Guild Wars 2

An Oak Knob.1275:

This is all what I want Anet to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

That is all.

Sandbox is the future, we know that! Nice vid!

Immensus.9732:

An Oak Knob.1275:

This is all what I want Anet to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

That is all.

Sandbox is the future, we know that! Nice vid!

Thank you, don’t forget to subscribe to him. He makes amazing videos.

if anet really wants horizontal progress, please remove gear treadmill. remove ascended (or leave it just as skins).
grinding should be only cosmetic. it was your manifesto: respect the pact and your customers.

only then, horizontal growth of character would be possible.
increase maps. create bigger or longer events and quests.
new achievements. new dynamics (not just kill x or gather y.)
encourage group playing and not just zerg or autotarget.
create mounts or vehicles. new weapon classes.
there so much to try

but don t turn to grind and treadmill just as any other nerdy mmo.
it would be an easy way for a short time…and then only carrot on a stick…and finally lots of ragequits.
we re a different kind of players.

Kevan.8912:

if anet really wants horizontal progress, please remove gear treadmill. remove ascended (or leave it just as skins).
grinding should be only cosmetic. it was your manifesto: respect the pact and your customers.

only then, horizontal growth of character would be possible.
increase maps. create bigger or longer events and quests.
new achievements. new dynamics (not just kill x or gather y.)
encourage group playing and not just zerg or autotarget.
create mounts or vehicles. new weapon classes.
there so much to try

but don t turn to grind and treadmill just as any other nerdy mmo.
it would be an easy way for a short time…and then only carrot on a stick…and finally lots of ragequits.
we re a different kind of players.

It’s too late to remove it now.
The crys of the thousands of people that have invested time and ingame currency to get the ascended gear would be massive and a backlash of forum anger would continue and without a doubt playerbase decline.

An Oak Knob.1275:

It’s too late to remove it now.
The crys of the thousands of people that have invested time and ingame currency to get the ascended gear would be massive and a backlash of forum anger would continue and without a doubt playerbase decline.

And it’s that same grind that prevents me from playing this game.

Left WoW because the grind is just completely over the top now. Level 90 characters gear has such a vast range difference in stats that new 90s aren’t really 90s at all in reality other than the level itself. I eventually decided that the whole game was just a repetitive grind and the next expansion (lvl 100) was just going to restart the process probably with an even bigger gear level range for 100s.

Thanks Chris and all of Arena Net for a wonderful game and these CDI’s.
For putting all this extra time in, when you all should be on holidays enjoying yourselves. It really shows the passion you all have.

This last CDI about progression has been a wonderful time reading about all the brainstorming ideas everyone have shared. Just thinking about these and that some form of these ideas and what else Arena Net has installed for 2014 leaves me like a little child who can’t waiting to open all the presents under the Christmas tree.

For all the Players, Arena Net and Chris have a Happy New Year and see you all in game next year.

Distaste.4801:

Grevender.9235:

Horizontal snip.

I’m not against crafting the character you want, but I think that can be accomplished without creating a whole new sub-class system.

I strongly disagree with you here

I’ve explained already more than enough, why all of this is nonsense and why the Trait System will be never ever able to be compared with the potential, that lies within Sub Class Systems, whereas the current trait system simply can’t do many things that ANet could easily do with Sub Classes, simply out of the reason, because both systems are meant to work completely different and let the player achieve completely different things.

The Trait Systems main focus lies onto only Skill/Character Effect Custimization.
Sub Classes are a System, that is used to let the character truly progress, as they can work as a unlocking system, what the Trait System is just simple said IMPOSSIBLE to do so too.
A Trait will and should never ever decide about it, if a character should be able at the moment to wield a completely new weapon.A Sub Class can and should decide over these kind of things.

Our Characters need to develop themself further over time, visually as like skillfully and mechanically and this goal can be only reached with redesigning the Trait System, adding Sub Classes and splitting the Trait System up into 3 seperate different Systems constisting out of Traits, Abilities, and Talents.

This would make Character Customization broader and give ANet also alot more options for overall Character Progression, vertically as like horizontally.

Can’t understand, why suddenly alot pf people seem to “fear” Sub Classes.
There is absolutely nothing to fear from them. They won’t limitate anything for you.

But if you fear Sub Classes only, because of each Sub Class limitating the pictures in your minds, into what you could make your characters, then I think, everyone who thinks this, should stop playing GW2 right now, as the game will with this way of thinking never make you happy then, because with its 8 current Main Professions it already limitates you, how a player can customize what your characters can become.

You will never be able to create that character, which will be 100% exactly like what you want to create, because there will be always directly the decision of which class you want to become.

I strongly believe, the best route that Anet should go with GW2 is that one of more and better character specialization, that clearly gives the player the impression of direct character progress, which you can

• SEE, by new unique sub class bonded equipment and new unlockable Abilities that change the looks of skills based on your chosen sub class.

• FEEL, by new sub class bunded equipable weapons, new skils, new traits ect.

and

• RECOGNIZE through a new gameplay, that is recognizable different and improved over that of the main profession that has the basics only, so that you clearly recognize, that your character progressed in his job career what I think is very important.
  ——

Its like the clear example of letting a kitchen noob make a competition against a 5star hotel chef cook, which is far more experienced in his job, is also specialized in many things surely not best at everything, but specialzed in something naturally.
The kitchen noob would clearly have 0 chance against the professional cook.

You see the SEE the difference, in the quality of the result. You FEEL the difference by the taste of the result and you RECOGNIZE the difference, by the efficiency of how both work with the professional being much faster, due to all of his experience.

Thats what I want to make you all clear here, sub classes are nothing bad, they are just the way superior 3 in 1 solution over just lettign the game have only traits. Believe me.
When I’m very convinced about something, then this!

Chris you were talking about how a skins locker was ‘supporting functionality to an existing system (Skin Collection)’. With all the ideas in this thread would it help if we created 2 top 3 lists;

1. Top 3 supporting functionality ideas (Skins locker, stat swapping, build template..)
2. Top 3 HP content ideas (New weapons skills, skills & traits, Order / Factin expansion, New maps to explore / Zone progression, Louveepine’s Lore codex, Nike’s Patrons of the City..)

This would highlight the top 3 supporting functionality & the top 3 HP content idea. This could be quite useful.

Immensus.9732:

An Oak Knob.1275:

This is all what I want Anet to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

That is all.

Sandbox is the future, we know that! Nice vid!

Now that you point it out, what I wouldn’t give to have that in GW2.
Honestly, I’ve done everything in GW2, well, everything I ever wanted to.
I’m just about done my 7th level 80, and my last one is at 65, I’ll be done within a week.

Tried WvW extensively, and it’s shallow and repetitive. I’ve done every jumping puzzle, and done a bunch of guild events and meta events.

The fact of the matter is that no matter what Arenanet does, they cannot make content as fast as players can chew through it, and without the insane amount of grind other MMO’s have you rather quickly bump up against the borders of the experience.

There really isn’t anything interesting to do at ‘end game’, a phase I despise.

-

So maybe sandbox elements is the way to go in this situation? Give us the tools to entertain ourselves and each other, and you’d have a unlimited amount of content.

