Guild Wars 2

As a player who isn’t too deep into “getting the best stats as fast as possible” I’d like to give my point of view. As someone who plays the game more casually, but quite as a big fan and player since beta.

Getting geared up. I like the idea of having ascended gear the way it is at the moment. It’s not too powerful compared to exotics, but I find it quite difficult to get into the crafting process. I regularly get a lot of mats for the weapons/armor but I have no real clue what to combine in which way. I would wish that there would be a kind of tech-tree UI. A place where I could see all the needed mats for the weapon; where I can directly put in the mats I’ve already gathered and get an idea what’s still missing.

It’s just confusing for me. I know that I’m progressing, but I have no idea how far away I am at the moment. Sometimes this gives me the feeling that it would take ages for me to get the ascended stuff, so I’ll just throw in the towel.

The same with Legendaries.

TL;DR: I’d love to give you insights of how I feel about progression, but it’s hard because due to the confusing crafting UI (no full-screen tech tree of all the mats needed for 1 ascended/legendary item) I have no idea how I’m progressing.

The simple problem with the current system is that Horizontal Progression is just as expensive and resource-intensive as Vertical Progression. If I want to switch from ascended Power/Precision/CritDamage to ascended Power/Precision/Toughness, the game requires me to build a completely new item from the ground up for the exact same amount of resources I spent going from exotic to ascended. This means that every time more ascended gear is added in, it becomes harder to gear up more builds and more alts. In other words, the current Vertical Progression is strangling Horizontal Progression.

Many posters have already offered good solutions, but I’ll embellish just a bit.

1) Use the Legendaries-switch-stats tech you already possess to let Ascended gear swap stats.

Earning your first Ascended armor set should be a significant investment. Earning your third armor set to allow you to run more than one build should not be so. For the love of Melandru’s Magnificent Melons, give Ascended gear stat swapping by default, or allow it to “absorb” stats from cheaper, more widely distributed items to gain more stat combinations. Anything less makes horizontal progression simply intolerable.

2) Give us lvl 500 Jeweler, and let us make Legendary accessories that swap stats.

You’ve left this crafting discipline in the dust ever since fractals first appeared and it became obsolete. Give it some well deserved revenge. Let Jewelers break down ascended trinkets into something like Chaos Diamonds, and convert bundles of every gemstone and these diamonds into Legendary Trinket equipment. This should not be as significant a grind as armor and weapons since they have no inherent stat increase over current best-in-slot gear, but it will allow far more flexibility if Jewelers can create kaleidoscopic rings, amulets, accessories, and back pieces.

3) When you separate PvP stats from skins, apply this change across all content.

We used to have twenty to thirty different skin options for maximum stat weaponry, now there are two. We used to have eight dungeon armors, WvW armor, karma armor, crafted sets, and random drops with different appearances, now there is one. I realize this is probably lovely for your transmutation crystal sales, but I’m a little tired of getting fleeced giving you money to solve a problem you created. Split skins and stats completely and use the PvP locker to create aesthetic storage space, and millions will cheer your name.

Horizontal Progression should not demand the same resources as Vertical Progression. Changing stats should be far easier than climbing upwards to another tier of power. Horizontal progress is all about flexibility and expansion, thus the system of acquiring it should be just as adaptable and verdant.

Random infographics added for inspiration.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Savoy.6824:

I dont think we need 8+ pages telling them that ascended gear was a bad idea. If we can lets focus on ideas to make obtaining it easier and other ideas for progression other than vertical.

I’ve written a few walls of text already where I analyzed the current situation and made serious suggestions to improve upon it.

I don’t actually think ascended gear was a bad idea. I do think there needs to be more ways to acquire it (as many of us have been bringing up.)

In fact that’s really my main issue with ascended gear is only being able to acquire it via crafting. It makes it feel less satisfying somehow when the only real gate is money. For whatever reason (and it may just be me) but getting my first set of dungeon armor was WAY more satisfying then any crafted/temple/cultural gear. Because I actually worked for it. It’s like going to going into a Arah LFG group and seeing a bunch of guys in Arah gear. When you see that you know you’re with a group who knows what they’re doing.

Oh, and also the ascended gear is ugly. Seriously, how is it that the gear with the highest stats, is also the worst looking? My only guess is that this was a bid to sell more transmutation crystals, which makes me sad.

the suggestion would be: create something like this ingame:

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/backend/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/d9U7R-300x206.png

Can we get some dev input on cosmetic progression?

I mean we go through most of the living story metas which awards with all kinds of fantastic skins. On top of that (although i myself havent yet) people also buy these skins from the gemstore.

But these things sit in our inventory/bank taking up space.
Some kind of storage for all these skins would be great cosmetic(horizontal progression) because as we complete all these LS metas we would slowly be able to see on the skin storage tab where our character has been, whats he been doing over the time you spent with him.

I mean just one year from now imagine looking into your skins tab then seeing your tequatl wings, slickpack and antitoxin back skins and just getting this huge wave of nostalgia from those metas.

And it also give collectors/long time players something look at

I fear that me and many others players will end up deleting the fantastic skins thus also deleting the ‘we were there when it happened’ or atleast the only tangable piece of it because we need the bank/inventory space for other things.

So my main question is in regards to cosmetic progression are there any plans/discussion on skin storage/wardrobe system? And also their opinion on one-time use skins. As me and other players feel like it isnt worth the trouble if we can only use it once thus halting horizontal progression even more. And we cant buy more of the LS meta skins so these skins end up never end up getting used because you might make a character later that would look much better with that skin.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

the suggestion would be: create something like this ingame:

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/backend/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/d9U7R-300x206.png

It’s a bit small :P

Wallace MacBix.2089:

iniside.4736:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

If I recall a dev (maybe Colin?) said that the players got exotic gear way too fast for your liking. My question is, why is that a bad thing? In gw1 you could reach level cap and get the best gear in under a week.

It’s bad thing for the reasons that I posted in previous post, but make “short” summary:
1. There is no other progression, beyond stats and skins. Skins didn’t worked, so they tried increasing stats. We all know how it went.

2. There is no skill collecting/hunting. You can get all skills extremely quick. It’s not bad thing on it’s own, if not for the fact there are very few skills to play with in the first place.

3. There not much to play with in terms of customizing your character. I’m not talking about looks, I’m talking about gameplay. Very simple itemization combined with very few skills, and tiered traits, prove to not be enough in that terms, and people got bored quickly. Those limited options can get you only this far in terms of experimentation.

4. Add on top of that that items lock you in single build, and customization is even more severely limited. I personally could get over it, if the items were not boring in the first place.

Thanks for summarizing, with how fast these CDI threads expand I doubt I have the time to read everything.

1) I guess that’s my point. I can enjoy this game as is, I don’t need “progression” (outside of trying new content every so often). I hit lvl 80 in less than a month, and I actually really like the craftable heavy armor, so I’ve been using that for over a year now (and ~1.5k hours of him). I much prefer having to “grind” for a skin than stats.

2) I agree that there are not many skills in total. And even less for a particular playstyle, and again even less that are viable. I posted above how I think skills/combat can get more interesting.

3) While I can see your point, wouldn’t horizontal progression (ie, more skills and traits) help solve this problem? Also I don’t see how the trait system can be reworked. At most, you can maybe give players access to 10 more trait points (or maybe just the traits and not the stats associated with that line).

