Guild Wars 2

Orpheal.8263:

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*
—-

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.

A lot of people come from gaming environments like D&D where customisation is near endless.
I agree we need to keep sub classes simple for the time being, at least if we want to see a timely implementation. (Complexity and development time scale up hand in hand.)

The stat and trait system does need an overhaul.
They didn’t want the trinity, but this is not the way to go about it. They simply replaced it with another trinity and then trivialised 2 out of 3 roles in PvE, leaving only DPS. (And only direct DPS at that)
We need the efficiency of roles to be closer together, and we need more roles. That’d be another way to “break the trinity” and not devalue everything but DPS.

UNLOCKING skills isn’t likely to be fun. USING skills is fun. Give us new skills we unlock the old way along with new content which requires those skills.

The Antitoxin Spray + Nightmare Tower was a great idea, but it was way too weak/situational of a skill. I tried to use it and had little to no success doing so.

Give us skills that affect certain boss mechanics or enemy types. A skill that makes Risen attack each other. A skill that makes ghosts forget who they are and stop attacking. A skill that prevents Dredge from tunneling back up once they’ve gone under the ground.

As a Mesmer, I’m constantly switching skills based on encounters, but I feel like most classes have very little reason to do so. Elementalists do this with attunements, sort of, same thing for Engineers and kits. Changing up your build during gameplay is a unique, interesting, and underused mechanic which could be promoted more by the inclusion of new situationally-effective skills.

Naetell.3815:

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.

<snip>

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.

I’d much rather see expanding the skills go into consumables more so than just “more skills”. Add a 4 slot bar so we can put things like fire ele powders and ogre pet whistles in there, then add more of those types of skills (cloak of invisibility, potion of higher healing power, etc). Make PvE only ones and PvP only ones and add interesting ways to get them. I definitely don’t want more bars and skills spread out. Getting these new things could definitely be interesting and could be tied to crafting, Special event rewards, quest like discovery, NPC merchants tied to event chains (like ogre and fire ele) and so on. This way people have the goals to reach for various new skills without the big balance issues they might entail, since all classes would have equal access to them.

timmyf.1490:

As a Mesmer, I’m constantly switching skills based on encounters, but I feel like most classes have very little reason to do so..

As a Ranger in PvE, unless I am Trying Really Freaking Hard to come up with a new unique build that no one else uses (such as messing with Magi gear, Boon Duration, and a trait setup that perma mights your pet and gives it a ridiculous amount of DPS and survivability) I have absolutely no reason to ever switch out of a Zerker build with Signets.

So…., you’re right.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.)

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.

The simplest solution would be to always give players two ways to get a reward.
1) The way that gets them there fastest.
2) The way that gets them there the way they want to.

New skill example:
A new skill can be unlocked through completing dungeon challenge X. (Run fractals 10 or above and kill the boss in under 1 hour.)

I’d argue the majority of the playerbase would not like this. Now, mitigate that by making the new skill something that’s at its most useful to players who are into timed runs and of less use to others. (Considering how the current game state of PvE is, this would mean having a party where everyone is forced to play DPS)
PvP players will likely avoid getting this new skill altogether, kind of like with the antitoxin spray.

There is no way a casual could get this, perhaps they don’t need to either. That depends on the design of the skill.
However, perhaps they like the flavor, or maybe they want to build around it after all. Who know?

As a secondary way, use or introduce a currency that is simple to obtain, yet difficult to obtain much of. Then offer players the option to use that currency to unlock this skill.
Like, say, laurels. You can play however you want, if you complete your daily, you’ll get a laurel. There are cases to make there pro and con in and by itself, but I won’t go into that.

Because it is a currency they cannot earn fast & easy at the same time, the players are forced to choose which reward they want first. They should know there is no upper limit they can earn to this currency though. Perhaps a currency that becomes harder to obtain the more you have of it. Like the way you need ever more luck to get another % magic find.
That way you’d be able to estimate pretty clearly how long it would take a player trying to unlock the new skill using this currency.
It’d help if players could earn said currency by any type of play.

I used a skill as an example, but it might as well be a skin, or something else. Perhaps a collection or rewards, not all rewards possible. People also like having something unique and hard to obtain, so it’s really up to from what pov you want to approach the matter.

As for degenerate play. The only way to combat it is making it so that the path of least resistance = the intended path. Say, using a solo instance and making a player complete a challenge in there.
Anything in the open world will be zerged. It will be profiteered upon. It’s like trying to herd a swarm of locusts.

munkiman.3068:

Naetell.3815:

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.

<snip>

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.

I’d much rather see expanding the skills go into consumables more so than just “more skills”. Add a 4 slot bar so we can put things like fire ele powders and ogre pet whistles in there, then add more of those types of skills (cloak of invisibility, potion of higher healing power, etc). Make PvE only ones and PvP only ones and add interesting ways to get them. I definitely don’t want more bars and skills spread out. Getting these new things could definitely be interesting and could be tied to crafting, Special event rewards, quest like discovery, NPC merchants tied to event chains (like ogre and fire ele) and so on. This way people have the goals to reach for various new skills without the big balance issues they might entail, since all classes would have equal access to them.

Consumables is pretty much a discussion by itself, but there is something to be said about crafting.
Crafting needs love, badly. One of the things about crafting is that most of it is entirely uninteresting. Crafting various consumables is one thing, but the thing crafting needs most, though I loathe to say it, is reliance on other crafting disciplines and recipes. This would open up new markets exclusive to those going deep into one or two crafting disciplines and make it a possible source of income for most players as well.

oh dear lord, timmy you are soo wrong

Unlocking new skills IS FUN, especially when it feels like being an achievement for you and if it feels like you progressed with your character, having learned something new, that enables you lots of new gameplay possibilities.

Sure, unlocking skills feels absolutely not like making fun, when all what is needed to gain new skills in this game is just only farming skill points from zerging in a train Champions, until you have farmed enough Skill Scrolls to unlock everything on the get go.

But if receiving and unlocking new skills would require of the player to do MEANINGFUL and eventually also challenging tasks, then it absolutely will make fun to unlock new skills, other than just spending permanently only skill points.

