Guild Wars 2

I miss the heroes from GW1 and I don’t play dungeons because I have to group with other people. Would it be possible to unlock heroes that could be used instead of living players to run dungeons. Perhaps scale rewards by the number of real players. I mostly just want to see the content… not necessarily for the rewards.

Also I like the idea of gaining dungeon tokens through some other means in the zone containing the dungeon. Perhaps certain quest chains or creature kills could have a chance to drop them.

Yes, a PvE skin locker would be grand. My vote is for utilizing the Hall of Monuments as a place to store such things. In general we need a way to collect and reuse the skins we acquire. I love being able to get skins out of the HoM. It’s a system that works well and should be expanded upon.

Soulbound should go away… yadda yadda yadda.

More weapons… specifically a way to unlock weapons that currently cannot be used by specific professions. Perhaps a personal story line that is profession specific to unlock the use of the other weapon types. Or perhaps a master of each weapon type that can be trained under to unlock the types.

Dedicated minipet ui where you can select any pet stored in the collection and has a hide option.

A menagerie to collect pets and wildlife (ambient creatures).

A slot outside of inventory to store each type of weapon. Say for an elementalist, a slot for staff, one for scepter, dagger main hand, dagger off hand, etc. Then you check which one you want active. For professions with weapon switching you’d check two sets. Haven’t thought it all the way through, but the point being to have a compete set up weapons not sitting in your inventory where they might be accidentally salvaged or sold. Also it’d give an excuse to collect all the available weapon types.

Elite skill capture a la GW1.

Vanquishing of some sort. Zones or instances where the blasted baddies don’t respawn. But do one better that GW1 and put something on the map showing the locations of the last few mobs. It should be about killing out the baddies not spending an hour hunting that last one hiding in a corner somewhere.

This isn’t about progression… but could you please make it so the PvE map shows where the other players in the zone are? I’d like to know where everyone is without having to be in a group first. Different color dots for guildies would be nice too.

Achievements related to non-playable races/groups. Say a friend of the skritt or hylek achievement. Maybe it gives you access to special areas with discounted vendors, skin sellers, or something.

Farming… as in your own area of farming nodes. Like once you collect say 250 of a certain type of cooking supply you can create a seed to plant a node in your own personal farm field. I don’t know, just a wild idea.

I like the idea of a book that you can fill with hearts completed in the PvE zones. I redo hearts on alts all the time, but it seems like it’d be neat to have a way to redo them on characters that have already completed them. Perhaps they could be turned in for a little bit of gold, experience, karma or the like.

Dyes should be account bound and provide a way to see which dyes are missing from the collection (and allow a way to preview the un-obtained dyes).

A monster model viewer, perhaps tied to the slayer achievement line.

I think that’s it. Anyone like these ideas?

ZeftheWicked.3076:

This is a terrible idea.

Racial skills add to uniquness and make my race choice matter. I don’t play a sylvari to watch it summon charr warband or draw hidden pistol. I play a sylvari so even in burned ashford plains i can bring the power of nature into the fight!

Tying it into given map makes me feel like i’m the map’s she-dog and not master of my own fate, walking down my own path.

Not to mention how ridicilous it would look lore-wise:

• charr warshipping human gods (to use human racials)
• sylvari morphing into animals (while they’re plants)
• asura becoming “9 feet tall!” when doing same
• norn who aren’t into science using radiation fields and golems…oh wait they can do that via runes…yikes!

You want to make racials on pair with normal profession skills – i absolutely agree, more power to you if you do. But if you want to make them a communistic “if you have it so should everybody else, only on our terms” then i say “HELL NO!”

I understand your concerns, but I have a few words to say about it.

Horizontal Progression is about choices and customisation

• You persue what you want;
• You shape your character the way you want;

Assuming that racial skills were obtained from territory quests instead of race-gated skills, that doesn’t means you would be forced to customise a character against your will. Likewise, just because you (= any player) does not wishes to build a character that way, it does not means that other players should be forced to go through the same path. You can always ignore it.

Besides, what’s crazy about a sylvari summoning a warband, assuming that the skill was unlocked after a quest where said character gained the trust of said warband? And a plant morphing into a bird is not that much different than a “human” turning into a bird, is it? And what’s preventing a charr from believing in human’s gods? Is there anything in those gods’ foreheads saying “human-only”? If praying for Dwayna results in body healing, and is not merely a questionable myth, what’s preventing any character from another race from being fascinated by human’s religion and following it? And Norns can be engineers already.

Horizontal Progression is heavily tied to Role-Playing, which is the means to give players tools to build the stories and personality for their own characters.

GW2 is in need of more skill options, and more world exploration/ immersion. This solution would help at enhancing both. Racial skills are also underwhelming at adding flavor to races because they’re not meant to be used seriously, so making them cross-class skills would give more freedom for anet to buff them without worries for race descrimination.

But I understand it would be a very problematic and complex change.

does weapon diversity count as horizontal progression?
if it does: here’s a suggestion. there are a couple progressions that have unbearably limited weapon choices.(engineer, anyone? thief too i guess.) now i’ve heard arguments that letting all classes use all weapons would create a huge amount of inflation of prices. and those arguments are right: for a while. but as we’ve seen with exotic armor and weapon prices(now that everyone has them) they will balance out if they increase in price at all. heck, that might even give crafting a point outside of experience.
That being said, some classes do not need additional weapons(warrior/ranger) and some of them don’t exactly need additional weapons, but having another weapon suit their build that they don’t have would be fantastic(melee power necro)

First off all, ty for making CDI about character progression an i would like to add my input as a serious WvW player. Playing in WvW guild which raiding everynight, going GvGs etc. and probably WvW covers at least my %50 gameplay time atm.

WXP gain, rank and abilities
Making Wxp gain account bound was a huge right step, before i was avoiding using alts in WvW. My problem about ranks and abilities is, there is so few abilities to gain, increased numbers of choice would be nice. Second thing is, at some abilities line, powerful ones exist at start of that masteries. Best example for it probably Cannon Mastery, after 2 tier there is no need to go deeper i think. Also damage increases in respective sieges are so reachable, it causes “power creep” i think. They should exist at higher ranks.

Fractals and WvW
I have big problems here, since i love fractals but you can’t do it without agony resistance ofc, but it collides with my WvW success. Reason is, esp. after introducing ascended armor, stat containing infusions (5 X stat ones) becomes more powerful, since now you can gain another 70 stat from them. But the problem is it forcing me to leave fractals completly because fine infusions (5 X stat + 5 agony resistance) too expensive for someone like me.

Weapon skin profession
Many people here said they missed the chance of having old skins, maybe a proffesion for it would be nice. For example, lets say someone wants Sclerite weapon skin, make them collect x amount karka shell, x amount passiflora and 1 rare drop from karka queen. This way people can get their skin, but also that will be gated by that rare drop.

Stat distribution at traits
Gameplay is highly dependant on what trait you are using, but also the stat you gain from them. But sometimes they collide with each other. For example lets say im a thief and want to use Bountiful Theft, but i have nothing to do with conditions. So it will be either 200 stat for nothing or not use that trait line at all. My suggestion is make trait line and stats differen pointing systems, 70 point for traits and 700 points for primary+secondary stats. In this way i’m sure people will feel more specialized at their character grow.

Ideas for horizontal progression

1. Dodge Animations | First off I didn’t come up with this. I heard about this while watching a VisualWood podcast. Imagine an elementalist that dodges with a crack of electricity, or a mesmer who just disappears shortly when dodging. For simplicity’s sake these wouldn’t add any additional effects, unless of course you have traited for it. I am sure the last thing the Devs want to do is add another component to the game that needs to be balanced.

2. Mounts | Yes I did indeed open this can of worms. People hate this idea and I understand why IF that would mean inclusion of mounts means waypoints were effected. These two systems could work entirely independently of one another.

