Guild Wars 2

Khisanth.2948:

There is actually already an event like this in the game although it doesn’t give anything particular at the end.

Then there was the stuff for getting the 2012 Halloween back piece.

Yep exactly, something along the lines of the old Halloween event. But more specific to zones of the same or lower level-ranges of the player and something easier to discover through playing and exploring and simply stumble upon rather than getting an ingame mail about it.

And with the forum-limit I forgot to put – if there’s an issue with how to handle the different classes unlocking skills from the same skill-quest, here’s 1 more idea:

Every Vet has 1 new skill of each class to offer.
But in battle the Vet’s profession changes depending on the class of the player who triggered the event. So if a Mesmer spawned the Vet, it’d use Mesmer-skills + the new mesmer skill. If a Necro spawned the Vet, it’d use Necro-skills + the new necro skill.
If other people with the capture-item of different classes participate and beat it, they still unlock the respective skill of that Vet for their own class.

Chris,

Aww, you remembered that I asked you for an Art CDI! Too bad you forgot my name! LOL Still pretty cool that you remembered!

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/exclusive-interview-chris-whiteside-cdis-part-3

Immanuel.1560’s Idea ::: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3462132

Ronah.2869:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Chrispy.5641:

How would you address the fact that many people do not play PvP in any way, and thus are locked out of skills under the system you proposed?

Edit : And there are Some people who only play WvW, should they be forced to play PvE content and do Jumping puzzles in order to unlock new skills as well?

I like this idea, if people have that major a concern about not being able to unlock the new skills you could make it that each of the mini-titles unlock one skill for your account (non specifically). So that you’d only have to do it all if you want everything. Having the Grandmaster title awarding a unique skill and maybe other rewards too would be nice.

Wvw,Pve and Pvp are each an aspect of gameplay mastery should require you to display skills in all three areas. Plus it adds a unique reward for genuine skill that can’t be bought.

I’d consider tweaking the group events one, I believe I’ve just barely completed over 3000 events total group events accounting for maybe 500 of them in the year and a half the games been out., so 300 might be a better target.

As for fractals, as the level will go up it wouldn’t be a concrete goal so I’d specify a specific level, say 40? or the current max of 50?

+1 Conski Deshan for this
you could make it that each of the mini-titles unlock one skill for your account
Plus it adds a unique reward for genuine skill that can’t be bought

But Even with your solution Conski, it still locks players out of gaining access to all skills because, they don’t want to do Jumping Puzzles or WvW or PvP or Killing Mega Bosses or Exploration stuff. What your solution, and the original idea will do is create an Elitist climate throughout all areas of the game.

I’m not actually against, I’ll go learn to be better at PvP so I can kill more players so I can unlock that skill. But, I am in that demographic of players that would consider themselves Hardcore Players.

BUT, for the Casual Players, many of which can’t find the time investment to even complete one item on that list given a year of time, It locks them out of quite a bit of content related to using more skills. If those skills have the slightest whiff of being more powerful than regular skills, then you will see the forums light up on fire with angry players. You will see alot of casual players leave the game, and Guild Wars 2 will generally be much worse off for it.

Sure, it would increase build diversity,…for the 5% of players that can actually finish all of those tasks. But for the other 95% that might finish one or two, but never all of them, they are going to feel left out.

I am following this thread closely and I wanted to mention that a huge and important part of going for a fun Horizontal progression is to deal away with the grind. Guild Wars 2 has to shed its Grind Wars 2 and Buy Wars 2 titles.

In order to shed these perceptions and achieve a true horizontal progression, you need to do a few basic items I don’t see discussed here.

1. Make it easy/easier to gear your character(s). Getting rid of soul-bound items in sake of Account bound items is a long needed step.

2. Introduce a skin locker. You had this in Guild Wars 1. There should be something like this in Guild Wars 2. Currently, I have 0 motivation to buy any skin from the Cash Shop, primarily, cause I cannot get unlimited uses out of them.

3. Consolidate your gearing philosophy. Items should be available to all players where-ever they play. Mainly, ascended gear should be available, ALL OF IT, at the fractals vendor, at WvW for Badges of Honor, for Laurels at Laurel vendors, etc.

4. Consolidate your currency via a currency exchange shop. A place where you can change dungeon tokens for laurels, Fractal tokens for badges of Honor, etc.

5. You need to add new mechanics in game. You had these in Guild Wars 1. Enemies that were immune to physical damage, or immune to spells, or immune to cold, immune to burning, etc. This added great depth to the gameplay. Why is this gone?

TLDR: You still have a lot of work to do in the fundamentals of the game. These changes are QoL changes and game play mechanic changes.

Chrispy.5641:

Immanuel.1560’s Idea ::: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3462132

Ronah.2869:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Chrispy.5641:

How would you address the fact that many people do not play PvP in any way, and thus are locked out of skills under the system you proposed?

Edit : And there are Some people who only play WvW, should they be forced to play PvE content and do Jumping puzzles in order to unlock new skills as well?

I like this idea, if people have that major a concern about not being able to unlock the new skills you could make it that each of the mini-titles unlock one skill for your account (non specifically). So that you’d only have to do it all if you want everything. Having the Grandmaster title awarding a unique skill and maybe other rewards too would be nice.

Wvw,Pve and Pvp are each an aspect of gameplay mastery should require you to display skills in all three areas. Plus it adds a unique reward for genuine skill that can’t be bought.

I’d consider tweaking the group events one, I believe I’ve just barely completed over 3000 events total group events accounting for maybe 500 of them in the year and a half the games been out., so 300 might be a better target.

As for fractals, as the level will go up it wouldn’t be a concrete goal so I’d specify a specific level, say 40? or the current max of 50?

+1 Conski Deshan for this
you could make it that each of the mini-titles unlock one skill for your account
Plus it adds a unique reward for genuine skill that can’t be bought

But Even with your solution Conski, it still locks players out of gaining access to all skills because, they don’t want to do Jumping Puzzles or WvW or PvP or Killing Mega Bosses or Exploration stuff. What your solution, and the original idea will do is create an Elitist climate throughout all areas of the game.

I’m not actually against, I’ll go learn to be better at PvP so I can kill more players so I can unlock that skill. But, I am in that demographic of players that would consider themselves Hardcore Players.