There are so many different ways of how our characters could learn and unlock new skills:

1) Hunting new Skills from killing specific Elite/Champion/Legendary foes
2) Becoming a pupil of a Master/Grandmaster/Sage NPC to learn new Skills from them for successfully doing tasks for them that are part of your teachings.
Its education, that could take also quite some time for being a long term goal, because gettign educated by a master/grandmaster/sage isn#t something, that is doen within just a dy or two.. it requires time to learn some more impactful skills that let you specialize your character more into certain different ways.
3) By reading hidden Skill Scrolls and Tomes in the world which you could find just everywhere, leadign to the point, that players will have to search them.
4) Through Self Training/Sudden Inspirations/observing enemies by experimentating with your known skills, until your character has out of a sudden an idea to perform a new skill.
5) By making Skill Challenges successfully
6) Through killing other Players in PvP/WvW
7) By going into Schools that teach knowledges about professions that let the character learn new skills based from the received information and doing also sparrings with NPC’s there.
8) By automatically learning new skills every X Character Levels, like all 5 Levels, the character unlocks a few more skilsl that could be learned with Skill Points
9) By improving existing skills to learn new variations, through giving each Skill a Skill Level, that will raise, so more oftenly a skill gets used by the player and the more experience your character collects by using the equipped skills.
Each Skill for example could have 10 Levels and each 2 skill levels you could unlock a new skill that is based upon the origin skill or the visuals could simply change to make the skilsl look more impressive.
10) Learn new skills by generally talking with NPCs in the game world that could give you just “inspirations”
Inspirations could be something, that a character has to develop over time, a player would have to collect multiple “inspirations” to combine them then and if you combine the right inspirations with each other, you could come up with new skills to learn, that are unique for this method.

If i’d think more about it, I’m sure I could come up with like 2-3 more fun methods to unlock new skills. One of them naturally being Sub Class, so progressing and advancign with your character in your characters career to receive new skills that are based on your character advancement or learning new skills also like in FF9, where speciafic new skills/traits are bonded also to the equipment and weapon that you use, until you learned them, also a system thats nice and easy to comprehend.

Orpheal.8263:

If i’d think more about it, I’m sure I could come up with like 2-3 more fun methods to unlock new skills. One of them naturally being Sub Class, so progressing and advancign with your character in your characters career to receive new skills that are based on your character advancement or learning new skills also like in FF9, where speciafic new skills/traits are bonded also to the equipment and weapon that you use, until you learned them, also a system thats nice and easy to comprehend.

That could be an interesting idea. Buying a Different Weapon to Learn different skills, and once you learn them, you keep them forever. That just makes everything way more complex though….

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

2) Go to Dulfy. Look up thing to kill. Waypoint to nearest location. Kill. If group is required, insert period of time asking guildies to come with.

I played GW1 and there’s a few things that people remember about that game that they might be too find of. Specifically, people are remembering the interesting challenge of capturing ELITE skills and trying to put that process in GW2.

Now, if you are saying that a Signet of Capture mechanic should come back for ELITE SKILLS ONLY, I could get behind that. Sounds fun. Something to do, but it won’t overwhelm me with my 10 toons.

If you are suggesting this mechanic for utility skills, I’ll reiterate my “this is not fun, give us stuff to do with skills, don’t gate the unlocking.”

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

Reuse the Skill Point NPC’s for some skills.

For example, one NPC teaches Defensive Stance for Warriors (Grants Stability and both incoming and outgoing crits fumble).

During the time of that challenge, the player only has access to this skill and dodge, and they have to survive X amount of time. Give the NPC’s a few moves that make Defensive Stance an effective skill to use against (say, next X attacks crit), and if the player uses the skill appropriately and survives for that time, they unlock the skill.

Re-use the world for others

Maybe an Elementalist needs to find pieces of a stone tablet that teaches a move that, say, refreshes all Attunement cooldowns. At the same time and location, a Necro might find a location of power where they have to summon a minion type, and has to beat it to ‘claim’ it.

Or course, to prevent people just looking up the location of these pieces, make the locations random for each player.

GW1 Skill Capture with a twist

Instead of this system capturing the actual skill, it captures an alternatively skinned skill with no extra mechanical effects.

For example, in Fractals over level 30, Necro’s can capture an alternatively skinned Wells of Power, titled Archdiviner’s Well of [Name], with a purple and black glowy effect like Entropy has.

timmyf.1490:

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

2) Go to Dulfy. Look up thing to kill. Waypoint to nearest location. Kill. If group is required, insert period of time asking guildies to come with.

I played GW1 and there’s a few things that people remember about that game that they might be too find of. Specifically, people are remembering the interesting challenge of capturing ELITE skills and trying to put that process in GW2.

Now, if you are saying that a Signet of Capture mechanic should come back for ELITE SKILLS ONLY, I could get behind that. Sounds fun. Something to do, but it won’t overwhelm me with my 10 toons.

If you are suggesting this mechanic for utility skills, I’ll reiterate my “this is not fun, give us stuff to do with skills, don’t gate the unlocking.”

Except….Wouldn’t that also be a “Go to Dulfy” (to find the path of least resistance) type of thing as well? That’s not very interesting either!

Naetell.3815:

munkiman.3068:

Naetell.3815:

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.

<snip>

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.

I’d much rather see expanding the skills go into consumables more so than just “more skills”. Add a 4 slot bar so we can put things like fire ele powders and ogre pet whistles in there, then add more of those types of skills (cloak of invisibility, potion of higher healing power, etc). Make PvE only ones and PvP only ones and add interesting ways to get them. I definitely don’t want more bars and skills spread out. Getting these new things could definitely be interesting and could be tied to crafting, Special event rewards, quest like discovery, NPC merchants tied to event chains (like ogre and fire ele) and so on. This way people have the goals to reach for various new skills without the big balance issues they might entail, since all classes would have equal access to them.

Consumables is pretty much a discussion by itself, but there is something to be said about crafting.
Crafting needs love, badly. One of the things about crafting is that most of it is entirely uninteresting. Crafting various consumables is one thing, but the thing crafting needs most, though I loathe to say it, is reliance on other crafting disciplines and recipes. This would open up new markets exclusive to those going deep into one or two crafting disciplines and make it a possible source of income for most players as well.

Yes i agree on crafting, although the time gate on Ecto refinement has opened up the market for that material. it’s really not enough.

I wouldn’t put consumables out of the picture, quite simply, they play a pretty major role in builds, expanding the diversity and utility of them would definitely switch up combat play styles. Imagine having access to 14 different consumable “as skills” and the diversity that would create. Since they exists outside the trait lines, you wouldn’t have to struggle with balance as much. Or you could even expand the trait lines to include consumables and tie them into all sorts of different content to unlock. You could go pretty far horizontally with consumables.

