Guild Wars 2

I enjoy the game a lot especially wvw dispite the rendering issues.

I used to raid/play wow even to the point of leading raid teams, loot progression became horrific at times. I’m glad GW isn’t like that.

The current set up really needs a none defencive review of why X prof is so much more utilised than Y others you end yo with a very boring momogenius diet.

Thanks Peter

Nike.2631:

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.

I wasn’t really making a comment on Monetization, since DCUO did Monetize it at all, which I would prefer. I think using the Crystals once per piece could work. I just don’t think the clunky UI setup for Lotro is good. & having to go to a specific wardrobe in your bank is waste of time. Although they should have a save/load for builds including the cosmetics.

Having them be account bound unlocks is nice, but I don’t know if Anet would do that, they might miss out on Monetization. also, you’re not going to be able to use heavy on a light character, it’s just not gonna happen. Also, DCUO had very little skin restrictions. you could use almost anything.

I agree with the comments about how horizontal progression and choices is generally more interesting when there exist fail consequences tied to them (= challenging content).

Players love to buildcraft because of what? Either to seek a specific flavor, sure or… to beat content! In GW1, most of the builds were created to finish specific hard content, or for several tasks like farming, running, etc. One of the interesting things about tweaking builds is to make them efficient at beating content.

In this way, horizontal progression is very similar to vertical progression: it makes you stronger. Yes! Making you stronger is not exclusive to vertical progression. And yes, players love that! The difference is that efficiency comes from more options, which in turn makes for stronger synergies. It’s an indirect vertical progression that comes out of horizontal means, and it’s not a bad thing. It rewards skill, strategy and analysis.

But all of this has no purpose if content is beatable with auto-attacks (or zerker stacking).

In the previous CDI thread, adubb.2453 brought up an interesting idea about giving profession the ability to choose the type of armor they use, with some trade-offs for each armor class.

Some restrictions I feel are necessary, first of all:

• No mix-and-match of armor class. If you’re wearing leather pants, you’re not wearing a cloth helm.
• I think the choice should be a permanent one, and I think it should be made after doing a quest line along the lines of Order selection- a chance to use all three and experience the benefits and drawbacks before deciding. Up to this point (I’m thinking it should start around level 10), the character uses the default armor each profession currently uses.

Actual Ideas

• Each armor class could be tied to a secondary stat. Maybe armor, health pool, and healing power? Obviously there’s a lot of room for discussion.
• As adubb proposed in the initial idea, maybe heavy armor decreases your movement speed slightly but increases your armor; medium stays as it is, and light armor increases healing power and very slightly decreases health pool. (These are all base stats that decrease/increase when armor type is chosen. Also, these are totally up for discussion- they’re in no way fully formed ideas.)
• If it’s feasible, you could offer a way to reset armor class.

Positives

• Allows for diversity without tying up concepts with sub-classes. Nike sums this up beautifully in two separate posts which I’ve found and now linked.
• Options mean replayability or, in this case, multiple characters of the same profession are suddenly more attractive.
• Armor would become more meaningful (given more impact via the advantages and drawbacks to each) instead of simply a cosmetic marker for a profession.
• If you do offer a way to reset, maybe there could be some sort of small bonus for sticking to an armor class. A tiny boost to money gathered, after a certain amount of time spent in an armor class. Or possibly this could vary based on armor type as well.

Potential Stumbling Blocks

• I clearly have no idea how difficult this would be to implement.
• This would have to be carefully balanced in order to keep each armor class attractive as an option, and yet still make it more than a solely cosmetic choice. I don’t know how difficult that would make things.
• I don’t know how this might impact sPvP or WvW.

DiogoSilva.7089:

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.

Hmm, I think I see where you’re going with this.

I do think that I should give a bit more explanation to the schedule issue though:

Imagine that mini-pets would be able to fight in an arena.

Would it be better to have the living story pop out one mini every update, or multiple mini’s once every four updates? (Of course the updates without mini’s would get something else, like more skills and weapon skins, whereas the mini update would get less of those)

The total playable content would be the same, but the rewards would be spread out differently so that we don’t simply get one after the other (or decide not to get it because everyone gets the same one anyways…), but build our character through options.

(Of course the downside of this scenario is that a mini-pet lover doesn’t get to see new mini’s for a few updates in a row.)

Alrighty, here’s one crack at a horizontal progressive idea that I mentioned in another thread… accomplishments in the world resulting in the unlocking of new items to create through crafting. (Having a place to display things would open this up tremendously!). For example, killing Tequatl could result with assorted items being dropped that are Tequatl specific… a scale, a tooth fragment, etc. Possibly getting scales unlocks a means to craft a new skin for ascended gear with a dragony twist, or (with a place to put it) perhaps the means to craft a table, wall hanging, etc for decorative purposes. Sure, people have ascended gear, but how many have the “Tequatl’s Bane” set, or perhaps a unique shield skin made of dragon hide and has teeth shards sticking out of it around the perimeter?

One idea at a time for readability, so there you go. Unlock new things to craft via accomplishments (and associated drops) achieved in the world.

Something to consider from the perspective of someone who loves cosmetic progression: okay, you’ve got your awesome looking cosmetic items. Now how about showing them off? Unfortunately, there are some annoying limitations in doing so in game. Generally when people are into cosmetic progression, they like to be able to show off their character or simply see their character doing awesome stuff in this outfit they’ve worked so hard to put together. Some consideration should probably go into the following:

• First Person Camera - I still don’t get why this isn’t in the game, but adding it in would improve players’ abilities to create machinimas, videos, group shots and other visual showmanship.

• Improve camera positioning - it’s actually kind of hard to take a decent front-on screenshot of yourself in this game, since the camera position tends to force you to look down or up at yourself.

• HD screenshot option - this was in beta. Why not in release?

• More emotes! - GW1 had a plethora of emotes. By comparison, GW2 has hardly any. This removes half the fun from screenshots and video making. Help us give our characters more . . . character! Emotes for everybody <3

• View character outside of the game - with the avatar up at the top of the forum there before you log in, I think it might have actually been intended to pull characters through to a website. It would be cool to be able to link to your character and show off your look/set-up outside of the game.

• View character . . . inside the game? One of the things I loved most about the Hall of Monuments was having my favourite armour sets on display, ON my character. That was a great narcissistic touch <3

All of this probably seems pretty trivial, but it’s all quality of life stuff that enhances the utility/appeal of cosmetics and might help players engage more with their cosmetic progression.

Nike.2631:

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!!

I also think that the way personality can shift is a positive thing. It’s reflective of real life, in that way. I would also like to have more meaningful ways than conversations to impact personality, but I don’t actually have any ideas for that right now.

See, this bit about making lore part of the reward never would have occurred to me. I am not a lore-hound, but I certainly appreciate the elegance of the idea. I also think there could be a couple of locations only accessible to members of an Order (and maybe features inside could unlock with rank, or maybe more of the area could unlock with rank… or both). Nothing game-changing, just thematically appropriate, and maybe we find out more about the background of well-known members of the Order, too.

Finally, I must take a moment to say that your idea of making some of the regular dyes available at Order vendors is BRILLIANT. Particularly the implementation that would not devalue the dyes by flooding the market or making them too readily accessible/account bound.

VOLKON.1290:

Alrighty, here’s one crack at a horizontal progressive idea that I mentioned in another thread… accomplishments in the world resulting in the unlocking of new items to Crete through crafting. (Having a place to display things would open this up tremendously!). For example, killing Tequatl could result with assorted items being dropped that are Tequatl specific… a scale, a tooth fragment, etc. Possibly getting scales unlocks a means to craft a new skin for ascended gear with a dragony twist, or (with a place to put it) perhaps the means to craft a table, wall hanging, etc for decorative purposes. Sure, people have ascended gear, but how many have the “Tequatl’s Bane” set, or perhaps a unique shield skin made of dragon hide and has teeth shards sticking out of it around the perimeter?

One idea at a time for readability, so there you go. Unlock new things to craft via accomplishments (and associated drops) achieved in the world.

