Guild Wars 2

notebene.3190:

I ‘love’ this game. Some days I feel like I’m the only one. I also like some other new games, and when I visit those forums, again, I feel like the only one. It’s not specific to this game, it’s a disease that seems to have spread around and gotten ‘really’ noticeable in MMO forums over the past, say, 3 years. It’s unfortunate.

You’re not alone. I feel the same way.

I’d quit my job and hand it over to this awesome dude named Eric Flannum.

I would remove all passive effects from every skill, utility and major traits. Each of these must have a useful mechanic. Minor traits would be the only place where the player would choose passive effects (ex: reduced cooldown by 20%, increased damage by 10% ect)

90% of the suggestions here assume that the Lead Designer has responsibility for all aspects of the game, when clearly they don’t. Most of the problems that require the changes that people are talking about are fundamentally about how the game is monetized, not how it is designed.

The design of this game is breathtaking, with great concept art, level and instance design, story, lore and environment. The vast majority of the issues highlighted in this thread are nothing to do with design.

I’m very sure I would do a poor job. But I would probably give whomever balance professions, a set of balls, so they could make some bigger changes. There seem to be so many obvious flaws with almost all professions, that it’s a riddle as to why changes are happening at a snail’s pace. I would then make community a much higher priority when it comes to sPvP. It seems that the devs who are working on sPvP are too focused on designing new modes for the game, to a minority of players. There should be a much larger focus on brining in the community to sPvP, and make it just as entertaining to watch, as it is to play. I would make a new pillar that says; make people love sPvP, even if they don’t like playing it. Give sPvP an audience.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting this many replies at all, much less in under a day…

I figured I’d wait a bit to post what I would do, in order to not derail the thread into “OP’s opinions are stupid” and completely ignore the premise. Anyways, as for what I would change…

1. Fix all the obvious bugs with the custom music system, such as the crafting playlist not working at all, and the Main menu/boss battle playlists not randomizing. On top of that, I’d add more playlists, like UnderwaterCombat, Dungeon, and zone or terrain-specific playlists, like swamp/snow/grass. Battle playlist also needs to play when fighting a champion, no matter what.

2. Put explorable mode dungeon tokens on trash, and give each trash mob a high chance of dropping drops of liquid karma/moneybags. Drastically reduce the rewards for finishing the dungeon. Seriously, why is trash even here at the moment if it’s worth skipping it?

3. Make some ascended gear pieces that are world drops, as well as some that can be attained through WvWvW and dungeons besides Fractals. Can’t find a group for anything other than fractals at the moment because there’s no impetus whatsoever to go to any other dungeon.

4. Reduce the quantities of mats needed to craft legendaries, but implement extremely difficult requirements to craft them, such as questlines, going to spots in dungeons, jumping puzzles, even. I think the effort required to get them is at a good spot at the moment, but the methods through which to actually craft the legendaries could be vastly improved. The main reason I’m not even trying for one at the moment is that it’s too much grinding and farming for a sword, when I’m perfectly fine with my current one.

5. Someone suggested in the lore thread about making Trehearne the next Big Bad lore-wise. Do this. Just about every player hates him, for one reason or another.

1) get event team to step it up a notch, there are still event draughts well leveling that can make the game feel empty.

2) fix bugged skills, then go back and start meaningful class balance to help out classes that have little diversity in how they have to build.

3) make weapon and armor skins that are unique to each class that you earn by doing your personal quest or some other quest chain.

4) show WvW players that we care and work on implementing a rank system for them (February I hope) and make meaningful changes to wvw in general by listening to those who do spend the most time there.

5) keep adding pve dungeons and contents, maybe even a large group dungeon (like a raid) that guilds can do but keep loot in line with the rest of the game. At the same time don’t fall I to the trap of feeding content locusts who will consume content faster the. It can be churned out and suck time and resources from other aspects of the game.

First thing? Immediately?

Completely remove anything and everything that looks even REMOTELY like it’s Anime style.

Second thing? Immediately after the first thing?

Completely eliminate the stylized, brushstroke style of the artwork and replace it with the more realistic approach of Guild Wars.

After that? There’s so much I’d do I can’t even begin to think of where to start.

I would make points in WvW worth more the longer you hold them (with a cap), creating clear points of defence and greatly changing the tactical setting in WvW.

MasterGeese.4756:

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Start development on Guild Wars 2.

