Guild Wars 2

Harbard.5738:

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”.

I wholeheartedly agree, I haven’t thought of this before but it’s 100% true. I also claim that champions should scale down to 1 player (not so much health) since it takes forever to bring them down when you’re alone.

It’s still equally as difficult when the champ would have 1/4 of it’s health since attacks are just as strong and you would have to know how to avoid those. Doing this for 20+ minutes though is just not fun.

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.

you raised a very interesting point here and personally I think the game has become too focused on the fastest way to get rewards- be it for xyz.
Imo the LS is partly responsible for this because it taught players to get while the going is good

People have become focused on carrots so we will always have the people who chase down the carrots in a matter of days and even then complain that the carrot tasted like an apple.

The primary focus should always be game- play and is it fun.
We desperately need ways to broaden our game play at this point in the game.
Not to keep us logged on for longer doing meaningless stuff to get carrots

Do not take me wrong- I love GW2 and I play almost everyday and have since the betas.

People want rewards- but those rewards can be small, fun and naturally also more long term, the main key here is that it should broaden our experience not narrow it down

So that people can do what they enjoy in the game and still feel that they spent their time well and- that their character is different and more unique than it was yesterday.
Or the month before- or the year before

So from my own personal perspective I want my character to reflect the journey I have had in the game – remind me of epic things I did etc.
All the things I am referring to here is purely from a horizontal perspective btw.
I have no interest in bigger numbers or being more powerful.

btw I think Swagger was specifically referring to the skills and traits we already have as opposed to developing a sub- class system

Morrigan.2809:

So from my own personal perspective I want my character to reflect the journey I have had in the game – remind me of epic things I did etc.
All the things I am referring to here is purely from a horizontal perspective btw.
I have no interest in bigger numbers or being more powerful.

I think more of the stuff we do/did should be reflected in our home instances.
like yeah, the nodes from the living story is neat, but i’m talking NPCs we could talk to and such. NPCs you’ve crossed path with during your journey

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?

Hmm…

Currently in game we have a variety of World Event notifications in various zones. These show progress, whether it be success or failure and the consequences (Tequatl is a nice example, peppers his area of the zone with undead and mines if failed, success makes the zone more friendly.) Actually, while Tequatl is up regardless of where-ever you are in the zone you can see the event icons, but more on that later.

Here is what I think would be fair:

- For rewards specific for difficult content like defeating Tequatl, there are already specific rewards from his chests, but we can also have a vendor spawn at his area with rewards unique to the zone, but only for a limited time after his defeat and items unique to the vendor only. Obviously we want people to try to kill Tequatl for his weapons and mini, but perhaps have the vendor sell the other minis, some named exotics, karma equipment, etc. In fact it would be a great way to introduce some equipment or items players have been really craving, but nothing that might break the Trading Post…

- How would people know? I have an idea, but I can’t quite figure out the pros/cons of the suggestion yet. How about adding a ‘Event Board’ physically in each of the main cities? This may take a bit to program, and could even be as simple as those ‘scout’ NPCs you run into as you explore Tyria. How it works is that when you interact with this quest board, a list of ACTIVE dynamic world events is shown perhaps in a dialogue box, maybe one says ‘Trouble in the Blazeridge’. Clicking on that option pulls up the map like when you did the scout interaction, moves your look over to Blazeridge and a small synopsis shows up, saying ‘We got reports of increased Branded activity in Blazeridge, the Vigil requests assistance…’ followed up by the typical circles that might just show the current events there.

The above example does two things, first, with Lion’s Arch being a primary city hub many people would flock to the board to keep tabs on active quests, while new players would show interest as well, walk over, KNOW where the event ‘sort of’ is, and not have to go to third party maps to find out the status on events. Two, it can promote activity in these events since there are a vast number of people who might not track using 3rd party, and if something comes up the map chat might flood with ‘Shatterer is coming up soon! Let’s roll!’

Of course, what happens if you are already in a zone when a world event pops?

I think in that instance we can have subtle changes in the environment…either emotes, sounds, or freshly spawned yelling npcs crying for help! For example, I am busy in Harathi Hinterlands, far away from the Centaur wars when, perhaps in a unique yellow font appearing in the middle of my screen (See what I did there) it says ‘The air seems to have changed…the flames of war have started’ or perhaps have the sounds of wardrums beating in the background, and follow all of this with the beginning of the wars event shown in red icons on your minimap.

Boom, you being in the zone hear a unique event notification for something big, it shows up on your map. Newer players might be very interested to see what is up, while veteran players can instantly recognize it without having to look it up through a website or by spams in map chat.

Upon further reflection, the rewards idea I had might pale in comparison to what I came up with in dealing with immersion and event notification. I would like to see something of an event board and special event effects to come through so I don’t end up looking at a site online for events to appear in real-time, I can just do it in game through LA or even be in the zone when something happens.

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.

I think it’s worth remembering some of our existing ‘general’ measures of progress may still be appropriate and sensible even if they’re a bit degenerate presently.

Assume for a moment we have expanded on the concept of a personal space within our neighborhood or perhaps have a nook in a guildhall we can call our own. A place that can serve as a showcase of our accomplishments, but also a testament to our particular tastes.

We might have a very outdoorsy and heroic set of activities that liberates a famous painter who now feels indebted to us and becomes available as a vendor in our neighborhood who can provide us with hi-res account-bound pieces of the game’s concept art as paintings we can hang in our showcase area…

…Its not unreasonable that those paintings would still have to be paid for with gold coin. Maybe quite a few gold coins.

The pure Trading Post baron doesn’t have access to the vendor, but the pure adventurer may have to do a bit of scrimping and saving to get the painting he wants even after liberating the painter.

The final piece that’s actually on display shows your aptitude in both realms, and further, reveals your taste through what images you’ve chosen to display in a limited amount of space.

Skill points, gold, & karma still reflect a lot of time spent in the world and could be part of the unlocking process. With new ways to use those currencies, the pleasure of amassing them is renewed.

Morrigan.2809:

People have become focused on carrots so we will always have the people who chase down the carrots in a matter of days and even then complain that the carrot tasted like an apple.

Wait! Carrots can taste like Apples!?!….Coooooool!!!!

also, I agree with just about everything you said.

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.

The first part of your post is basically the same thing as I just said; hearts were specifically added so people would not feel lost. That other poster however made a false claim as to why there were no hearts in Orr which I intended to rectify.

Your reference to ‘dark ages of MMOs’ however feels like a pointless remark of personal preference which holds no real substance for discussion in this thread.

As to this thread itself, Colin or Chris specifically asked for ways to add horizontal progression with a specific mention on how to communicate it to the players without them having to go to third-party sites. I personally believe that new hearts (different color?) is a good suggestion and could assist in showing people where to go in order to look for these new additions.

What I would like to suggest is new areas where these things take place. At present time almost half of Tyria cannot be visited. What better way to add horizontal progression than by adding these new zones. Traversing the Ring of Fire Islands or the Far Shiverpeaks or the Crystal Desert? Cantha and Elona? To me new zones would be a perfect staging area for things like specializations, different looking gear (Rice Hats!), previously unavailable weapon sets and new abilities in general as these could be integrated perfectly.

Also having a Home instance worth visiting may be a nice place for horizontal progression. Player Housing can be worth a lot to many people and would be a perfect candidate in my humble opinion. I need a place to call home instead of slumming in front of the bank in LA. Besides, I want to display my complete set of Destiny’s Edge minis somewhere

As far as awarding things goes, I think the dailies and LW metas have the right idea: do a little bit of everything, get a prize. It’s nice being pushed to do things you don’t do all the time, but at the same time being forced to do too much of it is a drag.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- 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.

First, my opinion is going to differ greatly from any of the previous voices concerns/suggestions.

• To be honest, Colin, I can’t believe I’m saying this…but it seems as if everything has been made TOO rewarding. That, or the fact of acquisition anywhere or ability to buy just about anything on the TP has removed a lot of the value of diversifying the content one plays at any given time.