As far as I know there is no system yet that would unlock crafting recipes through achievements. But I suppose that Tequatl could drop a recipe? Perhaps it would be a one time drop from a seperate bouncy chest upon completing the meta-achievement?

And would it need to be a skin or a complete item? Personally I’d lean towards a skin, because that could more easily use completely different materials as ingredients.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Hmm, I think I see where you’re going with this.

I do think that I should give a bit more explanation to the schedule issue though:

Imagine that mini-pets would be able to fight in an arena.

Would it be better to have the living story pop out one mini every update, or multiple mini’s once every four updates? (Of course the updates without mini’s would get something else, like more skills and weapon skins, whereas the mini update would get less of those)

The total playable content would be the same, but the rewards would be spread out differently so that we don’t simply get one after the other (or decide not to get it because everyone gets the same one anyways…), but build our character through options.

(Of course the downside of this scenario is that a mini-pet lover doesn’t get to see new mini’s for a few updates in a row.)

I like that idea lot. It could lead to something like this:

• Patch 1
  Four new armor skins to fill your wardrobe or for a sudden burst of skin customisation options.
• Patch 2
  New elite skills for each profession, and potential for new builds for each profession.
• Patch 3
  Four new mini-pets to “shake” the respective mini-game’s meta.

This would prevent a situation where all players would suddenly start using the same new mini-pet or the same new armor-skin after each patch for being the “new thing”. Would also give players more options.

Not sure how feasible some of them would be for development purposes, though.

New exclamations

The character already says things when discovering a new area, a new skill, getting might or other stuff. This can also be used to display character progress. If a character is in the priory and discovers a tomb, they might say something like “The priory will be interested in this”. Or if after a character kills an earth elemental after killing hundreds of elementals before they say “I know your weaknesses”. Same after killing an enemy with a dagger after accumulating 500 dagger kills: “I always liked this weapon”. This way your progress is displayed and the game is a bit livelier. The system is also quite expandable.

Follow up events
After finishing a renown heart you gained the trust of this NPC. Some of them could allow you to start new events related to that renown heart. The same can be done with representatives of the orders. These could also offer you specific mission like events. This would provide a way to hook in new events and make returning to the renown hearts NPCs more rewarding.
Example: There is a renown heart where you are stealthed and have to navigate through Ash Legion Spies without them discovering you. This could have a follow up event where you have to ambush a Charr Separatist. This guy is a coward and teleports away as soon as he sees another player. So the player has to gain stealth and accquire an Anti-Teleportation-Gun from the renown hearts NPC to first disable his teleport. After this it is a normal fight, so other players can join in as well. Since it is possible that other players run into him accidentally before his teleport is disabled, the event should not fail right away, but should just teleport away far enough to drop aggro and regain full health. All this should of course take place near the renown hearts NPC to prevent players from gaining stealth and running around the map unharmed. Stealth might wear of after say one minute or upon leaving the event circle.

The Lost Witch.7601:

VOLKON.1290:

Alrighty, here’s one crack at a horizontal progressive idea that I mentioned in another thread… accomplishments in the world resulting in the unlocking of new items to Crete through crafting. (Having a place to display things would open this up tremendously!). For example, killing Tequatl could result with assorted items being dropped that are Tequatl specific… a scale, a tooth fragment, etc. Possibly getting scales unlocks a means to craft a new skin for ascended gear with a dragony twist, or (with a place to put it) perhaps the means to craft a table, wall hanging, etc for decorative purposes. Sure, people have ascended gear, but how many have the “Tequatl’s Bane” set, or perhaps a unique shield skin made of dragon hide and has teeth shards sticking out of it around the perimeter?

One idea at a time for readability, so there you go. Unlock new things to craft via accomplishments (and associated drops) achieved in the world.

As far as I know there is no system yet that would unlock crafting recipes through achievements. But I suppose that Tequatl could drop a recipe? Perhaps it would be a one time drop from a seperate bouncy chest upon completing the meta-achievement?

And would it need to be a skin or a complete item? Personally I’d lean towards a skin, because that could more easily use completely different materials as ingredients.

Operative word… Yet. Just an idea for something new. Having Tequatl drop a recipe seems a bit weak. I’d find it more satisfying if Tequatl dropped assorted items and there were a few choices of things to make with them.

This could result in a new crafting profession (sub-profession that is always unlocked but not part of the two now perhaps?) as well. You could, for example, have armor smithing, jewel crafting and a third, tinkering, open. Tinkering would always be active where the current professions would remain ‘two at a time’.

I’d love to see some more use for skill points regarding our progression (not the current one where you add a new skill and it costs a lot for no real reason (new healing skills I’m looking at you!)). For example you could add a new tab to the skill panel, where you can unlock your skills again (even weapon skills) but they would have different cosmetics. Like greater fireball, or bull’s charge summons a bull that runs with you towards your target, or add different colour to skills etc. These would have increased skill point costs, since they are only cosmetical, you could even tie some of them to some achievements/challenges or if you decide to use prestige classes to those as well.

VOLKON.1290:

Operative word… Yet. Just an idea for something new. Having Tequatl drop a recipe seems a bit weak. I’d find it more satisfying if Tequatl dropped assorted items and there were a few choices of things to make with them.

This could result in a new crafting profession (sub-profession that is always unlocked but not part of the two now perhaps?) as well. You could, for example, have armor smithing, jewel crafting and a third, tinkering, open. Tinkering would always be active where the current professions would remain ‘two at a time’.

I don’t quite understand what you mean with tinkering yet, but I do think that assorted items to work into new discoveries would be cool. That has always been the one thing I loved most about the GW2 crafting system: discovering new recipes.

(A joy which is for many players killed by dulfy, but available to those that enjoy the puzzle as long as it makes some sense)

Besides, it would be rather odd to have Tequatl carry a recipe on how to make a shield of his scales with him. At the same time, it would be odd to unlock crafting recipes based on killing him… perhaps we need to channel a source of power at his corpse to gain knowledge of the dragons anatomy, and discover which parts are useful?

The Lost Witch.7601:

VOLKON.1290:

Operative word… Yet. Just an idea for something new. Having Tequatl drop a recipe seems a bit weak. I’d find it more satisfying if Tequatl dropped assorted items and there were a few choices of things to make with them.

This could result in a new crafting profession (sub-profession that is always unlocked but not part of the two now perhaps?) as well. You could, for example, have armor smithing, jewel crafting and a third, tinkering, open. Tinkering would always be active where the current professions would remain ‘two at a time’.

I don’t quite understand what you mean with tinkering yet, but I do think that assorted items to work into new discoveries would be cool. That has always been the one thing I loved most about the GW2 crafting system: discovering new recipes.

(A joy which is for many players killed by dulfy, but available to those that enjoy the puzzle as long as it makes some sense)

Besides, it would be rather odd to have Tequatl carry a recipe on how to make a shield of his scales with him. At the same time, it would be odd to unlock crafting recipes based on killing him… perhaps we need to channel a source of power at his corpse to gain knowledge of the dragons anatomy, and discover which parts are useful?

Sorry, but what is dulfy “killing” exactly? (I personally think she provides the community with an invaluable service.)

I briefly read what others had posted, so here are my thoughts:

1. I like the idea of fractal armor.
Turn in fractal relics for a nifty looking armor set. We have fractal weapons and a fractal backpack, so I could see fractal armor being the next logical step.

2. Mini pets.
I LOVE mini pets. I have just about every single one. I’m sure you’re aware that mini pets are put away when we zone into a new map/instance/die. I would love to see something done with them so they aren’t such a chore to keep out all the time. Maybe a little slot on our H panel that lets us “equip” them so they don’t despawn?
-Other than that, I love the mini pets and their designs, keep up the good work! When the puppy mini runs and his little ears flap it brings a smile to my face every time.

3. Ranger pet variety.
Going with the conversation of horizontal progression, I would like to speak up for the ranger community and inquire if there will be any new ranger pets? I love the ones we have now, and I was extremely excited to get the new Juvenile Reef Drake when Southsun Cove came out! I’m not expecting or asking for a new map for new pets or anything like that. In fact, there is a high demand for a lot of the already existing animals out there! For example, quite a few rangers in the forums and in game (myself included) have expressed interest in being able to tame a griffon, a rock dog, or even a dolphin. Would something like this be considered? Are there any plans for future pets?

