Guild Wars 2

Skills/traits discoverable throughout the open world of Tyria. By this, I mean being able to find a new skill for your class(or it could be a skill that could be used for any class) by completing dynamic events in the world. These skills are zone specific.
Skill A can only be found in Fireheart Rise. Skill B can only be found in Bloodtide Coast. Skill C can only be found in Metrica Provice., etc etc. I.E. you cannot farm the queensdale champ train into oblivion for all skills. That defeats the underlying point.

Thanks Chris! Good to know it’s on the radar, perhaps even being worked on as we speak

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My number one would be “Zone Progression” / “Order Progression”

Something that gives players a purpose to explore the zones.

• A lot of people miss quests, my main guess why this is the case is: they miss stories. Dynamic Events are cyclical in nature, so those stories have no real end – climax if you want. Time to give your writers something more to do and let them design unique events.
• even the most simple idea could make people exited. Today I leveled in Kessex Hills when I saw a bear walking alongside a skritt. Awesome I thought… until I found out that I can’t interact with that npc at all; it’s just a guild mission boss. Why not spawn such rare characters (dozen of them, but rare spawns) in the open world, give them a loottable and a few interesting dialogue-options or even a small event associated.

Fill the existing maps with tons of things to do. I mean: tons and tons of things. And may these be just little things… the world has to feel more alive.

…and then combine this with progression. The more people find, the more they unlock. And the more they can unlock for others (in the sense of triggering new events).

summary: progression in specific zones via a huge variety of things to do (something for everyone – fighters, explorers, collectors, lore-lovers, treasure hunters,…………

People should have some goals for each of the zones. Not for the world in general (Legendary – mats from everywhere). Zelda reference: the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods, not everywhere in Hyrule.

I totally agree with this and this is ‘number one’ feature I choose.

Sociopolitical Diversification

Guild Halls

- Guild Halls should be accessible through an UI icon similar to PvP, WvW, TP, etc.

- Getting back to the place in the open world where you were should be done through the same UI icon
(Note: The same Ion should be found in |G| window for those who want to accesses it from there)

- The guild hall UI Icon will be available only if the character represents the guild (guild-less characters won’t have that button in their UI)

- Guild Halls should be instanced zones or various architecture

- Guild Halls zones should evolve in time depending on the guild influence, merits, points etc accumulated totally by it.
( I am not a fan of donating because this will force guilds on arguing of what is more important: banners or guild donations?. It should be automatically evolved once you get to certain amount of points similar to the achievement system: you unlock things the more you gather and it should count the total amount w/o extracting the usages of influence points

- Statues:
I would like to have a place in the Guild Hall where I could see Statues of the characters that have done the most for the guild, calculating the influence earned
it will be a sort of the Top 10 Players list only we can see statues of the last character the player has played.
The Statues will be updated every time the players logs off with the respective character he has been on and the Top 10 will be updated every week counting the activity of the last week (This will give the possibility that new guild members can be in Top 10 if they played more then old guild members)

Also regarding the statues, there should be one permanent statue of the Guild Founder so every one will know who is the founder of the guild.

- Trophies. These are items that can be displayed in some palce in the Guild Hall and they are earned by playing guild activities. They are like Guild Ranks and if we compare it with the WvW ranks, we can see a rabbit, a dolyack, etc

- Guild Halls should contain all services available in the game bank, crafting, merchants, etc.

- You should be able to receive a temporary guild invite to any number of guilds to be able to visit their Guild Hall. The invite will be shown in the Guild Window under the current guilds in a guest category

Housing

- I like Open World housing and not instanced based. I like to see player cities evolving. Zones like WvW maps only called sectors which can be accessed through UI icon
- the UI icon is available to every character
- the player houses will be account bound and it will reflect the players activity through all his/her characters
( the houses will have racial rooms in it and they will vary in aria depending on how many characters of that specific race the account has.)
expl.
if an account has 1 character of each race, the house will have 5 rooms of similar aria decorated in racial style.
if an account has 1 character the house will have 5 rooms but only one will be decorated because the account has 5 default character slots
if an account has more then 5 characters then the racial rooms will be larger depending on what race has more characters. NOTE: for each character slot added to the account over the default 5, the house aria will grow with 10 % meaning that if an account will have 64 character the house will be 640% larger. The aria can also be done vertically not only horizontally meaning they can add more floors to the house.
it all depends on how large is the basic aria scheduled for an account (most certainly bigger then the 5 rooms)

- players will buy a house space and a house model. When the existing land will be finished, A-Net would release a new similar zone. So the player city will have Sector 1,2,3,4 …. 100,… etc
Later, they can add new house models which can be purchased from a cash shop item called "House make over kit "

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My number one would be “Zone Progression” / “Order Progression”

Something that gives players a purpose to explore the zones.

• A lot of people miss quests, my main guess why this is the case is: they miss stories. Dynamic Events are cyclical in nature, so those stories have no real end – climax if you want. Time to give your writers something more to do and let them design unique events.
• even the most simple idea could make people exited. Today I leveled in Kessex Hills when I saw a bear walking alongside a skritt. Awesome I thought… until I found out that I can’t interact with that npc at all; it’s just a guild mission boss. Why not spawn such rare characters (dozen of them, but rare spawns) in the open world, give them a loottable and a few interesting dialogue-options or even a small event associated.