• This behavior I see as a consequence of the initial Pay-to-Play model of MMOs of old, as well as the original design and time/experience curves of those games as well. Going on the player mentality of often taking the path of least resistance, I feel there is no one solution or one progression system that would be both meaningful to existing players and easy to message to new players, that wouldn’t be subject to the existing MMO mentality of “path of least resistance.”

• If the path of least resistance is going to be what the player desires, I say give that path more branches, so players are encouraged to branch out, try something new, and explore if they want to maximize profit gain/time spent. Only then, will new systems gain their maximum value potential.

• I’m gonna get some serious hate, but introduce Diminishing Returns on champion loot on a per-zone basis. If a person farms Queensdale for more than an hour, no more champion bags from Queensdale for that day. If said person loves champion farming, they’ll have to go to another zone. This first step will show how repetitive play is punished. It’s still possible, but players have to explore new zones, form new champ farms, etc…

• With that in place, add improved incentive for playing a variety of content. Players like maximizing time, and just about every human on earth likes to “get a good deal” or save time/money. Along with daily achievements, add hourly bonuses (not necessarily achievements) that can be messaged by the event panel/LW panel area. Only one bonus would be active at a time on all servers, and would rotate either every hour or every few hours. It might pigeonhole players, but honestly, if people are farming Queensdale, what’s the difference in just moving them around?

• Something like… “50% bonus xp for completing events in Fireheart Rise.” – 60 min
• “50% bonus Karma from events in Mount Maelstrom.” – 60 min
• The Call to War! “50% bonus WvW experience!” – 60 min

• Systems that continue to improve on existing content and spread players out across the world will give Arenanet more time to develop complex new systems for Horizontal Progression. I’ll have to detail more about what I would like to see for new systems at a later time, but for now, I’d say new story arcs that add meaning to Order choices and reward with skills/traits sounds like the most appealing and unique suggestion thus far.

About unlocking skills and thingies: I think skill point challenges are already interesting now (in most cases). Some spawn a veteran or group of enemies, sometimes you get a riddle (I love things like that!) or sometimes it offers a little lore about the importance of the place of power (to me, such little snippets of lore are also a reward in itself, though a shame that those places of power aren’t more interactive.^^). But the main thing with how it works now, is that the system feels far more interesting and rewarding early in the game than it does later on; of course since at a certain point the skills dry up but the skill points don’t. I think it’s definitely a system that works and could be expanded upon, if only there was a way that make those points more valuable later on as well. It’s just far more exciting (and feels more rewarding as a result) to find and complete three of these challenges to buy a skill you wanted, than it is to just take 25 points from your pool and buy it.

I liked those ideas proposed earlier with ties to the Order missions, or a personal trainer instance where you use that specific skill. But indeed, open world would be better.

My following comment might not be accurate, since I’ve never done one myself so don’t really know how it works: but maybe you could take some elements from Guild Missions to hunt down skill points, like bounty hunt. If I understand correctly, you have to track down and then kill an enemy in a certain zone/time? That sounds interesting, and if it already works for Guild Missions it might also be an option for skill hunting.

Immanuel.1560:

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:

If they are going to add more titles, they still need a better tracking method. Many achievements are next to impossible to track unless you’re keeping notes or have the memory of an elephant.

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.

take a look at this statement:

Lewis: If Elona or Cantha are released, would we expect more vista’s, skill points and hearts or would they be more like Southsun or Bazaar?

Hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels

Colin: There could be, but hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels, but we feel at higher levels we really can embrace the events system. I think you’ll see is a larger sense of innovation and growth in what dynamic events can do for a zone. That doesn’t mean vistas and skill points are out the window as it’s highly likely you’ll see those come back with new zones as well.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/colin-johanson-interview-looking-ahead-part-2

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Harbard.5738:

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”.

I wholeheartedly agree, I haven’t thought of this before but it’s 100% true. I also claim that champions should scale down to 1 player (not so much health) since it takes forever to bring them down when you’re alone.

It’s still equally as difficult when the champ would have 1/4 of it’s health since attacks are just as strong and you would have to know how to avoid those. Doing this for 20+ minutes though is just not fun.

I’m reminded of an older post I had about champions – a new buff for them:

ROUSED TO RAGE

All Champions have a new ability called Roused to Rage – for each unique player character that attacks them they gain 1 stack of this buff for 2 minutes, which provides a small amount of power and condition damage and a moderate amount of toughness. The buff may stack to 25 and dissipates while not in combat. Player controlled pets and minions to not contribute to RtR stacking.

(the two minute limit is so griefers who put one shot into the champ and then move on don’t leave a permanent stack.)

Champ farming just needs to scale faithfully to the number of number of players present. Make the fights more of a struggle when the kill is going to produce 28 champ lootbags instead of 3…

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

take a look at this statement:

Lewis: If Elona or Cantha are released, would we expect more vista’s, skill points and hearts or would they be more like Southsun or Bazaar?

Hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels

Colin: There could be, but hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels, but we feel at higher levels we really can embrace the events system. I think you’ll see is a larger sense of innovation and growth in what dynamic events can do for a zone. That doesn’t mean vistas and skill points are out the window as it’s highly likely you’ll see those come back with new zones as well.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/colin-johanson-interview-looking-ahead-part-2

“Least likely to add” is not the same as “Anet tries to get rid of them”. Thanks for the link though.

Only my two cents.
About subclass system. I think we could have a subclass system without any subclasses: skills, traits, wear is enough to diversify our characters.
We need more weapon skills, slot skills and elite skills, more weapons and maybe another trait tab but we don’t need a subclass system. If, finally, developers think it is necessary i would like we can change to any of the unlocked subclasses without any penality and as fast as possible. I agree with the build saving many people have talked before in the thread.
About how to obtain new skills. I think the way Eye of the North Alliance skills (Asura, Norn, Vanguard and Deldrimor) were obtained it is the way to do it. In GW1 we have Lightbringer, Sunspear, Luxon, Kurcick, Asura, Deldrimor, Vanguard and Norn skills which are obtained through personal story or secondary quest. I think Vigil, Order of Secrets and Durman Priory could be this GW2 alliances and skills could be attached to the title. I also agree with the idea of Legendary Masters posted by Nike could be a way to show us the new skills and weapons for every profession.
PvP and WvW players could skip this process buying the skills at a merchant buying with glory or honor badgets in adition to the skill points.
Just one more. If Alliances/Factions are taken into the foreground, i would mark that i would like to be aligned with all of them like in GW1 that you can have Luxon and Kurcick skills and armors with the same character. I miss my elementalist/ritualist wearing a longbow with his mix of elementalist/ritualist/asura/kurcick/sunspear skills.

RedCobra.7693:

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

Agreed. Not for everyone, however the search for Final Rest (even if it was a bug), was one of the most fun experiences i’ve had in GW2. Moar of that plox I do find that it’s a mixed bag of “too much information” versus “practically none”. There’s never really been an MMO i’ve played that really got that sort of thing balanced. It’s either a ton of hand holding or literally no guidance.

Malchior.5042:

First, my opinion is going to differ greatly from any of the previous voices concerns/suggestions.

• To be honest, Colin, I can’t believe I’m saying this…but it seems as if everything has been made TOO rewarding. That, or the fact of acquisition anywhere or ability to buy just about anything on the TP has removed a lot of the value of diversifying the content one plays at any given time.

I will totally agree with you here. There’s WAY TOO MUCH focus on rewards. Everything you do, you get a reward. What’s more, for those of us that have been playing for a long time, and already with exotic gear or more. Rewards either get sold/salvage or if they’re skins, they’ll get used up (I like skins, would like the to be re-usable). Instead of more rewards, give us more rewarding stories.
[/quote]

Malchior.5042:

• If the path of least resistance is going to be what the player desires, I say give that path more branches, so players are encouraged to branch out, try something new, and explore if they want to maximize profit gain/time spent. Only then, will new systems gain their maximum value potential.