4) I’m confused about this part. While exotics aren’t free, they also are much cheaper than ascended. I’d say the vertical nature of ascended gear is what locks you into a build more so adding new stat combs, etc. I agree with others above that for the amount of time/mats required to get ascended gear they should have changeable stats.

I respost for 3:
That is how itemization should look in the first place:

1. If <condition> Then <something happen>
2. While <conditon> do <something>
3. For Each <collection> do <something>
That was incredibly simple idea, and yet it had immense customization power for characters and itemization. It boggles my mind that none had thought about it before GW1 and noone seems to be using it after. Everyone is using flat stats. Borinnngggg.

More over it should have bigger stat variety like:
1. Decrease Cooldown.
2. Decrease Casting time.
3. Self balancing stats (ie. Increase casting time, but decrease cooldown on skills).
4. Life Steal.
5. Profession specific stats like:
1. Initiative regenration for thief.
2. Attument Swap cooldown reduction.
3. Life force generation.
etc.

On top of that we could really use getting energy mechanic back, and removing cooldowns from skills. But that is for another topic.

As for trait revmap. Well. separating stats from traits would be an good start.

Savoy.6824:

I dont think we need 8+ pages telling them that ascended gear was a bad idea. If we can lets focus on ideas to make obtaining it easier and other ideas for progression other than vertical.

I’m in agreement with you, and yet…. all I can think is, “No matter how much you tweak it, you’re never going to turn lead into gold.” If you want gold, you have to start with gold. Otherwise, you’re going to have to work with lead.

Here are a couple of thoughts. Assuming progression is tied to the character and not the account. A robust progression system is going to keep people entertained, but is going to limit their flexibility.

A flat system (like was present at launch) with the best gear and skill easily attainable encourages experimentation. Different characters, different builds. If something changes it’s no big deal, you just get new gear.

A horizontal progression system encourages focus on a single character, but is a little more open in terms of different builds. You can try out a conditionmancer and a minion master or a power build. No big deal, because the gear is easy to obtain.

A vertical progression system encourages focus on a single build type for a single character. Because the armor is relatively difficult to get, most people are only going to get one set it discourages experimentation.

Savoy.6824:

@DiogoSilva and @Evee.2714 that sounds great guys. Can you repost the suggestions and the suggestions only here in a bulleted list format. It might be easier to read than a wall of text and require less research (post spread out all over the forums even when you link to them are hard to find). Thanks for all you do.

All my posts are already in a bulleted list format, to make them easier and cleaner to read (right, ANET?), but I’ll do that once I have the time, tomorrow maybe, if an anet dev doesn’t do it first.

Already spent most of my time contributing to this thread, and need to take a break. :P

For me ascended gear, especially armor, should be something that only my main and maybe 1-2 alts be able to aquire. In this regard the current implementation of ascended gear feels about right.

Vertical progression:
– no more gear treadmill in form of stats
– don’t increase level cap!
– add more weapons and increase the utility skill diversity
– some form of templates to save and load builds

Horizontal Progression:
– good things are better when they are rare!
– the best example is the Fractal Capacitor
— you don’t need the updgrade but you still want it, and it atleast shows that you
have done a fair amount of fractals
– Give us oprtions to “upgrade” more stuff like Fractal weapons, T3 Cultual armor
or Doungenweapon/-armor for a ridiculous amount Tokens/Relicts/any Currency
(not gold)

I hope my english was not too bad, I tried my best.

PART 1/3
I will try to keep it as clean/dry (un-sarcastic/kitten) as possible, given my infractions/signature.
So, right away there’s a bit of a question mark springing up in my head: You’ve titled the thread “CDI- Character Progression”. Few posts down:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Felbryn.5462:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The two main areas for discussion will be Horizontal and Vertical progression, however please understand that the commentary and ideation we are really looking for regarding vertical is around its accessibility in game.

I’m not sure I understand this bit; could you clarify?

Basically:

• How easy it is to attain the Ascended gear?
• Is the balance of acquisition of Ascended out of whack between different game-modes (i.e. Easier in PvE than WvW, easier in the open world than it’s intended game mode [Fractals])?

Couldn’t have said it better myself DaiBish. Thanks.
Chris

So are we dealing here with character progression, which is a VERY wide topic, or just gearing (pretty narrow, sub-topic of character progression)?
(Before I get going, let me allow that without a doubt Ascended gear impacts both WvW and PvE regardless how much of a stat increase it is.)

(I gotta wait 5 minutes before each post… so it’s going to be spread out)

My main concern when it comes to progression is the difference between those who favor a single character and those who enjoy playing multiple characters.

Currently a player with just one character will get all things done much, much faster, and have much less things to do. As a result, they’ll probably complain about lack of content, as they have forfeited all the content they would have gotten with several characters, focusing all their effort in a single one.

But if a player enjoys more than one character, they’ll have to face issues such as:
- When getting new skills, as their skillpoint cost increases (25 skill points for a mere healing skill? What’s next, 50 for an utility? 200 for an elite?), it takes more and more time to have all skills in all characters.
- When crafting, expensive recipes must be learned with more characters. And some will not be available to others.
- When getting skins, one is limited to use them in one character, or having to pay a lot more for more characters, if getting more than one skin is even possible.
- When getting gear, players are forced to pick one or two characters that will get “the good stuff” like lengendaries and ascended, as making ascended for all characters is not only prohibitively expensive, it’s literally impossible without taking years unless you are willing to spend hours grinding for gold to buy stuff from the trading post.

There have been a few changes to alleviate that like making fractal and WvW account-wide, but nowhere near enough.

For example, with crafting, the list known recipes (any recipe ever learned by any character) should be account-wide. Even if there was some cost for each particular character to unlock access to a known recipe that was learned by another character.

Unlocking previously unlocked skills should have a reduced cost. For example, 25 points the first time a character unlocks it, 5 points for any other character that unlocks it.

As for ascended, it’s a problem for which I have no ideas. It’s just grind. I had prestige armors in all my characters in GW1 after 7 years, but they got armors with maxed stats in gear in less than 2 months each, without grind of any kind. No way I’m getting ascended in just 15 characters in GW2 in that much time. “Best in slot” stats are never optional, as long as they exist, they become the “objective” when it comes to gearing, but most of my characters do not even have exotics yet!

Estriella Faerie.4029:

[…]

That was not a reset. It was a replacement.

The previous 30-50 levels were not comparable to the new ones because of the Instabilities.
It would be like getting completion achievements for making the path that was replaced in Twilight Armor before they added the Aetherpath.

When things get replaced, all progress for the content that is no more is lost, not pushed back, and lost for everyone, both who got there, and those who did not get there, that will never be able to get there after the change. All that could be done is some sort of minimal compensation, like they did in PvP when tournaments went free and tickets got their use replaced. But never something meaningful or unique, as it’ll be unfair for those who would have tried to do the content before it got replaced if they knew it was going to give unique rewards.

From reading the topic I, remarked that when we talk about horizontal progression the most discussed examples are skins (cosmetic) and new skills. I don’t really see a talk about gameplay progression (well a little bit through skills and their acquirement).But, gw2 have others powerful tools to change the way we play our characters but they are used in a really timid way(i wont talk about new skills cause they are pretty much covered in the rest of the thread).

