Guild Wars 2

Sorry Orpheal, I thought you were responding to me in your post. I’ll be patient. :-)

ArtemusHunter.9521:

Sirendor.1394:

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

One can only hope. I do think it’s possible, given that they can maybe start with 1 level in upper city, one below surface, per city. That would add probably around 16 maps of a limited size (per server). They should be able to handle that.

Mikuchan.7261:

Claimable land and required building funds

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If not, one solution could be to have claimable land plots that you can only claim (buy) when you can afford to place a house there (to prevent people from stacking up on plots without building anything). You may need to place money and materials in a building fund. When the building fund is large enough for a basic house, you’re allowed to claim a lot and build on it.
Probably limited to 1 per account.

Plot decay to clear up unused plots

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Important is to have a decay system so that the game clears up plots that are unused.
It wouldn’t be desirable to have a rent.
Instead I think that having a timer of perhaps a month or two would be better.
Each time you visit the house, the timer resets.
When the timer reaches it’s target, the game force-sells the house and plot to clear it up so that someone else can use it.

These are two things I want them to avoid no matter what if they add housing,
having lots of gold but having actually done nothing but flipped or farmed should not earn you a house. It can be part of it and unavoidably will be but you should have to achieve some things within the game to get it.

Avoiding decay systems is partially why I want instanced If I leave this game for 5 years and then come back I expect all my stuff, gear ,land etc to be untouched. This would be horrific for people who want to take a break.

Orpheal.8263:

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 .

This can only be wrong, Anet stated multiple times that they have seperate teams who work on specific content. They have a small team which works on Skills & Balancing those (3 people if I remember correctly, Jon Peters and 2 others).

Sociopolitical Diversification:

Guild Halls – Let’s set the bar

The Vision:

A meeting place for like-minded individuals. Filled with fantastical wonders both great and small. A place to spur the imagination in whimsical delight, touching the very soul of all who enter. A bastion of hope and embodiment of dreams. Where even the 6 gods would envy to tread…

Location: The Guild District:

• Though I initially thought that the Guild District should be located in Lion’s Arch, after further thought, with the amount of people who will be drawn to the area, the stress on the frame rate might overtax poor LA, so how about the Guild District being an instanced area of LA somewhat like one’s home instance in Divinity’s Reach, hopefully alleviating that problem.
• First there would have to be some type of central meeting hub area(Guild Marketplace) for congregation outside of the guilds
• Then branching off the Marketplace, the Guild District could be further broken up into Communities depending on what the guild sees itself as being best known for(PvP, WvW, Crafting, Dungeons, PvE Open World, Guild of All Trades, etc.)
• Next it could further be broken into Neighborhoods if you wanted to refine the groupings even more.
• The guild would then need to pick a street and a plot of land on which to build their Guild Hall.
• Real-estate pricing would need to be set prior to anyone claiming any land since the huge guilds with a lot of money would naturally hog up all the close plots leaving all the small guilds pushed to the outskirts. Maybe make some advantage to spreading out, possibly a higher value for being closer to a certain resource.
• Malls could be set up for small guilds to share space, for example: Let’s say that a large guild would take up an acre of land but you have a mall prebuilt on the acre and 50 small guilds could take up the same space.
• As there is going to be a crazy rush when this is first made available, you will need to come up with some variables to who can build what, where and when. All guilds will need to start from equal footing to make it fair for everyone. So some gates will need to be established that cannot be circumvented with preexisting gold, influence, merits, etc.
• No guilds can be built in the first week so that everyone can go into the District and survey where they would like to build. Allow other guild members to agree on a location.

Land Development: The Guild Plot

• The Guild Plot would need to first be reserved for a small non-refundable fee. That would hold the plot for a short period of time. Maybe with a sign “Future location of the XYZ Guild” with guild tag and Herald Icon. Sometime while the location is on reserve the Guild would then buy a Deed and be able to start building.
• Pricing to purchase the Guild Deed would need to depend on Plot location, Plot size, closeness to resources, view, etc. Being way out in the boonies might be very cheap to buy but the same spot next to a spectacular view, much more expensive. This would help to spread everyone out more.
• Currency to be used for building? I am struggling with this one.

1. Gold has the disadvantage of catering to more farming and there is enough of that being rewarded already.
2. Influence makes a little more sense as it has some tie in to dedication to the guild but influence can be purchased with gold which then taints it somewhat.
3. Merits is a big NO as that system already penalizes small and medium size guilds.
4. Guild Credits are a proposed new guild-wide currency that could be accumulated thru guild representation, guild dynamic events located out in the world, etc.

The Physical Guild Hall Structure:

• I have seen may good posts for ideas on what the Guild Hall should look like and what to have in it so I will defer from commenting on those for now.
• The roster size of the Guild should predetermine the size of the Guild Hall itself. A five person guild should not have the same size structure as a five hundred person guild. Only certain size halls can be built on a certain amount of land. So, a 500 person guild could not build a huge guild structure on a 5 person plot of land.
• What if a Guild outgrows its current structure. Then they could find a new location, buy the Deed, pay a moving fee and everything they already achieved would be transferred to the new location.