• I’m gonna get some serious hate, but introduce Diminishing Returns on champion loot on a per-zone basis. If a person farms Queensdale for more than an hour, no more champion bags from Queensdale for that day. If said person loves champion farming, they’ll have to go to another zone. This first step will show how repetitive play is punished. It’s still possible, but players have to explore new zones, form new champ farms, etc…

I think offering more ways or branching on current ways to make money, for those who only do that (champ runs) would be nice, but don’t kill champ runs for those who like doing it… I mean, if they enjoy boring champ runs, let them do boring champ runs.

Adding gold rewards to PVP is a nice step in this direction.

Malchior.5042:

• With that in place, add improved incentive for playing a variety of content. Players like maximizing time, and just about every human on earth likes to “get a good deal” or save time/money. Along with daily achievements, add hourly bonuses (not necessarily achievements) that can be messaged by the event panel/LW panel area. Only one bonus would be active at a time on all servers, and would rotate either every hour or every few hours. It might pigeonhole players, but honestly, if people are farming Queensdale, what’s the difference in just moving them around?

• Something like… “50% bonus xp for completing events in Fireheart Rise.” – 60 min
• “50% bonus Karma from events in Mount Maelstrom.” – 60 min
• The Call to War! “50% bonus WvW experience!” – 60 min

I had an idea for this, tie events to those boost. So like at the end of a big meta/chain event, an NPC thanks you, and gives that boost to you, for the zone. Also the system we had in GW1 dungeons, where the more kills we got, the better the reward the buff would give. That could be another idea.

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!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

take a look at this statement:

Lewis: If Elona or Cantha are released, would we expect more vista’s, skill points and hearts or would they be more like Southsun or Bazaar?

Hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels

Colin: There could be, but hearts would be the least likely thing we’d add. The renown system we felt did a nice job to guide players through our world at lower and mid levels, but we feel at higher levels we really can embrace the events system. I think you’ll see is a larger sense of innovation and growth in what dynamic events can do for a zone. That doesn’t mean vistas and skill points are out the window as it’s highly likely you’ll see those come back with new zones as well.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/colin-johanson-interview-looking-ahead-part-2

In other words, for the first few weeks after a new Zone gets released, the Wiki and Dulfy will be your source for the “path of least resistance”. Your map will also be about half as useful as it was before.

munkiman.3068:

Immanuel.1560:

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:

If they are going to add more titles, they still need a better tracking method. Many achievements are next to impossible to track unless you’re keeping notes or have the memory of an elephant.

Yea, they should do that in a better way. Here is how I see it and also I incorporated Nikes idea of Racial Category in Achievement panel
The data I wrote in the picture may not be real like how many JPs are in those zones but I just wanted to give you the idea of how to track the things

Nike.2631:

So to round out the implementation of these titles, you’d need a new “Racial” achievements category, with 5 sub-headers (1 per race of course ). You could see all 5 from any character, but a nice touch would be a small warning “You may not advance these achievements on this character” when viewing any of the 4 tabs that do not align with your current race. Then you’d need a separate achievement for each title with the meta-achievement for the total collection. Finally, many of these achievements need the “Checklist format” that would have kept the whole ‘Stop Scarlet’s invasions in every zone’ achievement from turning into the book-keeping disaster that it did – none of this blind ‘X out of Y completed’ junk when it’s looking for exact and precise tasks – LIST THEM OUT WITH A CHECK-OFF FOR EACH ONE. If that means 50 check boxes to prove you’ve done each and every difficulty level of Fractals with a character of that race, then do it.

Sprinkle it with some achievement points and maybe a few tiers to break up the process into stages and watch us go.

I have to believe that this project has positively miniscule Development and Coding overhead compared to the amount of play time it encourages .

Btw, Immanuel, I liked that “Jumping Paws and Claws” title
You could have put the ones you changed in the table with different color.
It was kind of hard to find them from Banjamin’s table

A trainer inside a challenge inside a mini-dungeon behind an event wall inside a profession-specific area.

Start with the suggested trainer that tests your ability to use some new ability. Stick that trainer in a Queen’s Gauntlet style challenge. Stick that challenge arena down at the end of a mini-dungeon. Put that minidungeon underneath a general practice/testing/dueling area (like the edge of the mists.) Put it all in a profession specific area… secluded glade for rangers, arena for warriors, etc. When new progress is available, add long-term events to break through to the deeper passages, further challenges, and new sources of knowledge.

This is what patch day would be like…

• 1. Everyone logs in
• 2. Everyone goes to their profession area…
• 3. Elementalist Zergs, Thief Zergs, and Ranger Zergs all start the ball rolling on the events to break through to their deeper sources of knowledge. Which profession will break through first? If the events took at least a week or two to complete, people would have time to use multiple characters to take part in multiple events. There would be a progress indicator like injecting anti-toxin or other completion events, but actually progressing at a pace set by the players. It would be possible for players to never unlock knowledge on a specific server.
• 4. Oh, the Guardians on Blackgate have gotten a worlds first and broken through and word has gotten out. All Guardians attempt to guest on Blackgate, slowing down the progress of Guardian knowledge everywhere else. Blackgate becomes known as the server to go to if you want to progress your Guardian (at least for awhile until others catch up.)

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!)

The social environment I’ve seen regarding players learning how their skill works best is in a test dummy environment. Generally, a lot of players will spend some time working to test how their new build generates dps, mitigates dps, and performs in crowd control. The particular test dummy area I’m thinking of is from Champions Online and includes a way to damage the players character. A similar tool can be used in GW2. I can imagine a circus tent with several test dummies, strong men, and mobile acrobats to test each portion of a players use of skills and traits.

The trainer mentioned in the previous post could be somewhere at the circus in the open world environment.

Xae Isareth.1364:

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!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

Agreed, while the Teq fight was an interesting experiment in organized group fights, it’s definitely got that rather huge problem of the new arrivals not knowing what to do, making the fight much harder to complete. Not sure what a good solution is though, open world is a tough nut to crack on many levels.

Sykper.6583:

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?

Hmm…

Currently in game we have a variety of World Event notifications in various zones. These show progress, whether it be success or failure and the consequences (Tequatl is a nice example, peppers his area of the zone with undead and mines if failed, success makes the zone more friendly.) Actually, while Tequatl is up regardless of where-ever you are in the zone you can see the event icons, but more on that later.

Here is what I think would be fair:

- How would people know? I have an idea, but I can’t quite figure out the pros/cons of the suggestion yet. How about adding a ‘Event Board’ physically in each of the main cities? This may take a bit to program, and could even be as simple as those ‘scout’ NPCs you run into as you explore Tyria. How it works is that when you interact with this quest board, a list of ACTIVE dynamic world events is shown perhaps in a dialogue box, maybe one says ‘Trouble in the Blazeridge’. Clicking on that option pulls up the map like when you did the scout interaction, moves your look over to Blazeridge and a small synopsis shows up, saying ‘We got reports of increased Branded activity in Blazeridge, the Vigil requests assistance…’ followed up by the typical circles that might just show the current events there.

Upon further reflection, the rewards idea I had might pale in comparison to what I came up with in dealing with immersion and event notification. I would like to see something of an event board and special event effects to come through so I don’t end up looking at a site online for events to appear in real-time, I can just do it in game through LA or even be in the zone when something happens.

The programming difficulty should actually be quite all right.

We already have websites that track events for us through the API. Hence, the event data can already be extracted from the API. The Black Lion Trading Company screen works using an ingame webbrowser. The actual trading post is a website.
Creating a new screen using the browser functionality already in the game using the data already accessible from the API should be trivial in programming terms.

Though this does depend on how the programmers structured the code. It’d be a breeze in any object-oriented environment.

