Guild Wars 2

It strikes me that while there’s definite categories of things people want to see additions in, there’s endless variety of possibilities that we’re all brainstorming around.

The streamlining of the process of cosmetic progression, and town clothes, seems a universal want but many people want more ‘meaty’ game mechanic type progression.

New utilities and and weapons and skills possibly overlap with the idea of new subclasses, depending on how people’d choose to implement them.

There’s a number of people who straight out want more content.

New activities would be nice; polymock is mentioned several times.

New modes of competition like pve-related leaderboards also.

Factions seem like an area with substantial possibility – making the orders more meaningful for a start.

In general, though.. tons of ideas, similar themes, but I think it’d help if the thread could focus more on particulars of how each suggestion would work to give people long term goals. In general, in other words, yes to the ‘more skills!’ but much more elaboration on the ‘How do we get them so they feel satisfying?’ aspect.

I think it’d help if we got dev feed back particularly on the feasibility or timescales of some of the things people are talking about.

New Dailies: Zaishen Quests
I know most players will cringe when I say dailies… But Zaishen Quests from GW1 were an exception. Each day there would be a bounty to slay a particular boss, or clear a particular mission/dungeon, and we would be rewarded with Zaishen coins.

Zaishen Coins were great because they allowed us to purchase ultra-rare item skins, toys, and larger equipment bags.

Unlike GW2, we could repeat them on each character we had; a character time-gate as opposed to an account time-gate. Kinda like the way GW2 use to be.

I don’t see why such a system can’t work for Gw2 either, in order to get players back into more obscure zones.

Another idea I had last night was how you acquire items. You don’t only have to rely on drops from monster and RNG.

Gw2 is a universe full of lore and a beautiful world. Use it! Make finding and build items an adventure instead of something they just drop. Ill use final rest as an example and what I would have done with final rest. I was one of the ones that tried to find final rest when it was still unfound and was very disapointed in how you actually acquired it.

The item would be split into three pieces. A head, shaft, and power source. The first clue players encounter of the item is in AC. In the library room you’ll see a old torn tapestry with a picture of the staff as a whole. If you translate a few papers in the room you’ll find that it was buried with a white mantle leader in the ruins of holy demetra, however they need a key to get into the room where it is at. Luckily you can activate a hidden book that doesn’t have a name (so you can’t push alt) and whose locations is said in the trasncription that opens a secret door. In this door is the chest containing the key. Once in the ruins in harathi they can open the door, defeat a quick white mantle spirit boss and take the staff. However they find the head is missing. Near by is a note from bandits saying they found a strange looking head piece of a staff while running from a rampaging ghost. They mention that they can probably sell it to some flame legion in diessa plateau saying its some ancient artifact in a tone that is usual banditry/deceiving for money. You can then go into disseau plateau and talk to a charr or priory member in the camp. If you have the staff shaft in your inventory he has a special chat option where he talks about the head pieces and gives you a key into a special room in flame temple tombs. You can then go in there, find the hidden room, defeat a flame legion shammy boss and take the head piece. You then bring it back to the priory member who talks how it needs a power source so it can be back to its original powerful self and to talk to a necromancer in god lost swamp. You then go to the necromancer thats in the middle by the PoI. He tells you there is some ancient powersource he read about in the ruins of orr in zho qafar catacombs. You go in there, defeat the world boss and get the power source. You then activate one of the staff pieces in your inventory like the tri piece key and it forms the staff.

Heck if you add 1-3 of these weapons each patch, it will IMMENSELY improve the game for endgame players and new players. Also open up a whole new method of progression with items. You can also do different power sources for different stat combos.

Dailies are pretty ‘out’ right now in terms of player favor.. frankly I think it’s an overreaction to WoW’s complete overdo of the concept in their last expansion, and several other game’s over-reliance on them as ‘the one alternative to raiding’ as well.

In Gw2 right now we’ve actually got ‘dailies’ of a sort, and they’re just about the most pleasantly harmless kind of ‘chore’ I’ve seen, specially with the day-to-day variation. But they aren’t exactly what most people mean when they refer to daily quests.

But in moderation specific daily quests can actually work quite well. I’m think particularly of how in wow your quests with a faction would actually grow and change as you became more reputable with them, and privy to more of their lore. Getting more ‘story’ out of them as you progress did feel rewarding, and the bonus of dailies is that they do let more casual players work at a pace comparable to more hardcore ones. The only problem is when dailies are the only source of required hardcore/vertical progression.

I know ‘quests’ aren’t exactly what Gw2 does. Hearts are the nearest equivalent – but if I could posit a thought.. what’d be wrong with unlockable, repeatable hearts?

Horizontal Progression for Different Factions
Lets take a tally on some of the many different Factions in Guild Wars 2….

• You got the Priory, Vigil, and Order of Whispers.
• You got the Seraph, the Ministry guard, and the Shining Blade (also the Ebon Vanguard)
• You got the Ash, Blood, and Iron Legion (not to mention all sorts of warbands too)
• You got the College of Dynamics, Statics, and Synergetics.
• You got the Lionguard
• Who knows what else I missed….. (there’s also the Hylek, Skritt, and Largos, and what about the Tengu, Kodan, etc.?!?)

How many of those have special weapons and Armors? not much. We get to buy one armor set for each of the orders, and while there are some weapon sets from other factions….that’s about it.

You want Horizontal Progression? How about giving us up to 10 Faction Ranks for the Orders, and all other friendly Factions in the game (even unfriendly factions in some cases!). When we reach a high enough rank, then we unlock new titles. We can also then Purchase special Faction weapon and Armor skins, using Gold, not new Tokens, or anything else. You can raise your faction rank by doing events that involve those factions or defeating certain bosses.

Doing this, Players can see us with a Title showing our support for a particular Faction, or they can visually see that we Really Support a Particular faction by equiping special Faction Weapons and Armors.

For my Example, lets use the Hylek, for no other reason than talking poisonous frogs just seem awesome.
At Rank 5, we unlock a Title, “Friend of the Hylek”.

At Rank 9, we get a Title called “Ally of the Hylek” and we can now purchase new Weapon and Armor skins, and for the Hylek, those could be some seriously awesome Tribal looking stuffs. You could also buy special Hylek themed Finishers for use in WvW and PvP!

At Rank 10, we get a new Title called “Zintl’s Chosen” (Zintl, being the Hylek’s sun god.), but there can be a catch to it. There can be only one Zintl’s Chosen on any given server, and the one who gets the title is the one with the most faction points with the Hylek. In addition to having a Unique Title, you could have a unique Golden Aura surrounding you, and you get infinite access to the Hylek themed Finisher when in WvW and PvP.

Geting to Rank 10, and keeping your faction higher than everyone elses and being able to compete at that level would take some serious dedication, and are only for those who are that dedicated to the game. However, aside from that unique Title and Golden Aura, casual players can get access to everything else that faction has to offer.

Links to my other Ideas in this Thread
Horizontal Skill Progression ::: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3413290

Cosmetic Progression

Everyone seems to love the idea of Cosmetic Progression, so here’s my idea:

-Divide the Armor into at least three Racial Categories (Asura / Charr / Human, Norn, Sylvari). Asura and Charr wearing the same basic clothing as the more “human” characters doesn’t really make sense from either a Lore or Design perspective. Their bodies are just too different for stretching the armor to work, especially due to their hands, feet, and tails(Charr). The other three races are pretty much identical in the shapes of their bodies.

-Rotate the new armor design releases(both in-game drops and Gem Store) between the three. Hopefully, this would help the Charr and Asura players gain armor that fits them properly and doesn’t clip. Also, perhaps it would make armor cheaper to make, since the Devs would no longer have to make 10 sets of everything.

-Add in some more Cultural Armor Tiers or Skins for those that want them.

-Give the option to buy Gem Store Armor by the piece, as well as by the set.

-Add more Dungeon and Karma Skins to be bought with our Tokens and Karma, respectively.

Lheimroo.2947:

…
I know ‘quests’ aren’t exactly what Gw2 does. Hearts are the nearest equivalent – but if I could posit a thought.. what’d be wrong with unlockable, repeatable hearts?