As you can see, the horizontal expandability options are endless

@Orpheal
Would a deck system that unlocks unique profession specific appearance items by using the ‘deck’ to complete content fulfil your idea of the sub-class? This does not require the addition of sub classes per se but creates recommended builds that when a player selects the deck it will change their skill bar and spend their trait points as well as recommend the optimal stats/sigils/runes. By completing content with the Deck equipped your xp gained would work towards unlocking unique cosmetic items. A necromancer who uses the corruptor ‘deck’ would unlock armor that leaves behind poison pool footsteps while a lich deck causes the character to gain a spectral sheen. As new skills and weapons become available new decks would incentivize players to try the new skills/weapons with their characters.

Orpheal.8263:

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.

And this is where you forget that we’re in a game with alts and people who love to play different professions /characters. Currently suggestions how to unlock a subclass are all about having to play from 1-80 again, grind this and grind that. People already can’t stand that WvW profession is characterbound, how do you think they would react on subclasses?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Orpheal.8263:

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.

And this is where you forget that we’re in a game with alts and people who love to play different professions /characters. Currently suggestions how to unlock a subclass are all about having to play from 1-80 again, grind this and grind that. People already can’t stand that WvW profession is characterbound, how do you think they would react on subclasses?

This is pretty much where I stand. What if I decide I want to change? If I have to go and grind out a new subclass just because I want to try out a different build, that’s a big pain in my rear end.

You see this as opening up new opportunities. I see it as gating opportunities off.

Shongaqu.5279:

@Orpheal
Would a deck system that unlocks unique profession specific appearance items by using the ‘deck’ to complete content fulfil your idea of the sub-class? This does not require the addition of sub classes per se but creates recommended builds that when a player selects the deck it will change their skill bar and spend their trait points as well as recommend the optimal stats/sigils/runes. By completing content with the Deck equipped your xp gained would work towards unlocking unique cosmetic items. A necromancer who uses the corruptor ‘deck’ would unlock armor that leaves behind poison pool footsteps while a lich deck causes the character to gain a spectral sheen. As new skills and weapons become available new decks would incentivize players to try the new skills/weapons with their characters.

If it’s more or less the same system used in The Secret World, I think it would be a brilliant alternative to sub-classes.

Not only does it give the player choice (use this build or make your own), but it also helps the newer players without the need to go outside the game.

My post will be specifically geared toward “What will keep people playing, or coming back”. I have many friends that stopped playing months ago, and it’s become crucial to my enjoying the game, since this is social.

I want more diversification of skills, but I actually feel that something else will achieve what I stated more.

I support the following:
Other games have often garnered attention toward their game by using vertical progression, but I feel Guild Wars 1 proved that horizontal progression does the same trick. People don’t need to feel “better than others” to feel like they’ve achieved a lot.

That said, your character is almost always the display of your achievements, and diversity also promotes this.

I suggest that in order to get more people involved and interested in LS content, PvP, dungeons, etc. You provide visible rewards that provide the opportunity to be unique from (not better) than the person next to you. You have excellent artists at this company, task them more with developing unique assets that characters can literally equip and showcase.

If another LS dungeon like Molten, or Aetherblade, were to release but with the potential of having whole armor sets and weapons received for doing it more than once, I think it would incentivize people to do it more. If they have complaints, they’re probably complaining while still doing the content. With MMO gamers, that’s a win whether the harsh criticism feels like it or not.

One “it could drop” backpiece per dungeon won’t do it though. People want to define their overall style in different ways. One rocket pack is rarely gonna do that barring an engineer here or there, lol.

You don’t have to stop creating gem store armor and weapons, but slowly working our way toward an overall character we aspire to own, by participating in actual content, ropes people in.

In summary, give us very character defining looks and choices with new content. I emphasize new content, but with more replayability. Remove RNG as much as you can, and balance the grind needed to what keeps people playing but also from growing too bored to bother anymore.

@ timmy, I’ve re-edited a part of my answer in my last posting.

The rest follows here in regard of your specific question about the weapons.
I’m not 100% set into stone, that new weapons should be linked to sub classes, or if new weapons should be basically free.
I feel just the first way would be simpler to implement and balance and it just feels to me more right, that each class should have also a unique weapon, that adds upon the individual feeling of the class gameplay of that class.
Not all weapons should be usable by all classes, this would be for the balancing of the game a nightmare, especially with classes like the Elementalist and the Engineer.
certain combinations simply also make no sense at all, like Scepter Warriors, Scepter Thiefs, Pistol Necromancers, Rifle Necromancers ect.
A weapon should feell, like it truly fits to the gameplay and concept of a class. If a weapon simply fits not into the picture of a class, then they shouldn’t also be able to use them, only for the purpose of the class receivign some new weapon skills.
Makes no sense to me.

However, weapons are not the only thing, that can define roles, that make iup for the difference, that you are either viewed as being just a Thief, or as beign an advanced form of your profession like an Infiltrator, that is an superior advanced form of a Thief who is specialized in infiltrating places, gathering informations, stealth, trapping and assassinations with deathly venoms.

Sub Class Specifics could add unique looks to our characters that could help in defining, if you have just a Thief in front of you, or an andvanced Infiltrator by just looking at them and seeing the horizontal progression taking place in that.
Unlocked new unique utility skills, traits, elite skills and abilities to change the looks of your skill animations also do the rest of it together with talents, with that you can improve the natural born features of the class that further define the role of your character.

