Guild Wars 2

There’s a lot of people complaining how Berzerker gear is the only way to roll in PvE, that it’s Pvt for WvW and that builds based on Condition Damage get short shrift all round.

I propose that all stats are removed from gear apart from armour rating for armour and damage for weapons.

Then make traits solely responsible for controlling stat levels above base level.

Problem solved.
You no longer have to have umpteen different sets of gear.
Builds become more flexible, allowing more experimentation, as a trait refund only costs a couple of silver.

I’m not seeing the bad here.

Would require that every traitline is redesigned, and even though that, build variation will be a lot lower and everything would feel too simple, like Mists of Pandaria.
It already feels like everyone is playing the same builds. Stats on gear are there to let you customize your build for whatever stats you need. If going 30 pts in a power line and 30 pts in a crit dmg line, it is really good that you are able to improve defence by customizing your gear.

And people stating that you can’t play PvE content unless full berserker are dumb, most dungeons are doable with 1-3 ppl, so why on earth would you need full berserker for other than quicker boss take downs. In some dungeons it’s even better to have higher defence. Berserker is the way to go if you can survive the whole fight without problems, just because; why not?

And people stating that you can’t go to WvW unless full Pvt are dumb as well, in WvW it depends solely on your role. If you deal AoE damage from range you might as well go as offensive as you want, if you want to be well-rounded, mixing Pvt and Berserker is a good way. If you wanna be a sponge sucking up AoE dmg in the front lines full Pvt.

If something like it would be implemented, will never happen though, I’d rather go with stat sliders, allowing me to adjust every stat as I want.

Your suggestion would not fix a thing.

Currently, it’s “Berserker gear is the way to go”. With your suggestion, it would just change to “statting Power>Precision>Crit damage% is the way to go”, which is essentially the same.

The reason there is a best gear set has nothing to do with the gear itself existing, it has everything to do with there being stats that are not useful in PvE.

Also, what would you do about Runes? Currently, runes also offer stats. Because as you know, Rune of Scholar is the top in PvE, with Rune of Melandru, Rune of Traveler and Rune of Lyssa being pretty big in PvP/WvW. You couldn’t just eliminat the +stats or the mods, since majority of them are used for their special effects (-condition duration%, effects on heal/crit/elite use, +damage% under special conditions) rather than the +stats.

Keep runes and sigils the same. That’s the way it worked in GW1.

I’m not saying it wouldn’t take a lot of work, but in the end, you’d have a much cleaner, easier to understand system that promotes experimentation and is easier to balance.

The other thing this would do that people might see as being bad until they’d considered it?
It would completely invalidate trinkets.
But trinkets are currently just a bad patch for a bad system. While each trinket has its own unique icon, they do not appear on your character model.
I would argue that anything you equip should be visible on your character.

Yes, this idea as a whole would require a lot of work to implement, but in the end would be better for players and developers alike. As it stands at the moment, you may want to experiment with certain builds but can’t as certain stat combinations don’t exist on gear.
If players assigned stats purely through traits, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting gear stats to match.

Things that would need re-working to accommodate this change:
Elimination of Trinkets and deletion of a crafting profession (Jeweller)

All crafts would have to be changed.

Crafting materials would have to be rethought, as rare materials would no longer have a role. Make rare materials affect the appearance of equipment instead of its stats. Of course, this means that they’d have to put some work into making more varieties of armour.

Of course, I’m not playing any more, so I’m just making suggestions that make sense to me as an ex-player and that would draw me back in to playing.
The existing gear system is one bad thing they’ve taken from other MMOs, where before they had a nice, elegant system in the first game.
The whole “Golden Y-Fronts of Cleanliness +10” thing has never made sense to me.

First, if you’re not playing anymore, leave. Your “suggestions” from someone who doesn’t play and thus doesn’t care are not only invalid, but would suggest an entire new game.

The game has plenty of experimentation in it as is. Are there problems in the game? Of course! What game doesn’t have its problems. It’s a matter of do you want to spend the 1-2 hours not only theorizing the build but also testing it properly that makes a difference.

As far as having different sets of gear: why? I have one set of gear for my Necro. His build only supports two gear setups anyways, and they’re redundant. As Olba stated, removing stats purely to trait lines would have the same effect. Removing stats from the lines and putting them into the traits themselves might change things up, but that still leads to potential cookiecutter. You aren’t going to avoid it. Generalzied, cookiecutter builds will exist and theorist will find a way to make it remain so.

