Guild Wars 2

Everoyne Talking about Sub Classes (from the last 4 pages or so)

…snip…. (Unless you want me to get the Sherpas….)

As far as skill progression goes, Sub Classes are the Wrong Answer. What should be done (and is currently done) is that all skills in any given profession are made available to everyone in the profession (if they unlocked it, if not, then too bad pal!). Doing something like taking on a specialization should not offer you certain skills while locking you out of others. (while the Trait system does favor one skill’s effectiveness over another when you go down that line, it doesn’t outright lock you out of using any skill you darn well want to)

Chuggs.1682:

Rewards vs. Content

I just want to talk about this design element/philosophy, since I think it is easily blurred but is incredibly important to growing/retaining a player base.

A reward is what you get for completing a task.

Content is what you do and what you have fun with while you move toward a reward.

A lot of the “horizontal progression” ideas thrown out here are purely Rewards. More skins! More dyes! Guild halls! Player housing!

Rewards are important! Very important! But what I would like to see if an emphasis on how Rewards increase the incentive to enjoy content. Because people like games when they get new shiny Rewards, and they like games where the content is fun even if they aren’t being Rewarded, but they LOVE games and stick with games where they are being given fun and fresh things to do, and also get cool new rewards.
…snip…

I completely agree. Thanks for bringing this up.

One focus is on destination — what rewards they can get. But once the rewards is given, a new destination is needed. It get’s empty; they have no feeling of accomplishment other than “wow, new shiny”. They need new shinies. The least filling shinies often come from buying, not playing.

The Journey requires more developer work but provides more substance to players. It engages their mind, and gives them a great, sharable memory.

A successful MMO needs a mixture of both. Right now, GW2 is mostly destination, not journey.

timmyf.1490:

Cliff.8679:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

Honestly, I’m not so sure cloth prices being high is what you should be focusing on. You guys just put out a crafting system that punishes players for crafting with their own materials rather than spending money buying from the trading post. You can justify it as not being a time gate if you like, but I don’t see how that’s acceptable. Maybe a better option would be to fix the ascended crafting system itself, and then worry about playing with material acquisition.

As a counter-point, I’ve been crafting Damask and selling it at a substantial profit. This is the first time crafting has been profitable for me, so I’m happy.

Yep. On day 1, they were worth 25+ gold. Even now, they are hovering around 14 gold. This should still net you a small profit if you buy all the materials yourself.

That right there is how timegating should work.

(and yes, I still call it a time gate)(and Quartz is definitely a time gate, despite having no advantage over any other gear type)

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

instead of creating followers for dungeons (which I believe is not possible since you need intelligent AI for certain encounters other than npcs who are quite stupid) I’d suggest following:

Improve the scaling mechanics and make versions of each dungeon / encounter for 1-4 players. Now I would be able to enter the dungeon with my friend only and have a slightly different experience. Yes, some bosses might feel totally different (easier), but wasn’t this the idea behind scaling in GW2 from the beginning: Monsters get new skills, the more players there are.

BUT don’t forget people who enjoy soloing 5man content. There needs to be an option for not being scaled down to 1 player. It should show in your UI, so that people who managed to solo an instance will get the prestige when showing it on youtube. Why not reward those guys with titles too?

I think a lot more people would try to solo an instance non-scaled, if they learn to play it in a easier version – scaled for 1man.

To give incentive to play with a full group – rewards (tokens) should be best when playing with 5 players. Since bosses have less skills for 1-4 players it’s only logical to be rewarded with less token.

That’s actually a great idea! You’re right, solo-ers need love too, but the thing is how would this work in fractals like swampland or dredge facility? Solo-ing on youtube for bragging rights? That will make dungeons competitive which I think is good, plus it adds a new dimension for dungeons other than “get loot & get out”.

Not that it’s really something that necessarily belongs in a thread about horizontal progression opportunities, but given that crafting has been a hot topic as of the last several pages, I think there’s one thing that I hope ANet bears in mind. Some of your players don’t like crafting. In fact, some pretty much hate it.

It was mentioned several times in the V progression thread as well, particularly given the broken state of acquisition of ascended gear, but while crafting should certainly be considered as an avenue for progression, it should never be considered the only avenue.

I’d fully expect it to be harder to get these henchmen to do what players can, but if GW1 is any guide they can lead to sort of… super-builds that make other players irrelevant.

For me personally, they’d lead me to try out dungeons and fractals where before I just didn’t bother. I’ve yet to set foot in Sorrow’s Embrace even in story mode. Plus it’s a way to get Euryale out of the house once in a while. Don’t really see much of the storyline characters after the first story arc.

I would love to have henchmen or followers, and I would love scalable instances, but I do not think they will be easy things to implement. The dungeons and fractals are designed to require coordinated teamwork to complete in many cases, such as needing 3 players to run bundles at the same time while avoiding traps. I would imagine that would be very difficult to program AI to accomplish that.

As much as I would love to be able to do solo dungeons, or complete them with fewer players, or have henchmen help you, I would rather see dungeons/fractals that require teamwork to complete than instances that consist of mindless fights to get to the boss at the end, just so we can have these things.

That’s not to say I would object to them being added in areas where teamwork is not needed, such as open world areas. I just feel that if this kind of thing was added, they would have to be very careful they did not ruin the good things in the game by adding them, and the coordinated instances are one of those good things imo. If they can design AI that can handle it, then great, but I’m doubtful it will happen.

StriderShinryu.6923:

Not that it’s really something that necessarily belongs in a thread about horizontal progression opportunities, but given that crafting has been a hot topic as of the last several pages, I think there’s one thing that I hope ANet bears in mind. Some of your players don’t like crafting. In fact, some pretty much hate it.

It was mentioned several times in the V progression thread as well, particularly given the broken state of acquisition of ascended gear, but while crafting should certainly be considered as an avenue for progression, it should never be considered the only avenue.

In fairness to them it was one of the only ways they could prevent people instantly getting full ascended with minimal development hours. The requirement for crafting to 500, Gathering your own account bound mats and the time gated mats was enough to prevent the majority of the player base doing it on day one. (Which was half the aim of ascended). I say majority because a few super rich people would be able to but at substantial investment.

The idea was to force people to do some work before getting BIS gear, as opposed to exotics which was instant full set upon hitting 80. If they had made it accessible via Laurels,gold,tokens, all the players who already had all of these would just have instantly upgraded without it so much as being a speed bump to their progress.

As time passes they’ll add more ways, Ideally balanced to not be easier but alternate routes.

JTGuevara.9018:

, but the thing is how would this work in fractals like swampland or dredge facility? Solo-ing on youtube for bragging rights? That will make dungeons competitive which I think is good, plus it adds a new dimension for dungeons other than “get loot & get out”.

Well they could start with classic dungeons, I have no idea how they’d do it in these fractals since these are quite a step up from classic dungeons in the sense that they require teamwork sometimes. (which is a good thing)

They would have to redesign the dungeons so that soloplayers could do it as well, yes this would be a challenge for the devs. Even more so if they’d come up with a nice fun replacement so that the content is still at least equally as fun as the 5man version.

Agreed, there is no need for sacks or backbacks, even flamethrower could have some nice side container (the same for elixir gun), small and flashy (flamethrower could be some jar – like with flaming texture, elixir some fumes etc like on some guns (dire gun).

Chuggs.1682:

Time-gating or soul-binding key ingredients are basically the only way to guarantee profits, because an efficient market will drive the cost of the end-product toward the price of materials. This is because the effort or skill involved in crafting is just pushing a “craft” button, so you aren’t really bringing much value to the table vs. the other 10,000 max level Tailors out there.

Time Gating guarantees that demand will outstrip supply, and thus guarantee profits for crafters.

Soul binding/account binding ingredients also works, but will reward heavy grinders/farmers much more heavily than the common producer. If the grinders/farmers produce enough to drive supply up, you still might not even be able to make a profit this way.

TLDR: Time Gated crafting is an AWESOME solution to a very vexing problem, and although it SEEMS annoying, it is actually really really good for you.

