Guild Wars 2

My top 1 woud be this:

Specific Race Titles

- These titles are obtained / unlocked only by playing a specific race.
- When the title becomes available, it will be use-able by all characters in the account no matter what race they are
- There should be 1 Major title for each race
- Example of titles:

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

- Each major title will have 10 tiers, each having its own name (mini titles) which can be displayed only by the respective race once it is unlocked (remember the title tiers in GW1: Kind of a Big Deal, I am very Important, etc.)
- Earning tiers will involve doing various activities in the game like Personal Story, Jumping Puzzles, Crafting, etc. done with the specific race
- Example: Finish all JPs with a Charr, Finish the personal Story with a Charr character, Buy all cultural armors for a charr etc.
- These tiers can be cumulated with the achievements we already have as if you see above, finishing the story or JPs have already their achievements but they are account related not race related.
- So these “new” tiers will make these achievement more specific.

In this way there is not any auxiliary system added to the game but it will build upon the ones we already have

Chrispy.5641:

Nike.2631:

Watching this video I realized…

Order-specific dances.

Make it so .

Let us type /dance infront of a Dragon champion. The Dragon then starts dancing. Then it stomps and kills everyone in a five mile radius with giant words on the screen saying “You got served!”

Abaddon just filed a trademark infringement complaint. Be careful… he has all the good lawyers.

my top choice would be Sociopolitical Diversification. I think we could have a lot of meaningful content tied to personal and guild housing.

Crafting, Achievements, Exploration, Jumping Puzzles, etc.. could all be tied into it by having rewards such as trophies / recipes etc.. that can display these achievements in a tangible way. If they’re implemented in such a way that people can visit them just to see what a guild has accomplished for example before joining said guild it could also have a social element. What I mean is guilds can strive to to better their guild hall not just for them but also to attract the best players for example.

Same thing with personal housing. I would love to have personal challenges that can provide items I can display in my house to celebrate my accomplishments. Artifacts hidden away in one of the many hidden areas in the game. Memento rewarded from some secret event after helping an unmarked NPC. Trophy for completing some hard JP under a time limit etc..

On top of that you’d have the customization of the house itself trying to achieve the look you want.

The possibilities here could be endless.

If I had to choose one, and it’s really hard indeed to do so… I would pick Role Diversification. I and as some have mentioned, find that PvE meta where Zerkers are optimal way to go is not good for the game. I know there can be only 1 optimal way to go, such is the way of life but if you can manage and make other builds like support and CC mather in dungeons and open world it would be great. That defiant stack needs to change somehow.

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

I had quite a worked out idea on the topic of Player Housing and creating more structures in the world as a sort of sandbox content:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/15#post3421456

I still like the idea of being able to unlock the currently unavailable weapons for your characters (with unique skills, of course), and think this could potentially be done in more interesting ways than simply equipping and learning the skills. (Profession specific weapons should stay the same.) Say for example a mesmer wants to learn to use a longbow. It’s possible that, perhaps, he could do so perhaps by beating a certain dungeon boss in the game, by completing an event chain leading to a boss that uses the long bow, … I don’t know, something creative. Of course, even the current ‘equip and use’ would be nice, but the potential to take it a little further for weapons not in your professions core group is there.

VOLKON.1290:

I still like the idea of being able to unlock the currently unavailable weapons for your characters (with unique skills, of course), and think this could potentially be done in more interesting ways than simply equipping and learning the skills. (Profession specific weapons should stay the same.) Say for example a mesmer wants to learn to use a longbow. It’s possible that, perhaps, he could do so perhaps by beating a certain dungeon boss in the game, by completing an event chain leading to a boss that uses the long bow, … I don’t know, something creative. Of course, even the current ‘equip and use’ would be nice, but the potential to take it a little further for weapons not in your professions core group is there.

Would give them an excuse to add trainer npc into the game, perhaps with their own series of quests and tasks. Would help change up the maps a bit, and give us some new things to do. Said npcs could also eventually serve the double role of giving us the ability to train new weapon skill sets for our core weapons via more quests, tasks, etc when/if the dev’s develop more skills. Opens up some interesting options. Heck maybe the npc is some well known local hero that we have to go hunt up and ‘convince’ to train us to begin with.

I saw a post about player housing being open world. I gotta wonder if eventually space would run out lol.

In the end though, my top one would be the same as Chris’. Player housing, Guild Halls, Faction Alliances – All of that is important stuff that other games nowadays has either already implemented(Tera Online added faction alliances and alliance battles a few months back. FFXIV just released Guild Halls in 2.1 patch) or stuff that’s going to be released shortly(WoW with Guild Halls coming in their next expansion).

Could get people more interested too. If Alliances make their way back, my GW1 alliance might actually recombine again. It would give us reason to reconnect with each other. I’m just wondering if it will be server specific, which might cause a little issue.

I’ll bet the Consortium is looking at the requests about open world housing and already starting to divide up plots in SouthSun. (Some wildlife may need to be cleared prior to building…)

I like many of the ideas and ofc i would like to see most to be implemented but if i must pick one then that would be the Order quests.

The reason is that it would make people go over all the world map and keep us doing many events and stuffs. They could pick the events, bosses, dungeons, min-dungeons we have now and make the orders send us to do those things. I think the implementation of this wouldnt be that hard (compared with start something completely new) and would make people keep doing events and going all over the world doing things.