“Daily” hearts would be sweet. Multiple hearts across all the maps, should bring people back into those map (especially if we’re not limited into how many we do, as in there are a total of 40 across all maps but we can only do 5 that would be bad).

They’re almost in line with some of the dailies anyways, where you have to kill 40 (don’t remember, I do sPvP since it’s easier) in a certain region… I mean that’s the same thing has having a heart for that in that region…

Oh, also, for every third set of new hair/faces/color options in the Makeover Kits, move the first set to the primary character creation system. Basically, when set 3 was released, set 1 would move into the main area. This way, character creation at start would grow for new players and altoholics, while still leaving two “new” sets in the Kits to make them desirable. One of the biggest thing you can do, to hook new players, is give them tons of options for making their character look cool right from the start.

Chrispy.5641:

…

I absolutely love your idea about weapon skill expansion. Pretty much exactly how you proposed it. Having that little “tweak” for each skill would even be enough to further define one’s role in GW2.
It actually fits every request that has been made in this sub forum…
________________________________________
Another example would be Staff#2 Necro:
Mark of Blood
0 – Normal functionality, 3 stacks of bleeding, self regen
1 – 5 stacks of Torment, no regen
2 – No bleeding, higher base damage, pulses 3 times
3 – No bleeding, 2 sec protection, 5 sec regen to 5 allies in range
4 – (insert cc option)
________________________________________

If Chris is reading these (kudos) I would appreciate his thoughts on this matter as me and other feel strongly postive about that type of thing! What do you think?

DIVA

PS: While I don’t have any problem with skins whatsoever, I would like to focus on actual progression, as this is what is lacking in my opinion. Regards to all.

Kain Francois.4328:

New Dailies: Zaishen Quests
I know most players will cringe when I say dailies… But Zaishen Quests from GW1 were an exception. Each day there would be a bounty to slay a particular boss, or clear a particular mission/dungeon, and we would be rewarded with Zaishen coins.

Zaishen Coins were great because they allowed us to purchase ultra-rare item skins, toys, and larger equipment bags.

Unlike GW2, we could repeat them on each character we had; a character time-gate as opposed to an account time-gate. Kinda like the way GW2 use to be.

I don’t see why such a system can’t work for Gw2 either, in order to get players back into more obscure zones.

One refinement I would offer would be to make them weekly.

One of the best things GW2 does in my opinion is it puts everyone sharing a server on the same side. The most obvious manifestation is shared harvesting nodes, but there are a lot of other flourishes supporting that concept.

Bosses are something of a finite resource. Putting players in direct competition to be there and get kill credit over a narrow window just creates animosity. Allowing a longer cycle wouldn’t stop flaring tempers for first-day completionists, but it would leave a lot more space for casual players to have a go after the initial rush at the start of each cycle.

I wonder if it couldn’t just offer a modest sum of gems? Weekly bounty for say 10 or 20 gems? (probably 10 considering exchange rates, but still that’s a pretty sweet payout)

Chrispy.5641:

You want Horizontal Progression? How about giving us up to 10 Faction Ranks for the Orders, and all other friendly Factions in the game (even unfriendly factions in some cases!). When we reach a high enough rank, then we unlock new titles. We can also then Purchase special Faction weapon and Armor skins, using Gold, not new Tokens, or anything else. You can raise your faction rank by doing events that involve those factions or defeating certain bosses.

YES! You could even integrate this system with the current quest system and make it work in a way similar to how the temperament system works. Each quest you do has a certain value (positive or negative) for each faction you directly interact with. It would essentially be a series of experience bars that as you interact with them more, the more your influence with them goes up.

Along with this, why not add some more armor sets to the existing Orders and Pact? Give them new, exotic armor sets that are more kitten versions of the originals.

Ken DeBoer.9268:

2 – I would love to see Meta award skins be listed in the achievement pane for you to use more than once (I won’t be greedy and ask for all skins)

+1, We really need that.

Chrispy.5641:

Horizontal Progression for Existing Weapon Skills

I am cautiously interested in this, as it certainly sounds entertaining.

I’ll point out 2 downsides to work out (I think both are solvable, I just want them included in consideration) and an observation.

First, you’re going to need a fair bit of UI work both to manage your collection of alternate modes and for picking them. You’ll probably also need a fair bit of new icons so that you can look at your toolbar and at-a-glance identify “Oh yeah, I’m in Torment-mode. I forgot…” Something you can take in instantly without dragging you cursor over the skill (which would also reveal what mode you are in, naturally).

Second it will require a very deft hand managing trait interactions with multiple skill modes. While reducing cooldown 20% or + 5% damage is pretty uniform, some of the more complex modifying traits might crash and burn combining with certain new skills in the broader array. Not unsolvable, but a definite ongoing cost.

…We see the problem now – your weapon modes are quite similar to the flexibility offered by swapping out pets and for the life of me I still don’t know what Beastmaster IX: Intimidation Training (Activated (F2) abilities for canines and spiders cause cripple) does when my Mossdog howls to grant Regeneration.

Lastly, I wanted to mention some classes have fairly exacting meta-rules in how their weapon skills work and all variant modes would have to conform to those rules. For example Mesmers always have one clone and one phantasm in each possible #1 to #5 skill array. Exactly one. Introducing new variants to Mesmer weapons would have to always deliver a clone ability in an existing clone ability slot, and likewise with phantasms.

Septemptus.7164:

Ken DeBoer.9268:

2 – I would love to see Meta award skins be listed in the achievement pane for you to use more than once (I won’t be greedy and ask for all skins)

+1, We really need that.

I also want to throw my vote towards that and also add in, I think Gem-store skins should be added to this list since you “purchased” the skin.

Basically, any skin that cannot be purchased on the trading post should be able to be placed into the achievement panel to use more than once.

We already have something which functions exactly like faction, called “Karma”.

The problem is the fact most karma rewards are either incredibly niche, pointless, or just plain bad.

Plus they need a title track for karma spent…

Zero Day.2594:

Lheimroo.2947:

…
I know ‘quests’ aren’t exactly what Gw2 does. Hearts are the nearest equivalent – but if I could posit a thought.. what’d be wrong with unlockable, repeatable hearts?

“Daily” hearts would be sweet. Multiple hearts across all the maps, should bring people back into those map (especially if we’re not limited into how many we do, as in there are a total of 40 across all maps but we can only do 5 that would be bad).

They’re almost in line with some of the dailies anyways, where you have to kill 40 (don’t remember, I do sPvP since it’s easier) in a certain region… I mean that’s the same thing has having a heart for that in that region…

This seems like a fun idea. Expand upon the Living Story idea and have Daily Hearts or Daily Quests around the world that don’t necessarily have to deal directly with the living story but could. One example could be: Slay the Champion Tamini Butcher of Gendarran Fields. Except in order to kill him there was a quest that went with it. Perhaps one day the Tamini tribe gets particularly bold and starts attacking a certain human settlement around Gendarran Fields. This spawns an event where you must defend the settlement, set up siege, and eventually slay the Butcher of Gendarran Fields.

Or perhaps it’s a daily scavenger hunt, not unlike the Explorer Guild Mission where you have to find certain items in specific places around Tyria and eventually kill a boss.

Another idea is you could incorporate the actual Living Story currently going on with these special bigger events. So instead of just toxic spores showing up everywhere, what if we happen to stumble upon some Molten Alliance mooks setting up a “Mysterious Probe” somewhere and they call for backup. So you have to defeat the existing hordes and then waves of them start coming, finishing with a Champ that spawns to defend his underlings.