A Rogue is just superior in stealing, over an Infiltrator, therefore the Infiltrator is superior in stealth, of that of a Rogue and the Saboteur is just medium in both perhaps, but therefore has the unique feature of manipulating enemies and makes alot more use of unique environmental weapons. That are defined roles, that GW2 currently is missing so much, because there are no clear strenths and weaknesses of classes. The role diversifcation, that originately should have come into this game by the split of Damage, Control and Support, simply doesn’t exist, because everythign that counts in ths game so far is in 95% of all cases just only sadly Damage > everything.

PS:

@ Sho:

Good idea, gets near into the direction what I want, remembers me a bit on Kingdoms of Amalur with its “Destiny Cards”, if you know this game for PS3/X360, which had some brilliant gameplay features, especially for awesome finishing moves.

But what I absolutely don’t want with Sub Classes, is adding more grind to the game.
Sub Classes should feel like easy obtainable/learnable specializations, that don’t require of a player like months of playtime, just to reach the final end of your specialization by having to re-level basically your character back up again from 1 to 80 or stuff like that what has been suggested on the last page basically, so that people receive just an incentive to go back into older zones.

Progressing with your Specialization should feel like an achievement.
When progressing feels like an achievement and not like a chore, then it makes fun and it makes you want to spent more time with your character just to see how you can make your character progress even further, until you reach one day your personal zenith of progression, where you can’t specialize yourself any higher in your role.

About changing your decision in regard of Sub CLasses, thats why I want them to be changeable, just like Craftign Jobs. You can progress with all of them, and if you change your Sub Class, you don#t lose any progress.
However, changing them just costs you a fee olf gold, just like resetting traits costs a fee, or how changing dual classes in GW1 did cost also a small fee.

if you level up Black Smithing to 500, change then to Jewelry and return then to Black Smithing, once you made Jewelry to 400 as example, you return to Black MSithing with Level 500, you didn’t los any of your progress and the same way i want it with Sub Classes.

Every Sub Class has its Max Job Level, which you raise by collecting Job Experience, while you have your chosen Sub Class active. That way you earn for your Sub Class Talent Points, which you can then spent withon your sub class specific talents to specialize your character and unlock slowly new features, weapons, looks, trait,s ect. pp for your chosen Sub Class, that you can use only, while your chosen Sub Class is active in use.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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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.

Not much more to say. My #1 was (and still is) skill progression- more skills, more weapons, customizing 1-5 skills, and so on. Progressing your character by customizing it.

But the quoted idea is a game defining feature- or series of features -in a class all it’s own. Make it happen.

Orpheus, I agree with many of your points – I’d love to see control and support be more viable. I’d love to see condition builds in PvE be more viable. I just don’t think subclassing is the right way to go.

I certainly don’t believe that every class should have access to every weapon.

It sounds like what you really want are VISUAL cues tied to the existing build structure. Right now, you can already make a Thief that specializes in stealth or stealing. What you want is a cosmetic way to make that more obvious. Is that a fair statement?

That brings up an interesting option: what if certain traits could have unlockable visual additions? For example, once you’ve accomplished X with grenades, you unlock a second version of Grenadier that gives you the same effect but adds a special skin? Or once you accomplish Y with stealing, your Thief can unlock a Sleight of Hand trait which applies a different look? Or perhaps it means that you don’t get the “whoosh” sound when you dodge or shadowstep? (you know… you’re silent)

You could continue to use the original trait, of course.

coehl.2948:

coehl

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My post will be specifically geared toward “What will keep people playing, or coming back”. I have many friends that stopped playing months ago, and it’s become crucial to my enjoying the game, since this is social.

I want more diversification of skills, but I actually feel that something else will achieve what I stated more.

I support the following:
Other games have often garnered attention toward their game by using vertical progression, but I feel Guild Wars 1 proved that horizontal progression does the same trick. People don’t need to feel “better than others” to feel like they’ve achieved a lot.

That said, your character is almost always the display of your achievements, and diversity also promotes this.

I suggest that in order to get more people involved and interested in LS content, PvP, dungeons, etc. You provide visible rewards that provide the opportunity to be unique from (not better) than the person next to you. You have excellent artists at this company, task them more with developing unique assets that characters can literally equip and showcase.

If another LS dungeon like Molten, or Aetherblade, were to release but with the potential of having whole armor sets and weapons received for doing it more than once, I think it would incentivize people to do it more. If they have complaints, they’re probably complaining while still doing the content. With MMO gamers, that’s a win whether the harsh criticism feels like it or not.

One “it could drop” backpiece per dungeon won’t do it though. People want to define their overall style in different ways. One rocket pack is rarely gonna do that barring an engineer here or there, lol.

You don’t have to stop creating gem store armor and weapons, but slowly working our way toward an overall character we aspire to own, by participating in actual content, ropes people in.

In summary, give us very character defining looks and choices with new content. I emphasize new content, but with more replayability. Remove RNG as much as you can, and balance the grind needed to what keeps people playing but also from growing too bored to bother anymore.

first – Welcome to the CDI!!!

second – similar to how they did the new path in TA, but without the tiny drop rate of the new weapons? actually the new weapons could be ascended with their fancy effects and we could use classic tokens to unlock them…

Shongaqu.5279:

similar to how they did the new path in TA, but without the tiny drop rate of the new weapons? actually the new weapons could be ascended with their fancy effects and we could use classic tokens to unlock them.

As long as by doing the content, preferably more than one thing to do, maybe four or five, gives you some of what is required to eventually reach the goal. Fractals do this in their own way in some respects (mats for ascended) or tokens, which are straight forward and easily managed.