4. Cultural Armor.
It took me hours of creating and deleting characters just to preview their cultural armor. The cultural armor in this game is gorgeous. I notice I’m not the only one who loves cultural armor too. I see it everywhere! It doesn’t bother me at all though because I still wear it 24/7. Are there any plans to add in more cultural armor?

5. Profession Armor?
Cultural armor is great, but sometimes the medium cultural armor forces a character to look more “thief like” or “engineer like” than the wearer wants. Who wants to look all sneaky sneaky when you’re running headfirst into a battle, guns ablaze, throwing grenades and dropping bombs? Profession armor would be made to embody the idea behind the profession. Only elementalists could wear elementalist armor, rangers could only wear ranger armor, etc.

Now, you may be thinking, “But there are already tons of armors out there that can help you achieve this look!”. This may be slightly true, but think about this. As a thief, if you want to pull off the assassin/sneaky/you-can-never-see-me look, you need to be in the Order of Whispers faction for their super cool “assassiny armor”. Or, you need to be a human for their medium cultural “stabby-stabby-I-kill-you” armor. Some would even argue that the human medium cultural armor is too “ranger ish”.

Think of the possibilities with profession armor! Elementalist armor can have small stones in the design that glow to the attunement you’re currently in. Engineer armor can have (much like their backpacks) pieces of it that change when they switch kits. Guardian armor can catch on fire (blue fire!) whenever they get that blue fire above their f1-f4 skills (forgot what that was called). I’ll stop here, I’m getting carried away. However, the possibilities are endless!

6. Living Story skins.
I love the living story, and I have been playing through it since it first began. However, I have run out of characters to put these skins on! Every time a new living story comes out, you add in the coolest skin ever! So I skin that to a back piece and wear it. Then the next living story segment comes out, and you create yet another really amazing back piece! So then I can’t choose between the two. This problem got worse the more living story segments I played through. I have 6 characters total, and about 10 backpieces or so. Is there any way we can get some sort of skin locker like we do in PvP?

The Lost Witch.7601:

VOLKON.1290:

Operative word… Yet. Just an idea for something new. Having Tequatl drop a recipe seems a bit weak. I’d find it more satisfying if Tequatl dropped assorted items and there were a few choices of things to make with them.

This could result in a new crafting profession (sub-profession that is always unlocked but not part of the two now perhaps?) as well. You could, for example, have armor smithing, jewel crafting and a third, tinkering, open. Tinkering would always be active where the current professions would remain ‘two at a time’.

I don’t quite understand what you mean with tinkering yet, but I do think that assorted items to work into new discoveries would be cool. That has always been the one thing I loved most about the GW2 crafting system: discovering new recipes.

(A joy which is for many players killed by dulfy, but available to those that enjoy the puzzle as long as it makes some sense)

Besides, it would be rather odd to have Tequatl carry a recipe on how to make a shield of his scales with him. At the same time, it would be odd to unlock crafting recipes based on killing him… perhaps we need to channel a source of power at his corpse to gain knowledge of the dragons anatomy, and discover which parts are useful?

By tinkering, I mean a new crafting profession that would be for non armor or weapon type things… cosmetics. Say for example we had an instance we could develop with items, furnishings, etc. That’s where tinkering would come in… Crafting tables, chairs, wall hangings, etc. You would always know tinkering plus the two armor / weapon ones, but all the recipes would be discovered from using items you get in the world. A scale from Tequatl plus some wood plus some nails (made from iron or mithril for example learned earlier) combine to make a table. That’s what I mean by tinkering. You could also add to that personal clothing items as well, shirts, glasses, etc.

Ignavia.7420:

New exclamations

The character already says things when discovering a new area, a new skill, getting might or other stuff. This can also be used to display character progress. If a character is in the priory and discovers a tomb, they might say something like “The priory will be interested in this”. Or if after a character kills an earth elemental after killing hundreds of elementals before they say “I know your weaknesses”. Same after killing an enemy with a dagger after accumulating 500 dagger kills: “I always liked this weapon”. This way your progress is displayed and the game is a bit livelier. The system is also quite expandable.

That, sir, is awesome. Order-based exclamations would be a fabulous way to casually announce your choice of Orders in play.

I really think a major expansion or cluster of 2-week releases focusing on the three Orders is some of the strongest, deepest, & permanent non-mechanical progression we could hope for. There is just so much you could fit into that framework.

Follow up events
After finishing a renown heart you gained the trust of this NPC. Some of them could allow you to start new events related to that renown heart. The same can be done with representatives of the orders. These could also offer you specific mission like events. This would provide a way to hook in new events and make returning to the renown hearts NPCs more rewarding.

Nice. blurs the lines between world-building and progress (in a good way). The progression is players gain more opportunities to launch events of their choosing.

One limitation is you’d want a separate NPC participating in the event, or for it to be non-combat – its would be extremely annoying if someone else’s (failed) DE killed my heart-vendor.

I really like the legendary dye idea unlocked via hard pve content (like actual hard stuff, like 2-3 groups of 5 teaming up to do stuff similar to the deep or doa)

Pve locker with unlockable skill base backpieces

Progression needs to be through difficult pve content that is unlocked, like pseudo raiding, please dont use the teq style where massive groups of people can just zerg it down. Scale it for 10-20 players where groups need to split up and have specific objectives.

The Lost Witch.7601:

(A joy which is for many players killed by dulfy, but available to those that enjoy the puzzle as long as it makes some sense)

Dulfy and the wiki are both great powers which must be used wisely .

(I tend to avoid Dulfy Guides until figuring something out has either deeply aggravated me or become obviously tedious. I think the last time was after finding about 9 Naga obelisks on my own, the prospect of hunting every wet-map in the game hurt my soul and I looked the rest up.)

Besides, it would be rather odd to have Tequatl carry a recipe on how to make a shield of his scales with him. At the same time, it would be odd to unlock crafting recipes based on killing him… perhaps we need to channel a source of power at his corpse to gain knowledge of the dragons anatomy, and discover which parts are useful?

While a raid boss dropping mats is fairly familiar ground in MMOs, I think you could do it both ways – have something you could figure out on the discovery panel (maybe a new consumable?) and also use the new material in recipes with must be bought/earned. I’ve heard the local Hylek might have ideas what to do with “3 blighted spines” or whatever you plucked of the Sunless’s remains .

Personally I’d really like to get back to the crafting system being based on discovery. Buying all the recipes be it Celestial or Ascended left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. It was both obviously a gold-sink and a step backwards from what had been a fun mini-game.

Just quickly jumping into the fray without spending too much time…

One of the first things that I would / need to be implemented is a wardrobe. Have it be similar to the achievement skins wardrobe, or similar to the Mists pvp wardrobe. Either place a small karma cost on withdrawing a skin or not. But the cost should not be very high. Maybe 1000 or 2000 karma or something. It should be fairly easy and non earth shattering to with draw a skin.

The Lost Witch.7601:

VOLKON.1290:

Alrighty, here’s one crack at a horizontal progressive idea that I mentioned in another thread… accomplishments in the world resulting in the unlocking of new items to Crete through crafting. (Having a place to display things would open this up tremendously!). For example, killing Tequatl could result with assorted items being dropped that are Tequatl specific… a scale, a tooth fragment, etc. Possibly getting scales unlocks a means to craft a new skin for ascended gear with a dragony twist, or (with a place to put it) perhaps the means to craft a table, wall hanging, etc for decorative purposes. Sure, people have ascended gear, but how many have the “Tequatl’s Bane” set, or perhaps a unique shield skin made of dragon hide and has teeth shards sticking out of it around the perimeter?

One idea at a time for readability, so there you go. Unlock new things to craft via accomplishments (and associated drops) achieved in the world.

As far as I know there is no system yet that would unlock crafting recipes through achievements. But I suppose that Tequatl could drop a recipe? Perhaps it would be a one time drop from a seperate bouncy chest upon completing the meta-achievement?