Could we perhaps get a CDI on this topic? Discussing whether or not, and if so how sandbox elements could be implemented into the game.
Because if you want to talk about horizontal progression, players generating content for each other is about a horizontal as it can get.

Orpheal.8263:

Our Characters need to develop themself further over time, visually as like skillfully and mechanically and this goal can be only reached with redesigning the Trait System, adding Sub Classes and splitting the Trait System up into 3 seperate different Systems constisting out of Traits, Abilities, and Talents.

This would make Character Customization broader and give ANet also alot more options for overall Character Progression, vertically as like horizontally.

If I may, there isn’t anything about your post that demonstrates why we need subclasses themselves.

Skill Aesthetic Progression is a good idea. Allowing players to unlock intricate and magnificent animation options is a beautiful way to let players feel accomplished and to distinguish their character from others.

New weapons are definitely needed. Many classes simply don’t have enough weapons under their belt to fit the different roles in the game. Everyone should have reliable means of achieving concepts like AoE, direct offense, condition offense, defense, control, and support, but many classes were given the short end of the stick.

And finally, the trait system is not very well implemented because the format should not be the same across classes. Everyone is forced to use the Five Line Thirty Point method, no matter how foolish it is for different groups. A warrior is nothing like an engineer, so why are they required to use the same upgrade method?

But that doesn’t mean you need Subclasses.

If a class needs more weapons, give them more weapons. If a class needs a broader class mechanic, broaden the class mechanic. If the trait system isn’t up to snuff, improve the trait system. And if you want to provide skill aesthetic customization, implement systems that allow animations to be unlocked by story progress, Order choice, PvP rank, WvW winnings, difficult achievements, and other facets of existing gameplay.

Subclasses do not bring anything unique to the table. We already have active skills in the form of Weapons, Utilities, Elites, Heals, and Class Mechanics, along with passive effects handled by Traits. The system isn’t perfect, but it does theoretically cover everything a player needs to do. Anything you list as a possible subclass is either going to be a passive effect (your Duelist warrior has less armor but gains adrenaline faster!) or an active skill (instead of Death Shroud, your Necromancer gains Cloak of Doom!). The system already accounts for both of them.

If you believe the current system has lacks polish (an opinion I share) than improving the present mechanics makes a better outcome than adding another layer for the sake of a shiny name pasted onto the existing flaws.

I did a couple runs in Ascalon Catacombs earlier with a really nice PuG who was largely new to dungeons. Afterwords I offered to let them add me to their friends lists if they ever needed help in the future. As I added them to my already extensive list I realized that there are loads of people who I’ve only really played with a couple times (most were met in dungeons or fractals), and I didn’t really have any way to filter who was on my list for what reasons apart from setting nicknames (“Name Fractals” or “Name Dungeons” is a common sight on my friends list).

Would it be possible to add some type of ‘tagging’ system for PvE friends, WvW friends, PvP friends, Dungeons friends, Fractals friends, etc, or separate lists for acquaintances to the Friends panel?

P.S. Also ‘last date of activity’, so we can remove people who haven’t played in a year!

I know a lot of people want more of the lore in game, and I also saw a lot of people wanting order missions. I think putting lore in to order missions would be a great way to tell the history and future of the game.

I would also like new skills for weapons we have.

I think more can be done with dyes as well, such as adding effects to armor.

StriderShinryu.6923:

Harbard.5738:

• Alts as followers

I like this idea a lot. That would be one of the most awesome things to ever hit mmos in decades and a great incentive for “alting” as horizontal progression.This is horizontal progression if you think player, not character. For every alt you level you unlock a new hero, the alt himself, and you could play with them. as a full group, in instanced areas, such as dungeons, like in GW1, but those heroes would be your own alts as npcs. I could even play those instances with little or no coin/item rewards (if that’s used as a measure against botted farming, for instance). But it would be still every bit as awesome.

This is a brilliant idea. While I’m not 100% personally sold on the idea of helpers/followers in GW2 in the first place, this would be an excellent way to do it if it was done. I would love to see my main joined by even just one of my alts while out adventuring.

I too like this idea. It’s … disturbingly great, actually.

Bezagron.7352:

Chris you were talking about how a skins locker was ‘supporting functionality to an existing system (Skin Collection)’. With all the ideas in this thread would it help if we created 2 top 3 lists;

1. Top 3 supporting functionality ideas (Skins locker, stat swapping, build template..)
2. Top 3 HP content ideas (New weapons skills, skills & traits, Order / Factin expansion, New maps to explore / Zone progression, Louveepine’s Lore codex, Nike’s Patrons of the City..)

This would highlight the top 3 supporting functionality & the top 3 HP content idea. This could be quite useful.

I think it might be best to continue on the top 3’s for now. Then later on, when we discuss the more popular HP content ideas in a more focused manner, the supporting functionalities will rise to the top naturally. (At least, that is what I expect)

Multiple top 3’s now could become a bit confusing.

Orpheal.8263:

Subclasses

Some questions to the details of the subclass system as you may have it in mind:

• Would subclasses be a permanent choice? Or are they reversible? What would a change cost?

• Would subclasses be stronger than current professions? (The topchef versus the kitchen help) How do we go about this difference in WvW? Would PvE need to be rebalanced around it?

• How much time/effort should it take to become a master of the subclass? (Everything unlocked)

• Should every subclass be equal in every part of the game? Or is it ok for some subclasses to be worthless in let’s say: WvW but pretty good in dungeons?

• How many subclasses should there be?

• What are the differences between traits, talents and abilities? (Assuming they’re not skills)

• Would subclasses have their own armorsets, like racial sets? If not, what sets them apart visually?

You have probably written answers to these in your previous posts, but those are the types of questions that lead to the things I fear in subclasses.

- If they’re permanent, they need to be really well balanced, and even then, players will believe they’re not.

- If they’re not permanent and free to change, they may not feel like a specialisation at all.

- If they’re costly to change, buildcrafting becomes more of a nuisance.

- If subclasses are stronger than what we already have, PvE needs to evolve with it. Which may require a lot of rebalancing.

- If it takes a significant amount of time and effort to become specialized, the gap between veterans and newer players may increase. Perhaps leading to blowouts in WvW and might lead to elitism. Yet if it doesn’t take a significant amount of time or effort, it may not feel like you’ve made progression.

- If subclasses aren’t equal throughout the game, this could lead to subclass discrimination. Yet it would be really hard to make subclasses feel different, while also making them equally strong. (They’re already struggling to do so with the 8 professions)

- The more subclasses there are, the harder it will be to balance and to design for. Yet if there are not enough subclasses, players will feel like there is no place for their subclass. (I don’t want to be a battlemage, sorceror or scholar, I want to be an enchanter… etc)

- If we have traits, abilities and talents, it may become very hard to design things that are different. With traits alone we’re already seeing many things that look alike in the 8 professions. Making them different, means more balancing trouble. But we can’t have all subclasses use the same abilities and talents can we? It is not easy within the GW2 system to make a large amount of different abilities, talents and traits. There is no energy system we can use to make them different, and the desire to keep the game ‘clean’ by using easily recognizeable boons and conditions sets a limit to what we can do.

- The fact that there are 5 races to design for is already pressing kitten their design-resources. What if they need to design for let’s say 8×3 =24 subclasses? And every time they would like to update design within that system, they would need to do it for all of them, or some would feel left behind.