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 would like a system mixing instanced and open-world mechanics. For example:
- The player speaks with a NPC-trainer in the world and enters an instance
- The trainer offers to teach the player a new spec if he can help him with some tasks
- The player is required to complete a couple of instanced missions (for Lore!)
- The player is required to complete some open world missions… examples:
* complete events in specific locations to obtain particular event-items
* kill particular boss/champions to an event-item
* explore specific areas to find some event-items
* reach the end of a jumping puzzle to obtain a treasure
- The player go back to the trainer with the required items to complete the task and be trained in the new spec.

@Ronah

Hey, you are right, I should have done that in my table.
I have put in there two different colour now.

Red = Totally changed that title
Blue = It is same title, but I have change spelling of words

I hope it is now more clear what I have done in there.

In terms of communicating skill acquisition to players, I think a rework of the hero panel could do that. You already have a section detailing weapon skills and utilities – add a small tab with a list of ‘world’ skills that are unlockable, with a small text description attached.

Such as,

“Antitoxin spray – complete Twilight Arbor with ‘persistant toxic cloud’ instability.”
“New Gizmo” – Do Master Vekk in Rata Sum a favor.

- This way they sort of work as mini-quests or achievements. I quite like the idea of gambits, instabilities, finishes, being broadened into more PvE content, by the way.
As somebody up above said, fixing the zerker meta isn’t necessarily a matter of nerfing skills and traits, but giving mobs new tricks.

Xae Isareth.1364:

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!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

At the same time, the only sure way to kill Teq is by organized group of people, planning ahead of time, giving out specific roles across groups of people participating in said battle. Not everyone can work together, not everyone can even fit on the server that the groups is trying to carry out the strategy. That being said, small sized servers will have very hard time participating in those big open world events.
At this point in time, you have to be in the specific server or overflow an hour before the event starts if you want to have any possibility of defeating Teq. This causes problems for people that have limited time to play the game, while being restricted to one map while they wait for the fight to start. Also waiting so long in advance creates many AFK players because they couldn’t keep themselves occupied for the time of the wait that is required for the Teq fight.
Some will say that they got in just fine at the beginning of the battle. But that’s not the case for all.
If skills are going to be based off events like Teq, we’re limiting the accessibility of those skills to a wide population of players based on either low populated servers or that are very casual.
While myself I slain Teq a few times, I have a large amount of friends that never seen him go below 90% health.

Immanuel.1560:

@Ronah

Hey, you are right, I should have done that in my table.
I have put in there two different colour now.

Red = Totally changed that title
Blue = It is same title, but I have change spelling of words

I hope it is now more clear what I have done in there.

This is better now. Thank you !!

Romo.3709:

Xae Isareth.1364:

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!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

At the same time, the only sure way to kill Teq is by organized group of people, planning ahead of time, giving out specific roles across groups of people participating in said battle. Not everyone can work together, not everyone can even fit on the server that the groups is trying to carry out the strategy. That being said, small sized servers will have very hard time participating in those big open world events.
At this point in time, you have to be in the specific server or overflow an hour before the event starts if you want to have any possibility of defeating Teq. This causes problems for people that have limited time to play the game, while being restricted to one map while they wait for the fight to start. Also waiting so long in advance creates many AFK players because they couldn’t keep themselves occupied for the time of the wait that is required for the Teq fight.
Some will say that they got in just fine at the beginning of the battle. But that’s not the case for all.
If skills are going to be based off events like Teq, we’re limiting the accessibility of those skills to a wide population of players based on either low populated servers or that are very casual.
While myself I slain Teq a few times, I have a large amount of friends that never seen him go below 90% health.

And Teq isn’t even a complicated boss. The strategy is essentially spam poison cleanse on a spot, have every attacker stack and nuke the dragon, everyone else splits up and defends turrets. Split up into 3 groups for defend phases.

That’s nowhere near the difficulty of mechanics you usually see in a raid in MMOs. Its actually basically impossible to make difficult content in the open world, because simply not everyone can do difficult content, and open world content is for everyone. That’s a clear contradiction right there.

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.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

Before I will expand a bit i will quote myself from a previous post

Ronah.2869:

My opinion about sub-classes

- I see the sub-class as an affiliation of the character with a specific House similar with joining the Orders

- they are only a “name” and a “subcategory” of skills and NOT as a “specialization”. In this way we don’t limit players’ options regarding builds

- to visually differentiate the sub-classes there should be a “House specific look” similar to the Orders (Vigil, Priory, Whisperer) but with less constraints meaning that you can always change your sub-class (aka your House affiliation) if you like the other look.

- Affiliation to a House will imply to do various tasks having the final reward the new set skills from that specific House.

A House set of skills will include
-1 House specific skill which will give the name of your sub-class
-2 Profession specific skills
and 3 universal skills

So, a character can learn all the universal skills from all Houses, and all profession skills plus the House specific skills only from compatible Houses

To make a calculation

3 Houses / profession X 8 professions = 24 Houses

3 universal skills / house X 24 houses = 72 Universal skills usable by all professions

2 profession specific skills / house X 3 houses/ profession = 6 profession specific skills / character (usable only by a specific profession)

1 house specific skill / house =3 house specific skills / profession = Sub-class name (equipping one and only one of these skills will change your sub-c;lass name)

I hope i made it clear so you guys can understand what I meant

Houses will be seen in the world by all players, they can talk to the NPCs there but they will tell them they should come back alter when they are prepared meaning come back after level 80 is reached.

We don’t need to announce them to make it mandatory but we leave it as an option for the player.
He will discover that joining the houses will give him more skills while he would be intrigued when will he be prepared to join a House.

For people who think this these houses are too confusing, think of them as of Chinese martial schools. In there you join a school. In GW you join a House

@Colin

Communication
As far as communication to players, I think you could stick with your current system and send a short message through in-game mail, telling players to go speak to their Trainer. The Trainers could then relay the info.

Disclaimer
Before I address Skill Acquisition, I want to mention the one thing that I really find to be a negative with this game: almost everything is too easy to acquire, especially if you have money. We need to add in more things that require work/skill.

Skill Acquisition
Depending on the level of the skill involved, there should be different ways to earn them, with increasing difficulty.

Low Level – These would be the easiest to acquire. You could do something as simple as purchase them from the Trainer, earn them from the simpler jumping puzzles, certain hearts, or complete simple Quests/Challenges. (These would be the only ones available to purchase)

Mid Level – Earned through completing the lower level dungeons, mid level Champions, mid level jumping puzzles, and higher level Dynamic events.

High Level – Earned through the hardest Jumping Puzzles, Dungeons, Quests/Challenges, Dragons, and entire Temple Events.

Special Skills – Skills of varying difficulty could also be earned though Guild Missions or other gameplay modes done as an entire Guild party. These would be some of the skills earned through the other means, so as not to exclude smaller guilds.

All Levels – Place several “hidden” NPCs throughout the world that require differing levels of skill to locate. Perhaps located in mini-dungeons or side paths of jumping puzzles. They could offer special, cosmetic versions of skills.

Xae Isareth.1364:

And Teq isn’t even a complicated boss. The strategy is essentially spam poison cleanse on a spot, have every attacker stack and nuke the dragon, everyone else splits up and defends turrets. Split up into 3 groups for defend phases.

That’s nowhere near the difficulty of mechanics you usually see in a raid in MMOs. Its actually basically impossible to make difficult content in the open world, because simply not everyone can do difficult content, and open world content is for everyone. That’s a clear contradiction right there.

That’s completely understandable. Mechanics been understood hours after the release. What I’m trying to say is that if new skills acquisition is going to be based of those hardcore bosses that require a big amount of people to complete, a huge amount of casual players is going to feel left behind.
If those kind of fights are going to be the only way to acquire a specific skill, they need to scale down with amount of people present. Now I’m not saying scale down Teq. Don’t! Completely leave him alone as he is now. But basing skill acquisition on world bosses is kind of a hit and miss. Because it is not equal opportunity for all. Your skill makes no difference when 70 other people have no idea what they’re doing, leaving you completely dependent on a group of strangers. And that also ties down to how populated servers are at given times.