And would it need to be a skin or a complete item? Personally I’d lean towards a skin, because that could more easily use completely different materials as ingredients.

Eh, if you think about it, there is two systems in place:

• We have rewards tied to achievements. Just look at every living story meta for an example.
• We have the ability to unlock unlimited skins via achievement points. Just replace the skin with a recipie, and the requirement as the achievement, not the AP.

I’d like to add my opinions on Horizontal progression:

1. Horizontal Progression should be for actual progress and achievements, that means some people will not get the items/rewards , There should be rewards for both skill and dedication. Currently there are plenty of Dedication achievements but few skill achievements

Skill: along the lines of the Clocktower, Liandri and high level fractals, doing something that is impressive and not completable by every max level character.

Dedication: this is for the more collector type players, say unique staff’s collected, trophy’s off x types of animals, x kills, like many of the current achievements.

2. Any symbol/Item for Horizontal progression should ONLY be obtainable via doing x activity/achievement, that means no trading it, no buying it and no short-cuts of any manner ( This is where current legendaries fell down as you cannot be 100% sure the person with the legendary did the stuff themselves)

3. It must maintain its value, this means that difficulty doesn’t lower at a later point or an achievement becomes trivial due to inflation or some other cause ( T3 cultural is the only example I can think of at the moment where it is now considered easier to obtain than previously)

4. Progression should be displayable, completing something challenging is all well and good but if it can’t be shown off on your character how will anyone know?

5. Progress shouldn’t cost and should not involve gold, gold is a variable and anything buy-able with gold is also. Ascended Crafting is extremely costly at the moment but in a few months will not be anywhere near the same price this creates variability in the perceived value of the same item which is bad.

With those points out of the way here’s some ideas:
Rewards:

Legendary dyes: I’ve seen this idea suggested many times and it is by far the best one, it’s visible, does not effect game-play and gives satisfaction. This is an aura for your character glow/mist/darkness/rainbows whatever. The only issue would be implementation, a more personal story/quest route should be taken as opposed to buy x off the tp.

Personal instance tropheys/home items: Simply put stuff to stick in your home, cosmetics won’t really be that much use till player/guild housing is implimented but function items are always liked, this could be simple like 1 node of a metal/wood or more desirably cloth. to something more complex like 1 free unidentified dye/rare a day. As for cosmetics, wall trophies , like staves you’ve collected, heads of defeated monsters etc.

Name Tag changes: This is like the star for map completion, this would have to be a select few otherwise things would get messy, possibility of maybe swapping what medal is shown , colour change of the name for x achievement, special box around your name that sort of thing.

Alternate attack/walking/dance/whatever animations: As an example Mabinogi had the top 100 alchemists on each server given a special arms crossed pose as their idle animation. (more complex than that look up royal alchemists for more information)
As for attack animations similar to how the clockwork combat form changes my Elementalists attack animations.

Unique armour pieces: The obvious one, not my top suggestion as there is a massive amount of back-pieces,helms,gloves,shoulders already. You could throw some unique chests/legs but not too many as then players are forced to choose what progression to show.

Possible Horizontal progression:

Dungeon vanquishes, High level fractals, completeing all jp’s , special solo combat instances, survival challenge missions, Handicapped dungeon runs, timed races , more challenges like gauntlet/toypocalypse.

Maybe designed on several levels? with increased reward for the harder progression achievements:
Easy: 50% of the player base can complete.
Medium: 25% of the player base can complete.
Hard: 10% of the player base can complete.
Legendary: >1% of the player base can complete.

Build Diversity

1. I would like Elite skills to have a bigger impact on player’s builds as they currently do. How do the devs think about their current role??
_________________
I would like more elite skills to be added, mybe through different quest lines. Those would have cooldowns between 10-60 seconds and would be the center piece of a player’s build.
Example: An Elite Symbol/Shout/Consecration for guardians, an Elite Mark/Corruption/Well for Necs(they alredy have a minion) etc.

2. I would like if players could choose from more weapon skills. Even 2 options would suffice and accelerate diversity. What do the devs think of cutomizing weapon skills??
__________________
I want to customize all parts of my build. Adding an offensive and defensive option to each skill would allow players to further define their build and role
Example: Necro Staff #2 Either the curent one or mark that applies 5 stacks of vuln and deals more dmg but drops the regen, Guardian Mace #2 Either the current one or a symbol that applies might or fury, Warrior GS2 #2 Either the current one or a lower damage while blocking 3 attacks while attacking

3. How about adding particle effects to armor through various ways (mainly thinking of dungeons atm)??
Example: Buying a “frosty” aura with dungeon tokens from the Kodan dungeon, having a “fiery” aura from CoF.

This thread is a cool initiative from Anet, thanks for taking us serious. From what I red and witness on many class forums, people have lost faith, which I cannot comprehend when threads like these pop up weekly.
Happy Holidays,

DIVA

PS: What do the devs think about adding n auto attack to virtuallly all mobs between their slow attacks? (I feel like many people psted that idea for months now) I believe it would solve many problems like zerker-festing, pidgeon holing other player’s builds and finally stacking in dungeons. It would then require Anets staff to figure out how to promote CC and support oriented builds. (I KNOW, but think about t as a “soft trinity”

Implement something like WAR’s tome of knowledge.Also bring build variety to the meta game from PVE to SPVP and WvW.

The potential is still here!

One of the ideas for horizontal progression that I keep seeing is a skin locker.

I believe that this would be a nice feature, however I believe it would be very difficult, and possibly not worth the effort to make it retroactive. Instead it should just unlock all of the skins that are currently in our inventory.

In additional, unlocking skins is nice, but it shouldn’t be like HoM skins. The unlocked skins should be retrievable as a blank item, that requires a transmutation crystal to be added to normal gear. After all they should stick with transmutation crystals as a gem store item. If vanity items like transmutation crystals are removed from the gem store, something else will have to take their place (possibly something pay 2 win that no one would like).

Far more important that skins however are new skills/traits.

We need at least one additional option for each 5, 15, and 25 pt traits. There are MANY times when the given traits at those trait pt levels are useless for your build, or in rare cases DETRIMENTAL (thief shadow arts 5 pt trait says hi [clearly designed without revealed debuff in mind]). A tad of variation for those traits would go a long way towards increased customization.

Giving our existing weapons some swappable skills. Same as with the 5, 15, and 25 pt traits, sometimes some of the skills on a weapons bar are useless to us, but we are forced to take them to get a necessary skill. This would go a long way to increase customization!

More elite skills are necessary. Many of the current elite skills often suffer from long cool downs, and impact our game play very little. New ones that can be used frequently, and impact our game play in a meaningful way would be a very nice addition. In GW1, the elite skill chosen was often the cornerstone of your build. Here, it is just a skill with a long cd and an underwhelming effect for the long cd.

If this isn’t in the future, at least allow us to take one more normal skill instead so we can get something useful.

GW1 didn’t force us to take elite skills, we WANTED them!

New weapons for each class would also be very nice! I would love to be able to wield a scythe (please) on my thief like my assassin in gw1 used to use!

When adding the new alternate skills and traits, please give them to bosses, and give us a fun and challenging mechanic to steal them from the bosses that use them (like the original signet of capture)!

Other than new skins/skills/traits, new maps are also very much needed! There is a huge old thread on Cantha that is continually being bumped. Stop avoiding it and add that continent already.

Most of the things I have mentioned can be summed up as an expansion is needed for new content with some QoL changes (skin locker). Living story is nice, but it has not been good enough by itself to be a replacement for an expansion (like eye of the north, I don’t want stand alone campaigns cause more starter zone are NOT needed)!

I like the idea of introducing sub-classes, but please blur the lines a little and give players control. Here’s my idea: merge sub-classes into a heavily reworked trait system.

Replace the five trait lines with three: Control, Damage, and Support. Let each trait line go up to 50, but adjust per-point bonuses to each attribute so the final values stay the same.