For example:

They could send us to Scavenger’s Chasm (Malchor’s Leap) jumping puzzle to open the 3 chests and find what is hidden there.

If they also implement the repeteable renown hearts, the Order dailies could send us to do a specific heart.

Later, they could add new Order quests, even monthly ones that look more like the living story + the personal story misions in which one decide the tactics to follow.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— 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.

As much as I’d like to pick the first one, it would involve incredible amount of balancing which would nullify some of the ascended armors people just barely made for the current builds they’re using resulting in scrapement of the current gear and following by grind to make another set. It’d be nice to have a range weapon that I can’t outrun as a guardian, but from what I’ve seen in past balances the tradeoff would be astronomical gear-wise, considering tradeoffs we had to deal with while balancing classes with the set of skills and weapons that we already have.

As to the second point, that would be my absolute favorite of them all. Skin progression which was a big part of Guild Wars 2 before ascended gear release. More weapon skins, more armor skins, more verity. Please no more reskins, and if any, please pick some decent looking heavy and medium sets. I also once came by an idea someone thew out there that if reskins happen, why not take a piece from each set and combine them to make a whole new set.

Always a big fan of rewards, never a fan of any kind of progression deletion. Aside from that Titles I’m not so excited about. They have no meaning at all. We barely ever read them and they really have no significance to most of us.

When it comes to quality of life though, aside from wardrobe that been discussed over and over again, I’d love to see something being done with the minis. Maybe a slot that would allow us to equip them and have them out (outside of the big city only since that would have a high impact on loading times in LA). Have them be there with us at all times in the battle and exploration. When we die, they die and when we res, they res. When we zone, have them zone with us. Just a tiny thing I guess.

In order to make horizontal progress shine I believe you have to look at some of your core issues first, strengthening the base of it.

One example would be to flip the rewards on attacking/defending objects.
Capturing an Orr temple should be less rewarding than defending it.

If the attacking reward is higher than defending ,then the players won’t bother to defend objectives,resulting in a grind(karma train).

The one thing that I would kill to see is Character progression through traits/skills/weapons etc.
Character progression will add depth to every aspect of the game(PvE,WvW,SPvP) while also opening new doors such as harder/focused content which could be combined with Character progression and increase it even further resulting in breathing air for longer periods within the lifetime of GW2.

I have to say ANet puts too much efford in living stories, after all these months it starts feeling like a grind to me.

Maybe it is time to focus more of your resources on other mechanics of the game, one example would be to make guild UI better, or to fix certain bugs that annoy the playerbase deeply(like the party kick/invites on WvW).

ArtemusHunter.9521:

I saw a post about player housing being open world. I gotta wonder if eventually space would run out lol.

This is the eternal issue with player housing. If they opened the outer wall of DR as it’s own zone that might open up a good amount of space. I suppose it really depends on how many accounts can be tied to a server before it is considered full. Making 10,000 houses in Tyria would be insane. If servers max out at 70-100,000 like my quick math suggests then as much as I like open world housing I don’t think it is an option. The issue here comes into the cost that Chris mentioned. While similar, open world vs. instanced housing would have to be coded into the game very differently thus making a hybrid of the two much like cost effective. I love the idea/function of open world housing, so I’ll keep championing it, but instanced would probably be a better use of their time in the long run. If anet added new zones with houses in them there could be a fun land rush element to zone launches.

Shongaqu.5279:

ArtemusHunter.9521:

I saw a post about player housing being open world. I gotta wonder if eventually space would run out lol.

This is the eternal issue with player housing. If they opened the outer wall of DR as it’s own zone that might open up a good amount of space. I suppose it really depends on how many accounts can be tied to a server before it is considered full. Making 10,000 houses in Tyria would be insane. If servers max out at 70-100,000 like my quick math suggests then as much as I like open world housing I don’t think it is an option. The issue here comes into the cost that Chris mentioned. While similar, open world vs. instanced housing would have to be coded into the game very differently thus making a hybrid of the two much like cost effective. I love the idea/function of open world housing, so I’ll keep championing it, but instanced would probably be a better use of their time in the long run. If anet added new zones with houses in them there could be a fun land rush element to zone launches.

OR…. They could make VERTICAL building.
You don’t need 10 maps worth to build houses on if you can build into the air.

Shongaqu.5279:

cesmode.4257:

Chris, if you remember, I suggested something to this regard about global ongoing goals within the living story CDI thread. I think I titled it, global dominance where depending on how much of the world the players control, we receive certain benefits similar to WvW.

Hmmm tie the idea of global dominance to guild claiming of outposts in the open world and you would have a fascinating meta game that could involve the whole server. Small guilds of 5-10 could fortify camps and outposts while towns and forts would be available for larger guilds. It would cost influence and guild merits to claim an outpost and you would have to make sure the guild checked up on it at least once a day.

yes Malchior I got some of my sandbox ideas into the horizontal CDI I am sorry :P

It sounds very cool, but if something like this were to be implemented they would need to be very careful not to force people into playing in a boring way. When a guild holds a keep in WvW, and upgrades it, often members of that guild feel obligated to stay and defend it, even when others have moved on. It’s long and boring waiting for someone to attack that keep. If your guild claims a keep in the open world you don’t want to have members stuck there with the keep while others are off playing dungeons, fractals… fun and profitable stuff. It could cause hard feelings between guildmates or long hours for guild leaders.