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 would add at least 2 new categories to map completion for each zone, though I wouldn’t unlock it until a character on the account has done 100% world completion (though I’d remove WvW from world completion because of this).

First category would be: Skill Trainers. Like Skill Challenges just a lot tougher, capable of challenging a small group but also not being a push over for a zerg. Each trainer would have at least 1 skill they can teach each class which can be learned after defeating the trainer.

Second category would be: Factions. Like Renown Hearts but more involved with a heavy focus on doing events (objective taking in WvW). Each faction would allow the purchase of at least 1 skill for each class via karma.

This would expand upon a system all players should understand and would help get some replay out of the “leveling” content. (though I think that’s an aspect of the game that should be improved regardless)

One comment I would add though is it would behoove ANet to put effort into adding new events to the zones, outside of the Living Story content. One of the things that sold me on the game was the idea I could replay a zone a couple years down the road and because so many new events had been added it would have a vastly different experience. While they may be true for zones touch by the living story I don’t think that is the only way they should be updated.

I’ve never completed the fight itself, partly due to overflows and not being at the right place at the right time, but with Tequatl, I think one of the things might be that people get into turrets and get a sudden new set of skills presented to them (I might be wrong here, but I’m assuming that the turrets only work when the actual fight is underway). The same is true for other events, such as the guns that you can pick up in the Jormag fight. That one is a lot more forgiving, but what happens is the same: it suddenly presents players with a whole bunch of new skills which they have to check out in a hurry since the fight is already underway. Maybe it’s an idea to better familiarize players with such things, so they can actually go in a bit more prepared (and yes true, currently Jormag isn’t that challenging at all, but that’s not my point.^^). It could be tied into lore as well. The Durmand Priory dedicates itself to knowledge and research and has multiple outposts throughout the game. Perhaps they could offer tutorials on mysterious experimental weapons such as these. Maybe people at a Charr weapon forge could teach about the Charrzooka’s. Or maybe put all those tutorial NPC’s in a player’s home instance. I’d like to see lore-based factions and NPC’s out in the world teaching players such things, instead of having them just pop up in the UI.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

It depends on the kind of skills:

If are the skills we put in the right side of the quick bar, then an NPC in the city could send us there. Even better, it could be a part of the Order’s quest system in which the orders send us to do those events, or we win points doing events for them and with those points we can unlock/buy the skills.

If are weapon skills, then should be unlocked by fighting. It could be directly by killing things or could be masters (that challenge us like in the Belcher’s Bluff’s challenges) testing us, or duels with enemies (like the Queen’s Champion from the Queen’s Jubilee) blocking paths or rulling villages. This last two could be part of the Order quest system too.

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?

Challenging Content. This over and over again. If you have solo instances with Special bosses or stuff like the Gambit Cage where you Need to challenge your skill and class to get new visual stuff for your class(like the often mentioned Special effects for spells). Than there is absoutly no way to get it an easier way than just the way it is ment to get em. The main Problem for me with gw2 are 2 Points.

-Everything can be bought with Money ( Beisdes Liadri and Tribunational mode weapons) (fractal weapons are buyable as well since there is right now a spot on 49 for sale ).

- And of course that I still have no answer after several Posts of you in the vertical Progression Forum that we will have an answer on the issue of the fractal reset. In my eyes this thread is a slap in the face who lost a legit Progress and a lot of legit Progress and still are ignored. I know you might say now this sounds like a flame but it isn’t it is just the way you make us feel. With talking around Progression and how it should work , while completly ignoring the fact that you have reseted our Progression and hard work without and answer or excuse.

Why did the reset happen?

Why was the reset not to 0 if it was for the sake of starting fair into leaderboard?

Why are Leaderboards not implemented with the reset if they were the reason for the reset?

Why is there no comprehension for our loss of time and effort?

Why is the Topic of fractals and several issues completly ignored or postponed with answers in threads and even People are banned for asking about the reset on livestream?

Why is it so hard to talk with us?

Why you think it is completly fine to reset Progress in an MMO if only a small but very dedicted playerbase gets hurt?

Those question bother me for months now I really just hope to get an answer. And don’t take this as an offense Chris. It is hard to stay objective if Feelings are involved and you can’t write in your native language on top of that.

Just look at every Thing that sounds negative or offensive in this text as an Expression on how dedicted I am to this game and how much I care for this game and Fractals. If this wasn’t the case it would be way easier to write a clean and maybe really objective text..

I still hope for at least a fair and simple answer. ( not one of your buisness texts but one in the style of your sab programmer who was always honest with his sab playerbase and had no issues to say when he might have done somthing wrong)

Regards

A maybe a bit overdedicted guildwars player

Colin is right. if you unlock something really hard, the casual players won’t even bother but if you unlock something really easy then the elitists who get it will be hurt in their pride because they will be drawn back to mere commoners

ColinJohanson.2394:

Yeah to be clear, my point was in saying the skill point version isn’t very interesting, it lends itself to degenerate game play (play the fastest way to earn skill points, not the most fun) which is generally true of most systems of progression in basically any MMO ever made.

The veteran hunt is very similar to the Gw1 style skill collection, and certainly one of the systems we’re well aware of and talk about regularly when we consider systems of horizontal progression acquisition for the future.

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.

I missed this previously, so I’d like to comment because it’s related to all my other posts.

imo the “play your way” to level up and gain skill points to purchase abilities is perfect. the core problems are the way professions were designed, not so much the content. professions are not very interesting or engaging because of the factors that I mentioned in earlier posts. essentially you created a profession system that is severely limited in grand design with a reliance on gear stats for the main form of customization. yes, we have traits and a few skills to interchange, but that is not enough to create an interesting professions and combat system for long term retention. currently, the way professions, weapons and skills were designed, many players are sitting in front of their keyboard pressing a few buttons to get through most content. sure, you can get more depth if you really want by playing a profession with more swaps and long cool downs to manage, and about really caring for being a twitch and swap manager pro, but you don’t have to. you could say the skill level required for small engagement wvw and spvp can be “deep”, but for most it is an exercise in frustration and the numbers of players participating in pvp are a testament to that.

you don’t want players “sitting in front of your keyboard” merely pressing buttons? then make profession interesting, flexible, diverse and balanced enough to engage players by profession design merits alone. doing so will make content more interesting and increase the replay value tremendously because the character a player controls can perform multiple roles well and explore different ways to play.

you want “easy to learn so we can teach them to new players, accessible, and not overly complex/tedious”? then streamline profession controls by add more buttons at hand to the bar for weapons and powers to be placed, and lessen the reliance on swap and cool down management of a few powers that have multiple effects jam packed into them. make more of an effort to design better teamwork skills and counter play with abilities and put them “up front” not hidden behind taps and swaps. balance profession performance and stats, while still keeping a uniqueness to them…

so far it seems as though you have taken the “path of least resistance that leads to degenerate game play” by not making a strong reinvestment to profession development and that is clear shown by only trait number reshuffling over the past year. also, there were 4 teams hired for ls content while we only had a few heal skill introduced despite your players begging for more on these forums. you wanted to change your development philosophy so review the meta and make healthy profession changes regularly that target problematic issues such as stealth, conditions, over the top burst capabilities, hp disparities, lack of role diversity… make a profession system that is easy to pick up play and alt friendly so gamers are willing to play many different professions and roles. increase the ttk in pvp formats so players can try to learn and be encouraged as opposed to staring at the log out button…

tl;dr, reinvest and fix the profession core first before you add content, currency and new systems on top of existing systems that already work.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- 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)

I think that besides of be able to be obtained in another way (with quests). The legendary weapon should have its own achievements to unlock new skins, effects, etc. But i think what makes a legendary weapon is the story around it. Such a weapon should have a deeper story, before and after we get it. I think it could have a window telling the progress of the weapon: when was forged, who made it, who sold it, who bought it, the things we killed with them, etc.

munkiman.3068:

Xae Isareth.1364:

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!)

