Guild Wars 2

I am joining the thread late, but since this is a brainstorm… what if characters could actually get more permanent weapons skills based on the living world content?

I guess several changes would be needed to the left side skills, to let us choose wich ones to use, as happens with the right side skills already. But eventually, everyone would get used to it and the living world updates (although they are temporary) would give us something permanent and useful.

That would add vertical and horizontal progression at the same time if i understood how progression works. And the very best of it? It’s optional and if you miss an update you would miss 1 skill that might be good or lame, but not 100% needed for any other content.

As example: a hit that could stun for 3 seconds. Some classes would think it’s great because they don’t have enough crowd control, some others would not need it because they have it.

Not sure how it’d affect PvP since i never play there.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Deified.7520:

I think the biggest thing Anet needs to start working for is item uniqueness based on skill level. Right now an item is considered to be very unique or rare because the drop rate for such item is very low or the collection requirements are very high.

That’s a good point as well. I would love to see some content that demanded real skill, and had unique rewards tied to it. With Super Adventure Box we had Tribulation Mode, which already offered us a special backpack for conquering some of the hardest platforming the game had to offer. And I liked working for my reward.

But should such an item be tradeable, or remain account bound?

Account Bound. The game needs some Unique rewards that you can only obtain by actually working for them. Make some individual quests like GW1 had, that rewards you for completing the entire Quest Arc. Also, make the Quest Arcs fully optional.

Question for Deified and videoboy, who seem to like “working for rewards.” Is it enough if the rewards are cosmetic, or must the rewards be stats?

I had a lot of friends who came to GW2 and quickly left for Rift because they got exotics and there was nothing more powerful for them to grind out. “I have nothing to do!” they said.

“Do you have a Legendary?” – “No.” – “Get one!” – “Does it make me more powerful?” – “No, but it looks cool!” – “meh.”

I imagine most of the grind-for-stats types have already left, but as somebody who plays for fun, it’s always interesting to understand other viewpoints.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I play a PVT AOE Heal shout War. I have played this role fora long period of time and have never played a DPS War. On top of this I am also easily able to hold agro and support my group. My DPS is terrible but I keep my team alive while they run around destroying everything…

I like you believe that Horizontal Progression should be about role differentiation, however I feel like this system is already very core to the game…

Chris

It’s an excellent point that I think gets overlooked because of the prominence of popular cookie-cutter builds. I feel like those builds are good teaching tools, but it’s easy to lean on them as crutches. There seems to be a reluctance to stray too far from the “tried-and-true” builds.

I’d like to see Horizontal progression in terms of role diversification and hybridization. I’d love to see more options for “exotic” builds that step outside of the normal comfort zone of the professions to add more flexibility to builds, and new ways to engage content (read as: wreck kittens).

It seems to me that there are a lot of options for dps and damage mitigation, but there is tremendous opportunity to expand the meta game in other aspects of combat:

• Toggle Abilities
• Inter-profession Synergy
• Environmental Synergy

Toggle Abilities are Player States that are either on or off, depending on what the player needs at the moment. Risk and Reward should be a big part of Toggle balancing. For example, Warriors could have a “Determined Stance” that, when on, provides the Warrior with Stability, but drops Critical Hit Chance to 0% while the Toggle Ability is active.

Inter-profession Synergy is something that could be really exciting. It could also be really complex. It could work something like this:

• This would be a Party mechanic that you would set up when you form your Party.
• Each Profession has 1 Synergistic Effect with each of the other 7 Professions.
• Each Party Member can only have 1 active Synergy Effect at a time.
• To set up the Effect, you target the Party Member and “Offer Synergy”.
• The Party Member accepts or declines the Synergy.
• Synergies can be changed at any time outside of combat.

When the Synergy is active, both players benefit from the relationship. An example would be “Bond of Blood” between Warrior and Necromancer. While the Synergy is active, the Warrior’s attacks generate Life Force for the Necromancer. While in Death Shroud, a portion of the damage the Warrior takes comes off of the Necromancer’s Life Force Pool instead. This encourages players to work together in new ways.

Environmental Synergy is another Party Mechanic that could work in a number of ways, but basically it changes the ways professions operate under different circumstances. For example, a Guardian could have “Valiant Avenger” that grants the Guardian +Power or +Might for every Party Member that is either downed or dead. Necromancers could have “Parasitic Bond” that grants +Condition Damage for every Party Member that is below the Health Threshold. Rangers could have “Alpha Dog” that provides +Critical Damage for every active pet/minion in the party.

Gnat.9405:

What about ascended gear being taken down from the amount of sets we have, to a smaller amount of sets that have selectable stats?

For example, Berserker, Rampager, and Knight’s gear would be put into a single item set, and you can choose between those three stat sets similar to legendary weapon stat selection.

Giving each set only three different archetypes would still have people crafting different pieces, if their build called for a stat set that wasn’t available on their current set of three, but it would greatly reduce the acquisition period, as you would have alternatives available at any given time. It would also set apart ascended from legendary, as ascended would not have all stat types available at any time, but only 3.

I love this idea!!!! Even if it were just 2 I’d be happy with something like this.

Elrey.5472:

I am joining the thread late, but since this is a brainstorm… what if characters could actually get more permanent weapons skills based on the living world content?

It’s an interesting idea, but a balance nightmare for the devs, so I think it’s unlikely to happen.

New Weapon Skills are likely to come in the form of expanded weapon accessibility as ANet opens up more weapons for each of the professions. If I remember correctly, this is something that ANet has stated they want/intend to do at some point.

I like your idea, but I think it’s more appropriate to Utility Skills than Weapon Skills.

Horizontal Progression
My wish list:
I would love to see different talent builds really mean something in the game, add flavor and variety instead of zerg 101 insert dodge here’s your cookie builds.
I want to be able to explore and play with all of the styles, and types of armor stats and get into theory crafting.
I want to be able to use the skills I like, and make combinations that suit me rather than be locked into strict weapon sets and lame elite skills.
I want to be able to buy with currency tokens of any denomination things like more skills and even perhaps skills from other professions.
I want less grind, I want to experience the facets of talent builds and armor types without massive grinding.
If I have to farm lets say for example a T6 mat, then it should kitten well drop off the mob its supposed period! No exception! No DR ever!!!! Reward for effort and time spent!!
Kill the RNG or tone it down, it’s terrible and just demoralizes you, give me some certainty that if I do x then I get y.
Make the mats drop in specific maps to specific mobs, lets get everyone back into the world.
I want to be able to re do hearts if I feel like it.
If we remove the relentless grind maybe just maybe we can get back to experiencing the DE’s and LS, put the rewards back into playing the game content.
Make the DE’s and LS and other events drop BIS gear, I mean at least people can say hey I did a really cool event for my gear item instead of I farmed like a mindless zombie and I seriously want to take a bath with a toaster now instead of do that again.
Let me craft cool looking armor skins! And weapon skins.
Give me the ability to have multiple talent specs that I can hot swap, encourage us to use and customize our characters and make it enjoyable to do so.
Again move away from grind intensive activities, by all means make us work but don’t make this a job instead of a game.
Make it all mean something, why should doing the champ train mean more for my characters progression than my story or DE’s or LS for example ?
Tie some of the cash shop items to different charities – buy this Xmas outfit and 20% goes to kids in need somewhere for example.