Page 2 Summary – Part 1

General and QoL Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406541 – Add a Flag System for the Inventory
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406783 – Make upgrades permanent usable and unlockable accountwide similar like in PvP
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406883 – Dynamic Stat Swap for Ascendent

Horizontal WvW Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406798 – Add WvW Armor Sets linked with the Rank System
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406800 – Show WvW Rank to Allies

Cosmetical Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406577 – Adapt the System to LotRO, remove Transmutation System
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406657 – Legendary Armors, mixable effects
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406787 – Add Emblems and changeable textures
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406798 – Unlock more colorable options for equipment, make Equipment enchantable, Add a 7th Equipment Slot for Belts/Underwear
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3407060 – Make Order special Dyes

Skill/Trait Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406583 – Bring back Skill Hunting and PvE Only Skills
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406791 – Add More Weapon Skill Sets, add new Weapon Types, Redesign the Trait System

Housing and Home Instance Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406583 – WP to Home Instance

Part 2 Page 2 Summary

Gameplay Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406509 – Improve the Personality System
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543 – Add Sub Classes/ a Job System
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406617 – Add more explorable Areas, more new Monsters
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406767 – Remove Defiant, improve CC Gameplay
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406799 – Add more Minigames
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406883 – Rebalance the Support/Control gameplay to become up on par with Damage, Add more Consequences for Failures

Achievement/Title Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406509 – Personality Titles
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406509 – Add Order Based Achievements and Titles
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406709 – Colored Titles based on their difficulty

Guild Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406583 – Add again Guild Halls

New Features and reimplemented ones from GW1
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406709 -Add Ascendent Upgrades, like Runes, Sigils, Jewels
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406767 – Add a PvE Arena
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406798 – Let us progress in efficiency against enemies
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406883 – Add Elite Areas, like the UW/FoW
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406960 – Add Challenge Missions

Reward and Loot Improvements
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406509 – Let Personality influence the Loot, More Order based rewards
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406541 – More BLC-Keys through Living Story
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406756 – Make Rewards more flexible
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406798 – Let Bosses drop unique Upgrades
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406907 – Make Fractals more rewarding
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3407106 – Special Armor Sets from Named Bosses

Nadesh.7953:

…

I’m very fan of the idea of Order Quests ! Developing Living Story plots, giving additionnal informations.
It will be a nice improvement of the Nightmare tower toxic offshoot destruction events when you have to help a random order : Whisper bombs, Vigil mortars, Priory Hazmat suit.

I dream that Vigils have to defend themselves and their supplying roads or cut ennemies reinforcement/supplying, pick pockets corps and investigate.
Whispers Order have to go sneaky and stealthy in ennemy’s camp to steal some papers, investigate and track.
Help the Priory to understand ennemies weapons and tools, test things, or gather material and data to study.

But Daily Order Quest is too short content to be interesting. It will monopolize efforts for fast consumed content. Or it will be like Dailys : generic and tasteless content.

Dailies might be too much, but what about Weekly Orders Missions? Each Order can have a unique task for you to accomplish and it raises a corresponding Order Rank. Higher Order Ranks unlock new tiers of Order-specific gear.

As far as skins go, I’d love to see some more female light armor skins that have more of a powerful feeling rather than a delicate one. There are lots of “sexy” armors for light armor females, but there aren’t a lot of tough looking skins for them. I think there are also an overwhelming amount of skirt/dress/“butt cape” style armors in the game in general as well and a surprising lack of pants/leggings. I’d like to see some more pants that can embody the powerful and or elegant style for both females and males across light armor especially. Heavy armor lacks a lot of pant-like skins as well. Medium armor HAS pants, but the chest pieces almost always cover them up.

In terms of “sexy” skins, we only really see those with females. An example of this would be the winged armor set. As a woman, it looks like you designed the female set with only a male audience in mind. The female set is completely different than the male set for seemingly no other reason. It’d be nice if you could make both the “male” version and the “female” version available for all genders. Making more of these “male” and “female” versions available across the board would even out the playing field for both genders in terms of sexy and practical armor.

Another point to make on this is that quite a few of the female armors present extremely unnecessary aesthetics from the character model. The tier three human medium cultural armor flashes an under boob on female models. Why? What is the purpose of that? There’s no real defensible reason for that exposure other than “it looks sexy”. Two other examples of this I can think of were (more than likely) accidental slips from the two female light armor pants, the embroidered and tactical armor sets, where the only two pants available for light armors are so low riding that the character models have their bum cracks flashing every time they get into a combat stance. Seeing examples of things like this makes it look like the art team isn’t handling female character models well. I like both tactical and sexy armor, but I’d like to see the latter handled in a more respectful light.

Speaking of cultural armor, it is obvious that the art team had made skins for the human T3 light armor across all races after the gemstore release of the flaming version. Cultural weapons are available to all races, so why not cultural armor? Having cultural armor skins available to all races would allow more users to have unique skins on their characters. Could you imagine a charr with T3 asuran light armor? That would be an interesting sight to see.

On the idea of Daily Order ‘quests’ possibly something like we see now with the Living World meta-achievement where they have an identifying icon and count towards the larger meta and the daily quota.

Each day there would be three daily tasks in the list of 10-12, one for each Order with it’s own identifying icon that also counts towards the usual 5-per-day goal. That would reduce the cut into limited time as its working towards both goals simultaneously.

Actually that might work better as a standardized MONTHLY activity, but again advancing both your status with the Order and counting towards fulfilling the 4 Monthly Achievements.

While this is all tracked at an account level, you could keep the focus on individual characters by only being able to advance the daily/monthly achievement while on a character of the appropriate affiliation.

The question then become more do you want each character to be completely separate in their progress, or can an account with for example three Orders of Whispers-aligned characters ‘pool their pull’ with all three contributing to a single masters tracker for rank/standing?

Given my usual frustrations with alt-friendliness, I think I’d like all my Vigil characters to rise together, all my Priory nerds to contribute to a shared academic standing, and all my Whispers sneaky-sneaks to climb the ladder together. My experiences with WvW xp make truly individual tracking sound rather… dreadful.

I’d also mention increasing your Order rank/standing could include fancier banners on the character select screen . I loved getting those silly things, and would put is some serious time to have more elaborate versions displayed there.

Part A) You have a bunch of loose ends

• Our choices we did in character creation for the personal story ceased to matter.
  Either spread these options out to higher levels, or give us the choice to persuade several branches of the story how we see fit. Introduce completely new branches of the storyline that we get to decide in the future.
  There are no different outcomes or choices based on my “ego” (ferocious / dignified / charming) other than in unimportant, written NPC dialogues. Living story does not affect or shape my character, and neither can I shape the events in return. You build the living story in obsolescence. We don’t get anything anywhere to recap or even replay what we did other than story mode dungeons – which have no impact on our personal stories.

• After defeating Zhaitan, we never hear anything again from the Orders.
  Give the Orders more meaning. Give us Order missions. Give us “living story” Order events which are permanent. Give us lore to discover. Give our character a purpose of why we did those decisions back in the days. We are part of an ORGANIZATION that never gets back to us? That is like being employed but never doing something. The last time I was visiting my Order hub to check for armor skins was… heck… I don’t know.

• I thought we are fighting Elder Dragons?
  Look at Tyria. Partying around the world. We’ve slain Zhaitan and now everyone is mingling with the unimportant things called living story. All the dragons who wrecked havoc are not doing anything after a YEAR?! The giant scar left by Kralkatorrik and no sign of the dragon nor other activities of his mishappen creations on the Dragonbrand? And Jormag? Apparently his promises to the Sons of Svanir aren’t that great. We play whack-a-mole with them like there is no tomorrow, including the Elder Dragon’s Lieutenant. You can’t tell me Chicken McFrostywing isn’t annoyed by that? There are no rumors, no events, no activities, no unknown things popping up.
  I am playing a character who went great lengths to steel himself to fight and defeat what is the looming threat of the elder dragons. Since then I was an explorer of crab-island, babysitting a queen’s jubilee, going for unreasonable bands of enemies, betatesting asuran pixel boxes and dashing after a pigtailed twig? For a year? (not that it wasn’t fun, it just destroyed the credibility of the setting)
  If I had a say in it, I would re-schedule your 4 living story teams. One for main story continuity, one for personal character continuity (this includes the Orders), one for things that just happen to be in the world (like what we had an entire year for now) and one for continuous world changes, bringing in more meta-events and shaping the world to be a richer place. When was the last time we got a new zone? Right.
  This would be a much more diverse and fun and meaningful cycle as the content gets published. Just make sure all that stuff STAYS to be playable at ANY TIME.

