Guild Wars 2

I bet it is “hard” followed by “on.” I’ve seen that censored before.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

But more to the second part. “It’ll be chewed through quickly” . . . which is more my concern. They could run themselves ragged designing this region to “go nuts in” as you put it and it would still be almost completely done with in less than a week by a not-insignificant portion of players.

Again,“it will never be enough” is a meaningless design observation since it only informs 2 design responses: Always try to put in more to reach the unattainable. Or: Don’t put in anything since it is unattainable.

You have to create an arbitrary saturation point to get anywhere. For me its: I know right now that the game doesn’t have enough unique interesting goals & unique interesting encounters to feel alive or be worth going back to certain areas. So they need more. I think, again, the abandonment of DEs was just head scratchingly weird. The game has like 1/2 the number of DEs it should have. & they’ve neither implemented nor experimented with new, more variable DEs. The living story has become the"content". & it’s totally contrary to an actual living world. I feel like they are more concerned with making content that is flashy & advertizable so that players feel like they are getting more than they are, rather than fleshing out the entire world with DEs that fill up every corner of the maps with multi-branching stories.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Eh? Tixx’s Toybox wasn’t in the Gem Store, neither was my Injector skin. And my reward for doing WvW Season 1 was rediscovering I really enjoyed getting myself beaten bloody in there and occasionally getting someone else or helping win something.

Sometimes those rewards aren’t tangible.

Non-tangible rewards are a pointless design discussion because they don’t require anything to be designed. They are entirely player-generated. As for the back skins, sure, i can compare my back & hand items to the many full sets of armor, tons of BL weapons & town clothing in the Gem Store, but that would be dishonest. The comparison is an exercise in misdirection.

So, I’ve heard mention of these “Core Pillars” of GW2, but I don’t really know what they are. Could someone tell me how many there are and what they are?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We don’t teach it well enough and therefore it is obfuscated to the point that players have already invested heavily in a particular role making experimentation in diversification less appealing (for a multitude of reasons).

Recently however we have been working kitten balance and situational role parity and bit by bit in game you can see player’s experimenting much more. This is a very good sign and will afford us a stronger foundation to build our content on moving forward.

Thus the timing around this topic is actually excellent.

Chris

What are ya’lls thoughts on the investments players have (weapons/armor/trinkets) into certain specs being a limiter to diversification?

Nadesh.7953:

Serophous.9085:

First and foremost, what I am about to upload is very basic, and horribly drawn, so ignore all that.

Im basically talking about the trait system and reworking it to sorta have “subclasses”, or having two (maybe more?) professions for one character.

Basically, you choose your main class, in this example, warrior. Now lets say you progress down the tactics arms line, and when I hit fifteen points, I can either continue to go into warrior, or split off into thief (the other side could be say…guardian). So I split off into thief, either gaining an already in game minor trait, or a new one. Now, I can spend another five points down that thief path for a major trait, or go back to warrior, or go to guardian if I wanted.

Continuing with thief, I get a major thief trait (either taken from a thief line already in game or new). Then i can go along the path towards finishing thief or head back to warrior.

Now, problems I see here would of course be first and foremost, balance. The balance team would probably need to really kick it into high gear XD. Next, choosing which traits to allow (if not designing new), and picking ones that make sense. I mean, giving a trait that relies on stealing probably wouldnt be good, though, giving a warrior the caltrops when they dodge would be funny.

Next problem i foresee, and can be shown on the pic, is if allowing that once you take the second major trait in the subclass, do you allow going into the next tree for grandmaster? Or make it a pre-req that you have to have at least 10pts in that tree first? Again, allowing it would mean more class builds, but then more potential balance problems.

Finally, the way this is designed was on purpose. I wanted to keep the 5 trait lines in the main classes already, and not add more, and if you count the spaces in between, that leaves only room for 5 subclasses. So, excluding the current class already in use, that leaves 7 more, so two would be left out.

I figured for warrior, it would be Ele and Necro, since (other than ele using a summoned weapon) neither really go into melee combat.

Course, it doesnt even HAVE to go into current classes, this could start the subclasses, where that is the Shadow Warrior subclass, or something.

And speaking of subclasses, if anything, I would like to see a version of DnD 3.5 Frenzied Beserker, where vengeance auto activates when your hp reaches zero, letting you fight just a bit longer….:P

I think it is an interesting idea. How the skills would work? I mean, one would be able to get all the skills of all classes? or one would unlock skills based on the traits they unlock?

I was thinking in a system of specializations. Each job would have 1 or 2 specializations, but the specializations wouldnt be restricted to the first job. For example, a warrior specialization could be berserker and/or warlord but each class could pick those specializations. This mean you can have, for example, a thief-berserker or a mesmer-warlord.

With this the problems of traits would be solved bcs the specialization would have its own line of traits. There would be less problems with balance, since can balance the first jobs for one side and the second ones for another.

The very bad part is that is that a thief-berserker (for example) would have all the thief skills but not the warrior ones and would be limited to the berserker skills.

Example of the pucture at work:

The first 10 skill points go into tactics trait line, then i have 3 choices. I can spend the next 10 in warrior still and continue to the t2 trait, or spend the next 10 in either thief or guardian and get a diel t2 trait. The next 10 i can choose to go to the t3 duel trait, or go back and get a warrior t2 trait, or get the guardian t2 trait, or get the t3 warrior trait. Its a system still using the 70 pt system, so you would still have only the max of three major traits.

GW2 needs more craftign jobs..
Once you have so mucgh alts, that you can give your alts not a new craftign job,, that you haven’t already maxed with an other character, what is the case with already 4 characters, your 5th character would have already copied craftign jobs and would be basically useless, because lets face it, is here really sombody to crazy to teach for all characters that you have all crafting jobs to the max??? I doubt hardly that anyone in this game would be so insane to waste so much time and gold in the game to get all characters all craftign jobs to max, just only so that you don’t have to think about it, with hwich of you characters you gonna craft something.

Its much easer to use just with every character 2 different crafting jobs once and brign them per character all only just 1 time to the maxt.
Thats the most quickest and effective way how to handle crafting jobs for the cost of it, that you habe always to switch yiour charactters.

However, I suggest here a smart Gemstory item, a kind of Teaching Book for Crafting Jobs, which could be sold for every single Craftign Job at a certain gem price, which could be used, if you have at least 1 character in your account that has maxed the crafting jo,b so that if you use that book (would fall under either Upgrade or Tool), that you unlock that way for all of your alternative characters of your account the craftign job also with max level.

Example:

Tome of the Relic Hunter Use this 1time consumeable accountbound item, if you have at least 1 Character with Jeweler Rank 400 (500) and all of your other Characters will share with that 1 Character the same documentated wisdom, that lies within this Tome. Unlocks also the Title “Relic Hunter” for your account.

Tome of the Shining Blade Use this 1time consumeable Item and gain the Title “Shining Blade” Share also your Maximum Weapon Smith Rank with all your other Characters.

Tome of the Chef Cuisine. Unlock the Title “Chef Cuisine” and share also your Maximum Cooking Rank with all of your Characters of your Account.

