of Heroes).

Though this system could work with any type of encounter/event, I’m going to use a Dungeon as my examples though all of this.

The Core Concept:
As players progress though the dungeon, they will encounter various Bosses and Events. Succeeding at the event gives you an Essence from that Boss/Event. Collect enough of the right types of Essences, Dungeon Tokens (see Cosmetic Items below), and a few Mystic Coins then head to the Mystic Forge.

When at the Mystic Forge, you place the Essences, Dungeon Tokens, a few Mystic Coins, and an existing Exotic Armor piece (with its “Slot” filled with a Rune/upgrade). Once you “Forge”, your armor changes into Ascended Armor.

Ascended Armor has the same Stats as your existing Exotic Armor, but its upgrade (Rune/Gem) is now permanently fixed and can no longer be removed. Instead, you now get a “Infusion” slot that can be slotted.

For the “Agony” Encounter Stat, this Infusion slot is then filled by what ever mean and unusual event system you have to go though to gain these “Infusions”. (From the article it sounds like the Mystic Forge)

The Future
For simplicity’s sake, I would focus it all on the 6 Armor slots.

The intent of this system is that forging your Armor into Ascended is both a stats effect and adds the “slot” needed for the new contents stat. When a new content area is created that uses a different Encounter Stat, you will need to reforge your armor to gain an additional slot with its own unique name.

As new content is released in the same Encounter Stat, as you delve deeper into the Agony, you will need more Infused Armor. Maybe initially people only need one or two items, eventually they may need all 6 Infused to reach the very bottom.

Cosmetic Armor Items
Cosmetic progression at its core concept would, in my mind, work the same as existing Dungeon Vendors. Collect Tokens from doing normal activities in the Dungeon, Exploration Area, boss fights, Dynamic Events, etc… in the challenge area. Then spend said tokens to gain items designed like the Hall of Monument (HoM) items.

Meaning that you double click the newly gained item, drag and drop an armor piece into it and its Cosmetic looks change. But the stats stay the same as the base original item. The items gained from this new “Cosmetic Vendor” do not have stats of their own.

Some Cosmetic Items could be easier to get, others harder. One of the things this does is create status items. Why?

Guild Wars 1 had Obsidian and Vabbian Armor. In many ways, these armors where some of the hardest to get. Some people would immediately try for it, while others simply found other challenges that interested them more. There was no reason other then LOOKS to get either of these armors, but yet people went after them.

Other Armor items in GW1 where much easier to get, so much so that a casual player like me could acquire a few sets of “Elite Armor”.

In a game striving to keep both casual and hard core players going, a system that lets people go at their own pace, fighting the “new” content. Players get a measure of their success in the area (Dungeon Tokens) and eventually they gain a new look to their armor.

And most of all, without invalidating any of the existing content.

If people want a new “outfit”, they would need to acquire a new set of Exotic Armor through existing means then change the appearance with the items gained from the content area.

Finding the Carrot, or why would anyone to reach the bottom of a Dungeon?
Listening to both a friend of mine and my brother, they LOVE challenges. They love trying to figure out how to beat an Encounter, Event, or Boss. Once that wears off, they either get stuck helping friends beat said challenges or trying to find a rare drop.

All sorts of items could drop in a GW style at the bottom of a dungeon. Unique and Rare Weapons in GW1 seamed to be very valuable, to the point some people went to great lengths to acquire them. So why not offer a path to Legendary Weapons though getting to the bottom of a “Challenge” Area dungeon? Maybe offer unique Exotic Weapons only found at the bottom?

Titles are another great way. If you can survive at the bottom of a very long journey, why not reward them with a title for beating the content?

What ever the rewards are, they should be VISIBLE rewards, things that people can stand around and show off.

Very much agreed, I too personally believe that they should go back to their roots on things like armor progression, I very much am on the boarder of just stopping playing now because I feel I’m not being rewarded for my efforts at all, I feel that pushing for appearances instead of stats and the like is more rewarding than making us grind for stats. As stats make (as you so kindly put) all my work getting “x-y-z” armor completely useless and thus my reward is gone and my time was completely wasted and with such why should I even bother playing if my time means nothing. With GW1. We got to choose more easily and freely how and what class we wanted to play. Instead here I find myself grinding for 120hours just to play the same class in a new way, or grinding for ~200 hours just to play a new class… that’s not rewarding to me, that’s restrictive. I was a gw1 player, I grinded the game out to get like 25-ish sets of 15k(or higher[eg. 2 sets of obsidian]) armor, I chased down and eventually got a crystalline sword. So grinding I’m ok with, as long as all my previous struggles are still relevant and I’m able to do it with some variety.
(I also had 1 character slot for each class in gw1)

Yea, people want to be rewarded for time spent but reward =/= better stats. That thinking is the path to the WoW treadmill darkside.