First the runes and infusions, they are element, could add new ways to play the game but the variety is too narrow, all we have is stats, on hit effects, on skills effect(which could lead to a lot of variety). There is still a lot of room to explore: on weapons, while gathering, on combo finishers, OOC movement changing effects ;double jumps? yeah that might be a bit too much but there anet has a lot of thing they can add, and even if they are able just with one element of design. And i really want the devs to see how powerful they options are and to make the most out of them.

As a quick note,

If skills like the new healing spray are part of your plan for horizontal progression, ANET, they must not be as underwhelming as they are. Horizontal progression through skills is not only about collecting them, it’s also about having fun using them, and creating builds around them. They’re not skins. They’re mechanics: they’re meant to be played with. If they’re weak, there’s barely any “progression” here.

The skill balancing team should reconsider how they approach the balance of non-profession skills. Making them underwhelming on purpose so that balance doesn’t break is a noble cause, but it’s not working out. It’s not making anyone happier by wasting 25 skill points on that. It’s not even enhancing world immersion if players don’t get to use them and have fun with them.

DarcShriek.5829:

Swagger.1459:

snip

So many skills on the skill bar make my head swim. GW1 only had 8 skills on it’s skill bar. It’s not the number of skills on the skill bar that make variety but how many different ways the skill bar can be loaded.

This is very true. Adding more options for buttons just makes the learning curve steeper, and the button bindings more complex. Games that allow you to have all your skills at once remove build diversity and cheapen skill design because there is no reason to take a skill that does two things decently over two skills that do each thing excellently. That means that you have a skill for each situation, and you may as well create a bot to write “encounter situation > use skill”.

Skill diversity is needed, and trait diversity is needed to fix the current feeling of “sameness” from builds, not more buttons.

Time gated stuff is terrible for progression. Doing dungeons and getting tokens once a day is ok, that depends on a team and your skill, and some other factors of course

For ascended mats, you can get them all really fast and still have to wait weeks to get all your gear crafted. Otherwise, spend more gold on TP, which is bad since you already have the materials to make what you need

Actually, the difference between ascended and exotic is really small, and crafting or dropping ascended stuff is terrible right now that keeping your exotics is a lot less stressful. And don’t forget that ascended gear is only worth getting if you run fractals

We should be able to buy ascended armor and weapons in FotM. Grind a lot of fractal relics, maybe add some +5 agony infusion and congrats, it’s a piece of ascended armor (btw, it looks terrible, that’s another point that prevents players from getting them)

Quite some time ago I wrote a blog post over on Relics of Orr basically just about this which can be found here http://www.relicsoforr.com/?p=2680

I don’t expect anyone to actually go read it (though it would be awesome) so I’ll go into a short bulleted form of suggestions for ascended gear and horizontal progression (if I can figure out how to make bullets on these forums otherwise just a lot of returns)

-Ascended gear is here and it’s probably going to stay, we need to look forward at this point rather than try to get rid of it. A large of this is to not undermine the effort people have already put into the gear they currently have (much like the fractal level reset to 30)

-Exotics are become less and less useful as ascended gear has been released, seriously jsut look at the price of exotics on the TP now. If it’s not an exclusive skin, it’s at an all time low.

-Fix: Bump exotics to ascended level of stats number wise, keeping them relevant OR allow exotics to be upgraded to ascended with the use of a vision crystal

-Alternative leave exotics as is allow to become salvage/skin fodder, Make ascended gear much more acessible without gold through guild commendations, laurels, pristine fractal relics, fractal relics, dungeon tokens, badges of honor, WvW rank up chests, WvW season chests, and semi-regular drops (similar to exotics now)

-The above changes would undermine the effort players have put into previous ascended gear, how to compensate? Let the current ascended gear swap stats on the fly, much like legendaries do now or alternatively have those specific armors and weapons be part of what is needed to craft new legendaries when they are released.

-Would the above undermine legendaries? I honestly don’t think so because they have such unique skins and that was their purpose.

Beyond Ascended gear

-Traits should be more flexible, much like guild wars 1 I feel they should be changable with no fee in a city. Also keep working on making ALL traits feel wanted, there’s quite a bit of “why would you ever use this?” in each profession.

-Skills, simply put: more. More weapons (thieves could use a 1200 range weapon jsut saying) more utilities, the heals are a nice start but for some professions they jsut not that good so it’s kinda a “meh” point"

-Personality: Currently this is just a bar in the hero panel that might be full or not. Make it MEAN something. I personally would love to see combat quips change depending on personality

-Make professions more “unique”, not that every profession doesn’t have it’s own flavor but with shared armor it’s hard to look at a PC and go “THAT’S A BOMB GUARDIAN!”. Have profession specific challeneges with profession specific rewards like idle animations, new attack animations, particle effects for basically anything, and unique armor skins like a long scarf for a thief.

-Orders: Right now it’s just a bit of fluff for the personal story really, I say add order specific skills much like in Guild Wars 1, fucntionally they’d be the same but they would LOOK different. Could even have order specific challenges to acquire them!

I could keep going but I’ll just let this sit and see how people like it.

Chris,

Before I really get into this CDI, I was wondering. Is there any info you can give us about the much-wanted Skin Wardrobe? I know I’ve watched an interview where Colin said that it was something ANet fel was really missing from the game.

- Is this an idea that is actually possible to add to the game?
- If so, is it something that would take a very long time to create?
- what are you personal thoughts on the idea?

I realize that you may not be able to answer all of those questions, but would you be willing to address this desired addition in some way?

More skills, weapons and traits. More build diversity and less focus on armor and gear progression.

- New weapon skills
- New weapon types
- New Utility skills and Elite skills
- New Traits
- Traits for weapon only, customize your weapon skills

Reduce the diversity of stats on gear and increase the numbers so they make an actual difference to your playstyle.