BUT, for the Casual Players, many of which can’t find the time investment to even complete one item on that list given a year of time, It locks them out of quite a bit of content related to using more skills. If those skills have the slightest whiff of being more powerful than regular skills, then you will see the forums light up on fire with angry players. You will see alot of casual players leave the game, and Guild Wars 2 will generally be much worse off for it.

Sure, it would increase build diversity,…for the 5% of players that can actually finish all of those tasks. But for the other 95% that might finish one or two, but never all of them, they are going to feel left out.

I saw the forums light up in fire because of the need to go in WvW in order to get Map completion so… nothing new in this field

This system is a long term goal for horizontal progression, if you feel forced to do it, it means you are a compeltionist which takes out the part of being forced to do it. Compeltionists are only in one way: hard core gamers.
So, the casuals will do what they can while the completitionists will do everything.
As simple as that

- Players want challenge…. this is a long term challenge
- Players want things to make them different hen others…. this makes them different then others because they get skills that can’t be simply bought with skill points earned from champ loot boxes
- Elitists don’t want all the noobs to get it – this system allows this (expl: if you are not good at JPs you will not be a GWAMM)
- The casuals want to have at least the hope they can do it…. this system give them that hope.

I haven’t done the Jumping Puzzle title in SAB but I see people with that Mastery in Applied Jumping title. Do you think I mind? no, becasue i am not good at those.
I see people wearing the back pack skin from TA aetherbalde path.. Do you think I mind? No because I don’t like non solo-able instanced content

To sum it up, your is a personal point of view and it may be shared by others, but the meaning of challenge is to do things you are not normally good at and try to develop yourself

If you bought GW2 just to play WvW, that was your choice. Instead of selling you the WvW part separately like GW1 would have done, they sold you 3 games in one: PvE PvP, WvW. What part of it you like to do it is simply a personal choice not and enforcement
To get GWAMM in GW1 you needed to max titles resulting from PvP and PvE as well including dungeons and HM vanquishing. One for the hardest ones was The cartographer title which could not be done without TexMod. To know about TexMod you needed to be more then just a simple casual player.

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

You could even throw out in the PvE world random Champions that enter the world from one side, simply walk across and out the other if they’re not defeated. It would be up to the players to recognize, band together and defeat this champion to get an unlock that way. Don’t announce it, just have it happen.

So an open question: If you don’t announce it, how do players who want to progress their character down these new paths of exciting character progression know what to do it, or how to progress? …
And if the champion isn’t available, how do we message to players that the system of progression to advance their character isn’t available at this time? …

In Gw1 there were Zaishen Challenge Quests. IN Gw2 we could have Order Challenge Quests. The Bounty could be a way to hunt the champion down and get a chance of aquiring the desired loot or skill.

Maze.1902:

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

You could even throw out in the PvE world random Champions that enter the world from one side, simply walk across and out the other if they’re not defeated. It would be up to the players to recognize, band together and defeat this champion to get an unlock that way. Don’t announce it, just have it happen.

So an open question: If you don’t announce it, how do players who want to progress their character down these new paths of exciting character progression know what to do it, or how to progress? …
And if the champion isn’t available, how do we message to players that the system of progression to advance their character isn’t available at this time? …

In Gw1 there were Zaishen Challenge Quests. IN Gw2 we could have Order Challenge Quests. The Bounty could be a way to hunt the champion down and get a chance of aquiring the desired loot or skill.

We could also still have Zaishen Quests since they’re still around. I think utilizing them alongside the Orders could offer even more to do.

Ronah.2869:

Chrispy.5641:

Immanuel.1560’s Idea ::: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3462132

Ronah.2869:

+1 Conski Deshan for this
you could make it that each of the mini-titles unlock one skill for your account
Plus it adds a unique reward for genuine skill that can’t be bought

But Even with your solution Conski, it still locks players out of gaining access to all skills because, they don’t want to do Jumping Puzzles or WvW or PvP or Killing Mega Bosses or Exploration stuff. What your solution, and the original idea will do is create an Elitist climate throughout all areas of the game.

I’m not actually against, I’ll go learn to be better at PvP so I can kill more players so I can unlock that skill. But, I am in that demographic of players that would consider themselves Hardcore Players.

BUT, for the Casual Players, many of which can’t find the time investment to even complete one item on that list given a year of time, It locks them out of quite a bit of content related to using more skills. If those skills have the slightest whiff of being more powerful than regular skills, then you will see the forums light up on fire with angry players. You will see alot of casual players leave the game, and Guild Wars 2 will generally be much worse off for it.

Sure, it would increase build diversity,…for the 5% of players that can actually finish all of those tasks. But for the other 95% that might finish one or two, but never all of them, they are going to feel left out.

I saw the forums light up in fire because of the need to go in WvW in order to get Map completion so… nothing new in this field

This system is a long term goal for horizontal progression, if you feel forced to do it, it means you are a compeltionist which takes out the part of being forced to do it. Compeltionists are only in one way: hard core gamers.
So, the casuals will do what they can while the completitionists will do everything.
As simple as that

- Players want challenge…. this is a long term challenge
- Players want things to make them different hen others…. this makes them different then others because they get skills that can’t be simply bought with skill points earned from champ loot boxes
- Elitists don’t want all the noobs to get it – this system allows this (expl: if you are not good at JPs you will not be a GWAMM)
- The casuals want to have at least the hope they can do it…. this system give them that hope.

I haven’t done the Jumping Puzzle title in SAB but I see people with that Mastery in Applied Jumping title. Do you think I mind? no, becasue i am not good at those.
I see people wearing the back pack skin from TA aetherbalde path.. Do you think I mind? No because I don’t like non solo-able instanced content

To sum it up, your is a personal point of view and it may be shared by others, but the meaning of challenge is to do things you are not normally good at and try to develop yourself

If you bought GW2 just to play WvW, that was your choice. Instead of selling you the WvW part separately like GW1 would have done, they sold you 3 games in one: PvE PvP, WvW. What part of it you like to do it is simply a personal choice not and enforcement
To get GWAMM in GW1 you needed to max titles resulting from PvP and PvE as well including dungeons and HM vanquishing. One for the hardest ones was The cartographer title which could not be done without TexMod. To know about TexMod you needed to be more then just a simple casual player.

Wow, GWAMM was COSMETIC, there were no skills to be learned. Why are you not undrstanding that?

