Guild Wars 2

I think Gear took a step in the wrong direction between GW1 and GW2.

GW1 has a really fun and interesting gear model.
Below are key elements of the GW1 system that are worth preserving:

1. It’s fairly easy to obtain the best “base items”
2. Item properties are randomly generated
3. The properties themselves have randomly generated numbers. So you can get a Suffix with 12-15% chance to lifesteal. 15% will sell ten times higher than 14% because it’s perfect.
4. You can salvage any and all item properties, to then apply the ones you want to your favorite item.

Example:

• You want to make your dream Sword.
• You obtained your dream Sword skin, but it has the wrong stats.
• You got several weapons across your gameplay, and managed to salvage one or more Perfect properties among them
• You may farm to make gold to buy the missing Perfect properties
• You give the Perfect properties to your favorite Skin and voila, your perfect item (for that specific item, a least)
  —-

That is how GW2 should have turned out.

Sure we have Runes/Sigils, but that’s equivalent to Inscriptions from GW1.
That’s 2 variables less than in GW1.
GW2 should actually have more variables in gear customizability, not less.

So how to apply this to GW2?

1. Make Salvage Kits work like in GW1, with Basic and above allowing you to choose between salvaging upgrade with a chance to keep the rest of the item, or destroy the item to salvage the raw materials.
2. Make Stats in gear salvageable somehow, perhaps associating them to the gear components, like Mighty Jute Epaulet Padding, Malign Iron Sword Hilt, Precise Steel Axe Blade.
3. Make Stats in gear slightly random (the properties, not the raw defense/damage). For an item that has a flat 100 bonus to Toughness, it would instead randomly generate a value (hypotetically) between 75% and 100% of the current value.
4. While in GW1 you had 3 customizable components per item, in GW2 you should have at least 3, preferrably 4 or 5.
5. Make the degree of perfection generated on drops and crafted items apply to the whole item in order to make listing them in BLTP viable (modified items become soulbound so they’re not an issue).
6. Make the degree of perfection of an affix represented by a color in its text:
   100% = red
   95% = orange
   90% = yellow
   85% = green
   80% = blue
   75% = white
   So a “Ravaging Beautiful Staff of Bloodlust” with blue “Ravaging”, green “Beautiful Staff” and orange “of Bloodlust” would be a Masterwork item with 80% perfection on “Ravaging” and 95% perfection on “of Bloodlust”.
7. Upgrade BLTP display of items to show equipment in a more organized manner, such as:
   - Name – Property #1, Property #2, Property #3, Property #4, Property #5
   Example:
   - Ravaging Beautiful Staff of Bloodlust – Ravaging – N/A – N/A – N/A – of Bloodlust

Result
This would make collecting gear more exciting, a true item hunt, not for the items themselves, but for the potential Perfect properties you can salvage, and make all the random loot you get have better potential to earn you something worthwhile (perfect properties).

Not to mention requiring people to buy more gems so they can expand their bank to fit all this new gear they’re holding onto

Because of those variable upgrades, we didn’t have a weapon upgrade trader, as GW1 traders and GW2’s trading post do not save individual instances of items like in auction house in many other games, but just numbers of how many items of each individual sellable item are.

Instead of bringing to GW2 something that would prevent selling upgrades in the trading post unless they add every single possible version of each variable item, which would be a pain to manage, they should update weapon upgrades in GW1, so they are like runes and insignia, and so they can have the much needed weapon upgrade traders, and people who want to quickly make changes in their gear for PvP with their PvE character can do so like they can with runes and insignia thanks to the rune traders in each PvP outpost.

Wow, I think you’re missing alot of what makes GW1 gear and economy work.

What makes hunting weapons somewhat interesting in GW1, is the fact you aren’t so easily going to get the perfect affixes.

When you get +X% Enchantment Duration, it isn’t guaranteed to be a perfect 20%.
Wich means when you DO get a perfect 20%, it’s worth ALOT.
More than twice the worth of 19%.

Making everything always drop perfect is alot less fun.

GW2 can track individual instances of items, because we’re only talking about equipment and upgrades.

They could change something from GW1 to GW2 to make it easy to handle in terms of information.

Instead of drops generating each property individually, potentially generating an item with 1 perfect suffix and 1 weak prefix, ANet could make it so that a dropped item’s “perfection” affects the whole item.
So if you get a “perfect” Penetrating Staff of Enchantment, both the Penetrating and Enchantment properties are perfect.
If you get a 95% item, all variable properties are 95%.

This only needs to apply to dropped items (and crafted), because the ones you modify become soulbound.

The degree of perfection of an affix could be represented by a color.
100% = red
95% = orange
90% = yellow
85% = green
80% = blue
75% = white

Updated original post with a more concrete idea of how BLTP would display items with the increased number of properties.

Essentially, you’d see the name on the left, 5 collumns (in the case of 5 properties maximum) with the name of the properties, and then the price tab to the right as usual.

Please discuss.