Chrispy.5641:

timmyf.1490:

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

2) Go to Dulfy. Look up thing to kill. Waypoint to nearest location. Kill. If group is required, insert period of time asking guildies to come with.

I played GW1 and there’s a few things that people remember about that game that they might be too find of. Specifically, people are remembering the interesting challenge of capturing ELITE skills and trying to put that process in GW2.

Now, if you are saying that a Signet of Capture mechanic should come back for ELITE SKILLS ONLY, I could get behind that. Sounds fun. Something to do, but it won’t overwhelm me with my 10 toons.

If you are suggesting this mechanic for utility skills, I’ll reiterate my “this is not fun, give us stuff to do with skills, don’t gate the unlocking.”

Except….Wouldn’t that also be a “Go to Dulfy” (to find the path of least resistance) type of thing as well? That’s not very interesting either!

I was trying to be friendly. I still think adding a secondary skill capture/unlock system is ignoring the real problem that cookie-cutter builds are ideal in basically every encounter and area of the game for most players.

timmyf.1490:

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

2) Go to Dulfy. Look up thing to kill. Waypoint to nearest location. Kill. If group is required, insert period of time asking guildies to come with.

I played GW1 and there’s a few things that people remember about that game that they might be too find of. Specifically, people are remembering the interesting challenge of capturing ELITE skills and trying to put that process in GW2.

Now, if you are saying that a Signet of Capture mechanic should come back for ELITE SKILLS ONLY, I could get behind that. Sounds fun. Something to do, but it won’t overwhelm me with my 10 toons.

If you are suggesting this mechanic for utility skills, I’ll reiterate my “this is not fun, give us stuff to do with skills, don’t gate the unlocking.”

Sorry, but if you are so silly to take yourself away all the fun of what the game provides you by going onto sites, like dulfy, then this is just your own fault.
The main point of my posting was also to show you, that the game can easily be alot more, than just only unlockign skilsl with skill points only.
There are as you can see lots of different ways how palyers could receive for their characters new skills, than only by the total boring way of farming skill points only.

If a player wants to take his/herself away all the fun of the game by looking into solution sites in the internet, like dulfy, only to be done with everythign as quick and efficiently as possible, then this is the clear decision by that player to do so, but if a player does this, this player in my opinion clearly has no right to complain about it, that the game hasn’t anything to do anymore to “quickly” and that the game got boring so fast.

Because if you simply take out everywhere dulfy out of your posting, you will see, that alot of those methods would add alot of fun for the game, which could feel for every class different.

Each class having to hunt down different elite/champion/legendary foes for their skills
Each class having to find and read different books
Each class having to receive different inspirations to learn new skills.
Each Class havign to talk with different NPCs…
Each Class havign to do completely different Tasks for their Masters/Grandmasters/Sages
Each Cllass having to go into their own Schools

Also there are options for Anet to randomize those methods a bit, like changing daily the positions of NPCs/books ect. that have to be found, so that people simply can’t just go onto the site of dulfy and look where somethign can be found, when the location of what you seek will be every day somewhere else.

This concept is already basically used with guild mission npcs, that move around, ANet just has to expand on this, that the world and especially NPC#s become more “living persons”, that actually follow their own life and move around, never to be found at any given time always at the same spot, based also on daytime ect. and what dynamically happens around them (letting them for example flee to an other map, when Scarlets invasion occurs for example on their current map)

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!)

Well it could be a hybrid. Instead of using the trainers in town they could be “out there”. So getting to the trainer could be a social experience but you’ll have to overcome the final challenge on your own.

This is also how it worked in Prophecies.
Dunes of Despair, Thirsty River and Elona Reach were done as a group and then you do Augury Rock solo.

Instances would also allow making the encounters profession specific so you don’t have to design something that is one size fits all. They can be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of each class.

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!)

Why not have it like heart in the human starting zone where the seraph are training farmers to block, shoot, and swing a sword? Just replace the heart gauge mechanic with a skill guage (or just rename it, same function).

Or have special champ during the LS that you HAVE to earn gold on to gain the skill.

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?

There are MANY posts in this thread discussing a variety of ways people would like to earn skills. Would you care to comment on some of the ideas that have already been mentioned?

GW1 skill cap can return to GW2, only thru instance quests.
Also I don’t think Anet should focus on making quests for obtaining new skills. To me GW1 skill caping was pain in the kitten , I didn’t like it one bit. I found myself being forced to do it, rather than wanting to.
It’s better to use those resources for making Order based quests and faction reputation.
Anet should focus on making new skills interesting to use… and fix PvE encounters rather than profession themself, but that should be different topic.

Since Player Housing has been discussed in this thread, here’s my thoughts. Player Housing should be a goal players work for, not something they drop gold or cash to get the instant gratification before walking away from it bored. So I’d rather see Player Housing shaped by in-game actions and not something tied to (in any way) the Gem Shop.

Ideally, players’ actions would shape their housing. This means decisions made in the Personal Story could determine our neighbors, trophies from our conquests could be displayed, etc. I think the character’s house should be appropriately styled in a manner that reflects the characteristics of his race, too. Furnishings and decorations (paintings, etc) should come in a variety of styles and colors.

I’d like to see a new crafting discipline be implemented allowing us to make furniture. Metal, wood, leather, and cloth could all be used to make everything from chests to beds to tables. Chests could (if the developers deem it fitting) be used to store personal items. I can’t think of any consumables such a crafting discipline could make, but bags (chests/boxes, technically) could be made. The “auto-sort” bag for this craft could accept either consumables or soul/account bound items. Obviously higher-tiered furniture would look nicer than lower-tiered stuff.

While we’re on the subject, I’d love it if we could choose/buy a crafting station or two for our houses. I’d also like to see Player Housing tied to some form of gardening. It could be as simple as purchasing and planting seeds, and after a few days of care, harvesting. The seeds could produce random herbs, vegetables, or fruit depending on type (I’d go with Ascalonian, Krytan, Shiverpeak, Maguuma, and Orrian with each producing a random herb, mushroom, vegetable, or fruit appropriate to that region with a rare chance at getting Unidentified Dyes).

Orpheal.8263:

This concept is already basically used with guild mission npcs, that move around, ANet just has to expand on this, that the world and especially NPC#s become more “living persons”, that actually follow their own life and move around, never to be found at any given time always at the same spot, based also on daytime ect. and what dynamically happens around them (letting them for example flee to an other map, when Scarlets invasion occurs for example on their current map)

Well, now you’ve got a suggestion I like. Killing a Guild Bounty awards a unique skill based on the bounty.