Skills, which can be horizontal progression, also have a hint of Vertical progression in them because a single Skill can make or break a build. And I find it hard to believe that you are completely okay with letting a player that is more hardcore than you have access to a skill that makes his build better, which gives him the ability to kill you more than you can kill him in WvW. Locking players out of a skill because of a multi-year longterm goal is the wrong way to do it!

I don’t mind the cosmetic part of this idea, but the Skills is a big, giant NO GO to me.

Here’s a question: as new systems are implemented to enhance the experience on new skills etc, what are the chances of making them retroactive? That is, once we have new fun ways to accomplish stuff, why not revise older content to reflect the new system? Sure people that already got the current skill sets might feel miffed that they had to do it the old “boring” way, but the game needs to progress and attract new players. Plus we can always roll an alt to play the new version.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

The current system of skill points right now isn’t bad, I think it’s great but there’s a problem when skills are introduced later in the life of the game and a player has already done all skill challenges. His ways to get new skill points are via level up or tomes. Level up can be from anything and most day one hardcore (and even less hardcore) players have already unlocked all current skills and still have dozens or hundreds of skill points stashed. So when you introduce a new skill, it’s just a question if we want to buy it or not through the GUI.

If we had to do, say, five skill point challenges it would be cool… but they’re all done already. So it doesn’t give a sense of “awesome” when purchasing new skills even if we did cool skill challenges a while ago for those points we use right now.

So, I think you’ve already painted yourself in a corner with your skill points system. It was great from a new player perspective but not from a 100% map completion perspective.

My best idea would be a quest item that unlocks a skill dropped from a chest coming from a world boss at the end of an event chain. Similar to how temple karma vendors work. Upon using that item, it would unlock one specific skill per class so there would be event chain A for skill A, event chain B for skill B, etc. This way, nobody can use the least resistance path to obtain all their new skills. However, this means one new event chain per new set of skills… a bit more work than right now, but it would be a great opportunity to tie-in some interesting lore as well. I think it could be a win-win situation.

Once unlocked it would be available inside the GUI and purchasable with skill points like the other skills. (note : the event chain could unlock a skill challenge at the end as well to help alleviate the cost of that new skill for new players)

Those event chains should also give the same rewards as temple events currently give to prevent them from being impossible to do in the foreseeable future. (note : could also be an idea to simply introduce new skills inside current world boss/temple events as well so it would save a bit of work short term)

As how to announce this, first a letter is sent to all players via mailbox to inform them of the new event chain just like you do already with Living Story. Secondly, there should be a town crier in each major city giving infos on locations of these event chains. Also, ~15 minutes before a specific event that town crier should pop a ping signal on map and/or message on screen/in chat (just like Scarlet’s invasions) (option to turn off/on whichever should be given in F11 options) and announce in-game (chat bubble + speech) the event chain.

I already use a third party app for all temple/world boss/rare chest events to know exactly when they’ll be happening so I don’t have to wait around. If the feature would be in-game, I wouldn’t use a third party app.

Another idea would be to completely change all skill challenges and make them give skills directly instead of skill points thus removing one currency from the game. Multiple skill challenges of the same level could give identical skills (per example, all level 5 skill challenges of all zones could give the same skill set so norns won’t have different skills than charrs). For level up, give laurels instead of skill points. For items requiring skill points to purchase, switch it to a currency we have already (like laurels or something else).

This other idea brings a slight problem in regards to players doing only WvW though. They’d have to go PvE for skills.

I read the Transcript to that Video earlier today. Definitely provides some interesting insight for how all this works. You guys should spend the hour it takes to listen to the video, or read the interview by following the link above the video. Its all interesting stuff!

Chrispy.5641:

But Even with your solution Conski, it still locks players out of gaining access to all skills because, they don’t want to do Jumping Puzzles or WvW or PvP or Killing Mega Bosses or Exploration stuff. What your solution, and the original idea will do is create an Elitist climate throughout all areas of the game.

I’m not actually against, I’ll go learn to be better at PvP so I can kill more players so I can unlock that skill. But, I am in that demographic of players that would consider themselves Hardcore Players.

BUT, for the Casual Players, many of which can’t find the time investment to even complete one item on that list given a year of time, It locks them out of quite a bit of content related to using more skills. If those skills have the slightest whiff of being more powerful than regular skills, then you will see the forums light up on fire with angry players. You will see a lot of casual players leave the game, and Guild Wars 2 will generally be much worse off for it.

Sure, it would increase build diversity,…for the 5% of players that can actually finish all of those tasks. But for the other 95% that might finish one or two, but never all of them, they are going to feel left out.

That was why I suggested not making the unlock specific, if there is a skill for your build that you need you can do the easy challenge and get the skill, if you just want all of them for completions sake you’d have to work for it. 1,2,3,9,10 are all completable with low skill and time investment with only 6 and 7 having the potential of actually locking someone out due to skill. 8/10 should be sufficient I feel.

I know the whole doing what you like to get what you want thing was a draw but I feel there should be a limit, you can get plenty of stuff that way already. As for the time it takes, well I feel that should be part of the progression we’re trying to get more gameplay out of the content so giving you a goal to play towards fits that.

On a related but also separate note I’d like to bring up the topic of
Rewarding skill and specific gameplay
A note before I start, playing a casual amount of time does not necessarily mean the player is unskilled, so I will be differentiating the two.

Currently a significant amount of goals and rewards are just buyable, with slower methods to obtain many of them. These are usually things that just require time but not skill. As such are not favorable to “Hardcore” or Casual players.

I would like to see the introduction of more skill based goals, these are usually a you did it or you did’nt objectives, so lets say an hour long instance, do it successfully you get the reward, fail you get nothing. This as an alternative to the drip gain methods currently in place, i.e you accumulate a token or currency.

Another form of skill based goals that do use currency is rewarding the currency on successful completion of the objective (but not as in dungeons with chests at certain parts). This could be applied to jumping puzzles, or Wvw objectives, each unique puzzle you complete would award 1 token and the more tokens you have the better item you can buy. For WvW each unique tower/ camp capped could give 1 then each Keep 3 and Stonemist 5. The key here being it is a once only award, the player must then move out of their initial comfort zone to improve, you do all the easy jump puzzles then you have to move on to harder ones.

Liandri is another example, I beat all the people before her but only managed to barely get her to the second stage before dying each time, As a result I got nothing to show for it and that is good. It gives clear meaning to what the person with a Liandri mini acomlished.