Caramel Ham.4891:

Top ten-

1)Fix major profession bugs. CANNOT do step 2 if this is not done.

2)Balance all professions. This does NOT mean to just nerf everything.

3)Bring back GW1 missions.

4)Overhaul dungeons

5)Add new dungeons.

6)Add a TON more sword and armor skins. In a game where max gear stats is almost free…..you gotta give the players a carrot, otherwise they stop playing.

7)Add new PvP modes that use the same gear as PvE but you have your own separate build you can have like Spvp. I would look into CTF, attack/defend modes, and study WoW’s Alterac Valley. No repair fees.

8)LFG tool.

9)Have veteran and Champion mobs give consistently higher level quality items with a rare chance of getting something amazing.

10)Anet will be out of business if I do not take care of the gem shop. Various special skins, that look good, will be released. BL chests will include better loot (I will make players excited at what they will get, like a child opening a Christmas present). If my players seem scammed after opening a chest, I will NOT have repeat customers. Common sense business tells me that repeat customers are better than ripping them off for a quick buck. BL chests will probably rise a bit in price though.

I agree with every single one of these.

bpphantom.8243:

Start development on Guild Wars 2.

That’s the second thing I’d do. The first would be to rename the current version of Guild Wars 2 something else.

Something without “Guild Wars” in the title. I probably would like this game more if I hadn’t had an expectation that GW2 would follow the same spirit as GW…

I would first reset the game trajectory to the pre-11/15 manifesto trajectory. I would do a mea culpa, admit we had made a mistake in adding vertical progression and state a clear commitment to horizontal progression in the future.

Next, I would announce a cancellation of monthly events until the core bug and balance issues were worked out of the game. Once that was complete I would return to a slightly longer (than monthly) development cycle for new content that included an early PTR to be able to capture player feedback in time to actually make changes to incorporate it before release.

Meanwhile I would designate a team that would look at armor and weapon skins to give players cool stuff to play for.

I would de-emphasize ‘economy’ over player reward. And, I would do this in terms of the intrinsic reward of loot—i.e., not so much in terms of it’s ‘sale’ value, but rather its intrinsic worth to a player. The economy needs to be considered, but it should not be central, simply a mechanism for players to trade useful items that they can’t use. To this end I would look hard at a different monetization scheme, one where player reward didn’t cut into the bottom line.

That’s probably enough to get the ball rolling. Overtime, I would incorporate useful player feedback but would develop and evolve the game along the lines of its DNA from a strong core design philosophy as stated in an expanded manifesto rather than with my whetted finger in the wind. It would not be evolved by mob rule.

1) cut the number of programmers and art dudes working on PvE but 90% and put them into PvP and WvW

bpphantom.8243:

MasterGeese.4756:

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Start development on Guild Wars 2.

Oh, you cheeky monkey. XD
I hate to say that I know what you mean. Honestly thought GW1 knew what it was doing, where it was headed, and why. But GW2 went in a direction that every mmorp has already gone through. Now I have no clue if GW1 was simply a fluke of genius.

1. remove WvW from map completion
2. buff wvw area completion rewards
3. add new wvw monthly
4. move wvw kills to previously mentioned monthly
5. dailies suck… id do something there; but would have to ponder it
6. nerf warr/guard greatsword (THEYRE EVERYWHERE! flails arms around dramatically)
7. add more ranger pets (ones with f2 leap/blast finishers and interesting -gem store- reskins)
8. pistol/dagger as mainhand for mesmer
9. make quaggan playable
10. scale down max size char/norn
11. implement voice choice at character creation (was in a team with three male human warrs… ‘for great justice’ all in the same voice is not good =[)
12. account-wide dyes
13. area completion for southsun cove and interesting big boss
14. remove magic find
15. more water weapon diversity (offhand/main hand as well as more dual hands)
… ill stop now…

Hmm, things I’d do, if I’d be Lead Designer of GW2…
Or with other words being said

What would I order my teams of developers to change in the game, to improve it.
because this is it, what this thread is all about, besides randomly people posting sarcastic comments, jokes or comments about things others have posted.