Shongaqu.5279:

This is the eternal issue with player housing. If they opened the outer wall of DR as it’s own zone that might open up a good amount of space. I suppose it really depends on how many accounts can be tied to a server before it is considered full. Making 10,000 houses in Tyria would be insane. If servers max out at 70-100,000 like my quick math suggests then as much as I like open world housing I don’t think it is an option. The issue here comes into the cost that Chris mentioned. While similar, open world vs. instanced housing would have to be coded into the game very differently thus making a hybrid of the two much like cost effective. I love the idea/function of open world housing, so I’ll keep championing it, but instanced would probably be a better use of their time in the long run. If anet added new zones with houses in them there could be a fun land rush element to zone launches.

Personally, I’d like to see player housing semi-instanced. By that, I mean Player 1’s house is next door to his friends; Player 2, in this neighbourhood for player’s 1-8 or something.

Either that, or instanced. It’s just easier. It would also be pretty cool if they had a door in the guild hall that lead to the player housing(if instanced) and worked like when entering our home instances with parties.

Sirendor.1394:

OR…. They could make VERTICAL building.
You don’t need 10 maps worth to build houses on if you can build into the air.

That makes me think of apartment buildings, which you don’t really see in Tyria atm. lol

If it used some sort of asura/charr tech to make floating landspace as well, then it would seem like how Wildstar is doing their housing – though that’s instanced.

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

however the Follower system and personality based reaction holds a very strong grip too

if done properly the guild halls and faction quests could be a breath of fresh air

I once saw a post in the suggestion forum about having a single use item that a player could use in the open world against say a door on a building in LA, or a stead in Wayfarer’s. Once used/placed the player could interact with that door to enter a home instance for their own housing — it wouldn’t matter how many other players had used their “door” in the same area. That would allow players to have homes without taking up space. It seemed like a cool idea, but a monster coding feat.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Sirendor.1394:

OR…. They could make VERTICAL building.
You don’t need 10 maps worth to build houses on if you can build into the air.

That makes me think of apartment buildings, which you don’t really see in Tyria atm. lol

If it used some sort of asura/charr tech to make floating landspace as well, then it would seem like how Wildstar is doing their housing – though that’s instanced.

My idea is to have ‘instanced’ maps as in “City Levels” (basically how the current maps work, with barriers in the form of portals that require you to load the area. Currently Divinity’s Reach is rather vertical. It has huge slopes and different levels. If they simply added new levels, with walkways/portals to the next level, and allow the space DR has, you could build beneath the DR we have right now, or above it. Each ‘Level’ could then function as a sort of open world map, with their own npcs, npc houses, dynamic events, skill point challenges and much more.

It would create a completely new world, built by the players.

EDIT:
Oh and this could be done for any city known at this moment. Rata sum, with floating levels, Black Citadel with underground mines and mechanical structures. Hoelbrak could get spirit fields, dedicated to one ancestral spirit or another. The Grove would be one of the best, as a tree of life, climbing ever higher. Even some of the cities in explorable maps could lead to other city levels, think about Ebonhawke for example.

I think that anyone that is suggesting guild halls/player housing, etc, has to ask themselves the following -

Assuming that items related to player housing are achieved through the living story /achievement system (i.e. like some of the existing nodes so far, things like the dragon wings which we have obtained in similar ways), are you more likely to play through otherwise potentially repetitive/uninspiring (in my opinion) tasks/progress bars, just to get items that you will probably spend less than 1% of your overall playing time looking at? Unless you are a RPer, what does a player house actually add to the overall experience of the game?

I personally can understand why you would want to potentially grind for an armor skin, or a weapon skin, because that is something that you are looking at ALL of the time.

With regards to figuring out timelines/dev resources for any of these, there are really 2 parts to this – how long will it take to implement housing, and how long will it take to implement a rewards system for housing that is satisfying to the playerbase and creates a more ‘dynamic’ feel to the world, tying in to what is supposed to be the ‘whole world is endgame’ idea? Am I going to go back to Timberland Falls, for example, because I need a level 55 tree node? Or because there are awesome dynamic events/scavenger hunts/quests/hidden chests/etc that allow me to further progress towards my goal?

My favorite:
Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

Could creatures on a map behave different (e.g. hotile/non hostile), depending on my level (even if scaled down) and “experience” I earned on this specific map?

just found out that WoW has some sort of the arena fights / queens gauntlet already implemented since MoP O_o

Brawler’s guild
http://www.icy-veins.com/brawlers-guild-guide-wow

I’d love to see that as a permanent addition… sounds awesome imho. Queens Gauntlet evolved and put in as permanent content with a progression-system (e.g. Zone progression unlocks new enemies etc.). I loved doing arena battles when I didn’t know what else to do during Queens Gauntlet. It’s bite sized content which can be completed in a few minutes and leaves you wanting more.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

just found out that WoW has some sort of the arena fights / queens gauntlet already implemented since MoP O_o

Brawler’s guild
http://www.icy-veins.com/brawlers-guild-guide-wow

I’d love to see that as a permanent addition… sounds awesome imho. Queens Gauntlet evolved and put in as permanent content with a progression-system (e.g. Zone progression unlocks new enemies etc.). I loved doing arena battles when I didn’t know what else to do during Queens Gauntlet. It’s bite sized content which can be completed in a few minutes and leaves you wanting more.