Other skill based ones that could be added are, Survive x in a hostile environment could be tiered with a specific reward at each tier.
An instanced arena where you have to solo existing vets and champions from the open world by yourself with rewards based on progress there. (Could be open world so you could let players watch and they may learn from others progress).

Basically Challenges where there is risk to the reward. There’s the chance you won’t get it. As you don’t have to then time gate the challenge for the primary reward (you do for the secondary rewards as we learned from the queens gauntlet deadeye farm), it allows both casual and hardcore players to experience and attempt a new piece of content in a timely fashion.

Specific gameplay rewards
Before I started playing guildwars 2 I did’nt realize how much I would actually miss these.
That is if you spend all your time doing WvW you get specific rewards that are only obtainable from Wvw, they can’t be bought or unlocked with an alternative currency you have to do that activity if you want that reward.

I can see fractals benefiting hugely from something like this applied in a manner similar to how Pvp ranks work, each 10 fractal levels you unlock a new tier of fractal based rewards which can then be purchased with pristine fractal relics, the lock here isn’t the currency it is getting to the level to unlock the merchant, which feels more meaningful to me anyway.

This has two sides of course, on the upside a player will be able to clearly work towards their goal knowing what they have to improve in to get it, You managed to do every JP? people will know that as you have the reward for it that can only be gotten from it.
The possible downside is that some people will be " I cannot or will not do this activity but I want the reward it gives". They may have a point I don’t know but personally it feels like wanting everything without consideration for the skill and effort others put in to get the item.

As I was coming up with ideas to answer the question of: Which ONE content/suggestion type would be best for the game in improving horizontal character progression? I started thinking about how player housing could interweave into other aspects of the game.

Then I thought: What better exercise for planning this than to write my own set of imaginary game update notes?

DISCLAIMER: Despite my tone or choice of words in this post, I am not a developer. If you didn’t gather that already.

Introducing…

I overdid it just a lil’ bit.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Chrispy.5641:

But Even with your solution Conski, it still locks players out of gaining access to all skills because, they don’t want to do Jumping Puzzles or WvW or PvP or Killing Mega Bosses or Exploration stuff. What your solution, and the original idea will do is create an Elitist climate throughout all areas of the game.

I’m not actually against, I’ll go learn to be better at PvP so I can kill more players so I can unlock that skill. But, I am in that demographic of players that would consider themselves Hardcore Players.

BUT, for the Casual Players, many of which can’t find the time investment to even complete one item on that list given a year of time, It locks them out of quite a bit of content related to using more skills. If those skills have the slightest whiff of being more powerful than regular skills, then you will see the forums light up on fire with angry players. You will see a lot of casual players leave the game, and Guild Wars 2 will generally be much worse off for it.

Sure, it would increase build diversity,…for the 5% of players that can actually finish all of those tasks. But for the other 95% that might finish one or two, but never all of them, they are going to feel left out.

That was why I suggested not making the unlock specific, if there is a skill for your build that you need you can do the easy challenge and get the skill, if you just want all of them for completions sake you’d have to work for it. 1,2,3,9,10 are all completable with low skill and time investment with only 6 and 7 having the potential of actually locking someone out due to skill. 8/10 should be sufficient I feel.

I know the whole doing what you like to get what you want thing was a draw but I feel there should be a limit, you can get plenty of stuff that way already. As for the time it takes, well I feel that should be part of the progression we’re trying to get more gameplay out of the content so giving you a goal to play towards fits that.

And then when a balance patch comes out that makes that skill not worth as much as it is in the meta at that time, but a different skill that you could have unlocked, but didn’t becomes the new best thing? Suddenly that 8/10 becomes the most infuriating statistic in the world to the millions of players that got skill A instead of Skill B

You’re still forcing players to play through content that they don’t want to play through, and not only that, you’re forcing them to Grind Grinding isn’t a bad thing, but when its an un-fun grind that you would have never done under normal circumstances?

Getting players to play more should be one thing. Forcing them to play so they can still be effective is a different thing entirely, and should stay out of this game.

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

DarkWasp.7291:

• Black Lion Delivery Dolyak – Don’t have enough time to run from your house to the trading post representative in the center of the neighborhood? Select “Deliver Black Lion Goods” in your inventory options while you’re out exploring to have a dolyak make the trip for you. The delivery price is 10 silver. You may also opt to use dolyak delivery in your auto-crafting UI should your buy order for materials be fulfilled while you are away or offline.

I like this as a general Quality of Life Improvement. And a higher cost like 10 Silver ensures that Players aren’t abusing the system, and also gives those poor Dolyaks some rest!

everything else I don’t really have an opinion on, but they are all good ideas.

Chrispy.5641:

And then when a balance patch comes out that makes that skill not worth as much as it is in the meta at that time, but a different skill that you could have unlocked, but didn’t becomes the new best thing? Suddenly that 8/10 becomes the most infuriating statistic in the world to the millions of players that got skill A instead of Skill B

You’re still forcing players to play through content that they don’t want to play through, and not only that, you’re forcing them to Grind Grinding isn’t a bad thing, but when its an un-fun grind that you would have never done under normal circumstances?

Getting players to play more should be one thing. Forcing them to play so they can still be effective is a different thing entirely, and should stay out of this game.

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Alrighty lets keep the idea but remove the skills as the reward and have some cosmetic items instead.
I liked his idea, tying the skills in was an afterthought because it seems to be what some people want its not a personal interest for me.

I will say I’ve played games (Mabinogi) where getting the “elite” skills for your class was one hell of a journey (Ice Spear, Fireball, Thunder, Final Hit, Shock) Which involved a mixture of a treasure hunt, soloing certain dungeons and hunting down specific bosses.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Chrispy.5641:

And then when a balance patch comes out that makes that skill not worth as much as it is in the meta at that time, but a different skill that you could have unlocked, but didn’t becomes the new best thing? Suddenly that 8/10 becomes the most infuriating statistic in the world to the millions of players that got skill A instead of Skill B

You’re still forcing players to play through content that they don’t want to play through, and not only that, you’re forcing them to Grind Grinding isn’t a bad thing, but when its an un-fun grind that you would have never done under normal circumstances?

Getting players to play more should be one thing. Forcing them to play so they can still be effective is a different thing entirely, and should stay out of this game.