I think that waypoints are a great option for those busy people who like to instantly travel from place to place. I completely sympathize with you guys. If you only have two hours a week you want to get as much as you can out of those two hours. I however hate waypoints. I only use them when I need to travel very far distances.To me zipping from point A to point B ruins immersion. I would much rather use a mount for short to medium distance, and wps for long distance. And I think that people would enjoy collecting mounts. It gives another layer to horizontal progression aside from cosmetic gear.

3. Player Housing/Guild Halls | This would be cool but I am not sure what exactly it should consist of.

4. PVE Resurrection Animations | I got this idea from this forum. I think the author has a very good idea here. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/tower/Who-is-up-for-pve-Rezzer-animations/first#post3144259 . Think of an engineer who pulls out a makeshift defibrillator or a guardian praying over a corpse.

5. More Gear or Customization Options | Just reiterating the idea that DanteZero had earlier about customization of armor. I think this is a win win for adding depth and being resource efficient.

5. Utilities Skills | I think the skill point system is boring but gets the job done for early level skills. With these new additions to skill points instead of just tying them to a huge amount of skill points why not do some sort of class specific mission instead? I always thought that the lore between classes was shallow in GW2 and to me the lore behind a class is half my interest in the class.

jweez.7214:

1. Dodge Animations | First off I didn’t come up with this. I heard about this while watching a VisualWood podcast. Imagine an elementalist that dodges with a crack of electricity, or a mesmer who just disappears shortly when dodging. For simplicity’s sake these wouldn’t add any additional effects, unless of course you have traited for it. I am sure the last thing the Devs want to do is add another component to the game that needs to be balanced.

Oh yeah, I remember thinking about this earlier on, when I found out that the thief has a different dodge than the other professions.

I think there is one thing to be careful with in respect to these dodge animations though: effects easily start cluttering up the screen. So if they become too flashy combat might just turn into one big cloud of lights.

It could be really cool to have the fluffy part of horizontal progression extend to animations. And the dodge animation is one that we all use.

Would it be more interesting to group them by profession or to make them available to everyone? (With the idea that more options lead to more individual character progression. And it would require less development if we didn’t have to create multiple animations per profession just to give every profession some options.)

HP with a focus on builds

In a HP system were you want build experimentation and the use of different builds (PvE zerker problem) then the current system post level 80 has many obstacles. Many have covered ascended items & their impact, and how a stat swapping system would change all that. I’ll just say I agree. Some type of stat swapping system needs to be added to encourage build diversity and experimentation post level 80.

One other note with stat combinations regarding PVE as sPvP & WvW does not have this problem, DPS is the only aspect required (with a little offensive support). What I mean is at a certain level in PvE the other stats no longer matter. As your skill level increase you are able to avoid almost all of the damage or control and all that matters is how much damage you can now output. As such the only stats that matters is the almighty zerker stat combination. Something needs to be done to make control and support viable options.

The next problematic ingredient in builds is upgrades (runes, sigils, gemstones, infusions). As others have covered a unlock system could be added to runes & sigils as well. I would love to see more rune and sigils added but over all these existing runes need to be to balanced and adjusted. So many rune sets are just not used and others just out shine the other options (Eg: lyssa). On that I would prefer the others to be brought up lyssa’s level then reducing lyssa’s.

With sigils one area I find very frustrating is the global cooldown. All sigils with cooldowns are unable to function in combination. You equip any two and when one is on cool down the other can never operate. So what you get is a fight between the two sigils which will active first, once one active the other can’t. One the active sigils has come off cool down again it’s a fight. This really affects diversity when using sigils. What I would love is sigils to have individual cool downs like skills or at the least sigils types to have a group cool down that only effects sigils of that type (Eg. Effect on crit sigils to have a separate group cooldown to on weapon swap sigils).

TL;DR: For me HP becomes about builds (cosmetics and game play). HP should be about opening more options.

• Streamlining builds – I put this under HP as this is important for when adding future content. The new content could require new strategies and new builds. At the moment it is very unfriendly post level 80 to change builds. A build requires stats (tied to weapons, armour & trinkets), upgrades (runes, sigils, gemstones, infusions), buffs (food, utility), skills and traits. Post level 80 the problem ingredients in build extermination are stats and upgrades.

• New weapons skills – Add new weapons skills to existing weapon, a complete second or third set. Have there position fixed like the existing weapon skills but now your able to select which weapons set skill can go into that position

Eg. Skill 1 – set 2, Skill 2 – set 1, Skill 3 – set 1, Skill 4 – set 3, Skill 5 – set 2

• New rune & sigils – More options, but I believe runes need to be balanced and sigils global cooldowns need to be changed. Individual cooldowns or sigil types group cooldowns.

• PvE skins locker – similar to the PvP skins locker (another collection to collect).

• New weapons – Add new weapons (Great axe, polearm) or unlock existing (Engineer – hammer, elementalist – greatsword)

• New skills – When adding new skills let there be two option to acquiring these skills.

Option 1 – In PvE for new skills let us acquire them in game. As we never had these skills to begin with, please add challenges and / or quest that explain how these skills are now in game.
Option 2 – As you have adding skill unlocking in sPvP which is the same as unlocking existing skills in PvE now, allow this to be the second option to acquiring the new skills.

• New traits – More traits gives more options. A great avenue for HP.

• Sub classes – I love the idea of specialisation / sub-classes and would love to see these added, although to achieve the same overall results as adding specialisation / sub-classes I believe this could somehow be achieved with the expansion of the current exiting traits, weapons, weapon skills, and skills.

I remember in a prior thread you guys brought up Teq and possibly bringing up other bosses to that level. And I answered that it was a bad idea. I’d like it to work somehow though, because it would be interesting to have the world boss difficulty raised a bit more. However, my fear is they will all turn into Teq. Now Teq is a decent fight, but he either isn’t done at all on some servers or on ones like JQ he is only done at server reset and that’s it. If you miss that one event, you’re done. You’re just not getting Teq that day at all. It’s just a bad system overall atm.

You either have to nerf the fight or do something to entice people into doing this fight more often and not just at the first fight after server reset. I would like to keep the fight’s current difficulty if possible, so that means you must choose the latter course and give people enough incentive to return to teq. Not sure what you can do. Maybe drop additional loot even after the first kill for the day. Only it will not be as good as the first kill’s loot. Something along those lines…

You just need to think of ways of raising difficulty but not doing so in a way that will scare people off. The reward needs to match otherwise people just won’t show up.

Hey Chris, you might want to add this thread to the Master Sticky, I kind of assume that’s why it exists.

Also, I have a question, you might want to pass it on to Izzy or somebody as it is a bit technical.
We know we are going to get new skills/weapons/traits etc eventually.

-
But, is it possible for these new skills and abilities to utilize the Z-axis?

Most of the skills in the game effectively work on a flat plane, but as the Zephyr Sanctum showed it is quite possible go vertical as well. (admittedly only so far in a controlled space)
Technical map issues aside, is it possible we could see skills like these introduced into the game?

For example: Jumping into the air and raining down daggers or arrows, of launching yourself up and over your opponent.

-

And for everyone else, what do you think? Would you like to have skills that used the vertical Z-axis?

Letting players swap out skills on a weapon isn’t appropriate for GW2.

First of all, would you rather new weapon skills be placed on existing weapons, or would you rather get those skills on whole new weapons? ’Cause my thief really wants to use a staff as a melee pain-stick.

Secondly, keeping weapon skills locked is important for balancing the game – let’s not make it more complicated than it already is.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

DiogoSilva.7089:

• As race discrimination is an important issue, consider a proposal to make all racial skills unlocked to all races, but gated by territory-context “quests” (hearts and dynamic events).

This is a terrible idea.