Vertical Progression
I’m not liking the associated grind fest to progress in this fashion and this has already been spoken about extensively by many others so not much for me to add on this topic except I don’t like it in the manner it has been implemented.

Gnat.9405:

What about ascended gear being taken down from the amount of sets we have, to a smaller amount of sets that have selectable stats?

For example, Berserker, Rampager, and Knight’s gear would be put into a single item set, and you can choose between those three stat sets similar to legendary weapon stat selection.

Giving each set only three different archetypes would still have people crafting different pieces, if their build called for a stat set that wasn’t available on their current set of three, but it would greatly reduce the acquisition period, as you would have alternatives available at any given time. It would also set apart ascended from legendary, as ascended would not have all stat types available at any time, but only 3.

That’s a really interesting idea. I hope Chris or one of the other devs will offer some feedback on it.

I think, though, that a more practical solution would be to have a “Stat-change Vendor” that offers to change the stats on an Ascended item for a gold fee. Or reset the stats to a selectable state. This would be a reasonable bridge between Ascended and Legendary, I think. Legendary gear still enjoys unique QoL functionality, but players are able to change gear stats on Ascended items for a fee that would be much less than making a whole new piece.

That’s a great suggestion/addition to my idea, jsduke. Maybe the merchant can collect ascended materials for the transaction, as well as some silver, so that the materials would never fall out of use.

jsduke.6537:

Gnat.9405:

What about ascended gear being taken down from the amount of sets we have, to a smaller amount of sets that have selectable stats?

For example, Berserker, Rampager, and Knight’s gear would be put into a single item set, and you can choose between those three stat sets similar to legendary weapon stat selection.

Giving each set only three different archetypes would still have people crafting different pieces, if their build called for a stat set that wasn’t available on their current set of three, but it would greatly reduce the acquisition period, as you would have alternatives available at any given time. It would also set apart ascended from legendary, as ascended would not have all stat types available at any time, but only 3.

That’s a really interesting idea. I hope Chris or one of the other devs will offer some feedback on it.

I think, though, that a more practical solution would be to have a “Stat-change Vendor” that offers to change the stats on an Ascended item for a gold fee. Or reset the stats to a selectable state. This would be a reasonable bridge between Ascended and Legendary, I think. Legendary gear still enjoys unique QoL functionality, but players are able to change gear stats on Ascended items for a fee that would be much less than making a whole new piece.

I think this is quite nice. Personally Id rather not have ascendeds at all but this can be quite an agreeable middle ground.

Gnat.9405:

That’s a great suggestion/addition to my idea, jsduke. Maybe the merchant can collect ascended materials for the transaction, as well as some silver, so that the materials would never fall out of use.

Yeah, I think you’re right. Good call.

timmyf.1490:

Question for Deified and videoboy, who seem to like “working for rewards.” Is it enough if the rewards are cosmetic, or must the rewards be stats?

I had a lot of friends who came to GW2 and quickly left for Rift because they got exotics and there was nothing more powerful for them to grind out. “I have nothing to do!” they said.

“Do you have a Legendary?” – “No.” – “Get one!” – “Does it make me more powerful?” – “No, but it looks cool!” – “meh.”

I imagine most of the grind-for-stats types have already left, but as somebody who plays for fun, it’s always interesting to understand other viewpoints.

I was quoting Mad Queen Malafide, actually. LOL

My personal feeling, is that Vertical Progression should stop with the Legendary stats, since that is currently the highest Tier.

As to you question, I would want to be able to earn armor/weapon skins or new skills. However, I would hope that each Quest Arc would only lead to a particular skill or armor/weapon skin, rather than a chance to get one of multiple items. That way, people could choose to only complete the Quest for the reward they wanted, and not feel forced into the other Quests.

i wanna say it again. please. no level cap increase.
level 80 is fine. please do not increase the maximum level.

also. ascended tier.
please. no more higher tier than ascended. thank you.

as for horizontal progression.
allow us to grow and evolve our gear.

let our gear unlock new skins, and swap to them via a menu.
let our gear unlock new stats, and swap to them via a menu.

with this system in place, the horizontal progression will be infinite.
because, there will always be new stats combination to unlock. well, until all possible stats combination choices are exhausted, that is.

but for skins, there will always be new skins to unlock.

Ascended Tier isn’t the highest Tier. Legendary is. Ascended was just added to fill a gap between Exotic and Legendary.

videoboy.4162:

Ascended Tier isn’t the highest Tier. Legendary is. Ascended was just added to fill a gap between Exotic and Legendary.

no. legendary tier will always be the “highest” tier when they introduce new tiers.
i want that to stop.

if not, they can always introduce new tiers higher than ascended. that is bad. very bad.

besides, the cost to craft a legendary weapon is so ridiculously it is not even funny.

250 of each tier 6 fine crafting material? that is just ridiculously over priced.
i am not crafting a legendary weapon any time now since i do not like the legendary weapons.

ascended is the current highest tier due to the large amount of negative feedback from the community when they first introduced ascended tier during the karka introduction event.

“Ascended was just added to fill a gap between Exotic and Legendary.”
this is a very weak excuse actually.

legendary is supposed to be luxury prestige only and never supposed to the “highest tier” at all.

I thought that at one point that said that the stats on Legendary weapons were going to be adjusted, in order to make the Tiers go: Exotic → Ascended → Legendary.

Seeing as how that hasn’t happened, I now understand why you (and others) don’t want anything higher than Ascended and fully agree with you.

I don’t know percentages or anything, but what we have now isn’t working, i believe nearly everyone agrees with that.

I joined Guildwars 2 because i loved Guildwars 1, i know this was meant to be a different type of experience but when you enjoyed the first, most people expect the second to be at least similar.