But here is my personal actual TOP 10 – List what I would give the development teams in commision to work on, so that these things can come as update patch to optimize the game:

1. Change the Skill System/ Class System by adding to all Classes multiple kinds of “Sub Classes”, which can have different kinds of effects in changing how the main effects and features of the general class functionate. Adding to the system of weapon related preset skills different “battle styles”, so that players can change between different weapon skill settings.
With this Changes will come automatically a great modification and rebalancing of all classes, traits and upgrade items ect. simply everything that has some kind of greater effect on how effecient the classes do work.

2. Make changes in the personal story system, to allow players to replay their personal story line and maybe make certain different decisions (rewrite your personal story)
Especially a major change about all the stuff correspondign to Trahearne.
So basically branching up the personal story into two completely different outcomes, in regard of how the player does end the battle of claw island where your made decisions in that battle will decide over, if your order’s mentor gets killed in the end, or if you let Trahearne die and become self the great leader of the racial alliance army.
This means adding more new voiced over personal story quests and some minor changes for the last parts short before going against Zhaithan.
This Change should change also the way how to get on pact weapons/armory.
These items should not need a special token, these items should be receiveable via Karma and Gold cost, but naturally only be accessible, once a player as played through the game once and be account bound.

3. nice bridge to point 3… Change all equipment/weapons that you get receive as loot to ACCOUNT BOUND. The only soul bound items that should exist in GW2 should be crafted items, where the player has decided to use them self for the own character.
A crafted item, that is not soul bonded to a character wil count then as “unbonded”

4. Implement following playable Classes:

Classes: (making it a final total of 12, 4 for each category)

- Dragoon (Soldier)
- Mercenary (Soldier)
- Visionary (Scholar)
- Alchemist (Adventurer) (turning the Engineer into a pure Technician)

5. Remove everything out of WvW, that leads into money making, so that also those silly equipment npc’s can be abandoned and be put into the trash bin where they belong to for this gameplay mode. In WvW should players have no need to repair their stuff. Lets call it for now a macial buff of the mists, that auto repairs equipment at death. Make some significant changes in general for WvW, what would be now way too much to explain all…

6 Implement the feature of creating real unique equipment, where players can decide absolutely everything, from which stat combination it should have, over the skin to finally also the item’s final name. These items woulld be them automatically accountbound

7 Change the actual Attribute and Condition/Boon System slightly by adding a few more attributes with dual effects ,removing some cinditions/boons and adding for them some new or change some effects of existing conditions which stay in the game.

8 Implement more playable music instruments with a “Bard” as new crafting profession together with ABC systems ect. so that everybody can create either replayed music or own created songs like it works in games as LOTRO

9 Implement permanent accessible minigames (besides the already known Polymok), like a collectible Monster Card Game (monsters dropping their own cards, which could also work as upgrade items, lets call them Soul Cards), Dancing Mini Game (thus needs more dances), ect. ect

10 Implement in the style of GW1’s Bonus Mission Pack instanced playable multiple group missions as History Books players could receive from Zomorros), in which players can together replay the whole stories of the currently 2, soon 3 Guild Wars Books, Ghosts of Ascalon, Destinies Edge ect.

In the Ghosts of Ascalon-Instanced Missions a solo players could play as Dougal Keane replaying the Story of invading Ascalon and reclaiming back the Claw of Khan-Ur fighting all those ghosts of ascalon.

In Destinys Edge, the instance could be a group instance, where the game randomly decides, who plays which of the 5 heroes over the cource of the story.

1. Logan
2. Rytlock
3. Eir
4. Caithe
5. Zojja

Atm the 10 things I’d change in the game as Lead Designer ^^

Make Quaggan a playable race cuz frogs are awsome.

Practice my best smile and train my sword arm.

Sosyc.3025:

- DR overhaul.
- Abilities such as magic find are now shared by a group until the player is no longer in the party. The highest level on a single player will be party wide, non stacking.
- Tie in loot drops to specific bosses, areas and events to give players direction in their hunts.
- Remove the ability to sell Precursers and Legendary weapons while making them easier to obtain.
- Kicks in Dungeons would be part of a report function if player was still online, and in same instance/zone to prevent griefing.
- Alliances, Alliance chat, and Alliance halls that would function as a hub with a free waypoint would be added.
- Daily and monthly would focus around areas in pve, and wvw and not kill types or general task. (such as assist the people of " insert area" as a daily- or Helping a Npc in WvW capture or defend certain objectives)
- Adjustments to make builds within all classes viable by adjusting weaker weapons or skills.
-Equipment added to help build diversity in ascended range to cover several armor types.
- Make all ascended gear craft-able.
- Redesign mystic forge -100% chance for a new set of items requiring mastery in multiple craft disciplines, as well as Gear upgrading. This change would give the ability to upgrade an armor to the next tier using Multiple Crafts plus materials or create new items unique to the Forge that require mastery in 2-4 craft disciplines.
- Improve the search and party search ability to have a comment section and be cross server.
- Re-introduce the “design a weapon” contest, offer exclusive private beta test spots for new content to Helpful and active members of the game community to insure new content was ready and enjoyable.
- Add an ambassador system so current players could be rewarded for helping new players with content.