I should also clarify that this is under the assumption that at least some changes to the mechanics of the gameplay change (pretty please because I’m vouching for something of lesser importance to me).

They can experiment a bit on how to make people feel like each run of these new content contributions is eventually going to help them establish a character to feel proud of.

ArenaNet’s artists are just unquestionably ahead of others in their craft. This game could really afford a large extension of what is possible on a character level, that’s playing to one of the company’s greatest strengths (imho).

I’d have to agree that the following three focuses are the most vital in improving the game:

— 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.

But as for which one of the three that I think ArenaNet should prioritize on is " Role Diversification " , hands down. This is was THE defining characteristic of Guild Wars and I would love to see it make a comeback.

My vote for a single idea goes to Role Diversification as well. New skills and traits, new options for them, new weapons and weapon types.

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

But as for which one of the three that I think ArenaNet should prioritize on is " Role Diversification " , hands down. This is was THE defining characteristic of Guild Wars and I would love to see it make a comeback.

I sure hope you’re right.

Orpheal.8263:

an advanced form of your profession like an Infiltrator, that is an superior advanced form of a Thief who is specialized in infiltrating places, gathering informations, stealth, trapping and assassinations with deathly venoms.A Rogue is just superior in stealing, over an Infiltrator, therefore the Infiltrator is superior in stealth, of that of a Rogue and the Saboteur is just medium in both perhaps, but therefore has the unique feature of manipulating enemies and makes alot more use of unique environmental weapons.

you’re talking about vertical profession. If an Infiltrator has longer stealth (which already is difficult to balance) it would totally ruin balancing. Also your subclasses seem to make the core profession non-viable. Each subclass does something better than the profession without.

What I like in your suggestion above:
different looks depending on your choice of playstyle. Give each skill family (like conjures, poisons,…) values for each skill and trait. (e.g. poison skill x: 10 points, poison trait y: 10 points). If your current build has more than 50 points in poisons, you unlock the ability to dye your gear in a new poisonous-dye or wear a certain piece of skin.

Imagine: a Ranger who has chosen enough traits and skills which strengthen the pet unlocks a new colourscheme/fur pattern for pets and an armorset designed with a lot of fur and stuffed animal-skulls etc.

I voted for Marcus Greythorne’s Zone Progression and tied it to Chris’ Hero Recognition category( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3446808 ), but here’s some ideas I had for Socio-political Diversification:

• Player housing will only be attractive to me if others can see it. Putting it in the open world is likely not feasible, but can you put small markers in the open world that players can double-click to go to a player home instance? This way players could still pick where to build/place their abode and other players could still find and view them but the world wouldn’t be cluttered and load-times wouldn’t suffer.

• Barring this, I want player housing to be handled within guild halls. In a previous post in this thread I imagined a great hall with 500 doors lining the walls that lead to the customizable rooms/suites of the individual guild members. These may or may not have to be instanced, I don’t know what the limitations are. This would still allow many people to see your awesome home.

• As for guild halls, if it is not possible to place them in the open world, or a marker to access their instance in the open world, then I want them to be on floating islands in the Mists. In this case they should be accessible through the UI like other people have said in this thread. It would probably be impossible, but what if for GvG you merged two guild hall instances so we could battle between the two floating guild hall islands in a sort of land-based boarding action in the sky? That’s pretty much the GvG of my dreams. I also like Yalora Istairiea’s guild districts idea.

• It would also be cool if we were able to cosmetically upgrade some of the guild-specific items (like the back banner) with more guild commendations; we need a form of cosmetic guild progression for our characters.

To speak to what I’d like to see on a personal level:

Branch out existing professions into more varied roles, but that do not imbalance your ability to to do existing content.

Example: Three forms of the guardian profession that you can trait into that do a bit more specialization than what currently exists.

A damage oriented version that specializes in more offensive yet “holy-ish” abilities. Wielding spirit weapons or something that really class you up. I’ll call this guy a dervish.

A boon/support oriented version of the guardian that hearkens back to the paragon a bit. As he does his boons, it’s very visible. Wings that appear during casts, symbols on the ground that go into aoe support. Obviously, I’ll call him the paragon.

Last, a control oriented version of the guardian. He can do more with walls, bubbles, chains, and knockback effects. I’ll call this guy blue lantern. Because I’m not a serious person as much as I should be.

It invests into existing capabilities in game, but sacrifices more into becoming that role. If you invest more into becoming damage (putting you squisher than a zerk guardian), it might cause people to feel more inclined to bring control or support members to allow them to play this more damage oriented style.

The reason I didn’t suggest this first is that I understand GW2 was intended to be simpler to balance skillwise. This would not help that, but I feel the investment in making it happen would be worth it.

@ timmy:

Yeah, Id grant that for being a fair statement, at least I’d say, its a part of the core essence, why I want Sub Classes. When I have specialized myself into an advanced form of my class when I’ved raised my character’s career to the next stage of progression, then I want also to have some visual clear differences, that let other players recognize that difference by just looking at my character.

When I decide to specialize my thief into an Infiltrator, then I also want other players to recognize me directly and exactly as this, just by looking at my style of combat, my style of skill animations, my style of unique looking equipment and so on …

Subclass cosmetical trait line

What if you add 10 more points to each trait-line which are cosmetical only? You can’t use your trait points for it though, but c-trait points (cosmetical trait points).