My enjoyment of the game was extremely diminished after Nov 2012 when the Ascended and fractals were added, i saw my Horizontal fun game stripped into a Vertical WoW type genre clone (as i saw it).

The direction the game went severely impacted me and most of my friends in which almost all of them left and moved on.

I am not good with maths and figures but for a large chunk of the community who played your first Guildwars a progression system similar to the first would be just what the doctor ordered to bring back the losses of population, the low levels and skill orientated longevity the first had was a lot of fun and kept customers playing for years.

For me personally this “Prestige Tiered vertical thing” we have now only breeds anger, greed and diversity in the population you guys claim you do not want, yet its here as we’ve seen lately with a cash shop purchase.
————————
Tldr… Please add a Guildwars 1 type progression system for a longer healthy type game play experience.

Just to throw in my two cents, I have found acquisition of Ascended gear (and the mats to craft them) to be very onerous. Particularly if you do not deliberately force yourself to play a particular type of content even when you’re not in the mood to do it.

I’ve seen WvW players post that they have too many Empyreal Fragments and not enough Dragonite while I have the opposite problem (I haven’t recently been doing much WvW or Explorer Mode dungeon runs). Now I do like WvW and I’ve tried dungeon speed runs which are fine too but I don’t want to feel like I need to do them when I’m not in the mood.

I would prefer to simply play what content I want to play and not need to worry about whether I’m wasting my time obtaining yet more Dragonite rather than Empyreals.

I would suggest that every activity that currently gives Ascended crafting material should randomly give any of the crafting mats (Empyreal or Dragonite or Bloodstone, although I have enough Bloodstone to choke a horse at this point).

This is not my idea, Goddess of the Winds suggested it in this thread for WvW. I thought it could be applied to every activity.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Randomize-ascended-mats-in-WvW/first#post3333119

Also on the subject of crafting materials, the T6 crafting mat drop rate is also very depressing. When I think about the amounts of T6 mats I currently have after more than a year of playing and what I’ll need to get up to 500 and then needing even more to craft the items, it isn’t very encouraging.

Finally I have 3 level 80 alts and few more I would like to get to 80 and with the current state of Ascended acquisition I cannot ever imagine myself getting Ascended weapons for more than one character.

Barring exceedingly lucky drops, I have had one Ascended wep drop already but it was with stats I didn’t want. I threw it onto a character whose build doesn’t really match it but it was Ascended so I kept the thing. That diluted any sense of reward from getting the lucky drop and turned it more into a resigned feeling of ‘Oh well, it’s not what I want, but I might as well keep it.’

My suggestion here is that on random Ascended drops you let players pick what stats they want. That will make one feel good if you get it.

I am almost at the point of having enough for dual Ascended daggers on my ele and I really do not think I will want to do that grind all over again for any other characters. BTW – having to make two Vision Crystals with Ascended mats just because I like my DD ele more than my two-handed wielding characters does not seem fair (Shouldn’t one Vision Crystal that can give you one two-handed weapon be able to give two one-handed weapons?).

And as for the upcoming Ascended armor, unless it is far easier than the weapons I doubt I will ever see any of my characters in a full set of that.

In particular, I cannot imagine ever getting Ascended weapons and armor that would allow me to explore other builds or playstyles. It was difficult enough simply getting my alts equipped with a Berserker build with required exotic weapons, armor, trinkets, backpieces and rings. (That’s a rather daunting list of items one needs simply to try other builds if you think about it)

I have little inclination to expend the resources/money I’m trying to save for Ascended gear to try to equip another stat build of exotics to see how it functions. I suppose I could try experimentation with Rare gear but if the build doesn’t work you never know if it was because of a flaw in the build and your playing or because of the general decreased effectiveness/power of the gear.

My suggestion for this would be to simply make Ascended weapons Account bound but I’m sure others have brought up that idea.

Overall I’ve found that the current status of Ascended gear acquisition is taking away my attention from exploring other possible builds and playstyles and focusing my gameplay on just trying to get enough mats so I can scrap together enough to equip just one of my characters with one weapon stat build that I will never be able to change. Unless I want to go through the grind all over again.

So I’m not entirely sure if this fits into character progression… But what about Town clothes?
I like to role play and whatnot and the selection of town clothes is is… well.. horrible.

Adding more town clothes could give progression not just cosmetically. I’m thinking of crafting. What if there was a tier progression of town clothes our characters could craft? (This game could seriously use some nice dresses!) And you don’t need to limit it to Tailor (thinking cloth). I think all armour crafters should be able to do this. I can’t think of many ideas for weapon crafters, but I’m sure there are items they could each make for main hand cosmetics.

Maybe even race specific town clothes recipes (along with universal ones of course)? For example Sylvari could have more plant like recipes.

This doesn’t need to be a new tier though, add the recipes in for low to high level crafters.
Surely town clothes are easier on the art team than armours? Right?

As for ascended armours and weapons. I do think that more aspects of it should be tradeable. Not the actual items though. Maybe make the actual item craftable only, but allow more of the ascended materials on the TP. At least that will keep people having to level their crafter and will still let people feel as if it was earned… sorta. Maybe allow the dragonite/empyreal/bloodstone be tradeable, BUT put a time lock on their refinement or a time lock on crafting the vision crystals. OR keep them bound but allow somewhat easier (though still earned) methods of getting them. Augur stones require skill points. Maybe.. Allow the refined versions of dragonite/empyreal/bloodstone be bought with skillpoints too?

Gnat.9405:

Making the gear available account wide via ach panel method doesn’t really solve the alt problem – you’d still have to craft every piece of gear that you’d want your alts to use. If you craft a berserker heavy set and your alt is a condition necro, it’s no use

Very true, yet using guild panel to give us LS skins would rock.
I wait for this feature very long time.

It both frustrates me taking bank space for skins I don’t use and on the other had it makes me sad for characters with more than one gear set I have only one skin :/.

Several people have made mention of the rising amount of materials we need in order to craft ascended gear. I really feel like this is important to note, given that our basic (meaning the base line) scale for maximum storage is 250 of any given item, having any recipe require 10,000 of something is downright punitive. You guys really need to think in terms of scale when you’re coming up with these recipes. If we are meant to be thinking in terms of tens of thousands of items, maybe you should increase our base storage accordingly (and keep properly scaled collection expanders on the gem store, of course). At some point, you have to (this was changed to kitten, for reasons that will become obvious, but the word I’m looking for is spelled just like access, except the c’s are s’es) kitten whether all those extra zeros really add anything, or if they could be factored down to reasonable amounts if the effort to gain them is increased, or something, to offset the decrease.