You’re right in that it does exactly what it set out to do, but it’s a band-aid solution that adds nothing of value to the crafting system itself, and the tradeoff is that it harms players that wish to use their own materials to craft, or players who don’t have a lot of money but do have a lot of materials. Izzy says it isn’t a timegate, but it absolutely is a timegate for those players.

There are far better solutions that don’t involve timegating. They need to expand the amount of items that can be created through crafting, and they need to make the ingredients themselves rare and unique to those recipes. Special armor and weapon skins that can only be crafted with a rare drop from Tequatl, for example. It’s also part of the reason I’m pushing for a personal housing/guild hall system that involves craftable furnishings; if done correctly, it can create an entirely new market for crafting that can actually be profitable depending on how they implement it.

But the biggest problem is putting an actual tier of gear stats behind this timegating. That’s not okay. Profitable crafting can be done, but with the kind of game GW2 is (or is supposed to be, anyway), it should come from the crafting of vanity items.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Mikuchan.7261:

Claimable land and required building funds

hide spoiler

If not, one solution could be to have claimable land plots that you can only claim (buy) when you can afford to place a house there (to prevent people from stacking up on plots without building anything). You may need to place money and materials in a building fund. When the building fund is large enough for a basic house, you’re allowed to claim a lot and build on it.
Probably limited to 1 per account.

Plot decay to clear up unused plots

hide spoiler

Important is to have a decay system so that the game clears up plots that are unused.
It wouldn’t be desirable to have a rent.
Instead I think that having a timer of perhaps a month or two would be better.
Each time you visit the house, the timer resets.
When the timer reaches it’s target, the game force-sells the house and plot to clear it up so that someone else can use it.

These are two things I want them to avoid no matter what if they add housing,
having lots of gold but having actually done nothing but flipped or farmed should not earn you a house. It can be part of it and unavoidably will be but you should have to achieve some things within the game to get it.

Avoiding decay systems is partially why I want instanced If I leave this game for 5 years and then come back I expect all my stuff, gear ,land etc to be untouched. This would be horrific for people who want to take a break.

Well, the arguments are for open world housing, as that is what is most in line with the game in my opinion. For open world housing, decay is not optional. Otherwise you will end up with a lot of unused space.
And the force sell returns X% of your value you put into your house to you. So you do end up with practically what you had when you left. Except you need to find a new plot because you didn’t maintain your old.

The reasoning for the building fund is… How the cat do you pay for a house and a plot except with materials and money? Sure you can require karma as well and perhaps that you have a character of a certain race and some other criteria.. But a house should cost supplies to build or it makes no sense really.
No matter if it’s instanced or not.

The reasoning for having open world housing is that Guild Wars 2 is a living, breathing and ever-changing world.
Having instanced housing i weird when the housing can be used to create a more living and breathing world with player villages that collaborate to do stuff and what-not.
I think open world housing definitely is the way for GW2, if it’s made in a good way.
But as Dev said, that’s not easy.

EDIT: Furthermore I don’t see the problem in how you get your gold. A house is not a legendary item, it’s simply a house. What achievements do you need to get a house irl? Money.
And I don’t see needing money as a problem. It’s not about having -the most- money. It’s about having -enough- money.

Mikuchan.7261:

Well, the arguments are for open world housing, as that is what is most in line with the game in my opinion. For open world housing, decay is not optional. Otherwise you will end up with a lot of unused space.
And the force sell returns X% of your value you put into your house to you. So you do end up with practically what you had when you left. Except you need to find a new plot because you didn’t maintain your old.

The reasoning for the building fund is… How the cat do you pay for a house and a plot except with materials and money? Sure you can require karma as well and perhaps that you have a character of a certain race and some other criteria.. But a house should cost supplies or it makes no sense really.
No matter if it’s instanced or not.

The reasoning for having open world housing is that Guild Wars 2 is a living, breathing and ever-changing world.
Having instanced housing i weird when the housing can be used to create a more living and breathing world with player villages that collaborate to do stuff and what-not.
I think open world housing definitely is the way for GW2, if it’s made in a good way.
But as Dev said, that’s not easy.

I don’t think there is any possible way open world housing could work in GW2. The areas weren’t created with that in mind, and it would require enormous revamps of places like Queensdale or Wayfarer’s Foothills or similar areas. It’s just not going to happen. I can almost guarantee you that if/when ArenaNet implements player housing and guild halls, it’ll be through instances. It’s just a necessity at this point, but one advantage that instanced personal housing has is that it allows for a lot more expansion and customization than an open-world system would, as ArenaNet would have a lot more control over what they can implement within the instances for us to be able to customize.

Cliff.8679:

Mikuchan.7261:

Well, the arguments are for open world housing, as that is what is most in line with the game in my opinion. For open world housing, decay is not optional. Otherwise you will end up with a lot of unused space.
And the force sell returns X% of your value you put into your house to you. So you do end up with practically what you had when you left. Except you need to find a new plot because you didn’t maintain your old.

The reasoning for the building fund is… How the cat do you pay for a house and a plot except with materials and money? Sure you can require karma as well and perhaps that you have a character of a certain race and some other criteria.. But a house should cost supplies or it makes no sense really.
No matter if it’s instanced or not.

The reasoning for having open world housing is that Guild Wars 2 is a living, breathing and ever-changing world.
Having instanced housing i weird when the housing can be used to create a more living and breathing world with player villages that collaborate to do stuff and what-not.
I think open world housing definitely is the way for GW2, if it’s made in a good way.
But as Dev said, that’s not easy.

I don’t think there is any possible way open world housing could work in GW2. The areas weren’t created with that in mind, and it would require enormous revamps of places like Queensdale or Wayfarer’s Foothills or similar areas. It’s just not going to happen. I can almost guarantee you that if/when ArenaNet implements player housing and guild halls, it’ll be through instances. It’s just a necessity at this point, but one advantage that instanced personal housing has is that it allows for a lot more expansion and customization than an open-world system would, as ArenaNet would have a lot more control over what they can implement within the instances for us to be able to customize.

Quite correct. The world wasn’t built with that in mind.
But if you take a look at Kessex Hills, ANet has hinted that anything can happen anywhere.
It was probably not on the scale required, but what happened was on a large scale.

Open world housing is not impossible, but as said, it will require a lot of thinking and work.

In the end, if it turns out good, the thinking and work will have been worth it.

And I do want to keep pointing at “A living, breathing and everchanging world” which open world housing certainly would help building.

EDIT: There will also be new areas in the future. We will not always be stuck with only what we have.

Mikuchan.7261:

Cliff.8679:

Mikuchan.7261:

Well, the arguments are for open world housing, as that is what is most in line with the game in my opinion. For open world housing, decay is not optional. Otherwise you will end up with a lot of unused space.
And the force sell returns X% of your value you put into your house to you. So you do end up with practically what you had when you left. Except you need to find a new plot because you didn’t maintain your old.

The reasoning for the building fund is… How the cat do you pay for a house and a plot except with materials and money? Sure you can require karma as well and perhaps that you have a character of a certain race and some other criteria.. But a house should cost supplies or it makes no sense really.
No matter if it’s instanced or not.

The reasoning for having open world housing is that Guild Wars 2 is a living, breathing and ever-changing world.
Having instanced housing i weird when the housing can be used to create a more living and breathing world with player villages that collaborate to do stuff and what-not.
I think open world housing definitely is the way for GW2, if it’s made in a good way.
But as Dev said, that’s not easy.

I don’t think there is any possible way open world housing could work in GW2. The areas weren’t created with that in mind, and it would require enormous revamps of places like Queensdale or Wayfarer’s Foothills or similar areas. It’s just not going to happen. I can almost guarantee you that if/when ArenaNet implements player housing and guild halls, it’ll be through instances. It’s just a necessity at this point, but one advantage that instanced personal housing has is that it allows for a lot more expansion and customization than an open-world system would, as ArenaNet would have a lot more control over what they can implement within the instances for us to be able to customize.

Quite correct. The world wasn’t built with that in mind.
But if you take a look at Kessex Hills, ANet has hinted that anything can happen anywhere.
It was probably not on the scale required, but what happened was on a large scale.

Open world housing is not impossible, but as said, it will require a lot of thinking and work.

In the end, if it turns out good, the thinking and work will have been worth it.