• CONTROL
  • Condition & Control Effect Duration
  • Condition Damage
  • Toughness
  • Profession Attribute
• DAMAGE
  • Power
  • Precision
  • Critical Damage
  • Profession Attribute
• SUPPORT
  • Boon Duration
  • Vitality
  • Healing Power
  • Profession Attribute

Control effects would be scaled down by default, but scale up well with the trait. When healing other players, the game should usually use an average Healing Power between the skill user and target, so that Boon Duration isn’t the only attribute in Support that affects other players.

In general, traits need to make all three roles viable and attractive, but difficult to perform simultaneously.

Note that each trait line has its own unique profession attribute. Two more would need to be created for each profession, which I feel is manageable. Some of these could replace current fixed minor or major trait bonuses with flexible values. For example, Phantasmal Healing could be replaced with a scaling attribute that varies how much healing you and allies get while near your phantasms.

To further turn this into a subclass system, make most of the weapons and skills weaker by default, but dramatically increase the bonuses gained from related traits. If somebody is effectively using a greatsword, you know they have a Damage build. Staff? Support. Mantras? Control. And so on. New weapons and skills introduced to the game could play on this more than the base set, possibly even being locked behind trait walls.

I feel this creates a lot of opportunity for diversifying characters in a way that brings a lot of satisfaction. The final-slot bonuses from each trait line could be marvelous character-changing beasts if done right, and I would love to see what the developers could come up with.

If this were combined with an out-of-combat paradigm hotswitch, the results could be amazing.

I still don’t really understand the horizontal/vertical progression thing, so please forgive me if what I suggest isn’t what’s being discussed.

Legendaries

I think Legendaries are great, as they require a lot of ingredients and time/effort. Even after a year I still haven’t got one ha ha. However I do feel that for many players, legendaries aren’t a possibility or even a dream, whatsoever.

For example, if I wanted a specific legendary, I may have all the ingredients for it (or could work on obtaining many of those ingredients), but then I hit a stumbling block – I come across a gift that requires 500 Arah dungeon tokens or some other form of dungeon token.

Now I’m not a fan of dungeons, and no one is ever going to force me to do them, therefore I have no other choice but to miss out on working towards that legendary (unless I just save up uber amounts of money to just buy it – but I’d rather work for it). I am, however, a fan of WvW, and badges of honor I can do (even if it requires more badges than dungeon tokens). I think the motto of ‘play how you want’ isn’t actually a reality here because I can’t play how I want if my only option is to buy the legendary, rather than working for it through obtaining the ingredients.

The time/effort into getting legendaries is fine – no need to change that, what I do propose however, is more alternative ways of obtaining said ingredients (like dungeon tokens) for the legendary we want to craft. Just like how you guys added an alternative method of using bloodstone dust as a replacement for the vial of condensed mists essence from fractals for backpieces (I myself hate fractals, so I was over the moon when I could use a different item to replace that vial of mists stuff).

Flamekissed armor

I love the look of the current flamekissed armor. We all know when it was decided that it was going to be changed however, there was a massive uproar. Many are saddened by the fact that this could potentially disappear completely when the redesign comes out. Rather than wasting an amazing skin, why not add the current flamekissed skin to the human cultural tier 3 vendor as an upgrade for a decent amount of gold? This idea has been proposed a couple times now and I feel it is a brilliant idea at that! It is a win-win situation because it stays cultural, the option is there to buy it for your human characters, and an amazing skin isn’t lost into the abyss forever.

Customisation ideas

As a player of both Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2, being able to colour my weapons and armor (aesthetics) is extremely important for me because I want to stand out from the rest, but I cannot be different when weapons can’t be dyed. It was possible in GW1, surely it is possible in GW2? I believe this is vital for customisation and uniqueness. Therefore, I propose…

Dyeable weapons (I’ve included some recoloured weapon concepts I whipped up in photoshop)

Now, since ascended armor came out, my guess is that legendary armor either won’t came out at all, or it will be a very long time before that happens. One of the things that keeps me playing Guild Wars 2 is my fascination with aesthetics likes particle effects, animations, and glowy bits of all things. If there were an option to recolour the flames on my flamekissed armor or apply a sparkly night-sky effect to my robes, I would literally squeal with excitement on the inside. I believe this has been mentioned before too, but I truly think it would be an amazing update if implemented, so therefore I also propose…

—> Exotic/Legendary dyes which have particle effects/animations/glow

A skin locker has been proposed many times also, and I too believe this is necessary, because players go to a lot of effort in obtaining them.

A frustration I have too, is that, for example, if one were to use the ‘fused gauntlets’ skin on, say, light armored gloves, but then wanted to give it to one of their characters that uses heavy armor, they can’t. Would it be possible to give players an option to get the skin back so they could apply it to a different weighted class?

I think, overall, if there were some way of upgrading our armor to have special effects/glowy bits/animations and whatnot, it would greatly increase players’ efforts and time into getting said effects. You could add GW1 skins into the options as upgrades as well, for example. I know I would definitely work towards obtaining those effects for my characters.

WvW

I love WvW, however one thing that I feel lets me down is the fact that when I’m dead/wiped, I cannot pick up my loot (screenshot included). This mechanic makes me feel as though all my efforts have gone to waste. I think it would save players a lot of hassle if there were some sort of interface that pops up with ‘unclaimed loot’ for when you’re unable to collect that loot.

I just propose some ideas of horizontal progression, hoping it will bring some debate and advanced on Gw2! =)

good … phew .. I start! hope you like it… ((stress))

+ Addition of ruins or places “tomb raider” In the idea … with puzzles, levers, research, secrets.

I like to move, and discover new things.
Being a Tomb Raider!
Puzzles has résolve, enigma, hidden chests, underground, dark places, like the forgotten hall dwarfs.
this style of progression is important for the dream, and the amazement of the player.

+The exploration, treasure hunt, the discovery of new fantastic locations …

The developers make fantastic job. nothing like that visible change to indicate a thriving city.
More imagination you have shown is impressive.

+Improved decorder developments cities.

My dream is to discover, to any home interior. I dream of an stars observatory on a mountain goshawks Rata sum. A suburb for all Races. A
interior house for All Races.
See the world continue to evolve, the city of Lion’s Arch, for example, from trade should probably be change, a little richer houses. The shop of the charr legions of iron built.
Quaggans refugees will also build houses.
broader markets, open clothes shops. Villages will help to expand. Prosper .. and attracted bandits.
And changing cities, it also gives contained for Role play!

+ new dungeons + tokens and outfits.

Dungeons are part of the game that also informs us about the lore, and make us live the adventure, please make more. And have Tokens, allows for armor will have the lore and stories lived… It is a wonderful tool that gives us pleasure, and equipment.

+Progression of customization creations characters … (tattoos, horns, ears, hairstyles, change cursor more interesting.

This is something that brings people the satisfaction of being unique. Everyone likes to be unique. be neat, pleasant to the eye. Person progression is driven by a character that pleases.

+ Underwater exploration:

If the underwater battle system is reworked. The discovery of cities under water, submerged … the origin of Quaggans. That of largos … can be very fun.

I enjoy exploring underwater. And epic battles with sea monsters! the dragons! the problem of Karkas! I dream swimming with whales and other creatures.

+ Craft: Armor Gw1 findable explorations in revenue.

For fans of Gw1, it would be very interesting. Especially if revenues are findable in well hidden chests!
I know it’s a little put off.
But there is something for all tastes, people would be really happy.

+ Armor cultural

Many cultural armor are really great!
But it’s a shame not to have power from the dépars or can have a cultural level every 10lvls.
for example:
lvl 10: T0 – Armor has 1 silver coin by apiece.
lvl 20: T1 – Armor for 5 silvers coins…
lvl 30: T2 – 8 silvers coins
lvl 40: T3 – 10"
lvl 50: T4 – 12"
ok, it is not profitable, but it allows people to feel unique. Belonging to a group. to immerse in the culture!

+Armor map

In Shiverpeak, the character cold … and it goes farther north it is bad to have skin in the air … to Maguuma, he is sweating … armor would be well suited, for Role play.
We’ll spend more Karma in! and if we add a condition of weather forecasts in maps, they have a bonus of suitable type. rain, snowstorm, windstorm, high tide at the a Lion’s Arche!