Fill the existing maps with tons of things to do. I mean: tons and tons of things. And may these be just little things… the world has to feel more alive.

…and then combine this with progression. The more people find, the more they unlock. And the more they can unlock for others (in the sense of triggering new events).

summary: progression in specific zones via a huge variety of things to do (something for everyone – fighters, explorers, collectors, lore-lovers, treasure hunters,…………

People should have some goals for each of the zones. Not for the world in general (Legendary – mats from everywhere). Zelda reference: the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods, not everywhere in Hyrule.

This idea makes me excited, it could also tie into nearly every Horizontal Progression idea that has been put forward in this CDI.

It is just a good global ongoing goal to have, and one I think we have been doing but dependent on priorities could do a lot more of, especially from the point of view of using/evolving the Map Completion Meta Game system.

Chris

I think this idea is pretty much reflecting the ethos of the game as well. I find myself often just wanting to wander the game (actually I’m doing that now whilst I break to catch up on this thread) – you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you how wonderful the game is just to explore as a setting. Someone suggested in another thread the game feels “sterile”, which is perhaps too harsh a word, but the zones could be more alive with so much more bustle going on in them.

I think the above suggestion would transform the game to a level beyond any other mmo and be hard to compete with too.

I have an idea for you, Chris. One which might seem a little radical, but here goes:

Have an all-(relevant)-hands-on-deck release with the entire (relevant) development team building new Dynamic Events. Shoot for the moon: dozens or hundreds of new Dynamic Events. Call it a “Game Changer” because it is literally changing the game world.

Based on various loose-lipped comments I’ve heard, you have something big planned in the next few months. Why not follow it with a huge overhaul to the in-game world? Give everybody a reason to go back out and explore again.

And then… repeat. 3-6 months down the road, cycle out 100+ events and add 100+ new ones. And repeat. And repeat. That’s a real “living world.”

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My number one would be “Zone Progression” / “Order Progression”

Something that gives players a purpose to explore the zones.

• A lot of people miss quests, my main guess why this is the case is: they miss stories. Dynamic Events are cyclical in nature, so those stories have no real end – climax if you want. Time to give your writers something more to do and let them design unique events.
• even the most simple idea could make people exited. Today I leveled in Kessex Hills when I saw a bear walking alongside a skritt. Awesome I thought… until I found out that I can’t interact with that npc at all; it’s just a guild mission boss. Why not spawn such rare characters (dozen of them, but rare spawns) in the open world, give them a loottable and a few interesting dialogue-options or even a small event associated.

Fill the existing maps with tons of things to do. I mean: tons and tons of things. And may these be just little things… the world has to feel more alive.

…and then combine this with progression. The more people find, the more they unlock. And the more they can unlock for others (in the sense of triggering new events).

summary: progression in specific zones via a huge variety of things to do (something for everyone – fighters, explorers, collectors, lore-lovers, treasure hunters,…………

People should have some goals for each of the zones. Not for the world in general (Legendary – mats from everywhere). Zelda reference: the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods, not everywhere in Hyrule.

This idea makes me excited, it could also tie into nearly every Horizontal Progression idea that has been put forward in this CDI.

It is just a good global ongoing goal to have, and one I think we have been doing but dependent on priorities could do a lot more of, especially from the point of view of using/evolving the Map Completion Meta Game system.

Chris

I think this idea is pretty much reflecting the ethos of the game as well. I find myself often just wanting to wander the game (actually I’m doing that now whilst I break to catch up on this thread) – you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you how wonderful the game is just to explore as a setting. Someone suggested in another thread the game feels “sterile”, which is perhaps too harsh a word, but they could be more alive with so much more bustle going on in them.

I think the above suggestion would transform the game to a level beyond any other mmo and be hard to compete with too.

Yeah I read that thread to. Its interesting how a Living World Event can feel more ‘Alive’ than exploration in some maps. I think the fact that Living World events are tied directly into achievements that reflect the theme of the story contribute to this.

This is why I like Marcus’s idea so much. It builds on existing systems and content and is more of a philosophy than a specific work task.

Chris

It’s partly why dynamic events are such an overwhelming strength of the game, especially over an archaeic qst system. The events tell the worlds’ story not the character’s. If you go on holiday to the same country every year, there will always be something different – places change over time and people change even if only in the background. That’s what every zone should aim to achieve even if it isn’t part of the current main story.

Aaaand I’ve realised I’ve gone off topic into a diff CDI here

The concept of Zone Progression is one that I was really looking forward to as I interpreted the pre-release design of Guild Wars 2 back in 2010 and 2011.

The only zones that really get that sense of struggle and conflict of minor goals to achieve a major goal are Harathi Hinterlands and the Straits of Devastation. In these 2 zones, their events are all linked with a goal of “reach the end” or “destroy the leader,” and each event completion furthers that goal in a way, whether by slowly moving the player across the map or kicking off triggers to spawn new events.

