Guild Wars 2

Those guidelines are great to have! I’m way excited to get started on this thread. Here’s what I’ve been working on so far:

Make the Personality System Matter:

Emotes should vary based on your personality.

• The downside is that there are ten personality types. This would require a distinct effort at expanding the emotes system, because each one presently in the game would require nine variations.
• Solution: Hold a contest. List the ten personality types (or link to the wiki) and the emotes available, then ask for email submissions. Have a community leader type person select the best, then all you have to do is submit it to the proper editors to make sure there’s nothing inappropriate or misspelt in the final batch, so you don’t have to slog through all the entries. Winning IS the reward. Immortalize the winners somewhere on the website and they get to see their emote go in-game.

Personality-bound titles

• Maybe temporary based on current personality or maybe permanent. I can see arguments both ways. I think it would be a great starter title, and my preference would be for one that changes based on a character’s current personality.
• This might be hard to implement, since titles are account bound and I don’t know if there would be a simple way to introduce either version of this. Certainly achieving a permanent title seems like the easier option to implement.

Personality influenced drops

• I would lean toward this impacting cosmetic drops only, and only when multiple versions of one item may drop- notably like the three elemental back pieces in Zephyr Sanctum. This would work if the primary personality trait made a slight difference in which one dropped, and not in actual drop rates. I think this would need to be included in the patch notes when it does happen, so that people may plan accordingly.
• This would not exclude the chance at (in my example) any of the three back pieces dropping, it would just be a slightly higher chance that one of the three could drop. So it wouldn’t be like “Oh, I’ll play on my character who has Charm as the primary stat and be guaranteed the Wind Catcher.” Your Charm-based character could still get any of the three.

Make the Order Decision Matter:

Ranks within Orders

• Ranks could grant new titles. (Titles are such an inexpensive way to show progress, in my opinion!) Again, you could offer a contest for naming these ranks.
• Ranks could be obtained by doing extended quests for their Order- I’m thinking something on par with the monthly quests, but not linked to it. Maybe have a daily and monthly Order quest. This would need to be character-based, which would then motivate people to log in on more characters. Or maybe it could be account bound and characters in each Order would contribute to those quests. (Higher ranking characters could earn more “points” for these quests, maybe.)
• Order rank should be long-term, not something that can happen in a week.

Add tiered Order-based progression

• Armor skins, based on obtaining ranks within the Orders. Maybe even just back pieces and/or gloves.
• If this is too costly, new weapon skins for progressing through the Order ranks shouldn’t be out of the question.
• Add access to soulbound or account bound Order exclusive dyes at the top rank.
• Maybe the top rank should award access to a full set of armor skins. Again, I can see how this might not be cost-efficient, but the upside is that it could be a pretty major gold sink.

Some additional thoughts I’ve had regarding horizontal progression and the living story: The LS would be a great place to add rewards like black lion chest keys, exclusive dyes (maybe a choice between 3), a black lion ticket on occasion, hair/makeover kits, namechange contracts- any number of cosmetic-type things that are not back-slot or skins that otherwise take up space.

And speaking of skins that take up space… Wardrobe. Reusable skins. (I’m sure other people will have much more developed ideas about this, I just wanted to add my voice to the throng.)

Miniatures need a better display system. I should, at the very least, be able to flag one or two items not to be deposited with “deposit all” instead of using one of my bag slots for those items.

I put this in the other thread, but since this is a new thread specifically for horizontal profession, I’m reposting.

I think it wouldn’t hurt to bring back the guild wars 1 book system for the DEs.
Each map has a book available for it from an NPC. Inside each book is a list of each DE for that area. People take these books, do DEs and turn the full or partially filled books in for money and karma, maybe laurels, and  progress towards a new skin for gear or progress towards a piece of ascended armor. Perhaps an NPC can carry one of each type of armor and weapons. When X number of points/tokens/laurels are reached from turning in books, a player can choose an item from the NPC.  The more of the book that is filled in, the better the rewards are.
To keep people from repeatedly doing the starter maps, add a new daily. This daily would be to do X number of events in X  level map, such as do X events in a level 60-70 map. Using levels instead of particular maps would help to keep the people from zerging the events and spread them out. 
This would allow people to work on filling out the books at their own rate. They can do the maps on the days it is on the daily or do it on their own on other days. If there is a bonus to turning a filled book in on the day of the daily, they can fill it up over time and hold on to it and turn it in when done and on that daily. They can carry multiple copies of one book if they want to repeat events to fill books up.
The book system would have several advantages. 
1) pull people out of the starter zones and into higher level maps.
2) get people doing DEs they haven’t done before
3) keep them from farming the same event over and over to fill a book as the book only counts one per book. 
4) if they have multiple copies of a book, they can redo events to fill one page of each book they have. 
5) the Devs don’t have to rework the rewards of all the events, it can be done with the rewards a filled book gives. 
6) if filled books give better rewards, then this would encourage people group up to do the group events that are ignored now. 
7) it would give people another way to get ascended gear, by playing the game. 

Hi Chris!

First and foremost I want to thank you for your time in initiating and speaking with us all on this CDI. Character progression is something I’m relatively passionate about in games, and I’ve truly enjoyed reading everyone’s ideas and your responses in the other tread, and I’m happy to contribute to this one.

Horizontal progression:

There are two (somewhat related) topics I’d like to talk about that I think are very exciting and interesting ways to expand upon horizontal progression and really toss things up in the meta.

Topic 1: Horizontal Progression in the form of Sub-Classes/A Job System

You’ve stated a few times in a couple different ways that the Anet team has been discussing the potential of Horizontal progression in the form of a type of job system or “sub-classes” if you will.

This in my opinion is an excellent idea, and I would love to see something like this implemented in GW2. I think this is one of the best possible ways to expand upon horizontal progression. This is one of the reasons to why I have now participated in this CDI. I want to weigh in on this topic a bit more with my expectations/ideas for a system such as this.

Below, are three things that I would like to highlight regarding a potential job or Sub-Class System:

1: Further fleshing out the roles of “Control, Damage, Support” for each of the classes

In a lot of interviews with devs before this game came out, it was stated that GW2 wanted to do away with the original holy trinity of MMOs, and replace it with a trinity of Control, Damage, and Support. I feel like in the current meta of the game, this is new trinity is barely existent in PvE content. Most of this content is easier the faster you burn something down, so there is a very heavy reliance on DPS (even Tequatle is literally just a 15 minute DPS check with other mechanics thrown in). This is something I would LOVE to see expanded upon in the form of a Sub-class system, or heck, even without a sub-class sytem. New traits, new skills, new passive bonuses that the player has the choice to have active/slotted that can buff one of the three roles. This sort of leads into my second point.

2: New exclusive skills to each job (both weapon, utility, and passive).

This is touched a bit more on the next section, but new exclusive skills would really mix the meta up, and make it feel like No two Warriors/Thieves/Mesmers/etc are the same (which again, makes the game so much more engaging in my opinion)

3: Sub-Class development shouldn’t end with selecting a sub-class
This portion of my opinion might come under fire a bit because a lot of the GW2 community has lot of people don’t want things to feel too grindy (which is a completely fair and valid point). I still think there should be ways developing a sub-class furthar upon selection. A skill tree that uses your skill points would probably not be the way to go on this considering that makes it ALL about grind. Instead, perhaps, your sub-class or job could earn sub-class or job exp based on activities that the job performs well.

For the sake of example, suppose a thief has the Sub-Class “Nightshade” — a support based subclass that focuses on stealthing, healing, and buffing itself and its allies with the sacrifice of some DPS. This player should earn “Nightshade” exp by Stealthing, healing, and buffing it’s allies.

As the Sub-Class/Job increases in level, new passive and slot-able skills become available.

Topic 2: Horizontal Progression in the form of new weapon skills (not new weapons)

Some have mentioned new weapons, which is great and I’d still like to see, but I’m talking about multiple sets of skills for each 1 – 5 slot on each weapon. New skills for each weapon would increase build diversity exponentially, and it would make creating a build so much more engaging. There would be new combos to figure out, more diversity in combat — I’m sure there would be new animations etc. Generally speaking I think this another item for Horizontal progression that would be extremely healthy for the game, and the game’s meta. This can even tie back to sub-classes — certain sub-classes could have some exclusive weapon skills. The mixing and matching of weapon skills would be very engaging.

There are times where if I’m running a certain build, some of my weapon skills feel 90% invalidated. For example, take Death Blossom on the Thief D/D set-up. If you’re running a back-stab build for maximum power and crit damage, this skill is virtually worthless. It is semi okay for AoE, but if I want to do that, I’ll just switch to Short bow. I’m not saying it needs to be another raw damaging ability — but I’d hope to at least see something useful in that slot.

I never want to feel like because of my build, one of my core abilities in 1-5 is invalidated. This can be alleviated by adding multiple skills per weapon slot.

Guhracie.3419:

Those guidelines are great to have! I’m way excited to get started on this thread. Here’s what I’ve been working on so far:

Make the Personality System Matter:

A lot of interesting potential there . I’m trying to decide if it a plus or minus that Personality can shift over time when held up against your suggestions. I think its a plus. Your emotes would shift with you, and if players discovered they had a favorite amongst the drops they wanted to get but were the wrong Personality, they could shift themselves to that type before farming in earnest.