I would hire you in a heartbeat.

1) Dailies would be repeatable on alts (once a day for each character)
2) event karma and money rewards would be 10x more (except the experience portion, seems already generous)
3) no more Diminishing Returns. i would impose a flat rate of 20% for all awesome items. maybe remove DR on ITEMS and event rewards and place DR on Experience Gains.
4) involve more dragon/unicorn hybrids into game, somewhere
5) give more healing power options, or shorter CD on ele heals
6) open ring of fire isles, add 9 dragon events onto it
7) new loot standard – items start at rares – no more blues or greens or common (white?)
8) precursors would be craftable, so players can craft in the stats they desire, so when they roll it into the legendary item, it has the stats and looks they want. legendaries themselves would be account bound when crafted/acquired.
9) no more agony in fractals
10) keep ascended gear for PvE only, but give players multiple equipment slots, to switch between game modes (pve armor tab, separate wvwtab, another for town clothes, and one for pvp gear)
11) option to store character trait builds at trainers, so retraining is more worth it for 3.50 silver. intereacting with NPC gives some kind of “i would like to retrain to my [pvp/wvw]pve] skills”.

12) new and varied WvW maps. currently 3 of the 4 available are exactly the same. open up an elonian-themed map, and feature HUGE sand castles and forts, and mud sieges. maybe on map rotation (weekly?) it would shuffle up the 3 borderlan maps, so that there’s the regular one, sand one (desert) and a volcanic one, much like the variety of hall of heroes (guild wars 1 maps)?
13) badges of honor will drop 5-10% of the time guaranteed for players.
14) weather effects will affect players roaming about (get struck by lightning, random meteors in charr or volcanic areas) – not very high percentage though, or it would become too annoying.
15) dragging bosses around outside comfort zone will be okay if done correctly, and the “turn around and run back” limit will be severely increased to 20x, as so players can pull bosses much, MUCH farther if needed.
16) remove boss resets in dungeons. also, halve the amounts of HP they have.
17) add more fun emotes like /tebow or /flex. bring back the guild wars 1 emotes.
18) skills differentiate for each game type like guild wars 1. when in pve, have a skill that does 900 dmg. using same skill in wvw maybe does 500 dmg.

First I would tell my forum mods to close this thread and then I would laugh at how many peoole think they know how to be a lead designer for an MMO.

bpphantom.8243:

That’s the second thing I’d do. The first would be to rename the current version of Guild Wars 2 something else.

Something without “Guild Wars” in the title. I probably would like this game more if I hadn’t had an expectation that GW2 would follow the same spirit as GW…

I…

I love you for this. LOL

But seriously, I feel exactly the same way. They should have just named the places something different, had no mention of Guild Wars or anything to do with it, and named this game something else entirely.

plasmacutter.2709:

Agenda:
General:
Magic find removed from the game – all drop rates rebalanced to account for this
Crit damage has been removed from the game – All damage re-balanced to account for this.
Condition Damage Merged into Power.
DR removed from the game – drop agorithm re-engineered to flatten out bad-good streaks in RNG.
Precursors made craftable, lodestones purchasable by tokens badges and laurels at reasonable but not bargain prices.