Tome of the Nature Lover Unlock the Title “Nature Lover” and share also your Maximum Huntsman Rank with all of your Characters of your Account

Tome of the Dream Weaver Unlock the Title “Dream Weaver” and share also your Maximum Tailor Rank with all of your Characters of your Account

Tome of the Pathfinder Unlock the Title “Pathfinder” and share also your Maximum Leatherer Rank with all of your Characters of your Account

Tome of the Saviour of Tyria, Unlock the Title “Saviour of Tyria” and share also your Maximum Blacksmith Rank with all of your Characters of your Account

Tome of the Mastermind, Unlock the Title “Mastermind” and you share also your Maximum Constructeur Rank with all of your Characters of your Account
——

Crafting Jobs and Gathering Tasks that GW2 absolutely needs are:

Gathering Tasks:

- Fishing (The Game already has fishing poles!! Make use of them finally!)
- Digging (The Game also already has Shovels, let us use them to dig around for Materials!)

Difference between these 2 would be and the 3 existign onces, these 2 Gatherign Tools would be from begin on permanent, would have no consumeable charges, but to receive these Gathering Tools, you have to do something with your characters on their “journey”, to get a fishing pole and a shovel as rewards to become able to go fishing or to dig around at digging spots for hidden treasures. (you know, GW1 had monthly hidden treasures, brign them back into GW2!! some nice spots where you could get monthly some good money income from if you were lucky)
And Fishing could become a new Minigame with that you can get as reward new Fish, Crab, ect. Materials for new seafruit types of new cooking recipes

New Crafting Jobs that GW2 should receive are:

• Writer
• Tinkerer
• Peasant
• Artisan
• Enchanter
• Musician

Just a few I can think about, that would be fitting.

Orpheal.8263:

New Crafting Jobs that GW2 should receive are:

• Writer
• Tinkerer
• Peasant
• Artisan
• Enchanter
• Musician

Just a few I can think about, that would be fitting.

I would add the alchemist to that list. With temporary recipes that are on a mysterious rotation. The crafting process is filled with riddles and guesswork.

I wrote about it earlier here.

What do you think that these crafting jobs should produce btw?

I rather want to the the Alchemist as a Sub Class for the Engineer, that would make much more sense, thats the reason, why i haven#t listed it up as a Crafting Job

Essence Snow.3194:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We don’t teach it well enough and therefore it is obfuscated to the point that players have already invested heavily in a particular role making experimentation in diversification less appealing (for a multitude of reasons).

Recently however we have been working kitten balance and situational role parity and bit by bit in game you can see player’s experimenting much more. This is a very good sign and will afford us a stronger foundation to build our content on moving forward.

Thus the timing around this topic is actually excellent.

Chris

What are ya’lls thoughts on the investments players have (weapons/armor/trinkets) into certain specs being a limiter to diversification?

Ascended, and the time-gated nature of crafting it, certainly acts as a barrier to experimentation with different builds.

DarksunG.9537:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

But more to the second part. “It’ll be chewed through quickly” . . . which is more my concern. They could run themselves ragged designing this region to “go nuts in” as you put it and it would still be almost completely done with in less than a week by a not-insignificant portion of players.

Again,“it will never be enough” is a meaningless design observation since it only informs 2 design responses: Always try to put in more to reach the unattainable. Or: Don’t put in anything since it is unattainable.

No, it’s not a design observation though, just commentary meant to be more seen than acted on. Everyone would love more content, but if we just chase “more content” into the future then it’s a race to try to produce stuff quickly and get ahead of the general curve of people having completed it yet.

You have to create an arbitrary saturation point to get anywhere. For me its: I know right now that the game doesn’t have enough unique interesting goals & unique interesting encounters to feel alive or be worth going back to certain areas. So they need more. I think, again, the abandonment of DEs was just head scratchingly weird.

From what I gather, that was largely due to people not being impressed with it and going “meh, just quests under a different name and not interesting ones”, gravitating to the ones with the quickest reward scheme, and so on. In short – the players voted with their feet.

The game has like 1/2 the number of DEs it should have. & they’ve neither implemented nor experimented with new, more variable DEs.

See above, though I beg to differ – the “Modus Sceleri” events are interestingly variable and were . . . intriguing, but they didn’t seem to have anything to them.

The living story has become the"content". & it’s totally contrary to an actual living world. I feel like they are more concerned with making content that is flashy & advertizable so that players feel like they are getting more than they are, rather than fleshing out the entire world with DEs that fill up every corner of the maps with multi-branching stories.

Seems to be, but then this is somewhat what we asked for after Lost Shores failed miserably all around.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Eh? Tixx’s Toybox wasn’t in the Gem Store, neither was my Injector skin. And my reward for doing WvW Season 1 was rediscovering I really enjoyed getting myself beaten bloody in there and occasionally getting someone else or helping win something.

Sometimes those rewards aren’t tangible.

Non-tangible rewards are a pointless design discussion because they don’t require anything to be designed. They are entirely player-generated. As for the back skins, sure, i can compare my back & hand items to the many full sets of armor, tons of BL weapons & town clothing in the Gem Store, but that would be dishonest. The comparison is an exercise in misdirection.

And designing tangibles has been a problem thus far because they either don’t meet the demand or are odds-and-ends with no real . . . synergy . . . of relation to other things. The skins which were released via Living Story (not Gem Store) don’t really match things which existed already.

And the stuff in the Gem Store . . . notably town clothing . . . seemed to be released in response to some feedback going “ANet, we would pay for town clothing instead of more armor from the Gem Store.” So they put more town clothing in there

The kind of rewards I am looking for from content being discussed here are not “look at this neat thing I got – it sparkles!” or “this is worth a lot of gold” but rather things which lead to or are in themselves horizontal progression. We don’t need to focus on the new shiny skins as much as we do the progression everyone seems to be clamoring for.

I’m still seeing calls for sub-classes, and I’m still unsure why they’re needed at all. Why do we need another layer of game mechanics to let us play a “druid” ranger with a bunch of spirits or a marksman ranger focused on ranged combat when the current skill and trait system already allows us to do exactly that?

Orpheal.8263:

GW2 needs more craftign jobs..

I’m not so sure it does. I think what it needs is some different implementation of what we have now. Mostly because if you think the fuss kicked up over Ascended crafting goals was big . . . wait til you tell them there’s more other stuff to access this new cool stuff being put in.

Its much easer to use just with every character 2 different crafting jobs once and brign them per character all only just 1 time to the maxt. Thats the most quickest and effective way how to handle crafting jobs for the cost of it, that you habe always to switch yiour charactters.

I’ll solve this right now.

“Account Wide Crafting Skill”.

darkace.8925:

I’m still seeing calls for sub-classes, and I’m still unsure why they’re needed at all. Why do we need another layer of game mechanics to let us play a “druid” ranger with a bunch of spirits or a marksman ranger focused on ranged combat when the current skill and trait system already allows us to do exactly that?

You are using the word “let” in regards to doing certain things but what I really keep trying to aim for mentally and direct attention to is “enhance” doing the things you want to do.

“Subclass” doesn’t even need to be a whole concrete thing so much as it does a way of citing where the options are from and what it is suggested they work with. (Though not concretely assigned “this will only work with this”.)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Orpheal.8263:

GW2 needs more craftign jobs..

I’m not so sure it does. I think what it needs is some different implementation of what we have now. Mostly because if you think the fuss kicked up over Ascended crafting goals was big . . . wait til you tell them there’s more other stuff to access this new cool stuff being put in.

Its much easer to use just with every character 2 different crafting jobs once and brign them per character all only just 1 time to the maxt. Thats the most quickest and effective way how to handle crafting jobs for the cost of it, that you habe always to switch yiour charactters.