+The clothes closet

This is the last point “mode”, but hey, with the whole lot of armor propose, it must store! = ’)

+ meteorological event

We are announcing a tempest of snow on Shiverpeak! help people find refuge, enlighten them on the roads, destroy obstacles!
Heavy rainfall, the swamp rises Drake invasions! push them back!
tropical rain spiders out, ugly creatures on the loose!
heat wave, bring water to the inhabitants and plants, dig wells.
A Tidal wave threaten the Lion’s Arch, wear rescue residents, remove water from home, or succeed in saving business, and bring the people.

+hall.. housing…

a corner has customize, with the possibility of craft, it’s nice. this is home. this is really the corner of the player.

^ I completely agree with more customisation for characters, especially more horns for charr, tattoos etc.

The other day I was experimenting on whether or not to change the look of my charr guardian, and I couldn’t find any horns I really liked :-( I think I’ll wait for new horns to come out

Horizontal progression, as mentioned early in this thread, means that previous effort and rewards are never made obsolete. So, basically, this excludes gear, trait, and stat inflation. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE is on the table. There’s been a lot of good suggestions already, but I think this needs to be pointed out. You can imagine it? There’s a place in horizontal progression.

My first suggestion: Specialization. Focusing on certain skills, certain weapons, certain types of skills, etc and so forth. This can be done in a limited way through traits, but the amount of gameplay-related customization is actually pretty minimal right now. Part of this is due to gameplay being so simple- there’s not much room to move around within the GW2 combat paradigm. (having EVERYTHING as conditions is #2 on my top 2 list of MMORPG design failures of all time- and I’ve been playing them since Everquest in 1999). That said, even now there are a lot of things that can be opened up to player tinkering, most obviously stat combinations. Utility skills can be tweaked as well- altering them so they better match with one or another playstyle. Take ranger traps- most do DD and Condition at the same time. With some kind of investment, let a player alter a skill to focus on one aspect or the other to match into their build. Increase the passive buffs of signets at the cost of cooldown- or vise versa. Improve the activated ability of necro pets, in exchange for reduced pet stats. This kind of thing. Unlike traits, this will require time investment and be specific to each individual skill. Small differences are a big deal in the customization game.

Second: Cosmetic. There are so many things you can do that you haven’t. Animated dyes, glowing dyes, dyeable weapons, dyes that emit particle effects, reflective dyes- and that’s just things that can be done with textures. That’s not even going into the possibilities that can be achieved with gear modifications. Make a sword bigger or smaller- narrower or wider. Longer or shorter. Small changes can make a big difference to someones character vision. And don’t forget new generic armor sets- there’s no need for every new set to be an obnoxiously flashy, particle spewing high fantasy masterpiece. Case in point: How many types of pants are available to light armor users? Answer: 1. Fix that. Your transmutation stone sales will thank you.

Third: Home zone. Obviously, something you had planned at some point but never fully developed. Right now, an NPC or two will show up there based on your personal story. Unimpressive. Firstly, you need a reason for people to visit this zone. Crafting, bank, some as-yet unimplemented function. Whatever. Make people want to go there. Also, let them bring friends into their instance if they want. Next, increase the amount of customization of this zone to the imaginations limit. Guild Halls and HOM from GW1 are good starting points for ideas- but I’m sure other, more GW2 specific things can be brainstormed by people more artistic then me. Some things should be account wide (unlocking a banker, or crafting station) and other character specific. Make people feel like they are building their own personal masterpiece within the game.

Fourth Suggestion: Fix gameplay. Let’s get some depth! Oh wait…. that’s not the CDI topic this time. Oops. I totally didn’t mean to hijack this thread in a completely transparent effort to bring attention to this enormous, game-defining issue. No, I wouldn’t do anything underhanded like that. Even though more depth=more avenues for horizontal progression=more player retention. It would be extremely rude for me to try to carry the conversation in another direction that I personally place a lot of stake in. Therefore, I won’t do that. Dyes are much more important. Carry on.

I made a lot of words about the topic in the other thread, so I’ll just link this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/PopeUrban-2578/showposts

Working skill capture and skill diversity. Horizontal progression is not necessarily cosmetic, it also comes in the form of sidegrades, things that may be situationally better at some things while being situationally worse at others than the “core” mechanics.

THE barometer of “can you kill a plains wurm faster” is flawed.

If I was able to derive some specialized “Arthropod toxin” that made me better at killing a plains wurm while simultaneously making me worse at running, or magic find, or killing wolves or whatever… that’s still horizontal progression.

Ever since multiplayer shooters decided that they all needed to have XP and levels and junk they’ve been perfecting the idea of horizontal progression. The perfect system for which is one in which the defaul gun is an all around performer, but as you unlock other guns you get neat sidegrade options which are better at one thing but worse at another than the default gun.

In this case our “gun” is our overall character in terms of skill selection, weapon, class, and gear. If you could make fair trades for offense versus defense, better damage in certain regions while getting worse damage in others, etc. that is, I believe, horizontal progression. It’s the act of specializing rather than simply getting more powerful, and I believe that is something that should be considered when thinking about progression moving forward.

I would like to see horizontal progression dungeons.

Currently you have dungeons with different paths and a main hub where you start any dungeon path. What I would like to see is a dungeon made up of 4-5 paths but each path access is unlocked from completing the previous path. 1 → 2 → 3 and so on. The final boss will be at the end of path 5.

Once you have unlocked a path you can log out and your progress will be saved. So you can return to complete the next path at a later date. The loot you are rewarded is based on how many paths you have completed. i.e. if you join a group on path 5 you will receive path 1 loot.

This idea came from when I first completed Ascalonian Catacombs and when you kill the ghost king. he says: “You’ve defeated me, but what’ve you gained? Much deadlier things stir beneath us. They’ll consume you all!”

Unfortunately the things he was talking about were boring ol gravelings. But at the time I thought the explorable paths would take you lower and deeper and new powerful enemies would be discovered with a complex storyline to support it. I was wrong – just a bunch of overgrown lizards.

Thobek.1730:

I would like to see horizontal progression dungeons.

Currently you have dungeons with different paths and a main hub where you start any dungeon path. What I would like to see is a dungeon made up of 4-5 paths but each path access is unlocked from completing the previous path. 1 -> 2 -> 3 and so on. The final boss will be at the end of path 5.

Once you have unlocked a path you can log out and your progress will be saved. So you can return to complete the next path at a later date. The loot you are rewarded is based on how many paths you have completed. i.e. if you join a group on path 5 you will receive path 1 loot.

This idea came from when I first completed Ascalonian Catacombs and when you kill the ghost king. he says: “You’ve defeated me, but what’ve you gained? Much deadlier things stir beneath us. They’ll consume you all!”

Unfortunately the things he was talking about were boring ol gravelings. But at the time I thought the explorable paths would take you lower and deeper and new powerful enemies would be discovered with a complex storyline to support it. I was wrong – just a bunch of overgrown lizards.

That is strict vertical progression at work. Do think A to get to things b,c,and D. This was the majority of the vertical model used in GW1 and it was a lot of fun because it was about doing stuff rather than filling out numbers on a character sheet.

The horizontal version of dungeons is much more like what we have now, where you have multiple options rather than a single required path

As I mentioned in the previous thread, a lot of us really signed up for this because we liked what we heard pre-release about open world. (Well that and being GW1 fans.) So we would like to see more rewards and options to get us back on those maps again.

Stuff like:

• DE rewards revamped
• A brand new set (or 2 or 3, or like 15) of sleek, non-over-the-top, slim fitted armor available through Karma
• Ascended boxes and “Ecto Refinement” mats added to mob drobs
• Mob drops not balanced in such a way that assumes we are all botters and shouldn’t get anything
• Reverse DR, we get more for going to different places rather than less for staying in the same place
• Other cosmetics, bring back the town clothes you ripped from the gem store in a way that players directly collect them in game without gems

My favorite part of any game is the story and lore. This is relevant to horizontal progression in that, while my character may be level 80, I still feel like I’m making progress if I’m moving through a storyline and uncovering new lore. This has been true somewhat for the living story; moving through it felt like progress, even though I wasn’t really leveling up. However, I think having a way to track personal progress in the living story and any other future storylines in the hero UI would make the experience more enjoyable. I imagine it would look somewhat like the personal story pane which summarizes progress through the personal story.