PART 2/3
Focusing on the gearing and the quote above:
How easy it is to attain the Ascended gear?
Depending on how much gold you have, along with materials and the time you can invest. Personally, for me, it’s too much and yet the increase in stats makes me at unease that I don’t have the max stats. But never mind me. The problem stems from the ability to generate what’s required to make ascended gear. Farming seems to be frowned upon when players find/optimize dungeon paths, yet zerg trains still go on, this effects gold acquisition among some mat acquisition (side comment: Sorry to say, there’s a larger mass of players then developers, given this mass players will find optimizations/best-ways to acquire something and will prefer to do them if you guys don’t find/predict them yourselves). Some of the materials themselves are acquired by chance/“RNG” (potent blood, claws, so on, especially the tier 6 mats), supposedly to make the player feel “lucky” to have found the mats for whatever they’re crafting. Wood gathering, there’s no forests we could go to collect our lumber, instead we run around plains to find “special” trees. Gathering ore, same deal as wood, even worse for Orichalcum which is time gated (first occurrence, and it was there for so long). Leather, there isn’t skinning (as tedious as it was, WoW nailed it on skinning, kill an animal and then skin it), last I remember getting it is getting lucky on drops/salvage. Cloth, same thing as leather. So that’s just basic mats. Now you’ve introduced mats that you can only acquire so many a day, time gated. I understand that it’s to make crafting profession have their worth, but it’s done in a very wrong way, in a sense of how much their worth. Time gating in itself adds a how slew of problems, for instance the player’s play-time preference, where in the simple example player A and B dedicate 20 hours of gameplay per week, the difference is A does it over the span of 7 days and B does it over a span of 4 days, with your current ways player A benefits more than B. The feeling that “I’m” not progressing if “I’m” not playing today is a bit wrong, and it crosses the line where the game starts to impact real life (WoW was bad at this, commitment to raiding on certain days, then again GW2 has “reset” night for WvW but it’s not as bad as the raiding commitment)(it’s on a very small and unnoticeable scale, but it deteriorates “fun” over time as the player realizes(funny, we’re playing games to relax/escape/have fun, let’s not tie in real life a lot)). Time gating is also an artificial way to lengthen the time it takes to acquire something, so why have it(sorry to say, everything comes to an end someday)? Where do your intention truly stem from with trying to lengthen our gameplay? So why am I talking about this (and if you’re at this point, I’m a bit surprised you followed)? Well, to remind you of what basic paths we have for acquiring gear. (Funny, there’s only crafting that’s dependable for ascended. Exotics were “so easy” because there was also dungeons aside from just crafting, mind you it wasn’t chance based either (you had to collect a number of tokens to receive something, and pre-nerf/fix/DMR no artificial limits), there was drops just like ascended (though I would say very few depended on this), it was also accessible via WVW tokens). So, to make it “easier” to acquire ascended, please provided more than one dependable path (craft at the moment, drops – heh, no). Choose what you’re going for with gearing and what it takes… Is it luck? Is it dedication? Is it time? (don’t mix them much, see what’s happening now, though time and dedication go hand in hand most times). This could be done for each avenue of how to acquire the gear, or they can be their own avenues. Luck based, is similarly on how we acquire T6 mats (crude sense). Dedication based, in it’s extreme, Obsidian Shard, the player has played quite a bit of PvE/WvW and they have leveled X many times and now they can buy Obsidian Shards. Time based, time gated mats.
A bit of a detour, from the above topic but this still got hit in the crossfire. You wanted crafting profession to have worth, for them to be able to sell their merchandise. Well the only way (in my mind) that can happen, and easily happen, is if they sell upgrades for gear, which they do already. The only bit of problem is, not all upgrades are accessible through crafting (you can call me out here if I’m wrong), also goes back to the very top of this massive paragraph, the way in which these profession acquire their basic materials to craft the upgrades. Keep in mind unless it’s the same difficultly to acquire/buy through crafting professions, we will find a better way and abuse it (CoF p1 farming back in the day).

@Evee.2714 thank you. I agree with you 100%. I think they will most likly make ascended easier to get but if they let you bump exotics up to ascended then that would be great too. I also love your ideas on a personality system and the order factions.

VOLKON.1290:

PopeUrban.2578:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

Personally, I think they missed a trick with the Personal Story, both as a way or making it relative to the open world and extending the pacing of the story, by not including a Order rep requirement.

For example, you start out as a grunt, and you don’t get the next Personal Story mission until you’ve made yourself outstanding among the new recruits (through doing DE’s and Order Missions [Order Missions aren’t something that’s actually in the game. Rather they are tasks doled out at random – say, every 1 – 3 days]). I mean, I found it kind of disjointed that you start in an order, and 5 missions later you’re quite high in the Order in terms of rank.

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone remember skill books in GW1?

Great horizontal potential there if they come back.

Were they the ones you did for rep and gold?

Or am I thinking of something else?

You’re thinking of journals/storybooks. Skill books were the things you got in hard mode that let you learn any skill already unlocked on your account. IDK how this system would be applicable to GW2 though, as all skills in GW2 are considered “unlocked” when you make the character.

I wasn’t clear, sorry ‘bout that. I just meant as a means to acquire new skills. Maybe a boss drops a ranger skill book that contains one of n new skills. No guarantee that you’ll get the one you want, or even for the profession you want, but it would be a different way to open skills up for your characters. If you get one for a profession you don’t have, either sell it or save it for later. Or maybe toss four in the Mystic Forge for a random book.

You’re actually descibing signets as they existed in GW1 beta

WAAAAAY back before anet decided the skill capturing was more fun when you had to give up some opportunity (by replacing a skill with signet of capture) the way to acquire many skills was as drops. These drops were rings.

Now, the skill capture system was super awesome, you had to time the capture skill during a fight, and capture while a mob was casting the skill.

However this design was problematic for many skills with low or no cast time, so they moves the sigent functionality to after you had defeated the boss. This took something away from the system, made it less fun, but also made it equally difficult to capture the skills you wanted.

I think GW2’s mechanics are a perfect place for at least elite skill captures to go back to the original mold. In GW2 virtually all current elite skills have either a channel, buff, or form of some sort. The ones that do not are the minority.

I think if we add new skills and design them with that old school “in combat timing capture” in mind so that the problems that system had originally don’t pop up, it could be an awesome way to not only acquire new skills, but combined with tradable “empty” and “full” capture items (one for each crafting profession!) could be a great economic motivator too.

Imagine a world in which huntsmen craft “Binding ammunition” which adds a buff that will capture certain projectile based skills. You make or buy the ammo, and consume it. I gives you a one off elite “binding shot” that can be used while a enemy is using a capturable skill. If you time it properly, and capture the skill you gain an item.

Wheras in GW1 bosses were rather predictably placed and large, I see a system where any mob could conceivably spawn “enlightened” and the skills it could contain are based on its creature type. Enlightened foes are automatically made champions or elites, use the skills they contain regularly, and have a conspicuous glow.

So lets say you decide to make a name for yourself by collecting and selling necromancer skills, and you’re a ranger who is a hunstman crafter. You can do that. You craft your own binding ammo, and use that ammo in places where ‘necromancy skill’ mobs hang out. Places like swamps, risen bases, etc. You hunt around for these special mobs and when you find one nail him with your bindnig ammo, then take that necro elite and give it to an alt or sell it.

As for the timing issue, how about having the capture skill itself indicate when its a good time to use it. if you have a capturable mob targeted, when he uses a capturable skill , have the “binding shot” (or whatever other capture skill you use) Light up or change to cue the player that now is a good time to hit the button.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

Before I really get into this CDI, I was wondering. Is there any info you can give us about the much-wanted Skin Wardrobe? I know I’ve watched an interview where Colin said that it was something ANet fel was really missing from the game.

- Is this an idea that is actually possible to add to the game?
- If so, is it something that would take a very long time to create?
- what are you personal thoughts on the idea?

I realize that you may not be able to answer all of those questions, but would you be willing to address this desired addition in some way?

It is an idea that we are certainly very fond of (-:

Chris

I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. However, I have to say, you’re a huge tease!! LMAO

I do feel like I should be really excited though.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Felbryn.5462:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The two main areas for discussion will be Horizontal and Vertical progression, however please understand that the commentary and ideation we are really looking for regarding vertical is around its accessibility in game.

I’m not sure I understand this bit; could you clarify?

Hi,

To clarify I am looking forward to hearing the communities thoughts on speed of acquisition such as how long crafting time takes? or drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game etc.

I hope this adds some clarity.

Chris

Crafting needs to be revamped. It’s already been over a year since GW2 released. It’s time to revamp it for newer players, or returning players.

