Guild Wars 2

Though I initially placed my thoughts in the earlier thread I’ll put some of them here pertaining to horizontal only.

More weapons or at least more skills to existing weapons would help.
It would be interesting to see Engineers with Taze Maces or Sniper Rifle Mesmers.
New traits or weapon skills could help make classes more dynamic because no two Warriors will be the same in theory.

Guild Halls and improving Personal Instances is another great avenue of horizontal progression. A few mementos dedicated to Personal Story milestones or Living Story moments we’ve participated.

Another thing that will help is art from armor and backpieces we’ve earned in events shouldn’t be one use only.
Allow them a place in the Achievements skin box like the Radiance pieces I already have.

Orders:
Orders specific ranks, titles and currency:
-armors tied to ranks
-dyes, bundles(Ex:a dropable jump pad), food etc to buy with currency.
-scavengers hunts tied to the order.
-open world content:
* Dynamic events engaged by members of a specific orders.
* Elements which interact only with members of a specific order.

Signet:
Signet with more specific affinity: to weapons, skills, boons, dropping interactive bundles, etc.
Signets opening new ways to play a character out of combat, like faster gathering, higher jumps (out of combat), etc.
Skills: before adding new skill the available skills should be re-balanced:
As an example the new warrior stance is a great reward/risk skill, but when you have existent skills with a better reward/risk ratio it simply won’t be that appealing.
Also if you intend to add new weapons skills think about giving these skills some kind of synergy and the best examples would be greatswod on guardians and main hand sword on mesmer.

My suggestion is to have Racial Titles. They are account bound titles, which means they can be access by any character, only after they have been unlock. These titles can be unlocked only by playing that specific race.

- Each race have 10 titles to open. (Some of these titles have more tiers to open). When all of specific race titles are maxed, it opens 11th title what are something like this:

- Asura: Lab Genius
- Sylvari: Champion of Pale Tree
- Charr: High Tribune
- Human: Commander of Seraph
- Norn: Hero of Hoelbrack

When each of these races highest titles have been achieved (totally 55 titles, 10 racial from each race + 1 of each of these racial highest titles) there will be open one more title:

God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals 2

So in this way, Guild Wars 2 will have one most prestigous title, like Guild Wars 1 have. Which can be transferred to Guild Wars 3, if this will be out.

Ilmatar.6709:

My suggestion is to have Racial Titles. They are account bound titles, which means they can be access by any character, only after they have been unlock. These titles can be unlocked only by playing that specific race.

- Each race have 10 titles to open. (Some of these titles have more tiers to open). When all of specific race titles are maxed, it opens 11th title what are something like this:

- Asura: Lab Genius
- Sylvari: Champion of Pale Tree
- Charr: High Tribune
- Human: Commander of Seraph
- Norn: Hero of Hoelbrack

When each of these races highest titles have been achieved (totally 55 titles, 10 racial from each race + 1 of each of these racial highest titles) there will be open one more title:

God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals 2

So in this way, Guild Wars 2 will have one most prestigous title, like Guild Wars 1 have. Which can be transferred to Guild Wars 3, if this will be out.

Agreed with everything you said up until you actually labeled the last title. Pretty good idea up until you actually wrote God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals….2. Maybe there should be top ranking overall title…just not that.

Ilmatar.6709:

My suggestion is to have Racial Titles. They are account bound titles, which means they can be access by any character, only after they have been unlock. These titles can be unlocked only by playing that specific race.

- Each race have 10 titles to open. (Some of these titles have more tiers to open). When all of specific race titles are maxed, it opens 11th title what are something like this:

- Asura: Lab Genius
- Sylvari: Champion of Pale Tree
- Charr: High Tribune
- Human: Commander of Seraph
- Norn: Hero of Hoelbrack

When each of these races highest titles have been achieved (totally 55 titles, 10 racial from each race + 1 of each of these racial highest titles) there will be open one more title:

God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals 2

So in this way, Guild Wars 2 will have one most prestigious title, like Guild Wars 1 have. Which can be transferred to Guild Wars 3, if this will be out.

This is a really good idea on how to have GWAMM title in GW2 and the " 2 " after the title is pretty cool too. It will show this title was achieved in GW2 while the simple GWAMM was achieved in GW1

The player needs to be a champion of each race to be the " best of Tyria "

This will be a long term goal and will even continue if they add new races to the game.

Nice +1.

and i like that Hero of Hoelbrak title. it is like the real purpose of any norn personal story

Deified.7520:

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

This actually happened to the GW vets that played from the begining when Factions came out. I had so many skillpoints saved up from Prophecies that when Factions released I was able to purchase all my skills at launch(except Elites, still had to cap those).

CepeDuH.7543:

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.

Yes! I would love this.

It would be another time consuming difficult PvE activity to do that’s completely different than dungeons, and it lets players enjoy all of the zones in new and exciting instanced ways.

The biggest problem I see with this though, is that it would prevent players from spending time in the real zones, which is already a goal of Anet.

Dalanor.5387:

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.

Yes. This.

I put forth a lot of thought into the sub-classes idea — but I think this post highlights the single biggest issue with GW2 right now — and that is that DPS rules everything in PvE meta.

Because of defiant (and just the general nature of combat all being an AoE fest) there is quite literally no reason to ever build your character around control. Support sort of has its place — but DPS is sill 90% if not more what rules this games meta.

Anet tried to introduce new fun mechanics in Tequatle, but it still ended up being a 15 minute DPS check.

If Anet can get this under their belt, I think the game will move in a fantastic direction.

Here’s to hoping.

Mixchimmer.7230:

It would be another time consuming difficult PvE activity to do that’s completely different than dungeons, and it lets players enjoy all of the zones in new and exciting instanced ways.

as if the open world zones would be too populated nowadays, we need a new instanced version. No thank you. Better find other ways to add Hard Mode to the game but not instanced

Nike.2631:

Woohoo!

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!

Looking forward to seeing people’s ideas!!

I have the same feeling about downscaling in gw2 and even made a post about it
“https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Are-players-downscaled-enough/first#post3382057”
and it seems like players enjoy this kind of gameplay (pretty sad Y_Y).

- Implementation of Legendary Armors/ Accessoires, because they aren#t verticalyl better, than Ascendent, but they do look more impressive

- Implementation of more Skills of all sorts, not only Healing Skills,
Mainly Utility Skills, Elite Skills and new Weapons for the Classes, old ones added as like complete new Weapon Types, like Halberds, Great Axes, Whips/Chain Sickles, Quarterstaffs, Claws, Crossbows/Recurvebows, Flails

- Adding new Traits or as I suggest completely redesign and split up the Trait System into Traits, Abilities and Talents to improve the possibilities of the System for horizontal progression.

- Adding Content to the game, that improves the quality of life of the Character, or simply are a sign of prestige and horizontal progression like

• Housing
• Mounts
• Craftable own Ships/Air Ships for costless Way Point usage and traveling between continents in future (usable maybe also in future for NAVAL BATTLES and AIR BATTLES)

- Guild related Horizontal Progression

• Guild Halls and upgrading the Guild Hall to an own GUILD TOWN.
• Implementing as new Guild Feature Guild Crusades (a form of Raids in the more classic style)
• GvG Mode, where simply Guilds can fight directly against other guilds and where we can have again an Alliance System so that allied guilds can aid us in the battles.

- Class Related Horizontal Progression by adding Sub Classes, the most easiest and best key feature, with that you can combine adding and unlocking new skills, new weapons, new traits, new armor sets and os on.

- Achievement/Title Progression in combination with neutral talents
When you have slayed like 1000 Skales, then this should mean something, so more creatures of a certain species you kill, so more effieciently should your character become in killing these creatures and receive a bonus in:

- Dealign Damage to Creature X
- Receiving lesser Damage from Creature X
- Receiving more Exp from Creature X
- Raising the Chances of receiving rarer loot from Creature X

Players should receive also titles for killing like 1000, 2500, 5000, 10000 Creatures of a certain Species like:

- Vanquisher of X at 1000
- Slayer of X at 2500
- Devastator of X at 5000
- Dominator of X at 10000

At each title the player should receive beneath the title also a reward chest ,that should reward the player with something, that is related to that species, like a weapon or an armor part that is skinned after that creature that you have slayed so many times

- Reskinning all of the Head Gear Rewards from the Dungeon Stories/ adding more Rewards in Dungeons
Currently those Head Gear Rewards are a joke, its absolutely not worth it to do the Stories of the Dungeons for those Head Gear rewards, because the skins of those rewards are 0815 crap that you can find in the game like sand at the beach!!
Change those Head Gear Skins into some dungeon related unique skins, so that it is really worth it to make the Stories of the Dungeons, if you want to get the Skins of those Head Gears.

