The Book of Love

The Book of Love

in Suggestions

Posted by: Grendel.1235

Grendel.1235

The book of love is long and boring… you get the idea.

Compiled below are a series of changes that I think are needed in the game. Most are from GW1 and are missed in GW2. Now before I hear “this is not guild wars 1” these suggestions have nothing that breaks GW2 or makes it GW1, these are mostly functional and will make the experience of GW2 better in my opinion.

If you agree or disagree with these suggestions, a simple ye or nay for each one will suffice. If you want to elaborate on them by all means. I am posting this as a one off for discussion so I will detail my suggestions as well as I can.

1. Town Clothing:

What is the point? I mean in all honesty, I never see anyone wearing their town clothes in town nor do I have any interest in spending gems on new town clothes in the gem store if I have to manually toggle then on or off.

Why not bring back the feature in GW1 that allowed a player to specify when their helmet or cape was on or off (town/pvp/pve), except it would toggle to town clothes when a player enters town if they so choose. Why not even extend this into a fully flushed feature where similarly to GW2 a player can toggle their helmet, backpack, and shoulders in the same fashion?

The cost benefit is pretty simple here. You already have the conditional logic in place in GW1, why not port it over to GW2 in a living story patch? The benefit: the market for town clothing in the gem store and the satisfaction that a feature you included isn’t just sitting collecting dust and actually serves a purpose.

2. PvP Skills

Listen, I’ll be frank. You claimed this game is unique, its something new, and you know what? I think this game offers some of the most unique and mindful features I have seen, but lets face it, I think we are all tired of the roller coaster ride that is nerfing/buffing classes. We dealt with that in WoW, we dealt with that in Rift, and practically every other MMORPG out there. The last thing we want this game to turn into is some unbalanced mangy mess when it comes to player classes. We are already suffering this with condition damage.

Please re introduce what you had in GW1 where player skills had different versions in PvP. It just makes sense. No more nerfing, no more buffing, no more banning elementalists in tournaments, etc…

GW2 does not have nearly as many skills that GW1 had so this shouldn’t be a billion dollar project.

The Book of Love

in Suggestions

Posted by: Grendel.1235

Grendel.1235

3. Living Story

If you really do read the forums then you already know this. Why am I still fighting Zhaitan’s minions? Why is Orr still swarming with undead even though I have cleansed it? Why did my personal story just end at Zhaitans destruction, leaving me and everyone else in a time bubble?

I love the concept of a living story, but I am not really seeing the story part of it just yet. Scarlet? No. A “Tower of Nightmares” doesn’t really evolve the world much considering what I listed above. It is such a huge plot hole that you really almost need to backtrack to fill it in.

We killed one dragon, and the others are what? Fell back asleep? Where is Jormag or Primordius? what about the other 4-5 dragons? Tequatl doesn’t count.

Make living stories that are really part of the story. You dismissed expansion packs for this idea, start taking it seriously. Super Adventure Box is not a progression of the guild wars story.

4. Personal Story

This one strikes a cord with me. According to my personal story I killed Zhaitan and that is it. Everything in the past year must not have happened according to the accounts of my character.

Lets be serious here. You are sacrificing a lot of potential when it comes to the personal story. Why hasn’t every living story update progressed my character? If that is an unrealistic goal, then why not release a monthly update to our personal stories. Still a no? Why not address the suggestion in #3 and then that will give you an opportunity to develop our personal stories.

The whole voiced conversations were a big draw for a lot of us. Outside of our personal stories we don’t see any of that. The game is slowly becoming a grind for everything from dungeon tokens and now fractals. Our personal story is supposed to give meaning to it all. Instead we are left now with an empty husk, a long on, kill a few mobs, log off kind of game.

5. Inflation

Granted, a legendary weapon takes a lot of gold to make, but the slow rise of inflation is startling. I have watched the exchange rate between gold and gems go from 3g for 800 gems (Launch) to now costing over 60g for 800 gems. At this rate by next year, it will cost over 100g for $10 worth of gems. I am not even talking about the Gem -> Gold exchange rate here in which by that time I am sure you would be lucky to make 75g.

