Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

Well, new personal story arcs could send you off on paths that lead to unlocking something specific from the Order you chose at the beginning of the game (which would add more substance to the Order you choose mattering)…

Also just want to quickly add, I think this would be really cool and is an example of an approachable system for all players that’s relatively easy to message, understand, and could be available to everyone.

Expanding on Volkron’s idea, making a “task system” tied to the Orders would encourage more players to participate in the Personal Story and also allow you to tailor the tasks required to unlock the skills to the specific Orders. So someone who joined the Priory might be tasked to track down an artifact or research an area, a Whispers member might be charged to spy/infiltrate/assassinate, while Vigil members could earn the new skills through good old fashioned hand ’n slash. In this way the same skill could be unlocked through different styles of play and players would be rewarded for/encouraged to progress their Personal Stories (giving us character progression on two fronts at once).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There has been a huge amount of discussion around sub classes. I would love to see you guys close out this particular area by either putting a sub class proposal together (Sentence detailing how it would work) or deciding as a group that it isn’t relevant at this point.

Personally I like the idea behind sub classes and see quite a few of the counter arguments based upon assumptions around balancing etc. Where possible we should try not to make decisions around feasibility of ideas through assumptions.

In short I would like to see if the CDI group thinks it is a relevant part of Horizontal Progression at this stage of GW2’s life?

Chris

I’m not sure I do really feel like it’s a relevant part of Horizontal Progression at this stage of GW2’s life, personally. I kinda feel like it should be added quite a bit down the road with some additional vertical progression like a new level cap and stuff at the same time where those sub classes actually make your class more powerful rather than as purely horizontal.

Though, as I think about it, one way of doing it horizontally that I kinda like the idea of is having additional weapon skills that are locked to specific trait lines. I’m an ele, so not sure how it’d work for other classes, but it’d be cool if I could unlock additional fire weapon skills by putting points in Fire, water by putting points in water, etc. In that case I think they’d simply be unlocked using skill points, like you’ve been doing lately with healing skills.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

Wow good question. If I would have to combine everything you guys have ever done into one idea:

• WvW ranks – additional variability on builds. What we are really after is more switches to flip, not more positions for each switch – if you get the analogy. WvW ranks gives this to the WvWers (sadly PvErs are left out in the cold).
• Queens Gauntlet and Nightmare Tower – effectively open-world dungeons. You would have to be super careful with zerging requirements (which both needed) but the general concept of them was awesome – diamonds in the rough.
• Dynamic Events – look at the Queensdale champ farm, this is a starting area that is frequented by level 80s, it’s very easy champ bags. This is one aspect that was a mistake of Fractals in my honest opinion, that type of progression is way “too vertical.”

So here’s an idea, bring back The Hall of Heroes [or some more recent lore equivalent] and have it effectively a WvW arena against NPCs (which is probably completely impractical to do at this stage, but hey, ideation). Ranks in that arena (ascending?) could be spent on permanent passive bonuses for PvE (MF/GF/Karma) or once-off bonuses (Gold/Skins/Laurels and hey, hey, skills). Heck, maybe even allow a guild to “level up” in that area and earn traits to spend on their guild (that’s not to say it should be exclusively a guild thing like guild missions are).

Additional “useful” bonuses (ones that affect damage output etc.) are really tricky territory. Look at how the community has already abused achievement points as a barrier of entry to certain dungeons. At the same time I did indicate that more switches would be nice in terms of being able to have more unique builds. Maybe you could periodically release new soloable dungeons in that realm that will unlock a passive “useful” boost slot (each one having a few options that we can freely switch outside of combat?).

So there you have it, an open-world dungeon where we can earn ranks to spend on MF/GF/Karma/Gold/Skills/Skins/etc. with mini solo dungeons where we can earn new passive slots above-and-beyond our traits (and you can periodically release more of these if you want to further horizontal progression).

Ideas, impractical ones, but there you go .

Edit:

I just spotted your “pressing 1” and the Queens Gauntlet/Nightmare Tower are somewhat conducive to that type of gameplay. One idea could be have low-hanging fruit (champions and mobs) that yield extremely low rank XP (but are extremely reliable, maybe even intentionally plan out a train route for the players). Then have dynamic events that require a certain amount of players (activate then group up like breakouts in WvW) that are real challenges – stuff like a Skritt burglar on steroids (and maybe I will finally get my jackalope achievement ).

In regards to the mini solo instances you would have different forms of mastery. For example combat mastery would involve killing some stuff (hurrah), or mobility mastery some jumping puzzles. They would be challenging, but not the type of stuff that some players could never finish.

I have been thinking of these Racial Titles as well, what Ilmatar and Benjamin have talking about.
in this link: ( I hope I copy it right)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/34#post3451097

Benjamin’s table of Racial Titles was awesome. I have made some suggestions in this table too. I hope you don’t mind that I have use your table as base of my suggestion. I have change couple Titles names, otherwise it is untouched, I hope .

Here is my Table for Racial Titles:

I’m just throwing out ideas as I get them…..

Some new Skill Challenges could be made specifically to help new players out at the begining could be Events and NPC’s that teach some basics of combat

(Combo Fields for Example : Have the NPC lay out various combo fields, and have you use a skill to produce a combo finisher, and then he’ll explain to you how it works. No more Wiki to explain that aspect of the game!!!

Skill Challenges much later in the game could task you with applying the knowledge you learned early on from these beginer challenges. Some could be some creatively designed puzzles, or they could be applied in those Order challenges that Darkace and Volkon are talking about)

ColinJohanson.2394:

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

I think that events should be the key to horizontal progression, since they are the main content of the game. Not repeating hearts or doing static quests.

Maybe you could implement Expeditions.

• NPCs in cities would have short timers where they gather people (1-4min). They would then open a small portal to the borders of a zone where a meta-event might start soon. You then follow these npcs through the portal, to the event-location, and start the eventchain together. (like WvW breakout events)
• these NPCs would be doing this constantly. Once NPC a is through the portal, the portal disappears and a new NPC arrives with a new portal. You never know where the next portal takes you. As tons of event-chains in the game start constantly, there should be no downtime. New players could just go to the NPC (a big orange event-marker on the map, like the breakout events in WvW) and wait for a short time, to participate in any of the event-chains in the game.
• you could make this a daily: help NPC xy on his expedition.
• a few of the really big boss-event chains are added to these expeditions as well, so you don’t have to rely on boss-timers anymore.
• People in the same area as the NPC are scaled up to the zone-level

@Horizontal Progression:
There could be NPCs like this in each home city, who only create portals to events in that land. E.g. Divinity’s Reach —> Kryta. (Boss-events could be an exception / the boss-portal could look different).