The meta events throughout the other zones – Shatterer, Claw of Jormag, Fire Elemental, etc… They all have their own unique individual story to them and they easily serve as a zone’s climax, but there’s no buildup to them. That just have one or two prerequisite events and boom, the fight starts.

Harathi Hinterlands has always been one of my most favorite zones because it’s literally a back and forth battlefield between the Seraph and the Centaurs. The lines of war are constantly changing, as waypoints contest and outposts get destroyed and rebuilt.

^ THAT is the kind of Guild Wars 2 I want to experience in EVERY zone! I want meaning, depth, progress, and character in every event, such that they’re all intertwined to tell the “story” that the entire design and writing of the zone is meant to entail.

Southsun was an experiment with this, but honestly, it just felt too small and disconnected. Take the writing or the persistence of Southsun and mix it with something like the direction of Harathi, and I imagine something truly special and unique could burst forth!

Oh Skin Wardrobe, hands down.

Yes it’s quality of life, but it’s also something that can drive content.
Think of dungeon equipment, it’s one thing to ask people if they want to look like that all the time and therefor put in the effort to gain it, because quite frankly most of it’s not that great.

It’s another question entirely to ask if it’s something that would like to collect that they can use on any of their characters later. You’ve just lowered the bar significantly.
Even more so if purchasing the skin via tokens was an option.

Because that would have people who like to collect, or are even mildly vain, to do content they otherwise wouldn’t because the burden of entry was too high initially.

I for one would do all the dungeons just to collect them, as I haven’t done most of them for the above reasons. (which would also require me to do the story mode first)
This can naturally be extended to karma equipment out in the world, and even Living Story skins.

Again, it’s one thing to get it just for one character once, and entirely another to unlock it for all your characters permanently. Combine this with account bound dyes, and your going to make a lot of people very happy.

-
All of this is based on existing content, unlike most other suggestions discussed here. And, it can be monetized, ha.

I think that the earlier mentioned Hero Recognition and Diversification is a great interpretation of the things I like most about Guild Wars 2, therefore I would definitely go with that! :-)

Though I’ll still waffle a bit on my favourite bits of this game, in the hope that it’ll be helpful in some way:

Fashion and customization:
Having more choice for dress up and personalizing characters would be awesome. I love coming up with new character ideas. So this includes more armour variety (especially for medium), town clothes, currently unobtainable sets (such as the PvP-only tribal set or shaman NPC animal hoods). Also, a better way to store them such as in a skin locker! Also I’d love to see a way to unlock the clothing and armour that’s already in the game but not yet for players to wear.

Lore and world:
Anything that ties our characters to the world or choices we made. For example the aforementioned Order missions would be awesome, or different factions we could support to unlock rewards. Rewards could tie in to customization again, armour, weapons, titles, unveiled mysteries, decorations for your home instance .. Perhaps an Elonian hairstyle for Order of Whispers, or a Raven Headdress for earning favour with the Norn Raven Spirit. Or an eyepatch, for supporting corsairs. Unlocking is good!

Skills and customization:
I’d love to see new skills, weapons, traits, everything. Perhaps also customizing the weapons we already have. For example, three different skills to choose from for your “number two” attack with a sword. The skills would be of similar power, but different, so people could diversify their builds with the existing weapons.

As a final note, I think your art design is absolutely amazing in every aspect of the game, so whatever you will do, seeing more of that is always a treat to me. ^^

Chris Whiteside.6102:

TheDaiBish.9735:

How specific are you looking for when we’re choosing our one?

Would ‘Expanding Ascended Gear’ count as one, for example, even though this could include:

• Giving different play modes the chance to Ascend Exotics (granted, this is Vertical) to not force people into crafting.
• Giving players the chance to unlock stats and upgrades on a single set of armour in a way unique to that play-mode.

Absolutely as long as the macro level design also included information about the more micro level of design you included in your post.

Chris

Thanking you.

Right…left…diagonal…

My one would probably have to be: Traits and Skill Progression.

Including, but not limited to:

On the Skills side of things:

and a note on providing a reason for new skills

I second/third the DE

it is one of the strengths and also downfalls of the world because they were never expanded upon- not referring the events that were added last , last Oct- they were overshadowed by other issues in the game.

( also this last patch did exactly this (but it was more about the map and the hearts changing) and it was amazing)

Please add more DE’s per map and if possible make them chain and provide story/lore and unique items- be it recipes, fun stuff or whatever.

but to me it seems you can use this system for so much more- order missions- skills- weapon unlocks- unique rewards etc

not sure how this fits into this thread but just wanted to put it out there

Alright, time to get to fractals/ascended. Yes, it still has to do partially with horizontal progress (like infusions).

The main problem of fractals is that RNG is everywhere and RNG is kitten.
Ascended weapons and armors are way too rare and too reliant on RNG. As the word RNG implies, some hardcore players will farm over and over and get nothing, other kittenty players will rune just 2 or 3 times and get what they want …
Further more, even worse, even when we’re able to get one, we get kittenty stats.

Solutions for stats :

1) Remove stats, let us choose them (universal boxes, it seems to already exist, waiting to be introduced)
2) Allow ascended, like legendaries, to be able to swap stats
This could be pretty hard to do and legandaries owners would complain of losing the unicity of them.