This is something I’m quite concerned with. The main reason being that you can’t make open-world group content sophisticated or challenging.

Allow me to explain. Challenging content involves a learning process, especially if it has sophisticated mechanics which the group needs to overcome. This means your group will likely fail a few times, getting better each time until you finally beat the content.

Now for the open world part. This learning process just won’t work because in the open world, you’ll constantly get new people joining you, newbies who didn’t have that failing-and-learn experience. So every time you attempt it, there’s a good chance you’re starting at square one again.

So if you guys are going to focus most of your time on open-world content, then I’m very concerned about the future difficulty and sophistication of group content.

Agreed, while the Teq fight was an interesting experiment in organized group fights, it’s definitely got that rather huge problem of the new arrivals not knowing what to do, making the fight much harder to complete. Not sure what a good solution is though, open world is a tough nut to crack on many levels.

Actually, it’s not that big a problem once you analyse it.

We want open world content so people can enjoy the social aspect of the game. You know, run into each other, do stuff together even if they don’t know each other.
(There’s actually a lot to be said here about the large number of players playing the game as if it were a single player game instead of an MMO and actively complaining about the presence of other people, but that is for another thread)

Open world content cannot have a too high complexity or difficulty due to the fact the game needs to be accessible to all. We can assume that if an event is clear for someone with an IQ score of 100, most human beings will think so as well.

Now, the moment you try to combine these two, as with Tequatl, you run into a number of huge problems.
Complexity. Organisation. Difficulty. And ofc, the people who do not agree with any of these or simply aren’t used to it.
(Naturally, exposing players from the get go to a higher difficultly scale will improve the average player’s ability to correctly estimate his role and purpose in higher difficulty content on average. The problem being that this is not the case and nor do we want it to be the case considering the game needs as many players as possible to be profitable.)

However, the key note to make here is the organisation pillar.
Due to the high level of organisation required to bring Tequatl down, players will seek this organisation out and have their commanders prepare them for the fight. As part of a guild that takes Teq down multiple times a week, I can assure you there is no lack of the social aspect of the game when it comes to killing Tequatl.

Hence, it does not matter whether Tequatl is instanced or open world. It is arguable that the encounter would work better when instanced since a lot of Tequatl slaying guilds create overflows on purpose to lock random players out of their kill attempt already!

This satisfies the conditions Colin put forth from the start. The problem is that GW2 still lacks the ability to create a party big enough to get everyone into an instance like that and that there are some issues involving party leaders leaving kicking everyone etc. (Compare dungeons)
Adding this ability to Commanders would be great. Especially as with the CDI on commanders in WvW, it was deemed a good idea if we could elect subcommanders and give them an icon on the minimap etc.

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.

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

Wow, this thread exploded while I was asleep. So, for unlocking new skills and traits and such I’ve had a few ideas come to mind while I was catching up with the thread. Most were already mentioned to some degree, but I’ll lay out my thoughts in story form for easy flow:

Patch Day
New patch hits, each profession now has 5 new traits, weapon skills, and utility skills (heal and elite included as utility). There’s new areas in the Skills and Traits tab of your Hero page (“H”). Those shiny new things? They’re all locked. Maybe their tooltip describes the effect, maybe its cryptic, but in any regards, they have a portion of the tooltip that shows you where to go, and who to talk to (similar to the navigation portions for achievements). For each item you want to unlock, you find a special trainer NPC (or maybe they’re the current profession trainers that are spread throughout Tyria). Or, maybe there’s a hub along the lines of fractals that serves to unlock new things. In any regard, you need to get to these NPCs and talk to them.

Personal Story
Now that you’ve arrived at your lovely NPC, it gives you an expanded personal story instance that sets you on a quest to find a “new source of power” or somesuch. Ultimately, it’ll send you on a quest related to the desired unlock you’ve set out to achieve first. This personal story instance will be geared to the idea that your skill reflects (i.e. if you’re unlocking a control heavy skills, mobs will use a lot of control, and you’ll need to use control against them. Likewise, if it deals with combo fields, mobs will use their own fields, and you’ll have to use your own). After completing this Personal Story step, you’ll now have the trait/skill unlocked, but still unusable.

Gaining Access
Now that you have the skill/trait unlocked, you still can’t use it. What now? The unlocked skill/trait will now have a tooltip that denotes an “achievement-like” requirement to fully gain access, along the lines of a daily. That is, if you’re unlocking said control skill, Maybe you’ll need to interrupt ~50 times. Or for a new chill effect, you need to amass ~100s of slowed skill recharge, or perhaps finish a combo field ~100 times. In this way, players can start to get a feel for making use of their soon to be new skill. Perhaps, there’s multiple smaller requirements for each aspect of the new skill/trait (10 launches, 30s chill, 15 blast combos finished). In this way, players will gain access by playing a “theme” closer to what they’re trying to unlock.

Reasonings
The glory in this, is that skills can be fully unlocked in any gamemode. You can interrupt in PvE, WvW, and PvP. You can chill or finish combo fields in PvE, WvW, and PvP. You can assume that if players want that shiny new control skill, they’ll be willing to use control to get it. Similar to what Colin Johnson had said about unlock options, Wxp and PvP ranks basically made you play WvW and PvP. With these skill/trait unlocks, you will be playing the game to unlock them, and finding your profession’s current abilities as well. You’ll need to control, chill, combo, or whatever before you get your shiny new skill/trait, and so you’ll be learning your class’s capabilities that you already had. In addition, you’ll have an instance portion (for solo, personal development, or with a party of 2-5. The weaker of the two aspects). and you’ll have the open world based aspect (you’ll be controlling, chilling, or combo-ing with other players in order to fully unlock whatever it was you needed).

Admittedly, the personal story portion isn’t completely needed, as some people would complain about needing to do that small portion of PvE were they a WvWer or PvPer, but I felt like it would be a great vehicle for lore and reasoning why you suddenly have these new abilities. The bigger portion is unlocking the skills by playing the game. The key here is to encourage the player to learn more of their desired skill/trait’s effects by related gameplay, and allow them to accomplish this is any game mode. Especially if there are additional effects, like having a skill deal more damage to burning foes, that character had better be learning how to burn and attack burning things with their current abilities before they get an ability to help them do it better.

Anyway, my thoughts after 3-4 pages of catching up

I feel like tossing a glass of water into the sea while posting here, but I’m doing it anyway.
The progression I’d like to see is the gw1 skill progression A.Net had there. I’d like to hunt for skills. I’d like skills to have a story and a meaning. Like “I learnt mirror images in Uzolan’s mirror house” or “I learnt the prayer to Dwayna at his statue in Divinity’s reach”
I really don’t like the skill point mechanic. May be we should still need to meat the skill point requirement to learn the skill.
But getting out there and learning a skill from some meaningful source makes more sense to me.

I think the acquisition of the heal skill by hunting for plants was a step in the right direction, if only there was no other way to get that skill. That would’ve been great.

Maybe instead of paying 25 skill points we should’ve payed the plants plus 3 or 6 skill points.

That was my glass of water.

Naetell.3815:

snip

Now, as for interaction with the open world.

I propose a 3 tier system. It is easy to learn and keep track of, and makes it so that there is something for everyone.

Normal events, group events, instanced events.

Normal events are the dynamic events we all know and are used to.

Current group events need to be assessed whether they fit being a group event or not. If not, refinement of the scaling mechanics can make it so that an event scales nicely from 1 player to, let’s say, 250 players.
The large group events, ie world bosses, should be designated as such and be the intermediate events.
The are harder than normal events, and require a very small degree of organisation. (something that could be done impromptu.)
Let’s say that if 5 to 10 people team up, they could make the event go smoothly for everyone involved.
The average difficulty level of world bosses should be increased, and the mechanics should prepare players for the huge instanced events in a minor degree.
(To compare with Tequatl, our one and only qualifying raid boss atm, a group event could have a phase where 2 structures need to be defended from various easy enemies.)