Now you gather reputation for Kryta when you help the portal-NPCs in Divinity’s Reach.

BUT I also think that exploration isn’t rewarding as it could be.

Veterans in the open world are sometimes quite well hidden, and I’d create a system which encourages me to hunt down as many different verterans of a zone as possible.

• you could give each veteran a name and some progression tied to killing all veterans. Veterans aren’t dynamic like evens, so they should be there once you arrive. Or let them guard something which drives your progression forward, this way it would even be there when the veteran has been killed recently.

You could also hide certain artifacts in the world which would make exploring feel much more rewarding. For those who don’t care about the reward tied to it, these artifacts could be worth 1g at a vendor.

Why not an open-world scavenger hunt? For example, lets say you want to acquire a new skill, called Jormag’s Breath which is available for all classes.

To start off the scavenger hunt, you have an NPC in your home instance that will tell you a short story or text with some background lore on this skill and any special legends around it (best if you include some GW1 lore in there for nostalgia).

After that, you are given a quest that will ask to you to visit all the Shiverpeak zones, doing various activities. For example, you may be requested to kill the Maw once, complete 5 events (that are related to Jormag-lore), kill X number of Svanir, as well as as taking down Jormag himself.

Now here are some possible concerns related to this, and some ways to alleviate it (ignoring the technical aspects since I do not know anything about them)

Issue #1 – Not readily available to new players
Since you are required to visit various diffferent zones at diffent levels, new players won’t be able to get this quest. But I don’t find this too much of a concern considering the system we have now doesn’t permit new players to obtain all skills (unless you use scrolls)

Issue #2 – Communication. How do we communicate this quest for a skill point? You can go as simple as mailing everyone in game with some lore-related communique, or create a new achievement tab for all new skill quests with instructions for which NPC to visit

Issue #3 – Not worth the time investment for a skill which may not be worth equipping.

I think you need to attach other incentives for those people who are not interested in going for the skill. They can be currency-related, for example. You could have a one-time offer of gold, karma, exp and laurels. Maybe even throw a free level scroll there!

Karizee.8076:

Romo.3709:

On the side note some of the most satisfying times I’ve had in GW2 was while map exploring by myself or with a friend, climbing mountains in the middle of nowhere. Taking a second while standing on top of the cliff looking around at the beautiful area surrounding me, with animals roaming around in wilderness. Underflows would destroy that feeling making it look like another Queensdale. But then again, that’s an adventurer in me speaking.

I agree with this – we really don’t need massive amounts of players on every map, it’s nice to strike off into the wilderness and get away from the madding crowds from time to time

I think its essentially possible to have both of these really. We already got guesting that can essentially do the same things an underflow server would do. What we’d need is some way to co-ordinate the process. I dont know it might be possible to join it with the LFG tool and have the game guest you to the server with the most population in the zone you wish to play for example.

Of course the problem here would be the empty zones on certain servers will become even more empty for those who do not wish to play in zones that are way too populated.

Concerning skill-unlocks… I’d like to see this in addition to a resource based unlock:

I really like that nemesis-idea that someone mentioned earlier. So building on that, I present you one of my favourite game-experiences so far:

The doppleganger.

The doppleganger is the same profession as you are, and the same race. It is a shapeshifter that has only one purpose: to beat you in combat. It gains a small stat increase every time that it is defeated. (Up until a certain maximum)

Background story: After an epic battle, you have managed to lock the doppleganger in an instance. A prison from which it cannot escape unless it defeats you. So that is what it will try to do, whenever you enter the arena, it will fight you. And learn… yet after a while, it figures out that simply copying all that you can do is never enough. So it meditates, thinks, and spends days/weeks/months to practise it’s moves. Time is irrelevant in the arena, centuries in the arena are like minutes in the open world.

All this, to be ready whenever you arrive.

The arena

The arena is like augury rock, a mystical zone, locked away from the rest of the world. (There is a PvE and a PvP version of this arena) And it has five locks to prevent the doppleganger from leaving. You can fight it on your own, or in a team of two, in which case it will scale up, but use skills based on the instance owner.

Everytime it defeats you, it will feast on your energy and use that to open a lock. After it has opened all five locks, it will escape and you will have to chase it down in the open world.

The chase

Whenever the doppleganger is loose, it will leave a trail of destruction in the open world only visible to you and your party’s eyes. Like the blackest of cracks through the earth. Or purple ones through the mists.

Of course you don’t have to track it down on your own, the priory, vigil and order all have their own ways to locate this monster. (Chasing it down should never take more than 10 minutes)

And it may just start attacking you at any time, surprising you and your party.

With a capture-skill that you can get from the arena-keeper, you can beam it back to the arena. After that it will be easier to defeat than at the previous attempt.

The unlock

Everytime you beat the doppleganger, it will teach you a skill for your profession that you don’t have yet. If you already have all the skills for that profession unlocked. It will just reward you a skillpoint and a champion lootbag once a day or week. (It could also pop up on the daily achievements list)

Extra’s

How about a dps calculator, like the master of damage had in GW1?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Swagger.1459:

the current system works great and allows for progression on the individual players terms. no need to make “special” content that forces players to jump through hoops or do things outside of their realm of interest when you have a user friendly system in place. the main concern should be to improve existing content and adding more permanent content along the way.

Which current system do you think works great specifically? In theory, we have a lot of systems already

For me, I think some our current systems of horizontal progression and their earn systems are:

- Collect skins: Purchase them for currencies (which becomes play the fastest way to earn currency X), get them as rare drops (play fastest way to kill mob/content type X), or purchase them off the trading post. (Play the fastest way to earn gold)

- Skills: Collect skill points. (Which becomes play the fastest way to earn XP, or skill points.)

- Achievement Horizontal Rewards: These are things like achievement point skin unlocks, titles, etc. This is more just sort of play everything that gives achievement points, since very little of it is repeatable.

