Guild Wars 2

1) Server populations

More importantly, how do you as a developer determine your server populations?
I.e. do you just do a count of concurrent active accounts in the PvE world. If so, you need to expand your count to include another metric. This metric should be an average active account count in WvW taken every six hours. This metric should be displayed to your consumers in the world selection window.

The large majority of the topics you see suggested in this thread are directly related to population. (skill lag, zerging, WvW coverage)

Do not try and reinvent the wheel here. You have a great design, but even great designs need working dynamic controls to maintain them. The metric I suggested should help even out server populations in WvW, thus allowing you as a developer to focus your manpower and time on improving on other things. This thread is full of these “other things”.

Thank you

PvE:

1. Condition Damage in Boss Events (and Crit Damage to a lesser extent). Any long term solutions to this issue?

2. Fractals and Agony Resistance – Why must I limit my prowess in other areas of the game just so I can get more AR that is only useful for Fractals? Will Fractals be expanded and what’s the general stance on more challenging group content?

3. Currency overkill – GW2 has lots of different currencies from various sources. It seems like once a new currency is introduced it adds a few items, but is then forgotten about completely. Any chance we might see new ways to spend existing currencies or some consolidation?

PvP

1.* Downed State and the impact it has on small and large scale PvP* – Most notably the “snowballing effect” of the downed-state is what I personally find most aggravating in that it gives an inherent advantage to the larger force. Any chance we might see changes to the downed-state mechanic that take into account how the game has evolved in the past year?

2. Resurrection in combat – The ability to resurrect everyone, anywhere has had some pretty undesirable side-effects from cheesing bosses over “lazily” waiting for rezzes rather than respawning. It also adds to the aforementioned snowballing in WvW. Any chance this might mechanic might be reviewed or limited to “out of combat”?

3. PvP reward system – sPvP is very unrewarding at this point and I believe the complete disconnect between PvP and the rest of the game is partially to blame. Any chance we might see this reconsidered and have rewards carry over into the main game?

Hi Chris thanks for putting this thread together.

My top three things I would like improved/built upon/implemented would be:

1) More aesthetic options for our characters (new armour skins in particular)

2) Better, more meaningful time-sink content (deeper progression and/or rewards in correlation to how much time and effort one would put into X)

3) Conveying the short stories on the main site into the game somehow. I get that this would be hard to do without just having people stand there watching NPCs interact which each other but not us, but surely we can think of something.

Cheers

1. Skills. The direction this game is heading in.

a, Unfixed weapon skills or fixed weapon skills for all classes or select classes?

b, Elite skills, large effect long cd or small effect small cd?

Ascended works as a long term time-gated background progression while unlocking skills through completing content works as a bridge between casuals and hardcores as a mainform of progression.

Roleplay is something you need to decide if it is a necessity for resources because if this game is at the stage were you can’t sit in chairs than you have a lot of work to do considering a certain competitor may attract the crowd your trying to hold. To me this needs its own subsection just like spvp and wvw.

Living Story. This imo should be in its own subsection like spvp and wvw. I’ll be honest with saying that I am out of touch with the game to give decent feedback on it other than more permanent content.

48LoP# 31 Control the options: get others to play with the cards you deal.

PVE:
1. More variety in armor skins
2. Easier ways to “re-spec” armor stats to match character trait builds.
3. New, permanent, explorable mode dungeons.

Current GW2 Game Direction:
1. Specific phrases and underlying intentions of current PR
2. Specific phrases and underlying intentions of current PR
3. Specific phrases and underlying intentions of current PR

1. Guilds – the key word in the title of the game is Guild – followed by wars. I would love to see guild to guild alliances (we already have one) but having a alliance chat would make things sooo much easier. Guild functions need to be greatly improved with a in-game guild recruitment tool, Guild calendars for organising in game events etc. More ways guilds can make members commit to their guild and not the other 4 they could also be members of.

2. Crafted gear..I don’t know how anyone can make gold by crafting in this game – make it a worthwhile fun thing to do in game.