18 (or however many) new elite skills, one from each bounty. Add a new Bounty mission type that lets you select your Bounty so you don’t have to keep trying to get the one you’re looking for.

Also gives people a reason to join guilds.

Tying them to bounties and not random champs in the open world adds an interesting new dimension.

timmyf.1490:

Orpheal.8263:

This concept is already basically used with guild mission npcs, that move around, ANet just has to expand on this, that the world and especially NPC#s become more “living persons”, that actually follow their own life and move around, never to be found at any given time always at the same spot, based also on daytime ect. and what dynamically happens around them (letting them for example flee to an other map, when Scarlets invasion occurs for example on their current map)

Well, now you’ve got a suggestion I like. Killing a Guild Bounty awards a unique skill based on the bounty.

18 (or however many) new elite skills, one from each bounty. Add a new Bounty mission type that lets you select your Bounty so you don’t have to keep trying to get the one you’re looking for.

Also gives people a reason to join guilds.

Tying them to bounties and not random champs in the open world adds an interesting new dimension.

In addition, the queen’s gauntlet npcs during that arc. The ones that had their own events and the crazy teleporting, hammering, or dust devil spawning skills? Sounds like some nifty elite area skills to me.

Romo.3709:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Kain Francois.4328:

I know I’ve suggested this before, but I will repeat it again: Underflow servers.

The root of all Horizontal Progression is the community. Chasing after nice aesthetics are pointless without other players to show it off to and interact with.

Please bring the community back to your game. We need underflow servers before Horizontal Progression even has a meaning.

Personally I think Underflow Servers are very important to. I do however think that your final sentence is a bit over the top (-:

Chris

The underflow servers also cause some minor issues as well. For example, we meet a lot of people on our adventures, form guilds, invite into existing guilds, and so on. If underflow servers go live, everywhere we’d go outside of main areas, we’d end up in underflow. While inviting people to your guilds while they’re located in another server would have no purpose, since the bonuses and influence acquirement doesn’t work cross-servers.

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

This may not be the popular definition of “Underflow Servers” but here is how I would like to see this system work.

I am zoning into Queensdale to finish up with map complete there. I live on Tarnished Coast, and it is prime time, so the server is full. Instead of the current system of Overflow, what if I am just shuttled off to the lowest population server? That way you don’t have to create many false instances of a zone- instead of “Overflow” on the mini-map, it could say “Jade Quarry” or whatever a true low-pop server is. You could still /join your friends. You could still go off to the Iron Marches and not be forced into a busy population (which is what it sounds like the current definition of Underflow would do). You could still opt out of the queue. Leaving Queensdale for Plains of Ashford sends me back to Tarnished Coast. So unless all the existing server maps of Queensdale are totally full, there’s no need for any sort of overflow eating up the resources.

I think this system would shine in maps that are traditionally high traffic because of events and whatnot. I feel like this would solve a lot of the problems people on low-pop servers had (are still having?) with Tequatl, for example.

Bring the Gauntlet NPCs back as Bounties! Yes!

Until you get Liadri, that is…

Orpheal.8263:

timmyf.1490:

Orpheal, 90% of your skill unlock ideas sound, to me, like either:

1) Go to Dulfy. Look up process for unlocking skill. Waypoint. Perform action. Repeat X times until complete.

Sorry, but if you are so silly to take yourself away all the fun of what the game provides you by going onto sites, like dulfy, then this is just your own fault.
The main point of my posting was also to show you, that the game can easily be alot more, than just only unlockign skilsl with skill points only.
There are as you can see lots of different ways how palyers could receive for their characters new skills, than only by the total boring way of farming skill points only.

If a player wants to take his/herself away all the fun of the game by looking into solution sites in the internet, like dulfy, only to be done with everythign as quick and efficiently as possible, then this is the clear decision by that player to do so, but if a player does this, this player in my opinion clearly has no right to complain about it, that the game hasn’t anything to do anymore to “quickly” and that the game got boring so fast.

Timmy is right though, the majority of the player base will do that and does, you think the champion farm is fun? it’s effective. I don’t farm gold but I will go after an item I want in the most effective manner possible that does not cost me, Fractals for rings, Guild missions for accessory’s , etc.

I would like to reintroduce one way to get items, it’s the only way you’ll force players to improve (by playing harder content or content they for some reason dislike).
Personally I don’t understand why we’re catering for “I refuse to do x but I want my reward anyway make it so” attitude, you’re playing a game the idea is you play it all.

Anyway

More Housing Research
So I looked at the video on Wow’s housing (Garrison) and I downloaded Rift and got a dimension to test out their housing.

The instance itself
Rift’s method of instancing is brilliant, you can earn instanced locals to stick your house in, it’s like your own private bubble. You can enter it anywhere and invite plenty of people. (an opportunity for progressions and goals there)

Wow as far as I can tell is using the you drop an entrance somewhere and it leads to your instance in an instanced version of the area it was dropped. Picking a pretty place for your instance is a form of personal progression I guess but Rifts sounds more fun.

Designing your instance
Rift uses near second life customisability of everything in your instance, placement,rotation,size,xyz positioning. Constructing your house one log at a time. I can see that being a bit tedious so maybe a toned down version where you can select a room size and shape, with doorway and window placement instead. Interior objects can then be moved around freely perhaps with the removal of the size changing tool.

Wow, you get 12 set plots of land and you choose what buildings to place there, three levels for each building with it getting bigger and better looking with each level gained. No customisability in relation to interior or exterior outside of that so the only element is building choice and what level they are.

Functionality/Interact-ability
Rift had a section in the shop called interactable objects, could’nt buy any cos I was a brand new character but there was a music box, damage test dummy, Npc bartender.
All three seem like good progression ideas, earn songs for your music box, unlock skins for damage dummy’s you have in your house. Npc servants/special merchants.

Aside from that I did’nt see anything strictly “functional” I could have missed something though.

Wow: You can gain resources and gear from your garrison, I heard mention of a farm which appears to be a separate thing but gives you several upgradeable collection nodes which seems like a very useful idea. The garrison itself allows you to send out missions which can succeed or fail and bring back loot for you and your garrison, levels up over time. (Think companion crafting from Star wars the old republic) From an hour to a week in duration passive gain.