Once players see mechanics like that pop up, it’ll be less alien to them in the truly large instanced events, thus lowering the treshold. Hence, group events will bridge the gap between the dynamic events everyone encounters everywhere, and the huge instanced events that would annihilate a single player.
A lot of balancing is required here, but I assume world bosses already need an overhaul as they are. From a player standpoint, it does feel like development doesn’t really know where to go with them.

Instanced events should be like Tequatl is now, only in an instance then. This saves both the people trying to level in sparkfly fen a lot of trouble as well as the slew of 80’s who want to kill the dragon.
We can talk raid dungeons all we want (and when I say raid, I mean being huge organised content) , but the truth is Arenanet doesn’t have much experience with them, and from what we can tell from how GW2 was marketed, no good experiences running them either.
The heart of the matter is though, that Tequatl is a better raid boss (For a first raid boss, he’s miles ahead from what other MMO’s offered as their first) than the current dungeons succeed at being dungeons. I’d keep the two seperate until both concepts are thoroughly mastered in both design and balancing. (Few MMO’s have ever created a dungeon for hundreds of people, and even fewer have succeeded at balancing that, to put things into perspective)

Putting a boss like Tequatl in an instance gives both us and development a lot of advantages.
For development, it means they can be more experimental with them and try things out. Working closely with large organised guilds can be a huge boon here. As players, we have seen and played through boss fights for decades. And from what I can see, GW2 could really offer us something different in that regard as well.
Instanced events like these also mean development can gather data on us efficiently and make on the fly adjustments to mechanics without the risk of breaking the game world.
This can lead to a fast buildup of relevant experience to make future fights with Elder Dragons spectacular and well-adjusted to the skill level of the average player. (Toning mechanics down is relatively speaking easier than ramping them up from a design perspective)

One thing that would be cool though, is having these huge instanced battles affect the game world for everyone.
Kind of like Tequatl does already. I’ve just never seen something like this implemented across different zones.
Does it matter a lot? Probably not, but I’m just saying it’s a pretty cool idea that random people could gauge how well the boss fight is going from the adjacent zone they’re playing in. It’d also be a way for large raiding guilds to have a positive impact on the play experience of casual players.

How could this work? Well, if you have a boss on a timer, it’s a lot easier than if it generates a new instance every time someone attempts it. Then again, with the data tracking tools already built into GW2, I’d wager it’d be possible to keep track of how many successes are made over a period of time and alter the game world based on that.
Maybe even make it like a monthly thing, like the area starts of dark at the start of the month and it becomes more cleansed every time an organised group takes the boss down. It’d give players another way to progress, and visually see how their progress affects the game world for everyone directly.

Swagger.1459:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Yeah to be clear, my point was in saying the skill point version isn’t very interesting, it lends itself to degenerate game play (play the fastest way to earn skill points, not the most fun) which is generally true of most systems of progression in basically any MMO ever made.

The veteran hunt is very similar to the Gw1 style skill collection, and certainly one of the systems we’re well aware of and talk about regularly when we consider systems of horizontal progression acquisition for the future.

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.

I missed this previously, so I’d like to comment because it’s related to all my other posts.

imo the “play your way” to level up and gain skill points to purchase abilities is perfect. the core problems are the way professions were designed, not so much the content. professions are not very interesting or engaging because of the factors that I mentioned in earlier posts. essentially you created a profession system that is severely limited in grand design with a reliance on gear stats for the main form of customization. yes, we have traits and a few skills to interchange, but that is not enough to create an interesting professions and combat system for long term retention. currently, the way professions, weapons and skills were designed, many players are sitting in front of their keyboard pressing a few buttons to get through most content. sure, you can get more depth if you really want by playing a profession with more swaps and long cool downs to manage, and about really caring for being a twitch and swap manager pro, but you don’t have to. you could say the skill level required for small engagement wvw and spvp can be “deep”, but for most it is an exercise in frustration and the numbers of players participating in pvp are a testament to that.

you don’t want players “sitting in front of your keyboard” merely pressing buttons? then make profession interesting, flexible, diverse and balanced enough to engage players by profession design merits alone. doing so will make content more interesting and increase the replay value tremendously because the character a player controls can perform multiple roles well and explore different ways to play.

you want “easy to learn so we can teach them to new players, accessible, and not overly complex/tedious”? then streamline profession controls by add more buttons at hand to the bar for weapons and powers to be placed, and lessen the reliance on swap and cool down management of a few powers that have multiple effects jam packed into them. make more of an effort to design better teamwork skills and counter play with abilities and put them “up front” not hidden behind taps and swaps. balance profession performance and stats, while still keeping a uniqueness to them…

so far it seems as though you have taken the “path of least resistance that leads to degenerate game play” by not making a strong reinvestment to profession development and that is clear shown by only trait number reshuffling over the past year. also, there were 4 teams hired for ls content while we only had a few heal skill introduced despite your players begging for more on these forums. you wanted to change your development philosophy so review the meta and make healthy profession changes regularly that target problematic issues such as stealth, conditions, over the top burst capabilities, hp disparities, lack of role diversity… make a profession system that is easy to pick up play and alt friendly so gamers are willing to play many different professions and roles. increase the ttk in pvp formats so players can try to learn and be encouraged as opposed to staring at the log out button…

tl;dr, reinvest and fix the profession core first before you add content, currency and new systems on top of existing systems that already work.

Seconded. A look at the current pve dungeon meta is enough.

After reading the last pages, I’m amazed to see what some other people expect to see from Sub Classes and into which extreme depth partwise.
I always thought that a Sub Class System is best, when it follows the KISS Principle at its beginning at least, because giving every profession maximum 3 Sub Classes would still be overviewable.

But now I see here people suggestign thigns like 1 Sub Class per Trait Line, or even going so far, like suggesting 1 Sub Class per combination of two trait lines up to crazy suggestions like giving the game like 10 Sub Classes per Trait Line and completely redesigning the Trait System for that into more generalistic terms and adding even on top of all this something again, like a splitting between Primary Trait Line and Secondary Trait Lines for all of the Sub Classes, where I think I saw a desperate try of someone to suggest, that Anet should bring back simply the silly Dual Class System back, which is in my opinion something that should stand out of question to do never ever. Keep the Dual Class System from GW1 out of all this please.
Thats not the kind of Sub Classes, what I want, that kind of system isn’t even a Sub Class System at all. However, that kind of System i think would fit perfectly under the frame of a Synergy System to add something interesting for the Combat System that could work like an upgrade of the Combo System to a much better intuitive way, that is more than just only Blast Finishers, Whirls, Projectiles, and Combo Fields*
—-

If I’d post here now my personal proposal (yeah, I’ve googled it xD ) I think it would end up in a huge novel, full of details that could fill alone many pages.

Colin writes now about what we want as “Unlock Mechanics” in GW2, and it feels to me, as if they are trying to feel in a very subtle way on our tooths, like wanting to drain out of us all of the very important information they need
But first I want to thank Colin, for coming into the discussion now and partaking in it with your good guiding questions that always point the views of us onto the important this and direct the discussion into new ways and that with just making simple questions.

I think, if I’d write my whole proposal down here now, it would just go down under.
So I think I’ll post it in the suggestions area where it can be locked instantly by a Moderator once I’m done with it and just relink the thread then here later.

I have had a clear vision over my concept of Sub Classes, but the last few pages of suggestions opened my eyes and now I see clearer, that I have to overwork my current concept that I have in my mind all of the time since months over months.

I definetely want to find a compromise here, one that improves the game fundamentally, one that doesn’t feel like being too restrictive, but still makes the stretch for enabling it the players to create real unique diversive characters and one, that is able to give players visual as like mechanically the feeling of having really progressed with your character that you can say at the end of it “My character is now advanced in what he is as a professsion and more advanced in regard of its fighting style and all of the known techniques, that make my character special and this with all of the flavor and the truly fitting name”

I am still at the opinion that Sub Classes are very relevant, but now after reading the past pages , I’m convinced of it, that Sub Classes would require some serious overhauls of some systems, of the game, like the Trait System, the Stat System and the Skill System in certain points, so that by the end all 3 would harmonize better together, than currently now it is the case with the biggest problem of the game being omnipresent at all the times being DPS > everything.