3. More explorable zones and fun things to do – nothing grindy – we do have real lives.

PvE
1) Dynamic Events
2) Profitability (for characters)
3) Ascended equipment

1. Better rewards for events.
2. Better monster AI.
3. The emptiness of the open world.

PVE:

1. Raiding
2. Major Future Content (can be vague but, maps/weapons/professions/races)
3. plans/opinions on pve meta

1- Living Story: permanent in game content over temporary (doesn’t matter if takes more time, as long it is permanent and makes impact in game history)

2- RolePlay: More choices to create a unique character, more storytelling, housing system, etc. (i’ve just played a organ in Stronghold of Ebonhawke, imagine if we could get stuff like this in our homes)

3-Reward: More coherent rewarding system (e.g. someone spends a good amount of time in a jumping puzzle to get only 2 blues ¬¬)

1) There really does need to be an open forum on the state of condition damage in this game. It’s not working in any way resembling viable.

2) The lack of particularly effective roles outside of pure damage. You have a ton of gear options and a wide variety of build potential… but with the mechanics the way they are in PvE (big damage spikes and one-hit kill abilities), it’s pretty much go Berserker (occasionally Assassin) or go home.

3) A discussion as to exactly what your target audience is; as in right now, not at the beginning. There are a sizable number of Guild Wars 1 fans who feel betrayed and lied to because they feel the game has changed significantly and that they aren’t wanted any longer. There needs to be some honesty as to why perceived changes to the pillars of the game have been made… or if Arena.net doesn’t think they have… to detail why or why not.

PvE:

1. Guilds – Management, Tools, Guild Halls, Last Online, etc. I believe it is time to improve the guild system.

2. Living Story Content – I enjoy the updates every 2 weeks, but I feel like we only get a day or two of content out of the entire 2 week span (maybe I am just too fast at it). Would it be possible to get an expansive Living Story with content that lasts 2 weeks without any time gating or that includes new zones / events anytime soon? Personally I feel like Twilight Assault, Teq, and Halloween were lacking and some for sure could of been bundled together (Teq and a dungeon for example).

3. Lore – Goes along with #2, but I feel like a lot of new players will miss out on the lore that is happening in game as events come and go.

1. Ranger Sword — (prevents dodging, evades don’t match animation)
2. Ranger Pets — (can’t dodge at all, F2 takes up to 4 seconds to activate)
3. Ranger DPS -- (izzy said in 2011 it would be very high. It’s currently the lowest on Avg)

1. WvW: Squad system & meaningful ways of obtaining the commander tag
2. WvW: Ways to limit night-capping trains
3. Acceptable and non-acceptable grind – what the players feel is too much, or simply in the wrong direction
4. Acceptable and non-acceptable rng – as above
5. Ascended & legendary items acquisition
6. Revamping world bosses without causing the game-breaking lag some of us are experiencing in Tequatl.
7. Lfg tool tweeking

I know it is more than 3, but could not really choose

1. Ascended Gear – Specifically current means of acquisition
2. Rewards – Time vs. Effort and the adding of new cosmetic rewards without large grind
3. State of Conditions in PVE – 25 stack cap making condition builds inefficient in group content as well as against objects that are immune.

PvE 1) Dungeon encounter design

that’s it. this game still doesn’t compare to competing MMOs in this department at all.

My biggest issue with this game…and it’s a harder one probably to quantify, has been immersion. I’ve been looking for an immersive MMO for a long time, and in some ways this game does qualify but in many ways, there are things that break immersion all the time.

Immersion is something that can often be fixed quite easily, and without a lot of complaint…but it’s almost never something that’s looked at directly. Game mechanics always seem to go first.

Some things the break immersion are harder to cope with than others (particularly if they’re not done up front) but one example is the fact that everyone can rez everyone, but when one person gets killed in the story, it’s supposed to be this dramatic thing. And you ask yourself why doesn’t this NPC just rez (because others do).

Other things are quite easy to fix, but you have to think about them or they’ll never change.

If this game was more immersive, it would be a much better game for many people, I feel.

There are clearly other things that need work, but without immersion, I’m not sure how much the rest of it matters to me personally.

1. Immersion

1. Living World – specifically, how ArenaNet is going to provide players with more ways to have permanent impact, with the Captain’s Council vote as a starting point.