As you increase the gold awards you also drastically effect the Gem -> Gold and Gold -> Gem market substantially. Your philosophy of trading Time -> Gems and Gems -> Time is skewed. The time it would take me to farm 60g today is worth a whole lot more than $10.

Stop increasing gold awards. Keep the rate of monetary awards to what they are currently or at least scale it back slightly. If you want a legendary and do not want to spend a year crafting it, then trade your money for time and sell Gems for Gold as it was originally intended.


That is about it for what I have. If you have anything else, feel free to add it, but there are the issues that I think are solvable in the near future.

The Book of Love

in Suggestions

Posted by: Isende.2607

Isende.2607

Actually, there are considerable changes that could and likely should be made. I love what they’ve done, with soliciting player input re: the changes on 10 December, but I hate that they’re going forward with so many changes, and still overlooking or ignoring some pretty significant changes. Among them are:

Targeting – currently, there are a couple of different methods of targeting. One is just point and shoot, and hit whatever the system decides is in your range. Another is to tab target to select your preferred target. Last, you can set your tab target to only target the mobs closest to you. I, among many people, rely on tab targeting to select the mobs I wish to focus my attentions on. This becomes a problem because tab targeting is likely to select the mob closest to me, or the one way across the field from me that’s completely out of my range. I recently dropped in to Rift, to see how things are there, and I was like, “Oh, yeah! This is what targeting should be!” It boggles the mind that this hasn’t been addressed and after a full year is still as much a problem as it was to begin with. Yes, they gave us the “Select closest target,” but that becomes a problem when you try to move your target. For instance, on my thief, I play her with a strong mobility/strong condi build, so I run her d/d and love my deathblossom to handle crowds of mobs. In a crowd of eight, say, I select my target, db over him, then move my target to another mob a bit further away so I can strike up to three different targets, spreading the bleeds around the entire group. If I have closest target selected? I can’t move my target with tab. If I don’t have it selected? I may, on my next tab, hit a mob that’s across the field and completely out of my range. This is nuts.

Town Clothes You’re so right, Grendel — what really is the purpose of town clothes? Further, the way specialty costumes are set up, you must spend money to keep up with the ‘mute stones if you buy the costume for a low-level character, or, as I did, do a LOT of map completion to build up the 1-79 stones. You guys don’t think we spend enough money, buying the costumes? C’mon, I know my husband and I have averaged it and, on a normal month, between us we spend about $40-$50 on gem store items. I doubt we’re outside the norm, in fact, we’re probably on the low end of norm for that. I think you’d do your players a great service by bringing back costume slots.

Guild Interface and Management Couple of issues here. First of all, there’s a lot that would improve the guild interface, not least of which is the “last played” ability. But what about calenders, so we can schedule our events? What about a specific officer chat? Oh, and notifications of guildies logging in? Yes, I know — that notification exists in System Messages. However, in order to see what’s being said without it scrolling off my chat window instantly because of bloody system spam, I have System Messages turned off. Really, guys, packing in guild notifications when guildies log in or out with System Messages was very sloppy and poor design. It would improve standard of living greatly if you put that where it belongs — in Guild Notifications. Also, there’s the whole limit to party size being five. If your guild decides to embark on, say, Orr exploration, you have to do one of two things — have the leader get a WvW Commander’s tag so everyone knows whom to follow or make multiple parties of five. There really should exist some way to be able to pack in 11, 15, or 25 players or more for a guild outing.