Leveling up crafting is too expensive if a new player tries to buy the materials on trading post.

Not only that, it’s too confusing for the new player to figure out discoveries, and where to get crafting materials out in the world, and by the time they do figure it out, they will have already outlevel the crafting equipment and gear.

When this thread opened to discuss progression, ascended gear was the last thing that came to my mind. Most playtime next year will not be on characters wearing ascended gear, and most of those who do will not notice it, (outside of Fractals).

To me, progression for my characters after 80 is much more about maximizing their potential by finding fun, efficient builds. Finding the right set of traits, skills, and upgrade components will dramatically influence your desired statistics throughout every variety of content. That cannot be said for ascended equipment.

Vertical progression in GW2 needs to come from horizontal progression: increasing synergy between the pillars of what makes a character tick. For one recent example, the new Skelk Venom makes a venom specialist distinctly stronger than when they were stuck with healing skills that didn’t synergize with their traits. Changes like this add up, moreso than a 5% increase on armor stats.

PART 3/3
Is the balance of acquisition of Ascended out of whack between different game-modes (i.e. Easier in PvE than WvW, easier in the open world than it’s intended game mode [Fractals])?
YES, very short and simple. WvW and PvE are two different beasts. It’s a bit weird going to WvW to only chop trees or mine ore or pick some berries (why can we even do this is a bit weird in itself) to say the least. The question here is, do you want to mix the two modes together (they are at this state)? Let’s bring sPvP for a sec, gear(stats) is completely isolated from other modes, why – to supposedly be competitive (another topic) and provide an even playing field. I’m out of any advice for this though, not too sure how you can separate or create a natural feel between the two. The only game that I’ve played that happily married WvW and PvE was RF:Online (their version of WvW was War that occurred every 4 hours). How? Well aside from “war” (let’s remember it’s a game) being fun, there was a little subtle almost unnoticeable reason to participate and get people to participate. That reason was (as malicious as it is, but that’s what comes with “pvp”) to screw over the other race(s) (the war was between 3 races/factions), to gain victory which allowed you to mine(gather) for 1-2 hours (don’t remember the exact time) at the core of the war map, which you couldn’t do that unless you race was victorious. Mining at that location would give you special resources to make more and more powerful gear, in turn making you more and more powerful for the next war (never ending cycle). Well what if one race hogged/won all the time? Never really happened, at times it was an all out war 1v1v1, and at times two races would mutually agree to cooperate against another race (Dirty? yes. This is war.) (for a deal of saying, we will win this war, but the next war you will win, or don’t kitten with us when we’re leveling and we will let you win (there was world pvp, so in a sense there wasn’t pve)) (how did races even collaborate like that? there was Race leaders(possible character progression here for you guys to think about, war leaders? world leaders? (Something higher than a commander, there’s also room for something lower than a commander(this is after all has it’s roots in war)))). This subtle unnoticeable idea, because there was pvp in pve, provoked players to fight, it provoked and impacted both the war and PvE in every sense(If one faction(not going to use race, as it may give kittenociations) went around killing other factions while they were leveling this would in turn help them in the war as other factions might not have their characters leveled up yet. To get a chance of peace was to be constantly winning wars for your faction). I guess what I’m trying to say by giving this anecdote is, as simple and stupid (there was one map, that can’t even compare to your WvW maps) as their wars were in RF:Online, it was magnitudes deeper(though, for a foot solider it was pretty basic, if you were able to climb higher (socially) it became more apparent or if you thought for a second) than WvW in this game. So the only take away for youhere is: decide on if you truly wish to have WvW and PvE in some sort of mix and if so find a way to happily marry the two (give some depth to WvW, incentive to participate (Not talking about the season bullkitten, as it’s temporary thing. Instead get a theme, a deep reason, going (realistically, why do we go to war?(I’m contradicting myself here saying not to bring real life in and then asking this question, but yeah)))). Sorry I can’t speak for how easy it is for Fractals to acquire, if it’s chance based (drops) then it would be hard without a doubt.

Just a food for thought. :P Pessimistically, it probably won’t even get read. I will probably post something on “Character Progression” as opposed to gear. For those that thought it was a waste of time reading this, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to be.

WHEN are you guys going to start progressing through the rest of Tyria? Why are we not moving forward into the rest of the world. There are more dragons and tons of more lands to explore and yet we have not moved anywhere. Why give us ascended armor if your not giving us content to use it in… like why not bring back 8 mans or 12 mans? Sure you have fractals but its the same things over and over and sure it gets harder and harder but why not bring back FoW or UW where it took teams and proper grp comps to complete and you had to earn your unique skins from those places. Lots of ppl want that rewarding feeling back, I feel like you guys need to bring more pve dungeons/ raids/ missions what ever you wanna call them into the game so guilds have things do do as far as team work goes. All we have now are guild missions which are fun don’t get me wrong but the feeling of getting your guild together to do a massive 8-12 man dungeon that requires grp comps and skill to earn somthing you cant get anywhere else is lacking. I miss that from GW1 my guild used to run FoW, UW, Urgoz, DoA… all those places for mats and skins and you felt like you where actually working towards a goal. Ascended Armor is good yes but why increase stats if your just gonna keep running the same things you where doing fine in with full exotics? My point is Anet plz bring back some gw1 things, bring back the rest of Tyria. Bring back higher level elite dungeons (8-12 Mans). Bring back a sense of progression that I feel the PvE community is lacking right now.

I do not like the idea of Ascended in general, but most of all I do not like how it is implemented. When this game aired, it was easy to get the highest level gear no matter of your playstyle and it was more of a question of skin.
Now different ascended items have set acquisition methods and are time gated. I want to ask, why is that so? If I play the game just to enjoy running dungeons, why should I go out of my way to craft a max level gear set? One might say “oh but legendaries are only acquired trough a set method as well”, however legendaries are sellable. Ascendeds are not. “They can drop in the open world” one might say, however the drop rate is pretty low and on top of that nothing can guarantee that you’ll get an ascended with the right stats.
For now I simply abandoned the idea of even having a single character decked out in ascendeds. However the idea that such gear types exist (gear types acquirable trough very few methods) scare me that this game will lose its focus and one day I won’t be able to participate in the newest content just because I decided not to go trough acquiring such a gear set. When that happens this MMO will simply lose its uniqueness for me and I will probably just quietly go somewhere else.

To sum up this post – I want more acquisition methods for ascended gear. For example dungeon tokens, karma, etc (obviously the amount required should be far larger than for exotic, won’t complain there, however I would still like to play however I wish and be able to keep on par with other players)

As for progression..
That depends on the philosophical aspect of what GW2 wants to be.

Does it want players to strive for an infinite end , or perhaps, to be content with what they can accomplish (whether it be solo, grouped, or both).

And how can characters display their accomplishments? So far, by titles and vanity gear, but GW2 limits this, because there isn’t any inspection of gear or achievements to compare and contrast with others.

Another progression route could be for the home instance. There isn’t really a home for players to customize though. Imagine placing furniture, plants, etc, inside your home. These could be dropped from dungeons, wvw, bosses, gem-store, achievements, etc.

ANet, not more tiers of gear. Ascended is enough for me. If you insist on it, make it so there is no stat gain.