Racial skills add to uniquness and make my race choice matter. I don’t play a sylvari to watch it summon charr warband or draw hidden pistol. I play a sylvari so even in burned ashford plains i can bring the power of nature into the fight!

What about option C, skills that are mechanically equivalent but look unique?

As a sylvari, you summon a pair of fern hounds or a druid spirit. As a charr, two warband mates come to fight or a siege weapon is deployed. As a norn, a pair of bears or a mighty wolf spirit head your call. As a human, hounds of balthazar or an angel of dwayna appear at your side. As an asura, a dynamic golem-mite duo or a massive war golem emerge from prefabricated deployment.

All of the above skills can be 100% mechanically the same: you summon a pair of small creatures or one big support creature. But they can all be “reskinned” to look unique and provide flavor for your race.

This would allow everyone to have a pool of common skills to achieve basic objectives like Remove Conditions, Evade Backwards, Inflict Damage, Snare Foe, and AoE Attack without worrying about picking a specific race to get a specific goodie. Likewise, a wider pool of elites can cover skill transformations, summons, and brief moments of invulnerability or a brief-yet-powerful attack without any of them being favored.

Heck, you could even let individual racial choices be important. A human who chooses Melandru would get the ability to summon Watchers instead of Hounds of Balthazar, but they do the same thing from a balance perspective. This would allow some of the meaningless choices to actually feel a bit more important.

Horizontal progression, in my opinion, is one of the main forces in replay value. I didn’t PvP at all in GW1 (at least, the formal sPvP style arenas). Almost all of my time was actually spent leveling each profession to 20, having some fun, then deleting some poor soul and re-leveling that character. I love the leveling process. Now in GW2, I’ve got an 80 of each profession, but I don’t want to delete and remake any character. I feel I’ve invested too much in each to try anything new in the leveling process, so I’ll have to turn to trying to capture that feeling after 80.

I thought many of the original ideas for GW2, back when it was first being talked about, were great. Somethings I could live without, like dual-professions, but I think the Living Story could introduce many of the interesting, more plausible, items that were talked about.

Skills and Traits:

I loved the idea that you would travel the land, searching far and wide for polymock skills and traits to unlock by completing what turned into the skill challenges. What we could do with this, is for new skills (weapon and utility) and traits, you would complete some new content (hidden?) throughout Tyria. Once completed, you unlock the ability to purchase the new skills, traits, w/e with skillpoints. What I’d love to see, is options to replace skills within weapons with your new unlocks, or to drastically augment current utility skills etc. In this way, people can more completely customize their desired role, while also providing some uncertainty when facing players in WvW or PvP. No two Hammer Guardians will be guaranteed to have the same loadout.

Skins:

This might be more of a pipedream, but I really liked a certain idea that I can’t be bothered to find again (sorry :P). Basically, players would unlock portions of skins (instead of entire skins), and mix and match those parts to create their own, but predefined, skins for armor and weapons. Possibly, it could work well enough with just crafting, but in this way you could choose the length, skin, or effects for pommel, blade, head, ect. You could possibly unlock different skin portions or effects from dungeons, or LS, or anything else. Some skins should probably stay “whole”, like the “expensive Exotics” (Volcanus, Immobulus, The Anomaly etc).

Housing/Achievements:

I was a fan of Guild Halls way back when. For GW2, we could improve this a few ways. Guilds could put commendations and influence to work to improve their Hall, by adding vendors, or maybe daily nodes, and other guild achievements, but also possibly a separate player instance (housing) where players could show off their personal achievements. If anyone has looked into their Personal Story tab, there’re items from some of the story steps based on what quests you chose. They used to be items like accessories, but were removed. Those items are perfect to recreate and add to player housing as decorations. That nifty little trinket you supposedly got? It now sits in your house on a shelf or what not. LS, and an enhanced Personal Story continuation, could then award more items to further represent your mark in the game.

Sidekick system:

It was mentioned that there would be a sidekick options similar to heroes in GW1, but limited to one per character. In a LS update, these could be added, possibly when not in a party, to add another level of customization. Remember those races you chose to help in your PS? They’re your first sidekick, with options to gain others as you progress. You could gear them, choose their weapons, and then let them run amok with you. A party of 5 would still be preferable, but could make some interesting options for solo players. In addition, there could be a 1v1 PvP mode with sidekicks, once again representative from GW1.

Faction:

I’m a huge fan of GW:Factions. Other than my love of the setting, I liked the idea of the two main factions (Kurzick and Luxon) duking it out. Along with Eye of the North, different racial factions could provide some players with a different kind of goal that costs less monetarily than a Legendary. Faction specific skins could be unlocked, along with variations of racial skills. Also, trinkets to add to player and guild housing. I’m sure even a basic reputation system not too far from GW1’s versions would be acceptable, but I know there’re a lot of fun things that could be done.

Underwater:

I feel this is a severely underutilized portion of the game. Considering there’s underwater armor, weapons, and skills, I think this is an untapped area to improve upon (one that has been since launch, rather than a “new idea” a lot of us talk about). Making underwater combat something you can work towards as a “role” in a sense should be considered. Underwater areas being removed from WvW, PvP, and not really supported well in PvE.

Gulesave.5073:

Letting players swap out skills on a weapon isn’t appropriate for GW2.

First of all, would you rather new weapon skills be placed on existing weapons, or would you rather get those skills on whole new weapons? ’Cause my thief really wants to use a staff as a melee pain-stick.

Secondly, keeping weapon skills locked is important for balancing the game – let’s not make it more complicated than it already is.

Swapping out skills in combat? I agree that should never happen. However, new skills to choose from per weapon while out of combat? I see no reason why that is not compatible with GW2. Hell, I think that’s how it should have been to begin with. I want new skills per weapon and utility skills and elites. That makes for a more interesting and complex game. More thoughtful decisions that people have to make. Adding more weapons per class? Sure, I’m all for that as well. But we definitely need more skills per weapon. Anet moved too far away from the way GW1 was. They felt GW1 was too complicated, but quite frankly they went the opposite way with GW2. We need the complexity of GW1 back. Not completely like that, of course but it certainly can’t be what it is now.

I keep seeing the words “Locker” and “Wardrobe” being thrown around.
They remind me of the armor templates from GW1. Which would be neat to have. Build Templates too.

xarallei.4279:

Gulesave.5073:

Letting players swap out skills on a weapon isn’t appropriate for GW2.

First of all, would you rather new weapon skills be placed on existing weapons, or would you rather get those skills on whole new weapons? ’Cause my thief really wants to use a staff as a melee pain-stick.

Secondly, keeping weapon skills locked is important for balancing the game – let’s not make it more complicated than it already is.

Swapping out skills in combat? I agree that should never happen. However, new skills to choose from per weapon while out of combat? I see no reason why that is not compatible with GW2. Hell, I think that’s how it should have been to begin with. I want new skills per weapon and utility skills and elites. That makes for a more interesting and complex game. More thoughtful decisions that people have to make. Adding more weapons per class? Sure, I’m all for that as well. But we definitely need more skills per weapon. Anet moved too far away from the way GW1 was. They felt GW1 was too complicated, but quite frankly they went the opposite way with GW2. We need the complexity of GW1 back. Not completely like that, of course but it certainly can’t be what it is now.

I remember a couple months ago I was talking to a friend of mine about being able to change weapon skills.

Basically something like 2-4 skills to choose from for skills 2-4 and the 5th one having more(no point really in changing the auto attack too much/maybe make it so you can change what condition it applies or some other mechanic or something).

It could be class specific too to an extent. For example, maybe double pistol thieves could make the 3rd skill 1 of 5 different things? Idk. I know a bunch of people would like this. More customization in our builds should always be welcomed imo.