- Legendary: This one doesn’t really have a totally clear path to acquisition other than earn crazy amounts of gold, which goes back to play the fastest way to earn gold. (note legendary is only horizontal if you already have ascended)

- WxP Abilities: Complete objectives worth points in WvW. (Complete objectives as fast as possible, find a group to help you do this. Of all the above this is basically just telling you to play WvW, and though it is as some degenerate aspects is probably the least so)

- PvP Skin Locker & PvP Ranks: Play PvP. (This is basically just play PvP since the latest release.)

Not everyone plays the way I described above, but many of the systems above encourage you to want to play the fastest way possible to earn the rewards, sometimes at the cost of not playing the way you’d find the most fun. The upside of Gw2 is you can play the things you enjoy most and still be rewarded for them in most cases, even if it’s not at the fastest rate. The downside is because almost everything can earn you most of the same rewards, this becomes a matter of choosing to do the things you enjoy the most, but getting rewarded slower because of it.

Potential different systems would create more diverse game play, but the challenge is making it not overly complex, and running the risk of driving players to force one specific type of game play they may not enjoy since they can’t earn it other ways. These are some of the challenges we face we looking at any form of horizontal progression, and some of the discussions that come up when looking at new potential systems as well.

your original post was about earning and unlock new abilities, not any other forms of progression.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

the current system to unlocking new skills is perfect. that same skill point system can be used to unlock new weapons, cross class skills, secondary/sub class abilities, new trait lines… or whatever other class specific progression you put in.

Galen Grey.4709:

Karizee.8076:

Romo.3709:

On the side note some of the most satisfying times I’ve had in GW2 was while map exploring by myself or with a friend, climbing mountains in the middle of nowhere. Taking a second while standing on top of the cliff looking around at the beautiful area surrounding me, with animals roaming around in wilderness. Underflows would destroy that feeling making it look like another Queensdale. But then again, that’s an adventurer in me speaking.

I agree with this – we really don’t need massive amounts of players on every map, it’s nice to strike off into the wilderness and get away from the madding crowds from time to time

I think its essentially possible to have both of these really. We already got guesting that can essentially do the same things an underflow server would do. What we’d need is some way to co-ordinate the process. I dont know it might be possible to join it with the LFG tool and have the game guest you to the server with the most population in the zone you wish to play for example.

Of course the problem here would be the empty zones on certain servers will become even more empty for those who do not wish to play in zones that are way too populated.

We can also use something from the Overflow system. And create a pop-up message if you’re in main server asking you if you want to travel to Underflow or stay here, when the number of players reaches below a certain number.

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

You could even throw out in the PvE world random Champions that enter the world from one side, simply walk across and out the other if they’re not defeated. It would be up to the players to recognize, band together and defeat this champion to get an unlock that way. Don’t announce it, just have it happen.

So an open question: If you don’t announce it, how do players who want to progress their character down these new paths of exciting character progression know what to do it, or how to progress? We’ve seen if the path of progression isn’t relatively clear, most our every-day casual players won’t bother doing it, which isn’t a system that buys us much game play over-all.

And if the champion isn’t available, how do we message to players that the system of progression to advance their character isn’t available at this time? I think you can get away with no real messaging around something like a rare skin, but if it’s a system that expands your characters profession diversity it needs much clearer communication.

These are the kind of questions I ask the designers coming up with the systems we’ll use in the future, so it’s a fun opportunity for you guys as well

This is the main issue i have with the game, you shove everything into the players screen as playing, you leave nothing to discovery, no adventure and no experience, this sort of tactic makes the world feel bland and small, i know that if i run down queensdale im just gonna run into 1 or 2 champs and a few npcs and thats it, wheres the secrets, the adventure

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zone.1275:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I think special dynamic events could be one way. Currently some dynamic events open up special vendors to buy little knick knacks. For example, if in Brisban Wildlands there was a special dynamic event chain where you help the Skritt King in some way and after the events are over you can buy a new skill from him with skill points.

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

One way to do this would be to use the heart/karma system you have in place instead of dynamic events.

This would tie in with your desire to get more people into the open game world (non-instanced).

When a player hits level 80, a series of new hearts open around the game world. As you release new skills, traits and even weapon/armor skins, you add new hearts.

When the player fills the heart, a new vendor appears that sells the new skills/traits for skill points and new armor/weapon skins for karma (we need new places to use karma anyway). To help people find them, current profession trainers could have dialogue options that point the way to the different hearts associated with specific new skills.

You could even tie the hearts, loosely, into current and past living story steps (eg, a heart quest in Diessa related to rebuilding/defending the hatchery that was attacked during Flame and Frost).

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

stuff about trainers

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

Interesting question.

The obivous answers that immediate spring to mind:

• Tie skills to world bosses, maybe you have to use the skill against a specific world boss, or in a certain way. etc (might be trickier for people who are on outside of peak times, but I really like this idea)
• Pit players against eachother in some sort of battle to the death (probably a bad idea in this case, but an interesting thought)
• Shared Instance ala GW2’s tutorial quests (boooring)
• Spectator Sport ala Queen’s Pavilion (but that had the problem of spectating not being fun)
• Or like you said, skill point or DE style.
• Maybe even a dynamic event where the person(s) trying to learn the skill play a special role, with other players backing them up. (I like this idea too!)

Crazy / absurd / impractical thoughts:

• Have arenas in the open world filled with death-traps, traps that can be triggered by other players via evil control panels. Special achievements and titles for thwarting your fellow players quest for elnightenment. My laugh is an evil laugh. I know you won’t do this one, but you should totally do this one.
• Have some sort of arena slam down on top of anyone in the area, trapping them inside, like the game zones from the TV series reboot. Works well with the previous idea…
• Require some huge number of players (say, 100) and send them all off on some epic zergy quest of enlightenment at once (no way this would work… but it would be awesome)

Blaeys.3102:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zone.1275:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I think special dynamic events could be one way. Currently some dynamic events open up special vendors to buy little knick knacks. For example, if in Brisban Wildlands there was a special dynamic event chain where you help the Skritt King in some way and after the events are over you can buy a new skill from him with skill points.

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

One way to do this would be to use the heart/karma system you have in place instead of dynamic events.

This would tie in with your desire to get more people into the open game world (non-instanced).

When a player hits level 80, a series of new hearts open around the game world. As you release new skills, traits and even weapon/armor skins, you add new hearts.

When the player fills the heart, a new vendor appears that “sells” the new skills/traits for skill points and new armor/weapon skins for karma (we need new places to use karma anyway).