Vertical progression is fine when done correctly. You didn’t do it correctly in my humble opinion. You have horizontal progression in your game as well. You did not have the two systems work together. You didn’t even attempt to make them work together. Horizontal progression includes multiple characters, skins, gear sets with different stats and runes/sigils to support different builds.

The more horizontal you went, the more options for fun you have. Yet for every horizontal progression a player has made, they are now required to do a vertical progression for each and every one. They always have required a vertical progression, it just wasn’t nearly as expensive or time gated. Have four exotic chest pieces to support 4 skins 4 runes and 4 different insignias? You need to make 4 ascended chest pieces.

The time is fine for the player with one character, one build and one weapon set.
Go past that and your time and costs compound. You cannot reuse skins on characters that equipped them like dyes can. You cannot craft another stat set into an existing piece of ascended so you can switch them, and you can’t accumulate rune sets. Legendary weapons can choose any stat for free. Ascended can’t have more crafted into them? As a result, every player that went wide horizontally is punished according to the amount of horizontal progression they made.

The two systems don’t work well together, at all. You are killing player options, fun has turned to months if not years of work for some players to get to feeling like they are playing heroes again, and a dedicated portion of your player base, the ones who explored your content the most, are left disillusioned. Until you get the two systems working well together, you will bleed players that reach their limit with trying to support their horizontal progression. Currently, you either go vertical OR you go horizontal OR you go insane.

Please fix this.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Felbryn.5462:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The two main areas for discussion will be Horizontal and Vertical progression, however please understand that the commentary and ideation we are really looking for regarding vertical is around its accessibility in game.

I’m not sure I understand this bit; could you clarify?

Hi,

To clarify I am looking forward to hearing the communities thoughts on speed of acquisition such as how long crafting time takes? or drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game etc.

I hope this adds some clarity.

Chris

In that case …

In both interviews and I believe one of the blog posts you guys mentioned the inequality between obtaining exotics through drops versus crafting/dungeon tokens. I had taken that to mean that you would fix this inequality for ascended but the current drop rate for ascended seems low to the point of irrelevant. What was the point of bringing up those difference if there was no plan on fixing the inequality?

I like tiers of gear, keep em coming!
I would like to be able to advance my legendary into a further state(visually) So it becomes more unique again.

And what bothers me is combat skills. I’ve used the same weapon skills since lvl 15. I know it can be a trouble in balancing purpose. But i don’t really feel my character grows stronger when i stil use the same skills as i did 45lvl ago.

I know a few people have brought up similar ideas, but I’m just going to throw a couple indepth things that I think would contribute a lot to progression, as well as to the game as a whole:

Personal Housing
Teased long ago along with guild halls, these would make for an excellent form of horizontal progression. Ideally separate from the home instance, there are a number of ways this could work for progression.

• Upgrades – The size and style of the house could be changed through a progression system. Players could choose a style of personal house from the start that they feel best goes with their character, and over time they could upgrade to more impressive versions or new styles altogether.
• Furnishing – The ability to customize the house with furniture (could be craftable, creating an entirely new market), trophies from achievements, etc.
• Bonuses – Reaching certain thresholds of progression with your personal house could give you special bonuses. You have the standard XP, Karma, Magic Find, and Gold Find as possibilities to work with, and I’m sure you could get creative with some others. Crafting stations, mystic forge, the ability to rewatch cutscenes, access to special instances, there are a number of creative things you could do with it.
• Incorporation with living story – Characters could visit the player homes (instead of sending mail all the time), and certain aspects of these visits could change based on interactions. It opens up a lot of possibilities in the living story. And how exciting would a special instance be where you get attacked in your own home?

New Weapon Skills
Obviously everyone would be excited for their classes to gain access to new weapons entirely, but I’m talking about something different. New weapon skills for existing weapons. Just like we have the option of reslotting our utility skills, why not give us the same option for weapon skills? New uses for old weapons would be fantastic, and would exponentially increase build variety.

As an example, the Engineer pistol set is a very condition-heavy build with low power scaling. What about an alternate set of skills for the pistol that’s more power-based and works with a different playstyle? Here’s an example.

• Static Shot alternative – Static Shot deals minor physical damage and inflicts blind and confusion to multiple enemies it bounces between. The blinds helps mitigate damage to the player, while the confusion works with the player’s condition damage to deal the main damage component. As an alternative, say we’re given the option to replace it with a Max Payne-style shoot dodge skill. The player dives in their currently moving direction, or backwards if stationary, and fires off a single high damage power-based shot while evading. The skill is similar in the way that it gives the player the damage mitigation (an evade instead of blinding multiple targets), but different in that it works on an entirely different playstyle and is tailored to a different kind of build (power versus condition).

Make these new weapon skills unlockable as a form of horizontal progression, and you not only give players more to do, you give us a ton more options to approach combat and builds.

tl;dr – Vertical progression currently too expensive for something that a character may need to repeat. It should either be cheaper, only be necessary once, or even unlock for all characters.

Personal feelings on vertical progression:

Ascended crafting is far too expensive for what it is. I’d be willing to pay that kind of price for a skin, and there are a lot of ascended skins I like, but the stats and infusion part should be cheaper. Biggest offender price-wise is the crafting requirements of Damask. Within 2 hours of farming humanoid enemies in Fields of Ruin with a level 35 character (essentially the closest thing to a dedicated cloth farm), I was unable to earn either enough wool or cotton scraps for a single day’s crafting – never mind that this got me no linen or silk. Silk is needed in absurd amounts as well. Unlike the requirements of Wood and Metal, a single player cannot reasonably expect to earn the materials needed daily for cloth (or leather, but leather’s not needed daily as the use of it is restricted by Damask anyways) through gameplay alone – they must resort to the trading post to keep up.

When it comes to fractals, ascended gear is both build-locking and character-locking. There are a number of fractals that can only be reasonably completed with agony resist, and as such require the player to use a character which is using armor tuned to a specific build with agony resistance added. The player cannot player other characters or even other build archetypes on the same character, without first investing in enough ascended gear to survive agony for that new character/build.

Unfortunately, a full set of armor can take over a month to create; trinkets average about 2 weeks per slot, weapons can take anywhere from 5 to 9 days each and a character could need as many as 4. The timegate alone is incredibly restrictive on build variety within fractals.

The current infusion system is also fairly unfriendly. Disregarding that infusions are tied to ascended gear, that agony infusions cannot be removed freely or used as part of an upgrade is restrictive to the progression of agony resistance; additionally, the extremely expensive versatile stat infusions further restrict what a character can do with the gear they’re on.

