Guild Wars 2

I would like to prefice this whole thing with a rebuttle of the argument to simply buy a lower tier from the trading post if you want to save time or money. First – The numbers of each item drive their demand and therefore drive the prices of the items in the cash shop. Second – the current systems in place do not cater to both “casual” and “hardcore” players like they did in the original Guild Wars. The current system caters towards hardcore players, as they have the information and time to most cost effectively obtain items. This suggestion is also not related to getting rarer items more easily, it’s about bridging the disparity of the enourmous gap between tiers of item power.

This is the best suggestion I have in order to satisfy classical MMO players and original Guild Wars players.

Rework the item system. It looks like the work was already done to allow for what should happen.

What needs to happen?

Separate skins from stats on the hero panel.

In my mind this only matters at level 80. This is good because it reduces the rework necessary drastically.

Basically at level 80 change the hero panel to have slots for armor and weapons like normal, but separate the affixes for the stats to be their own thing.

Create two paths of progression. One path is stats the other is aesthetic. Allow players to mix and match stats and skins with a simple drag and click.

Additionally reword needs to be done to the tiers of sigils and runes, but more on that later.

Now here’s where the debate starts to occur…
How far to take stat progression?

In my mind stat progression should be the exact same thing as in Guild Wars, because it was perfect. Minimal progression up until max level. Now clearly ANet has abandoned this philosophy in order to draw more users from other games. So, we don’t go with Guild Wars’ system. Instead we given stat progression junkies a progression system of having stats of 5-10% higher than the base that the rest of playerbase operates off of. Why 5-10%? Because it’s not too much that players from the Guild Wars side feel they have to grind it out to get it and it’s not too little that players from the traditional MMO side still want to grind for it.

The current system is much more in favor of the traditional MMO player, where they spend a lot of time or money in game going for the gear with the best stats. Lets just look an example of the numbers off the wiki…

Note parenthesis show the % increase from fine items
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor#Attributes
Fine: MinAtt-168, MajAtt-237
Masterwork: MinAtt-184(9.5%), MajAtt-255(7.6%)
Rare: MinAtt-197(17.3%), MajAtt-278(17.3%)
Exotic: MinAtt-224(33.3%), MajAtt-315(32.9%)

So we see that the attributes get a bonus of over 30% from the base armors at level 80. In addition to the attributes, on weapons and armor weapon attack and armor defense also increase with each tier. 30% is an incredibly significant increase and why players from the original guild wars feel slighted by ArenaNet, because we believed that ANet wanted grind to be optional, meaning for things like aesthetics or small bonuses in power. We didn’t believe that ANet thought grind should be driving character power.

Now the difference from tier to tier is obvoiusly less, but the problem isn’t just with the attribute numbers. In fact the issue lies even moreso in the numbers for runes and sigils, because those are heavy drivers for build effectiveness. Lets look at a couple of examples…

Note parenthesis show the % increase from fine items
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Earth
Minor Sigil of Earth:30% Chance on Critical: Inflict Bleeding (3 Seconds)
Major Sigil of Earth: +45%(50%) Chance on Critical: Inflict Bleeding (4 Seconds) (33.3%)
Superior Sigil of Earth:60%(100%) Chance on Critical: Inflict Bleeding (5 Seconds) (66.7%)

Note parenthesis show the % increase from fine items
We will just look at the first two bonuses of runes to keep things simple
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Monk
Minor Rune of the Monk: +10 Healing Power, +5% Boon
Major Rune of the Monk: +15 Healing Power (50%), +10% Boon (100%)
Superior Rune of the Monk: +25 Healing Power (150%), +15% Boon (200%)

It’s pretty obvious that the numbers are drastically different. A 200% difference in effect power is not optional, that kind of disparity makes the best items become manditory. And as soon as the disparity in item strength becomes greater than 10% items lose the quality of being optional

And this is the core of what it all comes down to, the numbers. The disparity of the numbers is far too distant in their current state to make the casual playerbase of the original Guild Wars happy.