I’ll solve this right now.

“Account Wide Crafting Skill”.

If you have account wide crafting, then that destroys leveling alts with the crafting to level 80.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We don’t teach it well enough and therefore it is obfuscated to the point that players have already invested heavily in a particular role making experimentation in diversification less appealing (for a multitude of reasons).

Recently however we have been working kitten balance and situational role parity and bit by bit in game you can see player’s experimenting much more. This is a very good sign and will afford us a stronger foundation to build our content on moving forward.

I am very glad to hear you are investigating situational roles more thoroughly, however there is one thing I would add to your previous point.

The problem is not teaching the system, it’s challenging the players. Most of the content in this game consists of very crude opponents, mindless melee monsters who stroll towards the player or imbecilic ranged enemies who stand still while someone bashes them in the face. Likewise, most monsters have one single cooldown skill, a rather pathetic lack of resources.

Bless your hearts, Anet, you are great designers but you’ve never been good at making monsters. The best challenge you ever gave us in GW1 was porting hero builds directly onto new enemies, and even then someone else did all the legwork. You designed a magnificently mobile and skill savvy system, but your monsters cannot handle it. Players don’t need to change builds because there’s nothing out there hammering them into switching strategies. “Kite + pew pew” or “Apply Hundred Blades Directly To The Forehead” work in 95% of content, which means no one needs to be flexible. And 4% of the remaining content can be zerged without ever facing any risk, since the scaled up monsters are still reliant on largely single target attacks.

Give monsters more skills. Give them the ability to attack while moving (or make their autoattacks move them slightly, much like a ranger sword attack). Give them the power to kite. Give scaled up monsters scaled outward skills capable of harming a zerg. Make us pay attention to what’s in front of us, and maybe we’ll have to adapt strategies once in a while. It wouldn’t hurt if you gave us quality of life improvements like Build Slots or the ability for ascended gear to learn new statistics by absorbing exotic gear, but it all starts with the enemies.

Strong metal must be forged in the blazing inferno. Turn up the heat, and we’ll grow stronger and more flexible in turn.

Serophous.9085:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’ll solve this right now.

“Account Wide Crafting Skill”.

If you have account wide crafting, then that destroys leveling alts with the crafting to level 80.

Yes. Yes it does. Except from what I understand that’s not possible anyway. Besides, I’m more at home simply working my skills up on one character (except for Cooking) and using them rather than shuffling alts around.

I honestly don’t think changing it would do any good either, but if there’s a lot of people suddenly wanting access to those skills on other characters? Why not?

Shriketalon.1937:

Strong metal must be forged in the blazing inferno. Turn up the heat, and we’ll grow stronger and more flexible in turn.

Remind me when the CDI for that stuff comes up, I’ll start sketching ideas.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Shriketalon.1937:

Strong metal must be forged in the blazing inferno. Turn up the heat, and we’ll grow stronger and more flexible in turn.

Remind me when the CDI for that stuff comes up, I’ll start sketching ideas.

I have been ready for that CDI for 4 months. Actually, I hope that my most important thread back then inspired them to develop the upcoming changes.

My ideas there would go really well with some of the horizontal progression ideas here. Especially the asset-ones. Where we can gain help by completing parts of the game. Help that can be used to balance out any party-weaknesses that we may have in certain encounters.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Everyone would love more content, but if we just chase “more content” into the future then it’s a race to try to produce stuff quickly and get ahead of the general curve of people having completed it yet.

There is no other direction. Either you add new stuff, or you replace stuff. Either way, it’s more. Weather someone completes it fast or not is immaterial.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

From what I gather, that was largely due to people not being impressed with it and going “meh, just quests under a different name and not interesting ones”, gravitating to the ones with the quickest reward scheme, and so on. In short – the players voted with their feet.

That’s like hiding a a $20 bill somewhere in a park, announcing on the news that there is a free $10 bill on the the first park bench then complaining that people didn’t like the $20 bill. There is so much wrong with comparing the success of the DEs they added to the Living Story.
DEs:
no new rewards
no new mechanics or evolution in the system
only announcement was that they added new events “to the game” in the patch notes.
they added a paltry 70ish events.

LS:
Website, media outlets & In-game announcements
New Reward items
New Achievements
More added every 2 weeks
in-game direction exactly where to go
Blog & Video story updates

The only remotely fair comparison is comparing the DEs with the first F&F LS Which was a disaster. People voted with their feet? I guess, though the comparison is disingenuous at best.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

See above, though I beg to differ – the “Modus Sceleri” events are interestingly variable and were . . . intriguing, but they didn’t seem to have anything to them.

I don’t consider 9 new “mob-spawn” events to be variable & inventive. Every map should have 20 odd rare spawn bosses with unique drops just so you can say “oh neat it’s that guy” every once in a while. 9 mobs al over the world? that’s nothing.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Seems to be, but then this is somewhat what we asked for after Lost Shores failed miserably all around.

I loved lost shores because it was real & temporal. but the current LS is nice too. But without real content & feature updates like full expansions, it’s not worth it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And designing tangibles has been a problem thus far because they either don’t meet the demand or are odds-and-ends with no real . . . synergy . . . of relation to other things. The skins which were released via Living Story (not Gem Store) don’t really match things which existed already.

And the stuff in the Gem Store . . . notably town clothing . . . seemed to be released in response to some feedback going “ANet, we would pay for town clothing instead of more armor from the Gem Store.” So they put more town clothing in there

The kind of rewards I am looking for from content being discussed here are not “look at this neat thing I got – it sparkles!” or “this is worth a lot of gold” but rather things which lead to or are in themselves horizontal progression. We don’t need to focus on the new shiny skins as much as we do the progression everyone seems to be clamoring for.

Well, this is certainly not true, as people love skins & the game is designed around a cosmetic endgame. While there are issues with in-game rewards who truly believes “well, there are some problems, maybe it would be better if I had less to work towards”? Legendaries (as much as people complain about them) are one of the primary player goals. Dungeon Sets were the first thing people worked towards, so saying that the sets being in the store was what people wanted is.. well, unprovable, but also not making a lot of sense. People said “well buy skins!” because they weren’t making ANYTHING. Factions added 2X the number of skins of Prophecies. GW2 hasn’t added .5 the # it started with & it’s a year & a half. & all but 2 sets are Gem Store. This does NOT help to add goals. It helps add profit & that’s it’s only goal.

Personally I want visual progression. If I can’t see my progression in some way I don’t want it. That’s is why numbers are lame. i killed that mob in 1 less swings.. big deal. I want my guy to get scars or maybe get older or unique hair styles , or maybe his hand gets branded by a dragon or he gets mounts or a little sidekick or has medals all over him. 2nd to that is more skills & weapons. but as I said, they have to work out Control & Support before they do that. & I want this stuff though various achievement types/scavenger hunts & adventures, not 500 bolts of silk.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

- Sub-classes will be discussed again in a CDI once Arena finishes its current balance work in regard to roles.

Many thanks for that, gives me time to mull over anything in there.

- Where possible use the above design paradigm to reinforce and evolve the existing world.

I’d bold that, because it’s kind of useful to enrich what’s existing in a way people might enjoy.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Zone Dominance through Faction Alliances (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

I must have missed that, but if it’s what it sounds like then there are going to be potential problems; particularly one dominant faction leading people to believe they must align with it to get the rewards, leaving other factions abandoned. Again, if this isn’t what I’m thinking it is then disregard my concern.