CHARACTER TITLE and PROGRESSION.

Many people in here say we need a title for doing something, but really I kinda feel like its a bit misguided .

You can have only one title.

Because of that one will think that the most awesome was doing fractals, someone else will feel that the best title is the one for achievement points and 3rd person will think that the best title was from GW1 (I just love GW1 titles because they meant my character progression).

If you want titles to matter there should be the master title like it was in GW1.
It was called GWAMM – God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals.

For those of you who don’t know how it worked.
There were several achievements in the game and for maxing 30 out of 43 (I think and they were really hard to get). The titles had to be maxed. For each 5 progression in this title thread, displayed title changed to another title, so it showed progression.
So when you looked on someone with the title you read it like: “He mastered 20 aspects of the game, and this one only 10, that one is awesome he has 30.”

Over time there were many people with 30 titles, but GW1 was kinda locked with the way it operated, GW2 on the other hand has ability to make it kinda infinite title

This can easily be implemented into GW2 if you make it an infinite title: and add a bunch of ways to contribute to it.
(I know that achievement’s aren’t the best in the game, but you would need to make wort something anyway, not like now, and master title would really refresh that in my opinion.)
Some of my Examples:

5 points title needs:
1. Completing at least 1 personal story (race part)
2. Completing at least 1 personal story (order part)
And 3 from optional list
10 points title needs:
1. Completing at least 3 personal story (race part)
2. Completing at Arach story (killing Zaithan)
And 3 from optional list (not counted for lower tier – 6 in total)
15 points title needs:
1. Completing at least 2 personal story (order part)
2. Completing map exploration
And 3 from optional list (not counted for lower tier – 9 in total)
20 points title needs:
1. Completing at least 5 personal story (race part)
2. Completing dungeon master title.
And 3 from optional list (not counted for lower tier – 12 in total)
Etc…

Those are my propositions for “Must to have list” categories:
- getting at least 5 races story completed
- getting all 3 orders story done
- killed Zaithan
- getting dungenmaster title
- getting all bosses category titles done
- 3rd rank in PvP done
- taking castle 5 times,
- taking garrison 10 times
- taking tower 20 times
- taking camp 50 times.
- having at least 10th fractal level unlocked

Those are my propositions for “optional” categories:
- getting grandmaster crafter title (all to 500)
- getting at least 1 mini collection title compleeted
- getting at least 1 mini game achievments compleeted
- active guild member title done
- no one left bahind title done
- teamwork gets it done title done
- all you can eat title done
- thirst slayer title done
- golden title done
- 500 hearts done
- 5000 events done
- 1000 skill points earned
- 90% of jumping puzzles done
- 90% of slayer titles done
- 90% of weaponmaster titles done
- all races 1st Tier culture armors bought (1 set per race)
- all races 2nd Tier culture armors bought (1 set per race)
- all races 3st Tier culture armors bought (1 set per race)
- something from WvW but on an logical numbers
- 5 living stories metas done
- 10 living stories metas done
- 15 living stories metas done
…
- 100 living stories metas done (and more)
- 50 dailies done
- 100 dailies done
…
- 250 dailies done (I would stop in here)
- 6 monthlies done
- 12 monthlies done (I would stop in here)
- 4rd rank in PvP done
- 5rd rank in PvP done
…
- 8rd rank in PvP done
- having at 20th fractal level unlocked
…
- having at 50th fractal level unlocked (and more if you make more)
- 5 titles acquired
- 10 titles acquired
…
100 titles acquired (and more if you make more)

LadyFearghus.3406 brings up a good point- it would be fantastic to introduce town clothes into crafting. That puts crafting and acquiring the clothes as two forms of horizontal progression in one fell swoop.

Also, I know I’m not the first person to mention this by far, but I think adding roleplay items (chairs you can sit in, things like the kites, steins, bouquets… etc) to crafting would be excellent.

Finally, I propose something really crazy: Here’s a way to make the personality system matter: What if your emotes changed based on your personality type? I think you should add tons of in-game emotes (and I think people would line up to write them for you for free) that vary. I think personality could be a huge part of this, but it could also vary based on Order, level, time played, achievement points, race, profession, even crafting skills could have their own emotes. But let’s stick to personality, for now.

Let’s say I’m maxxed out on ferocity: I type /grin, and out pops: “Guhracie bares her teeth in a ferocious grin.” I type in /giggle and this happens: “Guhracie giggles maniacally, seeming a little unhinged.” If I’m charming, /grin gives me something like: “Guhracie breaks into a sunny grin, eyes mischievous.” Giggle could be: “Guhracie ducks her head and giggles with delight.” For dignified- Grin: “Guhracie’s lips slowly turn upward as she breaks into a rare grin.” and Giggle: “Guhracie emits an awkward giggle, clapping her hand over her mouth too late to contain it.”

Then make some new and interesting ways to earn personality. Participating in certain dynamic events, etc.

Titles are another really cheap way to customize. Titles can apply to all types of players- you don’t have to only make titles for the really hard stuff (and you don’t, I realize) so everyone has something to put on their names. I think adding guild rank to titles would be interesting, as well as something to tie in with your chosen order and where you are in your personal story. And, to repeat my theme- something personality-based would be nice.

I think order-based quests would be a good way to bring that into the game. I could see it lasting a whole month and take into account a character’s personality, profession, rank in the order, and/or crafting skills. This would be an excellent way to introduce another way to earn laurels. Order progression would be another good end-game solution, in my opinion. It could be a branching thing that gives access to sigils/runes as well as (maybe?) new spells and, of course, new skins. Maybe even character boosts. Access to certain areas with some small, interesting things in them. I am just spit-balling at this point.

I still think that in order to discuss character progression, we have to take a hard look at broken professions, but these are some other things that I’ve either seen mentioned and/or had rolling around in my head.

I guess I’ll add a few thoughts (which turned out longer than expected!)

My view on character progression is summed up most easily by saying what I’d like from PvE character progression is that eventually my PvE characters are as flexible as an sPvP character.

Essentially this would mean:
– full selection of traits (requires leveling to 80)
– full selection of skills (achieved by ~level 80, extras gotten fairly easily through regular play)
– max stat gear (very difficult for someone who plays little, covered thoroughly in discussion of ascended gear)
– full selection of stats/upgrades (very nearly impossible given bag space and cost)

So looking at this the area I’d like to see most changed is in flexibility of stats and upgrades in PvE. I’ll add my voice to those who would like to see selectable stat gear that you can actually get as a possible solution to this.