I am not saying that it cannot be done, nor am I saying that it shouldn’t be. Just trying to ask the questions required to shape a vague idea into something solid and useable. Personally, I am leaning to Shriketalon’s polish.

I would like to see (in general):
- more emotes
- housing (and I want MY place, not a stinky bachelor pad full of other single people)
– also visible monuments. As someone who didn’t play GW1, I feel very left out with
an empty Hall of Monuments or visible display of my achievements.
- new skills/ weapon variations
- at X level, unlock a "trait switch’ for a second situational set of traits.

I would like to see living zones instead of ghost towns. To that end I suggest:
- rewards for re-visiting zones— and not just to go after the easy champ-fests.
- I like the idea of re-setting zones. Like Skyrim has done for skills, once you’ve maxed out a zone, you could reset it and start over. The second time through, maybe you could get rewards appropriate to your level? Perhaps one piece of gear for your level + a gather collection appropriate to the zone? Maybe a map-related title or map-related skin or mini?

More versatility in earnings:
- the ability to trade X dungeon awards for Y dungeon awards.
- the ability to earn Black Lion weapon skins without the giant gem sink
- the “special” LS items trade-able; what possible use could I have for a half dozen Queen Jenna minis? Similarly, I have no interest in keeping an injector backpack when I have a needle phobia; I’d rather give it to someone who’d appreciate it.

Minis. Totally useless.
- I have never wanted a mini, but I have several just because they’re bound. I would destroy them if they didn’t have dedicated space for them. (Or give them to someone who would appreciate them if they were trade-able. )
- Could you give these stupid things a purpose? Make them race-able or something?

I have a lot to say about gear aesthetics. Much of the endgame was supposed to be all about making your character look just the way you want. As IndigoSundown said waaaay back in this thread, “The current system…fosters the idea that a player should get one look and one look only.” It’s true. It’s also directly opposed to the original endgame ideas. So, I suggest:
- MORE TOWN CLOTHES. We’ve been promised these/begged for them since beta. Just allow us to buy (from regular merchants! Or craft-able would be good too) the stuff NPCs wear! And please, let players trigger town clothes/armor. I don’t want an armor switch for jumping into water or stubbing my toe.
- As Donari suggested, I’d like more merging of town clothes and armor. We can choose an item for PvP or PvE; why not for town clothes use and vice-versa?
- I would like to see more armor variations, but I realize that’s asking for a lot. How about making female armors accessible to males and male armors accessible to females? I want to cross-dress!
- Several players also mentioned wanting particle effects for armor/weapons. Whether they’d work like dyes or sigils or infusions, I don’t care. I would love to add colored glows, light/dark effects, elemental auras, or snow effects, etc. to certain characters.

Here’s wishing for a Happy New Year for All!

Palador.2170:

StriderShinryu.6923:

Harbard.5738:

• Alts as followers

I like this idea a lot. That would be one of the most awesome things to ever hit mmos in decades and a great incentive for “alting” as horizontal progression.This is horizontal progression if you think player, not character. For every alt you level you unlock a new hero, the alt himself, and you could play with them. as a full group, in instanced areas, such as dungeons, like in GW1, but those heroes would be your own alts as npcs. I could even play those instances with little or no coin/item rewards (if that’s used as a measure against botted farming, for instance). But it would be still every bit as awesome.

This is a brilliant idea. While I’m not 100% personally sold on the idea of helpers/followers in GW2 in the first place, this would be an excellent way to do it if it was done. I would love to see my main joined by even just one of my alts while out adventuring.

I too like this idea. It’s … disturbingly great, actually.

Interesting… and lets me flood the place with more charrs.

I’d suggest it as an option for story-mode dungeons.

Synergies gave me the following idea:

You can unlock Elite-Skills called Synergy-xy (where xy stands for a profession). Instead of using a standard elite skill you can start the synergy, but only if the chosen synergy-elite profession is in close proximity to you. If not, the skill is greyed out.

Example: A guardian has chosen the elite: “Elementalist Synergy”. He now has access to skill xy / passive xy, but only if an Elementalist is in 600 yards range.

Although there are a lot of great ideas with regards to gear, skills, vanity, etc, there has been less talk about how we are actually going to obtain said items. My concern lies around the fact that each Living Story update has brought about achievements/skins that center around large amounts of grind (following zergs WP to WP) or RNG.

GW2, in it’s current state, has many different looks for endgame armor. The problem is that that the sets either require large amounts of dungeons (repetitive, static tasks) or impossibly low RNG odds. Will Guild Halls require millions of wood, ore, etc, farming? Will new skins be RNG based, either through keys or the mystic forge? IMO, the method of obtaining the rewards mentioned in this thread, is as important, if not more important, than the rewards themselves. I personally would rather have fun obtaining a semi-rare item than get grey hairs relying on RNG or massive grind.

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

The Great Al.2546:

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Well, I was exactly adressing that dilemma with my suggestions of zone progression (in a non-grindy way like finding unique events instead of repeating the same over and over) and dynamic order quests (NPCs who wander around in the world and have certain tasks for you).

I also like the idea about npcs who direct you to existing events in order to help one of the Orders and progressing via Duty Points.

Things where you have to do multiple specific open world activities – a big variety – rather than achieving goals by doing literally anything (which leads to grinding the most effective thing over and over).

I think it’s also important to value the dynamic aspect. GW2 was designed to be different each time you start a new character. In the end it didn’t work out quite as well, since events rotate in short intervalls and there aren’t enough of them – but still…
New content should lead players to explore the zones, not have them (as you put it nicely) follow a guide from one waypoint to another. This could be achieved by roaming npcs which need to be found first – which may trigger events.

Furthermore I also think that flagging things on the map is counterproductive to exploration. We had updates where you had to find gifts, halloween doors,… on the map, fight the things that come out of it and move on to the next. The fact that these were flagged on the map made a race out of it, rather than finding them while exploring the zone. I didn’t enjoy that.

I think the question Anet has to ask themselves should be:

How can we combine horizontal progression with one of the core aspects of the game: exploration, without having it feel grindy. And how can we do this without having the player experiencing the same thing again when he starts a new character (avoiding traditional quests).

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The Great Al.2546:

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Well, I was exactly adressing that dilemma with my suggestions of zone progression (in a non-grindy way like finding unique events instead of repeating the same over and over) and dynamic order quests (NPCs who wander around in the world and have certain tasks for you).

I also like the idea about npcs who direct you to existing events in order to help one of the Orders and progressing via Duty Points.

Things where you have to do multiple specific open world activities – a big variety – rather than achieving goals by doing literally anything (which leads to grinding the most effective thing over and over).

I think it’s also important to value the dynamic aspect. GW2 was designed to be different each time you start a new character. In the end it didn’t work out quite as well, since events rotate in short intervalls and there aren’t enough of them – but still…
New content should lead players to explore the zones, not have them (as you put it nicely) follow a guide from one waypoint to another. This could be achieved by roaming npcs which need to be found first – which may trigger events.

Furthermore I also think that flagging things on the map is counterproductive to exploration. We had updates where you had to find gifts, halloween doors,… on the map, fight the things that come out of it and move on to the next. The fact that these were flagged on the map made a race out of it, rather than finding them while exploring the zone. I didn’t enjoy that.