You could even tie the hearts, loosely, into current and past living story steps (eg, a heart quest in Diessa related to rebuilding/defending the hatchery that was attacked during Flame and Frost).

I like this idea, except for the level 80 part. If the content is in a lower level zone, then people at or above that level should have access to it with little exception.

Also maybe color the hearts a different color so all players know that that heart is the one that teaches a new skill, because that is probably what they are going to go for first anyways.

Vol.7601:

Why not an open-world scavenger hunt? For example, lets say you want to acquire a new skill, called Jormag’s Breath which is available for all classes.

To start off the scavenger hunt, you have an NPC in your home instance that will tell you a short story or text with some background lore on this skill and any special legends around it (best if you include some GW1 lore in there for nostalgia).

After that, you are given a quest that will ask to you to visit all the Shiverpeak zones, doing various activities. For example, you may be requested to kill the Maw once, complete 5 events (that are related to Jormag-lore), kill X number of Svanir, as well as as taking down Jormag himself.

Now here are some possible concerns related to this, and some ways to alleviate it (ignoring the technical aspects since I do not know anything about them)

Issue #1 – Not readily available to new players
Since you are required to visit various diffferent zones at diffent levels, new players won’t be able to get this quest. But I don’t find this too much of a concern considering the system we have now doesn’t permit new players to obtain all skills (unless you use scrolls)

Issue #2 – Communication. How do we communicate this quest for a skill point? You can go as simple as mailing everyone in game with some lore-related communique, or create a new achievement tab for all new skill quests with instructions for which NPC to visit

Issue #3 – Not worth the time investment for a skill which may not be worth equipping.

I think you need to attach other incentives for those people who are not interested in going for the skill. They can be currency-related, for example. You could have a one-time offer of gold, karma, exp and laurels. Maybe even throw a free level scroll there!

Don’t forget that if a scavenger hunt involves a fixed location, then the path of least resistance would be to look up the location on sites such as dulfy.net.

@Colin

• Repeatable content could be “randomized” or “dynamic” to be less predictable
  I think that’s what somebody else meant with champions walking through the map and disappearing. Randomizing their locations and giving them patrol patterns could be a good way to make “farming spots” less efficient and more thoughtful. This kind of thing should never be, however, used as a main vehicle for personal horizontal progression, but more as an optional/ secondary form, because, like you said, it’s harder to guide players through this. It does makes world exploration more interesting, though.
• Specific rewards instead of generic rewards
  Each dynamic event could offer flavored rewards depending on the context. This will create a situation where players will still want to farm a specific event for a specific item, but that’s still much better than everything giving only exp, gold, karma, and nothing else, and two or three events in a given map being more optimal than everything else.
• Personal “Quests” and personal dynamic events
  Remember my idea in the last page for a hybrid system between dynamic events and heart tasks? Marked in the map, can both be triggered automatically or through soulbound-triggers, etc? Kinda like the current skill challenges but much expanded upon. This kind of thing could exist, and players could be guided to those “quests” through the story. Like what other players are talking about with players being guided to do order quests once they’re far enough in the storyline. I also want to give an example of the main, story-driven quests in GW1 that you had to do inbetween missions: something like that, but after activated, have them work like dynamic events.

A traditional option would be tying the skill behind quests, but I think the tech behind quests isn’t that available in-game, not to mention that it’s not really that homogenous with the overall perceived game design. Tying the skill unlock as an item reward during the personal story also work, but the problems you encounter is that it’s a mostly a hierarchical unlock (how far are you in the personal story to unlock x items) meaning that on older players creating new characters it’s just probably going to be extremely repetitive.

On the side of informing the players for the skills, adding a location list for skills in the trainers would be nice, but I’m not sure if the tech implementation is present in-game. The current book-reading implementation in-game isn’t exactly good, so it will take a while to do so.

Horizontally speaking, I think my one thing I would like to see implemented is the thing that makes these two week updates feel like an expansion over the long term. We are still missing new classes, skills(got a few already), utilities, races and permanent zones(got one in a year and a half). In the classic sense of the word expansion, these are all bread and butter.

Chrispy.5641:

Blaeys.3102:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zone.1275:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I think special dynamic events could be one way. Currently some dynamic events open up special vendors to buy little knick knacks. For example, if in Brisban Wildlands there was a special dynamic event chain where you help the Skritt King in some way and after the events are over you can buy a new skill from him with skill points.

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

One way to do this would be to use the heart/karma system you have in place instead of dynamic events.

This would tie in with your desire to get more people into the open game world (non-instanced).

When a player hits level 80, a series of new hearts open around the game world. As you release new skills, traits and even weapon/armor skins, you add new hearts.

When the player fills the heart, a new vendor appears that “sells” the new skills/traits for skill points and new armor/weapon skins for karma (we need new places to use karma anyway).

You could even tie the hearts, loosely, into current and past living story steps (eg, a heart quest in Diessa related to rebuilding/defending the hatchery that was attacked during Flame and Frost).

I like this idea, except for the level 80 part. If the content is in a lower level zone, then people at or above that level should have access to it with little exception.

Also maybe color the hearts a different color so all players know that that heart is the one that teaches a new skill, because that is probably what they are going to go for first anyways.

That is fair – and agree about not limited to lvl 80.

I think another way to get people to them would be to have the profession trainers in various cities have dialogue options that point them to the hearts associated with specific skills/traits.

Blaeys.3102:

Chrispy.5641:

Blaeys.3102:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zone.1275:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I think special dynamic events could be one way. Currently some dynamic events open up special vendors to buy little knick knacks. For example, if in Brisban Wildlands there was a special dynamic event chain where you help the Skritt King in some way and after the events are over you can buy a new skill from him with skill points.

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

One way to do this would be to use the heart/karma system you have in place instead of dynamic events.

This would tie in with your desire to get more people into the open game world (non-instanced).

When a player hits level 80, a series of new hearts open around the game world. As you release new skills, traits and even weapon/armor skins, you add new hearts.

When the player fills the heart, a new vendor appears that “sells” the new skills/traits for skill points and new armor/weapon skins for karma (we need new places to use karma anyway).

You could even tie the hearts, loosely, into current and past living story steps (eg, a heart quest in Diessa related to rebuilding/defending the hatchery that was attacked during Flame and Frost).

I like this idea, except for the level 80 part. If the content is in a lower level zone, then people at or above that level should have access to it with little exception.