2. Ascended gear – is there any way to satisfy the players who expected less vertical progression/stat grinding? (Spoken as someone who hates the ascended grind, but does it anyway because he does not want less-than-best-in-slot.)

3. Quality of Life – there are a lot of these that some would consider “necessary”, and it may be a big morale boost for the playerbase to get some of the things they have been asking for since launch.

I’m looking forward to getting something productive out of this. Hopefully the environment remains civil and constructive.

My top 3 of what I don’t like in the current state of the game:

1) Grind (EVERYTHING forces you to farm)
2) Temporary Content / Replacement Content (give us something new!)
3) Ascended Items, their stats and their acquisition

1) Lore/Living Story/Continuity – Truly tying the lore/flow of the game to the history of the game.
2) DR/RNG – Casual player should not encounter DR, even if farming. Encounter based rewards far more rewarding than random chance.
3) Guild Hall/Personal Home – after all, the game is called Guild Wars, Guild Halls really are necessary, and the small or personal Guild should have access.

I’d love to see an expansion of discussion on UIs in this game. It’s something thats often overlooked (not necessarily by ANET but in general) but I honestly feel like it can make or break a feature for me.

Specifically I’m speaking about 2 things
1. The guild panel
2. the trading post
3. suppression to guildmembers/allies/friends/followers

1) PVE class balance (dungeons)
2) Reward vs effort vs RNG vs grind
3) Cosmetic system

PVE

1. Quality of Life (includes bug fixes, better pve character balance, and more)
2. Living Story (why does it have to be so bad?)
3. Grinds everywhere (why for ascended, legendaries, and all LS stuff?)

Explanations:
1. The most important thing to me, by far, is QoL updates. I cannot stress strongly enough how I think this game should devote more resources to fixing bugs. This includes even small bugs like all armor on Charr. (On a side note, please don’t say you don’t care about a problem because not enough people play that race or job.) This also includes bank stack updates (why do I have such a low stack limit when I need thousands of stuff for ascendeds and LS stuff.) Crafting of useful stuff at 425, 450, and 475 fit here. It is boring and painful to grind to 500 as it is now.
I would also like to have more integration with the wallet or bank and the rest of the world. I have heard that stuff in the wallet cannot be taken out to do recipes and such. Why not? Why can’t we get a wallet tab when crafting or using the Mystic Forge. Furthermore, why can’t I just choose from my bank when using the Mystic Forge, like I can for crafting. The Mystic Forges are rarer and only near banks. Why make it so Draconian that I have to get stuff out of the bank to walk over to the Mystic Forge. The same is true for vendoring stuff out of the bank. Why can I not vendor straight out of the bank? The guy is feet away! Finally, I would pay real money to have stuff I buy on the Trading post be moved to my bank with one click, preferably from anywhere in the world.

2. The quality of Living Story has been embarrassing this last year. I hear bragging and see commercials stating that GW2 updates more than any other MMO. That may be true, but so much of it is poorly written, full of bugs, and the simplest of quests.
I know there is story going on, but it’s so hard to find. Why is the LS on webpages and not in the game? I realize some players groan at watching a video or seeing talking NPCs, but it’s story. That’s what story is. Metal Gear Solid 4 was all cutscenes, and people still loved it. It is difficult to strike a balance between too much and too little with storytelling, but I will say GW2 LS has so forth been far beyond the too little on the in-game storytelling.
Furthermore, every update is full of bugs and broken content. I understand with an MMO that most updates will have bugs. But, when you stake your name on making constant updates, then it’s time to step that bar up and do more quality control.
Finally, why does LS feel so much like a grind? Every LS update, a majority of the achievements require you to kill X enemies or do X things. And, the numbers are often painful and repetitive. Why do I have to bash so many dragon pinatas or kill so many minions every update. This is lazy design. The rewards for doing so are also lame. I understand there are hardcore players. On that note, there will always be hardcore players that will finish the content within hours, accept it. But, if you’re going to make grindy achievements, at least include reasonable achievements that the average player can get enjoyably during some of their playtime. Heck, I would be fine with a graduated system that gives more rewards as you finish more achievements. Also, don’t be afraid to give out decent things for rewards (not all skins, please).
The biggest thing I can say here is: IF YOU CANNOT MAKE GOOD CONTENT FOR UPDATES EVERY TWO WEEKS, DON’T.