Regarding weapon skill swapping yes I believe its important to lock the weapons skills for balance. What I’m looking at is weapons skills positioned locked. For example lets take the staff;

This staff now has 3 weapon skill sets with each set having an overall theme. Please note that the position of the skills in these sets are locked. What this means is at any position (1-5) you can only choose 1 of 3 skills options. This give players the option to customise the weapon skills. So one greatsword guardian can operate different from another greatsword guardian just on weapon skills alone. This is what I would love and gives another avenue to expands skill options overall.

One negative aspect for players with this change would be that you no longer know exactly what weapons skills a profession will have by observing equipped weapons. You will now have to discover these skills in the fight. I actually like this, I running to take on a rifle engineer and now I don’t know what his weapons skills are, is the engineer running net shot or is it something else. For me this is no different to healing, utility and elite skills now. The other plus is now weapons skills that don’t fit a certain build can now be swapped out.

Lastly is there any difference in new weapons type adding new skill and adding new skill set to existing weapons? I would like to see both.

The skill sets can change up existing weapons giving a changing playstyle but any playstyle will be in theme of those weapons. Were new weapons can create new playstlyes which wouldn’t work with existing weapons. This give profession playstyle not current available with current weapons.

I figured I would also way in on the weapon skills swapping.

I too am also in favor of this idea, as it would allow the player not only more customization, but also to swap out skills that may not currently work well with your build. Elementalist really seem to have this problem in spades, loads of skills that often times just don’t work for you.

However, to avoid overloading a new player with too many skills, these additional sets can unlock at certain levels. Say we have three skill sets per weapon, first you start with at level 1, then you go about unlocking utilities and traits, then your elite at level 30, then at 40 you get your seconds set giving you a whole lot more stuff to unlock, then lastly the third set at level 60.

This would smoothen out the leveling curve, as it starts of really well, but get soul sucking after level 40 or 50. Esp on alts.

-
You could even tie it into a sub-class system, such as the weapons has three different skill sets, one for the core profession, and one for each of the two (or more) sub-classes. Which not only could make them more specialized, but keeping the balance reined in so that it doesn’t go to far afield.

I personally don’t see the value in adding a sub-class system. People are pushing for it in order to have further specialization in combat. This can be achieved through various means, such as simply introducing new skills.

Subclasses just don’t feel like they have a place in the Guild Wars lore. If anything a move back to secondary professions is more fitting.

Yoh.8469:

I figured I would also way in on the weapon skills swapping.

I too am also in favor of this idea, as it would allow the player not only more customization, but also to swap out skills that may not currently work well with your build. Elementalist really seem to have this problem in spades, loads of skills that often times just don’t work for you.

However, to avoid overloading a new player with too many skills, these additional sets can unlock at certain levels. Say we have three skill sets per weapon, first you start with at level 1, then you go about unlocking utilities and traits, then your elite at level 30, then at 40 you get your seconds set giving you a whole lot more stuff to unlock, then lastly the third set at level 60.

This would smoothen out the leveling curve, as it starts of really well, but get soul sucking after level 40 or 50. Esp on alts.

-
You could even tie it into a sub-class system, such as the weapons has three different skill sets, one for the core profession, and one for each of the two (or more) sub-classes. Which not only could make them more specialized, but keeping the balance reined in so that it doesn’t go to far afield.

This is one idea I really like. I must agree after level 40 character progression feels very lacking. The only new advancement is the unlocking of trait tiers. Every 5 – 10 level you change your weapons / armour. Skills become more of a collection.

Adding weapon set unlocks would be a great way to add a sub-class system. You could carry this over to the other skills as well. So your now getting a sub-class skill set (weapon, healing, utilities & elite). This could expand HP by adding another collection you now have the goal of collecting these sub-classes. This would give game lore to why we now have these new skills and we now get the skills in a packet. Not sure how other players feel but I would rather get a packet of skills then 1 at a time.

Shockwave.1230:

I personally don’t see the value in adding a sub-class system. People are pushing for it in order to have further specialization in combat. This can be achieved through various means, such as simply introducing new skills.

Subclasses just don’t feel like they have a place in the Guild Wars lore. If anything a move back to secondary professions is more fitting.

I think, at least the way I’ve thought of a sub-class system working, would basically be to just introduce new skills or traits, but having them be part of a “set”, or the “sub-class set”.

I.e., lets say Guardians get a Templar sub-class. You do things towards unlocking Templar specific skills and traits that allow you to fit better into a Templar type of role. This could easily be rolled into many of the other suggestions given about how to unlock these additions, but it’ll all depend on implementation.

Sub classes = traits + gear + weapons + utility skills
Here you go, you definied whats your class role. Sadly, the content and mechanics narrows the options (eg: Tequatl).

The wardrobe system is exactly the same as we have in pvp now, right? I see it only as another goal, which is completed and get forget.

Upgrading items for prestige looks like what you can do with the fractal capacitor is a nice idea, however we already overwhelmed with particle effects. And most of the prestige items and their materials can be bought from the TP ….

I could continue it for a while, but lets summarize it. The developers should fix fundamental problems which are ingame from day 1 instead of expanding on these broken features. If this comment gets your attention Chris, im gladly going in to a more detailed explanation.

I think this is one thing that’s really important. It’s nice to add all these new options – new weapons ,skills, traits and upgrades(runes/sigils) but how do you go about explaining why we as the character now have them.

I was thinking when sub-class was brought up that adding new weapons, skill and traits could achieve the same results that adding a sub-class could, but the more I think about these new weapons, skills and traits how do we go about explaining in game why we can now use them.

This would be my vote for adding sub-classes. Not for adding the new weapons, skills and traits but as an explanation of why we now have them.

I also want to bring up another issue somebody else raised: Elites

As is, Elites are little more then afterthoughts. Big, powerful, and seldom used skills, which greatly limits their usage. Rarely do I ever take them into consideration when making a build. It’s more like, oh, I guess I will take Mass Stealth since I am running a stealth build, but I don’t really want to, it still sucks.

-
Honestly, GW1 got elites right. It was such a great system.
While the capture process could get a little obnoxious at times, the elites themselves ran the gambit, from big powerful spells, to incredibly useful utilities.

But either way you sliced it, you build around your elites, it’s what made your build work. And it was always exciting to find more. Also, personally I just love collecting things….. well, things that aren’t stupid little mini-pets.

-
One thing that I particularly liked is that sometimes you would have elites that were just straight upgrades of already existing skills, which could lead you to either double up, or free up a slot for something else.

For example, Decoy gives you a 3 seconds stealth, a clone and a stun break. Useful, really useful, esp on a Prismatic Understanding build.
Now if there was also and elite that gave you 8 second stealth, 3 clones and a stun break, with the same or even a slightly shorter cooldown, now were cooking.

You could either A: Have both, thus maximizing your stealth and clone production, or B: opt to drop Decoy in favor of something else, say Signet of Illusions for tougher clones.
Decisions, decisions.

I honestly feel Arenanet should go back to what they did back then, as I don’t see any good reason to pigeon hole all elites into only singular powerful skills, that have no utility whatsoever. It’s just so kitten boring, and a wasted opportunity.

Horizontal progression page summary
Lets me know if you think I’ve missed something

Character progression

New Build: This includes;

• New weapons
• New skills including expansion of weapons skills
• New traits
• New stat combinations
• Sub-classes https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543
• New runes and sigils (ThanksTeckos.1305 missed that and I even have a post talking about then https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410128)

Cosmetics: This include;

• PvE skin locker. Similar to the sPvP locker https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406328
• Mini pets. Slots to place mini pets in so they don’t just go to collection and a game that involves mini pets. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406223
• Customising home instance – One main aspect requested is customising player housing where we can build and decorate the house (Thanks Donari.5237 missed that with home instance and player housing)
• An in game Hall of Monuments for GW2 to display achievements in game. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406216
• New skins. Armour / weapons / back items
• More emotes
• Alternate animations – another collection.
• New dyes.
• Weapon dyes – ability to dye weapons
• Some type of armour customisation. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406099
• Item progression. The fractal capacitor was used as an example
• Item enhancement. This could fall under item progression but the example used involved the flamekissed incident. The idea was to be able to enhance the human cultural armour so it could have the flamekissed skin.