• What happened to the Zephyrites?
  Trade agreements? Sharing knowledge and power? Will we help defend their ship? IAir superiority isn’t self evident °Dragons, wink wink nudge nudge° and they putz around in a really clunky vehicle that doesn’t look like it could withstand ANY. What about Evon? He is definitely NOT polishing and improving the trading post. Horizontal progression through continuity. Do not let loose ends hang suspended. At least feed us info every now and then.

Summary of Part A

Horizontal progression of the lore, character story and the additions you bring – give us the choice what we want to do, give our previous choices meaning and let us develop on them. Also, keep the bigger picture in mind. Tyria lost a lot of plausibility and credibility because the reason we originally came here – defend the world against dragons – has long since been dismissed. I do not want to fight an elder Dragon every 3 months but I want to at least see a very gradual build-up and stray information.
Time-restricted events are not going to help returning or pausing players, far from it.

Part B) Playing the world isn’t compelling any more

• Give us visibility, for it doesn’t exist.
  Why am I forced to use third-party services to know what is happening ingame? Why can’t I go to a town scryer or scout to see what is going on? We have asuran technology. You cannot tell me a world overview is lore breaking. Tie meta events to the “state of the zone”, and I don’t just mean the boss ones. And if not world, then region. Ascalon, Tyria, Maguuma, etc. The more we see what we can do, the more we are venturing forth. At the very least please show all events in the current zone I am in. Horizontal progression at it’s finest; information ignites initiative to go somewhere and DO things. Even Rift had to learn that lesson.

• Your dungeons are lacking.
  Open PvE world should be easy? Maybe. But why aren’t dungeons harder? And where are those extra events to make every single dungeon experience unique? All I can think of is Ascalon; “Is the Troll event triggering at the crossroads today or not?”
  Your new reward system is making people do the dungeon for REWARDS, not the dungeon itself, save for the few who still want to get the armor.
  You managed to bring instances in GW1 that players were awed and challenged. That was a GOOD thing. Clearing out the Underworld, or the Domain of Anguish for a regular guild group that wasn’t running cookiecutter specs was an achievement worth mentioning and was a real undertaking (speaking about my own casual guild now). Clearing out any dungeon in GW2? Not. Add more diversity through different events, perhaps even different bosses, and on top of that: introduce hard modes to dungeons, but don’t let them be arbitrarily gated with gear.

• Promote a fair system for big events to enrichen diversity of playing those.
  Your players doing support events miss out. Temple of Lyssa anyone? Everybody who keeps the 3 locations uncontested is basically shafted as they need to go back and forth hitting on Lyssa to be eligible for the end chest. Not okay. Defending locations / doing things which are a required part to keep the meta event going should be chained to this reward. That way, you can design branching events in which players need to be more flexible. I’m one of the few people who grudgingly back away from the fight to make sure the event keeps going by defending those nodes, gritting my teeth, hoping that this means I’m not being kicked out of the reward table – which happened.
  You also need to add the same reward levels for DEFENDING these events and thus also have similar difficulty doing so. It is really bad that players let the temples be claimed before they go there again.

• Give us consequences, for there are none.
  I beg you, beef up your dynamic event chain system. I have been saying this in open beta already, and I will do it again: Meta events mean nothing without tangible consequences – and yours are irrelevant. Not only are the events too easy, even in high levels, and some group events can be done solo, but they simply have no long-lasting impact on the world. What happens if we fail to kill Tequatl or the Shatterer? NOTHING. Something else;
  I want to stand in Lion’s Arch at my crafting station, and suddenly civilians start to run south, guards run up north, alarm bells are ringing, and NPCs tell me to grab my weapons and come help. Why? Because the Centaurs who have been neglected all that time have built up massive numbers and equipment to lay siege on Lion’s arch. I want the same thing happening for the Flame legion invading the Black Citadel if neglected long enough. I want to see Ebonhawke being under siege. Right now, your world is nothing but a feast for players, wading through rewards. Even Orr, arguably the island that should be the most difficult, has been getting karma-trained ever since last year. Give us a world where things actually happen. Give us a MEANING to band together. Daily boss chests are just braindead benefits. Give us a world that ACTS and not RE-acts. Tyria needs a big buff. Your living story gives no meaning to the world, and stuff like the Molten Alliance felt very questionable and arbitrary.

Summary of Part B

Add horizontal progression to the world itself to blend “Quality of life” with “give impact to what we do and what we fail at”. Give us reasons to go out there other than daily chests. Please stop holding our hands. Please stop with “I can do everything on my own, even some group events and for the rest of the time I am part of a big blob slashing at a hitpoint bar”. How should we see the other end of some chains if things are so easy to complete?

Part C) Exploring and customizing our character should not be resctrictive

• Give us incentive to play our characters differently and explore our professions.
  I am one of those people who want to have mulitple sets of exotic armor to play various builds and reset my traits to do so. But build-changing is not viable, even discouraged by the game. I need a trainer for that. Why? I should be able to click a button in my interface which subtracts the 3silverwhatnot and reset my traits.
  You said you don’t want to make people switch their stuff because it doesn’t give them a meaningful connection to their actual build. I disagree; you are promoting mindlocks and kill diversity, and you also discourage people from trying out new things. Insert my complaint of not having a dedicated testing area °HERE°. Because the Mists are not a viable testing ground.
  This is horizontal progression that even benefits you. I pay gems for these extra bags slots to house this armor. I remove money out of the economy to reset my traits. The more I can change this on the class I like to play, the longer I am going to have fun with my class. More fun = more playtime = higher chance to drop more money on cash-shop. It makes no sense why you give us many ways to play a profession only to tell us “choose 1 of the many ways, and stick with it, or level another copy.”

• Allow us to upgrade existing equipment.
  Why should I trash my exotic gear just to get ascended one that is just a minor upgrade and adds infusion slots? Milk more transmutations stones out of me? Why can’t I get the option to upgrade it? Subtract material cost of the exotic and give us the ability to forge an “upgrade kit” with the remaining ascended materials. What has this to do with horizontal progression? Simple: More people will be willing to upgrade more sets of their armor which have already been tailored to how they want to have it, so this puts more emphasis on build diversity. You shouldn’t be locked into one build in very high level fractals because you require the resistance.

• Cosmetics. Do not punish us for how we WANT to look.
  I DO NOT ask for of “you’ve unlocked this stat combination on this piece of armor, so you can switch freely.” If you want a shifting entity to change stats? Get a legendary (and legendary armor WILL come).
  I ask for a skin locker similar to what we already have in the achievement panel and the pvp locker in the mists. Use a transmutation stone for the respective item level to consume a piece of equipment which will then have it’s available in your locker and can be drawn upon indefinitely (just give us sorting options please).

• Achievements should become ACHIEVEMENTS, or at least finally getting to this level.
  With the introduction of A-chests, people start working down all those useless stuff that they didn’t bother before – even to the point where they stop doing things with their guild members. I like that you can get something with achievement points. I just don’t like how it was done and I don’t like how meaningless these achievements are. There is next to nothing that claims; “this player has skill.” The only one I could think of the top of my head is defeating Liadri and having the minipet to prove.
  The vast majority of achievements is just useless. Things that happen over time. But here is an example of what I am direly missing: a 5 tiered achievement for each dungeon path, going:
  “Completed Caudecus Manor Path 1 with everyone in the group wearing equipment of quality no higher than: Exotic – Rare – Masterwork – Fine – Basic” . Oh yes. Let the skill bar rise. Rewards? I dunno, other than “YEAH WE DID IT” how about special skins / titles / whatever to unlock, the further down you are getting. Why everyone in the group? To avoid leeching.
  But there is another thing with your achievements; WvW and PvP players miss out. On a large scale. They want their reward chests as well. Do not force people to do content they don’t want to do… but this addition is going to be very hard to turn around for the better.