Make the Order Decision Matter:

More good stuff. Only thing I would immediately add is as you climb in rank, you gain access to more information about your order. Maybe clickies in their headquarters, or maybe some sort of expansion to the story sub-panel of the Hero-panel.

The idea of lore being (part of) the reward for working up through an Order appeals to me lot.

And…

• Add access to soulbound or account bound Order exclusive dyes at the top rank.

THAT is unbelievably SEXY and I wantses it. Wantses it bad. The Precious!!

Many awesome ideas so far!

Something that would help me as a reader: Try to make one suggestion at a time.

The thread will be open for a long time still, so more focused posts could make sure that each of your individual ideas get some more attention.

This is probably the main step that needs to be taken before cosmetics become an organized progression.

• Make skins Into an Easy to Use Collection
  This is one area I was extremely surprised that Anet is years behind the current MMO standards. DCUO is the prime example of how cosmetics should be handled. Having individual items with individual looks feels like nothing more than a reason to sell more bag slots. When I get an item, I should be able to use a transmutation stone to unlock the skin. once. I’m not talking about having skins like in the achievement panel or the pvp locker. I should be able to right click an arrow next to an equipped item & see a window of my skins, like the skill bar. then I can just click the one I want to currently use. Anything else just seems like a waste of UI space & time. This is a current MMO convention.
  I added a mock-up of this UI system below. The items you’ve unlocked should fill up from the top down, as to get rid of unnecessary scrolling. The reason I think this UI is better than the current lockers is that it is easier to use & requires less clicks. Currently the PvP/Achievement Locker requires:

• open locker>scroll to find item>double click>open inventory>double click item>open hero panel>drag item to skin window>click ok.

Whereas it could be:

• Open hero panel>click on item arrow>scroll to fin item>click item

The biggest horizontal progression device for me would be proper implementation of a cosmetic appearance system. I know it’s supposedly in the cards, but it’s still a huge deal. In all honestly, GW2 could borrow Lord of the Rings Online’s cosmetics systems lock, stock and barrel and I wouldn’t complain one bit. LOTRO also shows that a game with a built in cash shop can easily be profitable without the use of silly transmutation crystals. (for those unaware, in addition to offering exclusively store bought cosmetic appearance items, LOTRO has multiple cosmetic outfit tabs for each character which a player can purchase more of as well as a wardrobe that holds purely cosmetic versions of items which a player can purchase more room in).

I’m also greatly intrigued by the multi class or class specialization ideas discussed in the Vertical Progression thread. It’s sort of tough to see how it would work in a trinityless game like GW2, but maybe that’s actually the only place where it could work given that with specific roles comes specific requirements for min maxing your class anyway.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also sorry for the delay, but I have been out and about with the family.

Chris

No sir. That is not allowed! /nogitup

Progression seems like the best opportunity for getting players to repopulate dead areas.

People love progression, because they feel like they’re building upon what you’ve already done, meaning your previous activities are important.

Horizontal character progression is one way to draw players back to low player density maps. Other forms of progression could be used as well, such as vertical (personally I’d avoid this one), lore or story progression.

High Level Ideas
Sticking to the topic of Horizontal progression as a high level plan, the approach that seems most logical is to provide numerous goals that can be exclusively obtained in each map. It’ll be important to keep these goals achievable for casual players with multiple alts as well as providing slightly longer term goals too for people who stick to a main.

In order to save on implementation time utilizing existing content would be a good place to start. Designing around dynamic events, the open world, instancing of existing maps, NPC DE triggers, etc.

Providing varying degrees of difficulty for obtaining horizontal progression should be a goal as well. Additionally varying the design of party size should be considered. Some progression should be designed around solo play, while other content can be designed for 2, 3, or 5 character parties (potentially larger parties if it ever makes sense to do that).

It’ll be important to start off implementing medium and short term horizontal progression goals, as there are already long and super long goals via gear.

Lower Level Details
Skill hunting seems like one of the best places to start. Implementing skill hunting, perhaps with the 1, 3, 6 skill point unlock requirement is a far superior solution than leaving skills already unlocked with a 25 skill point fee. If there needs to be more skill point sinks than it should be done another way. Skill hunting should by and large be a short term goal.

Basic implementation ideas on skill hunting
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406669

Something to be open to is the idea of blending horizontal and veritical progression. This was done in Guild Wars and as GW2 got closer to release you (ANet) did a good job at finding a balance for it. Numerous PvE only skills were unlocked horizontally, but could be powered up via title progression. The title progression was on an exponential curve, but eventually max power came early on in the title progression. There were a some mistakes, especially with Ursan Blessing, but the system was continuously refined, and since you refined it, it might be something to consider.

Guild Halls and Hall progression are another important classic Guild Wars horizontal progression system. Building upon it would be fun for Guilds. It’d be important to allow small Guilds to progress at a similar pace as larger Guilds. This is the major challenge. So perhaps you link Guild Hall progression to different parts of game content. Guild Missions could be a small portion of it, but shouldn’t be too big a part, because over time this could alienate newer Guilds. Something new could be added similar to Guild Missions, challenges of varying difficulties that don’t have time gates. Linking it to Guild Missions until the other Guild Hall Progression systems seems like a logical starting point.

Home instance progression is another potential area, but honestly I don’t know what the interest would be en masse. There’s no quick travel to the home instance, and it’s more of a selfish thing like the HoM from Guild Wars. If however, home instance progression required group play somewhat like the HoM progression did, it might be interesting.

Build diversity unlocks/skin unlock progression are potentially the most economy impacting, but would be highly desired by the players who don’t prefer doing the trading post. Allowing for Runes/sigils/stat combinations/skins to unlocked in a similar fashion to how the achievement chest skins behave is something pretty much everyone would want to play for. Obviously, because there are so many runes/sigils/stat combinations that aren’t very useful people would only go after the useful ones at first, but as you (ANet) make the other gear more useful through changes and the improvement of the support and control combat roles the other gear unlocks would become more desirable.

Guhracie.3419:

Make the Personality System Matter:

I totally agree. But I think your personality should change your idle animation & in-combat yells. Honestly I wish there were an entire conversation/personality system that could be used for in-town DEs.. I think that would be so cool. I mean.. noone goes to the cities. why not make a whole other type of non-combat adventure system for towns.. where your personality makes a difference.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I don’t give a skrit’s rump what other player’s think of my characters’ outfits or titles. I like having nice armor and weapons for my own enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. My ascended weapons, for example, have been reskinned with dragon or dreamthistle designs because of my personal taste and aesthetic. No one looking at my characters would know I’m using ascended equipment.

Mini-pets? Nah — they keep disappearing whenever I change areas, and they just add to screen clutter and lag.

Titles? Maybe, but the current title vary from the meaningless (Golden) to the wildly-difficult.

Fancy weapons? There’s so many legendaries in game, and they just clutter the screen for me.

For me, horizontal progression involves actual gameplay: going new places, having new skills, having new experiences. I want progression that is meaningful without it being a power gain. No more levels — instead, give me more things to accomplish, more places to see, more interesting monsters to perforate with my bow. Give me a home instance that reflects my accomplishments in a meaningful way.

My post from page 2 on the original Vertical progression page, before we got the guidance questions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/2#post3368755

StriderShinryu.6923:

The biggest horizontal progression device for me would be proper implementation of a cosmetic appearance system. I know it’s supposedly in the cards, but it’s still a huge deal. In all honestly, GW2 could borrow Lord of the Rings Online’s cosmetics systems lock, stock and barrel and I wouldn’t complain one bit. LOTRO also shows that a game with a built in cash shop can easily be profitable without the use of silly transmutation crystals. (for those unaware, in addition to offering exclusively store bought cosmetic appearance items, LOTRO has multiple cosmetic outfit tabs for each character which a player can purchase more of as well as a wardrobe that holds purely cosmetic versions of items which a player can purchase more room in).

LotRO has the best wardrobe system… tabs for setting and selecting wardrobe looks, and a tab for armor that sets your stats. The best system I’ve ever seen for CRPG armor.

I quit that game when it went F2P/P2W, as a warning to ANet.

Knaifhogg.5964:

1. Fix all the paths nobody wants to play. Take a look at length, rewards, difficulty, amount of silver mobs, boss difficulty (seriously take a look at their HP) and make the paths about 20 min long (could go for every path in the game).

Why does ‘nobody’ want to play these paths? Is it because it is tedious or hard? Or is it because there is something easier and faster available? I guess it depends on the dungeon. But if they were all as short and easy as CoF1, dungeons would start to be boring for me. (Someone who plays a variety of dungeons and paths because I like some challenge) I guess there is no real optimal difficulty for a dungeon. But the rewards could be balanced up to each individual difficulty.

Knaifhogg.5964:

2. Add vanquishing to dungeons. A longer version of the path (provided you’ve made them about 20 minutes now!) with more mobs where you kill everything for a better reward. Ascended possible reward, new cool vanquishing only items (fractals has its weapons).