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Alrighty lets keep the idea but remove the skills as the reward and have some cosmetic items instead.
I liked his idea, tying the skills in was an afterthought because it seems to be what some people want its not a personal interest for me.

I will say I’ve played games (Mabinogi) where getting the “elite” skills for your class was one hell of a journey (Ice Spear, Fireball, Thunder, Final Hit, Shock) Which involved a mixture of a treasure hunt, soloing certain dungeons and hunting down specific bosses.

I support that idea 100% as long as the skills are left out.

Also, Skins and new Looks is the way for Players in GW2 to tell other Players “HEY, I’M BETTER THAN YOU”, even though the character’s power and skills are all inside of the same limits. Using skills for that purpose has worked in past games and worked very well, but, imo its not a good fit for Guild Wars 2.

As a general sentiment, I’d prefer anything that permanently unlocks character gameplay affecting benefits (new skills, new weapons, heck, maybe even new runes) to mostly confine itself to individual segments of 3 hours or less. It would be painfully easy to separate the greater body of players from a perceived Elite (no matter how balanced and equivalent the new options might be) with long paths of activity. I say 3 hours on the idea that once a player learns about the new thing to pursue, keep in the realm of “a full afternoon” of play to access it.

Other rewards can and should be tied to longer journeys, but we’ve already seen the discontent spawned by the length of path involved in acquiring items from the Ascended tier. I’d rather not perpetuate that. Long paths to look the way you want are established fair game. Getting your character set up to work the way you want shouldn’t be a chore.

I’d also mention vehement opposition to unique Order skills. It would be too easy to place players in a position of uninformed and irrevocable choices. It’s tolerable to have uniformed choices if they are easily altered later. It can be interesting to have irrevocable choices as long as they are well-informed. But both at the same time gets you people still pressing a year later for the ability to swap race because it meant a lot more to how their characters play than the character creation screen actually explained.

My idea for new skill acquisition would be mix of dailies and specific challenges. Here’s how it would work:

There would be certain activities, with progressing difficulty levels that would net you points for unlocking the skill. New type of points, not old skill points.

For example jumping a puzzle that is easy would net you one point, harder one 2 pts. hellish one 5 pts.

you could daily get points for each challenge of each difficulty only once, and you could cap it at some amount of points you deem fair.

And here’s where the fun starts. Hardcore fans of certain activity will simply go for that one activity alone, taking on tougher challenges, for more points. Not so skilled players will got for easier challenges of all types to get to their goal.

Among possible challenges i would most definitely include pit fights. Today i played my norn ranger and i had lvl 16 personal story “the semifinals” (of big brawl challenge to get back at old enemy). Rarely did i enjoy personal story so much as i did that one. Arena fights are something that should be build upon!

Back to main subject. Challenges might include:

Affore mentioned Arena fights
Fractals (reward based on difficulty)
Jumping puzzles
Tequatl
Crafting a potion that gives it from rare ingredients
One point per certain number of events completed.

Sorry if ideas ain’t best, mighty tired atm.

Nike.2631:

As a general sentiment, I’d prefer anything that permanently unlocks character gameplay affecting benefits (new skills, new weapons, heck, maybe even new runes) to mostly confine itself to individual segments of 3 hours or less. It would be painfully easy to separate the greater body of players from a perceived Elite (no matter how balanced and equivalent the new options might be) with long paths of activity. I say 3 hours on the idea that once a player learns about the new thing to pursue, keep in the realm of “a full afternoon” of play to access it.

Other rewards can and should be tied to longer journeys, but we’ve already seen the discontent spawned by the length of path involved in acquiring items from the Ascended tier. I’d rather not perpetuate that. Long paths to look the way you want are established fair game. Getting your character set up to work the way you want shouldn’t be a chore.

I’d also mention vehement opposition to unique Order skills. It would be too easy to place players in a position of uninformed and irrevocable choices. It’s tolerable to have uniformed choices if they are easily altered later. It can be interesting to have irrevocable choices as long as they are well-informed. But both at the same time gets you people still pressing a year later for the ability to swap race because it meant a lot more to how their characters play than the character creation screen actually explained.

Nike said this very well, as did Chrispy on previous posts. New skills should ideally not be put behind new gating mechanics, but if they are, it should be a relatively quick process.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am back at work now and was just enjoying the last few days of my vacation.

It is awesome to see you all discussing the ‘Journey’ side of Horizontal Progression with Colin. Once that discussion has finished I will help us put a proposal together for both the ‘Journey’ and the ‘Reward’ and we can go from there.

Meanwhile Lee from GW2 Hub has posted an interview with me about the CDI. If you get a chance check it out and enjoy the fruits of your hard work:

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/exclusive-video-interview-chris-whiteside-cdis

Chris

Now I know this is sort of a no go for ArenaNet because it’s not unique enough but I never really had the feeling of a journey in GW2 and I know why. I even said something about it in the beta forums I think.

In most MMO’s you do quest, they send you all over the world. You learn to know the NPC’s, what they are doing, there story and so on. In the end you can get a unique reward for it. But even while doing it there can be unique rewards. The pet tame function in GW2 is not very dynamic with a predefined list of pets but with a more dynamic system it’s even possible people tame pets the designers did not think of because that animals spawns for a specific quest.

Anyway, as you can see traditional quest send you on a journey over the world and they can give very specific rewards designed an unintentional. GW2 does not have that element so much because they don’t have the more traditional quest.

Making more elements more dynamic (sandbox) also means people find there own rewards developers did not even think of. Like my pet example showed.

So if it’s rewards and journey you are looking for think about more dynamic (sandbox) system and traditional quests.

DarkWasp.7291:

Boast challenges — In certain parts of the world you may partake in boast challenges that hinder your character while you attempt to do normal content. Currently we have added two challenges to Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateu.

The challenge in Wayfarer Foothills involves disabling downed state (if you would get downed you get defeated instead) while attempting to survive combo kills. Every time you draw fire from five or more enemies and defeat them you gain a point. But watch out! Competive norn will sneak up and ambush you during your most stressful moments.

The charr in Diessa Plateu are seeking out the toughest cook of all time. Accept their challenge and you’ll find yourself dressed like a chef with only a frying pan for a weapon. With greatly reduced armor levels and a unique set of frying pan skills you must vanquish 50 enemies of 7 different varieties before the time is up. Complete the task in record time for a greater reward.