Instead, what I’d like to see:

• Ascend the character, not the gear
• When first equipping an ascended item, that slot on the character ascends.
• Ascended slots have a 5% increase to stats granted by gear in that slot.
• Ascended gear is equal to Exotic gear; the primary benefit is equipping it ascends the character’s equipment slot, which increases stats by 5% and thus makes the ascended stat tier.
• Ascending a slot grants the character an infusion slot. Equipping an (Infused) item grants one Agony infusion slot in addition.
• Rings and Accessories only grant the infusion slot on the item, and ascend only one of the Ring/Accessory slots based on the item (defensive ascends left slot and unlocks a defensive infusion slot, offensive ascends right slot and grants an offensive infusion slot).
• Backpiece slots merge into an Offensive/Defensive slot upon equipping a backpiece with a different slot type to the original.
• Amulet slots merge Offensive/Defensive in the same way, but Utility is separate (Utility slot should not affect combat stats).
• Utility slot no longer holds omni infusions.
• New infusion slots are a separate equipment page. Slots are in the same position as the regular equipment slots, but with underwater gear and weapon swap slots removed.
• Versatile and Agony infusions can be freely swapped out of slots as if they’re regular equipment, while regular infusions are destroyed. Add a crafting recipe to make WvW infusions Versatile.
• As an alternative method to those that don’t want ascended skins, add craftable consumables to the relevant professions which ascend equipment slots.
• Example: Hands Ascension Crystal: Consume to ascend the hand armor equipment slot, granting a +5% stats bonus to all equipped hand armor and granting your character a defensive infusion slot. One use only.
• Crafting costs should involve the account-bound ascended materials such as dragonite, empyreal stars, bloodstone, augur stones and dark matter, but perhaps not T7 cloth/leather/metal/wood.
• Potentially this cost could include an item purchasable with Pristine Fractal Relics, Laurels or Badges of Honor.
• Potential for a more expensive version which ascends the slot for all characters on the account.

Core concept: Vertical Progression to ascended tier should only be necessary once at current prices.

I don’t mind Ascended Gear.
However, as an active PvP and WvW player, it’s kinda hard getting the gold and mats.
I’m playing for over a year now, have 1 Legendary on my Ele and my other 4 chars are fully exotic equipped (for all the different builds).
Though, I have 0 asc weps nor armor.

I know WvW/PvP ain’t PvE and shouldn’t be rewarded as such, but the 10th dec patch already made a great step towards a balance between them I somewhat wanna see grow a bit more.

All game-modes should be almost equally rewarded since it’s still GW2 we’re playing.
I have this feeling as beeing a failure since I do not own any Asc weapons, while other teammates who do PvE, have some Weps and maybe some Armor already.
And this for all playing the same game..

Edit: I do not get this “vertical and horizontal progression”.. Do not know what they literally stand for..

Khisanth.2948:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Felbryn.5462:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The two main areas for discussion will be Horizontal and Vertical progression, however please understand that the commentary and ideation we are really looking for regarding vertical is around its accessibility in game.

I’m not sure I understand this bit; could you clarify?

Hi,

To clarify I am looking forward to hearing the communities thoughts on speed of acquisition such as how long crafting time takes? or drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game etc.

I hope this adds some clarity.

Chris

In that case …

In both interviews and I believe one of the blog posts you guys mentioned the inequality between obtaining exotics through drops versus crafting/dungeon tokens. I had taken that to mean that you would fix this inequality for ascended but the current drop rate for ascended seems low to the point of irrelevant. What was the point of bringing up those difference if there was no plan on fixing the inequality?

Furthering this. You’ve said that there was a “gap” between exotics and legendaries. You’ve added ascended to fill that “gap”. However the original “gap” still remains. The “gap” between acquiring exotics and legendaries is largely based on the chance of a precursor popping up, which has not been addressed.

One of the biggest issues I have with character progression in GW2 (and mainly the reason I quit playing extensively) is the “no endgame” philosophy.

When I brought my first character to level 80, I knew the next thing to do was get all exotic gear. But for what purpose? What was there for me to do with that new gear? I could either grind in dungeons as a MEANS of getting that gear, or simply buy it. But in what aspect of the game would it benefit me? Just to make the next dungeon grind easier?

Maybe in WvW it helps, but what did WvW give to me that offered more content to the game? It seemed to me that PvE didn’t offer much outside of farming the same dungeons over and over or doing those dragon champion world events. However, even those felt more brainless than the hype before release seemed to let on. You just follow a path until you get to the end. Auto attack and mindlessly skill combo on a champion or legendary boss until he’s finally dead. Get your chest. Do the other paths. Wait until the next day or go do a different dungeon that’s the same deal but different aesthetics. It didn’t feel interactive enough, and therefore was not enough incentive for me to grind for the gear.

It was the same in WvW. After playing on many servers of all sorts of ranks, WvW now feels very redundant… It’s always the same circle you travel in, always the same keeps you defend from the same tactics, always the same supply camps you flip, always the same zergs you fight. There wasn’t really any clear vision of how getting better gear was going to change that experience.

Unfortunately, that’s about the only method of character progression at the maximum level: You just grind for gear. And that was the fate GW2 was out to avoid.

IMHO, I would prefer to see things like these to offer more end-game progression:

-Unique drops from specific mobs or specific bosses. The “named” exotic items don’t seem to have any links to the means through which you obtain them. I would like to be able to fight a boss like Ranger Nente, and actually receive his item or armor and only from him. It gives a sense of exclusivity and piques a lot of interest in a player like myself who is really inclined to go “treasure hunting”. I prefer to know what exactly I’m fighting and working for, and prefer to cross my fingers in hopes of getting just that instead of just hoping that anytime I kill ANY mob I get one of hundreds of items that don’t really have meaning. I like to have an item as a trophy and testament to what I had accomplished.

- Unique titles from completing events, dungeons, or bosses. I think some of these may already be implemented, but in future patches I would like to see new areas and challenging boss battles added to the game. These should reward cool titles with maybe a symbol next to your name when equipped, or maybe a greater display of medals in your hero menu or login screen.

- Hall of monuments, guild halls, or maybe Keep customization. This was a huge thing for me in Guild Wars 1. You could customize what heroes, armors, pets, and achievements you had on display in your HoM, and you were able to take your party in to see what you’ve worked hard for. Bragging rights. Guild Halls gave guildies a great place to hang out, and deck out with any or all NPCs they desired. It was a place to invite guests, to hang out and talk, and also served as battlegrounds in GvG. I think if they were introduced in GW2, they should be a little more customizable (guild banners where you like to have them on display, maybe statues of certain members or officers, NPCs, maybe color schemes, all a price of course). This could possibly be done with guild-claimed Keeps in WvW, however I don’t feel that keeps offer any sort of permanence as they used to in the beginning of the game. It seems that no one has incentive to upgrade a keep as it usually just gets flipped overnight in the server’s off-hours.

Regardless, that will give players not only reason to progress individually but gives a guild a good reason to progress as a group as they all are rewarded from it in a fashion that is evident and visible.

If I think of anything else, I’d gladly post but writing this up totally distracted me from what I had also thought up originally lmao

Final fantasy 7 materia was one of my favorite progression systems. You could plug in different types of materia into your sword and the sword would do different things based on the type of materia put in. So if you pluged in fire materia your sword would cause burning. Diablo does something a little similar but a lot more dumbed down. Guild wars 2 kinda does it with sigils but you cant combine sigils to make new effects like you could with materia in final fantasy.

Ultima online housing. It was good except for the fact that they sprung up everywhere. It was the best ever because other players could see your house with out you taking them there. I think star wars galaxies did it better later by having player run towns. Except they allowed the towns to be attacked by other players which isnt a bad idea completly just poorly implemented from what I heard.

My idea of character progression in gw2 is that its way too simple as it is now.