Example:
Beast Master trait line (Ranger): 30 traitpoints (3 Major and 3 Minor traits) + 10 c-traitpoints (1 Minor and 1 Major c-trait).

Each c-trait slot (Major and Minor) has c-traits just like the normal traits, but those are only cosmetical.

Beast Master c-traits:

• Minor: you now are able to equip Beastmaster-gear-skins.
• Major I: your felines have a new fur-pattern
• Major II: your beastmaster’s gloves get claws (cosmetical only of course)
• Major III: your axes look 10% larger
• Major IV: your pet is 10% larger
• Major V: your drakes use new sound effects
• …

As a GW1 legacy player, I’d love to see more Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

I spent half over half my playtime in GW1 faction farming and I loved the town ownership/alliance dynamic. AB battles, JQ and MQSC were also really fun. I also love the idea of bringing back guild halls and maybe you can bring back GvG too?

lol, sorry, timmyf had the same idea before me… I didn’t want to “steal” that O_O

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

Chris,

I’d actually thought back when you posted your own top 3 that you’d pretty much nailed the what the general consensus was on the most important parts (certainly a good sign!). This is naturally going to become clearer when you have people pick their one most important, since that’s naturally going to get people to throw out the nice-to-haves and focus on the single most important thing. Thus, I think people are lining up behind one or another of your three not because they’re blinkered, but because for most people, one of those three genuinely is the most important in their mind.

Personally, I go for role diversification. More skills, weapons, traits, and, ideally, removal of the pain of retraiting so people can feel free to change builds and try something different when the whim strikes them. (Ability to more conveniently change weapon and armour stats would also help here, but I don’t think it is as important.)

For the record, no to subclasses. Unlike Orpheal’s claim that people who don’t like the restrictions associated with subclasses should only like completely freeform systems without classes at all and thus that there’s no point being anywhere but at one of the two extremes, I think having professions with freedom to make your own builds within those professions is a good compromise point. Certainly, a subclass system is NOT what I signed up for when I purchased the game.

PS: Okay, looking at more recent posts, the fundamental concept behind subclasses seems to be recognition for having specialised in a particular fashion…

That’s a reasonable goal. I’m busy this weekend, but can we think of ways in which people would be able to show off that they’ve specialised in a particular area without locking off build diversity? Say, having challenges in the world designed to be achieved by certain archetypes within a profession, that unlock new aesthetics – but keeping those aesthetics active requires having trait allocations within the bounds of the archetype? (For instance, keeping the aesthetic changes for a “poisoner”-type thief would require having a minimum number of traits invested in venoms, while activating the aesthetic changes for a stealth-based thief requires having a certain minimum investment in Shadow Arts).

That way, we might be able to get the best of both worlds – we don’t get any mechanical restrictions from such a “soft subclass system”, but people who specialise in a given archetype can gain cosmetic benefits over time that demonstrate their usage of and skill with that archetype.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

lol, sorry, timmyf had the same idea before me… I didn’t want to “steal” that O_O

Great minds think alike! :-D

My number one “2014 First To Do/Fix” would definitely be Profession Definitions, and by that I mean Role Diversification (as discussed here) and what I believe more importantly Role Viability.

Every Profession should not only be viable in every type of gameplay but should be able to do the 3 tenets of the Guild Wars 2 Build Structure of Damage, Control, Support. Plus the inclusion of more skill variety to better define which of the 3 types you want to play. For example in my skill bar I could select 5 Damages, 5 Supports or 5 Controls, or obviously hybrid mix and be relevant. I wouldn’t force every profession to use a heal spot and I would allow some professions to be able to use multiple heals. Class diversity is far better than class generalization (Frankly, I DON’T like I can do everything, waters down my profession, jack of all, master of none).

Yes, I know mobs have to be altered as well to make builds viable (separate discussion) but removing caps on conditions as well as better mitigating DPS builds would be a great start.

draxynnic.3719:

That’s a reasonable goal. I’m busy this weekend, but can we think of ways in which people would be able to show off that they’ve specialised in a particular area without locking off build diversity? Say, having challenges in the world designed to be achieved by certain archetypes within a profession, that unlock new aesthetics – but keeping those aesthetics active requires having trait allocations within the bounds of the archetype? (For instance, keeping the aesthetic changes for a “poisoner”-type thief would require having a minimum number of traits invested in venoms, while activating the aesthetic changes for a stealth-based thief requires having a certain minimum investment in Shadow Arts).

That way, we might be able to get the best of both worlds – we don’t get any mechanical restrictions from such a “soft subclass system”, but people who specialise in a given archetype can gain cosmetic benefits over time that demonstrate their usage of and skill with that archetype.

well people loved skill hunting in GW1. What if…

• you have the cosmetic-trait system I suggested above
• each of the Major c-traits are bound to specific veterans all over the world. Kill those to unlock that new cosmetic trait.

or even deeper:

• The profession trainer gives you tasks to become a true xy (xy = subclass e.g. Beastmaster)
• task 1: unlock rank 2 of zone xy (Beastmasters may have Jungle-zones) to purchase a Signet of Capture (this can only be used in that zone)
• task 2: capture certain traits from veterans in different zones (again: Beastmasters find beastmaster-c-traits in Jungle-zones)

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

Good point Marcus – I think there are two solutions. One would be to tag all mobs on your entry into the zone, but then if anyone kills them it counts, but that would encourage zerg-clearing zones which might be briefly hilarious but is also kind of ridiculous and doesn’t lead to a sustained population in the zone.