Also maybe color the hearts a different color so all players know that that heart is the one that teaches a new skill, because that is probably what they are going to go for first anyways.

That is fair – and agree about not limited to lvl 80.

I think another way to get people to them would be to have the profession trainers in various cities have dialogue options that point them to the hearts associated with specific skills/traits.

Yep, That’s similar to what I said earlier, and it would keep almost everything as far as finding these new skills, entirely in the game instead of a guide on Dulfy (though level 80’s would check anyways to get the skills they want first….that whole path of least resistance thing again!)

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

Given the fact that the questing is a thing of the past, maybe instead of having “trainers” be merchants, we can create a small instance (no bigger than Ascension Arena in GW1) where you’re presented with a task having your regular weapon skill and only that one utility skill you’re trying to learn.
With a trainer (now in real meaning of the word) looking over you, giving you pointers as to what to do in situation he/she had presented you with.
It’s just a small concept, but this way you’d earn your skill rather than just outright buy it, while learning it at the same time. Maybe give it an attempt cost? Creating an ability to fail such quest?

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

Skill point challenge allowing you to earn a skill instead of a skill point is quite interesting. Some of them harder than the other having to bring a party along or someone in map at the given time. The problem comes in with diversity of gameplay, since some people are in WvW, some in PvP, so PvE is not always to-go place for everyone. That creates a whole “why do I have to go to X in order to get X” discussion.

Having this system work in non-instance zones is quite troublesome as I see, while trying to please everyone at the same time. I can sympathise with the debacle you guys are going through every day.

One idea would be Guild based skills you can acquire in a way that Guild Missions work, but have open access to all Guild members. That also brings the problem with the guild sizes and guild unlocks, but it would give reason to a wide ranger of players to be in a guild, or see a reason to be in one to begin with. Upon joining the guild u earn access to certain locations across the world that unlock skills? Which while on the subject, there should be an option to restrict activating missions by any member limiting the task to officers, resulting in less stress and more control. But for this particular challenges, we could have anyone activate the challenge at any time they wish to take up on it. Resulting in acquiring the skill and maybe some chest, which would give reason to players in the area or in guild to come and help out that player complete the challenge. Maybe even spark an interest in a player walking by to joining said guild?

I’m not sure what’s your take on Guild challenges is. That being said, there also comes the issue of people joining in, getting skills and leaving the guild, but that’s bound to happen anyways.

Anything that gives rewards along with the skill for that person would be definitely best way to bring players along for the ride. The chest should also be time gated, making possible exploit farming minimal.

The personal story is a great way to guide players through, because of its linearity.

Have the personal story branch out new systems like some sort of tree.

For example, when you are introduced to the orders, and have to go to their base, a new instance/ cutscenes would trigger there and introduce to players some new kind of Orders quest system. After that, the player will have more gameplay choices: continue with the story instances, or start doing some orders missions as side tasks.

These order missions would be expanded as you keep doing more of them, as you advance through the story, and of course, as new patches come out. There could even exist some kind of bulletin board where you can see your tier, the quests available for your tier, and information about how to unlock future tiered quests. I’m thinking something similar to FFXII’s hunt bulletin board.

The quests themselves would track a personal record and personal acchievements, but once activated, any player could join them, like skill challenges. They could also be repeatable for lesser or time-gated rewards.

Completing them the first time would offer unique rewards. Advancing through tiers would also offer new rewards, and perhaps adding new items to Orders merchants. Again, much like the Bazaar in FFXII. And likewise, there’s a lot of potential for new, open world end-game content here. Perhaps, completing the strongest Orders dynamic quests would allow you to buy ascended gear in the merchants for Karma?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

Given the fact that the questing is a thing of the past, maybe instead of having “trainers” be merchants, we can create a small instance (no bigger than Ascension Arena in GW1) where you’re presented with a task having your regular weapon skill and only that one utility skill you’re trying to learn.
With a trainer (now in real meaning of the word) looking over you, giving you pointers as to what to do in situation he/she had presented you with.
It’s just a small concept, but this way you’d earn your skill rather than just outright buy it, while learning it at the same time. Maybe give it an attempt cost? Creating an ability to fail such quest?

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

Would non instanced arenas be acceptable? Only five people can enter the arena at a time (it could scale from 1-5) and then they attempt to complete a survival challenge together, I believe there’s an arena like that in Wayfarers I think? You’d meet people to do it with, others can watch and you still limit the amount of help a person can get on it.

The one problem with open world stuff at the moment is that get enough players together and you can trivialize it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

You could even throw out in the PvE world random Champions that enter the world from one side, simply walk across and out the other if they’re not defeated. It would be up to the players to recognize, band together and defeat this champion to get an unlock that way. Don’t announce it, just have it happen.

So an open question: If you don’t announce it, how do players who want to progress their character down these new paths of exciting character progression know what to do it, or how to progress? We’ve seen if the path of progression isn’t relatively clear, most our every-day casual players won’t bother doing it, which isn’t a system that buys us much game play over-all.

And if the champion isn’t available, how do we message to players that the system of progression to advance their character isn’t available at this time? I think you can get away with no real messaging around something like a rare skin, but if it’s a system that expands your characters profession diversity it needs much clearer communication.

These are the kind of questions I ask the designers coming up with the systems we’ll use in the future, so it’s a fun opportunity for you guys as well

Well, my first inclination is to not announce it, just announce the fact that it happens and allow the community to go out and find it. However, I can see where that may result in some champions being missed (Is that really a bad thing? To be decided.)

Another thought could be an announcement in whatever zone the champion is currently passing through, something subtle like “An mysterious presence has been felt in the area”. Just an in-zone clue that should get people in the zone curious enough to look.

Then of course, if that proves insufficient, there are the Scarlett type of world announcements, but personally I think that would take too much of the mystery out of it.

I don’t think you announce the lack of presence… my initial thoughts were that the champion is crossing from one zone to another and on, eventually there will be someone finding it and alerting others (make it tough enough that people will need help). If it were, for example, a less subtle large-sized champion (giant, small dragon, wandering Asura ego, etc.) then the visual should be quite enough notification in and of itself.