I’m not sure if you’re saying condition damage users get the short end of the stick in WvW or not, but it really depends on how you’re using them. A CD user such as a necro is used differently in WvW for different situations, while I grab a kill when I can, I tend to stay back and support the zerg. Between kills and other bonus’ I have amassed just 3 shy of 1000 badges of honor, in really not a great deal of play time, by no means toothless, but probably not as many as the front-line players such as warriors. Enemies suffering from conditions will go down a faster and have difficulties escaping the heavier hitters. CD/AOE users are the only way to go for tower defense. Just a handful on the battlements can stop an entire zerg. You’re basically protected by the wall, while they’re sitting ducks trying to take down the door. This is strategy.

Dalent, did you miss the part where I said I’m making these suggestions in the hope they’re implemented so that I might actually enjoy playing again?

I’ve put thousands of hours into GW2, and even more thousands into GW1.
I’ve put a pretty horrific amount of hours into other MMOs too, and what I have realised through my experience playing these games is that a focus on gear that affects stats is never satisfying.
It dictates that a progression system is pretty much mandatory.
It’s confusing and muddled as the stat bonuses are always fixed, resulting in infexibility.
There are almost ALWAYS stat combinations missing, and in the case of GW2, there’s a ridiculous amount missing or incomplete.
While YOU may use only one set of armour, that’s not to say everyone else does.

Let me explain about gear acquisition, build flexibility and balance:
If gear dictates build and is expensive to get, it discourages build experimentation and encourages cookie cutter builds.
People are too scared to invest in the gear they need to be completely flexible, so the metagame rapidly focuses on one particular build. As this build becomes prevalent, developers only see game feedback from players using this build, which in turn reinforces it.
Players eventually get bored of playing the same way over and over again and eventually stop playing as there’s no build diversity left.
Sound familiar?

If build flexibility is not restricted by expensive gear, people are more willing to experiment with builds.
Bugs or flaws are found faster.
Competitive play becomes more unpredictable and thus more exciting.
And developers receive feedback that allows them to balance for more than just one build, resulting in more satisfying and varied gameplay.

Variety is the spice of life.

I love it idea. I have way too many armor sets and weapons to switch builds. Making armor solely affect raw defense would be a great way of changing up playstyles faster, easier and cheaper.

Cookie cutter builds won’t go away, but it would encourage experimentation a lot more.

Mungrul.9358:

Dalent, did you miss the part where I said I’m making these suggestions in the hope they’re implemented so that I might actually enjoy playing again?

I’ve put thousands of hours into GW2, and even more thousands into GW1.
I’ve put a pretty horrific amount of hours into other MMOs too, and what I have realised through my experience playing these games is that a focus on gear that affects stats is never satisfying.
It dictates that a progression system is pretty much mandatory.
It’s confusing and muddled as the stat bonuses are always fixed, resulting in infexibility.
There are almost ALWAYS stat combinations missing, and in the case of GW2, there’s a ridiculous amount missing or incomplete.
While YOU may use only one set of armour, that’s not to say everyone else does.

Let me explain about gear acquisition, build flexibility and balance:
If gear dictates build and is expensive to get, it discourages build experimentation and encourages cookie cutter builds.
People are too scared to invest in the gear they need to be completely flexible, so the metagame rapidly focuses on one particular build. As this build becomes prevalent, developers only see game feedback from players using this build, which in turn reinforces it.
Players eventually get bored of playing the same way over and over again and eventually stop playing as there’s no build diversity left.
Sound familiar?

If build flexibility is not restricted by expensive gear, people are more willing to experiment with builds.
Bugs or flaws are found faster.
Competitive play becomes more unpredictable and thus more exciting.
And developers receive feedback that allows them to balance for more than just one build, resulting in more satisfying and varied gameplay.

Variety is the spice of life.

I read your post. Did you not read that what you are suggesting will break the game, and require an entire new one? Your hours would be for naught. I completely understand what you are aiming for, and I agree in some facets. But I am still acknowledging as its current limitations are, and to implement more than one of your changes would redesign the whole game, which could be GW3. But we’re in GW2 now, and I accept those limits.

Should they add more stat combos? Absolutely. As far as stat combos go, I think pure gear should be change. Have one offensive and one defensive stat on gear at all times. It would require more strategy for gearing, but would still be simple enough for extreme casuals. But that’s neither here nor there for your arguments, and is for a different discussion entirely.

I understand why people want to have an armor set for every potential build for their profession. And do it across multiple professions. But while I understand the reasoning behind doing that, I don’t see why people feel the -need- for that variety. Being reasonable within the game helps at times. Yes, I am saying I think it is unreasonable to be prepared for every single minuscule possibility on one character.

As far as gear experimentation, why not just use cheap blues or greens? You get the basic concept down, you get raw data, and you can figure it out with a calculator. Out of the theorycrafters I personally know (from GW2 and other MMOs), none of us do all of our number crunching purely in the game screen. Now, for those that do, they probably do deck out in full exotics to test. But I get the data well enough from greens or blues to come to the same results in the same amount of time.
I personally don’t play the game the same way over and over, because I like to create things myself. But that’s me. While it supports your “experimentation,” I do acknowledge not everyone truly experiments.