Shriketalon.1937:

The problem is not teaching the system, it’s challenging the players. Most of the content in this game consists of very crude opponents, mindless melee monsters who stroll towards the player or imbecilic ranged enemies who stand still while someone bashes them in the face. Likewise, most monsters have one single cooldown skill, a rather pathetic lack of resources.

Quoted for truth.

And really, the dumber monster AI is the more often you get calls to split skills between PvE and PvP behaviors. The effort spent making smarter, nastier, more vicious critters pays off double in the less you have to manage parallel skills between gameplay modes.

City of Heroes (may it soar forever in our hearts) was an EXTREME example of this: healing didn’t generate agro so healers could stand completely naked healing at full-blast in the midst of a mass melee and would be ignored by critters until every other party-member was dead. This lead to Devs ignoring giving healing classes any sort of active defense as part of their class. Now pop them into PvP where the universal battlecry is “KILL THE HEALER FIRST” and let me tell you: playing a healer in PvP in that game sucked donkey hindquarters. And they WOULD NOT FIX IT because ‘hey, healers are fine (in PvE)’…

I spoke with their lead designer about it a few times. He didn’t seem to appreciate my suggestion~

“Have healing cause substantial agro in PvE – then when you get a hundred thousand players screaming that healers are unplayable (or rather as unplayable as they are already in PvP…) maybe you’ll feel empowered to fix the root problem …”

I’d really like to see healing others in GW2 generating massive agro, because if monsters don’t respond to it, the fight’s already over. Similarly some mobs that are justifiably smarter in-game should clearly prioritize taking the weakest player down… and then prioritize ending them. Embers are about the only trash monster in the game I respect in group-play, and that’s because they almost coincidentally finish off downed players with their fire fields.

And this is not a call for the (un)holy trinity. The trinity is also based on BAD agro behavior. There is a reason the MMO-tank doesn’t exist in the real world: it is based on the attacker’s complete stupidity. You don’t attack the lowest threat + highest mitigation target first (without arbitrary mind-control… er, ‘taunts’). Games that rely on tanks as a role end up having to do backflips trying to make them relevant in PvP. Again: dumb monsters prompting dumb classes that fall apart when faced with human opponents.

Instead this is the call for more relevant Support and Control. If Critters were actually dangerous, there would be a place for helping the “priority target” survive either by healing/defensively buffing them (Support) or by debuffing or CCing the attackers (Control).

The issue of unsatisfying role balance is something to be laid at the feet of the AI design as much or more than any inequity on the player skill choices side.

Just dropping in quickly looks like I’m running out of time.
Hi Chris dam that Emu, the proposal sound great covering the core topics discussed. For everyone I’m looking at last two summaries to cover 53-58 & 59 to just before the proposal hoping finished late tonight.

And again thanks all for a great CDI discussion.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Zone Dominance through Faction Alliances (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

darkace.8925:

I must have missed that, but if it’s what it sounds like then there are going to be potential problems; particularly one dominant faction leading people to believe they must align with it to get the rewards, leaving other factions abandoned. Again, if this isn’t what I’m thinking it is then disregard my concern.

That threw up some flags for me too.

Chris, and you clarify your terms “Zone Dominance” and “Grail Quests” please?

DarksunG.9537:

There is no other direction. Either you add new stuff, or you replace stuff. Either way, it’s more. Weather someone completes it fast or not is immaterial.

It’s very important if many people complete it fast; if on average more people get through content you took time to work on than expected you’ve got a lot of people waiting on the next bit of content. Then there’s pressure to produce more before they get fed up and leave.

DEs: vs LS:

Strangely from this list, it looks like the LS is “better” than DEs and thus DEs should just be chucked out the window rather than reinforced. Especially if it’s not being wanted by the players.

The only remotely fair comparison is comparing the DEs with the first F&F LS Which was a disaster. People voted with their feet? I guess, though the comparison is disingenuous at best.

They did do that. Players flocked to the events which were the most lucrative, the most rewarding, or the most fun and left the others alone. You know that pirates one mentioned a page or so ago, which someone remarked was “entertaining”? Nobody does it. You know Timberline Falls, Dredgehaunt Cliffs, Brisban Wildlands? I poke my head in there from time to time, people aren’t doing the DEs there. Almost all the time I run through Gendarran, Ascalon Settlement is burning.

“They voted with their feet” meaning “they stopped bothering with them except for the champ trains and maybe, on a good day, Straits for a Balthazar push”.

If you want to ask why the DEs got left in the box for things to work on? Here’s a good long look why: start going to zones and taking notes on how many of the chains outside of ones which yield Dragonite are in “default fail mode”. Then ask if anyone’s doing them. People aren’t.

I don’t consider 9 new “mob-spawn” events to be variable & inventive. Every map should have 20 odd rare spawn bosses with unique drops just so you can say “oh neat it’s that guy” every once in a while. 9 mobs al over the world? that’s nothing.

They were variable and new, in they aren’t always up and in the same place. Similar to the Skritt Burglar, you can’t count on them being in a spot when you swing through. Inventive, in the sense the fights seem to be against characters using skills similar to players (from the ones I’ve had the fortune to do).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Seems to be, but then this is somewhat what we asked for after Lost Shores failed miserably all around.

I loved lost shores because it was real & temporal. but the current LS is nice too. But without real content & feature updates like full expansions, it’s not worth it.

I loved Lost Shores. It was a lot of fun. Half my guild liked it too when we tried it. We were the lucky ones. For every person who enjoyed it and participated, I’d say four more got stuck in “Overflow City” where events were out of sync, where lag was atrocious, and disconnections were common.

And that’s before we talk about how more than a few people wound up missing out on the chest from disconnections and were soured on the whole affair. It was a miserable failure on the technical side, and it colored everyone’s perception of the event. I can’t call it a qualified success if what everyone remembers of Lost Shores is “You have been disconnected”, bugged NPCs you had a time crunch to talk with before the story moved on, and not being able to do anything due to a crush of people lagging zones.

Well, this is certainly not true, as people love skins & the game is designed around a cosmetic endgame. While there are issues with in-game rewards who truly believes “well, there are some problems, maybe it would be better if I had less to work towards”?

The people who don’t want Ascended gear.

Personally I want visual progression. If I can’t see my progression in some way I don’t want it. That’s is why numbers are lame. i killed that mob in 1 less swings.. big deal. I want my guy to get scars or maybe get older or unique hair styles , or maybe his hand gets branded by a dragon or he gets mounts or a little sidekick or has medals all over him. 2nd to that is more skills & weapons. but as I said, they have to work out Control & Support before they do that. & I want this stuff though various achievement types/scavenger hunts & adventures, not 500 bolts of silk.

I’d like that too, especially that last comment. I still prize my alt in GW1 who held onto green weapons I was never going to use and had no value because they were trophies of a sort. I really wanted to hang them in the Hall of Monuments, but . . . alas . . . it was not to be.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed. Note many of us have read the thread internally and thus there has already been valuable impact.

Our Horizontal Progression Proposal

I’m going to sleep on this and let my subconscious have a crack at it before posting my main response tomorrow, but I do want to get one quick note in…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Hero Recognition (Reward) is a by product of the above two types of Horizontal Progression leading to Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

I would like for this point to specifically mention character Personality. Personality choices don’t have quite the gravitas of going to and slaying 6 Champions solo, but ultimately I think Personality is one of our most nuanced ways of developing our characters and their view of Tyria to our exact preferences and should be a key point in how “Tyria looks back at us.”