Solutions to kittenty RNG :
1) Drastically improve loot chance, allow to loot on mobs as well as at the end (not very good idea)

2) Make pristine fractal relics tradable for 1 ascended weapon box or 1 ascended armor box
Consequently, change how many pristine you get from a run to prevent easy farm of lower levels :
11-20 : 1 pristine
21-30 : 2 pristine
31-40 : 3 pristine
41-50 : 4 pristine
Now, let’s say something like you need 20 pristine to get 1 box.
This way, you need about 5 days if you only do daily 41-50 to get 1 item, or much, much more if you do lower dailies.
You can be even faster if you farm several dailies in a day.
It definitely seems the fairest solution : it gets rid of kittenty RNG by allowing rewards to time investment while still keeping time gated reward.

3) Add mats to the daily. You still get a chance to get 1 weapon or armor box But you also ALWAYS get to choose ascended material.
For instance, you can choose between
a) 1 deldrimor steel ingot OR 1 Spiritwood Plank OR 1 Elonian Leather Square (for weapon)
AND, in addition to that
b) 1 deldrimor steel ingot OR 1 Elonian Leather Square OR 1 bolt of Damask (armor)
This way, it gives a slight chance AND it also helps slowly towards crafting through guaranteed ascended mats.
Probably the easiest solution which does not require an extra currency (since it seems Anet wants to just get rid of pristine fractal relics). Not the best but still pretty good.
Also possible to be able to choose more than 1 in each category depending on daily level (like 1 for 21-40, 2 for 41-60 etc …)

Finally, infusions. Because seriously, it can’t be that only +1 are available and you should be able to get much better ones in higher levels, we should be able to get +2 AR, +3 AR … infusions to have a smoother progression that makes more sens.

Role Diversification would be my first choice, but after thinking about “Socialpolitcal Diversification” as described by Chris I figured out that it could open a much wider window to new content.

The Orders could be the gate to all of this, with a improved relationship between the player and the faction he’d chosen he would be able to access contend exclusive to the Prior/ Whisper or Vigil. This contend could be more quests, events, the " new game play opportunities" said by Chris.

I’ve playing Dark Souls a bit and the covenant system of their is something that really caught me. Maybe the Orders could get a deeper role-play feeling, making us feel we are part of it. There could be ranks and rewards, exclusive content in other maps that would be unlocked after joining a Order (just like the covenant system of DS), etc.

A quick question about the “housing system”: Will we be able to interact with the furniture, like sit on a chair or lie on bed, in this new system? We can’t do this stuff right now =/

The 3 I went for were:

1) expanding skills by gathering them off the world, new weapons, skill look customization. also on a side note I want playable Kodan and tengu!)
2) player housing
3) faction/order missions

Since 2 and 3 are seen as one by you its an easy choice to pick that one.

Player housing I would do instanced, but allowing you to invite friends over for a visit. Also you can build your own house and furniture using masonry and carpentry crafts.
Faction quests is pretty straightforward do job for your order.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

This idea makes me excited, it could also tie into nearly every Horizontal Progression idea that has been put forward in this CDI.

It is just a good global ongoing goal to have, and one I think we have been doing but dependent on priorities could do a lot more of, especially from the point of view of using/evolving the Map Completion Meta Game system.

Chris

Hey Chris,

I think filling existing zones with new content and new systems (or expanded old systems) should be a higher priority than adding completely new zones.

The reason for this is that most of the current existing zones play the same way, where you collect map completion, do some cycling events, get 100%, go to a new zone, repeat, and repeat once again. Many of those zones have beautiful locations and a lot of potential for lore. But players have to do the same kind of gameplay, usually at the same level of difficulty, and it gets, you know… a bit monotonous after a time, considering how many zones there are. And then players also have no reason to go back to them, which means they end up forgetting most of the locations they have explored, or many times, they didn’t even fully enjoyed it in the midst of WP rush or event rush.

I feel that many of those already existing zones would still feel very fresh – almost as fresh as completely new zones – if you added unique content and unique rewards to them. I have 100% map completion, but if something new was done to existing locations, most of them would still feel fresh to me.

Quality and immersion over quantity. I think that GW2 has waaay too many zones, but it does very little with them.

We have to choose only 1. Do we necessarily have to choose between those 3 ?

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.
— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.
— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

Or are there other choices ?

Also, would it be possible to have a CDI about fractals and ascended ? Because there’s soooo much more to talk about and do about it.

I think that, since you’re discouraging votes for Skin Wardrobe (you Devs have dropped so many hints that it’s coming soon anyway), I will vote for: Hero Recognition and Diversification.

The biggest draw to a game for me, is the ability to actually make my character look Unique. The more unique I look, the more I want to play. I am currently one of the lucky few that has the Flamekissed armor on my female Ele (any updates on the new skin?) The idea of having unique armor and weapon skins that I can actually go out and EARN excites me, because I know so many people just buy instead of search. This means I won’t run into a dozen other players sharing my look.

I also like the idea of being able to earn attack “skins” that just customize the appearance of your attack animations. =)

If I had to pick one, I gotta go with Sociopolitical Diversification. Specifically, player housing and guild halls.