I like this idea. Perhaps they could add this as a 3rd ‘mode’. Story/Explorable (may need a new name – Adventure perhaps?) and Vanquish (or the new explorable) mode.

This vanquishable version could have a non-linear approach with a random spawn of individual dungeon bosses and events. Or perhaps it doesn’t have the bosses and is more like the open world, but balanced for a small group. (Like GW1 vanquishes)

I suppose these vanquishes could lead to some sort of progression. Some ideas:

• Unlock vanquish mode through story and all explorable paths.
• Grant a vanquishing title to those who vanquished all of the dungeons.
• Grant a dungeon themed cosmetic item upon completing a vanquish. (Tonic/item skin/dye/emote/ideas aplenty in this thread)
• Grant a dungeon themed summoning stone.
• Fill a book with different vanquishes, that you can turn in for progression or wealth at a trader. To make it repeatable, but wouldn’t result in farming the same one over and over until burnout.
• Have the type of foes you fought in those dungeons respond to your accomplishments in the future. So after completing Cathedral of Flames, some of the flame legion charr would recognize you and say things like: ’That’s the cathedrals bane! I want revenge!’ or ’I’ve seen that weapon before, be careful, this is no ordinary meat.’

Things I would like to see:
- Miniatures becoming more desireable (see my signature of a suggestion thread of mine)
- Legendary armor sets
- more cultural armor sets (T4+)
- being able to mix and match legendary weapon effects. I would like to use my juggernauts metallic effect while wielding Eternity

I’m building upon my previous thread post of higher level concepts found here

Skill hunting
As previously mentioned skill hunting is one form of horizontal progression that could be implemented with existing content to help with repopulating zones. It should be more of a short term goal largely, and be achievable for alts. This will help facilitate players experiencing more build diversity throughout different professions.

Potential Implementations
Using NPC dynamic event triggers to start a 10 minute dynamic event chain could lead to an instance version of the zone which could play similarly to a living story quest.

Or talking to an NPC could take the player/players to an instance where they do a puzzle and after completing the puzzle they leave the instance arriving at a part of the zone that normally isn’t accessible otherwise (like underground or the top of a tower or something).

Or some easier skill hunts could be similar to skill point acquistions where the player communes in a place of knowledge or fights a skilled opponent to determine their worthiness to learn a new skill.

There’s numerous options, and with the examples above you can mix and match anything.

When implementing the new content though one of the MOST IMPORTANT things to remember is immersion, and to be sure to tie the content in to previous game history/lore, current events, living story, and add in foreshadowing too.

After the player learns the skill, they can unlock the skill via a 1, 3, 6 skill point investment. This will be a small skill point sink, but the way healing skills are done (25 skill point investment) should be avoided because those skills that players should be using frequently and 25 skill points is a lot to people who play more casually. Build diversity should be just as accessible as it was in Guild Wars 1.

In my view there are two sides to Horizontal progression that need to be addressed in Guild Wars 2. Skills/Traits Progression and Cosmetic Progression. Below are my proposed ideas for each.

Skills/Traits Progression
The most important thing in progression is the feeling of advancement and progress of a character in the world. Horizontal progression needs to provide the feeling of advancement and progress not by making them stronger but by increasing versatility. The most important thing that needs to be added to the game is a constant stream of new heals/utilities/elites and weapons to each profession.

Heals and Elites are situational and can be added with minor impacts to the dominant meta of the game. They can be the backbone of the skills added (maybe once every 2 months). Utilities can change the meta dramatically depending on design so they can be the next step in the skill additions (maybe every 4 months). Finally weapon skills have to go hand in hand with new traits that synergize well, this is the bread and butter of combat in GW2 it will completely redesign the meta and open up new builds for every profession (maybe every 6 months).

Cosmetic Progression
Second, we need a better tracking system for our armor sets. I understand that the transmutation stone system as well as the armors sold in the gem-store were designed as a monetization system for the game. I will propose an alternate method I think is more robust, much simpler.

There are several complaints regarding armor sets (either in game, or gem store). The main ones are that once you purchase a set in the gem-store you can only have one, if you only wanted one piece of the armor you need to store the rest, and you cannot reuse it in a new character. Other people feel that there are a lot of armors added to the gem-store and none added in game. Finally a lot of people think that it is not a good idea to use the transmutation stones as they destroy one of the skins used.

As many have sugested the best option is to have serchable/organizable wardrobe where we can store our armor sets. It could be organized by armor piece, or type, or by date added for example. While many people have failed to notice is how will this decision impact the current gem-store armor and their transmutation monetization. First, I would suggest that any armor that was purchased from the gem-store goes directly to the wardrobe. Second, a new gem-store item would be added that takes an armor piece, converts it to an armor skin and deposits it in the wardrobe. Once in the wardrobe any armor might be taken out as a transmutable skin and mixed with any other statted piece of the same type, similarly to how the HoM and Achivement Point skins function currently.

This would add incentive for ANET to add armors both to the gem-store and to the game directly. The new stones could be sold for 100 gems each, or a pack of 6 for 500 gems. This would make transforming any armor in the game to a permanent skins making the new wardrobe system just as monetizable as the current transmutation system.

Sytherek.7689:

Perhaps I’m weird, but I don’t give a skrit’s rump what other player’s think of my characters’ outfits or titles. I like having nice armor and weapons for my own enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. My ascended weapons, for example, have been reskinned with dragon or dreamthistle designs because of my personal taste and aesthetic. No one looking at my characters would know I’m using ascended equipment.

Mini-pets? Nah — they keep disappearing whenever I change areas, and they just add to screen clutter and lag.

Titles? Maybe, but the current title vary from the meaningless (Golden) to the wildly-difficult.

Fancy weapons? There’s so many legendaries in game, and they just clutter the screen for me.

For me, horizontal progression involves actual gameplay: going new places, having new skills, having new experiences. I want progression that is meaningful without it being a power gain. No more levels — instead, give me more things to accomplish, more places to see, more interesting monsters to perforate with my bow. Give me a home instance that reflects my accomplishments in a meaningful way.

I agree 100% with this. Horizontal progression in GW was capping Elite Skills, learning new and interesting skills, and then coming up with unique builds for those skills. You also had Heroes Ascent and GvG which allowed for you to display that progression in the form of Emotes for HA and Guild Rank for GvG.

I’d also like to see new stories in areas that we haven’t been to in GW2 yet. Exploring Cantha, Elona, and the Far Shiverpeaks in the GW expansions were great(and they added new and interesting stories to do also). We also were introdiced to the “Greens” when they added Sorrow’s Furnace to Prophecies. This gave everyone something to try to get. They expanded the “Greens” to almost all of the areas in Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North. Yes these items were RNG but it made it fun to try and get the one that you really wanted to be able to show it off.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Hi Chris!

Horizontal progression:

There are two (somewhat related) topics I’d like to talk about that I think are very exciting and interesting ways to expand upon horizontal progression and really toss things up in the meta.

Topic 1: Horizontal Progression in the form of Sub-Classes/A Job System

You’ve stated a few times in a couple different ways that the Anet team has been discussing the potential of Horizontal progression in the form of a type of job system or “sub-classes” if you will.

This in my opinion is an excellent idea, and I would love to see something like this implemented in GW2. I think this is one of the best possible ways to expand upon horizontal progression. This is one of the reasons to why I have now participated in this CDI. I want to weigh in on this topic a bit more with my expectations/ideas for a system such as this.

Below, are three things that I would like to highlight regarding a potential job or Sub-Class System:

1: Further fleshing out the roles of “Control, Damage, Support” for each of the classes

In a lot of interviews with devs before this game came out, it was stated that GW2 wanted to do away with the original holy trinity of MMOs, and replace it with a trinity of Control, Damage, and Support. I feel like in the current meta of the game, this is new trinity is barely existent in PvE content. Most of this content is easier the faster you burn something down, so there is a very heavy reliance on DPS (even Tequatle is literally just a 15 minute DPS check with other mechanics thrown in). This is something I would LOVE to see expanded upon in the form of a Sub-class system, or heck, even without a sub-class sytem. New traits, new skills, new passive bonuses that the player has the choice to have active/slotted that can buff one of the three roles. This sort of leads into my second point.

2: New exclusive skills to each job (both weapon, utility, and passive).

This is touched a bit more on the next section, but new exclusive skills would really mix the meta up, and make it feel like No two Warriors/Thieves/Mesmers/etc are the same (which again, makes the game so much more engaging in my opinion)

3: Sub-Class development shouldn’t end with selecting a sub-class
This portion of my opinion might come under fire a bit because a lot of the GW2 community has lot of people don’t want things to feel too grindy (which is a completely fair and valid point). I still think there should be ways developing a sub-class furthar upon selection. A skill tree that uses your skill points would probably not be the way to go on this considering that makes it ALL about grind. Instead, perhaps, your sub-class or job could earn sub-class or job exp based on activities that the job performs well.

For the sake of example, suppose a thief has the Sub-Class “Nightshade” — a support based subclass that focuses on stealthing, healing, and buffing itself and its allies with the sacrifice of some DPS. This player should earn “Nightshade” exp by Stealthing, healing, and buffing it’s allies.

As the Sub-Class/Job increases in level, new passive and slot-able skills become available.