Another idea that has been raised is the PvE equivalent of the PvP locker, which includes unlocked stats as well as skins and upgrades. I’ll add my name to this list that thinks this is a great solution. An extra tier, for those who want, might be to make those unlocks account-wide.

Levels and Vertical Progression

I’ll just share my last leveling experience. I leveled to 80 entirely through crafting, and then proceeded to play through the entire personal story. This was, by far, the most enjoyable play experience I’ve had in this game. So superior in fact, that I think people who can’t afford to craft to 80 (which is everyone now) are missing out on the most enjoyable open world GW2 experience. Here are some of the things I loved about not having levels:

+ I could just follow events, PoIs, other people, and my whims, to explore wherever I wanted on every map. At no point did I reach an area where I had to leave because of my level. At no point did I think “oh, I have to go grind some more to go there”.

+ The personal story plays out as quickly or as slowly as you like.

+ You never have to waste time or money on frankly uninteresting things like upgrading your crappy blues to other crappy blues to stop being punished by the downleveling scaling system.

+ You have access to your classes’ full skill and trait set.

+ Your play is still guided and gated by a) personal story b) map completion, for those who like those sorts of goals to find a reason to play.

I know it’s too late to revert this particular design decision, but I think there’s about 50 levels too many in this game. I understand wanting some in there to teach players, old and new, about their class, but that’s done by level 30. By having all those extra levels for ‘vertical progression’ not only do you lose all the stuff above, but you add in extra downsides like having 90% of the world dead because they are “leveling zones” with stuff that isn’t worth doing for vertical progression at max level.

Ascended Gear - an idea for flexibility

Since too many people have spent too much time for A.net to revert ascended gear without massive blowback, here’s a thought (which may have been covered already, apologies if so) for how it might be used for horizontal progression. Accessibility has been pretty thoroughly covered, but I guess I feel it’s a slog, especially if you like to play more than one character.

Instead of tying the vertical progression of ascended gear to the stats, tie it instead to the extra slots you get with ascended gear. So ascended would become exotic + infusion slots. It would pave the way for a proliferation of ascended upgrades that means at baseline ascended gear would have the same stats as exotic gear but can then be upgraded as appropriate for the playstyle. So fractal players get fractal specific mitigation with an endless treadmill for those who want it, WvW might have access to infusions more powerful than they have currently, but WvW specific, open world players might be able to get runspeed or bonuses to events, and the stat upgrade can still be gotten for the players who value it but at the expense of other valuable upgrades instead of a straight power bonus for grinding.

Extra fun stuff!

I love the ideas being thrown around for stuff like multi-classing, sub-classing, and new weapons. These are the kinds of massive revamp changes I expect to see from an expansion, but I hope these are still on the table even though expansions aren’t.

My idea in Horizontal and Vertcal progress is that the Order, what character have been chosen before, are giving tasks. And when character have been done these Order given tasks, character will get that reward what he/she has been chosen before. These tasks are repeatable as many times as player wants, only those DE’s are RNG in these tasks.

Example for reward what character can choose:

Order representative:
“What do you need?
- Ascended materials (only account bound)( minimum 5 and maximum 250)
- Legendary materials (only account bound)( minimum 5 and maximum 250)
- Karma (minimum 5 000 Karma points and Maximum 250 000 Karma points)
- Skill points (Minimum 5 and maximum 250 Skill points)
- Money (minimum 5 gold and maximum 250 gold)
- Experience points (for leveling)( minimum 50 000 xp and maximum 4 500 000 xp)
- Tokens (only account bound)(minimum 5 and maximum 250)”

At this time Character needs some Ascended materials. So he choose Ascended Materials from the list. Then there is opening new window where character can choose material what he needs (materials are only account bound). And he choose Empyreal Fragments.

When character have chosen what material he needs there will come amount window, how many of those materials he needs. (Same way with Karma, Skill points, Money, Experience points and Tokens):

Order representative:
“How much do you need this material?
- 5 Empyreal Fragments
- 10 Empyreal Fragments
- 50 Empyreal Fragments
- 100 Empyreal Fragments
- 250 Empyreal Fragments”

When character have been chosen how much he needs these materials, Order representative gives lists of the Dynamic Events what character needs to do to get this material. Larger amount of the material means more dynamic events from level 1 – 80 maps. (No FotM or Dungeon (meaning instances)), only dynamic events from the open world map.

By doing these tasks character is leveling up, getting materials what he needs, have to do dynamic events and get done also achievement points, (exploration, killings, using weapon and so on.)

This system requires, that all Dynamic Events are woking properly and are not bugged in any ways.

I am sorry that my English is so bad, but I hope you got idea what I wanted to share.

Orpheal.8263:

- snip-

I still do not see the difference from the current system.
The only thing you propose is a different way to aquire access to skills, combined with a “quest system”

Everything else is allready in the game. You can change your traits and skills allready.
They will add new skills as they go along.
They might raise the level cap to gain access to new traits, or just add them anyway, as they change the current ones.

Again, i love the prospect of “sub-classes” in other games, but the current system of GW2 allready allows for this kind of "customization allready and can be aquired by expanding it.

Sub-classes in the way you propose are not neccessary.
I allready mentioned in my post before: the basic idea is okay, but we cannot implement it straightforward like you suggest.

We can however take the positive elements and add them to the current system.

Right now you are proposing a balancing nightmare, that would take years to come into fruition and then some more to balance out.

The slow pace in which we get skills at the moment is a clear indication for the massive problems with these things.
The “simple” way of adding new abilities to the classes and slowly widening them to allow different playstyles will be the same as your proposed “sub-classes” in the long run.

Again, sub classes in concept and the acompanied “flavour” dynamics are great.
However we do not need them with the current system, since it is not different enough from what we allready have.

The “flavour” dynamics can integrated, though. However they better work for new players as guidance, so allready decked out players might only benefit from them with new abilities.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended creation time

We had a lot of discussion pre-releasing ascended armor to make sure the time to make ascended doesn’t blow out, We pull a lot of data and are watching how long it takes players and like we do with everything we will keep and eye on it but with anything with progression there are always a lot of tradeoffs when you make changes but we’re always looking at it.

really hard to believe this looking at the LIGHT VS HEAVY mistake….
Unless you can provide a reason why light armor players needs 11 days more….

I’d add that when you see a dev saying ascended armors are a to provide a midground between ascended etc…and another dev says ECONOMY needed another goldsink….