That would be awesome for anyone who wants to try their solo skills and experiment with diffrent kinds of builds. This would probably keep me busy for more than a few months, depending on the number of bosses .

I would really love to see a permament Queens Gauntlet(instanced tho) with some kind of spectating options like SPvP is now. This would be an amazing feature and just by adding more and more end bosses you can keep it alive and intresting for a looong time.

Crafting deserves its own CDI at some point. But my feeling on making it more relevant is to remove all the white/blue/green junk drops from the loot tables and increasing the value of the junk tokens merchants purchase. So you could still get rare on up through drops, but everything else would have to come via the player-driven economy. This would also encourage more people out into the world for materials.

moronwmachinegun.3815:

Crafting deserves its own CDI at some point. But my feeling on making it more relevant is to remove all the white/blue/green junk drops from the loot tables and increasing the value of the junk tokens merchants purchase. So you could still get rare on up through drops, but everything else would have to come via the player-driven economy. This would also encourage more people out into the world for materials.

Perhaps some of that grey junk could be incorporated into crafting (tinkering) for Halls and Homes. For example, if you took wood, leather, crystals and nails you could hypothetically create a mirror. What if you added, for example, minotaur claws or some other grey item to create an ornately decorated mirror that, for example, had the claws sticking out around the sides for a new look?

I’ve seen uninstanced housing done in Mabinogi and Entropia online, I don’t think it’s suitable for an mmo of this size though. A sandbox mmo would be needed to give the scale necessary.

The Appartment idea/ Instanced city levels I’m not really a fan of, they severely limit your options size and exterior wise. Anarchy online had instanced appartments which were all identical in shape and size which really sucked the life out of them.
Instanced communities could work but you’d need to give each person in the community a fairly large plot of land, and space the houses far enough apart that an eyesore house doesn’t ruin it for the rest.

The best options I feel would be instanced/ community instanced. Enterable via “go to house” button or from an asura gate in the real world, The spare gates in LA could be opened for such a purpose, to visit anothers house you just type there name in and off you go to their instance/community. (provided they don’t have no visitors/whitelist enabled.)
Perhaps a frontier style land? as more lands are being uncovered after Z’s downfall.

As somebody who owns a house in real life and spends plenty of money and time repairing and upgrading it, I can’t fathom why anybody would wish to do so in a game. I play this game to get away from that trouble…

…but if we’re going to have housing, we should maybe look for an apartment in Kaineng City. I hear they have plenty of space there… ;-)

The Great Al.2546:

I think that anyone that is suggesting guild halls/player housing, etc, has to ask themselves the following -

Assuming that items related to player housing are achieved through the living story /achievement system (i.e. like some of the existing nodes so far, things like the dragon wings which we have obtained in similar ways), are you more likely to play through otherwise potentially repetitive/uninspiring (in my opinion) tasks/progress bars, just to get items that you will probably spend less than 1% of your overall playing time looking at? Unless you are a RPer, what does a player house actually add to the overall experience of the game?

I personally can understand why you would want to potentially grind for an armor skin, or a weapon skin, because that is something that you are looking at ALL of the time.

With regards to figuring out timelines/dev resources for any of these, there are really 2 parts to this – how long will it take to implement housing, and how long will it take to implement a rewards system for housing that is satisfying to the playerbase and creates a more ‘dynamic’ feel to the world, tying in to what is supposed to be the ‘whole world is endgame’ idea? Am I going to go back to Timberland Falls, for example, because I need a level 55 tree node? Or because there are awesome dynamic events/scavenger hunts/quests/hidden chests/etc that allow me to further progress towards my goal?

Perfectly willing, I really don’t find it different to the weapon skills, or armor sets? like I’ll unlock all the new skills but won’t use 90% of them, I have an armor set that suits each of my characters, if they happen to make a new armor set that I like better and isn’t dirt common I’ll switch to it but then the old set looses its visibility.

I have ~50 unique exotic staffs at the moment, So I’ve gotten these skins but no one knows cos I can’t display them. That’s something housing can do, it ties in with new armor sets and weapons , hopefully you’d be able to mount and display weapons and armors (skyrim style). It’s not an either or situation, it’s housing and new armors and weapons to work towards.

Sirendor.1394:

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Sirendor.1394:

OR…. They could make VERTICAL building.
You don’t need 10 maps worth to build houses on if you can build into the air.

That makes me think of apartment buildings, which you don’t really see in Tyria atm. lol

If it used some sort of asura/charr tech to make floating landspace as well, then it would seem like how Wildstar is doing their housing – though that’s instanced.

My idea is to have ‘instanced’ maps as in “City Levels” (basically how the current maps work, with barriers in the form of portals that require you to load the area. Currently Divinity’s Reach is rather vertical. It has huge slopes and different levels. If they simply added new levels, with walkways/portals to the next level, and allow the space DR has, you could build beneath the DR we have right now, or above it. Each ‘Level’ could then function as a sort of open world map, with their own npcs, npc houses, dynamic events, skill point challenges and much more.

It would create a completely new world, built by the players.