Same goes also for the rare quality dungeon token armors, remove those 0815 designs there and give the rare set a new armor design that is unique, so that each dungeon should have 2 different armor sets for dungeon tokens to trade in, instead of only 1.
In general, you should add more dungeon armor sets and weapons over time, so that people stay interested in doing those dungeons. People should never reach the state, that they don’t know what to do with all their tokens, because of there being nothing, that interests them to buy with them.

Also all of those named armor sets should get reskinned, they currently all have the same design!! They should look really like the armors after those npcs they were named after!!
When I have Koss’ Armor in my inventory and equip it, then I also EXPECT from that armor, that it really looks like Koss’ Armor!! Otherwise if you don’t want to make yourself that effort, rename the Armors Sets !!

That was the first brainstorming xD

I want to contribute to that with the best way so i got few quick questions:
-How does the idea of adding new skills as often as possible is? and by saying and as often as possible means that the skills will be released after they`ve been tested and balanced properly.
-Also how about making most achievements less grindy and more fun with better rewards? i think the game is already more grindy than it should so ill give an example what i mean with this suggestion: i liked the achivs in the Within Of Nightmares update were you had to jump from the edge of the top of the tower wearing those swimming glasses. also i enjoyed the Tequatl achiv were i had to jump over the waves 10 times, and i like the fact that is a similar achiv in the last update. and for the rewards part i like the backpieces and all these staff but 1-2 back pieces per update is not enough imo. Also i would like to see some weapon skins also been purchases only from achivs.
- And one last thing, housing. yeah this can be an awesome way to have the feeling of progression, by adding trophies that you got from event and achievements to being able to add activities within you house instance that can be played by your friends or your guildies and also being able to compete with them. there are many other ideas about housing these are mine.

Deified.7520:

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.

This is an interesting concept

So, horizontal progression is up! Let’s get cracking…

Personally, for me – and this is something that I freely admit is different for others – one of the things that can really get me excited to come back into the game (as opposed to just marking off the daily checklist) is finding or coming up with a new build, or a new iteration of an old build, that I really want to try out. For instance, the new engineer heal skill applies a new angle to static discharge and melee Engineers, and when I put together a new build late one night to take advantage of that, I was looking forward to the opportunity to come back and try it out the following day in a way that, I’d have to say, I’m usually not about undertaking yet another circuit of daily achievements.

One of the biggest barriers to this, I think, is the charge for respeccing. Testing something out in the Mists is most definitely NOT the same feeling, and while the fee may be relatively small for most players, including myself, it does take a bit of the fun out of it when you know that every time you switch you’re having to fork out at least once, and possibly twice or more if the experiment proves a failure or needs additional trait tweaking. I’ve heard the argument that it’s a gold sink – I disagree for a number of philosophical reasons that probably need their own thread, but if a gold sink associated with respeccing is truly needed, how about having the option to buy a “permanent retraining contract” that allows you to respec at a trainer as many times as you like for free from then on. Make it cost something exhorbitant like five gold so that for most players, it’s not a cost-effective option – but for people who do like to try something different on a daily or weekly basis, this will be a welcome option for removing one of the fun-suckers from the game.

The benefits of adding more skills, more weapons, and boosting or reworking unused skills for this are self-evident, and I’m pretty sure that’s something that’s already on your proverbial radar, so I’ll just give a quick thank-you for the new heal skills in the latest patch, express the hope that it’s just the tip of the iceberg, and move on. ?

(Except to say, as one for the ranger players: More animal companions please! I’m still jealous of Shrieksy…)

I am a little leery, though, about the idea of sub-classes that keeps coming up – it’s certainly worthwhile to think of various concepts that could be thought of as subclasses when designing a set of skills or traits, but I’m much more inclined towards letting people build their own character through the skills and traits that are made available than to force them to work within prebuilt packages. One aspect I could see it working is as a mechanic for using the same weapon in a different way – a ranger, for instance, might use a staff “druid style” as a magical focus or “woodsman style” as a quarterstaff – but I think it’d be simpler to just leave subclasses out of it and, if there is a call to have multiple skillsets associated with a weapon for a particular profession, just present it as a choice between styles rather than a subclass choice.

One thing I really loved about GW1’s profession system is that subclasses came naturally out of combining different professions in different ways. I’m not sure if that’s something that’s practical in GW2’s profession system, but that’s personally about as far as I’d like to see a subclass system go.

One thing that I think would distinctly help with achieving horizontal progression through offering greater build variety is reworking how PvE encounters work. The idea of the “soft trinity” is one I heartily applaud – the problem is that it often just doesn’t work. Most of the most challenging encounters in PvE are boss fights, and with Unshakeable making control effects all but pointless against most bosses, and the way that in most boss fights gathering into a support field is just asking for the boss to drop a red circle on it that’ll remove more health than the field can hope to mitigate, means that the most efficient way to deal with most bosses is simply to dodge and make use of invulnerability effects and projectile blockers to negate attacks entirely while DPSing. This is probably far too large a topic to tackle here, but it is something that I think should be on the radar, and solving this problem so that the soft trinity functions properly will probably do a lot to promote build variety and thus horizontal progression through mastering a greater variety of builds.

Moving onto the aesthetic side of things: As has been said in the previous threads, one of the great tragedies of ascended armour is that, without making use of transmutation crystals, it pretty much relegates everyone to having the same skin if they want BiS armour in any location apart from helm, shoulders or gloves (a choice of two if they have HoM stuff). As well as appearing to confirm some people’s fears about transmutation crystals (namely, that it would lead to the development of ugly BiS armour in order to force people who care about aesthetics to buy crystals – now, I don’t think ascended is that bad, but it’s certainly not to everyone’s taste, and no one set of art really can be), it’s a crying shame that so much good artwork has been rendered obsolete. There really needs to be some other means through which additional skins can be applied to ascended equipment – allowing the option to craft it with an alternative skin, allowing dungeon, karma, and other purchased armours to be purchased in skin form, implementing a skin wardrobe similar to the GW1 festival hat maker, something...

A huge problem with cosmetic progression right now is the lack of options for achieving certain looks.

Example: You are playing a female Norn or Sylvari medium armour user and you want to look sleek and non-trenchcoaty? You’ll get the exotic duelist chest.

Now you are done. Full stop. There’s nothing else to work towards because no alternatives without stuff dangling down past the waist exist.

Female light armour users who want some pants without attached skirts, sashes, loincloths or whatever face a similar problem. The closest they can get to that are the craftable harem pants. Again, cosmetic progression in that slot comes to a full stop.

For cosmetic progression to work, there absolutely need to be multiple options for each look, slot and armour type.

Guhracie.3419:

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

Oh, she’s awesome, and I really like her work. But if she could delay her findings to say: a day after the content comes out, I would really appreciate it. Players might be more inclined to search for the clues themselves. That way we could more easily see how hard/easy it is to find such things on our own. Which could in turn give the devs some more accurate data on how easy or impossible their puzzles are to crack.

In short: I am afraid that her work causes puzzles to be too hard or unfun to solve on our own. (The average puzzler)

Then again, I prefer newspaper puzzles over puzzlebooks, since they don’t have the answers in the back.

TheDaiBish.9735:

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.

Yeah I was referring to the fact that we would need a recipe item. I thought he meant an unlock in the same way as that we unlock certain recipes at crafting level 350.

VOLKON.1290:

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.

I like this! I would love to have some tapestries, and a tapestry design competition too!

Merge Living Story with your home instance like this:

Characters from the LS which you’ve the metachievement of appear in your home instance.