Content

• Vanquishing. Example was another mode in dungeons were you have to vanquish all the monsters in the dungeon. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406082
  Another good post on Dungeon vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406646
• PvE map vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407867
• PvE arena https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406767
• Challenge missions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406960
• Crafting – Jaken has writing a interesting write up regarding crafting https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3407102
• Faction progression – Faction missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Order progression – Order missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Further personal story progression
  *Guild progression – adding guild halls

World development

• Louveepine write some great ideas of developing exploration https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407529

The Lost Witch.7601:

jweez.7214:

1. Dodge Animations | First off I didn’t come up with this. I heard about this while watching a VisualWood podcast. Imagine an elementalist that dodges with a crack of electricity, or a mesmer who just disappears shortly when dodging. For simplicity’s sake these wouldn’t add any additional effects, unless of course you have traited for it. I am sure the last thing the Devs want to do is add another component to the game that needs to be balanced.

Oh yeah, I remember thinking about this earlier on, when I found out that the thief has a different dodge than the other professions.

I think there is one thing to be careful with in respect to these dodge animations though: effects easily start cluttering up the screen. So if they become too flashy combat might just turn into one big cloud of lights.

It could be really cool to have the fluffy part of horizontal progression extend to animations. And the dodge animation is one that we all use.

Would it be more interesting to group them by profession or to make them available to everyone? (With the idea that more options lead to more individual character progression. And it would require less development if we didn’t have to create multiple animations per profession just to give every profession some options.)

I agree that they will have to be careful about it. Our spell effects are already distracting as it is.

I think it would be best to not class restrict it. Leave it up to the player to decide what they think is fitting.

I’m glad you like the idea. If anyone else likes it say so that way the devs know we want it!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Quick note to say that I am up to date and that there are some awesome ideas here.

If someone wants to do a macro summary of the main ideas that would be awesome (if they haven’t already. I haven’t seen one). If not I will do one tomorrow morning.

I will then call out some of the suggestions I personally really like. Also as per Colin’s question in the previous thread (one which has been asked again by some posters in this thread) feel free to discuss Horizontal Progression systems you have enjoyed in other games.

Chris

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d actually point to Guild Wars 1 here.

While, agreed, the skills available in GW1 got a little bloated and there was a big gap between good and bad builds, the ability to leave town with a different build every time was amazing – and the only way you’d ever be punished for doing so is failing a quest, mission, or vanquish because your build wasn’t as effective against the opposition as you’d hoped. No respec tax since it was decided early in GW1’s life that respec points were a bad idea – just go for it and have fun.

Similarly, as alluded to before, GW1’s armour system, even if you just take what was available early on (since it isn’t really fair to compare to the fully mature game) had between elite and 1.5k offerings at least half a dozen sets that were mechanically speaking at the top tier that could be crafted directly, rather than needing to fiddle around with transmutation and the like. I’m aware that transmutation stones/crystals/etc are intended to fill this gap, but even if they were given out for free it’s a clunky and inconvenient system, requiring as it does going to additional expense for what in many cases is technically a downgrade in appearance according to the in-game hierarchy.

Nice summary, Bezagron! I’d note that you left out housing other than a nod to customizing the home instance. The home instance is one way to go but I believe many suggestions have embraced other methods for it.

Endgame Appearance:
——————————————-

• What: New “Heros of Old Tyria” Armor or Armor Skin Missions

• How: Each zone in Tyria has a various piece of armor or armor skin associated with it. These pieces are broken up into fragments and spread across the zone in obscure areas (similar to how some of the explorer achievements are placed). Defeating a champion, solving puzzles, answering riddles, or completing some task will get you a fragment for a specific piece. Collecting 4 fragments allows a player to craft the skin in the mystic forge straight up. No grind. The challenges should be enough.

• Why: Tyria isn’t Tyria anymore. It’s Lions Arch (thanks to Fractals), it’s Queensdale, it’s Frostgorge Sound and wherever the latest “Living Story” is. Everywhere else is pretty much dead. This will breath a little more life into other areas. Along with adding more progression.

Skills
———-

• What: New weapons, more weapon skills, more racial specific skills, more class skills

• How: Allow each class to explore other weapons/new weapons, racial specific and class options. For each weapon there can be quest to unlock it. There can be quests to unlock the specific new skills like GW1. Once you have those skills players train them through usage. Special skills like elites should have special quests for them. Spread the weapon and skill learning across Tyria.

• Why: New player skill progression is the best type of horizontal progression. It adds utility and options to player builds. Players are always looking to tweak and improve their player or learn new tricks for them. Spreading the skill learning across Tyria opens the world back up and gives players reason to log in and travel around. The more options the more to unlock and try out.

Minis With Actual Utility
————————————————

• What: Minis serve absolutely no purpose, even cosmetically. They’re just THERE. Give minis a utility.

• How: Let them do things like increase cast animation speed, area of effect size, or some light protection. Make players have to feed them to keep them happy so they’ll perform better. Let them evolve after a certain level. They can function like mags in Phantasy Star Online/Universe

• Why: Why NOT? It’s more content. Taking care of a pet can be a constant source of content with a reward/pay off. It gives people a reason to actually try to get them and maintain them. They also add a level of meta to builds.

That’s all I got for now.

I’ll object to having to maintain a mini or lose progress on it, same as I object to losing a game house because I was away for a bit. This game isn’t supposed to force you to log in. Nothing should deteriorate merely from inattention. That isn’t fun!

Donari.5237:

I’ll object to having to maintain a mini or lose progress on it, same as I object to losing a game house because I was away for a bit. This game isn’t supposed to force you to log in. Nothing should deteriorate merely from inattention. That isn’t fun!

You’re not forced to anything. It’s an idea, and I didn’t say anything about “losing progress”.

I went into this briefly in the vertical progression thread, but I want to get a bit more indepth with a proposal for a personal housing system that could fill a major role being an ongoing form of horizontal progression for the playerbase. I want to stress that just adding gatherables and small things to the existing home instances isn’t going to cut it. If you’re going to do this, go all the way. Don’t halfass it just so you can say we have it. Do it right, and it could become a major aspect of the entire Guild Wars 2 experience!

Personal Housing

All players begin with a Level 1 house, and are able to choose among a small selection of styles appropriate to their race.

• Humans
  – A small, run-down apartment in Divinity’s Reach appropriate to a street rat.
  – A small, modest home in Divinity’s Reach appropriate for a commoner.
  – A small, but luxurious home in Divinity’s Reach appropriate for a minor noble.
• Charr
  – A small Blood Legion-themed military tent with just enough room for the player and his/her warband.
  – A small Ash Legion-themed military tent with just enough room for the player and his/her warband.
  – A small Iron Legion-themed military tent with just enough room for the player and his/her warband.
• Asura
  – A small home/lab with equipment themed towards golemancy.
  – A small home/lab with equipment themed towards study of the Eternal Alchemy.
  – A small home/lab with equipment themed towards a variety of different, less-focused projects.
• Norn
  – A campsite out in the wilderness of the Shiverpeaks, appropriate for a roaming hunter.
  – A small lodge similar to those found throughout the Shiverpeaks located outside of Hoelbrak.
  – A small lodge similar to those found throughout the Shiverpeaks located within Hoelbrak.
• Sylvari
  – A small home within the Grove, located higher up on the tree and themed towards a certain season.
  – A small home within the Grove, located midway up the tree and themed towards a certain season..
  – A small home within the Grove, located on the ground and themed towards a certain season.