And I do want to keep pointing at “A living, breathing and everchanging world” which open world housing certainly would help building.

EDIT: There will also be new areas in the future. We will not always be stuck with only what we have.

True, but what ArenaNet did with Kessex isn’t anything like what would be required to make personal housing out in the world feasible. All they did with Kessex was add some props to an already existing area. To make personal housing work, they’d need to drastically increase the size and scale of every eligible area to make room, make sure enough of the terrain is flat and able to support new housing structures, adjust creature spawns and events so that they wouldn’t get messed up by player-made buildings…it would pretty much require rebuilding existing areas from scratch. As far as creating new areas, where would they go? The areas around the cities are already accounted for, so any new areas that would allow for personal housing would be kind of in the middle of nowhere at this point…it just wouldn’t make much sense. I think they’d rather give us the feeling that we live in the actual racial cities, or at least around them. Instanced housing allows for this, and also allows for extra variety assuming they implement a system where we can choose what kind of backdrop we would like (within a city, out in the countryside, in a cave, you name it). There’s just so much more freedom for ArenaNet to give us options with an instanced housing system, and it wouldn’t require them to tear apart the entire game and rebuild it to do it.

I agree, I think open world housing is a very cool idea, but it can really only be done in a sandbox-style MMO that was built with that system in mind from the start. There’s still a lot of potential for ArenaNet’s living world that they’re pursuing, but I don’t think player housing is going to be, or even should be, a part of it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

This is definitely the one to focus on. Socio-political Diversification provides a platform to potentially address the other two areas, as well as a near infinite number of other areas.

Promote guild play and expand the current reward set of existing content

If we a had gate/portal within guild halls that allowed members (and guests) to directly travel into a dungeon/instance, by recognising that you are accessing the instance via your guild hall, we could gain the opportunity to unlock new skins, achievements or titles tied to this. This could potentially involve a new skin set for each dungeon, for example. This idea could translate into various areas of the game.

What about alienating solo players? To this I say – if they wanted the new reward badly enough – they can a) join a guild or b) guest with a guild for guild hall access. Enough hand holding. Guilded players form a larger group than unguilded. (Guesting was a feature available in Guild Wars 1) http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guest

Guild halls + PvP
Guild halls can be directly tied to GvG and other PvP modes. Guild Wars 1 saw guild halls also function as GvG maps. Although the scale, format, layout etc. would differ for Guild Wars 2, it is still a very real and useful function.

Guild queue-able world bosses
Provide guilds with the ability to start an instanced version of world bosses such as Tequatl, Claws of Jormag and The Shatterer. Can be queued once per day, you can do these bosses with your guild and challenge yourselves with difficult raid-like content. This gives Arenanet the ability to tweak theses bosses far better at more reasonable player number scales. Tequatl is a decent example of how all world bosses should be.

For example, if 20 skilled guild members take on The Shatterer, he has exponentially less HP than he currently has. but uses a lot more skills and is far more threatening than he currently is. These bosses should be difficult. The current elite-1-2-3-4-5-6-1-1-1-elite-1-1-1 world boss chain simply isn’t fun – it’s just obligatory if you want dragonite ore at a reasonable rate.

World bosses should still function as they do in the open world, spawning regularly; but this gives guilded players and even WvW guilds the opportunity to take a break and do some actual challenging content. Again, participating in guild orientated content can offer new achievements, titles and skins.

Guilds need to be severely addressed in my humble opinion. The multi-guild system was awesome on paper and does work in many facets of the game – but can really hamper and limit our ability to form strong bonds and a sense of community within them. More guild orientated content outside of guild missions (which many of us haven’t bothered with post ascended trinkets) would see people enjoying the game far more. At the end of the day, we play MMO’s because we like playing with (or against) others.

Role diversification.

I bought Gw2 under the premise that I could make a customized hero. That if I wanted to make a venom thief, I would have traits and skills to help me with that build. That if I wanted a tanky thief, I would get one. Now, that’s not the case. Not because it is impossible, but because we are lacking on the skills and traits departments.

So yeah, role diversification please.

MakubeC.3026:

Role diversification.

I bought Gw2 under the premise that I could make a customized hero. That if I wanted to make a venom thief, I would have traits and skills to help me with that build. That if I wanted a tanky thief, I would get one. Now, that’s not the case. Not because it is impossible, but because we are lacking on the skills and traits departments.

So yeah, role diversification please.

You can make a tanky thief. Just make a venom build and you’ll tank every group you’re in!

A lot of people are suggesting and talking about guild and player housing (Including Chris!)

To add to this discussion, I think it would be great if you could own land, buy and sell, trade it with players and stuff, and earn it through competitive play in some manner.

Whether that be which guild could hold points in a pvp setting for a week long event periodically (seasonally, every 3 months) or something else entirely.

I think this would provide an incentive for people to earn the land so they could build on it, or provide a price that the ‘land miners’ couldn’t refuse.

Competition for real estate leads to the worst in online behavior, I’ve seen it in game after game. Whatever system comes in needs to be inclusive, not exclusive. I say that as someone that is in game an awful lot, and likely could pounce some choice land as it became available. I don’t want to feel I burned someone else out of a chance at their dream spot, or be blocked from forming a neighborhood with my guild (though if we can do a different house per alt, then I would love a large variety of architectural style and scale).

Nor do I want some players to be able to lock up the real estate market and charge beyond legendary prices for those lucky few who can then have a hovel if the speculators feel gracious.

Open world housing or player control of who can afford it is asking for a lot of pain. One of this game’s big selling points is its cooperative nature.

However, I’ll concede one aspect of open world housing that works well — cooperative building. Horizons (now Istaria) caused flame wars over the subdivision plots it threw out in the world as people camped the purchase spots for hours to click them first before another camper could. But once you had a plot, you could lay it out to the design you liked (with large building blocks, buildings were on an oppressive scale) and your crafting friends could come along and apply materials to it. Once enough were applied, a new phase of the structure showed, up to completion.

I still think open world is wrong for many reasons. But cooperative large scale building really can be fun so long as it’s not a grind. Horizons world events included building a causeway out to the new subdivision island. Dragons pulled sleds of bricks through the air to hand to masons to build walls and foundations. Teams of foresters collected the lumber needed, with more dragons (playable race) transporting it. It was a big enough project to take a server full of people.

So why not have a guild full of people team up to make their hall? (Or airship or manor or mini fortress or grove of trees or laboratory or mead hall …. ). Go beyond merely gathering influence and time gating it in the guild panel. Have crafters of all disciplines making bits and pieces. Have little Dynamic Events for building with a team relaying key elements to a final spot.

I … suppose my faith in ANet’s vision means I should trust them to come up with viable cooperative open world housing. I just think keeping it instanced among friends will prevent a fractured community.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Snip snip snippity snip

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The skill system will improve over time. With this kind of mix of a class system while making every class can do everything, you need to find the right way to balance it and make specializing in something (damage, defense, or support) more rewarding in the specialized aspect while more punishing in the others. Along with that some of the PvE “inbalances” (such as go DPS or go home) can be alleviated with specialized dungeon designs that center around all that and the PvP meta can be easily changed if the new game modes are designed correctly to require other builds not in the meta to optimize your winning potential. So new skills and traits I dont think will do anything for the game till you guys (anet) figures out what you want to do with the skill system and build around that. Right now you dont and with the new skills I know many players ignored them or don’t use them. When I start seeing new skills that are properly made in a sense to promote build diversity and the current skills/traits are redesigned to promote build and trait diversity, then I will back putting in new skills to the game.

So thats why I pick Sociopolitical Diversification. By making guilds, factions, and player housing have a more importance, you can greatly improve the experience of the game for players in all game modes. This also opens up tons of doors for new content. Some of the most popular mods for games like Skyrim are housing mods. People just love customizing things and making it their own, I feel like this type of thing (with guilds/factions its even better) would greatly help promote guilds, player social involvement, and can offer a way to make various big actions in the game (like killing an elder dragon) feel more rewarding but offering you or your guild specialized thins for their halls, houses, and bases. I still stand by my stance of heavily incorporating things like guild bases and faction bases into zones, dynamic events of zones, and the open world in general. Its beautiful out there and we really need to find ways to get players to move back in there.