I’ve seen some people talking about instanced versus non-instanced housing, neighborhood instances versus personal house instances, etc. They’re all definitely interesting considerations.

In my opinion, while the neighborhood idea is cool, I think it will ultimately be more limiting. Especially if the focus is on turning the housing into a full-on progression system. It would limit the ability to expand your house if it needs to fit within a designated area due to the existence of other player homes around it. Open-world housing, while also very cool, I don’t think will be feasible in GW2. That’s the kind of thing that works better in sandbox MMOs that were built from the ground up to accommodate that kind of system.

I’ll just go ahead and link my writeup of a potential housing/guild hall system from a ways back, since this thread is so huge.
– Part 1 https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410915
– Part 2 https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410917

Just my two cents: I think character progression needs to be tied to world development. Something I’ve seen so far.

I would love to see Orr begin to return to being something other than a zombie infested waste land. Not all at once, but gradually. As Orr becomes more habitable secrets of the past could be unlocked and thus new skills.

Of course this would unlock more challenges too, and could open up a reason for why classes want to master new weapons.

In short: would love to see new weapons, new skills, and just throwing it in there, a trait line based on your affiliation like new traits or skills based on choosing vigil. Would like something more substantial than just armor and weapons.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

What I would like us to do is pick ONE idea that you would hold above all others as it relates to the community as a whole. Note I to found this very difficult but my one is blow. Also note I consider Wardrobe to be QOL, however any Wardrobe ideas that are Systemic or build on existing mechanics can be included.

My one choice would be a fleshed out Order and faction mechanics. The more I have thought about it, the more I believe this is the one thing I’d like to see most. Linking our Order choice to systems like titles, armour, weapons, emotes, etc. as we progress through traditional MMO quests and GW2s events would provide a sort of long term side content that wouldn’t exist otherwise. It would provide something for all players to do, whether they be the hardcore min maxer, the RPer or the casual explorer. It wouldn’t be something locked away in a private instance like housing or be locked behind specifically targeted content like crafting upgrades or guild content. And, perhaps most importantly, it would actually get players out and doing activities all over the entire world again.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

I have an idea for you, Chris. One which might seem a little radical, but here goes:

Have an all-(relevant)-hands-on-deck release with the entire (relevant) development team building new Dynamic Events. Shoot for the moon: dozens or hundreds of new Dynamic Events. Call it a “Game Changer” because it is literally changing the game world.

Based on various loose-lipped comments I’ve heard, you have something big planned in the next few months. Why not follow it with a huge overhaul to the in-game world? Give everybody a reason to go back out and explore again.

And then… repeat. 3-6 months down the road, cycle out 100+ events and add 100+ new ones. And repeat. And repeat. That’s a real “living world.”

I think that’s a really interesting idea TimmyF.

……..’nuff said (-:

Chris

And the best way to execute that idea, would be to take the chance to evolve or diversify the dynamic event system each release.

What I mean by this is, I don’t want simply 100 more events that play exactly the same way that old events already work.

Instead, I would like to see new kinds of events. More map-wide events (like scarlet’s), non-linear event chains, longer-lasting (= more permanent) event chains, more detailed and ambicious event chains, more challenging events with new strategies in order to beat them, more or new kinds of guild-driven events, and maybe even events to get materials for housing, etc.

And of course, event-specific rewards to make players more excited to go through as many different events as possible. Getting a shiny new sword from beating an evil knight in one event, and receiving a food buff as a meal offered by a man for us having saved their house in another event, are far more interesting than generic gold and karma only. This gets even more exciting when specific events can offer unique recipes, skins, etc. It makes players actively trying to hunt as many of them to see what they bestow.

Currently, because of the event reward system alone, there’s no incentives to search and hunt for new events.

Rin.1046:

As two of your three choices, Chris, fits with my previous choices and the suggestions of some other posters, I would choose a mix of two of yours, as follows:

The two choices in question are:
— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

I would mix them into one choice is as follows:
— Hero Recognition and Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions as well as unique skins, follwers and rewards, which would all be unlocked through progression in a title or faction.

As you gain rank in your chosen faction, or in a title, you unlock ways to increase your hero’s power (through diversification) and focus your hero’s identity (through skins and extra weapon options).

Sorry if this is technically 2 choices, but I feel they could be so closely linked they can easily be treated as one.

I vote this as my number one choice. I think that expanding the way my characters(s) can grow is the most limited currently of the horizontal progression ideas that have been brought forth.

With the way the living world/story occurs (assuming it goes back to updates every two weeks – which I enjoy!), I think that new dynamic events and areas to re-explore get covered well enough. I have especially liked the direction the game has been going with the past few LW releases. After the LW CDI, I feel confident that this is just going to get better as well. Of course, I agree that we can never have enough areas to explore and new or changing dynamic events is an awesome idea, so it follows a close second to the hero diversification.

I would not participate in the player housing at all. I am not interested in the guild hall features either, although expanding guild missions would be something nice to see in the future, but isn’t a top priority for me.

I’d really love events that span multiple zones or impact other events.

For example, you assist the Quaggans in Sparkfly Fen and they help you fight Tequatl the next time he spawns.