Unfortunately the wintersday gifts don’t show up on the map, but it is still a race to get to them. I think it’s a bad idea to have ‘first come first serve’ achievements.

The Great Al.2546:

Although there are a lot of great ideas with regards to gear, skills, vanity, etc, there has been less talk about how we are actually going to obtain said items. My concern lies around the fact that each Living Story update has brought about achievements/skins that center around large amounts of grind (following zergs WP to WP) or RNG.

GW2, in it’s current state, has many different looks for endgame armor. The problem is that that the sets either require large amounts of dungeons (repetitive, static tasks) or impossibly low RNG odds. Will Guild Halls require millions of wood, ore, etc, farming? Will new skins be RNG based, either through keys or the mystic forge? IMO, the method of obtaining the rewards mentioned in this thread, is as important, if not more important, than the rewards themselves. I personally would rather have fun obtaining a semi-rare item than get grey hairs relying on RNG or massive grind.

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Some posts come with descriptions on how to obtain. I know on page 4 I tried to come up with a way to obtain legendary dyes. It was basically equal to how legendaries are obtained atm, but you can see the full description here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/4#post3408259

Some posts talking about skills had some different ways of obtaining them. Some involved using the weapon over and over(I’m assuming in relation to achievements related to the weapon), or certain weapon skills over and over like unlocking weapon skills to unlock the new ones. As for utilities, I’m not sure but I think Signet of Capture was mentioned somewhere in the 26 pages of this thread.

The gear attainability was also mentioned in the thread through various means. One post even stated combining crafting professions to make unique skins(armorsmith + huntsman to make orichalcum plated longbows or something).

As for vanity, there was a couple posts on the idea of “Tinkering” that involved creating items for housing along side creating town clothes – all mixed into one third crafting profession that would be accessible to everyone along side the two crafting professions of choice.

People haven’t just been throwing idea’s out into the wind without any thought as to how to get them in-game. The core of the idea’s have had a lot of thought put into them early on in the the thread because people have had almost 2 years to think about these things(I’m considering open beta in that time frame – even longer if you count closed beta players).

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I think the question Anet has to ask themselves should be:

How can we combine horizontal progression with one of the core aspects of the game: exploration, without having it feel grindy. And how can we do this without having the player experiencing the same thing again when he starts a new character (avoiding traditional quests).

Yes, this is exactly it. At the end of the day, to supply thousands of hours of content with limited people making the game, there has to be a notion of replayability but there is an extremely fine line between replayable and grind. I would love to be able to log on for a 30 minute window and do something other than my daily, because that really creates fatigue. The only saving grace of the achievements system in its current form is that you don’t really get anything that great out of it.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

The Great Al.2546:

Although there are a lot of great ideas with regards to gear, skills, vanity, etc, there has been less talk about how we are actually going to obtain said items. My concern lies around the fact that each Living Story update has brought about achievements/skins that center around large amounts of grind (following zergs WP to WP) or RNG.

GW2, in it’s current state, has many different looks for endgame armor. The problem is that that the sets either require large amounts of dungeons (repetitive, static tasks) or impossibly low RNG odds. Will Guild Halls require millions of wood, ore, etc, farming? Will new skins be RNG based, either through keys or the mystic forge? IMO, the method of obtaining the rewards mentioned in this thread, is as important, if not more important, than the rewards themselves. I personally would rather have fun obtaining a semi-rare item than get grey hairs relying on RNG or massive grind.

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Some posts come with descriptions on how to obtain. I know on page 4 I tried to come up with a way to obtain legendary dyes. It was basically equal to how legendaries are obtained atm, but you can see the full description here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/4#post3408259

Some posts talking about skills had some different ways of obtaining them. Some involved using the weapon over and over(I’m assuming in relation to achievements related to the weapon), or certain weapon skills over and over like unlocking weapon skills to unlock the new ones. As for utilities, I’m not sure but I think Signet of Capture was mentioned somewhere in the 26 pages of this thread.

The gear attainability was also mentioned in the thread through various means. One post even stated combining crafting professions to make unique skins(armorsmith + huntsman to make orichalcum plated longbows or something).

As for vanity, there was a couple posts on the idea of “Tinkering” that involved creating items for housing along side creating town clothes – all mixed into one third crafting profession that would be accessible to everyone along side the two crafting professions of choice.

People haven’t just been throwing idea’s out into the wind without any thought as to how to get them in-game. The core of the idea’s have had a lot of thought put into them early on in the the thread because people have had almost 2 years to think about these things(I’m considering open beta in that time frame – even longer if you count closed beta players).

I think Signet of Capture is a fantastic idea and one of my favorite aspects of GW1. Would love to see something like that.

Palador.2170:

StriderShinryu.6923:

Harbard.5738:

• Alts as followers

I like this idea a lot. That would be one of the most awesome things to ever hit mmos in decades and a great incentive for “alting” as horizontal progression.This is horizontal progression if you think player, not character. For every alt you level you unlock a new hero, the alt himself, and you could play with them. as a full group, in instanced areas, such as dungeons, like in GW1, but those heroes would be your own alts as npcs. I could even play those instances with little or no coin/item rewards (if that’s used as a measure against botted farming, for instance). But it would be still every bit as awesome.

This is a brilliant idea. While I’m not 100% personally sold on the idea of helpers/followers in GW2 in the first place, this would be an excellent way to do it if it was done. I would love to see my main joined by even just one of my alts while out adventuring.

I too like this idea. It’s … disturbingly great, actually.

Never seen a game do that, ever. So new, so amaze.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mercenary

A Mercenary Hero is a special type of hero that players can create after purchasing a Mercenary Hero Slot at the NCsoft store. They behave exactly like any other hero, but are copies of your own characters.

It was pretty good in the original game, but given they’d probably do similarly and charge you in the gem store to do so, mehhhhhhhhh. Also remember them stating that henchmen/heroes didn’t for GW2 in the early development days.

can we please get some word on ascended, as of right now I don’t want to grind for gear but sadly since ive been dropped from groups for not having any, it looks like im going to have to or quit playing

Quizotic.2815:

can we please get some word on ascended, as of right now I don’t want to grind for gear but sadly since ive been dropped from groups for not having any, it looks like im going to have to or quit playing

The stat difference is not much from exotic.. I don’t see why even elitists would want to drop someone because of non-ascended.. :/

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Quizotic.2815:

can we please get some word on ascended, as of right now I don’t want to grind for gear but sadly since ive been dropped from groups for not having any, it looks like im going to have to or quit playing

The stat difference is not much from exotic.. I don’t see why even elitists would want to drop someone because of non-ascended.. :/

Only if you’re in Fractals and don’t have any AR would it make sense.

Ascended gear is not going away, but at least there won’t be any more after this. Right? RIGHT?!

Just another quick one,

I’d like some weapons that look like real, historical weapons. Most of the greatswords in the game for example don’t actually look anything like greatswords from any period of history.

One of the only decent looking realistic sword I could find for my thief was Bonetti’s Rapier.

I guess in relation to this thread perhaps we could get more skins all around and add some kind of way to earn then, as horizontal progression. (armours as well as weapon skins).

Here’s three ideas I had that I wanted to throw out there.