It gets even more confusing…..
But mostly….why didn t you tie a personal story or istances instead of putting up a system that is pure grind and 0% fun?

If i want to have fun i would like to do something interesting…gaining gold isn t for dure what people consider having fun…..

600+ gold for a single ascended armor or 200+36 days= NOT fun

In the end ….i really read this thread as damage control….and not as “CDI” since whatever we said on ascended get IGNORED or DELETED SINCE NOVEMBER 2012

Chris Whiteside.6102:

In this topic we will be discussing Character Progression.
We will be talking about both horizontal and vertical progression and I hope we can stay focused on what is in game now and what we would like to see in the future.

Chris, didn’t UK schools teach you the first rule of planning for the future is studying the past ??

Let me provide a brief historical summary:

1- This issues was first raised Nov 2012, there were thousands of posts. I suggest you go back to those and have a good long read.

2- It is clear that Anet will keep on doing what ever it deems fit regardless of what the player-base suggests

Refusing to discuss/review or even change past decisions is as pointless as this CDI topic and this entire initiative.

Oh, and here is something for the future:

2014 is almost here and with it will be a flurry of new games, both MMO and single player varieties. Meanwhile GW2 is in a sorry state, with bugs and class balance issues going back to release. For example, the class mechanic for the ranger is so broken, you cannot, or do not want, to fix it.

The clock is ticking on GW2 to get these things sorted over the next 2-3 months, yet here you are fiddling while Rome burns with a CDI topic that is one year too late!

Guhracie.3419:

Several people have made mention of the rising amount of materials we need in order to craft ascended gear. I really feel like this is important to note, given that our basic (meaning the base line) scale for maximum storage is 250 of any given item, having any recipe require 10,000 of something is downright punitive. You guys really need to think in terms of scale when you’re coming up with these recipes. If we are meant to be thinking in terms of tens of thousands of items, maybe you should increase our base storage accordingly (and keep properly scaled collection expanders on the gem store, of course). At some point, you have to (this was changed to kitten, for reasons that will become obvious, but the word I’m looking for is spelled just like access, except the c’s are s’es) kitten whether all those extra zeros really add anything, or if they could be factored down to reasonable amounts if the effort to gain them is increased, or something, to offset the decrease.

It seems fairly obvious, at least to me, that the amount of mats required for ecto refinement were set in order to soak up what anet determined to be an “excess”. They tried to do a similar thing with the Zephyr sanctum, exchanging mats for zephyr boxes, but that didn’t have a massive impact.

Ascended gear, particularly armour, has had a much more notable impact on supply/price of mats – disproportionately so on (say) silk scraps, which are not only required by all three armour crafting professions but in larger quantities than t5 ore/logs/leather. yes it soaks up a lot of the excess and makes silk worth something more than vendor+1c, but it also makes it a lot more expensive for folk without 400 tailoring to level it – and even more of an obnoxious grind to get ascended gear.

jsduke.6537:

I’d like to see Horizontal progression in terms of role diversification and hybridization. I’d love to see more options for “exotic” builds that step outside of the normal comfort zone of the professions to add more flexibility to builds, and new ways to engage content (read as: wreck kittens).

It seems to me that there are a lot of options for dps and damage mitigation, but there is tremendous opportunity to expand the meta game in other aspects of combat:

• Toggle Abilities
• Inter-profession Synergy
• Environmental Synergy

Toggle Abilities are Player States that are either on or off, depending on what the player needs at the moment. Risk and Reward should be a big part of Toggle balancing. For example, Warriors could have a “Determined Stance” that, when on, provides the Warrior with Stability, but drops Critical Hit Chance to 0% while the Toggle Ability is active.

First off, player are generally entirely unreceptive to affects that punish them. I like that sort of trade-off myself, but I’ve see that entire class of character options consistently turn into wasted effort or even negative effort because they have to go back and totally revamp it months later.

That said, you might look into bundling the effects you’d see as toggles into Signets. We have an established group of “Right Tray” skills that act like toggles. You just toggle them on outside of combat .

Inter-profession Synergy

The game went to a lot of trouble to usher long delays from precise party building out the door – I for one would not be so eager to invite it back in. Odds are painfully high that somewhere in your matrix of interactions is going to be some effect that is perceived as the new must-have for Dungeon XYZ and now we’re on to a whole new plane of people trying to tell other people what they have to run as their character “LFG, need 1 Necro-ONLY 4 synergy”.

You’re also looking at a lot of blatant power creep unless you manage its availability very careful.

Environmental Synergy is another Party Mechanic that could work in a number of ways, but basically it changes the ways professions operate under different circumstances. For example, a Guardian could have “Valiant Avenger” that grants the Guardian +Power or +Might for every Party Member that is either downed or dead. Necromancers could have “Parasitic Bond” that grants +Condition Damage for every Party Member that is below the Health Threshold. Rangers could have “Alpha Dog” that provides +Critical Damage for every active pet/minion in the party.

I think you could extract some interesting ideas for new roman-numeral traits from this. Alpha dog still spends way too much time telling other people what to do/play to optimize it, but the others seem adequately generic in their triggers.

Ok, fast thought for easing some of the interaction between Ascended gear crafting time-gating and gearing alts (with possible help for the unfair distribution of time-gated mats in Light armor crafting).

If you have multiple crafters with skills of 450+ (and all the costs that entails to reach that point)…

Separate the cooldown timers.

First off there’s little cause for two 450th Crafting Level characters in the same craft to be constantly blocking each other.

There’s even less reason for my making ascended mats on a Huntsman to be blocking the progress of my Artificer that day.

For light armor concerns and the “Silk Weaving Thread Barrier”, it would allow my Armor-smith and Leather-worker characters to make weaving cloth each day and contribute it to the shared pile to be used by my Tailor.

Sorry if i irritate you but i don’t believe my concerns answered fully yet.

Link

Bring back the Hall of Monuments.
It’s already in the game. Use it.

Anet please take the time to watch this vid. I’m sure others have spoke of something similar. I believe it is a great idea(not mine) and I wanted to share.
Basically in the video SignsOfKelani suggests taking our current top tier cultural armor and giving the players the option to upgrade it adding the particle effects. Yes a lot like what you just did to the Human Tier 3 Cultural Armor!
However let us work toward it, and give us a variety of choices in particle effects(by adding different mats w/ armor in the forge).
http://youtu.be/viVE6euuzDs

Joining this thread late and haven’t read most likely a lot of important posts, so my own post is maybe a bit ‘out of the blue’.