Players would be provided with a selection of basic furniture options appropriate to their chosen style, and from there, can begin furnishing their houses as they see fit. This leads into…

Upgrade System
This is where the progression comes in. Taking some inspiration from the Dark Cloud series, players have certain objectives they need to fulfill with their houses before they unlock the ability to upgrade to a Level 2 house. As the Level 1 house would be fairly small, there wouldn’t be much room for anything but an area to eat and sleep. Therefore, the prerequisites for being able to upgrade to Level 2 could be to place a bed, a table, and two chairs into the house. Once this is complete, players have the ability to spend gold on upgrading to Level 2.

Upgrading increases the size of the house, opening up the layout and allowing for more furniture to be placed within. From here, new objectives would open up to allow the player to upgrade to Level 3. Perhaps the player would need a certain amount of storage items like cabinets, dressers, desks, bookshelves, etc. Then, after that, maybe a focus on more decorative items such as paintings, plants, statues, etc. As a player’s house gets to be higher level, they’ll start requiring certain furnishings that aren’t provided initially. This would require the player to obtain certain furnishings through other methods such as crafting, drops, merchants, achievements, etc. Whenever a player reaches a certain level, they can freely refurnish their house without losing progress on their previous objectives. Eventually, if a player maxes out their house level, they can completely customize it however they’d like and would retain any and all progress.

Eventually, that human player who opted for the run-down street rat apartment could be living in an impressive hideout that would make any master thief proud. That noble could have a manor rivaling Caudecus’. The asura studying golemancy could have a huge lab, complete with an assembly line that produces customizable golems 24/7. Norn steadings turning into enormous lodges, Charr tents becoming great military barracks for their elite warbands, Sylvari plant houses becoming huge, elaborate organic homes. They’re exciting possibilities.

(Cont.)

(Cont.)

Incentives
So why spend the time and money on furnishing and upgrading your house (aside from the fun of it and the ability to show it off to friends, of course)? With each increased level, players are awarded with passive, account-wide benefits. Not only that, certain pieces of furniture could grant desirable functionality to the player’s home (trading post access, bank access, crafting stations, mystic forge access, merchant access, gardens with gatherable plants, extra bank tabs, etc.)

Passive bonuses could be award similarly to the bonuses granted by achievement chests. Magic Find, Gold Find, Karma Gain, and Experience Gain are givens, but there are plenty of other possibilities to tap into. Reduced Waypoint Costs, Crafting Critical Rate, World EXP Bonuses, Reduced Repair Costs, increased duration of Food/Drink buffs would all work well. Each time a player increases their house level, bonuses to any and all of these passives could be awarded.

Upgrade progress and passive bonuses should be account-bound. If a player gets to a Level 3 house on one character, for example, all other characters on that account should be allowed to jump straight to level 3 with their own houses without having to meet furnishing objectives or pay the builder’s fees.

How can the Gem Store fit in to this?
New housing styles could be released for purchase on the gem store. Maybe a Charr player would prefer to live like a gladium, rather than having a home themed towards one of the legions. A human player might not want to be limited to Divinity’s Reach, and would prefer to own farmland out in Queensdale. Special furniture packs such as Wintersday and Halloween themed packs could let us decorate for the holidays.

Special Instances and Incorporation with the Living Story
Characters could visit the player homes (instead of sending mail all the time), and certain aspects of these visits could change based on interactions with the player. It opens up a lot of possibilities in the living story, providing a new area through which it can be told. It also makes the story more personal. NPCs specifically seeking our characters out in person, rather than the other way around, would go a long way to make us feel more important in the world of Tyria. There can even be special encounters that take place in our player homes, related to the living story or not. How about an asura’s lab being attacked by the Inquest trying to steal their work?

So how would this benefit Guild Wars 2 as a whole?
- A new, extensive, long-term horizontal progression system that gives players new goals to work towards.
- Furniture system can greatly expand the crafting system, as well as the economy. Builder fees when players upgrade their houses add in a new gold sink to the game. Also opens up new rewards that players can work towards through drops, achievements, dungeons, etc.
- Additional passive bonuses to player accounts that act as horizontal progression on top of the the goal of actually expanding our player homes.
- Allows for more possibilities with the living story, including expanded Player-NPC interaction.

And finally…how can Guild Halls be involved?
As a huge bonus, this same system can be applied to Guild Halls. Each “housing style” would be more appropriate for a Guild Hall rather than a personal home. Rather than the individual, account-wide benefits granted by personal housing upgrades, the benefits from Guild Hall upgrades would be more guild-oriented. For example, faster build times for guild upgrades. Reduced influence costs for upgrades. Extended effects from guild bonuses (banner effects last longer, +10% Magic Find for 3 days becomes 5 days). Increased merits awarded for successful guild missions. The ability to unlock all new guild upgrades. Like a personal housing system, the Guild Hall system has all kinds of possibilities and can work on the same foundation.

Obviously this would be an enormous amount of work, and I honestly don’t expect you guys to pull off something this extensive. But what if you did? I hope, at the very least, this outline is something that appeals to you and is something you could strive for. I think it would do wonders for the game, but only if you guys go all out with personal housing. Not going all the way with it risks it becoming an afterthought for players, rather than a core system for us to incorporate into how we play the game. We’re in dire need of horizontal progression, and I can’t think of anything that would give every single player an attractive, long-term goal more than this would.

Apologies, I was objecting to the implications of “make players feed them to keep them happy.” I understand this is all just brainstorming What would happen if a player didn’t feed the mini?

Bezagron beat me to it with this post, complete with links. I’ll leave mine up just in case it might also be useful.

Here’s the summary of some of the most discussed topics in the first four pages of the thread:

• Horizontal progress should be the main form of progress.
• Everyone is nostalgic for GW1.
• Utilize Vanquishing from GW1, perhaps as a 3rd dungeon mode.
• Lots of people want Build Templates from GW1
• Many want skill hunting and the book system back from GW1
• We want to customize ALL THE THINGS. Including: Home instance, player housing, weapons, armor, emotes, town clothes, profession and titles. This includes things like dyeable and nameable weapons, more dye slots, profession-specific armor (like cultural armor), modified versions of currently available skins, titles based on personality type, craftable town clothes, a place to display achievements, more dyes, more ways to access dyes, personality/order-based character speech, let us craft or buy RP items, use skillpoints to customize skill aesthetics, emotes that are order/personality based, unlockable emotes, Legendary armor (pure cosmetics), etc.
• There needs to be some discussion of a wardrobe system for skins.
• Meta achievement skins should go into the achievement interface.
• Cosmetic progression is at odds with the current setup for runes, sigils and stat combinations. This feels punitive.
• Lots of people want sub-classes.
• Make player choices carry more weight by having them influence things like story progress, Order, and personality-based interactions.
• Minipets need to be more functional and accessible, rather than being shuttled to the collections.
• Many people want to be rid of the soulbound designation.
• Entice us to spend more time in the open world. (Maybe it’s not such a good thing that conveniences like the mystic forge are so centralized.)
• More skills, please.
• Elite skills should be more desirable, and the final slot should allow us to slot any utility, rather than forcing us into elite skills. We should want to slot them.
• New skills should not be gated behind a huge investment of skillpoints unless they are on par with skills of similar value.
• More weapon unlocks/availability to more professions
• Upgrade clunky interfaces- wardrobe, minipets, guild tools and the trading post could all use some love.
• Give us more options with available currencies, especially karma.
• Give us a feeling of progression through and continued connection with our chosen order.
• Use lore as a reward.
• PvE combat could use some higher difficulty. Underwater combat is hampered by an unfinished design. Conditions need to scale better in PvE. Separate PvE from PvP and WvW skills. Defiant renders many abilities worthless and it’s becoming more and more prominent.
• We would like a quick way to portal to and from our home instance.
• We want crafting to be via discovery, not from vendor-bought recipes.
• More character customization: The addition of things like scars, tattoos, makeup options, wrinkles, and accessories via their own slots would give greater weight to differences in characters.
• Mini-Games: Add more (polymock arena came up a lot) and keep old ones as permanent content.
• More zones to explore, and puzzles to discover. Get creative with the puzzles; think tomb raider.
• Guild vs. Guild
• Give Legendary weapons the ability to take on the cosmetic appearance (perhaps modified by the weapon’s effects slightly) of any other weapon of that type in the game.