Of course, this lends to the question as to whether or not the champions have individual unlocks of their own or whether or not any of them allow you to unlock an ability of your choice. If the latter, you don’t have someone waiting forever and missing the one champion they want for a specific unlock. If the former then you give the completionists a goal of their own, getting all champions and the associated unlocks. Yeah… this would need to be pondered as well… what are the pros and cons of each champion having their own unlock vs. any champion allowing you the unlock of your choice.

personal story for a horizontal progression system? And how do you progress once you’ve completed the personal story? Repeatable quests?

I also don’t like the idea of more hearts. Anet tries to get rid of them (see: high level zones) because they are just static quests.

Advent Leader.1083:

A traditional option would be tying the skill behind quests, but I think the tech behind quests isn’t that available in-game, not to mention that it’s not really that homogenous with the overall perceived game design. Tying the skill unlock as an item reward during the personal story also work, but the problems you encounter is that it’s a mostly a hierarchical unlock (how far are you in the personal story to unlock x items) meaning that on older players creating new characters it’s just probably going to be extremely repetitive.

On the side of informing the players for the skills, adding a location list for skills in the trainers would be nice, but I’m not sure if the tech implementation is present in-game. The current book-reading implementation in-game isn’t exactly good, so it will take a while to do so.

while this is interesting, it would be a bad idea for anet to force wvw and spvp players to pve for progression or vice versa. you would need to create a path for all types of players for this to work. that’s why the current system of leveling up to gain skill points for purchasing skills is the most reasonable way to do it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

Given the fact that the questing is a thing of the past, maybe instead of having “trainers” be merchants, we can create a small instance (no bigger than Ascension Arena in GW1) where you’re presented with a task having your regular weapon skill and only that one utility skill you’re trying to learn.
With a trainer (now in real meaning of the word) looking over you, giving you pointers as to what to do in situation he/she had presented you with.
It’s just a small concept, but this way you’d earn your skill rather than just outright buy it, while learning it at the same time. Maybe give it an attempt cost? Creating an ability to fail such quest?

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

Here are my ideas to new skill acquisition, all simple enough anybody gets it and hopefully fun to most people (i know i’d be having tons of it)

PVE avenue

Why not triggerable and scalable boss events? Better than plain old skill challenges that are not challenging at all, especially when 2+ people are involved. You talk to an npc, trigger a soloable event that scales if more people join after you. So no one has to be waiting on anything and players are going to know where to go because they are directed by a order storyline, or better yet, a PACT storyline that actually involves elder dragons (or at least not involving any hihihihohoho lame characters). I’d have fun dueling a veteran that uses that skill i’m trying to capture, a la queen’s jubilee arena, and it could scale to champion and spawn trash mobs if more people join.

As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t have to be anything shocking new, DEs are great stuff. As long as people don’t have to camp bosses and events a la EQ1, it would be fun.

PVP avenue

Pit two random opponents using a locked down prefab build using the skill to be acquired. The winner wins the skill. This could be either instanced or a duel in the open world where others could watch. It needs to be a random queue though, cause otherwise people will just lose on purpose to their friends.

WvW avenue

If you beat anyone that has a skill you don’t have, you could be able to learn it with skill points, as long it was an up to 5v5 fight. Don’t know how technically feasible it is to check if it was a small scale fight, but that’s an idea.

—
I like these two avenues because it takes skill rather than time spent, apparently they don’t have a path of least resistance and they’re fun.

Personally I’d reward people for exploration with a very simple change:

• enemies who haven’t been killed in a while give bonus xp
• let these mobs drop much more interesting stuff when having gathered enough bonus-xp.
• give them a chance to drop parts of a progression system (like pieces of an artifact from the mob-family they are).

In order to make people enjoy roaming around in the world looking for new events, the zone needs to have enough exciting things to find, enough things to do. Binding this to bonus-xp makes the whole thing dynamic, because farming-spots will change a lot.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I think it’s too late for dual classing now, but we could always get dual subclassing.

EDIT:
And that would simply work based on my many-pages-old concept: each subclass = each traitline. Instead of having 5 restricting and broad traitlines, we could get X (more than 5) trait lines (which would be less restricting) with more specialized effects (which would be less broad).

I think this suggestion a great way sub-classes could potentially fit into the existing system.

Duel sub-classing is such a cool idea! To make this work there would need to be at least 2 new tiers in each trait-line. i.e. You can put 50 points in one trait-line and 20 in another, 35 points in both, or whatever.

This way they wouldn’t have to make up too many new traits, and this might also help with class balancing because our choices are more restricted.

EDIT: I keep going on about “balance” whenever I mention sub-classes. I don’t think classes are tooo imbalanced as they are, but I want every class to have multiple viable builds.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zone.1275:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I think special dynamic events could be one way. Currently some dynamic events open up special vendors to buy little knick knacks. For example, if in Brisban Wildlands there was a special dynamic event chain where you help the Skritt King in some way and after the events are over you can buy a new skill from him with skill points.

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

I would do this as an evolution of the skill challenges:

Imagine an NPC who is Sergeant, and she has the icon of the skill challenge above the head. She activates a long chain of events rather than something simple like the current skills challenges. When you talk to her she will enlisting you on their team for a specific mission and she will mail you few seconds before the event begins. You need to do the whole chain of events in order to unlock the skill (I think this is important) then we would have something to show that you are doing everything.

A long time ago I gave a suggestion to make people participate on bosses pre-events and not skip bosses in dungenos. A “buff” somewhat similar to Morale Boost from GW1. You win it by doing one event of a chain of events or killing a dungeon boss. It will staking until you complete the envet chain or the dungeon and wil give you a better reward or 100% chance of a specific reward if you have the maximum of stacks.

The problem would be have to create many icons for various different events, so they do not mix with others, or you can make the “buff” icon appear next to the event name in the sidebar.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

The Guild Wars 1 system seems to lend itself very well to skill capture in GW2, too.

Having open world “bosses” — Vets, Elites or Champs would work nicely for a skill capture the same way it did in GW1. If you are playing a Warrior, for example, have a predefined warrior boss that carries a specific utility skill. Players would pay 3 skill points for a simple signet of capture, have it on your bar when you defeat a Veteran boss of the same profession as you who has a skill that you want. When the signet is used over the corpse of the boss it is replaced with the captured skill. Pay 6 skill points and kill an Elite mob for tier two skills, pay 10 or 30 for an elite skill and kill a Champ. While most mobs could be killed by a single player others might or would require company, much like current skill challenges do.

Tool Tips on the signet of capture could easily explain the process to new or casual players.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I also don’t like the idea of more hearts. Anet tries to get rid of them (see: high level zones) because they are just static quests.