Temporarily, the rewards for completing boasts are one, two or three champion loot bags depending on how well you did.

---

Wasp’s notes:
Boast challenges were an idea I had a month or so after release because I felt we needed an open world alternative to hardmode that does not separate you or the zone instance from the other players fighting normal enemies. I would suggest filling the worlds with these until they can be incorporated into a 200% world completion system.

While flavorful and entertaining… they’re also easily abused/side-stepped/trivialized by having a friend or six along with you doing the heavy lifting after you’ve hit the necessary critters hard enough to get kill credit. You also don’t want the boaster getting frothing mad when another player in the zone just happens by and pitches in. When the point is being able to boast of your prowess, you want to be very sure no one can second guess that it was really you who did the deed…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Deified.7520:

I think we should all take a moment to thank Chris Whiteside. Whether or not our ideas or suggestions see the light of day, hes been on these forums almost every day during the holiday/vacation. Its good to see that type of dedication with an employee of any company.

So thank you Chris for your hard work during this CDI!

I would like to thank you all for spending your time and rocking it in making GW2 the very best game it can be!

Chris

Thanks Chris and Colin too!

Hope you all had a chance to check out the links I posted in this thread and are inspired for the new year! Can’t wait to see all my amazing suggestions implemented in April 2014!

Yours Truly,
Swagger

Postscript, You all are very welcome! Also, don’t hesitate to give me a unique in-game title in honor of my contributions!

Nike.2631:

While flavorful and entertaining… they’re also easily abused/side-stepped/trivialized by having a friend or six along with you doing the heavy lifting after you’ve hit the necessary critters hard enough to get kill credit. You also don’t want the boaster getting frothing mad when another player in the zone just happens by and pitches in. When the point is being able to boast of your prowess, you want to be very sure no one can second guess that it was really you who did the deed…

Good feedback.

I have been trying to think of ways to overcome this issue, as it is level 80s and new players are already not mixing well on PvE maps (with all the rage coming from any deviance on the champ trains). However, I do think it’s very important that open world content works its way into becoming an end game. When we first got all hyped up about GW2, the PvE map features excited us and we hoped for a long future with them.

On Vanquishing:

I wonder if we couldn’t get some sort of nice Vanquish Mode by setting them inside Dungeon maps rather that open world zones.

In addition to keeping the size of space to be cleared more manageable, it also gives solo players a chance to actually see and explore some of this terrain that might otherwise be going to waste for that player. Leverage existing assets for use by another segment of the player-base.

Basically remove or downscale/replace the boss encounters with single-player appropriate challenges and give people the chance to really explore these spaces without the worry that the instance owner is about to leave and the whole thing will shut down and boot you out. It even allows some of the features built into the Dungeon maps to be better used than they are now: I believe some of them have mini jump puzzles in them that don’t actually do anything. Make those puzzles part of the Vanquish mode with a veteran critter or a chest (or both ) at their conclusion.

Rewards could be unique to each map as suggested for vanquisihing outdoors, and you could potentially grant a small number of dungeon tokens – not anything like a full 5 man run, but enough to help the player feel like they’re involved and making progress. Maybe around 5-10 tokens depending on the estimated amount of time the vanquish run will take. Or even incorporate a time trial: finishing get you 5 tokens. Finishing really fast gets you 10 .

I hope I’m not to late…and that this hasn’t been mentioned..if it has relegate this post to the trash heap!

One of the things that I enjoyed the most in GW1 was the way some weapons looked as better quality ones were obtained.

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ancient_Scythe

This was not available for every weapon, however, I enjoyed the search for obtaining these items….

Another point to horizontal rewards was the ability to color your own weapons, either to match your outfit…or to display wealth (again in GW1 black or white dyes used for dying you weapons).

Please do not add new skills or traits.
This game was made with the philosophy of not having too much skills to simplify class balance and gameplay. Doing it in a game where you alone can do damage and support is even worse.
What GW2 desperately needs now is REASON to use some set of skills.
We need content that pushes us to bring and use support and control skills in battle.
That pushes us to ASSIST besides get the guy up when he is downed or roll to save our own kitten.
And that content needs to FILL the world.They can’t be inside instanced content…
Why some low level areas are nearly empty since we have the down-level system up?
That’s the question….

Other important thing is currency.
Please, do not add too much currency into the game.
It forces people to do content they don’t want to.
If you still think multiple currencies is good, maybe you can have the best of the two worlds by making a currency exchange system.

I really hope all this discussion will bring some good horizontal rewards that comes from new content that is all over the existing world and not in an instanced one.

Sorry my bad English!

I really enjoyed that interview, Chris. I’d be very interested in the opportunity to chat with more devs, but I totally understand their reluctance. If you’re investigating new technology to help streamline these discussions, it might be helpful to ensure there’s some ability for the community to self-police offensive or aggressive comments.

Forums can be toxic, but I’d like to think that’s a vocal minority that could be easily silenced with the right functionality.

Oh, and Phill- your English is good, no need to apologize!

First, I’ve been somewhat critical of the ideas presented on this thread by Orpheal. I must, however, give him credit for a very well-written, thoughtful proposal which he posted outside this thread. His vision for the game is very clear, but it is not my vision. Inspired by his fine work (and that of others, Nike especially) I thought it would be worth the time to flesh out an idea that I’ve been pushing, Order Missions.

Where Orpheal is redesigning core functionality of the game – changing the way leveling, classing, traits, and skills work – I choose instead to take threads and concepts we’ve seen in game and expand them. I’ve been very much in favor of Order Missions for this purpose, and this is my proposal for one way they might work.

The Vigil – Vigil Assault

Order of Whispers – Infiltration Puzzle

Durmand Priory – Fractured Histories

Rewards
There are two types of rewards for completing Order Missions. Once per Order per day, receive coin, XP, karma, and an Order-specific reward (Vigil Assault: dungeon tokens, Infiltration Puzzle: badges of honor/jumping, Fractured Histories: Pristine Fractal relic).

In addition to the daily rewards, every single completion, even multiple times per day, progresses a new Faction track for each Order. While you will still be limited to only your own Order’s weapons and armor, Order Faction will unlock titles and rewards at periodic levels of completion. The top 100 players for each Order (region-wide, meaning top 100 NA and top 100 EU) can wear a special title, reassessed weekly, to show their mastery: Eternally Vigilant, Masterfully Crafty, and Historically Knowledgeable. (I’m sure somebody else can do better with these titles.)