• Engineer:
  1 – all weapon(not kit) skill damage increased by 60%
  2 – grenade 1 stacks vulnerability
  3 – all condition on crit traits increased to 100% chance
• Thief:
  1 – nerf backstab by 50% period (remove spvp split)
  2 – decouple survival from stealth.
  3 – reavealed debuff increased from 3 seconds to 10
• Elementalist:
  To make full GC ele builds more viable, and bunkers less Immortal:
  1 – non-group-wide regeneration sources in water trait line changed to something else (there’s still plenty of regen in the group-wide side, this just lowers ele dependence upon the water line for survival)
  To Balance This:
  2 – all movement skills on weapons provide evasion
  3 – all auras provide block
  4 – spread an extra 15% damage (each) into the air and fire traits
  5 – increase base HP to that of mesmer

I think the first thing on your agenda should be to stop dying to thieves and then raging about it with insane nerf ideas; also learning a little bit more about each class dynamic could be beneficial for you as well. Agree with you on engineers needing a buff, 60% damage increase to all weapon skills is insane like most of your ideas but some type of more reasonable buff is needed. I agree that the damage backstab causes needs to be nerfed but a 50% straight damage nerf with no compensation in other areas is insane and this coming from someone who dislikes the backstab wtf burst build. Secondly 10 second reveal debuff? Okay sure how about we also put a 10% movement debuff on warriors and guardians because they wear heavy armor, and have necros, mesmers, and ele use an MP pool and add a 10% damage multiplier when they are hit with melee attacks. Get real these aren’t ideas this is some knob whining for the sake of whining.

MasterGeese.4756:

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Remove all Levels from the game. Leveling is the same as grinding.

Add Raid Instances with story and explore mode like party instances, but designed for fights with 20players.

merge servers.

add minigames into the game.

Naval ships added.

Mounts added.

New weapons added.

Get rid of Underwater only weapons. Bring them to land as well.

Downed state allow movement and a 5th and 6th skill for countering AoE.

Allow WvW players to call out to the PvE server for help.

More Server events in WvW for the underpowered servers…

Stronger healing in WvW when underpowered.

Thief Nerfed.

Apply the Eternity concept to all legendaries
1 Light and happy
1 Dark and menacing
= Transitional weapon based on day/night

so like:
Dreamer = happy
Nightmare=Menacing
=Slumber

Nightmare looks: Black horse head with glowing red eyes, the butterfly portion would be a dragons wing. The arrows would be replaced with a black horse with a grim reaper on top with a NCSoft logo on the rump.

Slumbers look: Dreamer during the day, Nightmare during the night.

precursor for the Nightmare: The Hater

bpphantom.8243:

MasterGeese.4756:

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Start development on Guild Wars 2.

Was going to say delete Trahearne as the first thing I would do until I read this post and couldn’t have agreed more.

My reaction to this thread:

Alliance battles , Orders v Vigil v Priory 20 v 20 v 20
G v G competitive PVP 10 v 10 , with in game world rankings , ala gw1
H o H competitive PVP with rankings n nice rewards for the winners

Sorry i do not care for wv3 its just zerg v zerg v zerg , hate it personally no skill at all and meaningless

The FIRST thing I would do is make a universal dungeon currency.

To deal with the issue of people doing what they perceive to be the easiest dungeon I would add rewards to the amount of currency obtained from a dungeon run based on different dungeons done in a day.

1 dungeon = standard reward
2 different dungeons, 2nd dungeon gives +10%
3 different dungeons 3rd dungeon gives + 20%
and so on.

On of the things I hate the most about most MMOs are the number of different currencies. If nothing else then a currency exchange would be wonderful. Even if it required a fairly large cost.

TheDaiBish.9735:

• Weapon Skills 2 – 5 can now be chosen from a select pool (this is to facilitate balancing). Skills, however, will have to be ‘captured’ from mobs before they’re unlocked. Skill 5 will be able to house an Elite Weapon skill, which is only obtainable from the toughest foes.

That’s actually a very good idea! It captures (pun intended) the skill feel of GW1. There should just be some structure when it comes to dual weapons though, like there should always be 1 main-hand and 1 off-hand skill, while the other is optional. There will also be specific elite weapon skills depending on which two weapons you’re dual wielding.
I really love this idea.

• The buff / debuff system will be improved upon to give skills additional effects. This may lead to the introduction of Profession-Specific debuffs and buffs, such as Deep Wound for Warrior to take advantage of.

I’ve been going on like a broken record player how professions need something added to differentiate them, a mechanic that sets them apart and makes them contribute in a prof centric way when in a party. This is the best idea I’ve seen for this yet. Sort of how aegis is Guardian specific, each profession needs something like this.
Like deep wounds for a warrior, each profession should have a unique mechanic that only they can use. This would really differentiate them in a good way.

• We’ll also use our Fractals system to develop a system where Events get progressively harder a) the more times you complete them and b) the more players that get involved.