Summary of Part C

It all boils down to choice. The more choice a player has, the more is going to be investigated of this choice, come time. If you restrict possibilities too much, players will NOT develop and get to know their class better. Until the point where they leave your game.

Part D) Improving our character should be diversified and easier to access

• Hook new skills to special skill challenges.
  When you introduced the new healing skill recently I was like “25 skill points for a simple healing skill? No challenge? No quest? Just trying to remove abundant skillpoints from the game?” It was a nobrain-click which reeked of lazyness. Any new player or person who levels a new profession is going to ask “why the hell is that thing so expensive and isn’t actually better than any of them?” You shot your own foot with that. No, if you introduce new skills, give us a meaning to get it. Go out into the world or have an instanced skill challenge available at your skill trainers, whatever.

• Alternate weapon skills to choose and unlock.
  I was all giddy back then when I read that certain traits and probably even skills are going to be unlocked with challenges happening in the world and you really need to earn your stuff. What has become of that? Idly smack a guy with a teal symbol above their head. °sadness°
  Allow us to unlock alternative skills for each weapon in the world or through other specific challenges, like mentioned above. Those skills should be very much themed to the skill we already use, usually an inverted option. Example, Ranger sword 2: Instead of Hornet Sting + Monarch leap, simply “learn” to reverse the chain order. That would be a game changer for some people. Or instead of Ranger Dagger 5 of throwing it, the skill becomes a melee attack that thrusts down on the opponents foot, crippling, and then you make a leap backwards to gain distance. There is a ridiculous amount of possibility which is easy attainable by simply inverting the majority of skills or giving them a different, yet thematically fitting utility function.

• Add templates for skillsets and traits.
  It is tedious to click around. It really is. I want to play a different build today? One click should be all I need to do, after saving the trait and equipment before handed. Paying 3 Silver whatnot for the corresponding trait reset? Of course, here, have it. I don’t have a problem with that. I would even spend a SKILLPOINT for every trait reset, that is how dire I want it.

• More Support and (especially) Elite skills.
  I think this goes without saying, but I absolutely want to see any new skill as mentioned before tied to a skill challenge. Hell, you can even make some of the existing skills retroactively available through these challenges. Because why not? You get the sense of investing into the character and then gaining something PERMANENTLY for it after succeeding. Now the question arises, what about choice? I’d totally be fine with to pay a multiple of the originally required amount of skill points to simply skip the challenge. Pay for convenience. Shouldn’t hurt many people who already spent 25 points for an average new healing skill.

• More underwater variety please.
  It boggles my mind how some skills are not being correctly transitioned underwater, and I am growling how restrictive Elite-skill choice is as well. Your underwater combat in general deserves more attention. All underwater combat I’ve seen was outright atrocious. Yours is at least interesting and bearable. And I usually love underwater combat and want more of it.

• Personal instance 2.0
  The hall of monuments is for the past. Bring life to the present, the personal instance. Let us go there whenever we desire, like we go in the mists, and not needing to jump there first with a loading screen that we don’t need (city loading). This would also be the place where you would get all your unlocked account stuff, etc, and perhaps even the place where you re-play the stuff you did in the past.

Summary of Part D

If you give us meaningful ways to expand our characters, we will be more invested in them. A few quality of life improvements will yield a higher frequency of actually USING this accumulated diversity. I will not reignite the subclass versus trait system here, this will be done in a different topic, but your entire trait system definitely needs work to cope with future changes.

Hey guys! I just wanted to note that I’ve updated my post with favourite links in it to include attribution. The attribution means I had to cut down on lots of the descriptions, though, to make up for the character count. (I sort of wish hiding links under text would make the forum not count those characters.) Anyway, it’s looking way more polished now! Here.

Part E) Broaden the game’s horizon to make people play more together

• Redesign the strict 5-man cap in dungeons.
  Just looking into my own guild, it happens so often that we are only 4 people, which makes running a dungeon fall flat, but sometimes we don’t have 10 people to make two groups, so someone always have to be left at home. And no, it is not always possible to say “okay, we run that later” because time constraints are a thing. And no, “just get a pug” is also not the correct answer. If people want to invest their time in a dungeon then they also want to make sure it works well. Pugging doesn’t guarantee that, and also, what is a guild for then, hm?
  I suggest you lower the amount of people to run a dungeon to 4 and let a dungeon be scaled up to 8 players per group. With 8 you might as well make second group, yes, but hear me out: This way you can even enrichen dungeon experience even more by building in additional mechanics and even sub-mechanics that requires one or two people to branch out (like Dredge Fractal. fricking love it!). Plus, you definitely make more people happy who are playing your game. I cannot be the only one in a mediocre sized guild who runs into this problem. How is this horizontal progression you ask? Simple; increasing the accessibility and variety of your content is going to have more people play it.

• Make fun things happen again
  Where is the Bar-brawl? Or the shooting range? Where is Polymock? Why can’t we enter activities as a group, if we clearly can enter a prefab group in a pvp tournament? Why are there no leaderboards for activities? And most importantly; why have you arbitrarily locked some activities down to only be available every few days? If I want to play Kegbrawl, I want to play it now, and not when you decide to. This is time a player is not spending in your game. This is time of a player not enjoying your game. This is time that will make players spend their money elsewhere, because they continue to be disgruntled and shunned away from things that should only act as funny sidetracking.

• Make hearts replayable
  Let us be serious, there are easier and faster ways to get Karma and money than replaying heart events. But this little feature would add us to enjoy going down and play with people, as we are not jus twaiting for them to complete the heart but doing that ourselves. I would even be willing to consider that heart progress should be group-tied, but I guess other people will call this out for leeching. Especially with the following suggestion:
  Remove Karma and coin from Heart quests and introduce “Heart Tokens” which can be used for whatever. We have a Laurel Vendor, a Guild commendation Vendor, I’m sure you can come up with what a Heart vendor should sport easy enough.

• Expand Guild Interface and guild options
  Even many casual guilds have already maxed out everything but there is nothing on the horizon how our guilds are going to be improved. I tell you one thing that is going to have people go crazy: Guild halls. Yes. Give us back the core that was there make a guild the tangible thing in the world. Allow us to build crafting stations, hire guild heralds, trainers, whatever. Showing off a new armor or weapon to your guild members? Quickly meet there. Sitting around a bonfire while waiting for a member to come online for the group? Guild hall. Give us back the social interaction we once had. Neither Lion’s Arch nor the mists are an acceptable alternative to this.

Summary of Part E

You have to remember, that many people still play an MMO simply BECAUSE of the persons they met there, not necessarily because of it’s content. They just hang out and roll with it. If you promote the “do things together” part instead trying to sell this “epic open world experience” that I am still waiting to see then we will stick around for longer. Just because it is a nice place to be. But nowadays there is this looming feeling of being slamming with the solo-player-in-a-big-blob hammer “Made by Arenanet”.

~ ~ ~ No addition, show is over folks! ~ ~ ~

Nike.2631:

Chrispy.5641:

Horizontal Progression for Existing Weapon Skills

I am cautiously interested in this, as it certainly sounds entertaining……

Those two concerns are very valid concerns, there is no doubt about that.

On the First, on the amount of work it will take. If you take a step back and look at the amount of work required to create 4 alternate skills to every weapon skill in the game, that can seem like an absolutely ridiculous amount of work. But, Having 4 Variants to every skill is more of an end goal, not what needs to happen immediately.

What I mean is, is that Anet only needs to do one new skill variant for one weapon each profession. That’s only 8 new skills they have to work on, instead of making 4 variants for all the Rangers weapons at once, forcing them to make 205 new skills just like that (and thats just for the Ranger!!!) That way, Anet can test the systems out as they make it, and make changes and adjustments as they go, and once they feel the system will work, then they can start to make more than one new skill at a time.

The UI work will seem kind of crazy, and the graphic artists would definitely have a work load! If it is too much work, a very simple way to do it would be to just change the color of the border/outline of the skill. A Player would be able to look over at it, and see that Red is their Torment variant, Blue is their healing variant, etc.

On the Second….yeah Trait interaction is definitely going to be a problem with this, and I have no answer to address that.