Hope you guys like it!

@ timyf I think we need to be careful about tieing gameplay to Order choices. If they do go down the path of Order missions I don’t think players should be excluded based on a personal story choice they may have made over a year ago. I already don’t like that members of the Order of Whispers have unique NPC interactions making them feel like the superior choice for lore hounds.

I like the idea of title progression unlocking merchant options (this was used well in WoW with factions and EotN even used this with racial armour/weapons/consumables). I don’t like the idea of title progression being tied to skill effectiveness. We saw this with Ursan Blessing in GW1 where players were excluded from groups if they didn’t have rank x or higher, the grind didn’t feel like a choice, you had to do it if you want maximum efficiency. Power level items (skills and traits) should be low hanging fruit while the cosmetic and convenience items can be the long term goals (titles, cosmetic items, convenience items, consumables etc).

I thought Belcher’s Bluff had an interesting skill acquisition method – defeat the skill to earn the skill. It would be interesting to see that expanded on in GW2 for new utility skills. Skill points were neat but usually boiled down to channelling or auto-attacking an NPC and the end result was a generic skill point. Would it be too much to have skill specific challenges throughout the world? I remember reading prior to launch that the game had a skill/trait acquisition method similair to that. Why didn’t that make it into the game?

Shiren- all my Order Missions are available to all players. Order gear – as is the case now – would still be available for only your order. Sorry if that was unclear.

I want to tackle something that was sparked by Chris desire for housing and more guild orientated content, and a Massively article about it.

It’s a common thread that’s in all of that kind of content, Non-Combat Activities.

Stuff to do that has nothing to do with whomping things over the head. Sure combat is fun and all, but after hundreds of hours of it it just grows old, ya know?
And for my money, Jumping Puzzles is one of the best things I’ve seen come out of this industry in a very long time. I love me some jumping puzzles.

Variety is the spice of life, and alas there isn’t much in GW2, and what there is is somewhat clunkally implemented.
And so I have some ideas on the matter, some of which I have been over before but it bears repeating.

-

Activities Panel
There should be an activities panel as there is with WvW/sPvP and Achievements, where on this panel not only highlight activities out in the world to make them easier to find, but allow instant access to certain mini-games from anywhere in the world, just like you would for WvW.

A one stop shop for all your non-combat activities needs.

-
Mini-Games
The current implementation of mini-games is clunky at best.
Going to LA and talking to an NPC is a major pain in the backside, and an unnecessary step to go through. Sometime you just want to play a game wherever you happen to be, and not lose progress and have to port back again and again. I kind of hate LA.

In addition to being a tab in the Activities panel, every week should have a random assortment of mini-games that rotate out each week. Almost every mini-game that has every been in the game should be on this list, including holiday mini-games, and the Super Adventure Box. (which after watching Adventure Time, I finally got the joke)

Any game that has multiplier will que you up until enough players have qued up, at which point it will give you the prompt to go do it. ie, just like queing up for WvW.
Anything co-op can have your whole party que up so you can stay together, and fill in any missing slots.

The idea is just to make mini-games much easier to get into/find without a middle man/NPC.

-
Jumping Puzzle Races
And old idea of mine, and it’s what you think.
Have once a week instanced versions of one of the jumping puzzles in the world, accessible via the Activities panel just like mini-games, where the objective is to race through it in a certain amount of time, for Bronze-Silver-Gold rewards based on time.

Your given stock skills so there is no cheating, and to even it out so that level does not matter.
This is an entirely solo experience, so that other players can’t foul up your run.

However, to make things much more interesting this is also accompanied by a Score Board. Your personal high score is put on the score board fore everyone to see, you can redo it as many times as your want, and at the end of the week the top scorers per server are given and decent reward.
(Your also rewarded per run, something modest but worthwhile. Your mainly in it for the chance to win the weekly race.)

The weekly rewards besides Gold and EXP, could be tokens that you can save up for a variety of prizes. Everyone who participates gets some tokens at the end of the week, but naturally the winners get a lot more.
And some of it stuff you can get is unique, like mini-pets, or how about a Boot skin that have wings. Maybe a transformation tonic, etc.

On a side note, yes I know that the Wintersday JP did have a score board, only thing is that Anet forgot to actually include prizes for the winners, which essentially made the score board pointless.

It’s a way to have a little friendly competition and hone thous jumping skill prowess.

World Activities
One of the things that really bother me, is that after playing awhile your seriously run out of things to do.
What I’d like to see is a steady addition of activities to do out in the world that don’t have anything to do with combat, and are bloody PERMANENT.
Seriously, no more temporary content, it’s not funny anymore.

So what kind of activities? All sorts of things.
Such as in the Shiverpeaks regions you could go Skiing, even having Norn Ski Resorts with Charr built Ski-lifts to get you to the top of the mountain.
Each resort could have three different paths that range in difficulty, from the bunny slopes to the shear cliff dives.

Or how about Fishing spots. At various water spots you can sit down and go fishing, each with their own types of fish which range in difficulty to catch. Fish could be an actual food item, that is an ingredient in a number of new Chef fish recipes.

And how about Deep-Sea Diving. Swap into your trunks, and go diving looking for treasure using a sonar device. And once you’ve found it, the difficult part is getting it back to the surface. Maybe some treasure requires multiple people, each grabbing a handle and having to rise simultaneously. Could be a guild event.

Heck, how about Beach Volleyball. Get together with 4-10 guild mates and play on the beach.

There could also be very races specific activities, like Polymock in Rata Sum.
Or raising Sylvari Hound pups in the Grove. (or maybe a Plants vs Zombies mini-game, yeah I saw what you did there)
Curling Bowling in Hoelbrak.

And so on and so forth.

-
They don’t need to be big, or have a ton of depth, they just need to be momentary fun and just something different from the norm.
They should all whenever possible also have some kind of reward, like a little bit of EXP and Gold. Naturally events would still be better, but something, a token reward.

The main point is to gradually build up a host of activities that a player can do, strewn all over the world. So that you have a bunch of content that you can go back and forth between and occupy yourself while waiting for larger, more substantive content to come along.

Also, show the locations of these activities in the Activities panel, as well as a short description of what it is. And in the world, use a UI indicator to show that this is an activity and not something else.