I suggested something like this a while ago, and I’m glad someone else said thought of the same thing. Event escalation could be a fun way to really amp up the intensity, especially if players have seen and done the same events over and over. This will allow some diversity in the event mold and bring a sense of uncertainty and life to what’s happening in the area.

• The Legendary process will be improved. This will include: Adding lore to weapons with is unfolded in Questlines reducing the Resource Grind required, add achievement requirements in their place.

Yes! So very much please. The scavenger hunt should only be the start. From thereon the journey of your legendary weapon opens up. I really like your randomization idea. Having the weapon build with a set of objectives, each assembled through numerous and challenging task, all the while learning the lore of the item. That’s what a legend should be about.

• While the Dragons still pose a threat, each of the races still have their own problems to contend with.

What I like about this is the self selectable objectives. Like starting a mission to find a lost child, or stop vermin from spreading through the city. It would be a nice break and fun task inside city borders.

• Blim the Bard is also looking for heroes to tell tales of their adventures for him to sing about. He’s handing out books for you to fill in with tales of epic battles and dangerous delving, which can be exchanged for some rare items.

This is so reminiscent of the GW1 storybooks. What I loved about those was that you could do a dungeon for a reward you needed, which happened to be a Zaishen mission and it’s completion was added to your storybook. I loved that your objective overlapped, and this is something GW2 needs more of, rewarding additions that you gain from different sources.

Just like with your Amaranth the Traveler idea, more tasks that will get you involved in the world is always a good thing.

• The Orders are also busy. So much so, they’ll be sending you Missions as and when they arrive.

Oh yes, I’ve been keen to see the orders play a larger part, especially for your character as a representative. Order centered tasks will really be great, and building a standing sounds great, because right now, you’re just part of an order, but it really doesn’t mean much.

• Mercenaries will be available for hire for Story Mode dungeons only.

This is actually very smart. Story dungeons are meant to, well, experience the story. It’s an introduction to dungeons, and since people don’t do them any more and the rewards kinda suck, I think having a party of NPCs would be a great way for solo, or even small party players to clear them.

I would change the centaur into ponies that leave a trail of rainbows from their rear as they chase you around.

I would make some of the harvesting nodes contain traps, the metal nodes will sometimes be an earth elemental angry that you put a pickaxe to its head, cutting into a tree will sometimes drop a beehive on you or it will just get up and walk away, harvesting herbs will yield different results, shrooms will give you hallucination like you might see a certain dictator riding a unicorn.

I would bring back Land Sharks but this time they wont bug out, instead they will continue to chase you in land.

I would give Tequatl the ability to dive bomb the sea and cause a tidal wave so big that it drowns everyone on the beach.

I would give the Shatterer the brains to breath fire in a 180 degree just to catch those hiding behind the hill to his right.

I would get the claw to stop doing the same thing 3x

I would have a major city wide invasion event tailored for each race’s home city.

-Divinity’s Reach, invasion of trolls wearing bunny ears and wielding foam clubs.

-Black Citadel, invasion of Ascalonian knights who say NI!

-The Grove, invasion of cats and dogs looking to mark their territory by spraying or using the Sylvari as scratching posts.

-Hoelbrak, invasion of the Jackalope’s of Caebannog

I would make it so that Norns need to consume ale every so often otherwise they get weaker.

I would make it so Charr require flea treatment every so often otherwise they will start scratching this will include a small visual effect of black dots jumping from the Charr.

I would make it so Sylvari require watering every so often otherwise they will shrivel up and go all wrinkly.

Engineers need some love they will get a new kit grenade called the sovereign’s lobber of antioch.

I would make cricket bats available in orr.

I’m sure there’s more fun to be had but I would probably be thrown out a window…

1) Design the world so there’s more than one event that can run for any given “event space”. It’s downright depressing when half a map doesn’t see action because the main chain got bottlenecked.

2) Overhaul Rangers so their Utilities and Traits don’t suck horribly in every given situation. Also rebalance the value of pets so the Ranger themself doesn’t feel like a wet rag compared to other players.

3) Tack Ascended gear onto more progression paths.

4) Make Lv 80 Transmutation Stones available for copious amounts of rare currency. Dumb stuff like 100k Karma for a single stone, or 20 Skill Points or some other outrageous sum.