EDIT:
Oh and this could be done for any city known at this moment. Rata sum, with floating levels, Black Citadel with underground mines and mechanical structures. Hoelbrak could get spirit fields, dedicated to one ancestral spirit or another. The Grove would be one of the best, as a tree of life, climbing ever higher. Even some of the cities in explorable maps could lead to other city levels, think about Ebonhawke for example.

EBONHAWKE! would be an awesome place! If this was the case, it could get more people hanging out there. At least, that’s what I’d hope it would do.

They could even limit the amount of levels it goes above and below the cities with NPC’s saying they are working on building more space, and then have them resting in a future patch after all the work of adding even more levels! lol

Jaken.6801:

Yes class diversitation is needed, but please stop with the “subclasses”.

How about you stop to tell me, what I may suggest and what not?
Chris just has asked everybody to write about their own personal Top 1 idea and thats just what I did here writing about on my last posting.
My personal top favourite which falls under the category of role diversification.
Or do you want to forbid me now, what I may call as my top favourite and what not?

I don’t care, whats all possible with Traits, because I think Traits should stay, what they are – Traits, a System made for clear Skill and Character Effect Customization only.
Not real Sub Classes, that feel like a direct progression of your characters’s career that unlock alot of new features for your Class that could also have to do with lots of more other thigns, than just only Traits. Traits will never work like what I’m suggesting how Sub Classes should work and have already worked in other older games, but people keep on badmouthing Sub Classes here only, because they fear, that a feature like them would limitate the player in what their Characters can become.

Traits limitate us currently much more and if you are seeking for games, that don’t limitate you at anything, like I said, GW2 is already the wrong game for people that despise any kind of “limitations”, because we get already instantly limitated at what our characters can become right at character creation by having to choose one of the current 8 classes.
Sub Classes won’t remove this limitation that is right at the start of the game, but they will definetely expand our choices to individualize our characters and make them more unique and thats right for what role diversification stands for exactly – expanding our options to individualize our characters and define our roles that set up our strengths and weaknesses of our characters.
Currently there absolutely are no “roles” in this game, because the game is missing specializations which make up for roles. Roles can exist only, if classes receive strengths and weaknesses, because they are it, which define a class role

When I see a Thief, that has specialized itself and progressed itself into becoming a Rogue, then I want to see, feel and recognize that difference in many vertical as like horizontal ways – more than just only what traits can offer to the table in regard of how Traits functionize in this game and for what Traits should be intended to functionize only.

Look at what Rift has done, a game with a complex Sub Class System. Each having Strengths and Weaknesses which define their roles.
I think Anet can do with GW2 somethign similar, but much better, together with all of the other role diversification ideas in this CDI.
There you have several Main Professions and whopping 8 Sub Classes per Main Profession to diversify your role of your character based on your personal taste what you want that your Character should become.

Cleric > Cabalist, Druid, Inquisitor, Justicar, Warden, Purifier, Sentinel, Shaman

Mage > Archon, Chloromancer, Dominator, Elementalist, Necromancer, Pyromancer, Stormcaller, Warlock

Rogue > Assassin, Bard, Bladedancer, Marksman, Nightblade, Ranger, Riftstalker, Saboteur

Warrior > Beastmaster, Champion, Paladin, Paragon, Reaver, Riftblade, Void Knight, Warlord

They turned bysically the cycle around, they have less main professions, than GW2, but have lots of Sub Classes to specialize into to individualize your character and its diversive roles.

Rift is also a game about statistics, less about active combat. Huge talent trees with mostly uninteresting statistical advantages and a lot of similar skills. Correct me if I’m wrong. Would be a balancing nightmare if you ask me.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

while its good that ascended is driving the economy, its not so great that bis is so heavily weighted toward the merchant/crafting playstyle. Going back to previous post in the other thread, i still believe it was a mistake to virtually require max crafting to be a player with bis armor.
short outline of my solution

Final recipe should be doable without max crafting by making it through content (special crafting npcs or stations in hard areas/jumping puzzles etc) for slightly more resources

account bound versions of materials that can drop/be obtained from new interesting content (the high end mats , this makes it not direct competition and works with the TP)
crafting retains its value and the main focus for ascended, but people who dont want to, can buy/hunt for mats and put it together by reaching some goal, like DE chains, jumping puzzles, beating dungeons.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

This.

It took a long time for me to decide which I’d like to see more, role diversification or sociopolitical. I’d honestly say they’re nearly a tie, as they’re both important to me. But above all things, I’d just really, really love to try out new skills, weapons, builds.

However, one note about sociopolitical diversification I’d really like to beg is this: If the team does contemplate adding player housing of some kind, can you please consider making it very ‘open’ like Rift’s dimensions? I’ve never had so much fun as I have just being able to build whatever I could with the tools given. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I actually was inspired to make a (sadly very clumsy, given the jumping/movement controls) jump puzzle with my dimension because of GW2, and all I could think of since was how fun and amazing it would be to do the same in GW2.

I think if housing was added and it’s a simple thing of being given a pre-existing house where you can somewhat customize it, or add some trophies, I personally would not be terribly excited. However, I would definitely be if the housing came with more freedom and was more of a personal build kit. Is there any way to maybe implement something like that into the engine, I wonder?