To my knowledge they were actually added so that people would be able to go to these known ‘quests’ in order to explore the world and stumble across dynamic events along the way.

Not having them in Orr has nothing to do with wild claims that ANet is trying to ‘get rid of them’ so kindly stop spreading misinformation as this is simply not true.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Let’s keep things simple

Subclass Traiting System

• Expand the number of traitlines available to each profession.
• Make most of the traitlines (and each of their respective tiers) collectible through levels, quests, tome collection and boss hunting.
• Give an unique subclass flavor to each traitline (already happens to a certain extent). This also implies a redesign of the current traitlines and different trait allocation.
• Have each traitline offer traits that more deeply affect weapon’s skills, core profession mechanic skills and the profession as a whole.

This would basically be an expansion of the current trait system, with a stronger subclass flavor.

If anyone believes my proposal would be worse than the current system we have in place, please, I’d love to hear your thoughts.*

1) Expand the number of traitlines available to each profession.
I disagree with this. I think we just need to add on to existing trait-lines, and make each trait-line more focused and powerful. (kinda like what you said about weapon skills)

2) Make most of the traitlines (and each of their respective tiers) collectible through levels, quests, tome collection and boss hunting.
Not a bat idea, but it would require quite a lot of new content (which costs money to produce)

3) I agree with your last two bullet-points.

Aveneo.2068:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I also don’t like the idea of more hearts. Anet tries to get rid of them (see: high level zones) because they are just static quests.

To my knowledge they were actually added so that people would be able to go to these known ‘quests’ in order to explore the world and stumble across dynamic events along the way.

Not having them in Orr has nothing to do with wild claims that ANet is trying to ‘get rid of them’ so kindly stop spreading misinformation as this is simply not true.

The game originally didn’t have hearts from what they said. However people wandered about not knowing they were supposed to join in on events, so hearts were added to help train people to do events. I think we’ve evolved enough from the dark ages of MMOs that we can do without more hearts.

Cycling events are a great idea to deliver horizontal progression
I really like all those suggestions of expeditions and random DE chains. i’d run them even if there was no progression or rewards at all. The challenge I suppose is making them unpredictable enough. But anything, especially DEs, that change daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, whatever, is just great stuff.

Why group events suck though
I just wish there were no more group-only events, because they stay dead unless a zerg or something runs the whole chain in 10 mins and flips it and then it stays dead for hours, maybe days again. All solo events should scale to prevent all the facerolling, but no events should be group-only. It kills the spontaneity that’s the best part of DEs: You’re just exploring and bump into one guy doing some event, and another guy joins you and stuff scales and you end up on the other corner of the zone with 10-15 people and everyone had fun, as opposed to “begged in chat for an hour to get enough people to run a temple and was glad I was done with that crap”.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Reading through a lot of the comments on various class diversification (or just stronger trait/skill diversification) concepts, one of the things that seems to be missing is a discussion on how you’d actually earn/unlock these additional abilities to make it a progression system.

One of the goals of progression, in this case horizontal, is to create an extended sense of game play and thus = reward for playing it.

For example, we’ve added more skills to the game recently, but those simply unlock with skill points, which basically means -> play any part of the game that gives exp, or kill champs to get skill point books. That’s ok as systems of unlocking horizontal progression go for the extended class diversification, but game play wise it generally means find the easiest place to get XP/champ-loot and do it over and over again for a large % of players, since folks most often gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

Well, I stand by my initial thoughts in The New Masters, as a workable example with NPCs that act as a mini quest-hub for all characters but with added benefits for character’s of the corresponding class. Going to the mentor allows you to set off a series of Dynamic Events that support the narrative of helping the mentor/gaining their trust/proving your worthiness as appropriate to their personality. The climax of the sequence is a mini-dungeon as seen in several places in the game already – in fact some of the existing ones could gain additional purpose, being the place a nearby mentor sends you. The revelation of skills comes from completing the mentor’s task-chain but there is also a skill point cost component that encourages players to unlock them in the order of their interest as their stock of skill points allows.

Directing players to these mentors is probably best accomplished by having the Skill Trainers in the various cities point them out to players via dialogue and the sort of zoom-out-zoom-in map guidance used to introduce Dungeons (or possibly the voice-over and map-panning seen when dealing with Scouts).

I think the Skill Trainers need to gain functionality providing new tutorials and click-and-confirm auto-fill-in of sample builds. Making them the “herald” for all things pertaining to your specific profession could dovetail with that nicely. The hooks are already in place to introduce players to the Skill Trainers, this would just expand their role throughout your Character’s level progression.

VOLKON.1290:

Aveneo.2068:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I also don’t like the idea of more hearts. Anet tries to get rid of them (see: high level zones) because they are just static quests.

To my knowledge they were actually added so that people would be able to go to these known ‘quests’ in order to explore the world and stumble across dynamic events along the way.

Not having them in Orr has nothing to do with wild claims that ANet is trying to ‘get rid of them’ so kindly stop spreading misinformation as this is simply not true.

The game originally didn’t have hearts from what they said. However people wandered about not knowing they were supposed to join in on events, so hearts were added to help train people to do events. I think we’ve evolved enough from the dark ages of MMOs that we can do without more hearts.

But, it would still be a problem when you are wandering around aimlessly, and you have no idea where you need to go to learn a specific skill, so something still needs to be put in there to announce that an event like that is there.

Hearts were an improvement that helped to bring us out of the Dark ages of MMO’s, because, while they are Static points on the map, They are still starting points that we can go to and do events from there (most events spawn within the distance of a Heart)

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

Hi Colin,

Here’s my previos post in this:

Rin.1046:

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve put the relevant bits in bold. The factions could mean the Orders, or some new faction based progression. Which in turn could be introduce via personal story or simply receiving an email to talk to a new NPC.

I’ve been advocating adding new tiers to existing trait-lines for sub-classes. What if you unlocked up to tier 3 (current Grandmaster) in each trait line normally, like you do now, but tiers 4 (40 points in) and 5 (50 points) had to be unlocked via class quests?

ColinJohanson.2394:

What other systems would excite you that don’t fall into the “sitting in front of your keyboard” pressing buttons options? Keep in mind they need to be easy to learn so we can teach them to new players, accessible, and not overly complex/tedious, and hopefully not something with a path of least resistance that leads to degenerate game play.