Vertict
I think the best options that could be emulated or co-opted for Guildwars from these would be

1. Rifts local instance and progression.
2. A toned down version of Rifts customisability/ possibly mixed with Wows plots to prevent major clipping mishaps.
3. Wows Farm (sounds similar to Mabinogis farm/homestead) for nodes to gather in your home.
4. Rifts intractable objects and NPC’s

No, absolutely not lock this with guild bounties
There are also very alot of people, which don’t play in guilds, which you would essentially lock out from gaining those new skills.
Unlocking new skills should be possible for players all alike, regardless if the player is a guild player, or a single player without guild.

It wasn’t my intention to suggest this, what you#ve interpretated out of my posting now timmy.
What I was talking about is the simple mechanic of NPCS within the guild missions, that there are some, which seem to freely move around on the map, they are never ever at the same place on the map, so people have to search them what literally destroys the point of just quickly lookign into dulfy’s side to get instantly the solution for their location.

NPCs in general need to become alot more dyankic in this game. way too much of them stand around just statically and talk always the same 1 to 2 short lines of text every few seconds. Even old console games like Zelda: Majorah’s Mask had alot of better dynamic NPC that gave the game the impression of a real living world, where also day and nighttime played a big role of where you could possibly find a npc that you search, often bonded together, that you needed to learn first something about the characte,r to get a clue, where they possibly might be at the moment.

Example, you search for a fisherman, where you you naturally try too search them at a specific daytime??? At midday I’d think , they are following their job, so I’d gues,s the best chance to find my fisherman would be at lakes, rivers and so…but surely not in the afternoon, then they aren’t anymore where you would expect them to be, no they could be just found anywhere on the map on the way to their home perhaps loaded with all of their caught fish of the day)

This are the kind of details, that make a game world feel like being full of live.
So more npcs do interactively by theyself alone, so better.
The other half are naturally the players that would interact with the Npcs and the dynamic events of the maps (which in fact also need to increase in future massively.
At some point, anet imo needs to begin, to add with every single patch also always some new dynamic events to random maps, so that we always can also find new events. Livign Stories with their map changign impactful content are a good begin of that)

Fair point: I can see how some players might not want to have to use their guild to access skills. The skills could still be tied to the bounty, but perhaps any player can find and talk to them, triggering a fight for skill acquisition?

( I should mention that I still think skills should not be locked behind some new acquisition method, but if that’s the way it’s going to happen, this is a way if consider acceptable.)

We could have multiple options?

The Lost Witch.7601:

We could have multiple options?

Multiple options that shouldn’t lock a player out of any single one over another. Having some tied to Guild Bounties doesn’t inherently do that, not many guilds actually bother to ever do bounties (I’m guessing less than 20%), so if you can get skills through Guild Bounties, then those same skills should be obtainable somewhere else.

Player housing ultimately comes down to a few questions:

Is the game made better by a GW2 flavored and simplified version of the Sims?
Is this GW-Sims game meant to be played on its own, or are its resources tied to prolonging other gameplay and enforcing repetition elsewhere?
At which point is player housing not a new exciting fantasy, but just the projection of real world desires of estate ownership and extension to gameplay loops centered around greed?
If ownership is such a big draw, can it be expressed better in the public space and by using public space customizations?

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

Trait quests – you go to an NPC in your home instance, or your Order’s home base, to open a quest line for any unknown trait/skill. They tell you what you haven’t got and give you tips on who to talk to in order to get it. When the NPC is introduced, use mail to point out where they are.

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?

I laid out a pretty detailed version of a system that ties together crafting, cash sinks, opportunity cost, and old style skill capture in what was the original vertical thread, though to be fair it’s a more horizontal system.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/5#post3369632

In addition, you could open up horizontal “adventuring trades” by class, order, and race to aid in tracking these “enlightened” monsters. For instance, all necromancers, by virtue of being necromancers get free access to the “Shadow Sense” ability, which allows them to consume thing X to track local enlightened undead. Each use gets a free map ping in the direction of what they are tracking. Similarly, if that necro is norn he’s also going to have tracking skills for “beast”

Orders can further influence this by allowing sidegrades to substitute other tracking materials. For instance lets say that bone was the consumed component for tracking undead, but orders members can opt to sidegrade to some more esoteric materials like discarded garments or other grey items.

These “free” lines would be available automatically, but you could opt to learn other lines through some “eyeball hunting” of various unknown types, by undertaking some tough tests from orders or racial leaders, or otherwise “earning” your way in to other paths through playing additional content to progress outside of your initially small “box”

VOLKON.1290:

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.

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)…

This is my immediate thought as well, and it ties nicely into the fact that I would love to see Orders actually mean something in the long form of the game. It would also involve actually accepting that standard format quests are not necessarily a bad thing.

My proposal? Have 3 grandmasters in the order for each class (or just one for each class). Once you have reached level 80, the grandmaster(s) would start you off on a series of tiered quests. Each quest chain would be a lengthy series of objectives and would exemplify the sort of sub class or specialization you were interested in. As you progress through the quests, you unlock skills and specialized cosmetic armour pieces.

Using the guardian and 3 made up subclasses as an example:
Templar – Focused on dealing damage
The quests would involve the completion of challenges mainly focused on one on one fights versus champion class opponents, similar to the timed battles in the Queens arena.

Paladin – Focused on healing and support
The quests would involve completion of group content, with conditions involved such that focused use of healing and buffing skills was near mandatory. Could even be specialized runs of the already existing dungeons and/or fractals.

Paragon – Focused on survivability
The quests would involve challenges similar to a horde or survival mode, where the opponents were numerous and long term survival would take skill and knowledge.

Pepper in some other challenges like world wide champion searches, collecting rare drops, beating world bosses, etc. and you’ve got a solid start.

Note that, yes, I’m aware this sort of advancement could easily drift into a mix of horizontal and vertical progression. I’m okay with that even if it isn’t the perfect fit for this particular topic. I honestly feel that any sort of sub class system worth it’s merit is almost by design going to include some level of making a sub classed class better than it’s vanilla version.

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?

Skill hunting.

Ways to implement could be similar to the EotN system. Spreading these unlocks as well as other rewards/progression content throughout Tyria’s map would help somewhat with high density low area map concentration, especially if the unlocks are done in such a way that they are accessible enough that players would want to take their alts to do the content too. The trick is finding the balance in the pacing.