What GW2’s problem with progression is imo, it tries to offer progression in too many ways. In GW1, the progression-thing was more or less clear: It’s not about stats, it’s not about levels, it’s all about titles and shiny gear. That’s it. And with this principle, it was really a niche game in the MMO-market, there was (or at least I’ve never heard of one) never another game that followed this principle as straight as GW1.

Of course, there were a lot of players that didn’t enjoy this kind of progression, so they moved on to other games. In GW2, Ascended Gear seems to be the try to keep those kind of players happy while the GW1-veterans shouldn’t be bothered too much with it since it’s “only an advantage of a few percents”. As far as I’ve read in this thread and as far as I know the oppinions from GW2-players I know, this try was (and still is) a fail.

My oppinion: GW2 should return to the principles GW1 had; that it’s all about titles and shiny gear. That stats should be something absolutly irrelevant (maybe even more irrelevant than in GW1 since there is still room left in this topic, even in GW1). And why? Because it would be one of the only MMOs that follows this kind of principles while there are hundreds if not even thousands of MMOs that already have the stat-thing. GW2 would be niche, as GW1 was, and with that it would most likely address a lot of players that were happy with GW1 but not so much with GW2 (or any other MMO).

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for my bad English.

I actually never post here, but this initiative to brainstorm about character progression sounds quite interesting to participate in!

First I should explain a bit, since for me, character progression is a lot about dressing them up! A lot of my enjoyment of Guild Wars 2 comes from the creative aspect of the game: I will easily spend an hour to create a character’s looks. For me one of the most satisfying things in this game is coming up with the perfectly fitting character name, armour set and dye combination as well as prefered weapons and skills. The whole art style in combination with the gameplay just really clicks for me. But there’s definitely room for improvement.

I really like to see something with expansion of the skill and trait range, to further personalize a character. Especially unlocking skills (or skill skins) by doing something in addition to skill points. Perhaps a nice unlock method would be by defeating an enemy in a specific way: for example, if you defeat a certain champion by only using reflects, you would unlock a mesmer-specific skin. Of course, such things then could be different for other classes, according to their specialty.

Also karma still seems a bit unused, why not use that to unlock new town clothes? As someone who also enjoys roleplay, I’d like to see something happen with those. It’s a bit grating that the NPC’s have access to a plethora of awesome looking stuff while players don’t! So the art is already in the game for all races. I don’t know how implementing it for players would work from a game designer point of view, but from an outside perspective it seems like an easy adjustment to make, which will definitely please an aspect of the playerbase. There’s so much stuff both armour and town clothes wise, that looks to be already there but not available to us. Like those clothes, or for example the shaman outfits used by Norn. To me, adding that sounds like free happiness! ^^

On another note, I kind of like it that exotic gear is fairly easy to acquire and doesn’t become outdated if I don’t have much time to play. I think that the stat increase to Ascended is minor enough for me to not warrant getting it ASAP, though I agree that it’s seems to be a rrrreally lengthy and unnecessarily gated process.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Bring back the Hall of Monuments.
It’s already in the game. Use it.

Respectfully, no…

The grind in this game is nothing compared to the older “grind til you level” games of the past. Please don’t try to “catch up.”

Grinding isn’t the answer to anything. Adding more grind to fill yet another hall of monuments would only add to the frustration of those who don’t want to be forced to grind in the first place, while those who do not mind will tell those who do that “this game is not for you…”

There is plenty to do in this game. The problem lies in the risk vs. reward category. Whatever plan Anet comes up with to foster character progression will fail horribly if the reward isn’t up to the risk. There needs to be somewhat guaranteed rewards for the effort.

For comparison:
GW1 – Most of the named mobs had their own unique weapon with a drop rate that was decent. A lot of us farmed Ghial, Rhazan (sp), and the Lady of the Lake. Yes, we sold some of them, and we did make money, but the thing of it is that if a casual player (and I use the term in the manner of describing someone who plays occasionally and doesn’t have much money) decided that he wanted Ghial’s Staff, he or she could farm him for an hour or so and usually come up with one.

GW2 – We fight a named (champ) boss for 10 minutes (train notwithstanding) and we get a green, two blues and 5 “unidentifiable objects.” Where is the incentive for that?

I would love to have unique items a la GW1 to go find. I can see people standing around in LA and seeing a unique sword skin and thinking “Wow… he worked for that one…” instead of “wow, he’s rich…”

Ashabhi.1365:

Respectfully, no…

The grind in this game is nothing compared to the older “grind til you level” games of the past. Please don’t try to “catch up.”

Grinding isn’t the answer to anything. Adding more grind to fill yet another hall of monuments would only add to the frustration of those who don’t want to be forced to grind in the first place, while those who do not mind will tell those who do that “this game is not for you…”

But I want something to work towards. I want to collect armors, and display them somewhere. I want to collect various rare weapons, and put those on display as well. I want to see statues for each elite dungeon that I’ve completed, and a display for all my miniatures. These things are not grind, they are a visualization of your progress in the game and some recognition.

Hello.
About ascended gear i think it should be really easy to cratf since you have recipe ( which should be not to hard to get) because honestly i lost interest on my alts with “that” ascended gear.

Ascended Trinkets should be acc bound.

About fractals i am not a fan for a “special” gear only to run fractals.
So, how i would like to be fractals? Simple, same level sistem, drop rate for skins/exotic/lodestone equal to fractals level 1% level 1, 20% lvl 20’s.

What about really hard stuff to pro elite players?
My personal idea is to enter a big sized arena to fight 3 Random gw2 bosses at same time with diferent mechanics ( levels apllied with same % but for ascended armor or weapons)

This was my opinion, hope you like.

Regards

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Harbard.5738:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

Yes please, or even better:
All pieces could be crafted and sold on the TP.
All pieces could change stats.
All pieces could be obtained outside crafting without relying on RNG.

Personally and note this is not the opinion of Arena but I like the idea of uniquely skinned BiS items dropping in challenging content. My opinion as a player is that the current drop rates could be tweaked.

Chris

That will not remove the RNG factor…. Look at it this way:
Say you increased the drop rate on Tequatl. That means a higher change to get a weapon. But it is still RNG.
Some people will get several drops, others will get nothing, most will get items with the wrong stat combination. Please, please, please: No more RNG!

What if you could sell them? Thus complimentary to other forms of acquisition?

Chris

What’s the point of having an unique skin drop from a challenging encounter if you can just buy it on TP? Isn’t the point of the skin showing you beat the challenge? If a unique gear is gonna drop from a challenging encounter, it should be guaranteed and account bound, and the encounter really tough.