While maintaining the core vision of gw2 pvp focus most resourses onto the pvp side of the game for a couple months. The pvp players need some love I think.

Cash paycheck… acquire yacht. It’s the only logical choice, as changing anything requires a lot of time to do anything meaningful, not to mention no developer can really decide to put something in without consulting their co-staff/team etc.

Everyone’s answers = Why they are not ArenaNet’s lead designer.

So many remove this or remove that posts.
No desire to improve things, only to remove what you don’t like. That won’t get you in the position of lead designer, ever.

The lead designer’s role to is guide development forward. That means trying to fix what isn’t broken, to make it BETTER. To take into consideration all the players’ interests, not just the vocal minorities.

An extremely difficult job with many frustrations that come with it.

—

To answer the topic:

I would make sure there are people working on a project to retroactively improve the Personal Story. A lot of the post level50 story instances are pretty poor – Everyone gets choked into one route; it sucks, there should have at least been possible alternate endings.

There are only a few things I’d change
1. Allow players to freely move traits up and down and save their builds. I believe have a two state process would be helpful. The first state would be an editing mode, where traits could be moved up/down by a unit. Tying in with this concept is the ability save trait builds. Of course to edit or create a new build would still require a fee, keeping the economic impact of the current system intact.
2. Gear saving. As with the first game, I enjoyed the ability to save gear builds. I would design this, as well as having sets for town clothing.
3. Dyeing individual pieces of gear rather than the slot, or at least provide an option to do so.

notebene.3190:

MasterGeese.4756:

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Honestly, probably this. Because as a community, we didn’t used to be so entitled. I can’t imagine it’s terribly rewarding any more. At least, I bet they have to look inward and internally to feel rewarded.

And I’m not talking about the rose-tinted “games were so much better when…”, because I happen to be an older gamer who ‘remembers’ complaining 15 years ago, and a lot less now. I like the evolutionary (not revolutionary) pushes that WoW and GW2 made to make playing more fun. Corpse runs, de-leveling, forced grouping to do anything, spawn camping (and fighting over it), node stealing, mob tagging. Ugh. I love where we’re at with GW2. I hope we see more of it in future games. Especially the open world “we’re all just kinda in one big party” thing, it’s the way it should be. A ‘party’ is a mechanic from a by-gone era that related itself to a ‘party’ in DnD so we could relate to it and rally behind it.

I’m talking about our general attitude, and I’ve fallen into this trap myself. We’ve all become jaded and unappreciative. Because we’re expecting to be given some sort of ‘rebirth’ of the genre to make us feel like we did when we first were playing UO and EQ (before we realized there was nothing fun about de-leveling and corpse runs and all that other stuff). “Holy cow! It’s like I’m playing DnD online with 100s of people at the same time without a DM!” Yeah, those were exciting times.

Now, not so much. The developers are tired and we’re tired and honestly, 15 years ago, it would have been awesome to be an MMO developer. Today? It doesn’t seem like it’s any better than working your tail off to get a project done for a business client only to have them ask if their screen could be made of ice cream, because they like ice cream, but they don’t want it to melt, and it should be pink, but only when they feel like looking at pink, and it should just know when that is.

I ‘love’ this game. Some days I feel like I’m the only one. I also like some other new games, and when I visit those forums, again, I feel like the only one. It’s not specific to this game, it’s a disease that seems to have spread around and gotten ‘really’ noticeable in MMO forums over the past, say, 3 years. It’s unfortunate.

These kind of viscous rants have been around since before game companies provided forums it was just to cost prohibitive back in the early days of the interwebs and html coding forums was a full time job I mean seriously 24/7 but let me tell you its ALWAYS been here but most people here never went or were to young to go or even know of alt.binary.(insert title here).newsgroups. Its like mass media 24 hour news coverage like Fox, CNN society hasn’t changed just the exposure to it has.

Drop ascended gear to exotic strength. Keep them around for infusion against agony, but no combat stats, and make them good looking. Possibly keep utility infusions for them.
Basically I want to go back to purely horizontal progression.

Also, add more events and npcs you can interact with in Southsun Cove, it feels pretty empty atm.

Oh and try to fix bux/glitches, best to get those out of the way first, but that’s not really the designer’s job is it?

DreamOfACure.4382:

Everyone’s answers = Why they are not ArenaNet’s lead designer.

So many remove this or remove that posts.
No desire to improve things, only to remove what you don’t like. That won’t get you in the position of lead designer, ever.