Anyway, apologies for saying one topic was my most important and then ranting about another. I have a feeling Sociopolitical diversification very likely will end up as the majority top choice, and it’s also very important to me despite ultimately going with role diversification as my personal priority.

And as always, thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to hold this conversation.

Shallow vs. Deep Horizontal Progression

There are many excellent ideas for what I would call shallow horizontal progressions – these are things which are one-and-done, and which will change with player fancy with some high degree of frequency. Dyes, skins, titles, shouts, finishers, emotes… these are all fun but they are the kinds of things which provide short-term interest but little long-term staying power. These are the kinds of things which are great for biweekly updates.

I’m more interested in deep horizontal progression – what things can be done to make the game richer and more challenging. These types of improvements are things that keep players around for months and months, that draw old players back, and draw new players in. They are characterized by affecting how players play the game, and having a lasting effect upon a character. A few of the ideas I have seen and love:

Subclasses/Jobs
These could be a way to either unlock additional skills (utilities, elites, heals), or a way to unlock access to different weapons for a class. Staff Warriors? Pistol mainhands? Melee Rangers? New weapons entirely like Sickles, Great Axes, Crossbows, etc? That adds so much depth and playability, and gives players a whole new suite of fun options and things to grind for.

There are a few ways to do this – have a subclass be an actual variant of the class, that you leveled, and that you switched between main class/sub class while out of combat. Alternatively you could just add a new weapon option. The “whole new class” thing is attractive because it would give players a reason to level and revisit old zones. FFXIV didn’t do very much right, but their Job system was revolutionary. It basically turned every person into an altoholic, and gave them a reason to keep playing low level zones their entire time with the game. Subclasses/jobs here would reopen all of the fantastic low level content which is currently very underutilized and thus very empty and not-fun. This would also synergize with people seeking World Completion, spurring them possibly to seek out that legendary they had been avoiding due to the chore of Completion.

Underflow Servers
The backend tech for this would be challenging, but it requires no new art and no new design. Just make it more viable for people to play low level content, and they will. Right now low level zones are empty except for when Scarlet attacks, but even then they fill up but no one does the original content. Underflows also solve the problem of having to consolidate/erase any servers.

Skill Gated/Time Gated Dungeon Progression and Zone Progression
Fractals are beautiful. They are fresh, ever-changing, provide good rewards and have a very long time-scale to reach level 50. Why doesn’t something similar exist to incentivize people to do something similar with dungeons or even with zones? I like the ideas thrown out of Vanquisher variants, I also like the idea of scaleable dungeon runs which increase in difficulty and also in rewards. Incentivizing different paths, or lesser-run dungeons.

Something similar can be done with entire PvE zones – put a Vanquisher option into those by coding each mob upon zoning in with a tag that pops up on your map. Hunt down and kill every single tagged mob in the zone for the achievement. This also synergizes with World Completion. Vanquishing world zones would also provide a possible alternate pathway to Ascended or some of the other high-end itemization so that players who prefer solo-grinding in the world to instanced/group content can do that.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

…but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

If it takes more time to earn the equivalent money to buy said mats/items than farming it yourself, isn’t it technically still a time gate?

Just because the choice is there, doesn’t make it a viable option for some of us.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

I have to disagree a little wee bit on the time gate comment… someone had to spend the time, the gating is there regardless although I can see what you’re saying as well. But that’s actually a pretty weak argument… sorry.

However the gating comes into play when you have people that don’t have the in game gold to purchase all the mats nor the real world resources available to convert gems to gold to make up the difference. I think of it as a time gate with work arounds. The gate is in crafting yourself. The work arounds are purchasing off the TP with earned gold or doing the same with purchased gold.

@ Marcus:

I know that it would be a balance nightmare (thats why I want lesser Sub Classes to keep it simple and overviewable, 3 is just the perfect number for that), I just used Rift only as an example to show the poster, that I quoted, that a game with a feature that I suggest isn’t impossible, and already exists with even far more Sub Classes, than what I am suggesting, that ANet should start with by giving us at the start just only 3 uptions and not instantly 8 options, even If I think, that some people could have not enough choices, otherwise they fear instantly, that the game limitates them to much and offers only options, that they personally don’t like (that kind of reaction I’ve seen here so far only from a single Mesmer Player.)
That Rift is not perfect I also know, I just mentioned that game only with their basic core concept of Sub Classes, which works there perfectly fine.
That Anet could make a 10000 times better Sub Class System, stands absolutely out of question to me with the help of our suggestions from threads like this, once everybody would work together to work on the best Sub Class System in a MMORPG, that ever has been seen putting all of those older games wide into ANets shade then by combining other new intuitive and innovative role diversification systems with this feature, like Class Synergies for example.

Chuggs.1682:

Something similar can be done with entire PvE zones – put a Vanquisher option into those by coding each mob upon zoning in with a tag that pops up on your map. Hunt down and kill every single tagged mob in the zone for the achievement. This also synergizes with World Completion. Vanquishing world zones would also provide a possible alternate pathway to Ascended or some of the other high-end itemization so that players who prefer solo-grinding in the world to instanced/group content can do that.

I agree with the idea to have players spread on a map instead of repeating the same events over and over. Be aware though that GW2 is a non-instanced world and zones are much bigger than GW1’s zones.

Do you really think it’s fun to kill every single mob in a zone with respawning enemies and other players who kill “your” mobs?