On the Observation I accounted for that with the Example I provided. Quick Shot always has a retreat/jump back in it, regardless of how the end result of the skill changed. Any weapon with a unique mechanic (class or just weapon) should keep that mechanic.

Lets Take Mesmer Greatsword #2, which is the skill that creates a clone. Every Variant of Mirror Blade should always create a clone, just like the original skill, but instead of its other effect that gives might to allies, it gives swiftness to allies instead, or inflicts bleeding on foes.

Khunvyel.3972:

Snip

Im not trying to talk down any suggestion you made, since most of them are very good suggestions, but, there’s alot of them that have nothing to do with Horizontal Progression, which is the topic of the thread.

These posts about wanting some kind of Faction reputation worry me. It’s one of the easiest things to turn into a grind, and it just doesn’t seem that interesting. There are far more substantial things the devs can implement for horizontal progression than faction rep. Besides, a rank system within the factions doesn’t exactly work too well considering we’re the commander of the Pact in the story anyway.

If a rep system is ever implemented, I sincerely hope we get some of the more important systems in first.

depends on the faction reward

Cliff.8679:

These posts about wanting some kind of Faction reputation worry me. It’s one of the easiest things to turn into a grind, and it just doesn’t seem that interesting. There are far more substantial things the devs can implement for horizontal progression than faction rep.

In many ways Horizontal Progression is fundamentally about “Adding things to do… and incentivizing them in a way that doesn’t blow up your game…”

That they drink player time like sweet spring rain is sorta the point .

That said, the specifics of implementation are key. Assume you need “100 ticks” to get something you want. For me at least the difference between there being 25 activities that can generate a tick giving an average of 4 times each to get the shiny, and there being only 5 tick activities giving me an average repeat rate of 20 times ((grrr)) is the difference between fun and OMGWTBBQ grinding .

Cliff.8679:

These posts about wanting some kind of Faction reputation worry me. It’s one of the easiest things to turn into a grind, and it just doesn’t seem that interesting. There are far more substantial things the devs can implement for horizontal progression than faction rep.

No one likes Grinding……except for the people that like it. Grinding is evil, but it is a necessary evil for the existence of an MMO, because you can’t support a game of that size with just casual players. Thats why everything that involves Vertical Progression should mostly be easily unlocked by Casual Players (things like levels and stats), but everything that involves Horizontal Progression should have stuff for both types of players (things like skins and titles)

Sub-classes as build content game lore

My thoughts on the reason to add sub-classes from previous posts:
1st https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410495

2nd https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410551

For me I don’t see sub-classes as locking or restricting my option when buildcrafting but as a means to deliver new build content (weapons, weapons skills, skills, traits, upgrades(runes, sigils, infusions)) in a packet that explains in game why we now have all this new content. Sub-classes I envision expand the build content without taking away. In this way it’s no different to just expanding the build content. Sub-classes as a mechanism explain why we have this content.

Nike’s The New Masters would be a great way to add and unlock these new sub-classes or masters. This would work fantastic when opening up new area like Cantha or Elona. Surely there is unknown build content in these new areas. Even maybe new profession which could be a new profession or another sub-class to collect.

The main point with how I see sub-classes is their a mechanism for explaining by game lore this new content. Any sub-class that applies bonuses or unlocks and restricts build content choices is purily a players build and not actucally a sub-class. This way sub-classes add to build content giving players the options to build the Battlemage, Auramancer or Elemental Dancer like DiogSilva’s examples.

The biggest plus I see to this system is it’s modular, sub-classes could be added 1 at a time. Sub-classes could be cross-profession (although that one idea I’m not crash hot on).

In truth sub-classes are just professions that overlap other profession themes and favors. Were if they were different professions you would be asking why have both.

This is how I would like to see a sub-class system added

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Bezagron.7352:

Horizontal progression page summary
Lets me know if you think I’ve missed something

Character progression

New Build: This includes;

• New weapons
• New skills including expansion of weapons skills
• New traits
• New stat combinations
• Sub-classes https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543
• New runes and sigils (ThanksTeckos.1305 missed that and I even have a post talking about then https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410128)

Cosmetics: This include;

• PvE skin locker. Similar to the sPvP locker https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406328
• Mini pets. Slots to place mini pets in so they don’t just go to collection and a game that involves mini pets. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406223
• Customising home instance – One main aspect requested is customising player housing where we can build and decorate the house (Thanks Donari.5237 missed that with home instance and player housing)
• An in game Hall of Monuments for GW2 to display achievements in game. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406216
• New skins. Armour / weapons / back items
• More emotes
• Alternate animations – another collection.
• New dyes.
• Weapon dyes – ability to dye weapons
• Some type of armour customisation. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406099
• Item progression. The fractal capacitor was used as an example
• Item enhancement. This could fall under item progression but the example used involved the flamekissed incident. The idea was to be able to enhance the human cultural armour so it could have the flamekissed skin.

Content

• Vanquishing. Example was another mode in dungeons were you have to vanquish all the monsters in the dungeon. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406082
  Another good post on Dungeon vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406646
• PvE map vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407867
• PvE arena https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406767
• Challenge missions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406960
• Crafting – Jaken has writing a interesting write up regarding crafting https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3407102
• Faction progression – Faction missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Order progression – Order missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Further personal story progression
  *Guild progression – adding guild halls

World development

• Louveepine write some great ideas of developing exploration https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407529

Awesome work Bezagron.

Summary bump.

Chris

Am I the only one a bit disappointed… All that this community could think off is generally: “more of the same”. Where are the crazy ideas of some new progression systems? Or suggestions about something that could be copied from other games?

HiddenNick.7206:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Bezagron.7352:

Horizontal progression page summary
Lets me know if you think I’ve missed something

Character progression

New Build: This includes;

• New weapons
• New skills including expansion of weapons skills
• New traits
• New stat combinations
• Sub-classes https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543
• New runes and sigils (ThanksTeckos.1305 missed that and I even have a post talking about then https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/6#post3410128)

Cosmetics: This include;

• PvE skin locker. Similar to the sPvP locker https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406328
• Mini pets. Slots to place mini pets in so they don’t just go to collection and a game that involves mini pets. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406223
• Customising home instance – One main aspect requested is customising player housing where we can build and decorate the house (Thanks Donari.5237 missed that with home instance and player housing)
• An in game Hall of Monuments for GW2 to display achievements in game. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406216
• New skins. Armour / weapons / back items
• More emotes
• Alternate animations – another collection.
• New dyes.
• Weapon dyes – ability to dye weapons
• Some type of armour customisation. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406099
• Item progression. The fractal capacitor was used as an example
• Item enhancement. This could fall under item progression but the example used involved the flamekissed incident. The idea was to be able to enhance the human cultural armour so it could have the flamekissed skin.

Content

• Vanquishing. Example was another mode in dungeons were you have to vanquish all the monsters in the dungeon. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406082
  Another good post on Dungeon vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406646
• PvE map vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407867
• PvE arena https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406767
• Challenge missions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406960
• Crafting – Jaken has writing a interesting write up regarding crafting https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3407102
• Faction progression – Faction missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Order progression – Order missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Further personal story progression
  *Guild progression – adding guild halls

World development

• Louveepine write some great ideas of developing exploration https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407529

Awesome work Bezagron.

Summary bump.

Chris

Am I the only one a bit disappointed… All that this community could think off is generally: “more of the same”. Where are the crazy ideas of some new progression systems? Or suggestions about something that could be copied from other games?

No you are not the only one, but for start i would be more than happy to have at least these added in the game

Nike.2631:

In many ways Horizontal Progression is fundamentally about “Adding things to do… and incentivizing them in a way that doesn’t blow up your game…”

That they drink player time like sweet spring rain is sorta the point .

That said, the specifics of implementation are key. Assume you need “100 ticks” to get something you want. For me at least the difference between there being 25 activities that can generate a tick giving an average of 4 times each to get the shiny, and 5 activities giving me an average repeat rate of 20 times ((grrr)) is the difference between fun and OMGWTBBQ grinding .