This could potentially be tied to Order Faction or Rank (and work as an alternate Hero system) – if you’re ranked high enough in your order, you can start new events to acquire order assistance for a period of time/particular event/particular area.

Home instance from which new quests & challenges are progressively unlocked granting rewards specific to factions or profession in the form of titles, skills and character flexibility.

Where/How— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

How/Rewards— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

Rewards/Why— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

As can be seen, all three of these main ideas can be elegantly linked together. This is how I envision one way in which this could be implemented.

Upon reaching level 80 a profession ‘master’ trainer shows up in your home instance, revealing a list of goals for advanced study. I picture this list much like the achievement panel with running totals of progression towards each category, with the reward clearly indicated for each.

These areas of advanced study would take the form of unique challenges, quests or gambits that if completed would eventually unlock rewards of titles, an extra build template, new weapon skills, unique armor skins etc.

For instance one challenge might be for a thief to accept a temporary gambit that reduces all armor to 0 and seek out and kill a number of ranged enemies or specific bosses in order to unlock a new swap-able duel wield dagger skill. Also is rewarded the title ‘Knife in the Dark’ and a unique hooded armor skin.

There is a huge amount of flexibility with this system without the requirement of adding a lot of new content to the game. Through gambits and challenges the player could be encouraged to explore places and dynamic events that they might not have any other reason to discover or revisit.

A sense of studying under a master of their profession, pact representative, or guild mason and pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone in order to achieve something that is both visible to all and enhances their unique playstyle and QoL would offer much to those looking for horizontal progression after reaching level 80.

EDIT: Just had another idea of what form these hero level challenges could take. You could take all the Queen’s Gauntlet encounters and spread them all over Tyria in the form of solo only instances. It would also add some context and explanation as to where they came from and where they are now. I would love to discover where Liadri is hiding and plot my revenge.

timmyf.1490:

I’d really love events that span multiple zones or impact other events.

For example, you assist the Quaggans in Sparkfly Fen and they help you fight Tequatl the next time he spawns.

This could potentially be tied to Order Faction or Rank (and work as an alternate Hero system) – if you’re ranked high enough in your order, you can start new events to acquire order assistance for a period of time/particular event/particular area.

This is great idea! Helping other minor races/villagers/ basically npc through events in certain zones, could increase temporary ‘reputation’ for yourself/faction etc, or it could be tied to zone progression, so this way you can see that your decisions have impact on the world – I will help Quaggans, so in the time of need we will stood united in the battlefield. I won’t help them – ex. they will be corrupted and we will see additional deadly wave of raging Quaggans against us in a boss fight.

Malchior.5042:

The concept of Zone Progression is one that I was really looking forward to as I interpreted the pre-release design of Guild Wars 2 back in 2010 and 2011.

The only zones that really get that sense of struggle and conflict of minor goals to achieve a major goal are Harathi Hinterlands and the Straits of Devastation. In these 2 zones, their events are all linked with a goal of “reach the end” or “destroy the leader,” and each event completion furthers that goal in a way, whether by slowly moving the player across the map or kicking off triggers to spawn new events.

The meta events throughout the other zones – Shatterer, Claw of Jormag, Fire Elemental, etc… They all have their own unique individual story to them and they easily serve as a zone’s climax, but there’s no buildup to them. That just have one or two prerequisite events and boom, the fight starts.

Harathi Hinterlands has always been one of my most favorite zones because it’s literally a back and forth battlefield between the Seraph and the Centaurs. The lines of war are constantly changing, as waypoints contest and outposts get destroyed and rebuilt.

^ THAT is the kind of Guild Wars 2 I want to experience in EVERY zone! I want meaning, depth, progress, and character in every event, such that they’re all intertwined to tell the “story” that the entire design and writing of the zone is meant to entail.

Southsun was an experiment with this, but honestly, it just felt too small and disconnected. Take the writing or the persistence of Southsun and mix it with something like the direction of Harathi, and I imagine something truly special and unique could burst forth!

I like this idea, but i hate going into Orr, ESPECIALLY the Straits. Every way is blocked and every waypoint contested because there is not enough people around to keep things open. Without player help every dynamic event (in Tyria) is 100% guaranteed to fail. I should also note I’m from Tarnished Coast – which is a high population server. I feel bad for low population servers, especially if the active LS is a busy one. I’ve overheard many people out in the world make comments that lead me to believe many low population servers guest to high population ones because they lack the people to keep anything open (in all of tyria, not just the straits) – which of course makes matters even worse on their home worlds.

Tough choice, but my one would be: Player/Guild housing.

What I would love to see housing with:

• Different layouts
• Expandable (adding additional floors/basement, etc.)
• A huge array of furniture sets (tied to race, order, class, existing weapons sets, holidays, etc.; see Animal Crossing)
• Different floors and wall papers the correspond to the furniture sets (see Animal Crossing)
• Different skins for the exterior of the house (see Parallel Kingdom)
• Bank Access (potentially access to other types of npc vendors as well)
• Instant, free, travel access in the same manner the HoM is accessed
• Trophy displays (possibly heads/claws/horns of impressive critter kills or trophies for significant achievements or both)
• A furniture/exterior skin locker.