Braham and Rox as Skill-challenge like encounter: you can spar with them, each time you beat them they get stronger & stronger. Beat them on difficulty: “elite” to turn them into vendors who sell you their weapon-skins for 100 laurels each. (difficulty elite: you have to be alone in the instance to participate). You also can earn one Skillpoint per day when defeating them.

Include Utility Minis which have to be found in the open word (through exploration – like collecting pieces of them and putting them together).

possible Utility Minis:

• collects your loot
• has a single bag – more bagspace
• eats all the junk-items you collect
• …

in general I think that all types of collections are needed in GW2 to give people more to do instead of focussing on armor only. It should be usable in combat though, since this is what gameplay is all about.

I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but I know a bunch of people have been saying they want legendary dyes, and it occurred to me that maybe its possible.

First off, I don’t know if people have thought of this, but I’m just going to put it out there anyways:

Legendary Dyes and their names.

Start with names since it will help you understand what I’m talking about. Basically, name them after the legendaries themselves.

Dye of Twilight
Dye of Sunrise
Dye of Bifrost
Dye of The Juggernaut
Dye of Frostfang

and so on.
I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this. The next part would be the look for them. I’m not entirely sure when it comes to the greatswords looks, but lets use Frostfang for this example.

So you craft yourself a Dye of Frostfang and are super stoked to be a kitten in legendary dye! You put it on your armor and close the hero pane and watch the pretty frost effect that would be on frostfang, but on your shoulders. or gloves. or entire armor set.

Crafting these mother-of-all-dyes:

Obviously it would require the Gift of Color. I mean, its a dye. Perhaps gift of legendary-type as well. As for the other pieces of the puzzle, I’m not sure.

Effects:

I’m thinking that the weapon trail effects should be included somehow.. but if it was to trail behind all 6 pieces, it might look a little weird/bad. The boots would be cool. Maybe if all 6 pieces had it on, it would do the trail behind the boots.. idk..

That’s all i got, feel free to add on top of it.

~Floyd Hunter

Edit:

Last night I was thinking about the combination for making these dyes.

Gift of Color – obviously because it’s dyes.
Gift of (weapon) – To determine the effect you want in the dye.

Here’s where I’m not sure on what the other two pieces should be for the recipe, so I’m going to list off the ideas:

Gift of Mastery – Because its a legendary, I thought maybe it should have the GoM for the simple fact that if you want to look like kitten, you should have to work to be a kitten

Gift of Ascension – Because another use for an item is cool? idk.

Stack or X-Amount of Ascended materials, refined or not – Just thought maybe they could make use of the ascended mats for another item instead of just ascended weps/armor

Stack of Ecto or Stack of Obi Shards – Considering this to be the 4th piece of the recipe because.. Ecto/Obi.. because reasons? lol

One idea which comes to my mind is related to a system we know from Flame and Frost:

• you can find certain items in the world (or parts of it, making it also a collectible game) which belong to someone. You can either sell those items for 1g each or try to find the owner. (there is a little hint like "this belongs to someone from the northern areas of Plains of Ashfurth). This would reward exploration of the world since those objects can spawn anywhere in the open world in any zone.

• once you’ve found the owner you’ll have to help him before he listens to you (do any event which is related to that person). This would bring players back to different zones and let’s them experience long forgotten events again.

• it’s not time gated. You can look for the npc connected to that item whenever you want. These items will get a seperate bank-space. This way you could work towards a complete item collection. (returning the item to the owner creates an image of that item with a little lore-one-liner which takes that bank-space now).

reward… well I guess there has to be a little incentive. Maybe you could give the player +600% magicfind during this one event. Or achievement points. A full collection could also be rewarded with AP and/or a title associated.

a build up from that:

have also some “veteran objects” spawning in various random locations in the world. You could sell those for 2g/piece or return those to the associated veteran. Doing the related event however scales you back to a lower level than intended… making this a hardmode event for you

Skills:

1. Many people have already touched upon adding new skills and such,I admit I haven’t read everything but the things I did read I missed 1 thing, new weapon types. I remember one of the devs saying in the past they preferred adding new weapons over new classes, I completely agree with this and new weapon types would be a great way to allow players to be more diverse. It will be a lot of work since that would mean for 2 handed weapons 40 new skills (even more for 1 handed)+ there will be need for quite some skins for them to more or less match up with the current ones, but it is IMO definitely worth it. Being a ranger main myself I would love to see a crossbow make it into the game and I am pretty sure people that main other classes have quite some ideas on this too.
2. Add skills that can be earned by every class by doing certain events in the open world. Pretty much like how skill points are being gathered, only IMO it should be a bit harder, perhaps not even doable by just one person. This way you also won’t need to design a different skill for every class, obviously this does not exclude new skills that are class specific of being added. This way of acquiring skills can also be useful if you plan an continuing with race specific skills that can only be obtained by a certain race in their area.
3. This one will likely be a lot of work but it is something I will throw out anyway, being able to customize the look of your skills. Same as the previous one you would go and gather these looks by doing something in the open world. I would bind these events to a certain slot as to not make the amount needed ridiculously high so that 1 of these events adds a customization to the 3rd slot of every weapon set.

Home instance:

People have already brought it up, the home instance is not what it should be, what it could be, but what direction should be taken? Personally as I see it at this point the current home instances leave little place for customization since it is pretty much a place designed by you guys. We have no say in what our home looks like, how big it is, etc, neither does the effort we put into it make a lot of difference. Therefore it is IMO best to make the home instance a completely empty patch of dirt where we can make our own place, where we can also show off the rewards we have gotten and choose where to place the gathering nodes we have gotten. If worked out well it could also lay down the foundations on adding guild housing, but I will leave that for a guild progression CDI.

More progression can be done by for example adding a mason or carpenter craft line, they can make furniture and other items needed to customize your home instance, this might also require the addition of new gathering nodes for stone.

Character story:

In our personal story we did some jobs for our chosen order and progressed in rank towards the highest rank, apart from the boss of the order, IMO this were the best parts of the personal story, where we progressed our character trough our order. Why not expand this some more? Why not after you completed your story your order requires your help once more for minor tasks? Some people have called it a faction system where we develop our character trough helping out certain groups and this would be a great way to work something like this out and see if it is worthwhile to expand to a fully-fledged faction system also for every race/city etc.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Oh, she’s awesome, and I really like her work. But if she could delay her findings to say: a day after the content comes out, I would really appreciate it. Players might be more inclined to search for the clues themselves. That way we could more easily see how hard/easy it is to find such things on our own. Which could in turn give the devs some more accurate data on how easy or impossible their puzzles are to crack.

In short: I am afraid that her work causes puzzles to be too hard or unfun to solve on our own. (The average puzzler)

Then again, I prefer newspaper puzzles over puzzlebooks, since they don’t have the answers in the back.

Snipped for relevance. Thanks for clarifying this; I totally see where you’re coming from. It’s a little like how WoW changed raid encounters to account for all the mods people were using- eventually, it was just taken for granted that the majority of people would have a mod pointing them in the right direction. I just think it’s important to remember that dulfy is a person, not just the name of the website.

I would love to see the home instance as a showcase of your progression in the game, just like the Hall of Monuments in GW1. What has to be done though imho:

• give players a portal stone which ports you to the HI and back where you were again.
• Redesign some of the homeinstances. Imho the norn HI is underwhelming compared to the Human and Charr HI.
• add fun activities to the HI which you can do with your friends
• add fun events like the ones from Ebonhawke to the main cities – people should feel rewarded for visiting cities other than Lionsarch.