As much as I want Sub Classes, I also don’t want Sub Classes at any cost.
Sub Classes aren’t something, which are made just over night.
Its content, that requires work – serious work, especially when it should help in balancing the game also to mitigate the importants of pure Damage gameplay more over to Support and Control to make all 3 paths as equal as possible in the game.

When one thing got clear here, then that Sub Classes received here alot of resistance which I find unreasonable, because most of the arguements against Sub Classes are based on fears and assumptions.
Assumptions that went so far, that even Chris has mentioned them directly within the same posting, where he said, that he personally likes the basic idea of Sub Classes (in which way now exatly being executed will always be up to the Devs only, our suggestions and proposals will aways be only inspirations for them, nothing more, nothing less)

This might is a bit zynic but if I was a rich guy that made Money in tradingpost without playing the game I would earn in those Systems the rewards as following

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)
- basicaly Gold for all other currencies just pay for an exploited run in the area you want to have tokkens

- Skills: Collect skill points. (Which becomes play the fastest way to earn XP, or skill points.)
-just buy dungeonruns to get the skillpoints you need

- 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.
- most Points are in dailies here wich is a big Problem but as a rich guy I don’t care about achievment Points because I already have all legendaries and don’t have to care for the Skins

- 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)
I just buy as many as I want and control the market

- 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) there are no Special Skins or rewards besides a mini dolyak so why should I care?

- PvP Skin Locker & PvP Ranks: Play PvP. (This is basically just play PvP since the latest release.)
hmm there are some finishers I want I just go and exploit skyhammer for 2 weeks and have the equal result than People who cared and played for a year

- Making Liadri with light up the Darkness Achievment to gain Special spell effects.
This Looks really sick but I can’t buy it it sucks
-
- Rewarding a cool title for Players that put a lot of effort to get to the highest scales avaiable in fractals when they were released in 2012
This is kitten why should they deserve anything for they’re time invested that I can’t buy

Obviously this is not ment to be offensive but this is the way things feel
after 4k hours played and invested loads of time and Money to get to scale 81 in fractals getting 30k kills in wvw playing pvp to clim to rank 40. Having not aquired a single legendary. Having done cof p1 and arah p4 when they actually were hard ( before they got nerfed) You feel like nothing you have done actually matters this is a Feeling that might Need a bit aggresive way to describe. But you might see My Fractal Level just got reseted by Anet, My 30k kills might matter in the Long way for the title but not for the ap or for my wxp because most of those kills I got before the wxp System was in place. My pvp rank doesn’t matter besides the titles I got on the way while playing tourneys but in the end I could have just exploited skyhammer and saved a lot of time. Having done a dungeonmaster title in the first weeks and beeing proud of it doesn’t matter anymore since you can buy/sell LEGALY every single path there is in gw2. Fractal scales can be bought as well. I know I might be a minor part of People that actually Plays the game and have fun instead of farming / rushing dungeons I search the challenge ( haven’t found it yet besides light up the dark and doing Thing with less People than they are ment for). But I don’t see why you make all my efforts pointless by either:
- looking away by Major exploits like skyhammer
- or resetting our Progress by yourself

Just each of you foryourself how you would feel to realize that you have spent 1000’s of hours maybe half of time for nothing…..

What I could maybe should have done:

I could have the same account I have with the same items maybe a couple of legendaries and a bit of Money more if I would just have played with the mass.
- Farming 15g / hour with TA instead of investing 2 months of hardcore gameplay to get first to scale 81
- Wait when new Content gets released till it gets nerfed so everyone can Play it.
- Farm skyhammer to have a higher pvp rank than I have now and have a huge ammount of Money from selling presents at start of wintersday
- Trading instead of running dungeons and buy the dungeonruns for some Gold ( or even to make Gold for example with the ac run that is beeing exploited)
- Just have an account that Plays less and is more lucky and drop a precursor
(This is just because this is the way gw1 dropsystem worked you got better Drops if you weren’t logged in for Long time)

So anyway maybe sometime 1 guy will get what my Problem is especially with the fractals reset it’s not that I haven’t had the experience while playing it is just that I have the Feeling that investing time NOW is pointless than they will Keep programming and reseting things for the big mass that is playing the game LATER so why not just Play it later and have WAY better loot and the Better reward for less time invested.

I know this might be a minor opignon but it is still one.

I quite like the idea of a new, more challenging style of task represented by map icons that would unlock once you’ve hit 80 or some other milestone. I also like the idea of new maps that have a focus on skill and skin acquisition a great deal.

To me we even have a few ‘high level’ maps in game already that can serve as a start – Orr and Southsun both offer more difficulty and quite a different flavor, already. Southsun itself is begging for more to do. Orr already has an unlockable skin, even, and a system in place that communicates the status of the temples in the area.

I realize Orr isn’t the most populous zone nowadays but that’s more of a function of useful rewards migrating away from it than a fault of the design. My only particular fault with the design of Orr is the sheer physical difficulty of navigation over the rough terrain.

What the new tasks are is a whole different ball of wax, though – are they solo instances where you complete skill testing challenges? Are they large events like Tequatl or the Temples? Are they, in other words, soloable or group-oriented, or a variety? Is there a special currency or one of the more generalized currencies in game?

I suppose from my talk of Orr and Southsun and Tequatl that I’d focus on high-level multi-stage events with solo components – to me GW2 really is at it’s best when it promotes team play. I mean, you can participate in unlocking the temples, or swoop in when they’re open – but you still don’t get the rewards for free even if you do, it requires karma, which is a currency you can earn solo. So it blends solo and group play requirements, yes?

@ Colin/Chris
From this discussion I’d love to know by now, what of both topics that seem to have caught the focus of this thread now – Sub Classes and Player Housing – at least thats my impression – would cost ANet more effort and more money?

If..and I say it again for more impactfulness if Sub Classes should be something, that would require far more ressources from Anet to get implemented into the Game and with ressources I mean money, development teams (personal management), time, and whatever else there may be for ressources that exist there for developers that are essential to develop something like a Sub Class System – if all of this should require substantial more effort for ANet to make this system coming true, than how high the costs would be for making a Player Housing System, then I think it would be best to postpone the development and redesign of certain aspects of the game to implement Sub Classes for the advantage of letting Player Housing make the first step now.

I want Sub Classes, but I can wait for them.
I want Anet to blow our minds with them just to say it. They must be evolutionary, something that has never be seen before in any other MMORPG.

ANet has to make sure with such efforts like making Sub Classes, that the effort is worth it in the end.
If its not worth it in the end, making Sub Classes makes no sense and would be only a waste of time and ressources.
But when even a developer that is responssible for cost calculations, if I got it right, like Chris says, that he likes the idea of Sub Classes, then I think he didn’t say that without any reason.
He must have a reason, why he personally finds the general idea good and that is cause of the reason as I think, because as like I do it, he also must see something behind of the concept, that makes it worth it to implement such a fundamental game changer, like Sub Classes.

However – Anet is not just a development team, that consists only out of 1 group of persons.
They have many little groups which are all responssible for different things and that makes it possible, that they can make distinctive groups, which can work simultanously on different new content. The Living Story teams are proof of this.

So there could be a Team associated for example onto Player Housing, while in the background will work an other Team on Sub Classes with a far more reaching longer project behind it, that will take more time.

What I want to say with this is.. Anet could taker Player Housing now for once, to literally buy other development teams more time to work on other things meanwhile.
Working on a MMORPG is basically like a lifetime project management, where everythign always needs to get coordinated.
I’m sure, you guys natually know this by far best So I’m not telling you any news xD