Deified.7520:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Snip snip snippity snip

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The skill system will improve over time. With this kind of mix of a class system while making every class can do everything, you need to find the right way to balance it and make specializing in something (damage, defense, or support) more rewarding in the specialized aspect while more punishing in the others. Along with that some of the PvE “inbalances” (such as go DPS or go home) can be alleviated with specialized dungeon designs that center around all that and the PvP meta can be easily changed if the new game modes are designed correctly to require other builds not in the meta to optimize your winning potential. So new skills and traits I dont think will do anything for the game till you guys (anet) figures out what you want to do with the skill system and build around that. Right now you dont and with the new skills I know many players ignored them or don’t use them. When I start seeing new skills that are properly made in a sense to promote build diversity and the current skills/traits are redesigned to promote build and trait diversity, then I will back putting in new skills to the game.

So thats why I pick Sociopolitical Diversification. By making guilds, factions, and player housing have a more importance, you can greatly improve the experience of the game for players in all game modes. This also opens up tons of doors for new content. Some of the most popular mods for games like Skyrim are housing mods. People just love customizing things and making it their own, I feel like this type of thing (with guilds/factions its even better) would greatly help promote guilds, player social involvement, and can offer a way to make various big actions in the game (like killing an elder dragon) feel more rewarding but offering you or your guild specialized thins for their halls, houses, and bases. I still stand by my stance of heavily incorporating things like guild bases and faction bases into zones, dynamic events of zones, and the open world in general. Its beautiful out there and we really need to find ways to get players to move back in there.

Housing and Guild Halls will improve the experience for just about everything, generally, except for the act of running around killing things.

How will Housing and Guild Halls improve on the experience of running around and killing things, which does eat up a rather large portion of gameplay right now?

Ilmatar.6709:

My top 1 woud be this:

Specific Race Titles

- These titles are obtained / unlocked only by playing a specific race.
- When the title becomes available, it will be use-able by all characters in the account no matter what race they are
- There should be 1 Major title for each race
- Example of titles:

- Asura: Lab Genius
– Sylvari: Champion of Pale Tree
– Charr: High Tribune
– Human: Commander of Seraph
– Norn: Hero of Hoelbrack

- Each major title will have 10 tiers, each having its own name (mini titles) which can be displayed only by the respective race once it is unlocked (remember the title tiers in GW1: Kind of a Big Deal, I am very Important, etc.)
- Earning tiers will involve doing various activities in the game like Personal Story, Jumping Puzzles, Crafting, etc. done with the specific race
- Example: Finish all JPs with a Charr, Finish the personal Story with a Charr character, Buy all cultural armors for a charr etc.
- These tiers can be cumulated with the achievements we already have as if you see above, finishing the story or JPs have already their achievements but they are account related not race related.
- So these “new” tiers will make these achievement more specific.

In this way there is not any auxiliary system added to the game but it will build upon the ones we already have

Yes, I want this too!

Race based titles, which are like “little GWAMM’s”.
There could be one title, which is counting how many times character have used race based skill too. It could be like:
- Race based skills used 5000 times.

+1 from me for this suggestion

Chrispy.5641:

Deified.7520:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Snip snip snippity snip

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

.

Housing and Guild Halls will improve the experience for just about everything, generally, except for the act of running around killing things.

How will Housing and Guild Halls improve on the experience of running around and killing things, which does eat up a rather large portion of gameplay right now?

They offer a new reward system for players to get. Furniture, trophies, vendors, etc. Now I’ve posted my idea before, but basically guild halls would not exist in instances like in gw1. If they did a similar gw1 system then towns would be even more dead, they would have to not put in TP, banks, etc. If they did that then they would be pretty useless for a lot of people, like the personal districts in the towns. Basically it would be a combination (my idea) of the faction towns in factions from gw1 and guild halls. There would exist 2-3 guild halls in each zone. These guild halls would have special guild only area they the guild can choose to open to the public and a regular town area. They would be tied to the stabilization of an area selected in the zone for the guild hall. You do more events, kill more unique bosses, and do mini dungeons in said area, the stabilization goes up. There are tiers and each tier unlocks something in the guild hall. It would be the only place in a zone to find a TP and a bank. Could unlock special karma vendors with unique looking gear for level 80s along with rares/greens/blues for lower levels in the area. You can also unlock special structures that give you long buffs that last a considerable amount of time, don’t take the place of any currennt food buffs, and can be used in WvW, dungeons, fractals, etc. Everywhere except spvp (could do a special part of it that gives an increase to glory and what not to make guild halls useful in pvp too). You could also unlock special quest giver of sorts (I noticed a lot of people have requested quest) for a special daily that offers a good reward, but is challenging (in terms of skill, like queens gauntlent. Not just a grind).

You’re right, adding in guild halls wont directly affect killing things, but it could offer a branch point for anet to implement things that make running around the open world and killing things more rewarding for the player, world, and community.

EDIT: Guild halls would be tied to the amount of influence a guild has. The higher level zone, the high amount of influence required to claim and “maintain” a guild hall. It automatically puts guilds in charge of halls so they can’t claim low level ones because it is easier. There would be a influence drain to help get rid of afk guilds/inactive guilds. This influence drain would go down slower of the zone that the hall is in is stabilized. This means lower player count guilds would have a chance of getting a guild hall, but high player count guilds halls would be put in zones that would properly use the higher player count (higher level zones mean harder events, sometimes more people required). If an event fails it could also cause the stabilization to go down more.

Deified.7520:

Chrispy.5641:

Deified.7520:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Snip snip snippity snip

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

.

Housing and Guild Halls will improve the experience for just about everything, generally, except for the act of running around killing things.

How will Housing and Guild Halls improve on the experience of running around and killing things, which does eat up a rather large portion of gameplay right now?

They offer a new reward system for players to get. Furniture, trophies, vendors, etc. Now I’ve posted my idea before, but basically guild halls would not exist in instances like in gw1. If they did a similar gw1 system then towns would be even more dead, they would have to not put in TP, banks, etc. If they did that then they would be pretty useless for a lot of people, like the personal districts in the towns. Basically it would be a combination (my idea) of the faction towns in factions from gw1 and guild halls. There would exist 2-3 guild halls in each zone. These guild halls would have special guild only area they the guild can choose to open to the public and a regular town area. They would be tied to the stabilization of an area selected in the zone for the guild hall. You do more events, kill more unique bosses, and do mini dungeons in said area, the stabilization goes up. There are tiers and each tier unlocks something in the guild hall. It would be the only place in a zone to find a TP and a bank. Could unlock special karma vendors with unique looking gear for level 80s along with rares/greens/blues for lower levels in the area. You can also unlock special structures that give you long buffs that last a considerable amount of time, don’t take the place of any currennt food buffs, and can be used in WvW, dungeons, fractals, etc. Everywhere except spvp (could do a special part of it that gives an increase to glory and what not to make guild halls useful in pvp too). You could also unlock special quest giver of sorts (I noticed a lot of people have requested quest) for a special daily that offers a good reward, but is challenging (in terms of skill, like queens gauntlent. Not just a grind).

You’re right, adding in guild halls wont directly affect killing things, but it could offer a branch point for anet to implement things that make running around the open world and killing things more rewarding for the player, world, and community.

EDIT: Guild halls would be tied to the amount of influence a guild has. The higher level zone, the high amount of influence required to claim and “maintain” a guild hall. It automatically puts guilds in charge of halls so they can’t claim low level ones because it is easier. There would be a influence drain to help get rid of afk guilds/inactive guilds. This influence drain would go down slower of the zone that the hall is in is stabilized. This means lower player count guilds would have a chance of getting a guild hall, but high player count guilds halls would be put in zones that would properly use the higher player count (higher level zones mean harder events, sometimes more people required). If an event fails it could also cause the stabilization to go down more.

Very nicely explained!

Also, Its so nice to see people actually explain their positions with absolutely none of this “It was in an earlier post!” stuff (then they don’t link said earlier post!)…just saying, I’ve read all 34 pages, but,…34 pages is alot of stuff to read through and memorize.