Right now, the kind of horizontal progression we really need is something that players can continuously work towards without any kind of time-gating. The kinds of implementation I’m seeing for faction rep involve dailies/weeklies or events. The daily/weekly thing isn’t what we need right now; it’s something you finish within a quick session or two and then for the rest of the day/week, we’re back to where we are now: directionless. The alternative, a system based on being able to continuously raise your faction rep through doing events over and over, just becomes a grind. If they want it to last players a long time, each event wouldn’t give much progress individually. Even worse, this would combine with the fact that there simply wouldn’t be enough variety in events to make it consistently enjoyable. It would get boring quickly, and there would still be a long way to go.

I’m much more interested in forms of horizontal progression that can be pursued at an individual player’s pace, and is built from the ground up in such a way that it isn’t a grind.

HiddenNick.7206:

Am I the only one a bit disappointed… All that this community could think off is generally: “more of the same”. Where are the crazy ideas of some new progression systems? Or suggestions about something that could be copied from other games?

That’s maybe a little unfair. As exciting as “revolutionary” changes are, a lot of work gets done through more “evolutionary” outgrowth, building on existing systems or experiences (when sifting through what other games have done very right).

Just pointing at one of my off-hand thoughts, being able to buy specific shades of dye with karma is actually a bit ‘crazy’… its just not dangerous .

When that perfect revolutionary idea does hit, I’m sure it’ll stir things up quite nicely . But even then we’re looking at a live game, not a blank whiteboard. The best idea since sliced bread will still have to refined (and I really mean “hammered” when I say that) to fit into the environment already in place.

Cliff.8679:

These posts about wanting some kind of Faction reputation worry me. It’s one of the easiest things to turn into a grind, and it just doesn’t seem that interesting. There are far more substantial things the devs can implement for horizontal progression than faction rep. Besides, a rank system within the factions doesn’t exactly work too well considering we’re the commander of the Pact in the story anyway.

If a rep system is ever implemented, I sincerely hope we get some of the more important systems in first.

I don’t think Faction reputation has to necessarily be a grind in and of itself. It could be a vehicle for more content. The idea behind the Living Story and the 2-week cadence is to create the idea that Tyria is a living, breathing world with things going on all the time. It’s not static for a long time and then SUDDENLY HUGE THING!

I think the idea of using the existing Factions (Vigil, Durmand Priory, Whispers, Pact, and all the different races) is another avenue to do something similar. It could be a neat way to have smaller content that shows that while there are major events going on in the world, there are other things going on as well.

Examples of this kind of content would be things like “Acolyte kitten of The Durmand Priory got word that there is an ancient artifact in a cave in Frostgorge Sound. Help Acolyte kitten investigate by searching for this Artifact.” Then there’s a series of events where you meet up with Acolyte kitten , going hunting in the wrong cave but get a clue as to the right one. You go to the right one but some Corrupted Quaggan got to it first and you have to fight them for it. Then it turns out the artifact is broken and you have to go get the remaining piece from another cave that’s guarded by a Champ Quaggan/Krait hybrid that takes a bunch of people to kill. Beat it, get the other piece bring it back to the Priory for study. Tada! You get a bunch of factions points with the Priory and the maybe the Quaggans for protecting them or something and you felt like you actually did something worth doing.

edit: LOL That is a seriously weird word to censor.

Chrispy.5641:

Im not trying to talk down any suggestion you made, since most of them are very good suggestions, but, there’s alot of them that have nothing to do with Horizontal Progression, which is the topic of the thread.

Some of them don’t look like that, indeed. But not only is “horizontal progression” a very loose term, but I have also written some things in there which act as further-growing foundation to even certain horizontal progressions that I have stated throughout my posts.

I actually had to slap my fingers to not post certain stuff which definitely was not horizontal progression and tried to give some of my points the explanation of why I believed them to be horizontal. Again, loose term, and I’m partly sorry for Chris and everyone else who is meticulously reading through all this stuff… but if the end result is worth it, then the only thing I can do is provide thought-through stuff that is hopefully worth a read and remotely understandable.

adubb.2453:

I don’t think Faction reputation has to necessarily be a grind in and of itself. It could be a vehicle for more content. The idea behind the Living Story and the 2-week cadence is to create the idea that Tyria is a living, breathing world with things going on all the time. It’s not static for a long time and then SUDDENLY HUGE THING!

I think the idea of using the existing Factions (Vigil, Durmand Priory, Whispers, Pact, and all the different races) is another avenue to do something similar. It could be a neat way to have smaller content that shows that while there are major events going on in the world, there are other things going on as well.

Examples of this kind of content would be things like “Acolyte kitten of The Durmand Priory got word that there is an ancient artifact in a cave in Frostgorge Sound. Help Acolyte kitten investigate by searching for this Artifact.” Then there’s a series of events where you meet up with Acolyte kitten , going hunting in the wrong cave but get a clue as to the right one. You go to the right one but some Corrupted Quaggan got to it first and you have to fight them for it. Then it turns out the artifact is broken and you have to go get the remaining piece from another cave that’s guarded by a Champ Quaggan/Krait hybrid that takes a bunch of people to kill. Beat it, get the other piece bring it back to the Priory for study. Tada! You get a bunch of factions points with the Priory and the maybe the Quaggans for protecting them or something and you felt like you actually did something worth doing.

I agree that if every time you set out to gain faction, it was done through substantial, non-grindy content, that would be great. What you’re describing sounds closer to a series of personal story missions. The problem is, I don’t see them coming out with enough content like this to keep it from getting boring. If you’re trying to attach it to the living story and not make it its own thing, then what about the actual living story release? Resources going into the Order missions would take away from that, and I think that would do a disservice to both.

Deified.7520:

Another idea I had last night was how you acquire items. You don’t only have to rely on drops from monster and RNG.

Gw2 is a universe full of lore and a beautiful world. Use it! Make finding and build items an adventure instead of something they just drop.

I love that idea, but think of it: not even Legendaries got any adventure, any lore or any interesting quests attached, just boring mats-gathering. It seems that there is little dev-time available for such kind of things

New condition + condition system adjustment

New possibilities and layers of fun can also be achieved through fixing what’s broken or not used to it’s full potential. As i already mentioned in this thread such a thing is condition system. I have two ideas reagarding it:

1. The before mentioned moving of 25 stacks cap from monster to attacker. Each player has a 25 stack cap of bleeding/confusion/torment on any given single monster, but monster itself doesn’t have any cap of how much it can take. So any other player who puts those conditions on it contribues to damage and is not a waste of space for being condition specced.

This makes all those PvE condition builds accually meaningful, may give “zerk warriors” a run for their money, and gives underdogs like necro some teeth. Not to mention all that condition damage gear becoming a viable option.

2. New condition – enfeebled. This is my idea for a new condition. This is a critical-hit and hard cc degeneration condition that stacks in intensity.

Each stack is 2% less chance to critically hit, 3% shorter fear duration, and 4% less chance for hard cc to work. The basic idea behind it is that not everyone has stability in bulks (necro!) and if there’s a boon vs control effects, then why not condition?
On top of that it would challenge all those zeker buids.

The stacking nature of the condition also provides for both a challenge and strategy. You go for full 25 stacks if you want stability level protection from the target, but it’ll cost you cooldown on all those skills you used to get there. Or you can whip up less stacks for more of a gamble, but some stacks in reserve for emergencies.

With this it would also be advised to alter weakness condition. Returning it to former mechanic – chance to half attacks’ damage if it’s not a crit (crits doing full damage always) would be logical as now enfeeble would serve to deal with criticals. Still higher activation chance or larger damage reduction for such a weakness would be advised to balance out the danger from criticals, as well as the fact that enfeeble would be reqired to make it truly shine.

By hard cc i mean:

• knockdown
• pulling
• stun
• blowout

As for distributing between professions, the clear top dog must be necro – he’s got hardest time with knockdowns. I belive rangers should have a few meaningful options for it too.

Thieves, warriors and guardians shouldn’t get much of it, if at all. They all have very viable defense options (stun breaks, thieves tons of evades in skills, guards + wars stability)

Engis, Mesmers, Eles i don’t know so i leave no recommendation here.