Add new non-combat utility infusions (and perhaps more than 1 utiltiy slot per item)

ideas from a reddit thread:

• % chance to not damage armor on death (thanks pwnitc)
• % chance to slowly revive on death. (Similar to the Revive Orb. Might be very handy in difficult JP where no one’s around. Doesn’t work in WvW or Dungeons as long someone is in combat) (thanks pwnitc)
• a shout when engaging combat depending on your race/profession. (For XY!) (thanks pwnitc)
• +50% larger mini pet (thanks Anwn)
• + 500% tonic duration
• Special Idle animation

evolution from Queens Gauntlet to horizontally progress in a Gladiator-like arena in the open world:

a small idea how to keep those fun PvE-bosses around after the living story chapter is gone:

• each zone in the game gets one arena (which can also be used for 1vs.1 PvP duels)
• every day 5 random bosses spawn on any of the 25 maps and wander around.
• if you find one, you can talk to him and challenge him: he responds: "sure, we meet in the arena
• now you walk to the arena and queue up (in case duels are going on) the boss is now available to fight for you for 15 minutes.
• he counts as a champion here too, so you get a champion lootbag for a win. + each boss has a single unique skin, rare drop-chance.
• the battle is not instanced, but only for you. Others can watch and cheer for you.
• after the time-limit you won’t fall to your death. You only get kicked out of the arena and lose precious time since the boss is only around for 15 minutes. If someone else want’s to duel at that time, the boss-time gets paused until you’re back in the arena with him.

you can only challenge higher tier bosses if you have defeated the tier below. You should be a worthy contender.

on a further note:

as these arenas can be used for 1v1 duels and these are not instanced, other people can watch. This opens up new possibilities:

*tournaments: 8 players can queue up for a tournament (still 1v1 battles)

• king of the ring: 10 players in the arena, only one leaves the ring alive …

PS:
each arena fits the zone, BUT no orange or red floor
arenas are in pits without glasswalls or woodbars. Instead there is an invisible border outside players can’t cross. This way you can watch the battle without something in the way.

Just two more points I’d like to add based on the current discussion:

Preventing Homogony: (Aka preventing everyone looking the same.) A major problem in Guildwars 1 (one of few) was that “endgame” wise there was a uniform of sorts that most accomplished players would end up wearing,
Obsidian armor (most expensive, required completing a 3 hour hard map clear in addition making it the most prestigious)
Torment weapon (requires repeated completion of an elite area, expensive)
Chaos gloves: (Really expensive hand item that literally glows)
GWAMM title progress: (shows how many other titles you have total)

Looks wise this looked really good but the problem was this was objectively the most prestigious outfit, it requires the most money,skill and well roundedness to get.
So everyone wanted it, and many people got it, there was one point when you couldn’t walk into an outpost without someone having the same outfit as you which shouldn’t happen in a good Horizontal progression, but how do you stop this?

by tackling these three points
1. For a start anyone who wanted to would eventually be able to complete the content.
2. There was only one endgame set
3. Horizontal progression was limited strictly to combat challenges.

So,
1. Increase the difficulty to a point where some people feel they will never obtain the item, this limits the amount of people walking around with whatever item.
2. Verity add several sets that can be considered equally prestigious.
3. Different challenges, have a jumping puzzle elite armor, a dungeon elite armor, a survival mission elite armor, a wvw elite armor, a class quest elite armor, a race quest elite armor. These should only be obtainable by completing a special instance/challenge.

I know point 1 sounds harsh but consider that if a player can’t do the dungeon one they may be good at jumping puzzles or wvw, or other areas.

TL/DR when adding new prestige items for horizontal progression make sure there is a variety of equally prestigious items for each slot to prevent everyone walking around in a uniform.

personal opinion
Legendary Items
This is just a quick semi rant I see people posting “Oh make the dungeon part of getting a legendary optional it’s too hard for me” “I as an average player feel I will never have a legendary”,

I do not have a legendary, I’m only missing the legend for mine, but the whole point of a legendary is that an average player won’t obtain it, it is meant to be for those who show skill in every area, it is not meant to be a guaranteed progression “oh I have my ascended I’ll grab my legendary now”

I’m aware that it is both unfortunately buy-able and easier to obtain than the developers expected, but the initial plan for legendaries if I recall correctly was that less than one percent of the player base would have them, cos you know they’re meant to be legendary.
TL/DR If you are describing yourself as an average player, then a legendary is probably not for you.

/personal opinion

Conski Deshan.2057:

-snip-

I’d go a very different route personally. Grinding stuff or things that only a small minority can achieve just so that not everyone has the item just doesn’t sound fun to me.

There are a lot of different skins in the game at the moment, most of the prestige ones hidden behind the black lion chest gating. My suggestion here:

• weaponskin-token rewards for certain long non-time gated meta-archievements in the game. People had to do a lot of things for the meta when the corresponding LS was live, so that non-time gated meta should be much harder, but still not too grindy.

• don’t forget to add Laurel sinks – prestige skins for a high amount of laurels.

on a further note I’m supporting the suggestion to change dailies to a weekly so that you can miss a day or two and still manage to complete the 7 laurels per week.

Marcus Greythorne.6843 has some very good ideas, I won’t quote them but they are worth a read through his multiple posts

My idea from VOLKON’s Thread:

What about a legendary quest?

• You start of with an exotic weapon of choice: a greatsword, a sword, a longbow, maybe a staff… basically anything. Important: you can choose a beginner skin you like for it too.
• Now, you embark on a dangerous journey… something similar to the GW1 storylines, cause I absolutely adored them. Every time you get the choice between a couple of things, and your choice affects what happens to your weapon: each time you get a new component after completing a story instance, you can add it to your weapon, modifying the skin slightly and making it more legendary by the step.
• When you’re halfway, your weapon can be upgraded to ascended level, you have reached The Source of Ascension.
• At the end of the epic storyline, your weapon becomes legendary and gets a new name, fitting to the adventures you have completed with it.

Another of my ideas copy-pasted:

1- Make ‘armour’ seperated from classes: everyone can wear anything they want.

• Each armour class gives a special bonus:
  - Medium armour: Agility, you are in your element in combat, making it harder to hit you (0-2-4-6-8-10% miss chance based on number of medium armour pieces).
  - Light armour: Wisdom, your affinity with magic creates magical defenses when you are in need (0-2-4-6-8-10% chance to reflect, based on number of light armour pieces).
  - Heavy armour: Dexterity, your armour protects you and you’re able to shrug off heavy damage (0-2-4-6-8-10% chance to block, based on number of heavy armour pieces).
• Armour ratings: all the same, but the armour you equip will influence if you can shrug off blows, evade blows or mirror them back.

2- Stats are no longer bound to armour, but to your mood:

• Gloomy: Condition damage, Toughness, Vitality.
• Angry: Power, Precision, Critical Damage
• Cheerful: Healing Power, Toughness, Vitality.
• … other combinations have other stats attached to them.

3- Every weapon is accessible to every class.

• Based on your mood you get to choose from a number of possible weapon skills per weapon you pick.
• The weapon skills will be complementary with the attributes you gain from mood.
• Traits are associated with moods aswell. There are no more class-specific traits and no more weapon-specific traits.

This would allow for a looooot more variety and practically infinite number of ‘classes’. Want to be a mage in robes swinging a greatsword? Go for it! Want to be an assassin using a rifle? Do it!

I’ve thought of a new system for horizontal progression that uses options/skills we already have in the game and combines it into a collecting activity.

• we already have environmenal weapons which aren’t as powerful as other profession skills
• those weapons are spread all over the world
• we have kits (think engineer)

now I’d combine that to something greater:

• There is a new elite/utility-skill: “environmental weapon”
• This skill can imitate any of the environmental weapons you’ve unlocked.
• once you’ve reached lv.80 you can unlock environmenal weapons by finding them
• This skill works just like an engineer bundle: you activate the skill and the first five skills turn into environmental weapon skills.
• You can swap in and out of that weapon just like with any other weapon

The skill can copy any of the environmental weapons you’ve unlocked, the weapon won’t disappear after usage but just goes on CD.

Collect them all! Balance shouldn’t be an issue because environmental weapons aren’t designed to be more powerful anyway.

You’ll get specific new unlocks for breaking certain barriers. E.g. once you’ve unlocked 10 environmental weapons, you get a CD decrease on your environmental skill. (or a special new environmental weapon).

Marcus Greythorne.6843 has some very good ideas, I won’t quote them but they are worth a read through his multiple posts

Thank you for the kind words, Ronah!

Hello

Below are my idea’s and opinions

1: Home instance focused progression

As raised a number of times on the forums the home instance is currently underused.
It would be an ideal hub for the collection of horizontal progression items / rewards.

Suggestion:

Make quest chains / achievements to add further NPC’s / Structures into your home instance.