Topic 2: Horizontal Progression in the form of new weapon skills (not new weapons)

Some have mentioned new weapons, which is great and I’d still like to see, but I’m talking about multiple sets of skills for each 1 – 5 slot on each weapon. New skills for each weapon would increase build diversity exponentially, and it would make creating a build so much more engaging. There would be new combos to figure out, more diversity in combat — I’m sure there would be new animations etc. Generally speaking I think this another item for Horizontal progression that would be extremely healthy for the game, and the game’s meta. This can even tie back to sub-classes — certain sub-classes could have some exclusive weapon skills. The mixing and matching of weapon skills would be very engaging.

There are times where if I’m running a certain build, some of my weapon skills feel 90% invalidated. For example, take Death Blossom on the Thief D/D set-up. If you’re running a back-stab build for maximum power and crit damage, this skill is virtually worthless. It is semi okay for AoE, but if I want to do that, I’ll just switch to Short bow. I’m not saying it needs to be another raw damaging ability — but I’d hope to at least see something useful in that slot.

I never want to feel like because of my build, one of my core abilities in 1-5 is invalidated. This can be alleviated by adding multiple skills per weapon slot.

Love these ideas !

Hello, here are some ideas for horizontal progression i came up with:
Colored titles
Make titles have colors like item rarity (white, blue… pink, purple). This would actually make rarer titles mean something and make them a better goal for players to work towards. A legendary title should be really difficult to get.
More emotes
Like the zaishen emote in Guild Wars 1. As you keep progressing your emote gets upgraded to look cooler.
New rune sets
Like runes of perplexity, but account bound. Add ascended runes for pve? (They dont need to be better than exotic they could just have a visual effect)
Dungeon progression
Right now you can do all the dungeons whenever you want to. If the dungeons were gated from easiest to most difficult there would be more incentive for players to do all the dungeons.

Nike.2631:

Just wanted to share my first test for “Is it vertical or horizontal?”

If it will let an 80th level character come back to Queensdale and kill a plainswurm one-tenth of a seconds faster than they can now… it ain’t horizontal!

So what if (I’m always eager to bend rules)…:

There would be 9 new skills called rituals. They could be learned by going through elaborate quests that concern some exploration, some grind and some challenge. All in all, getting 1 ritual shouldn’t take more than 10 hours. But getting all 9 would be quite a long grind. (Though this grind could be part of everyday play, so over time you’d find yourself nearly there on most tracks)

These rituals all have a similar functionality:

- Take 5 seconds to perform.
- Give a buff (possibly all defensive to prevent a clear winner?) in a very wide area. (2000 range)
- Last 5 minutes.

And here comes the neat bit:

- We can only have one ritual on our skillbar at a time. It comes as an F5 skill.
- There can only be one ritual active on a player at a time. (The most recently cast one in the area, or the one you own)

It ‘could’ be vertical progression in that players with a ritual unlocked are better at defeating that plainswurm. But there wouldn’t be a big gap between those who have one ritual unlocked and those who have all nine. Yet it offers a lot more progression for those that desire all 9 for flexibility. In addition to that, only one member in the team would need a ritual.

Now I am not necessarily in favor of such a system. But I do think that this type of progression could be part of the horizontal progression discussion. Since it is in my mind about 90% horizontal and 10% vertical. And mostly harmless in the vertical direction through it’s implementation.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Right off the top of my head I would like to see soulbound to be banished from GW2. By all means keep account bound and turn everything soulbound to account bound on use.

It would make altoholics happy and you can’t play GW2 without having multiple alts. GW1 vets you know what I am talking about.

The only demographic I see being hurt are the TP flippers. IMO GW2 wasn’t supposed to be “Stock Market 2”.

I’m an altoholic and I have no problem with soulbound equipment. Weapons and armour to be clear.

Anything and everything else, though, should be completely tradeable. Edit: except dyes.

roflcopter airlines.7125:

Colored titles
Make titles have colors like item rarity (white, blue… pink, purple). This would actually make rarer titles mean something and make them a better goal for players to work towards. A legendary title should be really difficult to get.

I like this one! At the moment I just see text, I don’t read the titles. But colours could work.

roflcopter airlines.7125:

More emotes
Like the zaishen emote in Guild Wars 1. As you keep progressing your emote gets upgraded to look cooler.

I’m thinking it could be a /flex emote that gets more and more elaborate. Starting with a simple flex, then adding some acrobatic moves, an eastern martial arts pre-flex focus, ending up with a spiritual roar of some creature. It would start being a 2 seconds animation on the spot, and eventually be a 7 seconds long event that moves further from the starting spot.

roflcopter airlines.7125:

New rune sets
Like runes of perplexity, but account bound. Add ascended runes for pve? (They dont need to be better than exotic they could just have a visual effect)

What type of visual effect are you talking about? And could the visual effects be part of an armor upgrade instead of based on the rune? Since I wouldn’t want my combat performance to suffer from my aethetic desires.

roflcopter airlines.7125:

Dungeon progression
Right now you can do all the dungeons whenever you want to. If the dungeons were gated from easiest to most difficult there would be more incentive for players to do all the dungeons.

And then it would be harder to play with your friends that haven’t past the gates yet. I would have to say no to this idea.

Edit: I created this post as its own thread but a forum mod merged it with this one despite it being focused on vertical progression when this thread is about horizontal progression, so forgive it for being off-topic.

A question I’d like answered is where infusions are headed and if they are going to be a continued form of equipment progression, what is being done to address the flexibility in changing or upgrading them?

Early on we only had 4 types to choose from:
+4 to a stat
+5 to a stat
+5 AR
+5 AR and +5 to a stat

This made the choice fairly simple one. You would stick with one of the weaker ones until you could afford the one which combined the stat bonus with agony resistance.

However the introduction of WvW infusions started to complicate things. Now you had a choice between infusions for WvW or Fractals.

More recently infused items got a special infusion slot instead of their built-in agony resist. You can now combine agony resist infusions to gain an “unlimited” amount, but you cannot upgrade infusions on your items unless you extract the old one first.

Up next? A potential +7 stat infusion we have seen in livestreams and in item codes.

And every time you want to change or upgrade your infusion the only way is to destroy your old one or spend 250 gems per item to extract them.

So I hope you can see my concern with this. Something as costly as infusions is not a good form of progression inflexible as it is.

There are already some very cool ideas, my favorites are:

sub-class system, I’d love to specialize my characters even more. The only problem I see here is, without changing some core mechanics, the meta will stay at max-dps.
In my opinion Defiant is a really, really bad system and makes crowd control basically useless. Unless they won’t change some core mechanics to make control and support needed in dungeons, I don’t want to see sub-classes ingame, after that, I’d love to.

Account-wide bag, this should be something that starts small and can grow when you complete certain challenges. This would be really cool for those who like to do many dungeons with their alts, but don’t want to refill buff-food or dungeon potions on every character. It would also make tools like the Copper-Based Salvage Machine better since you don’t need to go to the bank every time you need it. Another thing would be tonics, especially the endless ones and well, basically everything that’s account- or unbound (also minis ).

Skin wardrobe, we really need something like this. Maybe not for every skin, but at least for those from the living story. It really sucks to have one really cool locking skin, but 3,4,5… alts that would look great with it.

Account-bound dyes, this has always been a great discussion, but since the introduction of new limited and very rare dyes, it got alot worse for us alt-o-holics. No matter how great the dye looks, 200+ gold is very expensive and most of us can’t afford that for more than one character. One possible solution would be to make special dyes account-wide and the normal ones (which you can get ingame) not.

A slot for Minipets, this has been suggested so often, there’s no way you haven’t heard of it
This is really a must-have to make minis worth more than something to collect. They should reappear after changing zones and even after dying.
Personally I think this slot should be account-wide, mostly because I want to show off my Liadri at all my Characters
An approach could be, that it’s a dropdown to select a mini out of your collection, so you don’t even need to have it in your inventory. That would also allow to use the same mini on multiple character.

now onto some personal ideas:

dungeon difficulty
Even though many players would say dungeons are hard enough and some even too hard,
there are also some players like me, that think even Arah and FotM LV 49 is easy.
my Idea

• New paths after dungeon master
• DON’T just increase HP and Attack
• new mechanics which require more coordination
• Bosses have different stages where you need different mechanics
• different ways to solve a path, e.g. one with more Jumping, one with a Labyrinth, one with some positions that must be defended at the same time etc.
• Instead of just a better reward at the end, let there be a better chance for exotics or maybe even ascended weapons/armor
  I know many people will claim that this sucks because then bad players can’t get as much rewards as everyone else, but in all seriousness, this is already the case. How often do you see a casual doing Arah Path 4? Not very often. Some dungeons are very easy, some are very hard. And in my opinion the good players need harder content.
  Not hard as in “as soon as the mobs see you, you’re dead. And oh, they now have 1 billion HP”, but hard as in requires better teamwork and has difficult mechanics.

PvE Arena with titles
It would be really cool to have some kind of arena (maybe an instance) where you can fight against really hard enemies. You could include the ones from Queens Jubilee and add some in between for the start. After that you could add one new boss every month.
Maybe even make it some bosses class-based, e.g. a Boss which requires you to block a certain skill to break his defense and damage him, or a different one where he blocks more and more attacks the longer you fight him (and maybe damages you when he blocks) and you need to stealth to make him more inattentive so he doesn’t block that much anymore.