All of these could be earned in multiple ways: karma vendors from hearts, npc merchants that appear after certain dynamic events, random drops, crafting (add carpenter and/or upholsterer to the crafting choices), meta achievement completion, etc.

While open world housing would be cool, I would be content with instanced housing. If a party of people are visiting, whose house is visited could be determined by the party leader as in the HoM in GW1.

If we want to get carried away, we could add a customizable garden to the grounds…

Note: This was my thinking on player housing, but guild housing could operate on a similar basis but, perhaps, requiring guild involvement to acquire the items.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

To be clear you guys and girls don’t have to pick the ones I put forward. I was just contributing to the thread with what I would like to see as a player. You can pick an ideas from the thread. Just wanted to make that clear.

Chris

We know, but you pretty much listed the average Top 3. LOL

Well, my top pick would still be player progression in terms of recognission and in an visual representation.

One of my main griefs, and i wrote about it allready, is the rather stale crafting system we have in place.

While the crafting itself is not what everyone wants to do, the spoils of it are still an interesting factor which can go into several system you have allready mentioned.

Crafting at the moment
It is a bit boring. You do the same in every tier and the only profession where you can see changes is armorsmith and tailor, since their products actually change with each tier.
Every other crafting profession just changes in terms of stats and for weapons in a bit of hue, not reflecting the “artwork” we see in the UI of the parts we put together.

You just click and repeat the steps you did in tier one till the end.
The “discovery” aspect we have is rather slim at the moment, so i just mention it`s existens here.

What crafting could be
- We are able to have two professions at the time, however most of the time they are in the way of each other, or do have nothing in common (same materials etc.. ). What is needed is some kind of synergy between the professions. have them create parts, that other profession need.
- Customization : As i mentioned. Aside from armor, not much is reflected in what we create. How about the ability to customize some products a bit.
A weapon smith could build weapons, based on different parts he creates. Let us chosse handle, grip and blade design. Let us put inscritipns or effects on weapons if we are high lvl enough.
- Finding inspiration in the world : That just came to mind. discovering reciptes in the UI is a bit boring. There could be so much more. How about we hunt down inspiration in the world. A high lvl armor smith could be inspired by a certain enmytype he faces (hidden, special champion etc.) and if he defeats it, he has a new idea for a new design.
The same could work for every other profession. Find crystals in the world for jeweler. Visit places, etc… a lot of potential here…

And now i hope links will be opened. Since i had some ideas allready and wrote them down, so i offer them here again:

Order Progression
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Living-World/page/39#post3182997

Anyway. alot was allready mentioned and i just wanted to push my agenda in again a bit. I was not able to follow everything over the past few days for obvious reasons, so if what i have said was allready put aside for more relevant reasons i understand that. if any. have fun and some happy new year ^^

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also note I do agree that we need to continue to balance some build paradigms. Specifically support and crit. We have been working extensively on this toward the end of 2013 and will continue to do so.

Chris.

This is interesting. Are you talking about a change to these mechanics (e.g. you can only crit others from behind) or changing a few numbers? I don’t quite get what you mean with balancing build paradigms.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lot’s of really cool ideas here to. I really like the carpentry idea which you and others have mentioned in the past. In regard to the idea about bosses that learn. Do they learn within the world they reside in for example SoR or is it level based like in fractals or based on an item the group has (essentially gated)

Chris

Could vary?

Learning through Multiple Encounters

Gating

Although, given the only programming I know is ‘Hello World!’ in C++, I can’t begin to imagine how much work something like that would take to implement.

DiogoSilva.7089:

And the best way to execute that idea, would be to take the chance to evolve or diversify the dynamic event system each release.

What I mean by this is, I don’t want simply 100 more events that play exactly the same way that old events already work.

Instead, I would like to see new kinds of events. More map-wide events (like scarlet’s), non-linear event chains, longer-lasting (= more permanent) event chains, more detailed and ambicious event chains, more challenging events with new strategies in order to beat them, more or new kinds of guild-driven events, and maybe even events to get materials for housing, etc.

And of course, event-specific rewards to make players more excited to go through as many different events as possible. Getting a shiny new sword from beating an evil knight in one event, and receiving a food buff as a meal offered by a man for us having saved their house in another event, are far more interesting than generic gold and karma only. This gets even more exciting when specific events can offer unique recipes, skins, etc. It makes players actively trying to hunt as many of them to see what they bestow.

Currently, because of the event reward system alone, there’s no incentives to search and hunt for new events.

What about events that evolve depending on how many times they’ve been done, with the rewards only being given out for actually beating the event at the top tier?

A suggestion as old as the forums themselves

Chris Whiteside.6102:

To be clear you guys and girls don’t have to pick the ones I put forward. I was just contributing to the thread with what I would like to see as a player. You can pick an ideas from the thread. Just wanted to make that clear.

Chris

I think most of us understood that we didn’t have to pick from your top three. I just think that the Sociopolitical Diversification as a means of progression holds a lot of weight. Even before you mentioned it earlier today, we had been talking about in different ways for better part of the last two days.

Basically, we’re with you! I know the CDI doesn’t lead directly to development simply because we want it to, but dangit man get on it! LOL!