Similarly, the home instance was not fully implemented as was discussed in a blog post prior to release. Fully developing the home instance so that it tangibly shows progress would be awesome. Also, the home instance seems like a great location for supporting various types of collections (imagine if we could keep an armor/weapon collection in our home?). Another collection idea would be to I’d love to see added to the home instance would be an element which allows us to re-watch cinematics from past events. We’d collect and unlock cinematics as we watch them, and the interactable cinematic collector would show how many we’ve collected, like the Scrying Pool in Guild Wars 1. Basically, I’d love to see the home instance become the GW2 version of GW1’s Hall of Monuments.

Finally, the best way to add to my sense of horizontal progression is to ensure that future story releases are high quality, to keep me compelled to continue progressing through the story. Thanks for having this discussion!

Just quoting, couldnt say better.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

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.

PopeUrban.2578:

The barometer of “can you kill a plains wurm faster” is flawed.

If I was able to derive some specialized “Arthropod toxin” that made me better at killing a plains wurm while simultaneously making me worse at running, or magic find, or killing wolves or whatever… that’s still horizontal progression.

If its more effective than a Potent Potion of Wurm Slaying (+ 10% damage to wurms; – 10% damage taken from wurms) I am gonna be pretty skeptical that a penalty to magic find or stabbing wolves is more than just a distraction from the vertical progression compared to consumables in game now.

If you are fully fed, potioned, runed and rocking a Sigil of Night at night… wurms go down mighty fast. Players can hit really, really hard. Most of the time none of us bother to push to that ultimate limit. There’s a bit more wiggle room in my barometer than you might think .

In this case our “gun” is our overall character in terms of skill selection, weapon, class, and gear. If you could make fair trades for offense versus defense, better damage in certain regions while getting worse damage in others, etc. that is, I believe, horizontal progression. It’s the act of specializing rather than simply getting more powerful, and I believe that is something that should be considered when thinking about progression moving forward.

Agree fully. So if you do breach the ‘wurm limit’ I would plan on having a really compelling explanation of what you gave up to do it. And careful consider if the down side of your trade-off is something that can be completely mitigated. “Vulnerability to wolves” is meaningless if I can switch the exchange off before fighting a wolf…

progression stuff…

step 1- hire more people (like you did for ls development) to seriously work on professions and combat. one of those people hired should be familiar with coh so they can help guide you with developing much better character, ability, combat, cc, movement, progression, lots more stuff… systems.

step 2- gw2 could use more ability and weapon buttons to press on the bar. I suggest something like this…
*#1-10 would be used for individual or multiple weapon skills.
*f1-f4 mechanics bar
*f5 heal skill
*f6 aoe/team heal skill
*f7-f10 utility skills
*f11 &f12 elite skills
*a 3rd weapon swap option would be great as well.

step 3- open test server.

step 4- profit from long term retention and earn the respect of players who value quality profession and combat systems.

additionally, you will need to remove combat movement suppression, greatly increase the camera zoom out range and provide a customizable ui to compliment these amazing new progression systems.

thanks!

Something I posted in another thread. Thought I would post it here.

I would like an ingame speed clear leaderboard and timer for dungeons and fractals. You could grant achievement points when a group clears a path in a bronze/silver/gold time. And the record times could be put into an official leaderboard on the website.

Its something that would appeal greatly to the higher end and more dedicated pve players (these are the type of players that stick around for the longest). It also gives others something to work towards to improve themselves and earn respect among other players. There shouldnt be any ingame reward changes for clearing a path in a certain time, to prevent elitism and blacklisting certain classes. It should simply be a leaderboard type thing with no ingame rewards apart from extra AP (maybe).

Just adding my ideas to the conversation, there’s been a lot of focus on armour and dyes, but I know people who would work hard to unlock emotes (who doesn’t want /plane, though more emotes like /rank could also be introduced).
wvw’ers could have siege cosmetics, the wintersday projectile effects currently being used could be unlocked/bought for example, or the siege itself could look different. Also ascended cooking (when/if it is eventually introduced) could be very horizontal, giving people who eat it effects like how the omnomberry ghost currently does, as well as a stat boost.

afoot.6932:

…while my character may be level 80, I still feel like I’m making progress if I’m moving through a storyline and uncovering new lore.

This this this this this this this this.

Also, what he said.

If it turns out that Scarlet is actually a Dragon Minion, I’m deleting my characters. Seriously, what happened to your writers, Anet?

spoj.9672:

Something I posted in another thread. Thought I would post it here.

I would like an ingame speed clear leaderboard and timer for dungeons and fractals. You could grant achievement points when a group clears a path in a bronze/silver/gold time. And the record times could be put into an official leaderboard on the website.

Its something that would appeal greatly to the higher end and more dedicated pve players (these are the type of players that stick around for the longest). It also gives others something to work towards to improve themselves and earn respect among other players. There shouldnt be any ingame reward changes for clearing a path in a certain time, to prevent elitism and blacklisting certain classes. It should simply be a leaderboard type thing with no ingame rewards apart from extra AP (maybe).

Add in a dps meter and i will be pleased too.

Thanks again for making these threads available, it does mean a lot that you’re willing to open up discussion with the players like this. Now, I haven’t read through all the previous posts, but just wanted to ramble a bit about my thoughts on the subject.

Though I missed out on the Vertical Progression side of things, I think it bears repeating that it, as a design decision, taps into that part of a Player that seeks perfection, and honing of their avatar. For some people, and when done well, it can be extremely motivating and keeps them occupied for a very long time. Horizontal Progression, on the other hand, walks a little bit of a finer line. I’ll divvy my thoughts up on the matter into a few categories.

STATS:
So when it comes to the actual play and min-max side of the game, I feel like the Player’s options in the game are not as fluid as many would like them to be. That is to say, changing around Stats and playing their avatars in a variety of ways is a cumbersome system with some fairly severe consequences. When it comes to gear, in order to try out a new play style it means investing in what will become soul bound gear, an entire new set in fact, which then needs to have runes applied, upgrades installed, and if the look isn’t right, transmuted to be comfortable to play in. That means additional armor taking up bank space, having to travel to switch it out, and then redoing your traits to make the system work with it.

Basically, I think there’s a very obvious reason some stats are decided to be the best for a particular job, and real world experimentation is a bit low. If that’s the sort of investment we’re talking about, it is in the Player’s best interest to find a Stat makeup that works, and stick to it.

The polar opposite and the most Horizontal Progression you could get would be the Legendary Weapon system applied to all armor, as in you buy armor at a certain level and rarity, and then are able to swap out the stat distribution freely while also being able to redo your traits completely. That’s quite a shift, and I somehow doubt that would be in the cards, especially since a great deal of the economy is based on gear swapping and trait resetting is a bit of a gold sink.

One option would be, as some people have offered on the cosmetic side, a sort of stat ‘wardrobe’ where you gather and ‘consume’ various prefixes to a particular weapon, gradually making it so you can use the Legendary Weapon system to switch it to any previously ‘consumed’ Stat prefix you have. For instance, you buy a Berserker’s level 80 Exotic Sword, then buy a Cleric’s lvl 80 Exotic Sword. Through some UI process (perhaps a consumable item like a Salvage Kit) you ‘add’ the Cleric’s Sword to the Berserker, and may then freely switch between the two at any time you’d like, without taking up space in your inventory. The end goal, obviously being, to gather all possible permutations of the weapon and have it be completely malleable. While this doesn’t solve all of the issues I noted before (aside from storage concerns) I feel it would be an incentive that would drive the Player to ‘complete’ their gear, as this system could be applied to armor sets as well. It would have the added benefit of being relatively clear to the Player which prefixes they were missing, as changing the gear’s Stats could also display a list of both the prefixes available, and also those missing.