The Lost Witch.7601:

So what if (I’m always eager to bend rules)…:

There would be 9 new skills called rituals. They could be learned by going through elaborate quests that concern some exploration, some grind and some challenge. All in all, getting 1 ritual shouldn’t take more than 10 hours. But getting all 9 would be quite a long grind. (Though this grind could be part of everyday play, so over time you’d find yourself nearly there on most tracks)

First off “difficulty to access” is a non-starter when determining if something is horizontal or vertical. More power is more power no matter how you got it .

Back when Magic: the Gathering was first getting started the designer let it be known he wasn’t too worried about the effect of some rare cards on play because “Nobody would buy so many card packs that they would have 4 of them to put in a single deck.”

Needless to say, he revised his opinion in light of the multi-million dollar industry he spawned . If there is a way to power, players WILL achieve it.

- We can only have one ritual on our skillbar at a time. It comes as an F5 skill.
- There can only be one ritual active on a player at a time. (The most recently cast one in the area, or the one you own)

It ‘could’ be vertical progression in that players with a ritual unlocked are better at defeating that plainswurm. But there wouldn’t be a big gap between those who have one ritual unlocked and those who have all nine. Yet it offers a lot more progression for those that desire all 9 for flexibility. In addition to that, only one member in the team would need a ritual.

The question isn’t about having 1 or 9 being more or less powerful than each other – you have internal tradeoffs once you’ve broken into that new tier of power. But it is a new and higher tier you’re describing. When you add an extra button without a take-away, its vertical. whether you rework it into the class from level 1 or think you’ve hidden it behind 21 hours of hardcore gameplay, its still vertical. Even defensive buffs/rituals speed up kills. Maybe not plainswurm kills, but Queen Plainsworm kills certainly (one of my favorite early Queensdale DEs ) because they mean you spend less time dodging or casting heals.

Now I am not necessarily in favor of such a system. But I do think that this type of progression could be part of the horizontal progression discussion. Since it is in my mind about 90% horizontal and 10% vertical. And mostly harmless in the vertical direction through it’s implementation.

As long as you’re clear it IS vertical, then I think there’s a fascinating conversation to be had there. Just maybe not in this thread . 10% vertical advancements are "mostly harmless "… that month. But over a year or three… not so harmless. That’s why is called “creep”. It’s sneaky. Like maybe adding another gear tier in 2016, it would be better to find solutions that don’t rely on vertical progression at all.

gotkitten ed.5318:

Maybe even make it some bosses class-based, e.g. a Boss which requires you to block a certain skill to break his defense and damage him, or a different one where he blocks more and more attacks the longer you fight him (and maybe damages you when he blocks) and you need to stealth to make him more inattentive so he doesn’t block that much anymore.

For this they could do like they did in Prophecies were to get out of the Crystal Desert you had to defeat your doppleganger and then you had to get to Glint by defeating “Aspects” of each class.

An unlock system for permanent, reusable runes and sigils.

DanteZero.9736:

I would like to see a greater focus on customizing armor appearances. As I understand it, every set of armor that is released has 10 versions which means a crap ton of resources time, money, and manpower are needed for a single set of armor. This may not seem feasible so why not aim for the ability to customize the appearances of the armor?

Is it possible to add variations of the armor E.G: female phoenix armor with sleeves on both arms instead of 1 sleeve on the right arm, or removing the floating bits of feather as an option? Anything that allows current existing armor sets to be customized beyond a simple degree of dye channels could be a very big draw to me. Personally, I’d love to be able to remove the floating feathers (not the ones already connected to each other) on the phoenix set.

Another option could be to the ability to add particle effects so that I can set a “theme” for armor sets. Unlocking the ability to add a single particle effect on a single piece of armor could be a very nice reward outlet and adding different types of particle effects such as glowing embers, glimmer snow, or bolts of lightning could change an armor set’s “theme.”

Imagine a set of armor with the grenth hood and the darkness particle effects seen on the sunless weapons. We’d end up looking a bit more like Liadri the Concealing Dark but hey, it’s a theme.

The focus I’d like to see for Anet’s stance on horizontal progression is customizability of what already exists. Or rather, if Anet can add 2-3 variants of certain armor pieces on armor sets without having to sink 2-3 times the resources to add it. It was mentioned before the helmets, shoulders, and gloves are the least resource intensive (cheapest) for artwork. Why not give us variations of these artwork where we unlock a base item and can further unlock additional variant artwork, much like alternate costumes/appearances found in fighting games?

I love this idea!

Building on that:

• New armors with texture slots. (Blank areas on the armor that would allow for different types of texture, like wool textures, rough jute, smooth leather.)

• Emblems. These would be like the guild emblem section of the guild armor and weapons, but not based on the guild you are in. (I don’t pick my guild based on the emblem, but I do really like the idea of wielding an emblem.) This would certainly be cool as a contest design too, since they are probably much easier to implement than community designed armors/weapons.

• Woodwork and metal polish. Currently many skins look pretty dull (which is ok for common weapons) because of the low contrast. (Pale wood and a dusty grey) Unfortunately, if I am looking for a somewhat realistic weapon design, and nothing over the top fancy, I am often restricted to these dull options. A colour change would go a long way here. (Perhaps we could go to a remote master weaponsmith that spawns after an event that can replace our softwooden parts with a dark brown/reddish mahogany for a fair(ly high) price. (This wouldn’t need to be implemented with existing weaponry in mind, but with items going forward!)

Hi,

i added most of these ideas at vertical progression topic, but i think it will fit more in here… so i will post it again with some additionals

Weapon Skill progression.

- problems:
1) always the same skills for more than a year…
2) some weapons at some profession are barely used
3) traits give some bonus to weapon you are currently using = it could be a problem with adding new types of weapons

- ideas:
1) make some progression in weapon skills? if im using staff, allow me to get more skills and allow me to choose which i want to use
- each skill from weapon slot could have 1-2 alternatives (tier2 and tier3) that you can learn by doing some set of events, by achieving mastery in weapon that you are using
- base skills can be achievable in the way they are now, but tier2 and tier3 of these skills could be achievable after lvl 80
- this would make a lot of diversity in builds and play style and would let you use current weapon skill system as a base

2) introduce more weapons types and make new types available to more professions
- new weapons: Crossbow, Sling, Throwing Spear, Halberd, Rapier, Scyth
- for a start, add one more weapon type per each class

3) redesign traits system so they would not be tight to weapons but to some class specific elements (like elementalist’s 4 elements and so on)

Armor progression
- problems:
1) Ascended is long term thing especially for our alts… but lets say that is fine for now.. what will we have next year ?
2) adding more armors = constant grind… we dont like grind, we want progression!!
3) ascended armors looks horrible… apparently ANet designers have no more ideas to create an armor set that ppl will put on and will go for, armor that will have better visual look than these we have already in game
4) armor sets are too easy to get – which makes them common (only thing which makes more trouble to get is arah set….)
5) no WvW specific armor that we can be proud of!!
- ideas:
1) more coloring options – sometimes 4 is not enought…
- allow to unlock some extra dye slots by doing some sort activities or using some transmutation technique
- you could state how many extra dye slots each armor could have (1-2 would be enought)
2) let us achieve some cosmetic progress on our ascended gear
- something like enchanting in Lineage2 but do not enchant stats of the weapon/armor but allow us to get nice glow at +5 but superior glow at +25
- add glow if all 6 peaces of armor are enchanted for more than +5 or something
3) Extend current 6 peaces armor set by 7th part – let say BELT or UNDERWEAR or even both!!!
- Introduce Ascended Runes and Sigils which will have 7th bonus coming with BELT or UNDERWEAR
- BELT/UNDERWEAR could have consumable slots (0 till rare type, 1 at exotic, 2 at ascended) which allow us turn on auto food usage without constant clicking every 30/60 minutes on it (especially for WvW when you are in fight)
4) introduce boss jewelery which will have some additional bonus besides standard stats
- something like Celestial ring of Shatterer or Berserker Amulet of Zaithan
5) and finally – legendary armor set
– something which we will go for in next 2-3 years to complete the whole set,
- this could be the final armor progression in game
- it must be long term, and possible, not related to luck of dropping precursors….
6) introduce some effects that can be set to weapon, which will not make it overpowered, but make it more usable in more situations and plaves
- add pernament +10% dmg bonus vs undead
- add pernament -10% dmg from undead etc
7) WvW specific armor set with awsome looking skin, something like Phoenix armor look at Human female elementalist
- introduce special vendor to buy them
- link this system with wvw ranks (example: at rank 100 allow to buy helmet, rank 300 – boots, 500 – gloves etc)
- make wvw ranks system mean more then nothing…
8) PvE/WvW Armor locker (similar to PvP)
- allow us to collect armor skins and after collect to use is as skin multiple times

Mini games!