Donari.5237:

Apologies, I was objecting to the implications of “make players feed them to keep them happy.” I understand this is all just brainstorming What would happen if a player didn’t feed the mini?

Nothing, but maybe if you do feed it enough it evolves into an iteration of itself with more utilities:

And here are some of my favourite posts from the first 4 pages.

Marcus Greythorne.6843
Scavenger hunt
Utility minipets
LS NPCs in home instance

ArtemusHunter.9521
Legendary dyes

VOLKON.1290
Crafting with more flavor
Tinkering

Gulesave.5073
Traits rework

Soeki.9643
Customize skills

The Lost Witch.7601
Challenge Missions

Shanaeri Rynale.6897
Commentary w/solutions

Astral Projections.7320
book system, etc

Nike.2631
Runes/sigils

Karizee.8076
Commander tags reflect WvW rank/Achievements, etkitten

hril Ashwalker.6230
Why have 5 guilds but only the ability to help 1 at a time

Knaifhogg.5964
Dungeon Tokens

DanteZero.9736
modular gear customization
Follow-up

DiogoSilva.7089
Racial skills granted more power at home
dyes/skins
Armor pass

Dominus.2360
Item appearance levels

Sykper.6583
Enhanced cultural armor

Shunsui Jiraiya.9103
Multiple ideas

Louveepine.7630
Multiple

D I V A.6018
Build Diversity

Shockwave.1230
General ideas

Mixchimmer.7230
Sub-classes, etc

Tyops.5894
Weapon/elite skills
Single-use skins don’t feel like progression

Lheimroo.2947
Dyes

Wasbunny.6531
Feasible dual spec

Finnway.2183
Separate PvE skills from PvP and WvW

roflcopter airlines.7125
Titles with color, and more

Odd Magnet.3970
Account-wide bag slot, bring back the arena challenge, etc

I feel many players have mentioned the similar desires I hold: Changing many soulbound items to account bound, especially ascended/legendary items. More functionality for mini pets. More weapon skins, and armors. New weapon skills, utility skills, elite skills, racial skills. Tons of nicely heard ideas!

Now to share one idea I haven’t seen mentioned, at least from what I’ve seen. A feature I feel should be an in game mechanic instead of becoming a gem shop item only.

Profession Switching – The ability for a single character to level up and manage the ability to play as any profession.

This feature would be managed by the multiple profession retainers that currently only serve to reset a specific profession’s trait points. Now all profession trainers would be allowed to enable a main lv80 character to swap and undergo training under a new profession.

Unlike race, a profession is something learned by skill and not bound by birth. A character upon reaching level 80 would be able to visit another profession trait retainer and undergo the ability of profession swapping. A Lv80 Warrior can switch to a Lv1 Necromancer. Leveled professions are saved and players could make profession swap with a reasonable cost of skill point and coin trade in.

Not all players like to manage multiple characters and this gives a benefit of managing soul bound equipment and items. There will still be benefits of managing separate alt characters over a single one, namely being multiple rewards like jumping puzzle or meta event chests. Guild Wars 1 had dual profession mechanics which perhaps would be seen difficult to manage in Guild Wars 2, but a way to swap professions as they’re unlocked and levels are earned would greatly improve the longevity of enjoying a single character.

Leveling up multiple professions on a single character would come across similar as to leveling up multiple crafting professions. Those who haven’t finished map exploration would be given options to continue exploration as another profession while keeping current map progression.

Personal story rewards and all would still remain tailored to the original chosen profession of a character. Changing back to the main profession would also always be free of charge. Players could also enjoy creating multiple armor appearances and going for more weapon skins to further incite the drive of enjoying horizontal progression this way.

With the introduction of Tomes of Knowledge more frequently, players will have multiple ways to earn their swapped professions to lv80 again. This would also give a great use for those with Experience Scrolls to lv20 yet do not care to maintain multiple characters.

This kind of horizontal progression, is something of great asset for it brings new choice and eliminates regret such as when a current profession may suffer from balance update changes unfavorable to them. It gives more desires for completionists to pursue. New achievement and title ideas can be born from this. It also helps eliminate profession selection which I feel is one of the greatest mistakes MMOs make by enforcing it and expecting a player to completely start over when all they want to do is enjoy a change of fighting style and abilities. This can also be a good start to making ascended and legendary items more desirable for collections.

Anyways this idea is pretty rough sketch here, but I could flush out and elaborate more on how the overall system would work.

Zygil.1276:

Profession Switching – The ability for a single character to level up and manage the ability to play as any profession.

This feature would be managed by the multiple profession retainers that currently only serve to reset a specific profession’s trait points. Now all profession trainers would be allowed to enable a main lv80 character to swap and undergo training under a new profession.

Unlike race, a profession is something learned by skill and not bound by birth. A character upon reaching level 80 would be able to visit another profession trait retainer and undergo the ability of profession swapping. A Lv80 Warrior can switch to a Lv1 Necromancer. Leveled professions are saved and players could make profession swap with a reasonable cost of skill point and coin trade in.

This type of thing is met with mixed feelings. I personally feel it might actually fit somewhat well with the GW universe(considering NPC’s have been swapping professions since the days of GW1), but I know that there’s quite a bit of players that might be kitten ed off about it(due to leveling all their alts to 80 so they could have those professions at max level) and some might even go as far as to say that it would be the final peg needed to prove how alt friendly this game can/could be.

I believe you got this idea from FFXIV, since that’s how that game works currently. Its a neat feature, but they have bonus’ in that game if you do hit level cap for alt’s. It’s a confusing a new term to those that have played regular mmo’s. It would be nice but I feel that the population would be a few on board, a bit more than the few liking it not liking it at all, and the rest on the fence; eventually forgetting about the idea.

It would fit with the game, but does that mean it should be in the game?

I have to say that I typically don’t care much about horizontal progression, but there are some annoying things which just would improve quality of life.

1. Harvesting Permanent Items Sure they are account bound, but that hardly makes it not annoying to have to log on and off characters to play pass the bone pick. You have a system for the achievement chest items where once unlocked you can get as many soulbound copies as you want. Why not do that with all the account bound permanent harvesting gear?

2. Dyes Dyes should be account bound versus character bound. It is too frustrating to have to redo work. This is one of the reasons I was soooo happy to be able to buy tomes of knowledge for glory. I hate redoing PvE. Well, once I get a dye, I don’t want it to be bound on just one toon. Then I have toons of all different shapes, sizes, dyes, etc. I get having characters have different vertical progression profiles but why in the World would I want that to be true for horizontal progression (e.g. fluff)?

3. Profession Swapping For a gold, let me change professions. Please dear God don’t make me have to level up again! This would avoid the ever so awful need to redo PvE just to get an alt and a fresh look at a class. We can do this in pvp, so why not wvw and PvE? Gear wouldn’t transfer so it would be easiest to move from a light armor to light armor or heavy to heavy but that is entirely up to you.
Absolutely, I want to change professions when changes are made to them that make one interesting that was not previously.

Bezagron.7352:

Horizontal progression page summary
Lets me know if you think I’ve missed something

Character progression

New Build: This includes;

• New weapons
• New skills including expansion of weapons skills
• New traits
• New stat combinations
• Sub-classes [url]https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543[

hum what about the runes and sigils.