I’ll reference the above paragraph in saying build experimentation is not restricted by gear. Mental laziness perhaps? Sure. We all have it. And not everyone is a mathematician. Competative play becoming more unpredictable? I don’t see that, as you can generally tell quickly, based on weapons, what a build does. You don’t get a perfect idea, but you get a good educated guess. Staff Mesmer? Probably support. Shortbow Ranger? Probably condition damage. Are any of these absolute? No. And even if you’re right, are you positive what type of support or condi damage they are doing? What about secondary weapons? Maybe I’m giving build diversity too much credit, but you also have to think, in WvW or sPvP, how long to you have to mentally analyze the enemy?

No. Just no.

Guild Wars 1 had a far better stat system, and was a far better game than this is altogether.

Oh, and another thing, and this has affected anyone who has ever played with a non-standard build:
When ArenaNet change traits or skills without warning, your build is no longer viable and you HAVE to spend a lot of money and time re-gearing.

I understand that this would be a major change, but my point is, this is a far better, fairer, more balanced system, and the benefits would outweigh the negatives.
In addition, it would be an incredibly brave move for an MMO developer and really would set the game apart, where at the moment it’s beginning to taste like every other crappy WoW clone out there.

And to re-iterate, this would bring the system more in line with the original Guild Wars system. That also required tweaking over time, and the introduction of insignias and inscriptions was a massive sea change to that system, as big as this.
And it only improved the game.

Mungrul.9358:

There’s a lot of people complaining how Berzerker gear is the only way to roll in PvE, that it’s Pvt for WvW and that builds based on Condition Damage get short shrift all round.

I propose that all stats are removed from gear apart from armour rating for armour and damage for weapons.

Then make traits solely responsible for controlling stat levels above base level.

Problem solved.
You no longer have to have umpteen different sets of gear.
Builds become more flexible, allowing more experimentation, as a trait refund only costs a couple of silver.

I’m not seeing the bad here.

I have a solution to your problem: play sPvP

Mungrul.9358:

Oh, and another thing, and this has affected anyone who has ever played with a non-standard build:
When ArenaNet change traits or skills without warning, your build is no longer viable and you HAVE to spend a lot of money and time re-gearing.

I understand that this would be a major change, but my point is, this is a far better, fairer, more balanced system, and the benefits would outweigh the negatives.
In addition, it would be an incredibly brave move for an MMO developer and really would set the game apart, where at the moment it’s beginning to taste like every other crappy WoW clone out there.

And to re-iterate, this would bring the system more in line with the original Guild Wars system. That also required tweaking over time, and the introduction of insignias and inscriptions was a massive sea change to that system, as big as this.
And it only improved the game.

I play non-standard builds. I never have to spend gold or time to regear. In fact, most of my builds just required moving a few Major Traits, if even that. And the ones that did require regearing? It was minor, not “drop all my gold on this gearset” horrible. Not even remotely painful. I made the gold back in less than one day, and I’m casual with my gold making.

This is “fairer” and “better” in your opinion. In my opinion, it’s lazy and game breaking. You want new gear. Buy/craft it. Need the gold? Sell something. Need something to sell? Farm it. It is an MMO. No matter how you twist it, unless they make everything in this game account-bound and remove that auction system, it’s how the MMO world will work. It’s a mental/physical trap to get you to play more/longer. As an avid WoW player, I can tell you this is no WoW clone. Does WoW have a thing or two I’d want to see implemented in a GW2 style? Probably (none come to mind immediately). Does GW2 do things I’d like to see WoW do? Yes.

Their intent, as far as I have read, is not to make this a Guild Wars 1 expansion. It is a new game. The base lore is the same. There are a few mechanics/names that are similar. They still semi-support GW1. Even if they changed it so vastly in a way that would still make the game even look like GW2, it would take a year at least. Because anything else would be too drastic and too fast.

Raine Akrune.8416:

I have a solution to your problem: play sPvP

A great solution.

The argument “It’s an MMO, that’s how they work, deal with it” is one of the laziest arguments around. It’s a simple fear of change.
And rather than just saying it’s game-breaking, explain HOW it’s game-breaking. I bet you can’t come up with a single, sound reason beyond making a lot of grind irrelevant (which I’m having a hard time seeing as a bad thing).

And your note about being able to make the gold quickly and that you’re “casual with your gold making”?
Yeah, pull the other one.
If you really were casual, you’d rarely have over ten gold to play with, and that would take a week or more to accumulate.
Newsflash: If you can make enough gold to allow you to re-gear quickly, you’re not casual.

MMO players. Can’t stand ‘em. No imagination. Can’t think outside their genre.