I know one minigame i really love and like to see implemented on bigger scale – the bell choire from wintersday! Not only it’s fun, but “play your own music!” is like a small musical simulator! It really got me into trying to play songs i know using bells. Needless to say how happy i was when i found bells in my wintersday box to play when event is over:)

Character progression
- problems:
1) easy to get to lvl 80 – getting to lvl 80 means nothing
2) what to do at lvl 80? farm to get better armor, farm to get gold, farm to get legendary?
3) my alts never ended personal story because i didnt have to do it to progress to lvl 80
- ideas:
1) bound lvl progress to something more than just exp…
2) introduce some level transfer quests, or trials… at lvl 20,40,60,70,80
3) Maybe some subclass system ?
4) Or Grand Class system which will allow to achieve some greater specialization for example: Elementalist could go into one of the 4 elements specialization and become grand master in water or fire getting some power full spells
5) show WvW rank title to people on our own borderland (as an evolving title parallel with ranks)

thx, i hope some of these would be useful

Sytherek.7689:

LotRO has the best wardrobe system… tabs for setting and selecting wardrobe looks, and a tab for armor that sets your stats. The best system I’ve ever seen for CRPG armor.

I quit that game when it went F2P/P2W, as a warning to ANet.

Lotro’s system has a lot of problems. it requires inventory space in one fashion or another (including wardrobe slots) It requires keeping the items if you run out of wardrobe slots, it’s not quick.
DCUO has the best system where each time you put on a piece of gear it just “unlocks” the cosmetic & you can pick the look at any time from a drop-down on each piece.

DarksunG.9537:

Sytherek.7689:

LotRO has the best wardrobe system… tabs for setting and selecting wardrobe looks, and a tab for armor that sets your stats. The best system I’ve ever seen for CRPG armor.

Lotro’s system has a lot of problems. It requires inventory space in one fashion or another (including wardrobe slots) It requires keeping the items if you run out of wardrobe slots, it’s not quick.
DCUO has the best system where each time you put on a piece of gear it just “unlocks” the cosmetic & you can pick the look at any time from a drop-down on each piece.

Like most games, there’s a bit of pick and choose to get the “best” features all in one place.

DCUO does have better skin/slot management. On the other hand its locked by character (unless things have changes since I was there last) whereas LotRO’s wardrobe is account-wide and specifically lets you move looks across classes (my Captain’s plate-mail outfit for my Burglar never fails to amuse…)

And while DCUO’s is a little player-friendlier in its automatic accessibility, it needs to be said that the LotRO Wardrobe system does a truly superior job of being monetized without being offensively monetized. The basic model is perfectly adequate, and you usually don’t feel like you need to scrub down with soap after you decide to pay for an upgrade or a cash-shop outfit.

Guildwars 2 could learn a lot from examining both of those models more closely.

Personally, I think moving towards a pure HP model is going to be more difficult than some people imagine. Not without significant rework in the combat, skills and content systems.

For sure adding things like wardrobes, new skins and revamping rewards can help but ultimately people like to feel their character has evolved and moved on. Not just been able to wear prettier and shinier stuff.

This is where the weakness of GW2 becomes ever more apparent(certainly in PvE) where DPS is king and support and control are very much also rans.

Adding new skills, and methods of capture is indeed a great idea. However these skill are going to need to be useful if they are to move beyond the gotta get em all phase.

If they are DPS skills, people will expect them to be more powerful, if they are support/control skills people are going to expect them to be worth taking over the DPS meta.

All of which, unless content Is going to be trivialised even more will mean that content and encounters will need to be re-worked to ensure these new skills (especially support and control ones) are actually useful.

Basically, unless PvE is re-worked new skills are a temporary fix. An accelerant in the cycle of buff, nerf and power creep.

The other issue is that of build diversity and failure scenario’s. Thanks to a restricted skill set and focus on DPS there are only a few build for each class that are actually worth taking.

This issue is further compounded by the fact that stats are now linked to gear. If the current meta’s are changed to make others more worthwhile then all of those who ground for thousands of hours for ascended items are going to be furious and upset.

In order for build diversity to become available then really stats should be separated from gear(or at least have stats swappable) as really I don’t see an alternative.

There also needs to be a sense of jeopardy. Outside of a very few encounters it is impossible to fail content in a meaningful way. Fail a temple event, so what? either wait or hop to a server that has it open. Personal stories and dungeons are impossible to fail, only run out of time or money.

You can’t drive horizontal progression in a very largely fail free game., as nothing matters, nothing is at stake.

As to how to fix these issues. Then I would suggest:
Short term
+ Introduce more social stuff. Wardrobes, guild halls, more stuff that allows the community to do stuff together(and if we are being really radical take a long hard look at your back end server structure. It really does hold so many things back) – *Community drives longevity and fun, not content grind. *
+ Allow dynamic stat swapping on ascended items too. It would give a horizontal progression meaning to why they are there, and facilitate more build diversity.
+ Go back and play GW1. Look how that did content and horizontal progression. particularly skill capping, the UW and FoW areas. Basically look what worked there and do that

Long term:
+ Rework content to make support and control aspects needed
+ Introduce real consequences for failure in dungeons and instances.
+ Allow a degree of profession blurring. where you can use weapons and skills from other professions(Heck maybe ascension still works in the crystal desert and the reward for ascending is being able to utilise more weapons)

Basically. I feel the pve meta is stale, adding more of the same skills and content wont fix it. It feels to me as though GW2 needs to become GW2 2.0 to really evolve and move on. Every and anything is else is just treading water.

A whole chapter of GW1 was scrapped because it highlighted issues that were unsolvable in a GW1 context. It was a courageous decision and from it GW2 was born.

I feel now is the time to be courageous again if GW2 is to move beyond the trivial and temporary.

Nike.2631:

First off “difficulty to access” is a non-starter when determining if something is horizontal or vertical. More power is more power no matter how you got it .

More power is indeed more power, but in that regard, unlocking a skill may very well make me more powerful than I was before. (The new ele healing skill for example) yet I do not really consider it vertical progression. And this is for a large part because it is so easily accessible. (But also because you have to trade it off against not taking other skills)

Nike.2631:

The question isn’t about having 1 or 9 being more or less powerful than each other – you have internal tradeoffs once you’ve broken into that new tier of power. But it is a new and higher tier you’re describing. When you add an extra button without a take-away, its vertical. whether you rework it into the class from level 1 or think you’ve hidden it behind 21 hours of hardcore gameplay, its still vertical. Even defensive buffs/rituals speed up kills. Maybe not plainswurm kills, but Queen Plainsworm kills certainly (one of my favorite early Queensdale DEs ) because they mean you spend less time dodging or casting heals..

The accessibility of that new tier of power is essential to this though. If we look at horizontal progression as the upper bar of the ‘T’, this would make the vertical ‘I’ a little longer and the horizontal ‘_’ a little wider. I don’t mean to hide it behind gameplay, I mean for it to feel as meaningful progression, while not being a necessity. And there is a good reason to do so with a minor part of vertical progression. Because it in this method, no matter how terrible the ritual is, it has a benefit over not having it – for all professions (unlike making it an elite skill for example, in which it would compete with strong and weak skills depending on the professions that people play).

I have read a lot of posts about ‘quests’ to get skills. And I’m sure you’ve read them as well, but consider the wvw-er, would he want to go on a quest for that? A skill system in which only one of a kind can be active at a time could keep this kind of progression manageable without making the quest feel ‘useless’ because you can also obtain it through paying with badges.

The details matter in this idea.

Nike.2631:

As long as you’re clear it IS vertical, then I think there’s a fascinating conversation to be had there. Just maybe not in this thread . 10% vertical advancements are "mostly harmless "… that month. But over a year or three… not so harmless. That’s why is called “creep”. It’s sneaky. Like maybe adding another gear tier in 2016, it would be better to find solutions that don’t rely on vertical progression at all.

Well, it is a wildly different kind of vertical progression than the one that we have with for example ascended gear. Since this doesn’t replace our older options.

It is also different from a progression system like the one in WvW, where the increase is pretty much infinitely accumulative. (The more you get, the better you become.) Since you have to choose. And someone who has unlocked 1 ritual isn’t better than someone who has all 9. In fact, in a team, you are equal even if you have none.

As for wether a discussion would need to take place in this thread. I’m afraid it might. Since we’re not heading back to vertical progression and I do feel that it has much more horizontal than vertical value.

One point that you make is incredibly valid though: power creep.

And it is the main reason why I wouldn’t want to see this implemented. On the other hand, if they ever do feel the need to get an easier way of balancing new skills, and making grindable skills a feature of GW2. I’d prefer it if they took this route instead of scaleable PvE skills such as they did in GW1.

But though it does add up: don’t turn something down because of a slippery slope argument. We just need to be aware of what the game needs and how the vertical aspect balances out with the horizontal potential. At the moment I would say: it’s not worth the vertical progression. So let’s move on to other ideas.

Let’s pretend I didn’t write this post and move on to wiser words.

The challenge with “horizontal” progression will be to make it actually feel like progression. As other people have noted, people need to feel like their characters are improving. They also need goals in the game.

My suggestion is to tie a significant proportion of the horizontal progression to skill increases. That way people can feel like they are progressing, but they are progressing via their own improved skill rather than their character’s power. The horizontal rewards can both recognise these achivements and give the player’s concrete goals to aim for.