A different take on ascended stat swapping
Rather than stat swapping on ascended gear, I would prefer account-wide stat unlocking. As an example, when you craft an ascended light armor chest piece with dire stats, any light armor profession on your account would have access to ascended dire stats for their chest pieces. Once they are level 80 they would be able to access the unlocked stats in the hero panel similarly to how Zenith skins are accessed, and apply the stats to their gear skins whenever they want. This system would be more alt friendly while at the same time encourage people to craft more ascended items to unlock more stat combos for specific pieces and armor types.

Guild progression
Several people have posted about faction progression like quests, titles, rewards and the like. While this would be nice, I would like guilds to have a large chunk of this horizontal progression as well. I’m much more interested in helping build and progressing in a faction that is entirely in the hands of players than I am interested in progressing in one of the three orders.
This game is called Guild Wars, and I think guilds should play a significant part in horizontal progression. This is of course much more difficult to design than faction progression, but I think it would ultimately feel more rewarding. Two brainstorming examples:

• What if player housing took the form of your own quarters within your guild hall? How cool would it be to have a voluminous Great Hall with 500 doors to player customizable rooms/suites lining the walls? That’s the kind of place I would hang out in more than LA.
• Guild officers can already activate guild missions, but what if this was built upon? In the Commander CDI one of the devs suggested giving commanders the ability to spawn events. If this idea was applied to guilds in pve, imagine a day when guild officers would be able to function almost like dungeon masters, creating unique adventures by stringing a series of events together, or events like putting a bounty on members of a rival guild on a rival server in wvw.

Zone specific rewards
I made a post about this in the suggestions sub-forum, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/A-rewards-based-solution-to-depopulated-areas/first#post3254272 , but the gist of it is that zones need unique rewards so people will actually play in them. This could take many forms:

• Account-bound skins that are acquired by double-clicking a set of the item fragments that were rewarded individually for completing dynamic events (the same way tri-keys work).
• All events in a particular zone award some crafting materials, and no other zone’s events award the same materials as another zone’s events (Orr would be repopulated overnight if every event awarded one tier 6 crafting mat).
• New skills or traits tied to long event chains that culminate in a boss battle and require the use of a Signet of Capture on the boss to acquire. (similar to GW1).

Your game got grindy, ascended weapons/armor lead people to do only content that gives the most beneficial time/material ratio for ascended gear becasue everyone will strive for the best items stat-wise. This isn’t fun and the overall game experience is suffering from it.

timmyf.1490:

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Quizotic.2815:

can we please get some word on ascended, as of right now I don’t want to grind for gear but sadly since ive been dropped from groups for not having any, it looks like im going to have to or quit playing

The stat difference is not much from exotic.. I don’t see why even elitists would want to drop someone because of non-ascended.. :/

Only if you’re in Fractals and don’t have any AR would it make sense.

Ascended gear is not going away, but at least there won’t be any more after this. Right? RIGHT?!

Don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they want ascended to be their top tier, and they wont change the stats to make it a HUGE advantage over exotic unless they make it almost as easy to obtain.

my contribution for this topic:

all gear (weapons & armor & back item) can swap skins
all trinkets (amulet rings accessories) can swap icons
all gear (weapons armor trinkets) can swap stats runes sigils infusions

max level 80, please keep it that way, do not increase.
highest tier ascended, please keep it that way, do not increase.

allow skins to be swapped, just like stats, once unlocked one by one.
each armor piece is able to swap skins, once unlocked.
each weapon is able to swap skins, once unlocked.
we can swap skins of any weapons and armor that we have unlocked

allow basic stats to be swapped, once unlocked one by one.
each armor piece is able to swap stats, once unlocked.
each weapon is able to swap stats, once unlocked.
we can swap stats of all gear weapons armor trinkets that we have unlocked

allow runes to be swapped, once unlocked one by one.
each armor piece is able to swap runes, once unlocked.
we can swap the armor runes that we have unlocked

allow sigils to be swapped, once unlocked one by one.
each weapon is able to swap sigils, once unlocked.
we can swap the weapon sigils that we have unlocked

allow infusions to be swapped, once unlocked one by one.
can swap between defensive, offensive, utility infusions.
can swap between various infusions once unlocked.

this is the ultimate horizontal progression that everyone has been asking for.
there will always be new skins. (no limit!)
there will always be new stats combinations. (certain limit?)
there will always be new infusions. (certain limit?)
there will always be new runes / sigils (certain limit?)

please quote and re post if you support.
thanks!

Horizontal progression, to me, is increasing in the availability of permanent options a player has (over his/her character) over time without directly improving the statistical attributes. Skills and traits is one area to look at, but hopefully will not end up in the same balancing hell as GW1.

As a player continues playing the game, his/her available options is increased permanently and thus becomes more flexible; this still gives a sense that the character is growing. The latest AP changes was, imo, a step in the right direction. It definitely gave a sense that the player was advancing in a permanent way, e.g., as he/she unlocks new skins that could be used account-wide, not to mention the xp, gold and mf gain. All the time spent didn’t feel it was for a one-off, but incrementally grows all characters under an account permanently.

I’m not entirely against vertical progression though (if it’s needed), but I think it should be less frequent, perhaps once every expansion (if there is even going to be one) to suit new content. I feel there is also a need to balance up the amount of effort required in getting to the top-tier gear with regards to content updates. The current ascended crafting and its gear is an example; if the ascended gear/crafting was released in an expansion (rather than as part of a content update) with PvE all-round that requires it, I believe there will be less complaints about it. For a content update, something about it definitely feels off.

If ANet’s philosophy behind no-grind (or little grind) did work, the game should remain fun regardless of how fast/slow players obtained the top end gears. I believe also that the promise was that top-end gears would be relatively easy to obtain. Sure we need to work for it, the question here is how much of a chore?

End of the day, what is the audience that GW2 is targeted at? This game definitely looks good for collectors (although there’s a lack of a good system to do that); it doesn’t look so good for players who are looking forward to become more powerful with ever increasing gear choices. Ultimately, I think that players who are still playing the game most likely belong to the former group.

P.S. I’m definitely looking forward to having the crafting of Legendaries as a long epic questline.

So, here is my top 3

1) More specifics skins linked to areas or dungeons
2) Housing/Guild halls
3) Balance the horizontal progression between PvP, WvW and PvE. For example, there are currently no specific skins to WvW, no reachable titles…

But I have few questions too :
- why this tread isn’t considered as being “active” in the Master Sticky ?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Master-Sticky

- why don’t we have this kind of topic in other languages ? Not a single red post about Horizontal Progression in De, Fr or SP…. And you said here :
“Our plan is to localize all this into German, French, and Spanish, so everyone can participate equally across each of our forum communities.”

I hope you’ll improve this point in 2014.

Markus.9084:

- why don’t we have this kind of topic in other languages ? Not a single red post about Horizontal Progression in De, Fr or SP…. And you said here :
“Our plan is to localize all this into German, French, and Spanish, so everyone can participate equally across each of our forum communities.”

I hope you’ll improve this point in 2014.

I’m from Austria and I really don’t mind that there is no translation / topic in the german forums. Why? Because there is a very limited number of developers who read this thread and it would take ages to translate it and also read it. As we learn English even before secondary 1 it should be no problem to post our ideas here and understand it perfectly imho. Give the guys a break.