Thank you all so much for your hard work and your passion toward making GW2 awesome. This has been a really good CDI and I want to thank you on behalf of Arena for caring so much about the world we love.

The in-game pay-off of this exercise should be epic .

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I have updated the proposal.

Chris

Thank you sir, that’s some speedy interaction .

VOLKON.1290:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

VOLKON.1290:

Why? Because we can, of course, and it could flesh out tinkering a bit more, that’s all.

We . . . are fleshing out . . . Tinkering, something which doesn’t exist yet, with more things which also don’t exist yet, and we don’t even know if Tinkering is something we should be looking at?

Sure why not?

:)

Though it bears to question just what exactly is “Tinkering” supposed to do which “Artificer” can’t as a flavor thing?

The thought was to have a crafting profession for “fluff” items, such as furnishings for halls or homes, town clothing, etc. The posts go into ideas, such as drops off boss mobs being used to make items (dragon scale table for ex.). Tied into housing and all that it builds on the overall concept and helps players have more of a hand in progressing their place plus pulls the world into it by using items found on certain mobs, etc.

Artificing is tied to combat, as are all the professions. This would be ‘out of combat’ fluff.

Fun crafts as I call them. Yeah thats nice addition that I have been suggesting for a long time. Does not only have to be about housing. Just making fun items. Think of items like the SAB music box or a mini and so on.

It however also could mean raising mounts (not going into the mounts discussion again, just an example here) or taming / raising ranger pets and so on. Many ways to make fun professions. Important element is that you get the requirements really from game mechanics. Not so much from grinding gold to buy it. That means, put them in specific places. Can indeed be a boss but might also be a group of mobs. But not from something like.. ’it’s a general drop but champions are more likely to drop them’ or the gem-store.

This would however mainly for the recipes or in rare cases one special ingredient. Not for every ingredient of course. Most ingredients would be more easily farm-able (wood, metal and so on).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Zone Dominance through Faction Alliances (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

Does this mean WvW gameplay for pvers?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Nike.2631:

Shriketalon.1937:

The problem is not teaching the system, it’s challenging the players. Most of the content in this game consists of very crude opponents, mindless melee monsters who stroll towards the player or imbecilic ranged enemies who stand still while someone bashes them in the face. Likewise, most monsters have one single cooldown skill, a rather pathetic lack of resources.

Quoted for truth.

And really, the dumber monster AI is the more often you get calls to split skills between PvE and PvP behaviors. The effort spent making smarter, nastier, more vicious critters pays off double in the less you have to manage parallel skills between gameplay modes.

City of Heroes (may it soar forever in our hearts) was an EXTREME example of this: healing didn’t generate agro so healers could stand completely naked healing at full-blast in the midst of a mass melee and would be ignored by critters until every other party-member was dead. This lead to Devs ignoring giving healing classes any sort of active defense as part of their class. Now pop them into PvP where the universal battlecry is “KILL THE HEALER FIRST” and let me tell you: playing a healer in PvP in that game sucked donkey hindquarters. And they WOULD NOT FIX IT because ‘hey, healers are fine (in PvE)’…

I spoke with their lead designer about it a few times. He didn’t seem to appreciate my suggestion~

“Have healing cause substantial agro in PvE – then when you get a hundred thousand players screaming that healers are unplayable (or rather as unplayable as they are already in PvP…) maybe you’ll feel empowered to fix the root problem …”

I’d really like to see healing others in GW2 generating massive agro, because if monsters don’t respond to it, the fight’s already over. Similarly some mobs that are justifiably smarter in-game should clearly prioritize taking the weakest player down… and then prioritize ending them. Embers are about the only trash monster in the game I respect in group-play, and that’s because they almost coincidentally finish off downed players with their fire fields.

And this is not a call for the (un)holy trinity. The trinity is also based on BAD agro behavior. There is a reason the MMO-tank doesn’t exist in the real world: it is based on the attacker’s complete stupidity. You don’t attack the lowest threat + highest mitigation target first (without arbitrary mind-control… er, ‘taunts’). Games that rely on tanks as a role end up having to do backflips trying to make them relevant in PvP. Again: dumb monsters prompting dumb classes that fall apart when faced with human opponents.

Instead this is the call for more relevant Support and Control. If Critters were actually dangerous, there would be a place for helping the “priority target” survive either by healing/defensively buffing them (Support) or by debuffing or CCing the attackers (Control).

The issue of unsatisfying role balance is something to be laid at the feet of the AI design as much or more than any inequity on the player skill choices side.

I want us to get the role balance paradigm just right providing a solid foundation to interact with before turning up the heat in terms of AI behavior. I believe and know this to be a prerequisite.

I can’t really go into much more detail than this.

Chris

Honestly in places I think that AI has improved considerably, it just hasn’t penetrated the rest of the game just yet.
Like the Flame and Front vets, the Protector and Berzerker esp were very well done, and had good mechanics. Thou subsequent LS releases were quite up too that level.

If more AI throughout the game had enemy AI like that, then you’d have a much easier time sorting out roles. For example, against the Protector dudes that make their allies invincible in their area of effect, Control effect to knock back or pull them out of it become more valuable the more often you encounter these mechanics.

Where as Support could be more effective against highly aggressive mobs, such as the Berserker. If that makes any sense.

-
Edit: I also wanted to add something else.
Ever consider have AI mobs use more ground targeting abilities that weren’t just straight up damage?
Like Wards, or Traps/Marks, Walls of Reflections, Projectile Absorbing bubbles, etc.
You know, stuff players use. Blur the lines a little bit.

Devata.6589:

VOLKON.1290:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

VOLKON.1290:

Why? Because we can, of course, and it could flesh out tinkering a bit more, that’s all.

We . . . are fleshing out . . . Tinkering, something which doesn’t exist yet, with more things which also don’t exist yet, and we don’t even know if Tinkering is something we should be looking at?

Sure why not?

:)

Though it bears to question just what exactly is “Tinkering” supposed to do which “Artificer” can’t as a flavor thing?

The thought was to have a crafting profession for “fluff” items, such as furnishings for halls or homes, town clothing, etc. The posts go into ideas, such as drops off boss mobs being used to make items (dragon scale table for ex.). Tied into housing and all that it builds on the overall concept and helps players have more of a hand in progressing their place plus pulls the world into it by using items found on certain mobs, etc.

Artificing is tied to combat, as are all the professions. This would be ‘out of combat’ fluff.

Fun crafts as I call them. Yeah thats nice addition that I have been suggesting for a long time. Does not only have to been about housing. Just making fun items. Think of items like the SAB music box or a mini and so on.

It however also could mean raising mounts (not going into the mounts discussion again, just an example here) or taming / raising ranger pets and so on. Many ways to make fun professions. Important element is that you get the requirement really from game mechanics. Not so much from grinding gold to buy it. That means, put them in specific places. Can indeed be a boss but might also be a group of mobs. But not from something like.. it’s a general drop but champions are more likely to drop them.

This however should be mainly for the recipes. Not for every ingredient of course. Most ingredients would be more easily farm-able (wood, metal and so on).

Honestly if we’re talking about minis and being able to craft them . . .