For example, the achievements for Fractals should be further developed (titles, armour). For dungeons, maybe do what WoW did and have achievements and titles granted for doing things the hard way, like clearing all the content or 4-manning it. Somebody in another thread also had a great idea to let people try and solo the various champs and bosses in the game via a “Queen’s gauntlet” style arena.

So in summary, tie some horizontal rewards to player skill progression. That will keep people motivated to keep playing.

Abramelin.7356:

The challenge with “horizontal” progression will be to make it actually feel like progression. As other people have noted, people need to feel like their characters are improving. They also need goals in the game.

My suggestion is to tie a significant proportion of the horizontal progression to skill increases. That way people can feel like they are progressing, but they are progressing via their own improved skill rather than their character’s power. The horizontal rewards can both recognise these achivements and give the player’s concrete goals to aim for.

For example, the achievements for Fractals should be further developed (titles, armour). For dungeons, maybe do what WoW did and have achievements and titles granted for doing things the hard way, like clearing all the content or 4-manning it. Somebody in another thread also had a great idea to let people try and solo the various champs and bosses in the game via a “Queen’s gauntlet” style arena.

So in summary, tie some horizontal rewards to player skill progression. That will keep people motivated to keep playing.

In regards to this:

A while back I made a post in the suggestions forum on Challenge missions.

They would be dungeons that keep a score. And are designed to keep a score. (Unlike fractals)

Not only could this hold a leaderboard, it could also keep a record of your personal progress through an achievement system. (The achievements being anything from secret objectives to score based ones) These achievements could unlock skins and other stuff.

A short description of a challenge mission example that I worked out:

Hack the inquest

• 5 players
• Takes place at the infinite coil reactor
• We are a special team that breaks into the inquest base to hack their database
• Every second that we can keep the data-transfer link running, we gain points
• The inquest take increasingly desperate measures to get rid of us or block our progress (in a variety of ways)
• Eventually we will lose the connection

Please go here for the full version: Hack the Inquest

It even has this picture to help explain the idea!:

Guhracie.3419:

Those guidelines are great to have! I’m way excited to get started on this thread. Here’s what I’ve been working on so far:

Make the Personality System Matter:

Emotes should vary based on your personality.

• The downside is that there are ten personality types. This would require a distinct effort at expanding the emotes system, because each one presently in the game would require nine variations.
• Solution: Hold a contest. List the ten personality types (or link to the wiki) and the emotes available, then ask for email submissions. Have a community leader type person select the best, then all you have to do is submit it to the proper editors to make sure there’s nothing inappropriate or misspelt in the final batch, so you don’t have to slog through all the entries. Winning IS the reward. Immortalize the winners somewhere on the website and they get to see their emote go in-game.

Personality-bound titles

• Maybe temporary based on current personality or maybe permanent. I can see arguments both ways. I think it would be a great starter title, and my preference would be for one that changes based on a character’s current personality.
• This might be hard to implement, since titles are account bound and I don’t know if there would be a simple way to introduce either version of this. Certainly achieving a permanent title seems like the easier option to implement.

Personality influenced drops

• I would lean toward this impacting cosmetic drops only, and only when multiple versions of one item may drop- notably like the three elemental back pieces in Zephyr Sanctum. This would work if the primary personality trait made a slight difference in which one dropped, and not in actual drop rates. I think this would need to be included in the patch notes when it does happen, so that people may plan accordingly.
• This would not exclude the chance at (in my example) any of the three back pieces dropping, it would just be a slightly higher chance that one of the three could drop. So it wouldn’t be like “Oh, I’ll play on my character who has Charm as the primary stat and be guaranteed the Wind Catcher.” Your Charm-based character could still get any of the three.

Make the Order Decision Matter:

Ranks within Orders

• Ranks could grant new titles. (Titles are such an inexpensive way to show progress, in my opinion!) Again, you could offer a contest for naming these ranks.
• Ranks could be obtained by doing extended quests for their Order- I’m thinking something on par with the monthly quests, but not linked to it. Maybe have a daily and monthly Order quest. This would need to be character-based, which would then motivate people to log in on more characters. Or maybe it could be account bound and characters in each Order would contribute to those quests. (Higher ranking characters could earn more “points” for these quests, maybe.)
• Order rank should be long-term, not something that can happen in a week.

Add tiered Order-based progression

• Armor skins, based on obtaining ranks within the Orders. Maybe even just back pieces and/or gloves.
• If this is too costly, new weapon skins for progressing through the Order ranks shouldn’t be out of the question.
• Add access to soulbound or account bound Order exclusive dyes at the top rank.
• Maybe the top rank should award access to a full set of armor skins. Again, I can see how this might not be cost-efficient, but the upside is that it could be a pretty major gold sink.

I would love to see something done with the Orders! Once you’ve finished your story, the Orders basically disappear. It would be easy to see these thrown in as Living Story content- where each Order takes turns assisting the events, and in turn the players assist the Order.

I would like to see a wvw player ranking, once the wxp becomes account bound. It could be updated in real time or weekly, whatever works. But I would like to see account names, their wvw rank, and the server they’re on.

And last, I would like to see a way to upgrade cultural armor using the mystic forge. You showed us how great it can be with flamekissed armor (and I will be sad to see mine go). Something like mystic coins, molten lodestones, mystic clovers, and a gem store item to produce fiery effects on cultural armor. Eventually, you could expand it to a recipe using corrupted lodestones for an ice effect, charged lodestones for a wind effect, and well I’m not sure what an earth effect would look like, but you get the idea!

The Lost Witch.7601:

More power is indeed more power, but in that regard, unlocking a skill may very well make me more powerful than I was before. (The new ele healing skill for example) yet I do not really consider it vertical progression. And this is for a large part because it is so easily accessible. (But also because you have to trade it off against not taking other skills)

A BIG reason why the new healing skills should not be considered ‘vertical’ is that in order to take them, you have to give up on using any other healing skill. “Opportunity costs” are essential to restraining power creep. No new ‘f5’ button was introduced to support them. They consume an existing and very finite resource.

For certain builds, the new skills ‘click’ better than any previous choice, but overall the class did (well, should) not get any more powerful.

There’s about 400 pages of arguments already underway how well the new skills met the goals of horizontal progression, but aa lot of them boil down to complaints that they are horizontal and “waaah, I wanted it to make me uber” .

The accessibility of that new tier of power is essential to this though. If we look at horizontal progression as the upper bar of the ‘T’, this would make the vertical ‘I’ a little longer and the horizontal ‘_’ a little wider. I don’t mean to hide it behind gameplay, I mean for it to feel as meaningful progression, while not being a necessity. And there is a good reason to do so with a minor part of vertical progression. Because it in this method, no matter how terrible the ritual is, it has a benefit over not having it – for all professions (unlike making it an elite skill for example, in which it would compete with strong and weak skills depending on the professions that people play).

Means of acquisition are largely separate from whether the rewards are — or | . I just want to help people recognize a | with they see one . If f5 does nothing now and the new ability makes it do something… almost anything… that’s a | effect.

I have read a lot of posts about ‘quests’ to get skills. And I’m sure you’ve read them as well, but consider the wvw-er, would he want to go on a quest for that?

These days I’m feeling the “pay skill points” model is a really strong one. Its something the leveling process teaches you early and reinforces constantly, its powered by gaining XP which are common to nearly all modes of play (and sPvP is gaining the ability to buy skill point tomes so even that mode advances along this path).

A skill system in which only one of a kind can be active at a time could keep this kind of progression manageable without making the quest feel ‘useless’ because you can also obtain it through paying with badges.

Sure. There are story-line minded UI tools in place. There’s some questions of UI bloat, but I think for a strong mid-to-long term activity with excellent repeatability and expansibility, the costs are worth it.

The details matter in this idea.

They always do .

Well, it is a wildly different kind of vertical progression than the one that we have with for example ascended gear. Since this doesn’t replace our older options.

I’m going to point out that right there is creep’s most insidious aspect. It DOES replace an existing option – the option that f5 does nothing.

It is also different from a progression system like the one in WvW, where the increase is pretty much infinitely accumulative. (The more you get, the better you become.) Since you have to choose.

Did you happen to read the WvW Comanders CDI? You might find This Post interesting, because I think people pretty much hated it or ignored it because it required you to “choose” one thing over another …

DiogoSilva.7089:

Interesting stuff

I especially like the in-depth skin review.

Do you think the game would be helped by having multiple options come out in one go, rather than a staged progression like the living story? (In which we get one of each weapon and perhaps one armor skin every month)

This in regard to your note on the ‘seeming’ lack of horizontal progression.

- Could it be that we do not see the progression because we don’t actively need to choose which skin to chase since we only get one new option at a time?

Edit:

Nike, I scratched all that there were some internal conflicts in that post and I didn’t pick a very strong example to begin with. I guess what I am trying to say is this:

While it is important that we learn to recognize vertical progression, we should also try to evaluate the potential for the horizontal progression it might deliver. In other words: don’t hold back on suggesting means for horizontal progression if it would require a vertical hint. It could be worth the trouble, or it might be an idea that can be transformed to a purely horizontal one.

