Guild Wars 2

Ideas for the future.

As an avid fan of this game, I am eager to see it evolve and develop in a manner that sees me become even more enamoured and engaged with its content. With this in mind I have fond that while many of the core principles of this MMO are excellent concepts, I feel they could be expanded in ways that would provide a more balanced experience.

Everyone likes to speculate and postulate on issues & solutions about their favourite films, games, books etc and for once I thought, “hell, why not post what you think and let it be shot down by the community” so here I go!

There are several areas that are on the cusp of excellence, but fall short for very minor reasons.

A grand, empty world.

With this enormous and gorgeous world Anet has created, this MMO has given me that sense of awe that I had not experienced since my first baby steps into WoW’s Azeroth all those many years ago. When I heard that my character would scale to keep all the content viable, it was immediately one of the overriding selling points for me and while they have recently made improvements to this aspect, with a few simple alterations they could fulfill this goal to the maximum.

Lost Satchels & Beasts’ Stomachs.

The addition of normalized loot bags across all zones, based on one’s level would take a massive step to rectify the limited high-end zone problem. The implementation of generic loot bags (in addition to those dropped by specific mobs, Miners Bags, Trinket Bags, Moldy Bags etc) that drop equally from monsters (stomachs) and humanoid enemies (satchels) would add a viable incentive to kill and explore zones of lower levels. They would include tier appropriate random crafting materials and items (including lodestones) that have no mob based bias, that scale according to your level regardless of zone.

An example of their implementation:

Character Level/Satchel & Stomach value
0 – 20 Tier 1
20 – 40 Tier 2
40 – 50 Tier 3
50 – 60 Tier 4
60 – 70 Tier 5
70 – 80 Tier 6

The drop rate would be a reasonable one that is reduced based on your relative level to the zone in which you are currently fighting. For example a level 80 player in a starting zone would still receive Tier 6 Satchels & Stomachs, however his drop chance would be impacted to say 3% rather than the 12% chance he may have against level 80 enemies.

Dr. Arch’s Tradingposten Syndrome

Auction houses have become a staple of MMOs and can be both rewarding and fun to use. That sense of satisfaction one makes from profiteering can be as energizing as killing a dragon and I feel GW2’s Trading Post, while very rough around the edges, is an extremely useful and integral tool. I do also believe however, that it has become a touch too invasive into a character’s journey in this world. With the game based around grand item crafting as its source of character progression (something I love), I suggest that the balance needs to be shifted slightly away from total market dominance and back towards good old fashioned adventuring. With nearly all items being purchasable, gold is the undeniable king of this game and while this is legitimate, it undermines an awful lot of the fantasy questing parts of what dragon hunting, RPG games are all about.

The return of the Soul-bound

A possible solution to this would be to add soul-bound materials to the game. An example would be to look at lodestones. These items are extremely hard to self collect despite gargantuan quantities being needed for many of the game’s more impressive items and while these items should indeed be very troublesome to acquire, the discrepancy in lodestone prices vastly impacts which of the similar items (Mjolnir, Volcanus, Winterbark etc) one chooses to go for.

If one were able to acquire items such as a Prismatic Lodestone that were soul-bound, neutral and attainable through say, the completion of all 3 paths of a dungeon each day or the completion of periodically resetting Zone Hearts, a more varied progression could be achieved towards your special item. These soul-bound stones would act as an additional lodestone to whichever type you have chosen to craft/mystic forge with as a bolster to those you have already purchased/found elsewhere.

For example:

1 Eldritch Scroll – 100 Mystic Coins – 1 Vial of Liquid Flame – 168 Molten Lodestones

In this craft of Volcanus, the person has fallen short of his Molten Lodestone count, but has collected 82 Prismatic Lodestones. When he adds these stones to the recipe they take the place of the missing Molten Lodestones and he can now craft his weapon. If he lacked all 250 Molten Lodestones but owned 250 Prismatic, perhaps they can be traded to Miyani for an equivalent number of soul-bound lodestones of his desire.

This would also give an added purpose and value to crafting, as many items (Destroyer Weapons, Runes, Sigils etc) require lodestones and could now be crafted for minimal (gold) expenditure on the player’s behalf and sold for a profit. Being a 400 Weaponsmith would have a visible benefit, rather than having to collect all the materials and weigh up whether it is cheaper to sell that mats and buy a pre-made item.

This system could be expanded to many crafting materials across the game, I merely used lodestones as an example.

Walls of text deserve at least one shame ridden bump.

I think the lodestone transferral idea has quite some merit.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

I think the lodestone transferral idea has quite some merit.

I think it COULD work, except the Forge only accepts 4 items.

Now, if you could turn Prismatic Lodestones into others with a recipe:

“1 Any Lodestone + 2n Prismatic Lodestones = n First Lodestone”

That’d do something twofold – allow you to transform Prismatic Lodestones as you need them, and require you have at least one before you start. The 2:1 exchange ratio also means it’s not easily abused for bulk exchanges for Trading Post sale later.

Though obviously it might need to be tweaked to 3:1 or maybe even 1d4+1 : 1 if you’re absolutely attached to a random return rate. (Note: this is not the best idea due to the unpredictability and the appearance of a potentially blatant time/effort sink.)

The question is where would you seed in Prismatic Lodestones? Best access for players would probably be as skill-point purchased through Miyani, second best would be a Karma merchant somewhere not easily accessible or requiring a specific DE chain to trigger. (Be evil and let it only be possible with all five Cathedrals uncontested . . . but AFTER putting fixes in for Balthazar.)

You’ve got some good ideas for the game. Well thought out. I commend you.

Too bad they’ll never be read by the developers who actually matter, let alone acted upon.

Thanks for the responses everyone, much appreciated!

@Tobias
It is awkward and I’m not sure how it could be done (the idea of one item taking the form of another) hence I suggested trading with Miyani, but then you get the whole "how would the game distinguish between a soul-bound lodestone and a regular one.

The basic principle is that there is a personal, individual player only source for certain items that is restricted to a degree so as to act as a gradual easer to the current way of collecting materials. Skill points seems reasonable, however they are not limited by a certain time frame ala dailies so could be too effective unless the conversion prices were high, which may undermine the whole principle and make it an unattractive venture.

I just feel gold being the be-all and end-all is not only bland but pigeon holes players to find the best methods to earning money. A bit more balance could go a long way I feel.

Varkronn.9783:

Thanks for the responses everyone, much appreciated!

@Tobias
It is awkward and I’m not sure how it could be done (the idea of one item taking the form of another) hence I suggested trading with Miyani, but then you get the whole "how would the game distinguish between a soul-bound lodestone and a regular one.

The basic principle is that there is a personal, individual player only source for certain items that is restricted to a degree so as to act as a gradual easer to the current way of collecting materials. Skill points seems reasonable, however they are not limited by a certain time frame ala dailies so could be too effective unless the conversion prices were high, which may undermine the whole principle and make it an unattractive venture.

I just feel gold being the be-all and end-all is not only bland but pigeon holes players to find the best methods to earning money. A bit more balance could go a long way I feel.

Well the problem with Soulbound attaching to the cores you would trade for . . . is that it doubles the database entries for the cores since there now has to be one “natural” core which is normal and one which is Soulbound through this process. And that means clunkier work since the item database now gets extra entries which are otherwise redundant.