We get to level 80 through events and story. But our story shows no repercussions in the world we experience outside so in my mind this isn’t character progression at all but simply a fun side story. to provide an example, in guild wars 1 as you went through the prophesies campaign you reached a point where you infused your armor. This then allowed you to fight in the ring of fire where the mursaat’s spectral agony would kill you otherwise. Whole areas were then opened up to you. The same can be said with the Domain of Anguish in the Nightfall campaign. your character had areas that he could only reach once that campaign had been completed.

Another reason i believe it is too simple is the skills. Now i understand that this has been a challenge with the implementation of skills that are linked to weaponry that you are equipping however it is simply not variable enough. If i am fighting another person in pvp and i see their weapon i know exactly what kind of skills they have. I want to be guessing what he’s going to throw at me, not knowing how the fight will happen before its even started.

To continue on the skill topic, elite skills aren’t variable enough. My Asuran guardian has 1 available elite when fighting under water. My human thief has 1 as well. In these instances or dilemma’s in gw1 you could choose to just NOT have an elite skill in place and replace it with a utility skill but we are denied that privilege here.

A similar topic is the healing skill system. I do support the recent healing skill patch as it has opened up many more viable builds for many classes. However what about the players who are teamed up, have a designated support class next to them, and their healing skill has a much lower marginal gain than it would be to have another utility skill. So although i believe the recent patch has had a beneficial effect in diversifying Solo builds, i believe we also need another patch that may focus on teamwork instead.

I want my character progression to matter in the real world. I want my character progression to help my team, my guild, my friends. As it is now it’s only a fun solo quest.

i cant even imagine a system similar to the Hall of Heros pvp in gw1 being implemented because their lacks a diversity of team setups. The combo field system isn’t even on most person’s minds. Blast finishers on fire fields are about the only thing people will utilize them for and this is usually limited to wvw zerging methods. What about improving on this system and making characters more aware of the benefits. Maybe add a training area or a tool tip option to display combo field benefits and combinations.

Diversity should be my character’s progression. Being able to increase my amount of available game play through progression and being able to be utilized in new situations.

I’m a day-one OG Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 player. I strongly advocate horizontal progression. The main draw for me (and my wife, I got her into the game) to Guild Wars 2 was the idea of playing any mode I wanted, regardless of time spent playing and I would still earn the same rewards as others . The days (or months) of grinding for money, materials and skins were supposed to be gone.

I enjoy Guild Wars 2. The manifesto (I know it isn’t considered meaningful now) highlights every aspect I love about this game.

Here are my suggestions:

1.) Dramatically increase drop rates for T6 mats. I understand not everyone wants a Legendary but for those of us who do, the amount of time, money and mats necessary to craft one is already high. The materials should not be difficult to come by and we shouldn’t have to continuously repeat dungeons, champ farm, etc. (read as grind) to gather the materials necessary. The RNG with other aspects of Legendary creation is already more than painful enough.

2.) Cosmetics (Skins and Dyes) should be allowed to be stored and reused infinitely by characters (I’m talking 50 slots because we all know this would be a gem store item). However, when a person adds either to their storage container they will become Account Bound.

3.) Maintain the effectiveness of every profession in all situations and fights. Continue to keep the game from the creep of a “soft trinity” or “this class/build/armor set only” type of game.

My idea of progression is being able to utilize and make the most of everything I’ve earned in the game. The cycle of reacquiring items over and over does not feel like progression, it is regression and a grind, which does not make the game fun.

I’d like to thank everyone at ArenaNet for doing their best to create an enjoyable game. I know this is your passion and your work based on your thoughts, ideas and feelings. There is only so much you can do to keep the playerbase happy and no matter what you do someone will be upset. I understand balance is difficult to maintain and constantly tweaked. However, do not make content more difficult to appease the small group of players that want this game to be something it wasn’t intended to be.

I would totally support a system where you can change ascended equipment stat in a limited way. For a cost of just an insignias / inscription let an ascended piece be imbued with the ability to switch between two prefixes. Each piece can only do this with two prefixes only (for trinkets, ability to switch prefixes combo and suffixes comb). So in this way it’s not as powerful as legendary and worth more of the time invested in making the item itself.

Unlocking rarer and rarer skins for my character is something I have always enjoyed…

The problems with that in this game is that:

a.) The cosmetics are too thin, not enough customization (aka you can never change the color of a glow/effect on armor pieces/weapons.

b.) lack of weapon dye and customizations (why not let us build a weapon? various types of hilts and blades etc. that can be unlocked and used to “build” your perfect sword)

c.) Progression < Having fun….having fun should always be the priority. Next time you add any kind of progression ask yourself “is this enjoyable to do?” is it enjoyable to craft ascended armor? (imo….not even in the slightest) I would have actually prefered it be a reward in a fun dungeon instead.

c.2) Refining the core of the game (give every zone a story, or instance, or activity to participate in, other than metas and events….what is with that bandit stronghold in Brisban? make it something people can play and have fun with) would make more sense right now, than looking at new forms of character progression. If the core game isnt fun enough to stand by itself without progression, then adding progression on top of it will make it even less so.

to be honest, with the way the current system is being implemented, nothing will fix the progression in place, because it has already started to drive itself into the river of mediocrity.

The latest example was ascended gear….if this type of thing is going to be added, give players of all types a fun way to get these (buying/farming materials, being time-gated, and feeling like working a second job to get access to these is ANTI-fun)

tl;dr

skins, achievements, and core content that improves you as a player, rather than the gear doing it for you. More skills, traits, and ways to make your character “you” customizing skills, new options.

>> I would like to suggest adding custom siege skins for WvW (Bandit, Orrian, Centuar, Lionguard skins for catapults, ballistae, trebuchets would be something I am sure a lot of people would work towards)

And please….go back and rewatch that Manifesto video a few extra times and try and let it sink in.

Re speed of acquisition: If acquiring VP gear through drops is suppose to be something that’s more than just theoretical, then the drop rate should be more than minuscule. I have rarely seen exotic drops and never received an ascended drop. I play a fair amount. Therefore, for me, the drop rate doesn’t even factor into how I feel about ascended gear.

Re favorite progression systems: Mass Effect 2 was probably my favorite (not a very deep skill tree but lots of ability to use them). Dragon Age Origins was pretty good. Guild Wars 2 through the leveling process (up to level 40ish) is excellent. This is my first MMO, so I don’t know about the stuff that other games have done in this genre.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

I wasn’t too fond of Guild Wars skill collecting honestly, I just unlocked everything in PvP and used books as needed. :P

With that said my favorite progression system is actually from a spanish indie game so I’ll just explain it.

Basically your character starts with a somewhat generic look, when you choose a class this look is modified in a pretty basic way. I chose thief so he got a bandana as a mask. Then as he leveled I could specialize in one of the talent trees (which was actually similar to traits in guild wars 2) when I reached level 10 in Espionage he lost the bandana and got an earpiece. At this point I decided to go into a more damage oriented tree of dueling at level 10 he got a guantlet on his left arm, at level 20 the guantlet got much more elaborate, at 30 it got a gem that glowed differently depending on what specific talent i had equiped. If I ahd the talent that would allow me to counter attack after a parry it was a red gem that had a glowing white sigil over it. It i took the talent that caused bleeding when I crit it was a black gem but my character recieved a bleeding type particle effect off his guantlet.

I really would like to see a similar system applied to traits in guild wars 2

I feel like I have to say, I wish you guys had come out with ascended gear before launch. It would have saved everyone a lot of angst.