3. This dovetails nicely into my last point: why so much grind? I am not against working hard for endgame content, but why must it be a grind. I would happily do map completion plus a long quest rather than run champ trains all day for a month to get a legendary. The same is true for ascended. There has to be a better way, even if it means some players get good items that would not normally have gotten them. I won’t even talk about the current Halloween stuff. Thousands of items for just one thing, so painful and expensive. Some grind is ok, but having everything requiring grinding at the endgame is painful. Again, this is another one that requires a light touch and a good balance. Neither of which GW2 has right now.

Overall, the game has been great. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to see improvements!

1.) Class Balance

2.) Game Polish (Bug, latency, framerate)

3.) Guild vs Guild and guildhalls

1) Character customization (better choices for skills)
2) Character customization (better choices for traits)
3) Character customization (better choices for armor skins)

PvE / WvW / sPvP
1. Allow all gear to be able to freely swap unlocked skins, stats, sigils, runes, infusions when not in combat, and allow templates to be saved for quick swapping.

more info here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/unlock-swap-skins-stats-best-treadmill

1) Role viability in dungeons and open world (support, control, etc).

2) Unique rewards – more unique looking weapons from specific dungeons, paths and bosses.

3) Permanent, expanded world – would rather see the world grow in size, rather than swell and shrink with temporary zones and content.

1. Ascended gear and grind for stats.
It is an issue ANET has not properly dealt with since its first reveal back in november. It has been the discussion of countless topics and is the single most darkest mark on ANETs record.
It and the effects it has had on the development of the game have to be dealt with once and for all.

2. Directly related to that are group gameplay mechanics, build variety, stat variety and build management.
In GW1 changing a build was faster than changing your pants IRL, even in PVE. There were roles you had to fulfil and even though 90% of the possible builds were not valid there were options. GW2 has had much of that taken away.

3. The living world, the story and general idea and direction of the game in terms of content that usually comes with expansions.
ANET needs a clear direction for the game. A roadmap where players can see what content can they expect either soon or even years down the line. The quality of updates needs to be addressed and real expansion worthy content needs to be introduced. Comparing GW2 to GW1 a year down the line makes it absolutely clear what and where the shortcomings of GW2 are.

IMO these should be the first three that need a discussion and subsequent fixes ASAP.

1) Time spend for all dailies (PVE+WvW+PVP).
2) I want to have possibility to extract runes (placed by me) from unsalvageable items. For example, i placed Superior Rune of the Soldier in Invaders Set (buyed for wvw badges). I dont care about materials or globs. Just Runes.
3) Diminishing returns.

I don’t know if someone already mentioned, but in Guardian section there is already a topic created about the class:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Collaborative-Development/first

1-More gears that harder to get …. all you do at lvl 80 is fractal to get the best gear then nothing ….
2-Pvp in the living world , (guild pvp) (faction pvp) (the good agaisnt the bad ) , i want challenge while i quest
3-RAIDS , big kitten dungeons with tons of people !!!

1) Mechanics > Content.
2) Roles in PVE.
3) Living Story.

1. Massive world events (ala Tequatl). What went right, and where improvements can be made.

2. Crafting from 400-500 (including ascended materials)

3. Living story feedback

4. PvE class balance and current metas

1. Living World and Larger, Permanent Content
2. New Skills, Traits, Weapon Skills for All Professions
3. New Zones and Expansion of Game World and Lore

I guess these all tie into each other. It’s kind of hard to think of new things (and I know none of these are new), when everyone has suggested just about everything I’m interested in. I guess all I want to talk about is how the game will build outward and not just stack on itself little by little each release.

1. Living Story
2. Ascended items
3. Intrinsic vs Extrinsic rewards. The game showers you in extrinsic rewards. What happened to playing video games for the sake of playing and not being lured by incentives to do an activity?