Horizontal progression additions that’d be healthy for GW2 are simple:

1) Scale the WvW achievements to actually all be achievable, because at this rate my 2 year old dog literally lacks the average life span to live long enough to see me complete them. Like that’s not even remotely a joke. In the time it would take me to finish them even my kid will have gone from not being able to say actual words right now, to the developmental stage of understanding how stupid of a concept that is and expressing that to me in complete and articulate sentences.

2) Sell Guild Halls on the gem store. Fill them with basically generic NPC’s that give special “Guild Achievement” lines for each one the guild “purchases” with influence. Now you can go do some specific set of things like any other achievement in some specific area, that isn’t a “guild mission” and gain Guild Accommodations every so many tiers. Ranking up in this Guild Achievement line grants titles every so often as well. Guild Hall’s main purpose would be just to congregate with the guild in an instanced zone, DUEL EACH OTHER, and have access to a few different convenient Asura gates (Lions Arch, Heart of The Mists, etc.)

3) Add a “Championship Mist War” pass to the gem store. This gives players access to a singular unique instance of WvW, and once it’s full it’s full, no more passes get sold. Players get to form teams, designate commanders, and then lock themselves in as Red, Blue, or Green, and it’s basically the pro-bowl of WvW. It lasts for 48 consecutive hours and run only on Sat-Sun. Put an observer mode in for this match up. Be sure to include achievements, titles, and unique rewards that should be seen as “I’m a bad mofo” and not “Yeah I had a lot of free time” like a solid 95% (possibly higher) of every other valued reward currently in the game.

4) Add Elite and Utility skills related to completing specific content. Scatter them around in low population areas, and make it rather difficult to complete the content so that guides are only as useful as the player themself is skilled enough to actually perform the tasks in the instructions. Make it hard. Like, smash the keyboard and cry in a corner for your mommy hard. That way, when you finally get that skill you wanted, it feels like an actual reward and not just another lump of cheese placed directly in front of you.

5) Make ascended crafting materials tradeable and then make ascended consumables that would also tradeable. But ensure they must be crafted by recipes that have to be found and cannot be “discovered”. Make those recipes account bound.

Put simply, focus on making characters stand out because they matter, not because they champ farmed for weeks. Because right now the only fun I’m having with GW2 is in the jokes I share with friends at it’s expense.

I Really Hate the idea of sub-classes.

I also think that most of their strengths could be harvested to build a better system of tutorials that clarify the concepts of role and ensure players have a good starting point for a variety of gameplay modes.

But.

I’ve often found its a poor process to discard an idea until you’ve really tried to make it work… personally. So here is my stab at Sub-classes that I think would dodge or mitigate most of their worst consequences.

Sub-classes are presented as a new type of Grandmaster Trait. These traits are labeled A, B, C, D, etc. for each profession (as opposed to the Roman numerals used for ‘normal’ Traits). They are unlocked by some mildly time consuming gameplay process that is really the LEAST important thing about deciding to introduce them at all. Trainers, unlocked through achievements, quest line, gem store… finding ways to make players pass the time is a separate concern from the abilities about to be unleashed on the playing field.

Once earned, a Subclass trait can be selected as a grandmaster trait through any of the 5 Trait lines. Even if you have 30 points in two separate lines, you may still only select a lettered Sub-class trait once. This one-&-only-one quality is of critical importance, allowing the traits to have sweeping effects without fear of conflicts between them. By allowing them to be selected from any line you preserve the greatest variety of pathways to this system, and try to give players latitude in their buildcraft.

Assured that a character will only ever have one of these traits at a time, the Developers are freed up to be more daring – not in overall power, but in the reach and breadth of the changes equipping the trait triggers. Complex packages of new effects, substitutions, and the occasional drawback. Vertical creep is one of several insidious and destructive problems looming over the whole concept, so the scrutiny directed at these Traits will have to be extreme. But as a bare minimum we know a person migrating into a sub-class has given up the flexibility and potency of picking a grandmaster trait as a down payment on what the package offers.

Weapon choice as it stands now comes close to creating the distinctiveness often sought for Sub-classes. A mace/shield guardian is a thing quite apart from a greatsword guardian or a scepter/focus guardian. Sub-class Traits could use existing weapon choices for the profession, but replacing some or all of their skill-buttons with new attacks as a powerful tool for creating unique gameplay without blocking a more general plan to increase the range of weapons available to each profession. Working from the model of engineer kits, these new skills could have slightly above-average performance, representing the major part of the contribution to effectiveness you would expect from any grandmaster Trait. Or they could be meticulously held on par with current weapon skills and the advantages delivered through passive effects or modified class mechanics.

I would also consider the option of Sub-Class traits imposing a fixed, locked, and absolute Elite skill while the Trait is equipped. While this could just be a hard association with an existing skill (e.g. a spirit-based Ranger sub-class that locks in Spirit of Nature as your Elite Skill), or it could be a new Elite skill unique to that Sub-class. Either way it uses an existing element of character power as the way to deliver FLAVOR rather than POWER.

Most sub-class concepts simply try to mask vertical progression or excuse it with the time taken to acquire it. When I hear the phrase “real progression” touted as one of their virtues, I shudder. My experiences with how full-on boring some dungeons have become now that my mains are running around with 6/6 ascended trinkets and an ascended weapon (much less armor…) makes me extremely concerned about allowing more power creep into the game in any form. But I think the above could provide a template for tightly-themed horizontal diversification.

I still think that a more daring approach to Trait design in general could net most of those benefits with less peril, but if I HAD TO design “sub-classes” for the game, I’d start with these sorts of trade-offs from within the existing framework.

Ilmatar.6709:

My top 1 woud be this:

Specific Race Titles

- These titles are obtained / unlocked only by playing a specific race.
- When the title becomes available, it will be use-able by all characters in the account no matter what race they are
- There should be 1 Major title for each race
- Example of titles:

- Asura: Lab Genius
– Sylvari: Champion of Pale Tree
– Charr: High Tribune
– Human: Commander of Seraph
– Norn: Hero of Hoelbrack

- Each major title will have 10 tiers, each having its own name (mini titles) which can be displayed only by the respective race once it is unlocked (remember the title tiers in GW1: Kind of a Big Deal, I am very Important, etc.)
- Earning tiers will involve doing various activities in the game like Personal Story, Jumping Puzzles, Crafting, etc. done with the specific race
- Example: Finish all JPs with a Charr, Finish the personal Story with a Charr character, Buy all cultural armors for a charr etc.
- These tiers can be cumulated with the achievements we already have as if you see above, finishing the story or JPs have already their achievements but they are account related not race related.
- So these “new” tiers will make these achievement more specific.

In this way there is not any auxiliary system added to the game but it will build upon the ones we already have

I have done a bit of thinking on how to obtain these titles what you are talking about and here is what I have came up with.

I have modified a few of those you put in there too.

If others have better title name ideas, feel free to add/change them

Benjamin.7458:

I have done a bit of thinking on how to obtain these titles what you are talking about and here is what I have came up with.

I have modified a few of those you put in there too.

If others have better title name ideas, feel free to add/change them

I like what you did there and it feels you have done a lot of thinking for this.
I like the requirements you put for obtaining the titles too
They seem fairly long term goal and involves all aspects of the game PvE, PvP WvW.

That Greater GWAMM title made me smile. Really nice done
If they make GW3 then can add Even Greater GWAMM and for GW4 The Greatest GWAMM of All

Anyway, nice work in there. If I find better title names I surely post them.

This suggestion is really easy to implement in the game based on achievements sistem we already have.

Some of those titles names really fit the idea and some are hilarious too especially those who are taken from the characters voice lines : I am six feet tall, it is all mine now, etc.

So to round out the implementation of these titles, you’d need a new “Racial” achievements category, with 5 sub-headers (1 per race of course ). You could see all 5 from any character, but a nice touch would be a small warning “You may not advance these achievements on this character” when viewing any of the 4 tabs that do not align with your current race. Then you’d need a separate achievement for each title with the meta-achievement for the total collection. Finally, many of these achievements need the “Checklist format” that would have kept the whole ‘Stop Scarlet’s invasions in every zone’ achievement from turning into the book-keeping disaster that it did – none of this blind ‘X out of Y completed’ junk when it’s looking for exact and precise tasks – LIST THEM OUT WITH A CHECK-OFF FOR EACH ONE. If that means 50 check boxes to prove you’ve done each and every difficulty level of Fractals with a character of that race, then do it.