I don’t think that Vanquish would actually cause a major problem though. Even if someone else tags your mobs before you can get to them, and you have to do a second lap through the zone to clean up, it seems very unlikely to me that you would end up having to spawn-camp a mob spawn for more than one spawn.

A third option would be to put a kill tally for each TYPE of mob in the zone that represents the total population, but then count all kills. So if there are 50 moas spread all over the map, as soon as you kill 50 moas you’ve got that part of the Vanquish done, even if what you actually did was kill the same 10 moas in one corner of the map five times each. As I write this, I think I actually like this solution the best. That way if you did a full comb-through of the map you’d probably get 80%+ of the way through the Vanquish, but then you could go back and clean up wherever you could find the right mobs.

Vanquish obviously works much more smoothly in an instanced dungeon, but I think the benefits (increased Zone participation and population) make it worth trying to work through the logistical difficulties.

— Role Diversification:
— Sociopolitical Diversification:
— Hero Recognition:

Wow, those three are tough choices. They are all important but if ‘bang for the buck’ is the judging criteria I’d have to vote for Sociopolitical Diversification.

Role Diversification leads to massive complications for balance and so it would require large amounts of resources to handle it well. The same with the amount of content needed for Hero Recognition. I’ve read suggestions for that would require unique content that only a small number of players would ever see upon attain some particular achievement or whatever, and going too far down that path would lead to resources being eaten up only for the benefit of small, (albeit probably appreciative) fractions of the community.

I think Sociopolitical Diversification would be engaging the community and the content dedicated to it would see the most usage by the most players. The Player Housing and Guild Housing aspect could also contribute to the Hero Recognition category through the previous suggestions of statues for achievements and such. NPCs reactions in the home instance could also provide recognition taking less resources than dealing with NPCs in the open world.

Naturally all three are important, but if I had to think of which would get me the most excited about GW2 again, it would be SD.

LoneBaron.1284:

• Player housing will only be attractive to me if others can see it. Putting it in the open world is likely not feasible, but can you put small markers in the open world that players can double-click to go to a player home instance? This way players could still pick where to build/place their abode and other players could still find and view them but the world wouldn’t be cluttered and load-times wouldn’t suffer.

I really like this idea. The ability to visit other customized houses would be great and could lead into various meta-game elements like monthly contests for most original, best seasonal etc.

timmyf.1490:

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… ;-)

I also own a house. Which is why I keep campaigning against game houses requiring rent/mortgage/logins lest they vanish. That’s real world drudgery, keep it out of my fun place! However, one reason I own a house is that I like having a place to live that is comfy and safe and mine. My characters feel a bit rootless even though Donari can snag the noble house in Salma District for small RP gatherings and Jin can sell tea and silk in a “shop” that is just a room with a counter in DR and Mouse can nestle in the hay of an LA barn … The world will feel more alive if there’s a place to live in it.

That doesn’t mean it should be an all consuming grind. Fun is key! LotRO had a good start on it, though the hooks for objects were far too sparse (whoever heard of a hobbit house with acres of unused floor space?) especially with player crafted decorative items, the recipes for some of which required higher level faction rep. Housing in an MMO gives a whole lot of diversion and things to work on at one’s own pace.

I recall seeing a picture posted of someone’s apartment they’d lovingly put together in one of the Star Wars MMOs. It was astounding (and from the comments, they’d done a stellar job with the tools available, above and beyond the norm). It’s a creative outlet.

Yes, I RP. No, I don’t think housing is the only horizontal addition the game needs. I do think it will add a whole new dimension to the GW2 experience and I have faith that ANet can come up with creative new ways to implement it that really make people happy.

I would love to see ANET’s take on raiding.

How it would differ from traditional MMO raiding and what kind of game-play/ rewards it could offer. Random example: Maybe raiding (legendary dungeons) could lead to acquiring Legendary armors.

I’m not entirely sure what I’d like to see from raiding in this game. However, if we ever get raiding, I don’t want it to be the traditional WoW style. I feel there is a lot of opportunity to be creative here.

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.

Honestly, I’m not so sure cloth prices being high is what you should be focusing on. You guys just put out a crafting system that punishes players for crafting with their own materials rather than spending money buying from the trading post. You can justify it as not being a time gate if you like, but I don’t see how that’s acceptable. Maybe a better option would be to fix the ascended crafting system itself, and then worry about playing with material acquisition.

Cliff.8679:

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.

Honestly, I’m not so sure cloth prices being high is what you should be focusing on. You guys just put out a crafting system that punishes players for crafting with their own materials rather than spending money buying from the trading post. You can justify it as not being a time gate if you like, but I don’t see how that’s acceptable. Maybe a better option would be to fix the ascended crafting system itself, and then worry about playing with material acquisition.

As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.

My top 3:

1. More interaction with the current open world – Give us the ability to sit on chairs/benches/etc… emotes affecting the environment such as NPC or object reactions. Also give us a reason to go back and re-visit the existing worlds. Perhaps re-doing the heart quests for extra rewards (maybe a way to obtain ascended armor/weps?).

2. Animation customization – give us the option to change the way our character moves, runs, attacks, blocks, casts, etc… Perhaps obtainable via karma/laurels/quests.