These could provide either quality of life services i.e. Trading post, Karma Vender, Skin Wardrobe, Banker etc… also the NPC’s can add visual and audio interest (just take hobo tron as an example).

The home instance should be easily accessed.

We should want to visit it and invite others to join us. Being able to earn mini games or ways to complete daily quests could achieve this.

2: Reincarnation based progression

As suggested by a number of others, re creating a main as another race / class could be a good feature.

Often players re roll as they feel their main has plateaued. Running through another version of the personal story, trying other classes etc… can change a restart into a progression line.

Suggestion:

Reincarnate but retain things like; Living story history, Map completion, Soul bound items (retaining level req and race specific swapping to new race), Dyes and Name, Skill points etc…

The reincarnation should award a title to show the progression of your efforts i.e. The 2nd, The 3rd, The 4th etc…

The cost could be the same as a character slot to avoid the loss of gem revenue for Anet.

3: Further visual progression through animation.

Visual progression has been talked about since the dawn of the game. Its fair to say a great many players would like more aesthetic options.

Suggestion

Earn “rare” stances, idle animations, emotes, walk animations through achievements.

Though I would love new skill animations I appreciate it would upset balance.

Thanks for your time in reading.

Idea for skin database from a few months ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Play-GW2-the-way-you-want-to/first#post3014193

1. A database for unlocked armour/weapon skins and armour/weapon/trinket stats

• No more using transmutation stones to get the skin you like on the weapon you like, every time.
• From now on, when you buy an armour, you can buy a “Template stone” (price in gem store equivalent to transmutation stone). This Template stone allows you to save the skin, stats and sigil of the particular armour into your account and will become accessible on all characters, for no further cost. You can also store runes, sigils and trinkets this way. Then you can create your own items, using the Template Menu, I think of this much in terms of the PvP locker, combining any stats/skins and upgrade components that you have stored in the locker.

• Templates: from now on you can save a certain set-up, albeit cosmetic or practical (for example “Dungeon gear”, “Support gear”, “Staff build”), which automatically loads:
  – your armour (stats, skins and runes)
  – your weapons (stats, skins and sigils)
  – your trinkets (stats)
  – your skills (heal, utility, elite)

2. The first suggestion means that from now on armour/weapons and so forth you consume using the Template stones will disappear into the Template storage and can be summoned by opening it up and selecting the gear/stats/runes. The summoned versions will be soulbound, but the armour will be accessible on your other characters aswell, though not tradeable or salvageable.

There you go. No more buying gear and having no space for it, no more having to farm gear for one character and then for the next ones too. Efficient and simple.

Sirendor.1394:

Another of my ideas copy-pasted:

1- Make ‘armour’ seperated from classes: everyone can wear anything they want.

• Each armour class gives a special bonus:
  - Medium armour: Agility, you are in your element in combat, making it harder to hit you (0-2-4-6-8-10% miss chance based on number of medium armour pieces).
  - Light armour: Wisdom, your affinity with magic creates magical defenses when you are in need (0-2-4-6-8-10% chance to reflect, based on number of light armour pieces).
  - Heavy armour: Dexterity, your armour protects you and you’re able to shrug off heavy damage (0-2-4-6-8-10% chance to block, based on number of heavy armour pieces).
• Armour ratings: all the same, but the armour you equip will influence if you can shrug off blows, evade blows or mirror them back.

2- Stats are no longer bound to armour, but to your mood:

• Gloomy: Condition damage, Toughness, Vitality.
• Angry: Power, Precision, Critical Damage
• Cheerful: Healing Power, Toughness, Vitality.
• … other combinations have other stats attached to them.

3- Every weapon is accessible to every class.

• Based on your mood you get to choose from a number of possible weapon skills per weapon you pick.
• The weapon skills will be complementary with the attributes you gain from mood.
• Traits are associated with moods aswell. There are no more class-specific traits and no more weapon-specific traits.

This would allow for a looooot more variety and practically infinite number of ‘classes’. Want to be a mage in robes swinging a greatsword? Go for it! Want to be an assassin using a rifle? Do it!

1. I personally don’t think that more random elements should be introduced into combat. The majority of effects I feel should be down to the players use of skills and mechanics, not some random number that decided on this attack you’ll actually get what amounts to a free attack because of reflect.

2 + 3. Mood should be an RP thing, more than a thing that is tied to your choice of build. For example, what is someone plays a Norn who is usually happy in battle, but it requires him to be Angry to use Beserker stats? I personally don’t RP, but I can imagine how it’d be an issue for those who do.

3. I agree with the ability to choose weapon skills, and not binding specific traits to weapons (Forceful Greatsword, for example). However, I think profession-specific traits should stay for those who’d like to place more importance on their profession’s mechanic. I mean, what would a Thief do with Burst Mastery?

Greetings.
Many people have written many of my ideas about cosmetics (wardrobes, hall of monuments, account dyes, more dyes, dyed weapons,…), orders (missions, characters, vendors, armor and weapons), character diversity (more skills, more weapons, racial skills) so i only focus in the legendaries.

Some of my clan mates don’t like several legendaries because they don’t fit to theirs characters. For example, they say that a necromancer wielding the Bifrost is not the kind of character they want to play.
I don’t know if there will be more legendary weapons that fill the gap but what about to make your own legendary weapon?
Almost all legendaries have the ability of changing stats, an aura and footprints. Legendary crafting is the gathering of three gifts and one weapon. Two of the gifts are the same for each legendary while one is unique.

My idea:
Let’s any weapon be a legendary weapon.
You should gather the gift of fortune and the gift of mastery as other legendaries.
You should transmutate (through a crystal) your weapon to a 80-level-ascended one (or at least exotic).
You should make a gift (weapon class depending) that give you the aura and footprints (we could call these gifts as seeds). These seeds should have to forge through Mystic Forge and they should need the icy runestones, one sigil, one gift from the type of weapon and the characteristic gift for the aura and footprints.
Example:
I want to make a staff with a dark aura like Twilight.
I gather the gift of mastery, the gift of fortune and get one cool staff (e. g. the Final Rest).
Then I have to gather the elements for The Seed of Darkness Magic Weapon so I gather the 100 icy runestones, the sigil of Blood (?), the gift of energy and the gift of darkness.
After that i put in the Mystic Forge: the Seed of Darkness Magic Weapon (obtained through Mystic Forge), the Gift of Mastery, the Gift of Mastery and my copy of an ascended staff with The Final Rest skin. Then I would get a legendary staff with my skin choice, the posibility to change their characteristics (bersecker, celestial,…) and the darkness aura and footprints from Twilight.

Some final points:
The seeds should be different from the gifts for true legendary weapons (to avoid mistakes).
The auras and footprints could be: fire (incinerator), cold (frostfang), rainbow (bifrost), darkness (twilight), light (sunrise), flowers (kuzdu), lighting (bolt) and stars (eternity).
There shouldn’t be more effects in the character (like arrow proyectils in the Dreamer).
The name could be just done appending “legendary” before the name of the weapon (e. g. legendary final rest).

This ideas could be used to legendary armor. When you have several legendaries on your character only an aura type should be displayed (the last equipped for example or the most used).

Sirendor.1394:

My idea from VOLKON’s Thread:

What about a legendary quest?

• You start of with an exotic weapon of choice: a greatsword, a sword, a longbow, maybe a staff… basically anything. Important: you can choose a beginner skin you like for it too.
• Now, you embark on a dangerous journey… something similar to the GW1 storylines, cause I absolutely adored them. Every time you get the choice between a couple of things, and your choice affects what happens to your weapon: each time you get a new component after completing a story instance, you can add it to your weapon, modifying the skin slightly and making it more legendary by the step.
• When you’re halfway, your weapon can be upgraded to ascended level, you have reached The Source of Ascension.
• At the end of the epic storyline, your weapon becomes legendary and gets a new name, fitting to the adventures you have completed with it.

They didn`t make a proper personal story, what makes you think they`ll make a good “legendary quest”? Or they even bother making one? Although it sounds good as an idea and i would like to see it in game

TheDaiBish.9735:

Sirendor.1394:

Another of my ideas copy-pasted:

1- Make ‘armour’ seperated from classes: everyone can wear anything they want.