FourthVariety.5463:

Player housing ultimately comes down to a few questions:

Is the game made better by a GW2 flavored and simplified version of the Sims?
Is this GW-Sims game meant to be played on its own, or are its resources tied to prolonging other gameplay and enforcing repetition elsewhere?
At which point is player housing not a new exciting fantasy, but just the projection of real world desires of estate ownership and extension to gameplay loops centered around greed?
If ownership is such a big draw, can it be expressed better in the public space and by using public space customizations?

I can’t speak for anyone else but I feel it would add a new aspect to the game which I feel is needed. Most of my guild and irl friends have stopped playing the game, my guild because they’ve done everything that doesn’t require lots of gold and have nothing to work for that isn’t pure grind.

I’m surprised by the opposition to housing in a second way, it was the only one of my ideas that would allow casual players and low skilled players in on it as well. It would also cater to the RP crowd who could use it for functions, and I know some of my guildy’s would love to just relax, build, semi afk and chat with friends in their own virtual house. It also gives new short,medium and long term goals to the player that are not all combat or gold grind based which can only be a good thing.

I feel that player housing, if implemented, needs to be attached to gameplay. The primary draw of player housing in most systems which incorporate it is that it is functionally useful. Either it’s a rest stop in a game without fast travel, a safe or expanded bank, a place to put player owned merchants, or a place to hole up from hostile creatures/players it always works best as a system when player houses are worth more than just places to hang trophies.

Good examples of where this could be useful from a player>guild scenario:

Use “open instancing” There isn’t enough floor space to simultaneously provide everyone with a plot of land and give them the room to actually have content. Age of Conan tried something interesting by making each housing instance house three groups of players. I think that’s a good start. Seed instanced map “neighborhoods” that work in a similar fashion to the home instance.

Allow players to combine and build plots for larger or combined structures in these neighborhoods, and allow players to move to new neighborhoods for little or no cost to avoid trolly neighbors, or just to get open plots to expand their guild halls. The idea is that these neighborhoods become social hubs, not places to compete over building space.

Allow guilds, individual players, or neighborhood collectives to set up limited industry there. Hire craftsmen that output randomly selected items of tier X, adventurer/scouts that bring back consumable “reports” that can give region-limited buffs, allow players to plant and maintain gardens or mines, and allow the neighborhood to opt in to potentially dangerous conflict with NPC factions to increase their industrial efficiency at the price of having to periodically defend their neighborhoos from insurgent forces of bandits, skritt, ogres, or whatever they managed to tick off.

Most of all, make these neighborhoods open and free to all. if I know someone’s ID, i should be able to visit their neighborhood, I should be able to randomly stroll through random neighborhoods, etc.

Decorating is great, but ultimately hollow and doesn’t add much to the game if these structures aren’t also functional places where you have a good reason to visit.

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?

It should be similar to the Signet of Capture system, however I make it a bit more difficult. Give the player a list of X amount of specific named NPCs they have to hunt down, defeat, and use the signet of capture on. They can only completed 1 a day. Once they have completed them all, they get the skill. I would make the NPCs have a chance to spawn in a number of locations across different maps in order to make the chase more difficult.

One area that I find Guild Wars to be lacking in is profession lore, so it would be awesome if you added in a lot of profession specific lore about these skills.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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:

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)

This is good in concept. The implementation could be modified slightly. Implementing a universal token currency that is rewarded in combination with current dungeon tokens would be a nice addition. Dungeons could reward a smaller amount of their current tokens, but also reward some universal tokens that could be exchanged for specific dungeon tokens. Two way currency exchange with diminishing returns could be implemented as well, but I think it’d be better to stick with a one-way turn in of universal for specific to continue the promotion of people playing each dungeon.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

I think y’all know that this one is a fairly uninteresting stale system currently. It actually works nicely for brand new players. However, after maxing your character’s level it quickly loses its lustyr, because skill points no longer become tied to acquiring skills. This is mostly due to the implementation of skill points as a currency sink in being tied to crafting and other items, so people farm champions to get skill points quickly. This system as is could be made more relevant through other systems, but that seems unnecessary to tie it in with something like skill hunting as the skill hunts should provide the reward on their own through their own pacing and should require further pacing to slow players down. There’s really not much reason to touch the skill point system unless you want to make it more relevant for some reason.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- 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.

This works very well for frequent players as most of the achievement points come from dailies. It doesn’t work so well for binge players (think Netflix). I doubt the goal is to cater as much towards infrequent players, but it would be nice if bingers had a way to catch up on daily achievement points. The weekly concept has been put forward, but I sense that hasn’t been implemented due to fear that replacing dailies with weeklies would impact player time/frequency in game. So maybe introducing weekly in addition to monthly/daily as a way to bridge the disparity between these types of players could be implemented.

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)

Having a clearer path to legendaries would be nice. I’m guessing y’all have ideas for how you want to do this. The most obvious way to avoid the ‘crazy amounts of gold’ issue is to provide path’s towards obtaining legendaries that can’t be bought directly via gold acquired items/currencies. To make these clearer to obtain, giving players a kind of special item that provides a material count and progress indicators for those items would be helpful.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

Love it. Just would like to see this become a gamewide skin locker. Unlock a skin in it and apply it to any equiped item. I’m guessing you’re thinking infinite use isn’t a good idea, so if it’s not infinite use give players a tool tip of what characters items in use are equipped to at the very least, and it’d be great if bank items that are soulbound would tell you who their soulbound too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

The other downside unmentioned is that a lot of the story content isn’t repeatable, so if you are racing to get rewards so you can earn big money on the marketplace you miss out on story elements. This is really disheartening because lore has been one of the strongest areas of the Guild Wars universe, and people are missing out on it without the option to go back and experience it.

I like the idea of “capturing skills” from champions or veterans, but would that work if you released one new utility? Would that work if you release three new utilities? Would it work better If there was a new champion for each profession or each new skill?

Also what is the next cdi discussion? I knew you brought up class discussion. Seems like a good discussion topic.

Oh and keep up the good work anet!

Signet of Capture was great in GW1, but wouldn’t work so well in GW2. I can very easily see it turning into either boss camping, or continuing on with the current meta of ‘this boss is up…now this boss is up!’ WP jumping. The sheer number of WPs, coupled with the fact that the overall number of skills would be very low (especially with no secondary profession), means that it would probably be a matter of a few hours before all skills were obtained. This wouldn’t really tie in to a long-term horizontal progression.