Imagine you’d be a teacher in a class of 200 people instead of 25… yes, there would be some great ideas, but the teacher would have very little time to focus on one of these without frustrating the other 199 students.

idea for Order progression:

Priory progression:

• There are tons of artifacts in the game. For each artifact you complete, you gain progression for the order of Priory.
• Each artifact consists of 6 or more parts, which have to be combined to complete it.

But where do you find these pieces? Each artifact belongs to a creature family, like the “Dredge Codex of the 1st Age”. Think of it like this:

• some pages drop from specific/non-random dredge veterans (droprate: 100%) all over the world
• some pages can be found in dredge structures
• some pages are the reward for completing specific dredge-related events

Of course these artifacts / pieces of artifacts are non-tradeable. Once you have all parts of an artifact, you need to talk to one specific related npc. Almost all of the related npcs can give you a hint where to go to combine the artifact. Here: talk to any friendly dredge in the game while having all parts of the dredge artifact. 70 % of these npcs will give you a name of a location and the target zone. Now you’ll have to look for this location on your zone map or (if you haven’t found it yet) look for yourself in that zone.

Now what happens if you’ve arrived in the target location? There may be various things that can happen now in order to complete your artifact.

-) You may find an npc who is able to combine the artifacts, like a specific smith
-) You may trigger an event where assassins try to kill you, but as you defeat them you get a missing piece from them which completes the artifact.
…

reward
A complete artifact not only drives your progress at the Order, but also unlocks that artifact for you to use (unlimited uses). It’s stored in the Priory Archives for you. The “Dredge Codex of the 1st Age” might be a codex with lore about the dredge race. You might also have artifacts in form of weapon skins, unique bags, environmental weapons (like the fire elemental powder), etc.

but why like this?

• You get the pieces while playing the game
• You get little missions when you’ve found all parts of one piece…
• … and a very specific reward for completing it
• this means new lore, new reward types,… it can be anything
• You get more and more pieces over time when playing a variety of content – a reward for going out in the world and explore it
• There is no farming here, just tons of shortterm goals which combine to a huge longterm goal: Priory progression. Each Priory rank also unlocks new rewards and achievement-categories.

I will make a post about the 3 things most important to me in horizontal progression after this post.

…………………. Achievement Progression:………………….

Achievements are a very nice way to progress horizontally. I have come to the point in this game where I feel like the only achievements left for me are really grindy ones for very little AP and dailies/monthlies (I have 12500 AP). There are many things in the game that currently do not award achievement or achievement points for some reason.

Things that could award Achievements:

Leveling characters to 80

• Grants 1AP per level (80AP at level 80)
• Grants 25AP for every unique class leveled to 80

Guild Missions

• It is understandable that when these were released they would not have achievements associated with them because only bigger guilds could get them unlocked so quickly; however, it has been almost a year since their release and many guilds have them unlocked now. They could definitely use some achievements for personal rewards.

Dungeons

• Each dungeon should have an achievement category specifically for it; they should each have a challenging set of achievement for an overall meta-achievement award; this could include a title or perhaps a unique mini or skin only gotten through the achievements. These skins should be account unlocks like achievement tier rewards; perhaps this would be a good place to earn unique back items from each dungeon, which dungeons (other than fractals) do not yet have.
• Award players each week for how many unique dungeon paths they did; this would encourage players to do more dungeons rather than just the same few paths every day to gain gold. This could award achievement points and also some extra rewards.

Other various ideas

• Gathering
• Revisiting already explored locations (perhaps by encouraging doing specific jumping puzzles, dungeons, or even just reviewing any vista cinematic in a specific zone).
• Upgrading bag slots, bank slots, collection slots (reward how many bank slots an account has unlocked with a few AP, etc.)
• Collecting skins/minis/finishers/tonics/etc. (and implementation of a skin/other things collection system).
• Spending gold/other currencies (Even if it does not award achievement points – I’d like to see how much gold I’ve spent tracked in some way).
• Quests or Side Storylines (Perhaps implement Quests or extra Side-Storylines of some sort in the game; as long as these quests are not terrible tasks like “go collect 3 weak bloods from those bats 10 zones away and come bring them to me.” They should be important stories in the world that feel like they have an actual impact on something.)

Weekly Achievements

• Awarding players for weekly achievements could be interesting and help out the game in many ways that it needs; it could help encourage players to do a variety of things. These could award achievement points and also extra rewards based on how much you did in the week.
• Ideas: Unique dungeon paths to encourage running less-played dungeon paths, unique world bosses done in the week to encourage doing many different events, unique zones visited to encourage exploration and revisiting already explored zones, unique daily achievements to encourage logging in on multiple days a week, etc.

Fractal Speedclear-Leaderbaord per path

• on lvl 20, 30, 40, 50
• special Rewards for being near Top Speed 10% slower 15% slower and so on

Solo Adventures – Instances

• Hard like Liadri
• maby very hard Solo Instance Paths with many traps + Speedclear Leaderboard

Romek.4201:

Fractal Speedclear-Leaderbaord per path

• on lvl 20, 30, 40, 50
• special Rewards for being near Top Speed 10% slower 15% slower and so on

meh, I can see all the berserkers out there rejoicing, but nobody else

Palador.2170:

StriderShinryu.6923:

Harbard.5738:

• Alts as followers

I like this idea a lot. That would be one of the most awesome things to ever hit mmos in decades and a great incentive for “alting” as horizontal progression.This is horizontal progression if you think player, not character. For every alt you level you unlock a new hero, the alt himself, and you could play with them. as a full group, in instanced areas, such as dungeons, like in GW1, but those heroes would be your own alts as npcs. I could even play those instances with little or no coin/item rewards (if that’s used as a measure against botted farming, for instance). But it would be still every bit as awesome.

This is a brilliant idea. While I’m not 100% personally sold on the idea of helpers/followers in GW2 in the first place, this would be an excellent way to do it if it was done. I would love to see my main joined by even just one of my alts while out adventuring.

I too like this idea. It’s … disturbingly great, actually.

I agree. I would LOVE this option, even if it was just in instances (dungeons, fractals, etc).

Orpheal.8263:

Believe me. When I’m very convinced about something, then this!

Orpheal, stop your adamant statements about “subclasses is the best”. You haven’t any little bit of proof. It’s just “I think that, so it is” or “I don’t like that, so it mustn’t be”.

You can already choose your weapon, that provide specific skills. You don’t fight the same way with a staff than with daggers.
You can select Traits that add various effects to your Utilities that can improve specific playstyle. You can go full berzerk with only offensive Traits or half support, full support, controller, cleanser…
After that you can pick Utilities and Elite and Heal skills. Depending of your gamestyle.
With the Stats you can improve your character the way you want. Full berzerker, assassin, or soldier making you strong, deadly or tough. And you can mix it.

Minion Necromancer ? There are already traits for that. Support Elementalist ? There are already traits for that. Close combat Elementalist ? There are already traits for that. Support Warrior ? There are traits for that too.

You think that people need to loose time to obtain these in a subclasses system ? When I see the rate of weapon skill unlock, I think Arena.net agree with us that people are here to play with the character they want, not for having the character they want after weeks of grinding gamestyle.
We already have to level to 80 to unlock all Traits points to be allowed to fully customize our character. It’s enough ! Fair requirement for people to know their class and learn some things about their gameplay and gamestyle.