New Crafting Profession: Toymaker
- Craft living dolls resembling real creatures. Killing a creature type enough to earn Rank 1 Slayer for it will open a blueprint for a Common miniature, Rank 4 for an Exotic one. Each mini in a rank is different, so collect them all.
- Refine “Junk materials” such as ‘tattered fur’ or ‘dark stained claw’ into toy parts! Toys require internal mechanisms from “gear” junk, stuffing from “fur” type junk, frames from “bone” type junk, and one other refinement for each type of critter relative to their forms. (Hooves for centaurs and such, warm stones for destroyers, et cetera.)
- Craft toys and other fun diversions for other players to use. Make playable instruments, or confetti guns, fireworks, toy weapons, or even disguises to appear differently. (Note: Disguises disabled in WvW and PvP.)

New NPC options: Bless the Children
- Talk with young children around Tyria and find out what they are interested in most. Present them a toy for karma and a loot bag of a level applicable to the area.
(Tentative: if housing gets implemented, maybe they send a “thank you” drawing you can hang up on the wall for a one-time Karma reward. Instead of eating it. You monster.)

This actually sounds more along the lines of what I was expecting to find when I purchased the game and what I’d find in a game that could actually be called casual (not what most of these people are calling casual just because it’s not so difficult that only 5 people can complete anything worthy of completing atm.)

I like this I would love for this to be expanded upon by adding the suggestions above concerning crafting jobs that make fun items. I’d even request adding an engineering job to crafting to make fun and useful items as a job in the game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed. Note many of us have read the thread internally and thus there has already been valuable impact.

Our Horizontal Progression Proposal

The Reward and Associated Journey

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Map Wide Meta events unlocked through Faction progression (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

— Role Diversification: ‘Grail Quest’ (Personal rights of passage) style adventures through the open world (testing the player in combat, discovery, and puzzle solving) which others can engage in once the activities are activated which could reward the Hero with New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, and infusions.

— Hero Recognition (Reward) is a by product of the above two types of Horizontal Progression leading to Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

Global Rule Proposal governing the above:

- Where possible use the above design paradigm to reinforce and evolve the existing world.
- Players should be able to have multiple methods of achieving ‘Grail Quests’, rather than a section of the journey being based on Jumping Puzzles and that alone for example.
-A reworked (cleaner) version of Signet of Capture would work very well for Role Diversification.
- Sub-classes will be discussed again in a CDI once Arena finishes its current balance work in regard to roles.
- QOL features such as a wardrobe should support this global design.

Once we have discussed the proposal and the thread reaches conclusion we will sticky it and move onto CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Thank you all so much for your hard work and your passion toward making GW2 awesome. This has been a really good CDI and I want to thank you on behalf of Arena for caring so much about the world we love.

Chris

Orpheal.8263:

GW2 needs more craftign jobs..

not when the existing crafting needs to be improved

the entire profession of jewelcrafting is currently obsolete, when will this be fixed?

currently there are many recipes that cannot be discovered or crafted because they are linked to living world events, what happens when the few players that can craft these all leave the game?

— Sociopolitical Diversification:
Player housing
isn’t this is basically what the home instance is meant to be?
in the last year the customization has been 3 nodes will this pattern be followed where you get mostly useless convenience to clutter the instance?

Guild Halls
how would these differ from personal housing? what about small guilds that are already locked out of the current guild missions?

Map Wide Meta
so more temple off balthazar type events?
would these be more/ less involved / rewarding?
in need of huge zergs like the new tequatl? locking out players who are on smaller servers or don’t play prime-time?
would they also be notified zone wide? many of the big map events ie dragons aren’t announced map wide, only right by the event

— Role Diversification: ‘Grail Quest’ this sounds like guild missions and more skill point challenges, how will you differentiate them? also will these personal rites require a large group like some of the living world events?

— Hero Recognition
followers (im not sure what you mean by this, will every class get a pet follower ?)

NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

given this was one of the major advertised features of the game, i hope you manage this, but the last time i even remember this happening was around lvl 10 personal story when players make a choice and have npcs remark on it in the home instance in the next story step, this needs to be more involved and widespread, with npcs who remember your deeds and choices and act accordingly

Global Rule Proposal governing the above:

-A reworked (cleaner) version of signet of Capture

given the new weapon types and skills how will this work for Spvp?

Sub-classes will be discussed again in a CDI once Arena finishes its current balance work in regard to roles.

i doubt sub classes are necessary, the same thing will be accomplished by opening up more weapon types and making a greater number of builds/roles viable,

im not sure how your going to manage this given the last year has seen players locked into one build through gating.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Orpheal.8263:

New Crafting Jobs that GW2 should receive are:

• Writer
• Tinkerer
• Peasant
• Artisan
• Enchanter
• Musician

Just a few I can think about, that would be fitting.

I would add the alchemist to that list. With temporary recipes that are on a mysterious rotation. The crafting process is filled with riddles and guesswork.

I wrote about it earlier here.

What do you think that these crafting jobs should produce btw?

I did talk about some in my last comment but might also add them to the lost here.

-Inventor or engineer (a guy who just make general fun stuff)

-Pet breeder (can tame ranger pets, then cross them to get special colors (hard system to build btw) or breed for abilities and then sell them to rangers)

-Mount breeder (if you would ever get mounts similar to pet trainer)

Funny enough in most mmo’s crafting was my main game element together with collecting mini, pets, mounts and collecting special items. Things like orb of invisibility or a item that spawns an animal or something like that.

In GW2 I have done pretty much none of that. Crafting are only the standard weapon and armor stuff. Something I don’t really like. Plus it does feel so much like a grind in the way that it requires mainly gold and the goal is the highest level. Fun crafts have a fun element all the way up (if there even is a real way up.. pet our mount breeding does not really have a level).

Mini’s are also a grind because most of them you get from grinding achievements in the living story or by grinding gold and buying them. There are only a few that really require game mechanics. The Tequatl one being one of them but because it’s not possible to collect them all (or 99% of them) I such a way then the few that are in the game in a ‘good’ way also lose interest.

Pets are just a list of predefined (you can see the full list in your pet view) animals that don’t really require any interesting mechanic to tame them. It’s not like you can go into the world and find rare pets, maybe some that developers haven’t even tough of you being able to tame. It’s not dynamic enough while that by itself is a whole game mechanic by itself.

Lastly the game does not have mounts and does also not really have such items. And those items could even be a set of rare but totally useless stones “Yellow shiny stone”, “Red shiny stone”, that adds something nice to the game.

All forms of horizontal progression that I did in other mmo’s but are not really available in GW2.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed. Note many of us have read the thread internally and thus there has already been valuable impact.

snip

Chris

Proposal looks good Chris,

I’d like to reiterate two points (I know they got a nice paragraph in the early summaries but it’s good to keep it fresh.)

Gem store involvement
I feel to keep progression meaningful the gem store has to be prevented from having an impact on it, this is the one area where shortcuts and boosts are not appropriate, I dislike the term but this is the “endgame” and you can’t buy the endgame.
(I support the gem store in general as a method for them to earn revenue,)

Account bound and gold minimal
I’d like progression towards horizontal progression goals to involve account bound materials and have minimal involvement of gold, the gold mainly because it causes clashes between already existing goals and rewards only grind.
The account bound, because progression is a personal journey and is something you should carry out yourself and not soul-bound so that alts don’t suffer.