Sprinkle it with some achievement points and maybe a few tiers to break up the process into stages and watch us go.

I have to believe that this project has positively miniscule Development and Coding overhead compared to the amount of play time it encourages .

Rin.1046:

I would love to have henchmen or followers, and I would love scalable instances, but I do not think they will be easy things to implement.

Guys what about this: every npc you completed a heart for, will be in your debt. You may call upon the npc for dungeons in the zone. Problem is, would only work for instanced, because the npcs still need to be in the world for other players to complete their hearts.

I support the idea of zone progression. My vision of this:

Each zone have additional bar stating influence of players in each zone. For example let’s day default value is 50% – half of the zone controlled by players, half taken by enemies. Players completing events and defeating enemies makes progress bar goes up to more % to reach 100%. When % reach some gap (ex. 60%, 70%, and so on) this triggers additional events.

Example 60% our influence, 40% enemies – enemies are gathering more in specyfic places in order to increase their numbers and send attack for different camps. Let’s go players and kill enemy where they gather their strenght and prepare for war. Players destroy their supply carts, etc to weaken enemies.
Example 70% our influence, 30% enemies – while we attack enemies on their spot, champions are attacking our villages and destroying our supplies! Go back and defeat them
Example 80% our influence, 20% enemies – Champions are defeated. Different enemy races form one alliance to fight us (ex. Molten Allience), new deadly enemies appear. Other friendly NPCs were kidnapped/forced to join their ranks and we have to fight people were our allies before (ex. quaggans).
Example 90% our influence, 10% enemies – New Alliance is almost defeated. But there is a last hope: powerful shamans summon massive bosses with unique mechanics and really great rewards for defeating them (better than 2 blues and 1 green).
100% influence – zone in players hands. This state is temporary for some time. Players get nice rewards, villagers are grateful for yor help, special NPCs are unlocked with unique receips/consumables/thropies.

I could also give also some examples when players loose fight, but I guess you guys catched the concept already. Ex. when influence of enemies is above 80% there is huge invasion on the whole zone, etc. More influence of enemy – Players have to defend villages, repel enemies, gather supplies, maybe trying some diversion, etc.

Part 2 in post below:

Part 2:

Sometimes zones are forgotten by players, so zone could easily go for 100% enemy influence after some time. This should have greater impact of the world.
Ex. Harathi Hinterlands are occupied by enemy (100% centaurs influence) for some time. This should trigger massive invasion of centaurs to Kryta. Players defeat invasion, get rewards and for ex. each player receive e-mai from Logan ‘thx for help, without you we wouldn’t defeat them. It’s perfect time to deal with centaurs once and for all. I send troops to Harathi Hinterlands, I hope you will help us again to defeat Kryta’s foes.’ Or it could be announced differently by NPCs, however, it somehow guides player, what he can do next, what could be his next goal to accomplish.
Also Heralds in every city should shout about some massive events/invasion, so player are aware of the situation what happens currently in other zones.

Of course zone progression should be tied with achievements, as I stated before, unique rewards, maybe some titles, increasing your rank if you represent your guild/order, etc. Each Zone could have some story, shown some lore by this events, etc.

Well I think zones progression is a good way to introduce more and better content and basically it is based on dynamic events, so not so many new thing need to be developed to achieve this. Also once for some times events could be changed. It could be also influenced by living story (see Kesex Hills transformation), forming alliences with NPC which were hostile before to fight back new enemies, etc.

PS: Sorry for bad english.

Sirendor.1394:

Rin.1046:

I would love to have henchmen or followers, and I would love scalable instances, but I do not think they will be easy things to implement.

Guys what about this: every npc you completed a heart for, will be in your debt. You may call upon the npc for dungeons in the zone. Problem is, would only work for instanced, because the npcs still need to be in the world for other players to complete their hearts.

I am very much in favor of a system like that.

An ‘asset’ option in instances could also allow for a limited ‘henchmen’ functionality.

This link directs you to my original post on dungeon assets.

As for hearts-npcs… I think that there are too many of them. They can’t all do different things. And having them all do the same is kind of dull.

Perhaps the orders would have npc’s to repay their debts to you. And perhaps the living story could leave some heroes to aid you when you are done saving them. Maybe the dungeon npc’s? It sort of makes sense to gain instanced aid by doing instances.

I’ve thought about another aspect of making a zone more interesting.

While I was running around in a zone while being downscaled I thought: now is it exciting to kill that mob over there? Can I get something useful for me (lv.80) out of it? The answer was no. I don’t have the feeling. So what can we do to adress this?

Another “problem” is that RNG feels just bad for most of the players. Some even hate it. How can we make RNG our friend?

What if…

• Each mob-family (Centaurs, Ascalonian ghosts,…) from a zone has a chance to drop something very cool looking. Centaurs could drop a chestpiece which is only a belt which may be the only way to have a bare-chested character.
• There is mob-family specific luck (can be salvaged from mob-specific drops) which increases the droprate of that one specific item above. (Of course there can be whole armorsets, so it’s open for further development)
• Normal mobs would have a really low droprate BUT the droprate can be increased up to a certain point:
• Mobs who have gained bonus-xp by being alive for a while will drop these mob-specific drops regularly. By farming those mobs (you have to move in order to farm them) you can collect mob-specific luck and increase the droprate of mob-specific rewards.

Your progression of mob-specific droprates could be included on trading cards.

To go even further and make it more interesting:

• The unique drop from a mob isn’t the item itself but a treasure map to the location on the map. http://i.imgur.com/udIGku6.jpg
• It may only be a part of that treasure map and you have to have all 4 parts to complete the treasure map
• Now you can compare the treasure map with your world map and find the location this way, or you have to explore the zone until you find the location by accident…
• If you arrive at the location a new event spawns. Most of the time it would be a veteran who needs to be defeated in order to get the mob-specific drop guaranteed.
• The hook: at 10% the veteran tries something shady. He might run away and you have to chase him down to not lose him (he despawns after 1min running), he might spawn a whole group of mobs to take you down. You don’t know what happens. It’s random and dangerous.

I think it’s this idea of an adventure awaiting, that would make me kill that random mob over there. The idea that only mobs who have gained bonus-xp can increase the chance of success would make me hunting down those mobs – but only if I could see the progress via an mob-specific UI.

I think probably the most important thing about this idea would be to make any drop here non-tradeable. Keep the trading post out of this if you want players to explore the world.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’ve thought about another aspect of making a zone more interesting.

While I was running around in a zone while being downscaled I thought: now is it exciting to kill that mob over there? Can I get something useful for me (lv.80) out of it? The answer was no. I don’t have the feeling. So what can we do to adress this?

Another “problem” is that RNG feels just bad for most of the players. Some even hate it. How can we make RNG our friend?

What if…

• Each mob-family (Centaurs, Ascalonian ghosts,…) from a zone has a chance to drop something very cool looking. Centaurs could drop a chestpiece which is only a belt which may be the only way to have a bare-chested character.
• There is mob-family specific luck (can be salvaged from mob-specific drops) which increases the droprate of that one specific item above. (Of course there can be whole armorsets, so it’s open for further development)
• Normal mobs would have a really low droprate BUT the droprate can be increased up to a certain point:
• Mobs who have gained bonus-xp by being alive for a while will drop these mob-specific drops regularly. By farming those mobs (you have to move in order to farm them) you can collect mob-specific luck and increase the droprate of mob-specific rewards.

Your progression of mob-specific droprates could be included on trading cards.

To go even further and make it more interesting:

• The unique drop from a mob isn’t the item itself but a treasure map to the location on the map. http://i.imgur.com/udIGku6.jpg
• It may only be a part of that treasure map and you have to have all 4 parts to complete the treasure map
• Now you can compare the treasure map with your world map and find the location this way, or you have to explore the zone until you find the location by accident…
• If you arrive at the location a new event spawns. Most of the time it would be a veteran who needs to be defeated in order to get the mob-specific drop guaranteed.
• The hook: at 10% the veteran tries something shady. He might run away and you have to chase him down to not lose him (he despawns after 1min running), he might spawn a whole group of mobs to take you down. You don’t know what happens. It’s random and dangerous.

