I’ve been playing GW2 since launch and I’m loving every minute of it, but one of the main problems I have with it is that it doesn’t feel like an epic journey. This is mainly for the lvl80 PVE part of the game and the collecting of skins. Almost none of the items I craft or collect have any meaning behind them besides looking cool. They have no lore weight. Since a huge part of the game is collecting skins I’d like to offer my two cents on how to improve this a bit and I understand that some ideas can not be done with existing items.
I. Armor
I’ve always felt that the armor has to show what your character belongs to and what he/she represents. In this sense there should also be some small things that indicate you’ve gone through some kind of hardship to get that armor.
- Wearing a full set of one type of armor gives you a cosmetic icon buff. For example wearing a full set of order of whispers armor could give you an icon with a dagger on it and the buff would be “Whisper Agent” or a human wearing full t3 with “Champion of the Six” something along these lines for every cultural, order, dungeon, gem and craftable (of exotic quality or higher) set. Friendly NPCs can react to this buff in some way.
- Future armor from dungeons to not be SOLD by vendors. Instead make the vendors crafters or engineers. The tokens will be the crafting materials they need from the dungeon/place of power to craft the armor or weapon. The NPC dialoge should also be appropriate for this. Besides the tokens there should also be a unique crafting material that you receive at the end of each of the 3 explorable paths and each exotic armor piece would require only one of these. For example expl. p1 gives 1 Shard needed for gloves and boots, p2 gives 1 Crystal needed for head and chest etc. (this is to prevent getting a full set by only farming p1 note that you can still mainly farm p1 but for a full set but you will need to have done p2 and 3 atleast two times). Also make 1 shard/crystal etc. tradeable for 3 tokens for ppl who don’t need them and only farm the paths for gold.
- Would be nice if cultural armor has some other prerequisite besides only level and gold. For example for Charr t1 you need 100% completion on atleast one Ascalon map and for t3 – 3 maps and 100 unique events done in them(again this is to prevent the situation where I get a full armor set by JUST farming CoF p1). I don’t see this working on existing sets but maybe for future ones. Needless to say the NPC vendor/crafter should note our exploits. Maybe even have us visit the race leader or our mentor from Destiny’s Edge to acknowledge our receiving of this armor.
- All of the above ideas are valid for all types of armor. They could be used for ascended or w/e. Just because I used it as an example of how to improve cultural or dungeon doesn’t mean it can’t be altered for something else. Would love to hear some feedback from fellow players on this one.
- I’m not sure how to handle characters who have mixed armor sets. Maybe just showing the different armors is enough since the different pieces can represent the effort done in the different areas of the game and be an indicator that you’ve worked hard for it. Help me out here guys.
- I’m happy with the back items. I think they are a perfect slot for having something that just looks cool without needing some lore strings attached.
I’ll post my ideas for weapons tomorrow since it’s getting pretty late here.
On a side note the comedy/goofy aspect of the game is perfect so as far as humor goes its a blast.
(edited by ShadowAgent.6053)