To be honest, any long-ish term capturing/acquiring of skills would probably be vertical progression, because for a considerable amount of time, some players would have access to skills that others wouldn’t.

I have always felt that skill challenges (map locations) are somewhat of a missed opportunity. I would love to see them revisited. The way I envisioned them working was something that required a little more thought than click a point and whack a mole or get a free point.

I personally would find it far more exciting if the skill challenges weren’t tied to the points, but rather rewarded actual unique skills based on the challenge. Some of them could be universal or some could be PvE exclusive skills. The ones in WVW maps could offer unique WVW skills, and so on.

Increase the amount of skill points awarded on level up to counter the removal of earning points from completing skill challenges. Then rework the challenges to make them a little more creative. Unique encounters with unique rewards. Naturally with the amount of skill challenges in the world right now, you might end up removing a few, or just having some still award bonus skill points or better yet, offer a unique player buff that lasts an hour or two depending on the challenge. Since many of them would be one time buffs, making them powerful would be acceptable since they’re both temporary and you can’t repeat them on the character.

Sources of power could be uncoupled from the skill point system and moved to their own unique crafting node for the materials that require them.

As for the specifics of what kind of challenges I would like to see?

Normal Challenge:
Options
1. Fight a unique veteran encounter that utilizes the skill rewarded.
2. Solve a unique puzzle zelda/tomb raider/retro gaming style. (use yer mind yo!)
3. Scavenger hunt to locate pieces to activate the point and earn the reward.
Rewards
1. Standard utility skill. Something that would be first tier unlock.
2. Powerful player buff that lasts 30 minutes – 1 hour. (Large luck, power, vitality, toughness, speed buff, etc.)
3. Extra skill point.

Hard Challenge:
Options
1. Elite monster fight, scaling difficulty that may require more players but still possible to solo.
2. More difficult brain puzzle, something that requires following more challenging clues.
Rewards
1. Second or third tier abilities. More potent, more useful.
2. Unique title and/or achievement associated with the challenge.

Ultimate Challenge:
Options
1. Champion boss fight with additional veterans. This is meant to require a group to accomplish.
2. A puzzle that requires at least two players to complete.
Rewards
1. Elite skill.
2. Super buff that lasts 2 hours.
3. Unique weapon skin or armor skin associated with the challenge.

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

If you don’t announce players obviously don’t know unless they come across chatter via player communication mediums where it has been discovered. Some content could be like that, probably don’t want very much to be like that though. Having enough of it to get people interested in exploring the world in the hopes of finding this kind of content may help players discover things they like they wouldn’t have otherwise found. So it can have some value.

Leaving hints that there is more to something around an area is a way to annouce to players that something may not be available currently. Anyone who’s played Pokemon knows the egg system. There are different messages building upon excitement as the egg gets closer and closer to hatching. That kind of concept could be implemented and taken further, such as leaving hints of what needs to be done to advance the progress (something other than a progress bar for sure).

Example:
Message: Odd flowers and Strange hoofprints are abound as though something was frightened away.

(There’s an underworld portal nearby)
(The creature enjoys eating these flowers).
The players destroy the portal and collect a bouquet of these flowers and place it in that area. It’s apprantly a timid creature in our situation as it was scared, so you’ll have to hide somewhere briefly and wait for it’s appearance. The risk in this situation is a player could afk and prevent the event or troll, but I think I’ve communicated the jist of it.

1. More ranger pets! The last new one we got was over a year ago with the Southsun Cove update!

2. Player housing!!!!!!! Woooo!

3. Miniatures! Please find a way to keep them from disappearing every time I waypoint

Shockwave.1230:

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)

This is good in concept. The implementation could be modified slightly. Implementing a universal token currency that is rewarded in combination with current dungeon tokens would be a nice addition. Dungeons could reward a smaller amount of their current tokens, but also reward some universal tokens that could be exchanged for specific dungeon tokens. Two way currency exchange with diminishing returns could be implemented as well, but I think it’d be better to stick with a one-way turn in of universal for specific to continue the promotion of people playing each dungeon.

You honestly see nothing wrong with a person running Cof but unable to complete Arah getting the Arah armor?
What is the incentive for running Arah specifically then? Cos slightly fast gain of an item doesn’t cut it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

The downside is that you de-incentivise improvement and promote grinding the same thing over and over. The players see an item they like and go I think I’ll add that to my collection, There is no risk that they’re not good enough to get it, they are not challenged into doing a new piece of content and are in no way forced out of their comfort zone. Skill goes under-rewarded.

Sorry for the rant >.< but people trying to take away others accomplishments because they want the same rewards annoys me significantly.

timidobserver.7925:

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?

It should be similar to the Signet of Capture system, however I make it a bit more difficult. Give the player a list of X amount of specific named NPCs they have to hunt down, defeat, and use the signet of capture on. They can only completed 1 a day. Once they have completed them all, they get the skill. I would make the NPCs have a chance to spawn in a number of locations across different maps in order to make the chase more difficult.

One area that I find Guild Wars to be lacking in is profession lore, so it would be awesome if you added in a lot of profession specific lore about these skills.

Artificially inflating the amount of time it takes to obtain these skills isn’t going to be popular.

Additionally, this turns into the same WP jumping that the world bosses and Living Story has brought about. Someone in guild chat links a WP, and everyone rushes to get there. I don’ t think a bounty hunt like that can really be successful in an open world game. There’s no personal skill involved in that, just a rush to get to the NPC.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Shockwave.1230:

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)

This is good in concept. The implementation could be modified slightly. Implementing a universal token currency that is rewarded in combination with current dungeon tokens would be a nice addition. Dungeons could reward a smaller amount of their current tokens, but also reward some universal tokens that could be exchanged for specific dungeon tokens. Two way currency exchange with diminishing returns could be implemented as well, but I think it’d be better to stick with a one-way turn in of universal for specific to continue the promotion of people playing each dungeon.

You honestly see nothing wrong with a person running Cof but unable to complete Arah getting the Arah armor?
What is the incentive for running Arah specifically then? Cos slightly fast gain of an item doesn’t cut it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

The downside is that you de-incentivise improvement and promote grinding the same thing over and over. The players see an item they like and go I think I’ll add that to my collection, There is no risk that they’re not good enough to get it, they are not challenged into doing a new piece of content and are in no way forced out of their comfort zone. Skill goes under-rewarded.