You can already see and feel your character progression. Make a new character of the same class, you will see the difference between a character with all their traits and utilities and a character with a weak armor, no utilities and no traits improvement.

Kitchen noob is level 1, five star chef is level 80 full ascended. That’s not an argument.

Also you ask that subclasses are more powerful. It’s useless, will unbalance the game and it’s vertical progression.

Recognition ? Already existing. I’ve seen Necromancer with five minions, some have zero minions but pop many AoE. When I see a warrior banners poping regularly, I know it’s a support and when I see a row of Signet buff, it’s clearly a selfie.

…………………. My Top 3 Ideas for Horizontal Progression:………………….

1. New Skills/Traits and New Ways of Gaining Them
Adding new skills/weapons/traits to every class will help increase variety; we can also be given new ways to get these skills – perhaps some of them very challenging. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3422453

Traits/Stats could be redesigned for more flexibility and higher build variety; this would allow for a trait/stat switching system to progress in and unlock new trait/stat pages to switch between in different situations. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3421233

2. Armor Collection/Unlocking System
This is one of the most important things that this game needs. If we could switch out our skins at any time and play around a lot with our armor look, this game could easily become a lot more about collecting skins instead of collecting better stats. I am a person who likes the idea of collecting every skin in the game, even if it means having to spend money. The reason why I haven’t spent anything is because I feel like if I accidentally use it on the wrong character or delete the item or something, there is nothing that can be done to re-withdraw the skin somewhere and just use it even though it somehow got deleted. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3421985

3. Achievements and Revisiting Older/Unknown Content
Players have a tendency to not revisit some zones they have already explored; there are some that are just so far off in places that players have no reason to visit that players may see a zone once during exploration and then never visit them again. Achievements can encourage players to revisit these zones and revisit content they may not want to do currently or may not even know exists. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3437531

There are other ways to encourage exploration of zones; rewards that reduce waypoint costs to zones and give other zone-specific rewards could be a way to get players to revisit them. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3421072

First of all thanks for these CDIs to ArenaNet and thanks to everyone who is participating in the discussions. I have been following GW2 since the first days of announcement and one point of horizontal progression in the list of facts, that didn’t let me go, was housing. Every character has its personal instances, but we are not able to do something great with it. We placed two ressource junction and one totem in our instances in the course of the living story, despite this there is nearly no use to these playgrounds.

We could do so much more in this area. I thought about a housing system similar to HDRO. What do you think about this idea?

Caveth.3268:

…………………. My Top 3 Ideas for Horizontal Progression: +*………………….

1. New Skills/Traits and New Ways of Gaining Them
Adding new skills/weapons/traits to every class will help increase variety; we can also be given new ways to get these skills – perhaps some of them very challenging. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3422453

Traits/Stats could be redesigned for more flexibility and higher build variety; this would allow for a trait/stat switching system to progress in and unlock new trait/stat pages to switch between in different situations. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3421233

2. Armor Collection/Unlocking System
This is one of the most important things that this game needs. If we could switch out our skins at any time and play around a lot with our armor look, this game could easily become a lot more about collecting skins instead of collecting better stats. I am a person who likes the idea of collecting every skin in the game, even if it means having to spend money. The reason why I haven’t spent anything is because I feel like if I accidentally use it on the wrong character or delete the item or something, there is nothing that can be done to re-withdraw the skin somewhere and just use it even though it somehow got deleted. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3421985

3. Achievements and Revisiting Older/Unknown Content
Players have a tendency to not revisit some zones they have already explored; there are some that are just so far off in places that players have no reason to visit that players may see a zone once during exploration and then never visit them again. Achievements can encourage players to revisit these zones and revisit content they may not want to do currently or may not even know exists. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3437531

There are other ways to encourage exploration of zones; rewards that reduce waypoint costs to zones and give other zone-specific rewards could be a way to get players to revisit them. See this post:

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3421072

I like the idea of new traits and skills. Nevertheless I’m against very challenging methods of gaining skills, because everyone should have access to new skills and traits without investing hours.

I totally agree to your opinion about collecting skins! GW was never about collecting stuff with better stats. The hunt for new and nice looking skins fit far better to its philosophy. It’s a pitty that we have to buy these tidious transmutacristalls to change the look of our armors. I didn’t like them from the time when they were announced.

It’s maybe no good idea to reduce the costs for teleports. These costs reduce slightly the amount of money in the game and do their part that the inflation is not too strong, albeit it is not able to stop it.

Yoh.8469:

Immensus.9732:

An Oak Knob.1275:

This is all what I want Anet to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

That is all.

Sandbox is the future, we know that! Nice vid!

Now that you point it out, what I wouldn’t give to have that in GW2.
Honestly, I’ve done everything in GW2, well, everything I ever wanted to.
I’m just about done my 7th level 80, and my last one is at 65, I’ll be done within a week.

Tried WvW extensively, and it’s shallow and repetitive. I’ve done every jumping puzzle, and done a bunch of guild events and meta events.

The fact of the matter is that no matter what Arenanet does, they cannot make content as fast as players can chew through it, and without the insane amount of grind other MMO’s have you rather quickly bump up against the borders of the experience.

There really isn’t anything interesting to do at ‘end game’, a phase I despise.

-

So maybe sandbox elements is the way to go in this situation? Give us the tools to entertain ourselves and each other, and you’d have a unlimited amount of content.

Could we perhaps get a CDI on this topic? Discussing whether or not, and if so how sandbox elements could be implemented into the game.
Because if you want to talk about horizontal progression, players generating content for each other is about a horizontal as it can get.

Yes.
But I think it’s too late for Anet to implement sandbox elements in guild wars2.
It should have been implemented during the development years of guild wars 2 before it was launched.
Now it’s too late and it’s already a fixed theme park mmo
It’s better to just hope that Anet improves whatever there is to improve in guild wars 2 and try to please as many as they can.
And it’s also better to just wait and hope for a miralce sandbox mmo that may come out in the future, but it’s hard for devs to do this, they rather want to copy wows success as a theme park mmo, they don’t want to risk experimenting with the sandbox mmo, a sandbox mmo can bring so much more to the players and the entertainment can be endless.

Chrispy.5641:

…and you haven’t been somehow implying that I’m deficient because I use alot of control in my builds? That’s been half of your argument so far to me. The other half is that you don’t use control because its not effective enough when its becoming increasingly obvious that you haven’t even tried a control heavy build. It works great in WvW, PvP, running around in PvE (and no, immobilize does not get in the way of my other control effects when fighting champions, another thing that you were all but assuming earlier). It needs some help in larger group events and way deep into the Fractals, but that in no way means that Control is a broken mechanic, or even a weak mechanic. People just choose not to use it.

Nope. Much the opposite, in fact – I’m quite confident that you could do better, against Defiant-equipped champions at least, without it (or, rather, with a build that wasn’t built around getting as much control as possible). On the other hand, you did come across as thinking that saying that you’ve beaten champions solo is something that would impress me. I daresay every poster in this thread has soloed a few champions. I don’t say this to dismiss you, just to say that most are easy if you know what you’re doing, and relying on chipping through Defiant stacks is unnecessary when there are other ways of negating their attacks that work every time.