I think it’s this idea of an adventure awaiting, that would make me kill that random mob over there. The idea that only mobs who have gained bonus-xp can increase the chance of success would make me hunting down those mobs – but only if I could see the progress via an mob-specific UI.

I think probably the most important thing about this idea would be to make any drop here non-tradeable. Keep the trading post out of this if you want players to explore the world.

Very nice idea Marcus. To add to the idea, what about making mobs harder to challenge higher level players?

I know they can scale events up based on the number of players playing along, what about they make mobs harder based on the level of players they fight and on a random “alive time calculator”… what about adding this:

“Mobs can learn skills, can learn moves such as dodge and they can learn traits!!!”

They could even spawn extra hard monsters with a full skill bar of “10” (elite included), which could really challenge a player.

Mobs could level up (and gain traits by it) by downing players and they get a downed state as well, making it less faceroll for a player to come out as the winner (I never lost against a mob for a year I’m guessing). They could also level up through alive time: every hour of not getting killed gives them a level up. When a mob reaches level 40 it becomes a “Veteran”. When a mob reaches level 80, it becomes a champion and it does not simply stay at it’s location anymore, but goes straight for the nearest capital city (accompanied by other champions, veterans and lower levels from it’s mob-family), where players have to defeat the champions… or see their cities perish.

“Champion Outbreak Events” could become “Global” events, warning everyone from a certain race that a hostile army is marching for their capital, albeit Rata Sum, The Grove, Divinity’s Reach, Hoelbrak or the Black Citadel. Friendly NPC’s living in cities will go into “War-State”, gathering arms and trying to face the enemy hordes… but ‘if’ they will prevail will depend on you!

We can take the mobs in the Nightmare Tower as a precedent.

There was a nice system in Champions Online that could be introduced and improved upon, and that is their Nemesis system. For those who never played it, you basically made (at a certain level) your nemesis. Your arch villain if you will that you created using the same character creator you used to create your own character (so they could look how you wanted them to look).

You then chose various options for your nemesis (much like your character background in GW2), such as personality type, nemesis archtype (which slected their skill set), minion types (again, this chose the minion’s skill sets), etc. You could even write up a detailed story for them. Then, once done you would gained your first nemesis mission. Further missions would be gained at various stages as you played through the game, and additionally you would randomly get attacked in the open world by your nemesis’ minions. These attackers would sometimes drop clues which lead to further nemesis missions.

At some stage you would discover your nemesis’ master plan and would have to track him/her/it to their lair and stop them, finishing off with you putting them in jail. At this point you could create a new nemisis and the process repeated.

On top of this, there was an end game instance (dungeon/raid/whatever), called Nemesis Confrontation, where you needed 5 players to fight against the game’s main bad guy, and along the way you had to fight each player’s current nemesis, before confronting the main villain.

It was a cool idea and it felt like you had a little more investment in the game. I would love to see something like this in GW2. It could be that you design your enemy, choose their skills and maybe even choose the type of events that are likely to happen (with more options being unlocked through some kind of horizontal progression). Then, while out in the open world the occasional event would trigger nearby your location, that increased your progression. These random events could be done by anyone, like any other event, but you would gain extra benefits related to your arch villain progression. Then, you could throw in special events in dungeons where the arch villain of a random player jumps in to try to cause trouble.

How easy this would be to implement don’t know, probably not easy at all, but I think not only would something like this make you feel a little more connected to the world around you (as it contains a villain you created) and gives you more things to do (such as random events and maybe more personal story quests), but it would also add a level of player created content that would make them feel like they are contributing to the game in some small way. Plus it opens up all manner of horizontal progression options.

@Rin’s Nemesis suggestion:

Whoa this sound really interesting. I think GW2’s dynamic event system (outside and in dungeons too) would be perfect for this. You could also add progression to this…

• your nemesis can only use skills you have unlocked for any character of yours
• he can be cross-profession (Warrior/Ele)
• your nemesis can gain new powerful skills (you don’t have to balance this too much, since it is PvE only)
• you can have a armory-like feature for your nemesis where you can show him/his gear/his skills and traits to other players.

MAAAN, so many ideas incoming…
You can do things with your nemesis which you can’t do for your character, because it’s PvE only. AWESOME.

Think of all the reactions you would get from other players:
“Wow, was this your nemesis? He was pretty stong”
“whoa, that guy was evil reincarnate”
“omg that was hillarious”
“Hey, would you invite me to your party the next time you fight him?”

Mikuchan.7261:

The reasoning for the building fund is… How the cat do you pay for a house and a plot except with materials and money? Sure you can require karma as well and perhaps that you have a character of a certain race and some other criteria.. But a house should cost supplies to build or it makes no sense really.
No matter if it’s instanced or not.

The reasoning for having open world housing is that Guild Wars 2 is a living, breathing and ever-changing world.
Having instanced housing i weird when the housing can be used to create a more living and breathing world with player villages that collaborate to do stuff and what-not.
I think open world housing definitely is the way for GW2, if it’s made in a good way.
But as Dev said, that’s not easy.

EDIT: Furthermore I don’t see the problem in how you get your gold. A house is not a legendary item, it’s simply a house. What achievements do you need to get a house irl? Money.
And I don’t see needing money as a problem. It’s not about having -the most- money. It’s about having -enough- money.

Obscure One.4357:

2) Sell Guild Halls on the gem store. Fill them with basically generic NPC’s that give special “Guild Achievement” lines for each one the guild “purchases” with influence. Now you can go do some specific set of things like any other achievement in some specific area, that isn’t a “guild mission” and gain Guild Accommodations every so many tiers. Ranking up in this Guild Achievement line grants titles every so often as well. Guild Hall’s main purpose would be just to congregate with the guild in an instanced zone, DUEL EACH OTHER, and have access to a few different convenient Asura gates (Lions Arch, Heart of The Mists, etc.)

3) Add a “Championship Mist War” pass to the gem store. This gives players access to a singular unique instance of WvW, and once it’s full it’s full, no more passes get sold. Players get to form teams, designate commanders, and then lock themselves in as Red, Blue, or Green, and it’s basically the pro-bowl of WvW. It lasts for 48 consecutive hours and run only on Sat-Sun. Put an observer mode in for this match up. Be sure to include achievements, titles, and unique rewards that should be seen as “I’m a bad mofo” and not “Yeah I had a lot of free time” like a solid 95% (possibly higher) of every other valued reward currently in the game.

I want to be as clear as possible I wish for Horizontal Progression to be something a person earns through doing varied challenging tasks. The reason I am against gold is twofold
1. It is already required for nearly every goal a player can set themselves material wise this means a person cannot advance several goals separately as they all require a common item. More importantly most current visible rewards require gold.

2. A player can put literally no effort in and still make gold,it can also be bought with gems this allows players who did not put in the time and effort to get the reward.

The Gem stores impact should be absolutely minimal in Progression, go nuts with the skins and unlimited gathering tools but if you can buy the progression/ “end game” then what incentive does anyone have to work for it? You can sell a rug for the house but it better not be better looking than the rug a skilled player can earn. Also selling guildhalls on the gemstore would be a nightmare the player backlash would be horrific. I don’t know why you’d even suggest it?

Conski Deshan.2057:

The Gem stores impact should be absolutely minimal in Progression, go nuts with the skins and unlimited gathering tools but if you can buy the progression/ “end game” then what incentive does anyone have to work for it?

agreed 100%. I think the decision to make Legendaries tradeable was the worst decision in the history of Guild Wars. You never know if someone who wields a Legendary has earned it or just bought it for real money.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

@Rin’s Nemesis suggestion:

Whoa this sound really interesting. I think GW2’s dynamic event system (outside and in dungeons too) would be perfect for this. You could also add progression to this…

• your nemesis can only use skills you have unlocked for any character of yours
• he can be cross-profession (Warrior/Ele)
• your nemesis can gain new powerful skills (you don’t have to balance this too much, since it is PvE only)
• you can have a armory-like feature for your nemesis where you can show him/his gear/his skills and traits to other players.