The lead designer’s role to is guide development forward. That means trying to fix what isn’t broken, to make it BETTER. To take into consideration all the players’ interests, not just the vocal minorities.

An extremely difficult job with many frustrations that come with it.

+1 this.

Allow you to use two classes at the same time once you have reached lvl 80. But I will be sure to work on re-balancing the game since there will obviously be some over-powered builds that people will make.

pfft you guys make your list wayy too long it’s almost like a chrismas wish list :P

Also, i was under the impression that the point of ongoing game development is to add more things to games – not taking things out! (unless they are broken to the point of unplayable)

There’s only three thing the game needs atm imho:

1 ingame pvp ladder with comprehensive stats

2 Lfg tool

3 better loot table – no more white-gear dropping champions

And none of these poses any balance issue whatsoever.

Get those three done and we’re good to go for another 10 months or so ! lol

1. work with everyone to develop a consistent vision for the game and its direction
2. ensure everyone is on the same page and understands the vision
3. let the players know what it is and explain it in a blog post etc
4. shoot down anything that violates the vision/ direction ie adding VP to a HP game
5. change content rollouts from every month to every 3 months, use extra time for polish + QA quality over quantity, consider benefits of a PTR
6. remove minipets etc from lockboxes and just have them in the store for X gems
7. add UI toggle for instruments so people can choose to hear choir bells etc
8. add a toggle for dyes so players can see character or account bound completion and use either on every character
9. add a recipe similar to triforge amulet upgrade for every exotic in the game
10. slap whomever introduced ascended because they just doubled our end game item database for no good reason
11. add WvW to SPVP so everyone can mix builds etc and are on a level playing feild
12. remove things like fractals completion and WvW kills from monthly
13. add WvW kills to monthly PvP
14. add title tracks simmilar to wows pugging one where playing with new players is rewarded, extend these over time offering titles / minipets
15. implement scrum for all teams if not already in place
16. remove Agony as resistance gating is a poor difficulty scaler, come up with new abilities etc to compensate
17. consider porting GW to the new engine
18. stop using progression as an excuse for bad design and realise “we did it with the best intentions” is not a valid excuse for terrible implementation.
19. ban people who consistently exploited to progress in fractals
20. get in my time machine and go do it right first time

Blackmoon.6837:

I’d quit my job and hand it over to this awesome dude named Eric Flannum.

This. But I would demand a hefty severance package.

I would make the perfect most popular game, and become rich!

It would basically be a modern version of Ultima Online, mixed with some Skyrim, and a little The Witcher, a little Spore, and lots of The Sims

All developers should play those games, and evolve a game to at least improve upon online rpgs 15+ year history.

Decrypter.1785:

Alliance battles , Orders v Vigil v Priory 20 v 20 v 20
G v G competitive PVP 10 v 10 , with in game world rankings , ala gw1
H o H competitive PVP with rankings n nice rewards for the winners

Sorry i do not care for wv3 its just zerg v zerg v zerg , hate it personally no skill at all and meaningless

like the idea of AB Orders v Vigil V Priory that way u can also play on either at the switch of a character so would be pretty balanced.

I do however really enjoy WvWvW but sometimes gets a bit repetitive meeting the same worlds every few weeks or sometimes 3-4 weeks in a row, maybe as an additional reward for winning ur tier i would try and make a huge new map where the winners of xTier EU can play against the winners of same tier NA for a bit of change and something to work agaisnt.

Make a dungeon that only allows 5 people with different professions to enter.

Would be interesting to make 5 different people who are different work together rather than 5 groups of overused professions who sometimes dont accept other professions and this is coming from a guardian.

I’d :
1. remove magic find from the game : p
2. remove DR
3. make all legendary weapons account bound
4. link up all cities chats together
5. Add the “display my own name” option
6. Make the trading system more “human”, alive. (trade window…)

X. Make my whole team think about more creative rewards than the omnipresent white/blue/green/rare/exotic useless gear :/
Y: Add fighting factions (player vs player)
Z: Mounts

korgoth.5924:

make an Oculus rift version of the game…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBylGcvRuek

buy the dev kit arena net.. its only like 400 bucks lol

^This. Oculus. Rift. Mode.

“What’s the first thing you’re going to do?”

If it hasn’t been said already:

Quit. It’s a thankless job.