Yep your right sorry I should have given more detail in the brainstorm idea. In the idea I imagined Sunless not being trade able but other normal Ascended gear being trade able. Note this is just a brainstorm idea.

Chris

I would hate it being able to be sold for a couple of reasons:
- pay to win
- any noob who grinds money could acquire them
- people who do activities that require a brain can still not get them

Have to stress though, they are pretty pay to win right now too, costing 200g for a craft and 60g per piece. Only people who can acquire ascended are farmers and tp flippers, which is very sad.

Do not start the price calculations based on current hard grinding.
The whole system needs adjustments toward less farmable contents and skill/fun based rewarding

RoyalPredator.9163:

The whole system needs adjustments toward less farmable contents and skill/fun based rewarding

I agree. For one PvP is extremely underrewarded. PvP is in most games I played the main end-game, and gets rewarded a lot because it takes skill and effort to fight enemy players and win.

Problem is: GW2 PvP revolves around stacking and zerging, making it easy for a even the most skill-less player to get some kills. There should seriously be body-blocking, places where it’s not possible to attack multiple targets at once (1v1 arenas), so a small group of players with major tactics could hold off a zerg.

Why one handed weapons have the same price as the two handed one ?
you have to spend twice more crafting materials (-> more time/gold) for dual wielding players, and if your weapon switch is also dual wielding…

Since weapon realse, i ve made only two ascended weapons (roaming -> no dragonite ore), hopefully, since 11/14/2012 i’ve decided that i’ll never grind for ascended so all my alts have exotic and i dont care about ascended at all.
In PvE, ascended makes easy a game witch is already easy….
In WvW, it confers a small advantage on ppl using it, but skill is more imporant than 5-10% stats

Ascended armor, well, never due to the low (boost/price) ratio.

Someone can explain me why now we have to get overly expansive gears for stats and really expansive gear for skin ?
Because before it was cheap stats on expansive skins. I thought it was a good idea…

Laenan De Malkshur.5803:

Why one handed weapons have the same price as the two handed one ?
you have to spend twice more crafting materials (-> more time/gold) for dual wielding players, and if your weapon switch is also dual wielding…

I agree. Was this an oversight?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

That’s a good point as well. I would love to see some content that demanded real skill, and had unique rewards tied to it. With Super Adventure Box we had Tribulation Mode, which already offered us a special backpack for conquering some of the hardest platforming the game had to offer. And I liked working for my reward.

But should such an item be tradeable, or remain account bound?

Account bound. You worked for it, so you should be able to show it off. I think that’s the biggest mistake they made with legendaries. They should never have been able to be sold. It makes the item less legendary in my eyes. How would you feel if I could buy every single item from SAB simply because I have a good paying job, while you had to try over and over and over again, with a lot of frustration?

About the vertical progression: I’m totally against any vertical progress that “forces” me to replace my armour/weapons every so many months simply to keep up in the power creep. Especially as most of my armours are transmuted over other skins.

Any vertical progress should be something that can be added to the current armour/weapon. So, instead of having to craft a new armour/weapon, you craft an upgrade component which can then be added. This upgrade would push the rarity one step up the ladder.

(so, you could craft a fine armour, upgrade it to masterwork, etc).

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

That’s a good point as well. I would love to see some content that demanded real skill, and had unique rewards tied to it. With Super Adventure Box we had Tribulation Mode, which already offered us a special backpack for conquering some of the hardest platforming the game had to offer. And I liked working for my reward.

But should such an item be tradeable, or remain account bound?

Account bound. You worked for it, so you should be able to show it off. I think that’s the biggest mistake they made with legendaries. They should never have been able to be sold. It makes the item less legendary in my eyes. How would you feel if I could buy every single item from SAB simply because I have a good paying job, while you had to try over and over and over again, with a lot of frustration?

---

About the vertical progression: I’m totally against any vertical progress that “forces” me to replace my armour/weapons every so many months simply to keep up in the power creep. Especially as most of my armours are transmuted over other skins.

Any vertical progress should be something that can be added to the current armour/weapon. So, instead of having to craft a new armour/weapon, you craft an upgrade component which can then be added. This upgrade would push the rarity one step up the ladder.

(so, you could craft a fine armour, upgrade it to masterwork, etc).

I dislike throwing my exotics away as much as you do, but there is argument to be made against this:

New players will have to go through all the hoops to get to the top level. At the moment they can decide to bypass the inbetween stages (in the case of trinkets for example) to sort of ‘catch up’ with the veteran crowd.

If things keep adding up without taking anything away, eventually the gap may become really really big. (It is already too big for my taste, but it could get much much worse)

So I was thinking a little more on the idea of inscriptions for ascended gear. Conceptually it feels like it has potential. In a nutshell:

1. All ascended gear (armor, weapons… maybe the others?) would have no stats. Instead they have an inscription slot.
2. All gear would come with an inscription included when crafted, found, etc. depending on the materials used in crafting, luck, etc.
3. Inscriptions would carry the stats for the gear. For example, Knight’s Inscription, Carrion Inscription, or more catchy names like Zojja’s Inscription of Extreme Displeasure.
4. Inscriptions can be crafted using T6 and ascended materials.

5. Inscriptions can be replaced with other inscriptions. There are two lines of thought with this…
a) Inscriptions are destroyed when being replaced. In this scenario, crafted inscriptions would be relatively “cheap”, i.e. use small amounts of ascended and T6 materials.
b) Inscriptions are salvaged when replaced. In this scenario, crafted inscriptions are fairly costly in materials, but not devastatingly so.

6. It would need to be determined, in either scenario, whether or not inscriptions could be traded on the TP. The amount of materials consumed should reflect this. My initial thoughts are that if inscriptions are salvaged when replaced then they should not be allowed to be traded, however if they’re destroyed when replaced they should be allowed on the TP.

Well… that’s the heart of the idea. You have additional sinks for ascended and T6 materials, you have stat flexibility on ascended gear and importantly (in my opinion) you get to keep the time-to-acquire pretty much the way it is now for ascended gear, which is an extremely valuable time sink when considering the long term health of the game.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

How would you feel if I could buy every single item from SAB simply because I have a good paying job, while you had to try over and over and over again, with a lot of frustration?

You pretty much can buy the same skins from the TP.
Also ascended = stats. Nobody should be unable to get the best stated gear just because they don’t craft. Give crafters the ability to make some account bound skins.