HiddenNick.7206:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Bezagron.7352:

Horizontal progression page summary
Snip

Content

• Vanquishing. Example was another mode in dungeons were you have to vanquish all the monsters in the dungeon. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first#post3406082
  Another good post on Dungeon vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406646
• PvE map vanquishing https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407867
• PvE arena https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406767
• Challenge missions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406960
• Crafting – Jaken has writing a interesting write up regarding crafting https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3407102
• Faction progression – Faction missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Order progression – Order missions, armour, skills, emotes
• Further personal story progression
  *Guild progression – adding guild halls

World development

• Louveepine write some great ideas of developing exploration https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/3#post3407529

Awesome work Bezagron.

Summary bump.

Chris

Am I the only one a bit disappointed… All that this community could think off is generally: “more of the same”. Where are the crazy ideas of some new progression systems? Or suggestions about something that could be copied from other games?

@HiddenNick I recommend looking at some to the ideas under Content & Louveepine’s ideas under World development. At the moment I think everyone’s covering existing ideas. I believe we’re all just starting and it early days for this discussion is there any crazy idea’s you have, would love to read them.

Cliff.8679:

I agree that if every time you set out to gain faction, it was done through substantial, non-grindy content, that would be great. What you’re describing sounds closer to a series of personal story missions. The problem is, I don’t see them coming out with enough content like this to keep it from getting boring. If you’re trying to attach it to the living story and not make it its own thing, then what about the actual living story release? Resources going into the Order missions would take away from that, and I think that would do a disservice to both.

Granted, that was a fairly complex series of missions, but it was just an example of what Factions could mean. It doesn’t have to be anywhere near that complicated. It could be as simple as adapting existing quests with the factions directly so there’s more incentive to actually go out into the world and do them, instead of huddling in LA, world bosses and Dungeons.

Ultimately, what I would like to see in the future is a reason to venture out into the existing world after I hit 80 and feel like I’m doing something that matters, in addition to just the Living Story. I remember when I first started playing, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options I had! There was so much to do everywhere! But after you’ve finished map completion and have several 80s, the incentive to go out into other maps is diminished. Despite being beautiful just wander around in, I have no real reason to go into most of the lower levels maps.

Also, I genuinely love the idea behind the Living Story, and would like to see it expanded into things like this. There’s so much lore to be explored and yet has remained untouched thus far. A built in incentive to interact with the various Factions around the world seems like a decent place to start to do that.

Chrispy.5641:

Horizontal Progression for Different Factions
Lets take a tally on some of the many different Factions in Guild Wars 2….

• You got the Priory, Vigil, and Order of Whispers.
• You got the Seraph, the Ministry guard, and the Shining Blade (also the Ebon Vanguard)
• You got the Ash, Blood, and Iron Legion (not to mention all sorts of warbands too)
• You got the College of Dynamics, Statics, and Synergetics.
• You got the Lionguard
• Who knows what else I missed….. (there’s also the Hylek, Skritt, and Largos, and what about the Tengu, Kodan, etc.?!?)

How many of those have special weapons and Armors? not much. We get to buy one armor set for each of the orders, and while there are some weapon sets from other factions….that’s about it.

You want Horizontal Progression? How about giving us up to 10 Faction Ranks for the Orders, and all other friendly Factions in the game (even unfriendly factions in some cases!). When we reach a high enough rank, then we unlock new titles. We can also then Purchase special Faction weapon and Armor skins, using Gold, not new Tokens, or anything else. You can raise your faction rank by doing events that involve those factions or defeating certain bosses.

Doing this, Players can see us with a Title showing our support for a particular Faction, or they can visually see that we Really Support a Particular faction by equiping special Faction Weapons and Armors.

For my Example, lets use the Hylek, for no other reason than talking poisonous frogs just seem awesome.
At Rank 5, we unlock a Title, “Friend of the Hylek”.

At Rank 9, we get a Title called “Ally of the Hylek” and we can now purchase new Weapon and Armor skins, and for the Hylek, those could be some seriously awesome Tribal looking stuffs. You could also buy special Hylek themed Finishers for use in WvW and PvP!

At Rank 10, we get a new Title called “Zintl’s Chosen” (Zintl, being the Hylek’s sun god.), but there can be a catch to it. There can be only one Zintl’s Chosen on any given server, and the one who gets the title is the one with the most faction points with the Hylek. In addition to having a Unique Title, you could have a unique Golden Aura surrounding you, and you get infinite access to the Hylek themed Finisher when in WvW and PvP.

Geting to Rank 10, and keeping your faction higher than everyone elses and being able to compete at that level would take some serious dedication, and are only for those who are that dedicated to the game. However, aside from that unique Title and Golden Aura, casual players can get access to everything else that faction has to offer.

Links to my other Ideas in this Thread
Horizontal Skill Progression ::: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3413290

This is a good idea, but I would rather see the items cost Karma than gold. Gold can be bought, Karma was supposed to be the currency you earned by helping NPC’s and used to buy the items unlocked after you helped them. Karma was a winning strategy that was abandoned at launch for some unknown reason.

I would love to see karma replace all of the superfluous currencies in Guild Wars 2. It’s ridiculous that we have dungeon tokens, fractal tokens, wvw tokens and laurels. Get rid of them, make everything cost karma.

To add to the NPC faction idea. What if your achievements for slaying monsters granted abilities and bonuses when fighting those creatures, in a similar way to WvW ranks. For example:

• Kill 500 Centaurs to gain a rank in Centaur slayer
• Earn minor title that changes as you reach higher ranks, ending in the mighty Centaur Slayer title.
• Each Rank awards a point to spend on one of three trees (Giving a clear choice)
  • Utility – Ranks in Utility grant bonuses such as increased magic find, karma, experience, gold find when fighting Centaurs.
  • Offence – Ranks in Offence grant bonus damage, percentage chance to gain specific boons (might, swiftness, fury, blind, cripple, immobilise) or other abilities when fighting centaurs.
  • Defence – Ranks in Offence grant damage reduction, percentage chance to gain specific boons (Aegis, Protection, Stability, Reflection), or other abilities when fighting centaurs.

I definitely agree with moving the condition cap from target to attacker. That would promote a lot more diversity in the direction of condition builds.

Control builds need some of that too. Extending the above change to non-damage conditions is a good start. Defiant needs to be changed so that the target still receives some penalty from being hit with control effects. Converting them to conditions like chill or vulnerability might be a reasonable exchange.

Elthuzar.9478:

Chrispy.5641:

Blah Blah Blah Horizontal Progression for Different Factions

This is a good idea, but I would rather see the items cost Karma than gold. Gold can be bought, Karma was supposed to be the currency you earned by helping NPC’s and used to buy the items unlocked after you helped them. Karma was a winning strategy that was abandoned at launch for some unknown reason.

I would love to see karma replace all of the superfluous currencies in Guild Wars 2. It’s ridiculous that we have dungeon tokens, fractal tokens, wvw tokens and laurels. Get rid of them, make everything cost karma.

I said ‘Gold only’ because it really isn’t a great idea to make a new currency for every faction in existence in Tyria. But Karma would be a good currency to use for this too,

Khunvyel.3972:

Chrispy.5641:

Im not trying to talk down any suggestion you made, since most of them are very good suggestions, but, there’s alot of them that have nothing to do with Horizontal Progression, which is the topic of the thread.

Some of them don’t look like that, indeed. But not only is “horizontal progression” a very loose term, but I have also written some things in there which act as further-growing foundation to even certain horizontal progressions that I have stated throughout my posts.

I actually had to slap my fingers to not post certain stuff which definitely was not horizontal progression and tried to give some of my points the explanation of why I believed them to be horizontal. Again, loose term, and I’m partly sorry for Chris and everyone else who is meticulously reading through all this stuff… but if the end result is worth it, then the only thing I can do is provide thought-through stuff that is hopefully worth a read and remotely understandable.

Fair enough. And it was worth reading, some of those ideas are good ideas.