I think there should be one dungeon currency, and each dungeon rewards a different amount of tokens based on difficulty and could potentially even be a dynamic reward based on how frequently that dungeon path should run. I think it’s a really bad design flaw that each dungeon set requires a grind of the same dungeon over and over – yes, I know that there are multiple paths per dungeon, but for a game that strives to reward doing different things, I think this should be revisited.

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?

Oh, me me me, pick me, I got it.

As you said, skills points aren’t really that engaging and does lead to unhealthy play, so phasing them out and replacing them with a better system would be a good idea.

This is what I am thinking.

-

A Skill Tracker
When you want to unlock a new skill, you double click it and it will be added to your skill tracker in the upper right hand corner of the screen like Dailies. (up to 3 at a time)
In order to unlock it you have to perform the list of objectives mentioned, just as you would a daily.

For example: Unlocking ‘Lightning Reflexes’ would require you to dodge attacks a certain number of times, and kill say Air Elementals some 20-30 times, and maybe even complete a jumping puzzle.

Higher tiers require more activities, and more challenging objectives.
After you unlock the skill you also get a little bit of EXP.

What great about this system is that it habituates people into doing daily and monthly activities, as well as reuses existing systems.

-

Elites
Elites could also work in a very similar way, but much more like how it used to in GW1.
Instead of small simple tasks, it requires you to find and slay the designated Champion/or the new Elite level mobs.
The skill tracker with show you it’s precise location, or at least give you all the information on how to find it.
Perhaps even some lore and flavor text about the mob in question, so we can learn more about the world and it’s inhabitants.

And so that new players aren’t completely overwhelmed, the entry level elite tier has low level champions/elites that can be soloed rather easily, but still provide some degree of challenge.
And while Champions are meant for several people to fight, they are fairly easily soloable if over leveled, and having people actual need to work together once in awhile isn’t a bad thing. Thou the new Elite mob types could work just as well, provided they have some unique mechanics.

Elites should be somewhat difficult and challenging to acquire, more so then ‘plomp skill points’.

Further more, as I have said before, Elite as a whole kind of have to be reworked so be more then just single powerful skills, but like with GW1 (which got them right the first time) they come in every shape and size, and you want to build your entire build around them.
Which means we need a lot more of them.

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.

I was thinking something in the same lines as this, although not necessarily tied to the personal (at least not beyond the choice of order). With an npc from each order serving as the messenger link between the game and the player, and in this way informing the player of their options of further class progression.

The npc could guide you to a remote place in tyria to find an old master of “X”. Maybe 3 different masters per class, or a few more “universal” masters shared between classes.

To avoid having to repeat the same challenges on all characters, specific class masters would probably work best.

These masters would, through a mix of events, scavenger hunts etc., teach you how to alter your skills (or whatever it’s gonna be) in the way you desired.

The alterations earned through these challenges would be permanently unlocked for the given character, and could be activated either in bulk (all skills get affected in the same way at once), or on a skill by skill basis.
This way you could earn all the specializations and change between them depending on how you wanted to play your build.

Hope this makes some sense, and that someone did not already say something similar. My mind is a bit loaded lately because of approaching exams, and I don’t have time to read all the posts in this thread, but I try to keep up with what’s happening.

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?

For Utility Skills I would prefer to see the same system used. Add a new layer beneath the 6 skill point skills and make them cost 12 skill points each.

For Elite skills however, I think it should involve all aspects of the game. You first must hunt down the master trainer, much like a KungFU master living on a reclusive mountainous monastery. Each Elite skill is taught by a different master at a different location. The master trainer will send you on a quest (that’s right, a quest!) to gather four unique items, each item comes from a different aspect of the game.
One Elite Skill quest for example could be:

• One can be found after defeating the Jade Maw.
• One drops from a player’s corpse in WvW.
• One can be found in the Forsaken Fortune Mini-Dungeon, in Dredgehaunt Cliffs.
• One can be found in the Royal Tombs of Azabe Qabar, in Cursed Shore.

Upon returning the items to the master trainer he teaches you the skill.
Additionally, he could ask you to combine them in the mystic forge and bring him the resulted item.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Shockwave.1230:

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)

This is good in concept. The implementation could be modified slightly. Implementing a universal token currency that is rewarded in combination with current dungeon tokens would be a nice addition. Dungeons could reward a smaller amount of their current tokens, but also reward some universal tokens that could be exchanged for specific dungeon tokens. Two way currency exchange with diminishing returns could be implemented as well, but I think it’d be better to stick with a one-way turn in of universal for specific to continue the promotion of people playing each dungeon.

You honestly see nothing wrong with a person running Cof but unable to complete Arah getting the Arah armor?
What is the incentive for running Arah specifically then? Cos slightly fast gain of an item doesn’t cut it.

Maybe there is somewhat of an issue with people never completing Arah to get arah armor, you can do it in PvP though. Maybe an additional implementation could be to restrict exchange from a universal token to a specific dungeon token until each path has been done, or just the story mode completed, or something in between depending upon what the devs want to do.

Remember Conski, the goal of the CDI is to collaborate constructively not exaserbate destructively. Offering solutions and ideas is a better approach than simply identifying a problem may arise.

Yoh.8469:

A Skill Tracker
When you want to unlock a new skill, you double click it and it will be added to your skill tracker in the upper right hand corner of the screen like Dailies. (up to 3 at a time)
In order to unlock it you have to perform the list of objectives mentioned, just as you would a daily.

For example: Unlocking ‘Lightning Reflexes’ would require you to dodge attacks a certain number of times, and kill say Air Elementals some 20-30 times, and maybe even complete a jumping puzzle.

Higher tiers require more activities, and more challenging objectives.
After you unlock the skill you also get a little bit of EXP.

What great about this system is that it habituates people into doing daily and monthly activities, as well as reuses existing systems.

I really love that idea, people should be familiar with daylies so it shouldn’t be too hard to grasp.

One thing I particularly love: Skills aren’t gated by prerequisite skills or a number of skillpoints but challenges spread in the world. You might not have access (due to low level) to a specific locations, so you should probably do the easier ones first.

What a pity that we already have all our skills unlocked with a quite boring unlock-system instead of your suggestion: doing a huge variety of things in order to unlock each skill. It would have been awesome imho.

(Yes, it would be a bad system if you only play WvW, because in that szenario you want all skills from the beginning. I would have unlocked all skills for WvW (just as it works in sPvP) because you’re already scaled up to 80 also. Once you go back to PvE you’d have to continue unlocking skills via exploration & activities.)