The Book of Love

in Suggestions

Posted by: Isende.2607

Isende.2607

(continued)

PvE Version of Commander’s Tags Ok, I get it — you decided to train us all to be sheep, and blithely follow whoever is pinned up. However, I think you’re neglecting the fact that often, the skills required for PvP/WvW are different from the skills required for PvE. I’m very fortunate because my server, Jade Quarry, has commanders who are 1. Very willing to jump in to PvE events and 2. Actually skilled at PvE. I’ve heard horror stories, though, of other servers where commanders pin up for PvE events, then don’t actually know how, or even care, to complete them correctly. Further, you’ve absolutely created a situation where, in PvE, people will not do things, or do them as intended, unless there’s a commander pinned up. Silly, silly, silly. I’m thinking of the Nightmare Tower, right now, but we saw this also in the games in Divinity’s Reach. I think it would be beneficial to have a PvE version of the commander’s pin — maybe make it green, instead of blue? Not terribly difficult and, oh, guess what? You still get folk spending their money!

Crafting This is a biggie. Crafting is a very good way to level a character, if you really don’t feel like doing the story, dealing with Trahearne’s whiny sniveling yet again, and slogging through hearts and dynamic events, etc. But there’s absolutely no benefit, after you’ve reached 400/500, to your crafting. You’ve made all the ascended recipes account bound, so we can’t use the fruit of our labors to make money off of them. Further, crafted items purchased on the Trading Post are actually cheaper to buy than to make, if you add up the cost in materials. I could, literally, sell the materials for what I’d make, buy what I’d make from the Trading Post, and have money left over. Why does this seem like a good idea to you? By making mats so difficult to acquire (I’m speaking of things like bones, totems, etc), and making them so cost-prohibitive to acquired (farming farming farming BORING!), you’ve created a situation where we can not make money from our crafting. Why, then, outside of the leveling benefits, should I waste my time, energy, and efforts crafting?

Dye Creation This is a pet peeve for me. Huge pet peeve. I build up the materials to make a rare unidentified red dye. Then, I open this unidentified red dye, and I get a common dye in return. This is absolutely beyond belief. If I spend the materials to make a rare dye, I should, at the very least, get a rare dye when I or anyone else opens it. Yet another way you’re making our crafting useless, gang. Please note this.

Trading Post There are still so many bugs in this, it’s nuts. For instance, if I wish to search for foods, I have to actually know the food’s name, or I have to search consumables, for a level range, then weed through all the potions, etc, that are also listed for that level. Or, I wish to buy a piece of armor. Leather/Medium for my Thief. Foot piece. I actually have to do a search for all armor foot pieces then weed through the results that are returned for Heavy/Medium/Light — I have no way to select Medium armor. Further, when I sell items, I have to actually click to buy them so I can preview the prices and amounts at that price, before I decide what I’m selling them for. You guys really need to work in a way to preview an item’s history and its current sales state for when we choose to sell them, so we can make an informed decision and not just blithely post our items for the “highest buyer” or “lowest seller” or whatever. Yes, there’s a way to work around it, but dear gods, the system in place for the TP right now is, at best, clunky. And I know your developers will be quite familiar with that term.

That’s all I can think of, at this moment, to add to Grendel’s list. Many of these types of lists have been made up in the past; many items from them you guys decided, “Eh, that’s a good idea,” but many more of them got lost by the wayside. Really, I appreciate what you’re trying to do with the 10 December patch. But there’s so much more in place that has been problematic since launch that you guys really need to wake up, notice, and deal with.

The Book of Love

in Suggestions

Posted by: Grendel.1235

Grendel.1235

Squads

In its current state I am not really sure what a squad is useful for. When joining a squad the option still appears to “join” it, yet in theory you have already joined. Be prepared to receive no indication that you actually joined the squad.

Its purpose in WvW is overshadowed by Team chat. The idea of a squad was a larger group than a party, but a subset of all the world players on the map. This is a great niche, however it has been neglected as far as usefulness and implementation.

From my experience with the current state of WvW a squad does not seem to really do anything to benefit the world. Players just follow the big blue commander icon on the map, forming a large mob. It is the small parties of guild members or friends who do the skirmishing. While this is nice, one would imagine this primarily being the role of a squad. With that it would be nice to see the role of a squad expanded.

Give players an indication that they are in a squad, maybe a small GUI indicating at least how many players are currently in the squad. If at all possible show squad members on the map. This gives it an edge over using Team chat, while retaining the benefits of a party, which is exactly where a squad should fall.