3. Variable options on existing armor skins – give us the ability to choose between 3 or more versions of the same armor skin. For example: Duelist coat can have the original version with the back skirt and left side long skirt, and its options can either have – back only/right side only/back+left+right skirt… That way, it will only require slight changes to the existing armors instead of having to implement entirely new versions of armors…. (Personally I could do without that long left skirt on my Duelist coat – I just want the back skirt to show so I could better sport those cool tier 3 medium assassin leggings )

Chuggs.1682:

A third option would be to put a kill tally for each TYPE of mob in the zone that represents the total population, but then count all kills. So if there are 50 moas spread all over the map, as soon as you kill 50 moas you’ve got that part of the Vanquish done, even if what you actually did was kill the same 10 moas in one corner of the map five times each. As I write this, I think I actually like this solution the best. That way if you did a full comb-through of the map you’d probably get 80%+ of the way through the Vanquish, but then you could go back and clean up wherever you could find the right mobs.

Vanquish obviously works much more smoothly in an instanced dungeon, but I think the benefits (increased Zone participation and population) make it worth trying to work through the logistical difficulties.

Hmm vanquish in GW1 had certain characteristics:

• you had to do it in hard mode
• it could be done in a reasonable amount of time
• it had to be done in one go

Killing mobs in low level zones isn’t difficult at all, backscaling doesn’t work properly (in my opinion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Z788nLevI) so it just would feel tedious.

It also takes far too long to vanquish a whole zone in GW2, these zones are huge.

So how could we adress these points (because I really like your spirit of bringing players back to the maps)?

1.) What if…

• a npc can toggle vanquish mode on/off for you
• in this mode you are 2 levels below the current zone level (instead of same level or slightly above) OR you can only wear white gear (he offers 0815 white gear for karma – unique skin though)

now this npc can be unlocked when you’ve got map completion of that zone + lv.80. What I did here: make the game harder for you personally. It’s not griefing since you just represent a low level player, which happens to be around all the time in low level zones.

2.) now to the second point:

• the npc guy has 4 tasks for you. Each of those can be completed in one go easily:
• task 1: kill xy (number of) Ogres in that zone in 3 locations while in vanquish mode (these will be marked on the map when the mode is active)
• task 2: kill xy Centaurs in that zone in 5 locations (see: map)
• task 3: …
• task 4: …

These tasks can be completed whenever you like, you don’t have to do all 4 tasks on one day. You have to do one task in one go though – else it resets.

This would break up a huge but too easy task into smaller bits which would be relatively challenging compared to your suggestion.

Edit: and we DON’T want to kill Moas… we don’t. Just no

timmyf.1490:

As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.

People who play the tradingpost (flipping) will have access to much more mats —> the rich guys get even richer while the poor ones find no place where to farm cloth-mats effeciently.

I don’t know, maybe it’s a very bad idea, but what if mats could be purchaseable through karma also? So that people who play the game a lot have a chance to follow up to the guys who buy gems —> money / flip trading post (aka no gameplay involved)?

I don’t think the open world is challenging enough for vanquishing to be a thing. Previously in this thread, I suggested new instanced zones without waypoints that could include a vanquishing concept. I called them Wilderness Zones. Still think that’s a better plan.

I had also suggested that Order Missions might send you into those zones and included a few examples. I could dig up a link if anybody’s interested.

a small add to my vanquish idea: disable waypoints when vanquish mode is active

This thread has me all excited for new updates and I can’t wait until they release the preview for the update in the 21st!

Curious: Has there been anything (even tiny things) that we’ve discussed in the various CDIs that has been able to be added to the game yet?

timmyf.1490:

As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.

And they absolutely should improve crafting in such a way that people can make a profit off it, because until now it’s been largely impossible. But crippling players who want to use their own materials with time-gating for best-in-slot gear is not the answer.

timmyf.1490:

I don’t think the open world is challenging enough for vanquishing to be a thing. Previously in this thread, I suggested new instanced zones without waypoints that could include a vanquishing concept. I called them Wilderness Zones. Still think that’s a better plan.

I had also suggested that Order Missions might send you into those zones and included a few examples. I could dig up a link if anybody’s interested.

Personally I’d like to do Vanquishing in the zones we have, so that you see other players doing their things and maybe get sidetracked with other things to do. Wilderness zones would take you out of the old zones which would split the playerbase. I’m all for new zones, but these too should be full of plentyful activities and not for vanquishing only.

LOL you wrote about waypoint disabling while I was busy writing my posts ^^ great idea! :P I like the suggestion that players have to use their feet while doing vanquishing.

Rewards vs. Content

I just want to talk about this design element/philosophy, since I think it is easily blurred but is incredibly important to growing/retaining a player base.

A reward is what you get for completing a task.

Content is what you do and what you have fun with while you move toward a reward.

A lot of the “horizontal progression” ideas thrown out here are purely Rewards. More skins! More dyes! Guild halls! Player housing!

Rewards are important! Very important! But what I would like to see if an emphasis on how Rewards increase the incentive to enjoy content. Because people like games when they get new shiny Rewards, and they like games where the content is fun even if they aren’t being Rewarded, but they LOVE games and stick with games where they are being given fun and fresh things to do, and also get cool new rewards.

So I’m not disagreeing with the people who ask for these rewards, but I think the real challenge for Anet is: “How do I put new Rewards into the game that effectively lead to people enjoying more content.”