Thanks for the CDI,

PS; if you’re looking for suggestions for the next one I suggested The involvement of skill and increased difficulty. (if you could also get a poll somehow to see if there really is large opposition to activity/area exclusive rewards that are unbuyable that would also be interesting)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Zaoda.1653:

@ColinJohanson,

In regards to new weapon skills/unlocks, I think the way it worked in GW1 in terms of obtaining both normal and elite skills using the Signet of Capture was so unique and amazing. It was something I had never seen done before in any other game I had played, whereby you go around the world looking for specific bosses that have the elite that you want, and that boss had a particular glow depending on what profession it was – gold/yellow for warrior, cyan for ritualist, green for necromancer etc. you slayed that boss, and captured its elite when standing near its corpse. I felt like I had truly earnt that skill, and that to me is what it’s all about – true progression.

So something like a Signet of Capture concept where you can purchase, or get via a reward, and go around and collect weapon skills from bosses would be ideal – and would make you feel as though you truly earnt it.

You could even swap in, say, 10-20 skill points for a capture skill (as many have been wanting more ways to use excess skill points, this could be another way to use them up?)

Edit: another idea could be bringing back elite tomes? Just a thought anyway.

Hi Zaoda,

Absolutely, this is a simple and excellent system. Very elegant, and rewarding with a great sense of discovery.

Chris

Well, I didn’t think the part where you had to have the Signet of Capture already taking up the slot of one of your skills on your skill bar in advance was what I would call “elegant,” but it was interesting aside from that.

Hi,

I am referring to the system at it’s core level. If we were going to reintroduce the system we would evolve and polish it.

I hope this makes more sense.

Chris

Well, of course it would not work that way since we can change skills any time we aren’t in combat anyway. I guess the greater point that I think should be kept in mind was that, unless someone always ran around with Signets of Capture, the system in that game required either looking things up ahead of time, such as on the wiki, or having to slog one’s way all the way back to a particular enemy a second time (and hoping to find them). Of course, travel is also a lot easier in this game.

As it stands, I think there have been a bit too many things with the Living World content that essentially required looking things up outside of the game, particularly some of the needle-in-a-haystack scavenger hunt stuff. This is also the general method of finding guild mission locations until people have memorized them, and when we all know that just about everyone is just going to look at the wiki or some other page to get the information, since most people don’t really like wandering around aimlessly trying to find something, especially when there is a time limit, I’m just not really sure what the point of the game not providing that information is supposed to be.

Just some things to keep in mind when designing any potential way of acquiring new skills, I guess. I’m not saying that there needs to be a dot on the map, but in my opinion the game should at least give people some direction, and hopefully a little more than simply directing them to an entire map. If people are going to be sent off looking for something, they at least need to have an idea of where they should be looking.

Anyway, I love what you guys are doing with these CDIs. I’ve been reading all of the dev posts and some more besides, even though I don’t feel like I’ve had much of anything to add for the most part.

Nike.2631:

I would like for this point to specifically mention character Personality. Personality choices don’t have quite the gravitas of going to and slaying 6 Champions solo, but ultimately I think Personality is one of our most nuanced ways of developing our characters and their view of Tyria to our exact preferences and should be a key point in how “Tyria looks back at us.”

Agreed. I brought this up in another topic about the living story in general and our PC’s relations with NPCs. The living story as a whole would greatly benefit from putting more work into allowing us to play our character’s the way we want personality-wise. I’m not sure this really falls under the umbrella of horizontal progression though, and it’s probably suited for a thread centered around writing/living story/personal story. Of course, it should be something more pervasive throughout, and it could certainly factor in to the Grail Quests, for example.

Chris,

You agreed with the comment about not being too hasty and finding a quick fix for the current meta so as to avoid creating further problems.
I remember you saying you would look in to fixing the mess that Fractured caused and I cannot for the life of me find any further mentioning on the matter.
Could you please provide SOMETHING for those of us who are still left in the dark and don’t seem to get any response whatsoever?
Fractured to us felt rushed and that it made more problems, and based on your comment I assume you would have some feelings about this?

I know this may not be the appropriate thread but you have players screaming out to be heard and replied to and this I thread I feel is the only one getting any sort of communication back to the community.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

VOLKON.1290:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

VOLKON.1290:

Why? Because we can, of course, and it could flesh out tinkering a bit more, that’s all.

We . . . are fleshing out . . . Tinkering, something which doesn’t exist yet, with more things which also don’t exist yet, and we don’t even know if Tinkering is something we should be looking at?

Sure why not?

:)

Though it bears to question just what exactly is “Tinkering” supposed to do which “Artificer” can’t as a flavor thing?

The thought was to have a crafting profession for “fluff” items, such as furnishings for halls or homes, town clothing, etc. The posts go into ideas, such as drops off boss mobs being used to make items (dragon scale table for ex.). Tied into housing and all that it builds on the overall concept and helps players have more of a hand in progressing their place plus pulls the world into it by using items found on certain mobs, etc.

Artificing is tied to combat, as are all the professions. This would be ‘out of combat’ fluff.

Fun crafts as I call them. Yeah thats nice addition that I have been suggesting for a long time. Does not only have to been about housing. Just making fun items. Think of items like the SAB music box or a mini and so on.

It however also could mean raising mounts (not going into the mounts discussion again, just an example here) or taming / raising ranger pets and so on. Many ways to make fun professions. Important element is that you get the requirement really from game mechanics. Not so much from grinding gold to buy it. That means, put them in specific places. Can indeed be a boss but might also be a group of mobs. But not from something like.. it’s a general drop but champions are more likely to drop them.

This however should be mainly for the recipes. Not for every ingredient of course. Most ingredients would be more easily farm-able (wood, metal and so on).

Honestly if we’re talking about minis and being able to craft them . . .

New Crafting Profession: Toymaker
- Craft living dolls resembling real creatures. Killing a creature type enough to earn Rank 1 Slayer for it will open a blueprint for a Common miniature, Rank 4 for an Exotic one. Each mini in a rank is different, so collect them all.
- Refine “Junk materials” such as ‘tattered fur’ or ‘dark stained claw’ into toy parts! Toys require internal mechanisms from “gear” junk, stuffing from “fur” type junk, frames from “bone” type junk, and one other refinement for each type of critter relative to their forms. (Hooves for centaurs and such, warm stones for destroyers, et cetera.)
- Craft toys and other fun diversions for other players to use. Make playable instruments, or confetti guns, fireworks, toy weapons, or even disguises to appear differently. (Note: Disguises disabled in WvW and PvP.)

New NPC options: Bless the Children
- Talk with young children around Tyria and find out what they are interested in most. Present them a toy for karma and a loot bag of a level applicable to the area.
(Tentative: if housing gets implemented, maybe they send a “thank you” drawing you can hang up on the wall for a one-time Karma reward. Instead of eating it. You monster.)

Like those ideas. Also the part where you interact more with the npc’s.

However I would rather involve them in getting a recipe or unique items. So you ask “what sort of doll would you like” and she gives you a paper.. “one yellow eye, one green, very long legs….” there is your recipe. As thank you there could indeed be the drawing you talk about. Rather then a way to get karma or a loot bags.

Devata.6589:

However I would rather involve them in getting a recipe or unique items. So you ask “what sort of doll would you like” and she gives you a paper.. “one yellow eye, one green, very long legs….” there is your recipe.