I don’t want to add too many ideas at once and I’ve seen plenty of great stuff on this thread already. But something I would like to see is a way for competitive players to be competitive without needing to go to a vertical gear grind.

For example, seasonal highscores based on who earned the most achievement points this month or this 3 month period etc. Who gained the most experience? (Or leveled up the most number of times after level 80). I’m sure the Arenanet development team could come up with great ideas like that for a seasonal highscore so people can be competitive without being rewarded with better stats than somebody who doesn’t care to be competitive.

I’ve seen people suggest Guild vs Guild and I think that’s a good idea as well, people would fight to get to the top of the guild rankings in each server, it would be fantastic competition.

Thanks for reading.

My points:

-I am tired of cosmetics hunting being the go to method of horizontal progression. I know there a large portion of the GW2 playerbase are the type of player that would be entirely satisfied with this game if they have a new skin to hunt down every two weeks, but I am not that player. I am a fan of functional rewards not rewards that look different but function the same.

- I would like to see new elements like new professions, races, skills, elites, and weapons. I think that skills, weapons, and trait progression are one huge area that Anet should focus on. Progression in this area allows them to avoid the gear treadmill which so many GW2 players seem to hate. The new skills, weapons, and traits don’t necessarily have to be better than others. They simply have to be different and allow for more customization of how your character plays. I need more functional progression and less fluff.

-One thing that has always bugged me about Guild Wars(1 and 2) is the lack of the profession really playing a role in the story. I’ll compare it to SWTOR where your entire story experience is different depending in which class you pick. Judging by the dialog, conversations, and story elements it is almost like these professions don’t even truly exist in the game world. The professions are rarely even mentioned by name. I would like to see more profession specific lore playing a major role in the story, events, and quests.

-My only WvW related request is that you add some things that make WvW look like it exists in the same world as the rest of the game. The keeps are all bland. I’d like to see more of the different races in WvW. I don’t think there is a single Asura or Sylvari NPC anywhere in WvW. I’d also like to see the keeps modified to look like they are something other than human. One possible solution is adding a a new tier 3 upgrade that allows the players to select an artisan from one of the races. After the upgrade completes, the keep will take on the look of a keep from one of those races and gain some unique benefit based on which artisan was chosen. Or another route would be just to give every keep a random chance on reset to have the look of anyone of the various races.

Bezagron.7352:

Horizontal progression page summary
Lets me know if you think I’ve missed something

Character progression

New Build: This includes;

• New weapons
• New skills including expansion of weapons skills
• New traits
• New stat combinations
• Sub-classes https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543

Cosmetics: This include;

• PvE skin locker.

Hire this man as your consultant. Anyway yeah, make an alternate switchable set of weapon abilities, or you guys can 1’up that and make a swappable pool of weapon abilities to pick from for each weapon. That would truly make things more interesting

Also, I am surprised little have mentioned it, but the current set-up of skill trees is absolutely boring. You have to wait until level 15 to get a minor trait that varies from awesome to absolutely useless.

Short version: Spice up the skill trees and make minor traits something that can be chosen. Also, why are we limited at 30 points? I know a lot of times I wanted to go over that and there is no good reason why I can’t.

Thanks all.

I think it’d be better to keep the existing systems in place – no subclasses, no trait overhauls, etc – but make small changes to allow a greater diversity of builds and roles. For example: allow each profession one more weapon, like…

Warrior: main-hand pistol
Guardian: Warhorn
Thief: rifle
Engineer: torch
Ranger: rifle or pistol
Mesmer: main-hand pistol
Necromancer: greatsword
Elementalist: shield

This could lead to a huge rethinking of how people play their class, give everybody new skills, and keep the game fresh.

timmyf.1490:

I think it’d be better to keep the existing systems in place – no subclasses, no trait overhauls, etc – but make small changes to allow a greater diversity of builds and roles. For example: allow each profession one more weapon, like…

Warrior: main-hand pistol
Guardian: Warhorn
Thief: rifle
Engineer: torch
Ranger: rifle or pistol
Mesmer: main-hand pistol
Necromancer: greatsword
Elementalist: shield

This could lead to a huge rethinking of how people play their class, give everybody new skills, and keep the game fresh.

One could argue then that there could be an even bigger variety of build changes if you allow all professions to use all weapons, which I know a bunch of people want.

This plus weapon skill swap pool would be then be an even larger build variety. I’d be very curious as to how an engineer would use a scepter in that case lol.

For those who want new skills/weapons — that works in the short term to keep the game fresh, but it’s not sustainable. If you keep adding skills, balance becomes a nightmare (Anet’s already having a terrible time of it right now).

How do you propose they Anet deals with this?

Lord Kuru.3685:

For those who want new skills/weapons — that works in the short term to keep the game fresh, but it’s not sustainable. If you keep adding skills, balance becomes a nightmare (Anet’s already having a terrible time of it right now).

How do you propose they Anet deals with this?

They did it with Gw1, and are probably better at now

MrDmajor.7084:

Minis With Actual Utility
————————————————

• What: Minis serve absolutely no purpose, even cosmetically. They’re just THERE. Give minis a utility.

• How: Let them do things like increase cast animation speed, area of effect size, or some light protection. Make players have to feed them to keep them happy so they’ll perform better. Let them evolve after a certain level. They can function like mags in Phantasy Star Online/Universe

• Why: Why NOT? It’s more content. Taking care of a pet can be a constant source of content with a reward/pay off. It gives people a reason to actually try to get them and maintain them. They also add a level of meta to builds.

I can give a big why NOT:

Most minis are acquired through the gem shop. Giving minis an ingame mechanical advantage, however small, is a step towards pay-to-win. You could possibly avoid this by having all minis give the same effect so that someone can just use festival or birthday minis to get the benefit without being at a disadvantage to the person with the full collection, but do we really want to be ankle-deep in Mini Queen Jennahs, Risen Knights and Candy Corn Golems all the time because they’re the most common minis?

A second big why NOT is that a mini that is out and about takes up resources both on the server and, if your character is close enough to them, on the client. Encouraging everyone to have their mini out at all times will thus be a drain on resources. Furthermore, this would get particularly problematic if, like in GW1, there was a limit on how many minis can be in a particular map at once, and thus it becomes a race to get your mini out before the other guy so you get the benefit.

Shockwave.1230:

Lord Kuru.3685:

For those who want new skills/weapons — that works in the short term to keep the game fresh, but it’s not sustainable. If you keep adding skills, balance becomes a nightmare (Anet’s already having a terrible time of it right now).

How do you propose they Anet deals with this?

They did it with Gw1, and are probably better at now

[awkward cough] Skill bloat was one of the main reasons production on GW1 had to be stopped.

I want more skills and weapons as much as the next guy, but just a few, and they don’t have to come right away.

Here’s some things that I can get behind and support.

More with the Orders. Go do missions for your Order, maybe just once or twice a day, that over time will/can lead to skills or skins or new dyes or achievements or whatever, and have these in two tiers. The missions can just lead to new events that will provide the starter with tier 1 stuff while your mates who come along for the ride are eligible for tier 2 stuff. And no achievement for them. Maybe even something similar for the player species.

Epic dyes. I like the sound of these, as people have described them. I have little interest in epic weapons but epic dyes with effects might be something that I would gather stuff for. I’m even happy for them to be account bound.

Personal housing. For those of you who played Daoc then you can think that. I really like the idea that was further up this page or on the previous about upgrading from level 1 to onward. If I find it again I’ll reference it (Cliff on p6, nice work). So something combining both.

Now, at the risk of becoming unpopular (not that anyone knows me), I would like to say that whatever happens can we please stop with the disintegration of individual character progression. I know this isn’t really on topic for the thread but not everyone feels the need to get rid of soulbinding. I can’t imagine much can be done for equipment but, if it ever goes down that road, for dyes at least give players the option to either make them account or soul bound.