One way is New Content. Dungeons/zones. I love those things, but they take time and resources to build for Anet and so they are sometimes not the most cost-efficient way to grow content. New content is best content, but we can’t always have just new content.

Another way is Recycle Content. Oh, you’ve done COF 10 times? Do it 100 times and get legendary dye, or a Charr statue for your house!

Finally, you can Renew Content. A lot of content is missed by most players, particularly the harder dungeon paths, and the leveling zones. My first 80 finished with only 25% map completion, which I suspect is probably pretty average. I still don’t have most of the map uncovered, but I have little Reward incentive to do so unless I’m going for Map Completion for a Legendary. There are a lot of ideas which could give people an incentive to go out into the map, or do dungeon paths they haven’t completed yet.

For example:
Leveling a subclass. It renews the content not only because you have a reason to explore new areas of the map, but also because the experience is fresh with new skills/weapons.

Vanquishing. It renews content by driving you to areas you haven’t been, and making you visit a dungeon/zone from a different perspective of killing every single last living thing there (killing it with love!).

Dungeon Progression. Escalating difficulties of dungeons (either through a fractal-like system, or a Nightmare mode, or some other scaling) keeps them fresh and a Reward system that encouraged completion of more paths and varied dungeons would wipe out the monotony of running the same handful of quick/easy ones once a day to get the Daily rewards.

Order/Racial Rewards. New quests and events centered in the world and built around building faction or building personality points (to attain race-specific or personality-specific Rewards) would encourage people to go back and experience content they may have skipped before.

Cliff.8679:

timmyf.1490:

As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.

And they absolutely should improve crafting in such a way that people can make a profit off it, because until now it’s been largely impossible. But crippling players who want to use their own materials with time-gating for best-in-slot gear is not the answer.

Time-gating or soul-binding key ingredients are basically the only way to guarantee profits, because an efficient market will drive the cost of the end-product toward the price of materials. This is because the effort or skill involved in crafting is just pushing a “craft” button, so you aren’t really bringing much value to the table vs. the other 10,000 max level Tailors out there.

Time Gating guarantees that demand will outstrip supply, and thus guarantee profits for crafters.

Soul binding/account binding ingredients also works, but will reward heavy grinders/farmers much more heavily than the common producer. If the grinders/farmers produce enough to drive supply up, you still might not even be able to make a profit this way.

TLDR: Time Gated crafting is an AWESOME solution to a very vexing problem, and although it SEEMS annoying, it is actually really really good for you.

… to evolve my idea about vanquishing a little bit in the reward section:

What if…

• Vanquishing is repeatable
• Once you’ve done all 4 tasks (see suggestion above) you unlock a vendor-page at that npc where you can spend vanquishing coins (you get some coins for completing all 4 tasks)
• the hook: you can only purchase 1 thing, then the vanquishing tasks reset and the vendor becomes disabled until you do the vanquishing of that zone again
• prestige objects need at least 3 runs, most of the objects are purchaseable for 1 run though.

What’s interesting now would be the living story. Zones might change during living story chapters and some vanquishing areas with it.

Do you think this could feel too grindy?

First off, I like this game, sure it’s got flaws but I like it.

ArenaNet, PLEASE reconsider playable NPC’s like henchmen & heroes for dungeons & fractals. Pugging is either hit or miss, also friends & guild mates aren’t always around or easy to make for some. I think if you guys want players to experience content & stay in the game, you need to give them access & freedom of choice. Personally I pug, some experiences are good some are a disaster, but sometimes I don’t learn the dungeon paths since everyone’s skipping thru them! The attitude people display when you don’t play their way leaves a lot to be desired.

A lot of players say heroes/henchmen will ‘kill’ teamwork like it ‘killed’ Guild Wars 1, but I don’t believe that. Heroes gave more years to that game than anything. Nothing is stopping them from forming a team with friends, guilds or pugs.

In the end, I’m reading that dungeons/fractals are the supposed, mythical ‘end-game’ everyone’s talking about! I never heard of that word in my life, I play a game because I like to play! Dungeons/Fractals are being catered to the raiders & farmers like every other run-of-the-mill MMO and not to the general public and it needs to end.

instead of creating followers for dungeons (which I believe is not possible since you need intelligent AI for certain encounters other than npcs who are quite stupid) I’d suggest following:

Improve the scaling mechanics and make versions of each dungeon / encounter for 1-4 players. Now I would be able to enter the dungeon with my friend only and have a slightly different experience. Yes, some bosses might feel totally different (easier), but wasn’t this the idea behind scaling in GW2 from the beginning: Monsters get new skills, the more players there are.

BUT don’t forget people who enjoy soloing 5man content. There needs to be an option for not being scaled down to 1 player. It should show in your UI, so that people who managed to solo an instance will get the prestige when showing it on youtube. Why not reward those guys with titles too?

I think a lot more people would try to solo an instance non-scaled, if they learn to play it in a easier version – scaled for 1man.

To give incentive to play with a full group – rewards (tokens) should be best when playing with 5 players. Since bosses have less skills for 1-4 players it’s only logical to be rewarded with less token.

Any restrictions on dungeons and fractals? Story mode only, level 1-10 fractals only, for example? Or is it OK to open them all up for henchmen?

(I hardly ever play dungeons/fractals at all, although I used to in GW1. So I’m not sure what kind of impact that concept might have.)