Hm, maybe. But more to the idea was similar to how Tixx worked on his toys. Like the charr want toy weapons or “training aids” as they could put it. Or you could make them a Mini Rox. (Whereupon they will now explode from those eyes made even cuter.)

(And humans will go “not another Queen Jennah”, because they are sick of the players having forced them off on them to get rid of the tons which were made.)

Of course, that would be basic stuff. If you wanted rarer things, turning out to be things from the parents for cheering up their children, give them rarer toys or specially created things. Maybe you could during Wintersday even impress Tixx with your ability (“for a bookah”).

As thank you there could indeed be the drawing you talk about. Rather then a way to get karma or a loot bags.

That’s referencing the infamous Thank you drawing from Flame and Frost.

Shadow Blade.1324:

Orpheal.8263:

GW2 needs more craftign jobs..

not when the existing crafting needs to be improved

the entire profession of jewelcrafting is currently obsolete, when will this be fixed?

Well we are talking about many crafts that would be obsolete / not needed. But fun!

tigirius.9014:

This actually sounds more along the lines of what I was expecting to find when I purchased the game and what I’d find in a game that could actually be called casual (not what most of these people are calling casual just because it’s not so difficult that only 5 people can complete anything worthy of completing atm.)

So I was not the only one understanding that as part of the casual.

Nike.2631:

The issue of unsatisfying role balance is something to be laid at the feet of the AI design as much or more than any inequity on the player skill choices side.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I want us to get the role balance paradigm just right providing a solid foundation to interact with before turning up the heat in terms of AI behavior. I believe and know this to be a prerequisite.

I must (politely ) call this in to question.

We currently play in an environment where the risk/threat posed by highly rewarding encounters is so low that the only axis that needs serious consideration is “We WILL succeed, so how fast can we get it done?” You could multiply healing done by x5 and it wouldn’t make healers any more appealing to the most skilled/efficient players because the “coefficient of relevance” on that type of support is currently zero. People are entirely capable of beating some of the apex challenges strictly relying on self-heals (when they aren’t soloing Lupicus just to drive the point home…).

Likewise its clear crowd control effects are clearly built around their performance in PvP, and when taken out into PvE the existence of “hit me with CC and I gain 25 stacks of defiance” puts an extremely visible “coefficient of relevance” of about 4% .

Improving AI/increasing critter challenge is just one way to approaching the hidden goal – making monsters more like players… and vice versa .

Consider: If all players had Unshakable and gained 2 stacks of Defiant each time they were struck with crowd control effects, you could rebalance our CC skills with that in mind (longer duration, shorter cooldowns, etc) to maintain the desired level of effectiveness in PvP… but as a byproduct you’d see a fraction of the complaints about CC-spam in Orr, and the entire Control role might become strong enough to be significant when fighting bosses who will outright ignore 25 out of 26 applications – at least now when it does work it works longer, and the process of stripping those stacks is faster because you have shorter cooldowns.

I think perfecting your paradigm strictly on the player-side first will just serve to lock-in existing monster mechanics because now you don’t dare alter them for fear of upsetting the player-side balance you’ve worked so hard to achieve…

I can’t really go into much more detail than this.

Chris

Not surprising… Critter AI seems so varied from game to game it probably falls deep into trade secrets territory .

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed. Note many of us have read the thread internally and thus there has already been valuable impact.

Our Horizontal Progression Proposal

The Reward and Associated Journey

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Map Wide Meta events unlocked through Faction progression (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

— Role Diversification: ‘Grail Quest’ (Personal rights of passage) style adventures through the open world (testing the player in combat, discovery, and puzzle solving) which others can engage in once the activities are activated which could reward the Hero with New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, and infusions.

— Hero Recognition (Reward) is a by product of the above two types of Horizontal Progression leading to Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

Global Rule Proposal governing the above:

- Where possible use the above design paradigm to reinforce and evolve the existing world.
- Players should be able to have multiple methods of achieving ‘Grail Quests’, rather than a section of the journey being based on Jumping Puzzles and that alone for example.
-A reworked (cleaner) version of Signet of Capture would work very well for Role Diversification.
- Sub-classes will be discussed again in a CDI once Arena finishes its current balance work in regard to roles.
- QOL features such as a wardrobe should support this global design.

Once we have discussed the proposal and the thread reaches conclusion we will sticky it and move onto CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Thank you all so much for your hard work and your passion toward making GW2 awesome. This has been a really good CDI and I want to thank you on behalf of Arena for caring so much about the world we love.

Chris

~Signed, done, /thread

please forgive me for being so late into the discussion, and for possibly retreading old ground. i’d like to comment on the following:

horizontal progression (additional skills) in relation to
a) the personal story and
b) the order you join during the personal story
though to be honest, i’m not so sure this wouldn’t count as vertical progression…

a) there are some choices in the personal story whereas the character has to make a choice on how to proceed within a 10 level arc. for example, in the norn storyline involving the Jotun, you make a choice whether to obtain Wolf’s blessing, or to slay a beast in order to forge a better weapon, before you face the Jotun.

whichever choice you make, the result is that when you face the Jotun, you either are transformed into a wolf with a new skill bar, or you are equipped with the improved weapon and its unique skill bar. what’s to say that at some point, whichever of those options you chose, becomes a F5 skill for your character (which would be a PvE only skill of course) with say, a 30 minute cooldown.

b) with respect to your order, you have to recruit a “lesser” race to the “kill Zhaitan” cause. why not add a F6 skill (say with a 60 minute cooldown) allowing us to summon the hero or two that we interacted with, from the race we recruited, for say, 5 minutes.

c) further along in the personal story, once the pact is formed and we invade Orr, there are additional weapons, such as the searing cauldron and the golem, that could become F7 skills with say, a 3 hour cooldown (maybe 24 hours due to their power)

d) basically, these skills earned through the personal story could fill additional skill slots for buttons F5-F8 (we already use F1-F4 for class mechanics, why not F5-F8 for skills earned from personal story / order-related missions?)

e) speaking of “subclasses,” they could offer additional skills specifically for use by the F5-F8 locations

EDIT: oh, and the proposal looks good! /signed

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed. Note many of us have read the thread internally and thus there has already been valuable impact.

Our Horizontal Progression Proposal

The Reward and Associated Journey

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Map Wide Meta events unlocked through Faction progression (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

— Role Diversification: ‘Grail Quest’ (Personal rights of passage) style adventures through the open world (testing the player in combat, discovery, and puzzle solving) which others can engage in once the activities are activated which could reward the Hero with New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, and infusions.

— Hero Recognition (Reward) is a by product of the above two types of Horizontal Progression leading to Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

Global Rule Proposal governing the above:

- Where possible use the above design paradigm to reinforce and evolve the existing world.
- Players should be able to have multiple methods of achieving ‘Grail Quests’, rather than a section of the journey being based on Jumping Puzzles and that alone for example.
-A reworked (cleaner) version of Signet of Capture would work very well for Role Diversification.
- Sub-classes will be discussed again in a CDI once Arena finishes its current balance work in regard to roles.
- QOL features such as a wardrobe should support this global design.

Once we have discussed the proposal and the thread reaches conclusion we will sticky it and move onto CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Thank you all so much for your hard work and your passion toward making GW2 awesome. This has been a really good CDI and I want to thank you on behalf of Arena for caring so much about the world we love.

Chris

Sounds good to me, I’ll sign off on it.
Basically covered everything that was important.