MAAAN, so many ideas incoming…
You can do things with your nemesis which you can’t do for your character, because it’s PvE only. AWESOME.

Think of all the reactions you would get from other players:
“Wow, was this your nemesis? He was pretty stong”
“whoa, that guy was evil reincarnate”
“omg that was hillarious”
“Hey, would you invite me to your party the next time you fight him?”

Indeed. I never played a single Nemesis Confrontation missiosn (the 5 man end game dungeon) where the group didn’t talk about or have a giggle at each others nemesis. It added a nice social aspect to doing a dungeon that I hadn’t seen in other games. You could also use any costume pieces you unlocked to design your nemesis, so there was an element of progression, but like you say I’m sure a lot more could be added.

I really hope Anet reads this Nemesis idea. The possibilities seem endless… O_O

• people would actually want to play dungeons with other players to see their nemesis
• you could go crazy with creating it: a heavy armor profession who wields a fiery greatsword, uses red guardian walls every 7 seconds, has 3 pets you’ve unlocked with your ranger, can rocketjump while spreading nullfields everywhere… whoaaaa
• player created dynamic events
• could be as strong as the player wants him to be

Imagine how many Trahearnes there would be. Greatsword wielding Necromancer… want have… ^^

My favorite one is unquestionably Sociopolitical Diversification (Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content).

Obviously I would like to have player housing and guild halls, but I think other socio-political aspects should be also enhanced. In particular I would love to see more aspects of Tyria controlled by the players. It would be nice to have outposts that can be destroyed (during Events) and rebuilt by players and guilds using money or crafting abilities, or faction points. Some Events can be modified to be “slower” and integrated with these new features.

For instance:
- Players conquer an outpost from Centaurs.
- Players/Guilds rebuilt (directly, not just by defending workers during an Event) the outpost and build new (optional) defenses (walls, turrets)
- Optional: players can build crafting stations, merchants, etc in the new outpost
- Players/Guilds recruit and train mercenaries all over the world for an assault to a bigger Centaur stronghold.
- When (if) players have enough forces to attack a new event can be triggered to start the assault.

It would be nice to have Events like this one tied to the different Orders, so that players can earn Faction Points by completing the Event (Faction Points that maybe can be spent to defend, improve and “personalize” conquered outposts). Obviously, only some outposts should be conquerable.

This is just an idea, but as I said I would like to see more sociopolitical aspects in the game and more player/guild control over it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Happy New Year! Thanks for being so patient with me. Regarding other dev’s posting during this period it is unlikely as it is the holiday period and I don’t expect them to emulate my behavior.

Note this CDI will only end when we are happy for it to do so ( and by we I mean all of us).

I am up to date with all the posts, thanks for all hard work, ideation, and discussion.

We are in the process of pulling the net in now and so I am going to ask you all to do something very difficult now (As in you won’t feel comfortable doing it). Previously I asked you to name your top three ideas. You did, and then everyone discussed them which led to a refocusing of many of your ideas and the birth of some new ones.

What I would like us to do is pick ONE idea that you would hold above all others as it relates to the community as a whole. Note I to found this very difficult but my one is blow. Also note I consider Wardrobe to be QOL, however any Wardrobe ideas that are Systemic or build on existing mechanics can be included.

Please also understand this is not a vote that leads to development, this is part of the ideation process. I would recommend looking at ideas that are built on existing systems or mechanics within the game. This is a nice to have however. Many have mentioned giving info on the relative weight of each idea that is put forward, we should do this after this phase but to be honest (having given it a lot of thought) I wouldn’t want to see this weighting get in the way of great ideas.

Remember at the end of the day we are not going to give details on what is in dev or what we plan to build. We will talk about what we like however and thus knowing details about Feature Cost is interesting to know but should not be something that inadvertently hampers the CDI or your ideas.

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

I like your top three list, but I would go with profession development first because it affects all players and your meta needs a lot of love. besides, what is better for marketing ads come spring, greatly improved profession designs, combat and end game performance or house building and guild halls?

Sub-classes are bad. If you add specialization then the community will require specialization, that’s simply how we are. Required specialization goes against the very heart of this game.

Housing locales: Ebonhawke (human), Southsun (mixed, Consortium owned), beneath Rata Sum (Asura, could add a big pool of water and reintroduce Sum-surfing)’ not sure on the other races… Thoughts? This would be if there were racial housing zones, and Southsun is an obvious mixing pot type of area were that to be developed.

Oh, and one problem with players/guilds taking over areas of the world… You effectively shut down the events related to those areas. Taking and controlling a centaur area would ‘turn off’ the centaur related events for example that spawn from those centaur. There’s a very real risk off entire event chains never being seen again. Just a thought to consider.

@Rin’s nemesis idea:
Sounds like a good idea BUT this sort of also sounds like the personal story. Aside from the part where the nemesis’ minions attack you randomly, theres character creation, and “personal story” for the missions. Personal Story support/additions have all been abandoned by Arenanet it seems, in focus of Living Story. There has been a lot of requests to add onto the current living story which have not seen the light of day, so I am skeptical if they would take on something like this.

This also sounds similar to the Companion system in SWTOR. Only, the companion is a friendly not an enemy NPC. The companion system you would literally gear out your companion in real gear, I cant remember if you can spec the companion out or not…but your companion choices shaped your gameplay. For example, my Maurader I chose Quinn who was a healer. Or if I wanted, I could have chose a more DPS or tanky companion depending on my gameplay.

I definately like the idea of some sort of companion or nemesis system. Adding story and lore to it…Im just going to guess that it would not be cost effective for arenanet since they have already said in these CDI threads that voice narration is/was too much $$. The story telling could be dumbed down to that of the current method in Living Story, and we know how thats turning out.

So, yes I vote for some sort of nemesis/friendly companion system. Question is: Which way to go with it? More story telling? Or gearing out the companion?

VOLKON.1290:

Oh, and one problem with players/guilds taking over areas of the world… You effectively shut down the events related to those areas. Taking and controlling a centaur area would ‘turn off’ the centaur related events for example that spawn from those centaur. There’s a very real risk off entire event chains never being seen again. Just a thought to consider.

Not necessarily. Would other events kick off, or restart? Lets say you and other players take control of an area from centaurs. Then wouldn’t other events kick off where the centaurs try to re-take ?

And I don’t think its necessarily possible for the players to be so spread out and well organized to control 100% of Tyria. There are other parts of the game still: Dungeons, fractals, spvp, wvw, chillin’ in LA, etc. I think this idea is to get more people into the open world working together but I personally dont think that as a server you will be able to lock down every zone so that events are unable to kick off. Just dont think theres enough players for that.

I wouldn’t put a Nemesis and a companion in the same category

It’s a different thing if you always have a npc around (too many characters on screen, lag, easier instead of more challenging, AI issues,…) compared to occationally fight one in the open world.

A nemesis would be an event for every player who is around. It could be a challenge to create the most powerful Nemesis you can – and to defeat him. Hell, you could even write dialogue lines for him which other players can read in their chat. Time for the player to create content.

VOLKON.1290:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

I have to disagree a little wee bit on the time gate comment… someone had to spend the time, the gating is there regardless although I can see what you’re saying as well. But that’s actually a pretty weak argument… sorry.

However the gating comes into play when you have people that don’t have the in game gold to purchase all the mats nor the real world resources available to convert gems to gold to make up the difference. I think of it as a time gate with work arounds. The gate is in crafting yourself. The work arounds are purchasing off the TP with earned gold or doing the same with purchased gold.

I’ll have to echo this with a lil bit added. If the purpose of a time gate is to keep the hardcores from running away from the casuals (so to say) they allowing gold to bypass it completely invalidates the gate. Silk has become a secondary time gate that does this exact thing. Casuals cannot go out and farm 300 silk per day, nor do they have the resources to buy as much. Thus effectively the gap between the hardcore and the casuals is only widening, which is the exact opposite to ya’lls intent. I am baffled by this as we were told something was black and it turns out white, yet there seems to be no concern….why?