What do we want?
Sociopolitical Diversification!
When do we want it?
Now!… Or, you know, when you can get to it.

If I could only choose one update, it would have to be more customisation. By this I mean:

Legendary Dyes with special effects/animations/glow/sparkly bits
Dyeable Weapons
Ascended weapons and armor getting the stat-switching ability

etc. etc.

If that doesn’t count as one, then Dyeable Weapons would be all I want.

Followed by Legendary Dyes if we had a second choice :-P

I would also go with what you called " Sociopolitical Diversification".
I especially would like to see Guild housing. For example you could buy a guild hall with the guild marks you gathered with the guild missions. And then you could add more and more interesting things into the hall (with more marks, influence, by doing special missions).

Things which the guild could add permanently (usefull):
- crafting stations
- various traders (normal one, guild marks, laurels, karma)
- bank / guild bank acces
- auction house access
- armor preview thing (like the pvp closets)

Things which the guild could add permanently (fluff):
- decoration like plants, paintings
- pets
- furniture

Some things which could be activated for a short time:
- seasonal decorations
- visiting heroes just to have a chat with for example Caithe

Getting all these things would give guilds something to do, also giving them a meeting space, and the great guild mission system could be expanded to unlock many different things for guild housing. Of course there should also be an option for guests to visit, maybe with an extra invitation like GW1. Some of these ideas could also be used for player housing, but I think this should be added to your personal instance and not some other extra place for a player house. And there could also be special missions (“quests”) to unlock things, since that is much more fun then just buying it.

Factions could be another great options, but to be honest I don’t care so much about that, but if there will be factions I hope we will be able to change them everytime we want.

Something I noticed very early in GW2’s zones: there are a LOT of veterans in the zones, and a lot of them are hidden behind mini-progress-architecture (I don’t know how to say this). They sit at the end of cavesystems, the end of wall-structures,…

It seems to me that somewhere during development skill-hunting ala GW1 was planned and then scrapped, leaving the well hidden veterans without skills.

I don’t know if this is the case, nontheless I’d like to suggest that you use that to your advantage. It would be a good start to hunt down the specific veterans on a map imho, since they are already positioned with thought in mind (it seems).

I sure know that it’s too late to implement skill-hunting, but I feel giving each veteran specific “things” people want would be the way to go.

Some spontaneous (maybe bad) ideas:

• each veteran you kill unlocks a corresponding trading card. The artwork of that monster shouldn’t be a 3D-model but drawn from one of Anet’s artists.
• —> the trading cards can be looks only OR an actual ingame card game. Killing the same type of veteran increases the level of that card – up to lv.4. Once in a city you can visit a bar and play this trading card game with others. Rules could be relatively simple.
• —> when you find additional veterans of the same type, each kill unlocks a bit of intel / lore on the card

• Find a veteran and kill him to unlock an arena fight. You go to the nearest arena and find a new battle unlocked: the veteran you killed in champion-status (maybe with 1-2 new moves). You may enter the arena with up to 2 friends (grouped). Others can watch the battle (similar to Queens Gauntlet, but with invisible barriers – battlepit). Killing the champion opens a picture on a UI-page where previously has been a question mark. Catch them all! (maybe add minis as reward-milestones)

• each veteran drops a champion-lootbag once, then never again.
• each veteran has a 20% chance to drop a piece of a map. Combine 3 parts of one map (like a puzzle) to unlock a secret encounter which triggers when you are at the target location which is then visible on the map. (secret encounter could be anything. Surprise the players!!)

…

Speaking of crafting, that could also be a bit expanded on and mainly in terms of looks, since especially for weaponcrafting professions all the things look the same from start to end. Okay that’s exaggerating a bit, but it would be nice if you could like, hunt down specific rare materials in order to craft things with different skins. For example, I like that some karma vendors offer recipes with skins not normally gotten through crafting (like those Godskull things).

Perhaps hide the ingredients in the various chests throughout the world. I think it’s best to then also make those materials account bound, so you actually have to get those items in the world instead of being able to buy them on the TP. Maybe make the materials reflect the zones of the world. For example to forge an old Ascalonian style blade, you need 5 different ingredients that spawn in chests throughout Ascalon zones. Or perhaps tie them to events in those zones. I think that those kinds of things also inspire people to wander the world in search for them. Little touches like these could do a lot of good to the currently rather bland (in results, not in mechanics) crafting system.

some totally unrelated idea, but it would probably fit well to zone progression:

A map-ui has 3+ layers. Make the top layer (the sky) dynamic – like clouds which get darker, the more evil is around. This should be a way to see the status of big metaevent-chains ingame without the need to be on the same map.

Imagine you are in Lions Arch. You look on the map and see how the weather above Sparkfly Fen gets worse. Dark clouds grow – which means: Tequatl might rise soon.

Now people wouldn’t sit in Lions Arch the whole evening but rather are interested what these dark clouds over zone xy might imply. This technique can be used for anything in the game, not only boss encounters.

A dynamic world, not hidden behind loading screens but for everyone to see – without breaking immersion of having APIs running. It might surprise you (spawn secret new events rarely).