How about a system like you guys just used in the Nightmare End LS. With the different objects we could interact with, where we had to use our brain instead of our brawn to figure the puzzle out.

You could make them tie in to the lore/story of a zone. Where answers are available by talking to NPCs or noticing stuff in the zone.

Chrispy.5641:

But, it would still be a problem when you are wandering around aimlessly, and you have no idea where you need to go to learn a specific skill, so something still needs to be put in there to announce that an event like that is there.

Hearts were an improvement that helped to bring us out of the Dark ages of MMO’s, because, while they are Static points on the map, They are still starting points that we can go to and do events from there (most events spawn within the distance of a Heart)

I agree that hearts were an improvement over the archaic static quests, and events are an improvement over them both. I just personally think more hearts or heart like substances really wouldn’t be needed (there are other means of broadcast in a zone, from map announcements to adding information to the existing scouts on the map and having them guide you) and would only add clutter to the map.

Personally I’d rather see something more fluid than a simple “Go to heart for unlock” thing. That doesn’t really add any life to the game… it becomes a run from one point to the next. People would be done in no time then looking for more and complaining when there isn’t more ready.

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

You could even throw out in the PvE world random Champions that enter the world from one side, simply walk across and out the other if they’re not defeated. It would be up to the players to recognize, band together and defeat this champion to get an unlock that way. Don’t announce it, just have it happen.

So an open question: If you don’t announce it, how do players who want to progress their character down these new paths of exciting character progression know what to do it, or how to progress? We’ve seen if the path of progression isn’t relatively clear, most our every-day casual players won’t bother doing it, which isn’t a system that buys us much game play over-all.

And if the champion isn’t available, how do we message to players that the system of progression to advance their character isn’t available at this time? I think you can get away with no real messaging around something like a rare skin, but if it’s a system that expands your characters profession diversity it needs much clearer communication.

These are the kind of questions I ask the designers coming up with the systems we’ll use in the future, so it’s a fun opportunity for you guys as well

We could use either the home instance or future housing areas to direct players to open world npcs that can give information on where to go, what is active, and how to start the event chains.

This will give players a common, easily accessible place to find information and be sent to a gathering place in the open world, where you still get to be around and interact with other players to accomplish the actual event.

More detailed explanation on how this could work in this earlier forum post about home instance NPCs and how they can be used to help distribute people into the world and give context to existing dynamic events:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/Home-Instances-and-Daily-Dynamic-events/first#post3328719

Sir Arthur.8905:

We could use either the home instance or future housing areas to direct players to open world npcs that can give information on where to go, what is active, and how to start the event chains.

This will give players a common, easily accessible place to find information and be sent to a gathering place in the open world, where you still get to be around and interact with other players to accomplish the actual event.

More detailed explanation on how this could work in this earlier forum post about home instance NPCs and how they can be used to help distribute people into the world and give context to existing dynamic events:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/Home-Instances-and-Daily-Dynamic-events/first#post3328719

Hey, you know… this isn’t a bad idea to run with. Imagine popping into your home instance to mine the nodes and Zojja is there waiting for you with something she needs your help with… could be randomly generated and maybe give you access to an unlock that you could also get elsewhere. Would be a nice kick into the personal story chain from a racial perspective (where the Orders could kick you into the personal story from a selected Order perspective).

There is subclassing already: builds. They just need to:

1) Be spelled out by the devs to the average player

There should be presets for each build that take their staple skills and traits and show where the player can fine tune. This is important especially in PvP, so players are taught not to come up with entirely horrible builds and is also aware of the roles available to their class. So why make it look unnecessarily open-ended, since it all boils down to a certain number of roles? Since that there are traits that are meant to go with each other?

2) All be relevant (in PvE as well)

3) Ironed out with new skills that reinforce certain roles.

4) Get lots of QoL love
Trait and skill saving, swapping, equipment load outs saving, easy rune and sigil swapping, stat swapping etc…

__
All that “subclassing” stuff can emerge from a properly supported ROLE system, already intended with builds (skills, traits and gear). Only after that we can come up with new roles too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

So an open question: If you don’t announce it, how do players who want to progress their character down these new paths of exciting character progression know what to do it, or how to progress? We’ve seen if the path of progression isn’t relatively clear, most our every-day casual players won’t bother doing it, which isn’t a system that buys us much game play over-all.

I know you’re saying this as a way of putting something at the end that gives us a feeling of progression.

But isn’t that the point of your event system. so the world is dynamic? I mean, I’m usually the one teaching the game to new members of our guild, and I still come across events I had never seen, or hear some idle chatter I never heard. Not knowing it’s there is part of the charm.

If you don’t want it to be a random event that people waits for it, you could do it like the unlocking of Forsaken Fortune but maybe a bit more complex. Like a system you used in the Nightmare’s End, with the puzzles we had to solve.

ColinJohanson.2394:

How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

Gauntlet Arena. in the open world :P
A bit like you have in Gendarran fields (Vollym’s Battle Pit )

ColinJohanson.2394:

Zone.1275:

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

I think special dynamic events could be one way. Currently some dynamic events open up special vendors to buy little knick knacks. For example, if in Brisban Wildlands there was a special dynamic event chain where you help the Skritt King in some way and after the events are over you can buy a new skill from him with skill points.

So a question for this, how would we message well to newer players how a system like this would work? One of the challenges of events is simply: they may not be running when you’re in an area. Is it ok to make people stand around waiting for an event to happen so they can get a specific thing from that event? How would they know what to do if the event wasn’t currently active, what form of messaging could help them understand the state of the world – while still being immersive and not requiring them to use a 3rd party app to progress?

One of the simplest methods of notifying the player of events coming up is to implement the timer into the game. I can imagine a tab on the map screen that brings you to a list of events on that map and the time until start. This idea is not very organic but it’s a start. To allow it to become more organic and grow from a small bit of information to a large collection of information let’s tie it into a story with the characters. As the player explores the zone and completes hearts and events then they acquire knowledge of when particular events can occur. That knowledge is then logged on a screen automatically (i.e. tab on the map screen). To build the live feed of when an event will occur then we’ll need to assume NPC contacts on that map are notifying the player via some Asura communication device. Ideally these contacts are members of the faction the player chooses at character creation.

This solution is somewhat complex to implement, but I feel it’s a good starting point to discuss ways to provide knowledge to the player regarding event start time and end time.