1. New skills/traits
2. Expansions
3. Grind

1.) Dungeons and Fractals
2.) Jumping puzzles

1) Dungeon Mechanics. We need much better mechanics than standing in melee all day and spamming 1. So many dungeons have exploits. We need tough bosses that reward players for staying mobile. You can ignore just about any mechanic in the game.

2) Completely scrap living world. It was a great idea that has failed to do anything except making us grind mobs for achievements that don’t matter.

3) Build diversity in PvE. I dont care if you guys need to make the skills different versions in PvP. Necro needs some PvE love.

4) Please give us more armor, more skills, Build templates (I would love this but not as much as my #1)

Overall we need to expand the game. I would prefer monthly patches if the quality of them would be better. I can get a meta achievement done in less than 2 hours unless you gate it with dailies. Vast new areas, more challenging content for us players that have played MMOs before. Currently there isn’t anything worth calling a challenge besides maybe Tequatl because of how many people you need.

One of the things i have a problem with in PvE is the whole stack melee for buffs and dont move out. This eliminates any fun when using a Longbow on my ranger for example. Your combat is designed to be mobile but isn’t played that way in PvE.

PvE

1. Condition caps/unshakeable, making debuffing viable.
2. Tradeable/salvageable fractal skins and rings
3. Dungeon final gold reward re-evaluation. (Example: ACp3 should not reward more than SEp2

PvE:
1) Ascended weapons and armor (worried about the grind and the build lock-in)
2) Condition cap
3) Grind in general for anything perdy

1) Roleplay and RP QoL
2) Guilds
3) Grind. How much is too much, and what do we replace it with?

((Note, 1 and 2 will actually overlap a bit on the topic of Guild Halls and Guild Coalitions.)

Trying to not make this a suggestion post.

General
1- Customization
2- UI
3- AI

PVE

1- FoTM
2- Rewards / RNG

PVP

1- sPVP

• Game modes
• What is going to be done with the rank farmers issue.
• Rewards

2- WvW

• Commanders
• Rewards

Hi Chris,

Thank you for this initiative. I appreciate your outreach to the community.

My Personal list for PVE:

1) Class balance (anecdote story about ranger being kicked out of dungeon)

2) More account bound items rather than soulbound, especially for skins, rewards, high end items like legendaries or item purchased using Gems, for more alt friendliness.

3) General quality of life changes. The last halloween patch is in the right direction.

Thank you and good luck.
-Joe

1) Conditions overhaul
2) More Personal Story
3) More rewards with dungeon token
_______________________________________________

1)-Add a mechanic to avoid wasting of condition damage.
Having x5 direct damage in a party is good, having x>1 condition damage users with a similiar build is bad: add a way to mitigate this for both conditions that stack in duration and conditions that stack in intensity, for example: raise the damage done by the condition when the duration/stacks go over a specific threshold
-Direct damage have many damage amplifiers (power, critical damage stat, Vulnerability, sigils/runes, traits, nourishments) and they stacks, condition damage have only one amplifier (condition damage). This is not very “fair” to me.
2) Introduce more Personal Story: if you don’t want to push more in the directions of dragons, you can still make “fillers episodes” (just like anime and TV series do) to expand the lore or the relations between our character and NPCs/our race/our Order/the Pact.
3) If i’m not interested by stats combination and skins given by a dungeon and i don’t plan to make a alt, the token are almost useless for me. Add something worth buying

1. Fractals and dungeons
2. Build diversity (including traits, gear and condition cap)
3. Prestige (rewards, including the risk/effort vs reward factors in gw2)

• Dungeon topic. Plans for raids or more difficult dungeons
• Class differentiation and roles. Class balance in PvE, strengthening of non-DPSDPSDPS roles.
• General armor skins topic. We need better and more! Also at least in part earnable in PvE. This was my main motivation that kept me in PvE in GW1.

1) Game Direction – would include LS, Debate on permanent additions and of course ascended and future tiers
2) Challenging Content
3) Rewards and Skins

PVE
1. Combating the Zerg Mentality in Boss encounters
2. Rewards for Support and Defense not just tagging a mob.
3. The Living Story and Unexplored parts of the World.

1.) ALT Friendliness
2.) Legendaries account bound
3.) Legendaries account bound