To put it another way, you come across as having made assumptions about your opponents that fell way short of reality – that when I’m talking about the effect of control I don’t have your experience of soloing champions, that the vast majority of players that have decided control just isn’t worth it (seriously, I think you’re the only gap in the otherwise unanimous agreement I’ve seen) are all doing so because they’re lazy and just haven’t given it a try, when the truth is a lot of people have… and they’ve also tried all the other means of damage mitigation out there and found that control just falls short when everything worth controlling is resistant to it, and alternate forms of damage mitigation are less likely to be subject to such resistance. If you’re not actually making those assumptions… you’re certainly coming across that way, and might want to think of how you phrase things. Seriously, you’re coming across as a very aggressive poster who holds people with opposing views in contempt.

When it comes to immobilise – I’m not saying it “gets in the way” of anything, just that it’s something that works when Defiant-affected skills don’t 75% or more of the time, and that kiting skills that don’t trigger Defiance are effective close to 100% of the time.

WvW and PvP are irrelevant, since players don’t have any special protection against control effects like Defiant – we’re just talking about PvE here. Clearly, control is useful in PvP, but your “even more Defiant in hard mode” proposal wouldn’t apply in PvP. It would be taking a mechanic that is already weak in PvE and giving people even more incentive to just not bother.

It’s not that people just choose not to use it because they’re ignorant. It’s because the PvE game mechanics have taught us that there are just better options.

Quote paraphrased to fit limit:

Orpheal.8263:

If you fear subclasses because they limit what you could make your characters, then everyone who thinks this, should stop playing, as the game will never make you happy, because with its 8 current Main Professions it already limits you

Shriketalon has already said most of what I was going to say, but on this claim in particular:

There’s always going to be a bit of compromise between totally freeform structures and highly rigid subclass-for-everything-under-the-sun systems. There are benefits to having a class-based system – easier to balance, convenient recognition of what somebody else’s character can be expected to do, carrying themes that link a character to a setting’s background (the four schools of magic in GW’s case), and so on.

There are also benefits to keeping those themes fairly broad, to allow players to come up with their own interpretations within those themes.

To give examples from pencil and paper roleplaying: 3rd edition D&D had a class system, but not a subclass system. I won’t say that any concept could be played straight out of the Player’s Handbook (certainly not and be viable) but there was a lot of room for interpretation and customisation (feats, skills, spell selections for spellcasters) within a class. Maybe not the paladin, but the other classes gave a wide range of options. (Prestige classes and new core classes did come out that were more specialised, but they served more to enhance things that were already possible, rather explicitly sorting characters into boxes in which they must fit or be less viable.)

4E, though, had what was pretty much an explicit subclass system, although they didn’t use the term. For some it was more obtrusive than others, but for most classes the subclass pretty much determined what powers you would be taking, what feats you would use to support those powers, and so on (even, usually, determining which race your character would be). For comparison, in the 3.5 Living Greyhawk campaign, I played with dozens of players with a variety of characters, and there are only a couple of particularly broken builds I can think of that I saw more than once. In the 4E Living Forgotten Realms campaign… there were maybe a dozen people I knew who were participating, and even then, I regularly found that a character concept I had was also being used by someone else even in that small group before we pretty much all gave up on the system. What basically happened there was that if there was a subclass that fit the concept you had in mind, you were all but identical to everyone else who took that subclass, and if there wasn’t, you were SOL.

At the moment, GW2 is closer to the 3.5 model. There are classes, but the classes we have are fairly broad… and while there are gaps within those broad ideas, there are clear ways in which the professions can be expanded to cover concepts that don’t currently fit simply with the addition of new skills, traits and weapons.

Consider the warrior, for instance. A GW2 warrior could be a noble knight or a rampaging berserker, a disciplined soldier accustomed to fighting side-by-side with close allies or a mercenary who fights dirty. He or she might be an officer accustomed to calling out orders to rally the troops or a champion that plants the unit’s standard and defends it to the death. They might even be a trained marksman, expecting to draw a melee weapon only if things go wrong, or a mace or hammer warrior may even be a crude battlemage, drawing on earth magic to shake the ground, enhance their strength, or fortify themselves against attacks. And that’s just what I can think of in a couple of minutes brainstorming.

A subclass system would cut the field down to, well, however many subclasses that ArenaNet has the resources to make. It becomes, as D&D 4E became, a system where you either have your concept handed to you by the developers on a silver platter or it just isn’t going to be viable at all. Simply expanding the options within a profession, without restricting them to subclasses, allows players to come up with their own combinations without being hindered by unnecessary artificial restrictions.

Personally, I don’t like playing the “if you don’t like it, you should play another game” card, but since you’ve brought it up… have you tried Rifts? Last I heard it was free-to-play, and it sounds like it would be right up your alley. In Guild Wars 2’s case, though… people who bought it, did so with the knowledge of where it sat on the spectrum between freeform and regimented subclass systems – namely, in the middle, with a small number of fairly broad professions. Shifting that midstream is a dangerous proposition, and now that the game is over a year old and sixteen months worth of players have signed up based on the current system, a swing towards either extreme is probably going to displease more players than it pleases.

does anyone talked about titles? everybody love titles! titles for everyone!

class specific titles for reaching some real challenge, like personal story but only for class, not race/etc.

for example pve arena like it was when queens jubelee was. you fight mobs. if you achieved victory you get some rank points, when you got enough rank points you can unlock title.

to harder this mode devs can add requisition to kill mob with specific weapon set/using specific utilities/without heal/utilities/withous ultimate
this will grant you more rank points and unlocks some special titles.

cool titles like “the stormbringer” (ele), shadow dancer (thief), the bloodthirsty (warr), iron will (guard), trickster (mes), warmachine (engi), legion (necro)

there are just examples, devs can make a TON of them, with almost zero contribution, they just need to design mobs.

title shows skill of owner, title makes you proud to use it, title can’t be bought, its all about how you are playing your class and how you are skilled with it.

\o/

draxynnic

Simply expanding the options within a profession, without restricting them to subclasses, allows players to come up with their own combinations without being hindered by unnecessary artificial restrictions.

Nicely said, I agree with your post.

In my opinion, if there were a subclass-system in GW2, I’d make it 100% cosmetics only, but even then it would be quite restricting.

In contrary, instead of restrictions I’d open the game even more. Give heavy armor professions the ability (I had a suggestion earlier how to do this, for example) to wear medium and light armor. This would vastly increase the possible armorsets one can wear considerably. Not to think of all the possible combinations.

To balance the lack of armor, you could give Warriors and Guardians a 5% speed-bonus when wearing light or medium armor. Elementalists on the other hand would get a bit more armor but lose 3% of their power and condition damage.

Or make it cosmetic only (I’d like that more, since it should be about horizontal progression) and make the armor-bonus characterbound, not armorbound, so that Elementalists would still have their low armor when wearing heavier stuff.

OneManArmy.9732:

does anyone talked about titles?

I have a suggestion how to progress with titles:

Create new titles which can be unlocked when merging other titles. You need certain requisites for these.

example
Playing a thief + Title for completing all jumping puzzles + Title “Sanctum Sprinter” = Title “Shinobi”