• Each armour class gives a special bonus:
  - Medium armour: Agility, you are in your element in combat, making it harder to hit you (0-2-4-6-8-10% miss chance based on number of medium armour pieces).
  - Light armour: Wisdom, your affinity with magic creates magical defenses when you are in need (0-2-4-6-8-10% chance to reflect, based on number of light armour pieces).
  - Heavy armour: Dexterity, your armour protects you and you’re able to shrug off heavy damage (0-2-4-6-8-10% chance to block, based on number of heavy armour pieces).
• Armour ratings: all the same, but the armour you equip will influence if you can shrug off blows, evade blows or mirror them back.

2- Stats are no longer bound to armour, but to your mood:

• Gloomy: Condition damage, Toughness, Vitality.
• Angry: Power, Precision, Critical Damage
• Cheerful: Healing Power, Toughness, Vitality.
• … other combinations have other stats attached to them.

3- Every weapon is accessible to every class.

• Based on your mood you get to choose from a number of possible weapon skills per weapon you pick.
• The weapon skills will be complementary with the attributes you gain from mood.
• Traits are associated with moods aswell. There are no more class-specific traits and no more weapon-specific traits.

This would allow for a looooot more variety and practically infinite number of ‘classes’. Want to be a mage in robes swinging a greatsword? Go for it! Want to be an assassin using a rifle? Do it!

1. I personally don’t think that more random elements should be introduced into combat. The majority of effects I feel should be down to the players use of skills and mechanics, not some random number that decided on this attack you’ll actually get what amounts to a free attack because of reflect.

2 + 3. Mood should be an RP thing, more than a thing that is tied to your choice of build. For example, what is someone plays a Norn who is usually happy in battle, but it requires him to be Angry to use Beserker stats? I personally don’t RP, but I can imagine how it’d be an issue for those who do.

3. I agree with the ability to choose weapon skills, and not binding specific traits to weapons (Forceful Greatsword, for example). However, I think profession-specific traits should stay for those who’d like to place more importance on their profession’s mechanic. I mean, what would a Thief do with Burst Mastery?

I’m just trying to look at things from another side. The idea is probably hardly realistic, has flaws and won’t happen (since it would break down most of their existing structures).

Problems are:
- Class breakdown: maybe limit your choice of skills to class, but at least allow a variety of skills/weapon.

- Mood: looked like a fun idea, and a lot better than binding the stats to armour/weapon/traits. Maybe not the best idea, but imo it would make it more enjoyable (not needing 6 armour sets for being able to use different builds).

I don’t know how much ‘moods’ would make you annoyed at limitations of your character. Nobody is always happy and sometimes looking angry is maybe preferable to looking expressionless like most characters right now. Maybe just allow sliders that have a limited amount of points (similar to traits, but detached from them)?

- I do like the idea of being able to wear anything I wish, and having a different defensive ability based on the things I wear, because obviously someone in robes has less ‘physical’ defense, while someone in armour could probably catch a blade with a gauntlet, without being hurt badly (if you look at the realism of the situation).

Allow me to refer to another thread (which was not written by me), but by someone else 9 months ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Profession-branching-Specialty-Traits/first#post1648409

And a post about class specialisation from Orpheal.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-do-you-want-as-the-next-profession/first#post1564508

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Conski Deshan.2057:

-snip-

I’d go a very different route personally. Grinding stuff or things that only a small minority can achieve just so that not everyone has the item just doesn’t sound fun to me.

There are a lot of different skins in the game at the moment, most of the prestige ones hidden behind the black lion chest gating. My suggestion here:

• weaponskin-token rewards for certain long non-time gated meta-archievements in the game. People had to do a lot of things for the meta when the corresponding LS was live, so that non-time gated meta should be much harder, but still not too grindy.

• don’t forget to add Laurel sinks – prestige skins for a high amount of laurels.

on a further note I’m supporting the suggestion to change dailies to a weekly so that you can miss a day or two and still manage to complete the 7 laurels per week.

Oh I’m not in favor of grind achievements, just challenges , if you successfully complete it once then you get the reward, with maybe some smaller bonus reward for repeats.

As for me my ideal progression is that through the events/achievements you’ve obtained you eventually end up wearing a combination of armor+title+weapon that no other player is using or can at that point use.
(opinion) Progression is by nature exclusionary otherwise it’s not progression. You have accomplished this where others could not and have been rewarded for it. Thats why in my main post I suggest several difficulties of progression so that everyone can feel they are achieving something, (/opinion)

I don’t consider any black lion chest skin to be prestige, to be a prestige it has to be earned not bought. No skill,effort or time was invested only money. A cutting down of black lion chest skins/increase of access would be a great idea but unlikely as they need to make money from something.

Temporary meta’s do allow the steady generation of minor prestige items, they’re limited, show work and show you were there.

I support your idea for a weekly.

I recently made a list of all the different types of vertical and horizontal progression in GW2 to try and clarify exactly what we would be best talking about in this thread and it gave me some interesting thoughts.

Vertical Progression (Things which make characters more powerful)
Stat increase from lvl 1-80 (with level adjusting this might not count for much though)
Gear increase from lvl 1-80
Gear quality increase from Common to Exotic (at game release)/Ascended (since Nov 2012)
Agony Resistance (especially since Oct 2013 fractured patch but applies to fractals only)
WvWvW XP (applies to wvw only, obviously)
Skills/weapon swap/class features unlock (up to lvl 30)
Trait unlock (lvl 20, 40, 60)
Trait stats (up to lvl 80)
Horizontal Progression (Things which make characters more interesting and versatile)
Skills (weapon, healing, utility and elite above lvl 30)
Traits (after lvl 60)
Trait stats (after lvl 80)
Gear variety (Zerkers, Soldiers, Clerics etc etc)
Skins (Character Appearance)
Collections (eg minipets)
Achievement Points
Personal Story (including race, gender etc)
Class

First interesting thing is that there was a lot more vertical progression than I had expected, and most of it has nothing to do with ascended. This is because almost all of it takes place before lvl80, is relatively easy and doesnt require a lot of time to complete.

Second thing is that there are a lot of items which appear on the list twice. This is because a lot of what is vertical content while a character is lvling pretty seamlessly becomes horizontal progression after a certain point. This is great design imo and much more like GW1 than I have previously given GW2 credit for.

Third thing is that of the time consuming post lvl 80 vertical progression items 2 of them are limited to a specific part of the game, ie they dont affect overall char power. WvW xp and agony resistance are specialized, long term vertical progression which works fine in a HP focused game because people are not obliged to participate in those areas beyond a point before where the progression starts. This is good.

This leaves the stat increase on ascended armour very much alone though. It affects every area of the game, it is a long term progression and it is exclusively post 80. This is the problem with it. If ascended just added an infusion slot and came with unique stat combinations (rather than stat increases) it would have provided long term horizontal progression coupled with fractals only vertical progression. I cant help but think thats much better. Ah well, too late for that now I guess.

Thats the VP side of the list done though, I guess the HP stuff is much more relevant to this thread.

There are also 3 main types of horizontal progression in GW2 that I can see. Theres the story stuff that is based on your choices before the character is made, and then there is the stuff that becomes horizontal after a certain point, like traits and unlocked skills and finally there is the collectable stuff like minipets or titles or AP.

Of the first type I feel that it is very unfinished at the moment and by far the most interesting part of it happens before you even start playing the game. Choosing race and class, and personality , it seems like these things were planned as being the start of something that would be much more involved during the game but it just sort of peters out after about the first 30 lvls when the personal story starts to merge together. I find it quite strange that unique skins are regularly handed out for living story participation but nobody thought to do that for the different choices during personal story. This is an area which could be a very immersive part of the game, great for roleplayers or even just people who like to feel their characters exist in a consistent context.

Of the second type of content, the things that essentially provide different builds or play styles beyond a certain point I feel that it suffers by being divorced from the story and context of the game to a large extent. For example, the recently added healing skills simply show up in your interface and, if you have the sp, you click twice on it and there you go, horizontal progression complete. But this is the sort of interaction you can have in a web browser. Why couldn’t we have unlocked that skill by, at the very least, talking to a merchant within the context of the game world? A merchant who appears in our home instance after we complete the dynamic event to rescue them from destroyers in a cave under the shiverpeaks and they agree to show us their secret knowledge in return.