But let’s move on. I am eager to head into a more valuable discussion.

Sytherek.7689:

StriderShinryu.6923:

The biggest horizontal progression device for me would be proper implementation of a cosmetic appearance system. I know it’s supposedly in the cards, but it’s still a huge deal. In all honestly, GW2 could borrow Lord of the Rings Online’s cosmetics systems lock, stock and barrel and I wouldn’t complain one bit. LOTRO also shows that a game with a built in cash shop can easily be profitable without the use of silly transmutation crystals. (for those unaware, in addition to offering exclusively store bought cosmetic appearance items, LOTRO has multiple cosmetic outfit tabs for each character which a player can purchase more of as well as a wardrobe that holds purely cosmetic versions of items which a player can purchase more room in).

LotRO has the best wardrobe system… tabs for setting and selecting wardrobe looks, and a tab for armor that sets your stats. The best system I’ve ever seen for CRPG armor.

I quit that game when it went F2P/P2W, as a warning to ANet.

For sure, and it really underlines a very important problem with cosmetics that GW2 has. Because you can’t freely switch between cosmetics, there is almost no drive at all to get the new ones. In GW2 any time you see a cool piece of gear you may be interested in getting you’re suddenly hit by the realization that using that new piece will mean, at best, having to buy relatively expensive transmutation stones or, at worst, completely giving up an old piece (stats and all) that you may like as well. It’s a paralyzing factor that kills incentive to pursue cosmetics and pretty much neuters any sort of cosmetic appearance options that ANet decides to implement.

Guhracie.3419:

Make the Personality System Matter:

Make the Order Decision Matter:

Absolutely. The personality system doesn’t seem to be used at all despite it being a feature I was extremely pleased to see in existence upon starting up the game for the first time.

Also, the Orders play such a big role in the level 20 to 50ish range that you really do become attached to the choice you make. Heck, they even seem important earlier than that when you see them in the home cities. And then, with the arrival of the Claw Island mission and the Pact they become pretty much nothing. I can understand using the Pact as part of the Personal Storyline but there is so much room for the integration of the orders outside of that. New armour skins for higher ranks in the Order, new emotes, new skill appearances, etc. There are so many ways the Orders could be utilized, and seem like they should be, but instead there’s just nothing.

Two words- Skin Wallet

I want a place that allows me to place all my skins and doesn’t force me to get rid of a skin I really enjoy to try out a new skin. I know you want to sell transmutation stones. So maybe reduce their gem store price and make them a currency that allows you to access the armor skin wallet.

An open letter to Arena Net:
As a dedicated fan of the Guild Wars franchise for 7 years, I’ve spent more than 50 hours a week dedicated to your game, much more than most other activities. It would not be an exaggeration to say Guild Wars was a large part in my upbringing, and even my experience as part of the Test Krewe has taught me many valueable lessons about the industry and life.

Although we’ve had a few “tsundere” love-hate moments over silly things in the past, present, and future to come, regardless, I want to give ArenaNet and its team a heart-felt “thank you” for providing such an amazing experience in my life.

However, the ArenaNet I grew to love established itself upon concepts like Horizontal progression through aesthetics, titles, build-making, and most importantly- depth.

For example, although the max level was 20, players like me were over-joyed by the introduction of heroes, AI companions whom in addition to customizing their appearance, we could customize their builds. I’ve spent THOUSANDS of hours theory-crafting and building unique teams to support one and other. With 1000 different skills to choose from, and 8 different characters to customize at once, there are ENDLESS possibilities of what teams I could make! Every day, I would always come up with a new strategy with my pal, Dunkoro. Please do not underestimate team customization as a form of Horizontal progression!

For others, horizontal progression took form of Skill Capturing, Mission Completion, Cartography, and Mapping. Imagine the thrill of players as they traveled across every reach of Tyia, engaging in epic boss fights, and expanding their collection of skills after emerging victorious? Or how about the sense of accomplishment after rising up to the challenge of Vanquishing Elona?

For others who preferred an even bigger challenge, there were dungeons for players to conquer, and elite missions to chase. Players have fond memories about the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, and that is because they tested players to the limits of skill, rewarding them graciously at the end. Eventually, players developed specialized builds and strategies to more easily clear these dungeons, but keep in mind learning those strategies are itself a form of progression.

Remember, Guild Wars 1 NEVER relied on randomized dungeons like Fractals does in GW2, yet players LOVED the elite zones! The entire point of player skill progression was learning a dungeon and clearing it more and more efficiently each time, as opposed to GW2’s fractals of the mists

Truly, Guild Wars 1 was the pinnacle of horizontal progression. Each individual action taken by a player felt like they had meaning, even if it didn’t directly boost a number on the screen. The loss of such values in GW2 was a saddening blow to us veteran fans of Arena Net.

However, since this is a CDI, perhaps we could discuss implementing such things which made GW1 great, into GW2?

For one, players want skill capturing back. I understand that may require an overhaul to the way the game works, but know what? Go for it.

Skill capturing, if implemented, would require three things:
- A LARGE batch of new skills to acquire
- Unique items dropped by bosses (Think: GW1 greens)
- UNDERFLOW servers!

Imagine a skill capturing system where Champions all over the world rewarded players with skills to cap, and with a chance at rare items? However, for such a thing to be successful, we NEED underflow! 2 players in each map spread across 24 servers are 48 players who could be doing the same event!

And what about reintroducing the Underworld and Fissure of Woe as NON-LINEAR dungeons? What made them so remembered fondly over the other elite dungeons are because they give the player agency to complete quests in any order they liked. Because of this, it gave players room simply to explore and farm, or come up with the best possible order of events to speed clear the dungeon.

Anyways, I don’t have a magical solution, but I do want to point out why us die-hard fans came to love you so much. I cannot emphasize enough how important Horizontal progression means to fans of Guild Wars 1.

I hold your game in a very special place in my heart, so please do not disappoint!

Did I mention Order-based unique dyes were hella sexy?

Well they are.

But I think another thing I’d like to see as a reward for advancing with your chosen Order is a vendor at each HQ that sells 3-4 of the existing colors of dyes for karma. However, buying them doesn’t give you a bottle to click – it directly unlocks it in that character’s dye panel.

No using them in the Mystic Forge, no flooding the market with them – the reason they are there is to let that specific character represent their Order by always having the Order’s preferred colors in their palette.

This simple benefit that could be granted much earlier in the course of ranking up in your Order. Quite separate from those wonderful unique dyes you get towards the end of the journey.

The Lost Witch.7601:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Interesting stuff

I especially like the in-depth skin review.

Do you think the game would be helped by having multiple options come out in one go, rather than a staged progression like the living story? (In which we get one of each weapon and perhaps one armor skin every month)

This in regard to your note on the ‘seeming’ lack of horizontal progression.

- Could it be that we do not see the progression because we don’t actively need to choose which skin to chase since we only get one new option at a time?

The casual side in me finds the 2-weekly schedule very exciting.

I think the problem with living story’s horizontal “progression” is not the schedule itself, but the lack of systems and mechanics to make that progression addicting and satisfying. Getting new mini-pets is not exciting when you can’t do anything with them. Getting new stat options is not exciting when you’ll not touch them either because 1. balance is dominated by zerker gear or 2. you’ll have to sacrifice your old stats for the new ones unless you buy new gear.

I think GW2 needs to estabilish some new, addicting and exciting horizontal systems that add short term and long term goals to players (subclasses, skin wardrobes, hall of monuments, hard mode version of challenges, expanded content, etc), and then have living story’s gradually expand upon or use those systems. Some horizontal systems already exist, like the Achievement’s system and its respective reward and magic find mechanics. But GW2 needs more, a lot more.

The temporary nature is also an obstacle to horizontal progression, because it is removing the options and rewards out of the game, which is ridiculous. Imagine if a player didn’t logged into the game for 1 month and a half. And imagine if that said player, after logging into the game, would have three permanent living story chapters to choose for. Isn’t that, in practice, about the same as a patch that would take, say, three times longer to come for three times the content? But alas, it’s all temporary, and those options never last.

Okay, the last CDI (vertical) was split and i postet parts of it allready.
I just repost them here as links:

Crafting 1
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/6#post3369903

Crafting 2, Armor, Choices, Town Clothing
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/10#post3372195

Archievments and Orders
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/10#post3372198

I would like to see a whole new type of cosmetic gear that doesn’t rely on completing events or the luck of the drop to acquire. My personal idea would be something like this.

Create sets of gear. Maybe one for each zone in the game. Give each zone a specific named spawn, or “unique” monster, that is guaranteed to drop at piece of this equipment(or an item specific to that set that can be converted to a specific piece of your choice like chest, shoulders, legs, etc).

Rather than having it spawn within a set window that can be tracked and at a specific location give it a wide window and make it considerably rare to spawn. Also give it multiple locations within the zone that it’s capable of spawning in and only let it be in one location at a time until someone kills it – similar to the skritt thief chest. Make the creature either veteran or a little tougher so a lone character exploring the zone has a chance to take it down.

Essentially it would be something that is hard but not impossible to farm. Somewhat rare to find. Something you could take on your own. And it would encourage exploration and people returning to various zones.