Perhaps another possibility would be to have the same sort of system as before, but to avoid the massive cost of either gold or crafting resources, (after all, buying THAT many exotics for every slot is still a steep price to pay) would be to have the ability to ‘Level Up’ the Player’s gear, either through just normal combat, investing unused Skill Points, or any number of the currently implemented currencies, or with an entirely new one. So that, for example, a Berserker’s Lvl 80 Exotic Sword takes 3 skill points to unlock another Prefix of choice, perhaps with a scaling cost or not. This is an idea that I would personally prefer, especially if it had an automatic process (such as an extra portion of experience gained through play being split between the gear currently equipped) as it really scratches that itch to ‘fill them bars’ you get from leveling and becoming more powerful, only this makes you more flexible. This option would mean that a Player would really only need to purchase a piece of gear at a certain level and rarity once, which might seem like a negative on the economy, however it has been my personal experience, as noted earlier, that I am motivated to make my decision on gear beforehand, and then stick rigidly to it as the cost for mistakes is simply too high, thusly I only buy one piece of gear for each slot regardless. I do not know how true that holds for other Players.

Concluded Below

Continued from above

While we’re on the subject of gear acquisition, I’d like to point out that I find the prospect of gaining my gear through the Trading Post to be a very… anti-climactic method. Crafting is obviously a step up, but when a great deal of that process still has to do with gathering the materials from the TP, it still doesn’t ‘feel’ horribly exciting. Perhaps the new Ascended Gear feels different as many of the materials are Account Bound, but I’ve not experienced that yet, as the time investment seems daunting. I don’t have a current solution to that kicking around my brain, and this post is long enough already.

Wrapping Up STATS:
I think the thing that strikes me about Horizontal Progression as far as Stats go is that they should be a means to an end, and not the end itself. That is to say, gaining the variety and ‘fluidity’ to select from a wide pool of play styles should not be as difficult to achieve as it currently is, but instead that it allows the Player to go about achieving their other more long term goals in a variety of ways. As it is, it feels like getting that ‘fluidity’ in Stats is the end game, but one that is exceptionally off-putting for the amount of effort that goes into it. I would rather see the larger goals of Players focused on something other than the perfection of Stats.

There’s other areas I’d like to discuss such as cosmetics and such, but I’m a little ‘typed out’ right now, so I’ll hopefully do that before the thread gets locked! Thanks again for having this open.

Cinch.5471:

While we’re on the subject of gear acquisition, I’d like to point out that I find the prospect of gaining my gear through the Trading Post to be a very… anti-climactic method.

The fact that you can buy practically everything through the TP causes people to play only the content that returns the most gold. The game becomes like real life, where you’re working an awful job (champ farming) to earn the money (gold) to buy what you want. This makes the game boring very quickly.

Of course no one is forced to play like this, but the fact is that a large proportion of the population does — because they can, I guess.

Unless something is done about this, no amount of horizontal progression will help the game — people will just go for the most efficient gold farm and all the hard work of creating content is wasted.

Lord Kuru.3685:

The fact that you can buy practically everything through the TP causes people to play only the content that returns the most gold. The game becomes like real life, where you’re working an awful job (champ farming) to earn the money (gold) to buy what you want. This makes the game boring very quickly.

Of course no one is forced to play like this, but the fact is that a large proportion of the population does — because they can, I guess.

Unless something is done about this, no amount of horizontal progression will help the game — people will just go for the most efficient gold farm and all the hard work of creating content is wasted.

Thank you, that’s a pretty good way of looking at it. I mean, it DOES make sense, though, that if your goal is gear acquisition Players will gravitate towards the most efficient way of obtaining it. If Gold Per Hour from Champ farming is quicker and easier than making it yourself, well… like I said, it makes sense. I know I do it.

Here are my quick thoughts about it, I wrote extensive post in the vertical progression thread because I thought it was about progression overall, but I know chris read it so thank you for that.

Right now Gw2 has some excellent collection in horizontal progression. It has literally been carrying the game since release. Everyone I play with is either collecting for a legendary or ascended gear. I don’t think this game needs any more collecting right now.

First lets talk about what makes horizontal progression good. Most players want recognition for their actions and success in the game. That is a main reason why you saw many players go into WvW instead of sPvP. This is because it is easier to “show off” what they did in PvE.

Secondly players need to be challenged. If a progression route is easy to get or doesn’t really challenge the players mentally (looking at your champion train skins), then they don’t really give the same satisfaction of getting an item from killing a endgame high dungeon tier boss in a vertical progression. It also takes one exploit, one “easy way” to discredit an entire set of items in terms of impressiveness. This is what we saw with CoF during the initial release and farm.

So lets talk about some possible ventures into this realm of horizontal progression.

1.Armor looks. Again, rewarding the players for what they do and not how long they have grinded is important now. You could do enchanced culture version where first you have to buy the cultural gear, then you can add effects to it by doing something hard in the game. You can go with themes for each of the elder dragons too. You evolve your armor sets, almost like pokemon. Could be a viable route.

2. Skills. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, gating skills solely behind skillpoints will not be viable in the long run. It helps improve the game for collectors and new players, everyone else is left in the cold. When I wanted to get a new skill in gw1 I had to get to that part of hte level/story, kill the boss, then spend money to use the sig of capture. Imagine if they made it so you just had to spend a currency that you got every time you leveled up. People would by every skill the minute the expansion came out for gw1 and it would probably have discouraged many players

2. Hard Mode- Do instanced 10+ player versions of meta events. Perhaps you need to have world completion done for that zone to do it. Unique skins and rewards, the likes. I know you’re going to be doing harder bosses like tequatl, heres the problem. Tequatl is insanely hard to organize for. Players get discourage because of how hard it is to get a bunch of people organized on at the same time and in the same overflow. There is a guild of tequatl runners that is huge, they will actually leave an overflow if there are too many pugs. Doing hard large scale organized groups in the open world will never work. It must be instanced or we should be able to easily choose our overflow.

3. Involve the open world more. The open world and the looks/dynamic events/ npc interactions is what makes this game unique. It will be the deciding factor in if it survives when new MMOs are released. You need to put more emphasis on exploration/open world actives that offer none grinding rewards, the satisfaction of doing something good, and the things i discussed in the first paragraphs of this. I think one of the biggest things you could do is long/large scale zone wide chain events that lead up to like a boss fight or big event that is big, but not just fighting a boss. These pre events will be challenging, they will challenge the player mentally(puzzles), reaction times will be tested (platforming), and just a mix of a bunch of cool stuff.

4. World Bosses. Tequatl is a good step in the right direction. However, if you keep it open world like this keep in mind on how hard it is to organize a ton of people. Good scaling will be key to open world bosses. Also involve the world more. More zone wide and NPC interaction. Like I said tequatl is a step in the right direction, but it can be so much more. Like make it so that up at the sun temple players can defend it from risen during teqautl. If they do this they send hylek reinforcements which fight risen but also decrease risen spawned at turrets. The defenders get the same credit as the dragon fighters (maybe make a chest spawn up there for them). Things like that. World bosses NEED to include the entire zone if you decide to keep them open world

Special Note: I’ve said it a million times, ill say it a million more. KEEP AWAY FROM TIMED SPAWNS. These are not good for the game. They’re hard for groups of people to organize for. They encourage a bad gameplay style of waiting around. If you need to put in a “cooldown” on the spawns, no more than 30 mins. Its better to have players doing events that last 1 an hour to complete or are hard to spawn a boss then have them waiting around for 3 hours or browsing the web while staring at timers. Doing none timed spawns also helps the community interact with one another. I loved the days before there were timers. When I could spawn the event whenever I wanted because no one did them (before the rare rewards). I met so many good people, I talked with so many people. I had a blast. When the timers came out everyone just ignored one another and I lost touch with a lot. It was a sad time.

What about adding Vanquishing (Similar to GW 1) into GW 2? It may work next way: You talking to npc in LA or any other city and selecting Vanquish option and then choose the map u havent done in this mode before. Then u get teleported to instanced version of the map (Queensdale, Cursed Shore or whatever you choose) and will have to clear all the mobs (which will be much harder than in normal open-world version). You may connect to this mode achievements, unique skins or tokens for vanquishing which u trade for precious items like skins or t6 materials or anything else.