It’s tricky. My suggestion of finding and killing each veteran in a zone suffers from the same problem: what if an other player kills it in front of you? One solution could be: each veteran guards an item which has to be collected (channel). This could be a trading card of that mob or a part of a treasure map.

@Orpheal: I cannot see the advantages having a sub class system over giving us the new weapons / skills without being locked in a subclass yet. Why should a new weapon be gated behind a subclass which would limit my options?

3 Subclasses per profession would also mean more skills. Obviously it’s quite difficult to even implement one skill… judging on the implementation of new skills in 2013. If I remember correctly Anet has 3 people who work on skills. They try to find a balance for longer than a year now. It seems unrealistic to me to give each subclass enough skills to feel unique enough. This isn’t Rift where developers don’t care about quality of skills but quantity. My opinion.

My vote goes for — Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

I have been waiting forever for Guild Halls. Maybe even have a achievement board in there where we can do guild achievements each day to give personal and guild points. Guild points could be used to buy things for the castle like castle bank, vendors, crafting stations, maybe even Statues where we can go and get a guild buff for the day. Different Statues could give different buffs. There is so much that could be done with guild castles and personal housing. We could even duel in the castle for fun. Maybe once a day we could harvest from fields just outside the castle.

With housing it would be cool to be able to use crafted furniture, display trophies, maybe buy storage chests for extra storage. There is really so much fun stuff that we could do. I know some people in other games that spend hours making their house unique.

I think my vote also goes for Sociopolitical Diversification, because much of the things I want with Role Diversification are actually more in lines with vertical progression. Things like un-changable traits offering passive bonuses that are acquired over a long period of time, maybe even with Laurels or something.

But as far as horizontal progression, player housing and possibly new crafting skills related to it definitely have my vote!

Subclasses/Hero Classes/Jobs

This is my favorite idea, and since Chris was just talking about it I wanted to flesh out some more thoughts. This idea is so awesome because it is very deep – you can add a ton of playability to the game with it. First, by giving people an incentive to level and visit content they haven’t experienced. Second, by adding a new layer of skills and combat mechanics which will keep the gameplay itself fresh.

You could literally double the amount of time someone wants to spend on a character just by giving them a new suite of skills to play with and level up. In terms of design efficiency, this is fantastic because you wouldn’t need to spend an ounce of content design resources. This game is already vast, and the average person probably experiences only 25% of it while leveling the first time. Releveling with a new suite of weapons/skills/mechanics would allow people to experience fresh content (which has already been designed!) with new skills.

The How
Subclasses/jobs should be leveled to 80 just like your primary class. One way to do this would be to have the subclass unlock once you leveled another class to 80 (so my Guardian levels as a Warrior to 80 to unlock Paladin subclass for example) or you could unlock the subclass which would start at level one and level to 80 with a combo of your old skills and the new ones. (So Guardian unlocks level 1 Paladin and then levels it up while still being a Guardian). The latter system is probably easier technically, and would only require opening up one hero/subclass/job for each primary class (at least to start, you can always add more later!).

However – I think there is an interesting debate as to whether leveling the subclass/hero class/job should occur in the background or whether you should physically change classes/levels/skill suites (like with an F5 swap or something). If it is in the background you are always a Warrior or Guardian, and don’t have to switch classes, but as you gain experience you will unlock a wider variety of access to weapons/skills that belong to the subclass. If it is actually a separate class that switches your weapons/traits/skills upon swap then you might as well expand it to include swapping to all of the original classes too (see FFXIV).

The What
Subclass/hero class/job opens up access to new weapons… either previously unusable weapons, mainhanding previous offhands, or access to entirely new weapons (for serious how are there not Great Axes or Crossbows???). That means a whole new skill set to play with. Also you can space unlocks of new utility/elite skills along the leveling curve. This is also consistent with Anet’s plan of using the vertical progression of leveling to teach class mechanics.

I think that the new skills should open up greater variety for the base class, rather than replace it. So you are constantly growing your character rather than making tradeoffs.

Speaking of those new skills – DYNAMIC! Explore more movement on X, Y, and Z axis. Leaps that can go vertical, skills that target allies instead of enemies, and pulls/pushes. This is actually a hugely effective thing – it makes your character feel truly heroic to leap onto an enemy, or leap to an allies salvation, or to push and pull your enemy around the battlefield. This was one thing that SWTOR excelled at – Force Leap to jump up onto a roof to assault your enemy, or the Warrior Defensive Leap where you jumped to your ally to give them a huge defensive boost, or Grappling Hook to pull enemies towards you (or potentially into environmental hazards), or Force Push to throw them away. Particularly since GW2 has stability, these mechanics would be really fun and would spice up both PvE and PvP.

The When
These could be pretty significant updates, and which leads me to a design philosophy question. With biweekly updates, there are always little things going on, but these sorts of big changes will require months of dedicated working resources. Biweekly updates are good little things to keep players who love this game around, and purchasing gems for the fun little things that happen or to accelerate progress by buying gold. However, biweekly updates don’t bring new players in, and don’t bring back many old players.

If you look at subscription and profitability curves for games, there is always a huge spike around expansions. I think GW2 needs to have occasional, bigger content drops, and they need to be called expansions. I don’t care if they are free, or can be paid for with gems, or if they cost real dollars. But those are the rallying points for new players, and are the income sources which let the game really grow in a major way.