There was a similar thing I felt when ascended crafting began. Suddenly, bamf, everyone is able to craft better than before and when you get to 450, whooosh, new recipes magically appear in your interface. One of them, the deldrimor steel rang a bell. I realised that this is the same material referred to by a blog post talking about Scarlet, how she studied under a master Norn blacksmith who recently rediscovered how to forge deldrimor steel.

So instead of just having that recipe appear on our crafting screen why couldnt we, after lvling crafting to 450, get a msg in the mail directing us to find this guy so we can learn his secrets. Except he is wary after how Scarlet turned out and wants to test us. So we do some quests for him as well, some of which involve bringing him the required materials for the recipe and at the end of it we not only have a bit of hp, but we have had an interesting, multi-mechanics game experience along the way.

I feel the same sort of separation between game world and progression with the collectables and miniatures as well. Too often this stuff just appears in the gem store at the same time as new content without a word of explanation, except the obvious one that you would like to make some money. I dont think anyone would begrudge you that but when it is done so regularly and with so little subtlety I fear the community gets cynical rather quickly (see recent flame armour for example). How does Gnashblade come by all the stuff anyway? You could add some more content into living story stuff to explain this, or at least give him some dialog options so we could quiz him about his nefarious business practices. He is an interesting character, sure people wont object to seeing more of him.

My overall suggestion then (and this is your TL/DR section folks) is to try and get your living story teams and your content/balance teams to work more closely together to integrate this stuff into the game world. Maybe at the start of each development cycle the teams get together and brainstorm how to integrate new features into the story in a plausible and immersive way. (like the signet of capture in GW1. I just remembered this but that was really good game design. I was very disappointed it didn’t return for the elites in GW2. Maybe it isnt too late?)

I will post some more specific suggestions in each of these three horizontal progression areas over the next few days and hopefully they might give you devs some good, or at least useful ideas.

Sirendor.1394:

I’m just trying to look at things from another side. The idea is probably hardly realistic, has flaws and won’t happen (since it would break down most of their existing structures).

Problems are:
- Class breakdown: maybe limit your choice of skills to class, but at least allow a variety of skills/weapon.

Like I said, I’m all for advocating more freedom in weapon skills (and weapon choice, although I may have missed saying that). Maybe more skills that utilise the classes mechanics? For example, more Adrenaline skills for Warriors, skills that are influenced by Virtues for Guardians. That sort of thing.

Sirendor.1394:

- Mood: looked like a fun idea, and a lot better than binding the stats to armour/weapon/traits. Maybe not the best idea, but imo it would make it more enjoyable (not needing 6 armour sets for being able to use different builds).

Maybe have it so stats are bound to armour, but you can add / unlock different combinations, as well as upgrades, depending on the content? For example, a crafter can do this at level 500 with Inscriptions and such by adding it to gear, while Fractallers have to search for components randomly placed within each fractal. Spending 3 of these components allows the player to unlock a stat combo on a single piece of gear, while spending 2 will allow the player to unlock a rune on a single piece of gear (along with a method of upgrading Exotics to Ascended), whereas WvWers automatically get the ability to unlock stat combos, upgrades and infusions every x amount of WvW ranks, starting at, say, rank 50.

Sirendor.1394:

I don’t know how much ‘moods’ would make you annoyed at limitations of your character. Nobody is always happy and sometimes looking angry is maybe preferable to looking expressionless like most characters right now. Maybe just allow sliders that have a limited amount of points (similar to traits, but detached from them)?

Like I said, it wouldn’t annoy me, but I could see why RPers would be. Tying mood to facial expression though? That’d be cool.

Sirendor.1394:

I do like the idea of being able to wear anything I wish, and having a different defensive ability based on the things I wear, because obviously someone in robes has less ‘physical’ defense, while someone in armour could probably catch a blade with a gauntlet, without being hurt badly (if you look at the realism of the situation).

Indeed. However, if you’re looking at realism, then a Greatsword shouldn’t be able to cleave through a number of people, if the first person blocks it.

Having things like chances to miss or get blocked could easily ruin the other person’s strategy with it being beyond their control. IMO, the less random elements in combat, the better.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Sirendor.1394:

I do like the idea of being able to wear anything I wish, and having a different defensive ability based on the things I wear, because obviously someone in robes has less ‘physical’ defense, while someone in armour could probably catch a blade with a gauntlet, without being hurt badly (if you look at the realism of the situation).

Indeed. However, if you’re looking at realism, then a Greatsword shouldn’t be able to cleave through a number of people, if the first person blocks it.

Having things like chances to miss or get blocked could easily ruin the other person’s strategy with it being beyond their control. IMO, the less random elements in combat, the better.

Mhmm maybe not a passive, but an active effect, so it relies on the player and not on chance?

Your other suggestions are sounding great, just don’t have time to respond in depth right now. :P

Continuation from above (page 3):

Character progress tab
This is an idea similar to the achievement tab in the hero panel, but on a per character basis. It is meant to give an overview of the characters progress. As I want to avoid the word “achievement”, I will call these progress indicators “goals”.
Some goals could be similar to existing achievement, like slaying 500 elementals or finishing the personal story. Others might be different like finishing all skill challenges. The rewards however are not achievement points. Instead you can use this system to award new skills, traits, skins, character based titles (“Slayer of Zhaitan”), exclamations (see above) or other stuff. Maybe add in the possibility to create custom goals as well, without any reward of course. These custom goals could for example be used to keep track of one’s progress making a legendary weapon.
I am admittedly not entirely convinced of this idea, since there is a large overlap between goals and achievements, but I put it up for discussion nonetheless. Maybe someone can save the idea.

Extensible ascended equipment
Yes, I know that this has been discussed at length in the vertical progression CDI, but this fits more nicely into horizontal progression.
Without a doubt ascended gear is hard to acquire. Using only laurels, you need 180 laurels to get one amulet, two rings and two accessories. You can get a maximum of 40 laurels per month (plus some additional from achievement chests), which adds up to 480 laurels per year. This way you can gear up between two and three characters with ascended trinkets per year and this is only one stat combination. Laurels are also needed for ascended recipes making them even more valuable. Sure, there are other ways to get ascended equipment and it is supposed to be hard to get one complete set. This is good as is. It is not good however, that all you get after this is a set with one stat combination.
So here is a proposal: You introduce a consumable that is used to unlock a stat combination on one ascended item. Then you can switch between all the unlocked stat combos as you can do with legendary equipment. These consumable should be a guaranteed drop from challenging content in the world. Defeating the karka queen yields a settler’s consumable for example. Opening the Temple of Balthasar, finishing a boss fractal, taking SM in WvW, doing a path in Arah or defeating Tequatl could be other means to get them.
Each place should drop exactly one type of consumable, so you know what you get. Each consumable should maybe drop in multiple places, though. This way people are not force to defeat Tequatl, for example, if their server has never succeeded, yet. You should only get one consumable per type, account and day. A nice way to place them would therefore be the bonus chests that appear above the mini map. Also make them nontradable, so that it requires some skill to get them.
Once you unlocked all stat combinations the items basically work the same as legendaries do. The next step is therefore clear: Allow us to use these items in place of legendary precursors. This would be a non RNG way to acquire a precursor, no progress is destroyed when new legendary equipment like armors or trinkets is introduced and it even has that feeling of a scavenger hunt through the entire world to get a precursor.
If ascended items are too cheap compared to the former precursors, add in an intermediate step, where you have to combined the weapon with some icy runestone or some similar item. This makes it easy to adjust the price to a reasonable amount. If it is too easy to get all stat combination, change the consumables to crafting ingredients for some recipe that produces the final consumable. All this requires some balancing, but the main idea stays the same.

I have two points I want to touch upon. That is, stat variety / PvE stat balance and skill additions:

Stat variety

I love the idea of having so many stat combinations. But currently the system is under-developed in that I never have a reason to have a fallback set for an existent build.
What I mean is, if I have a berserker-dungeon-setup for PvE, I use Zerker gear. I don’t have fights where I’d want to carry an equipment bag with a Soldier set.
I only need a new set when I switch builds.

I think a lot of potential horizontal progression space is lost here. If stat-combinations existed in various tiers from “simple” (Berserker, Soldier, Knight etc) over “slightly changed” (Assassin, Dire) to complex (Celestial, Apothecary, Settler), and if PvE would also ask for more stat-variety than just Berserker-stats, then we could have a lot of extra potential combinations and stat-weights in various tiers and groups, and unlocked via various chains, quests and combinations.
There’d be a lot of potential crafter-progression.

To that end, ideas:

• First of all, change PvE mobs. They need an autoattack (I think someone mentioned that), so that I can’t dodge 80%+ damage any more. If I want to go tissue paper stats, I should feel that. I currently feel how much damage I lose from not running Berserker’s, but I don’t feel how much more vulnerable I am. At all. An autoattack would solve this problem.
• Re-sort the existent stat-combinations and sort them into unlockable tiers. Done via experimentation-events as a crafter, where steady combinations yield a chain of unlocks.
• Make stats more distinguishable. Probably change weights here so that Assassin’s feels different to Berserker’s.

Skill Additions

I think this is where the lion share of horizontal progression could be done, if done well. GW1 IMO suffered from eventually having way too many skills, leading to washed out class designs and general input overload to a newcomer.

What I’d like:

• Introduce new skills steadily, but don’t always require 1-for-each-class. I’d have no qualms with other classes getting 2 skills each for 5 patches, until I get 4 skills in one go or something like that. Doesn’t have to be balanced.
• Add new Personal Story components which reward new racial skills.
• Skill capture? It’d be a big re-work, especially because you’d need to consider taking skills away again so that existent players have to re-capture them. Maybe allow an option to keep them, or to re-capture them. Capture gives minor cash on top of the skill if you had it before, so there’s an incentive. Player keeps the 5 currently equipped skills ofc.
• Intra-skill progression. What if I could capture “advanced” versions of a skill? No functional changes, just minor upgrades to the effects. Say for example my Mantra forms without the symbol above my head initially, then rank 2 adds the symbol, at rank 3 each word of the speech is followed by one symbol, in a triangle around me, and those float into me on completion. This would also give the art team something to do as “filler” which isn’t armours or weapons.
• Unlockable extra weapon skills which can be slotted in. Specific slot, they’re alternatives to existent moves. Say a Mesmer could capture and then slot a Scepter AA chain which is hitscan but no longer spawns clones.

I didn’t post earlier, because I needed to think what I personally would like to see as horizontal progression.

The first thing I had to do was decide exactly what I thought HP is. I decided that for me HP means things to do and goals to strive for without having to have more power, higher stats, or more uber armor.

So, with that in mind:

Elite Zones
I would love to see more zones that are most definitely geared toward the level 80 exotic wearing character. Isle of Janthir, Far Shiverpeaks, Maguuma, Ring of Fire, and Deldrimor come to mind. (I’m not bringing up Elona or Cantha here, as I am sure we all agree that we’d like to have them in-game. Let’s just leave it at that.)

These zones could have challenging content that require coordination and effort, although not on the level of Teq. These would be somewhat like the Underworld, Urgoz’s and the Deep were for GW1.

Rewards for completing the meta for those zones should be uber, great looking, and absolutely exclusive to those areas. No TP stuff, and nothing else should ever look like them or be the exact same stats.

In other worlds, elite content geared specifically for grouped level 80 characters with rewards that actually match the difficulty of the zone… Soloing could be done, but definitely difficult and time consuming.

More Guild stuff to do:
Examples: GvG with leaderboards active at release, not a month after GvG comes out. We need to see some guild loyalty and pride.

Add capes and/or tabards so that we can proudly show off our guild when we’re out in the world. Those who “win” a season get special things such as gold trim, tassels, or something.

Showcase Instance of some sort:
I really don’t want to see player housing. Suffice to say that my reasons are my own, and not needed here.

I would rather see players having somewhere to show off their stuff in one’s home instance, similar to a “museum” or something like it where all of your achievements show up as graphic examples. Kind of like to the Hall of Monuments in GW1, where there’s a place to show your minis, armor, weapons, etc. Also like the HoM in GW1, the player could show off his/her stuff to people in her group as the instance owner. Change instance owners, and the tropies change.

Less Gem Shop
Some of the skins in the shop are gorgeous. Others are pretty hideous. Some of the items are pretty good, and some are crap. The problem is that anything good that comes out is almost exclusively Gem Shop Items.

Some of the msot fun I had in GW1 was hunting for unique items from zone bosses. Examples: Ghial’s Staff, Rajazan’s Fervor, Oola’s Staff, and the Yakslapper. You had to actually kill the boss repeatedly to get them, but not so much that you spent hours upon hours of farming time to get them.

In other words, put more of the stuff from the Gem Shop in the game for us to hunt. Give us a reason to go to zone A or B or C. But please, make the odds so that it is actually doable, and not one of those 1 in 802,478,624,367,892 things like Precursors are.

About Precursors
I have heard tell that eventually there will be a scavenger hunt or some such to get precursors. Kudos if you ever implement it. The more ways of aquiring things the better, however I do have a couple of suggestions.

IF you are able to get a precursor through a scavenger hunt, make it account bound. Random drops, or MF items should still be sellable, but if you go through all the trouble of getting (blank) through a quest, it should be yours. No selling allowed. This will keep those who have the time and energy to repeatedly run the content from profiting at the expense of others. It will also give the current avenue of buying and selling a bit of protection from overpopulation.

In fact, I propose that the skins for the ones from the scavenger hunt be different than those found by other means.

The recipe’s for the Legendaries could be changed to an “or” situation, such as the Bifrost needs either The Legend or the new precursor from the hunt. If made with The Legend, it can be bought and sold, but if made with the new precursor, it would be account bound.

Summary
After thinking about it for a day or two, I have decided that these things are more important to me than a lot of what has been posted before. Yes, there are things I would like personally, but they really don’t fall in to “Horizontal Progression” but more into “I want, can I haz?” such as armor tabs, doing away with “town clothes” and making them armor skins, and minipet wars.

The key is that variety, difficulty (without being OP,) Less TP, and a place to show off are important to everyone.

1) I completely agree with the general feeling that a PvE skins locker and a wider variety of PvE skins would be a great feature to the game. GW2’s endgame philosophy has often been cited as a cosmetic progression rather than a gear grind, but as it stands the cosmetic nature is hindered by the fact that you need to store all your cosmetic gear in the bank, which fills up way too fast. When space is at a premium, it completely restricts the enjoyment or desire to collect nice cosmetic skins.

2) I think the game could really use some casual and fun time-sinks, things to do when you’re not engaging in the main PvE or PvP activities. For this I would highly recommend secondary tradeskills like fishing, and possibly some kind of archaeology/exploration-style activity that would take players around awesome parts of the map that they may not have been able to appreciate before. Fishing in my opinion is a great addition to any game, you could tie it into cooking, allow various chests/bits of unique loot etc. to be fished up, a new set of achievements with a title or two etc. It may not be everybody’s idea of fun, but if you ask me it would sure beat just standing around in Lion’s Arch twiddling our thumbs until the opportunity for a world boss/dungeon group/wvw action presented itself.

3) Player housing, I cannot stress enough how happy this would make me. Again, I understand it’s not for everyone, but for a lot of people having a sandbox area to build up and decorate and make into a player home would be the epitome of character progression. I think it needs to be done right, however, so actually allow design tools like rotation and resizing, and a nice pool of items that you can place that can be gained through vendors/drops/achievements/gemstore (This is a BIG deal, people would spend tons on housing items in the gemstore) and tradeskills (like a new fishing/archaeology tradeskill, for example!). And the housing could have a functional element, upgradable with gold/karma/gems to include vendors/banks/trading post etc. with a means of accessing the player house through a teleport like the HoM stone. I feel it would be good for the community, improving the social element of the game where players could get together and view each other’s creations, give feedback etc. It also allows for some great Anet-led competitions to get the community interested and having fun/being creative.

Horizontal Progression Systems

Cosmetic Progression

Skill Progression

Horizontal Gear Progression

Progression within the World

Horizontal Progression and Content