While I think that the gear progression is currently the largest problem and most important to fix I have already reasoned about that here .
So I’ll go on and argue about hosing and some stuff below.

I personally think that more progression around orders would be interesting.
Factions would also be nice, but don’t make the Luxon vs Kurzick mistake again where players join factions and one become large because it becomes powerful and it all gets imbalanced. Factions like EverQuest has would be interesting. Players can help different “tribes” of creatures or player race people and gain or lose faction with them by doing different actions. But there has to be some reward to it.

For the housing question I think that open world housing would be most in line with the game. I also think that it would be the most interesting concept. However I do wonder where all those houses should be placed.
The lack of space may however make people populate less populated servers, which is a nice pro.

Questions for Chuggs and others suggesting subclasses: do subclasses increase or decrease build diversity? Couldn’t you get the same results by adding weapon options for a class? And/or by adding additional traits?

What, specifically, about subclasses can the game not support with its existing mechanics and concepts that subclasses bring? Other than “now I have to grind out/lock myself into something else?”

The advantage is, that you truly feel that you are unique with your character.
You can wield that way weapons, that are special to your class, where you will know, that you can use that weapon with your character, because of YOU having made for you the decision to specialize your character into the path, that YOU have chosen.
Connecting Weapons to specific Sub Classes, helps in putting roles to classes, adding new builds and looks to characters, that would be specific for only your chosen Sub Class.

If ANet owuld make every weapon useable for every clas,s we owund end up just in what you said at the end of your posting – quantity and not quality.
Specific Weapons make also absolutely no sense in the hands of every class.
A scepter warrior for example makes clearly no sense for example, same as like a rifle thief would make no sense, because thiefs are all about being silent and sneaky, there make loud rifles no sense. people want them only, so that they can feel like “Snipers”, but a Thief could feel like a sniper also with Crossbows, which would be a much better fitting option for a thief, because crossbows are silent and deadly at the same time without making muhc noice that fits not into the theme of a thief. However I get into OT

Naturally Sub Classes would mean more Skills, but we haven’t seen so far alot more new skills getting implemented, because of t being too hard to balance.
Whe just haven’t seen getting every patch new skills, because ANet was over the past year just way too much focused on other content .

We’ve seen alot of new content havign been added to the game over the past 12 months (for free) and these simply had way much more priority over adding every 2 weeks new skills, that in fact need alot more time of balancing and testing, than adding new features, like a new dungeon path or so, or redesigning a world both does take time.

I don’t suggest with Sub Classes, that Anet should add to the game like 40 new utility skills or more per class, thats unrealistic and I know that.
But adding per Sub Class just like a few new weapons isn’t much work, but they have big impact on the game.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m strongly for Sub Classes, but I’m also not as foolish to believe, that a feature like them would be something, that would be implemented into GW2 from today on within like the next 4 months.
Sub Classes are content, which normally gets implemented through Expansions, don’t forget that.
So if ANet should focus on alot more of role diversification in the near future of GW2, I expect something like Sub Classes to find their way into the game maybe slowly step by step hidden as stealth content, until the moment has come that everythign has been stealth implementated after like 1-2 years to unlock all of them all at once then with a big “Feature Patch” that makes everythign look like then, as if anet would have added all of that just with that one single patch We know how it works xD And we know, that Anet likes to use Stealth Implementations ^^

You want a Thief, that can use the unique Weapon of Chain Sickles? Become an Infiltrator. You want to become able to wield with your Thief Quarterstaffs? Become a Rogue. You want to use Axes and Maces with your Thief? Become a Saboteur!

Just examples, but they clearly show, where this could get to.

You didn’t answer my question: why do we need subclasses to gain access to new weapons and skills? Why can’t we just have those new weapons and skills with our existing classes?

I can call my Thief an “infiltrator” because I wield Chain Sickles without any sort of subclass structure. We have this already in game. Look at terms like Zerk Warrior, Healway, Bearbow – these all refer to specific builds and weapon choices without a subclass structure.

I didn’t answer it, because i’ve seen your question first just at the moment, when I posted my last posting … sheesh.. be more patient

Your “terms” that you mention there, just are plain simple player thought out short cut names for their “builds”, but nothing, that really is linked to a profession, that feels in the game, like following a career with your character.

Builds are no gameplay mechanic, like sub classes, that can be used to unlock new gameplay features step by step. Builds are just builds, player chosen traits, chosen weapons and chosen equipment sets with specific stat combinations, that define together your personal “build”, which the player gives then a name.

But theres no weight behind a build, nothign that defines your personal “progression”, like rasing in ypour class related carreer ladder by specializign your class and becoming in what you’ve chosen to specialize your self more advanced in your profession.

You don’t get born and start to be directly a for example pope. Being the pope is a long chain of decisions in your life, your personal “career ladder”), that defines your role in your life andwhat you can become over time, because every profession has more specalized developed forms.

We don’t have just only businessmen and women in the world. We have alot of different versions of businessmen and women in the world, due to the fact, that all of those different versions (name it sub classes), are specialized in something different, but all of them must have learned the exact same BASIC KNOWLEDGE to become their main profession, the businessman/woman, they share all the basics, but it are the specializations, that define all of their unique roles.