Nike.2631:

On Vanquishing:

I wonder if we couldn’t get some sort of nice Vanquish Mode by setting them inside Dungeon maps rather that open world zones.

In addition to keeping the size of space to be cleared more manageable, it also gives solo players a chance to actually see and explore some of this terrain that might otherwise be going to waste for that player. Leverage existing assets for use by another segment of the player-base.

Basically remove or downscale/replace the boss encounters with single-player appropriate challenges and give people the chance to really explore these spaces without the worry that the instance owner is about to leave and the whole thing will shut down and boot you out. It even allows some of the features built into the Dungeon maps to be better used than they are now: I believe some of them have mini jump puzzles in them that don’t actually do anything. Make those puzzles part of the Vanquish mode with a veteran critter or a chest (or both ) at their conclusion.

Rewards could be unique to each map as suggested for vanquisihing outdoors, and you could potentially grant a small number of dungeon tokens – not anything like a full 5 man run, but enough to help the player feel like they’re involved and making progress. Maybe around 5-10 tokens depending on the estimated amount of time the vanquish run will take. Or even incorporate a time trial: finishing get you 5 tokens. Finishing really fast gets you 10 .

first I thought this is bad because you won’t take out the people from the open world, but I really think that your arguments are totally valid. I love that idea actually. Soloplayers have no reason to visit those maps, even though the maps are wonderfully designed.

A lot of possibilities:

• open all paths at once with less enemies in each path
• hide a few chests but guarded by stronger enemies
• scavenger-hunt (Priory mission)
• optional: guard a historian (Vigil mission)
• sneaking sections (Order of Whispers stealths you and you need not come near to patrolling enemies)
• hardmode / challenge for soloplayers totally possible now
• even time trials

awesome idea (as mostly) Nike!!

It’s only… I don’t think that Anet designs content for soloplayers only. I wish they did, but I think they set their priority on group-content.

Chrispy.5641:

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Who talked about more powerful skills? maybe the new skills are purely some new cosmetic animations for the exiting ones. Is that sovereign you would agree with?

For example, the seed turret for silvary is pretty simple now: a flower. How about a new skill that looks like a toxic spore and shoots other type of ammo.
This could be enough for making a player feel different without making it more powerful.

Ronah.2869:

Chrispy.5641:

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Who talked about more powerful skills? maybe the new skills are purely some new cosmetic animations for the exiting ones. Is that sovereign you would agree with?

For example, the seed turret for silvary is pretty simple now: a flower. How about a new skill that looks like a toxic spore and shoots other type of ammo.
This could be enough for making a player feel different without making it more powerful.

Sort of like for example, instead of my Mesmer clones puffing away with pink butterflies, but instead they are black crows. Something like that.

a bit offtopic, a thought of healing in the game and making support more important:

The idea is to greatly buff regeneration, making it much stronger, but at a price:
Each regen-tick on you that heals you depletes the value of your next self heal for the same amount. Your self-heal power would regenerate when no regen-boon is on you, but only slowly.

Alternatively seperate “Regeneration boon” into

• the old Regeneration
• a new boon: Power Regeneration

Only Power Regen would deplete your next self-heal.

Ronah.2869:

Chrispy.5641:

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Who talked about more powerful skills? maybe the new skills are purely some new cosmetic animations for the exiting ones. Is that sovereign you would agree with?

For example, the seed turret for silvary is pretty simple now: a flower. How about a new skill that looks like a toxic spore and shoots other type of ammo.
This could be enough for making a player feel different without making it more powerful.

Making my Longbow shoot Killer Bees instead of Wooden Arrows is just a waste of resorces if that is the only effect I get from getting a New Skill, you know, something we haven’t gotten any of for almost two years (minus two very situational healing skills). If Anet spends their time on making New skills with Cosmetic effects only, then it is a complete waste of effort and time, because those resources could be put into making entirely new skills, or at the very least, skills with differing effects on the flow of Combat, and increasing Build diversity in the process. Anet should be spending their time on that first if its anything related to skills, and While I have made a Suggestion that alters the visual effects of skills, it is through an equipment slot, not through new skills. Its also nowhere near the top of my list. That way, all your skills (or a certain set of skills) are affected, instead of just one.

Chrispy.5641:

Ronah.2869:

Chrispy.5641:

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Who talked about more powerful skills? maybe the new skills are purely some new cosmetic animations for the exiting ones. Is that sovereign you would agree with?

For example, the seed turret for silvary is pretty simple now: a flower. How about a new skill that looks like a toxic spore and shoots other type of ammo.
This could be enough for making a player feel different without making it more powerful.

Making my Longbow shoot Killer Bees instead of Wooden Arrows is just a waste of resorces if that is the only effect I get from getting a New Skill, you know, something we haven’t gotten any of for almost two years (minus two very situational healing skills). If Anet spends their time on making New skills with Cosmetic effects only, then it is a complete waste of effort and time, because those resources could be put into making entirely new skills, or at the very least, skills with differing effects on the flow of Combat, and increasing Build diversity in the process. Anet should be spending their time on that first if its anything related to skills, and While I have made a Suggestion that alters the visual effects of skills, it is through an equipment slot, not through new skills. Its also nowhere near the top of my list. That way, all your skills (or a certain set of skills) are affected, instead of just one.

Yeah, I kind of agree. If it came down to ascetic or new skills, I would prefer new skills.
Ascetics can come later when skills are a little more diverse, and it has more meat on it’s bones.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

a bit offtopic, a thought of healing in the game and making support more important:

The idea is to greatly buff regeneration, making it much stronger, but at a price:
Each regen-tick on you that heals you depletes the value of your next self heal for the same amount. Your self-heal power would regenerate when no regen-boon is on you, but only slowly.

Alternatively seperate “Regeneration boon” into

• the old Regeneration
• a new boon: Power Regeneration

Only Power Regen would deplete your next self-heal.

It wouldn’t be enough, support need a lot more. Boons in almost their entirely would have to be overhauled, taking attributes into account as conditions do with condition damage.

Regeneration should just straight up scale better with Healing Power. Lower the base amount of Regeneration, and vastly increase the scaling. If your going to pour into Healing Power, you should get a lot of bang for your buck.

Chrispy.5641:

Ronah.2869:

Chrispy.5641:

Cosmetic and Cosmetic rewards only should be used for the higher end Hardcore players, not things that affect Gameplay in any way, because it automatically makes them more powerful players.

Who talked about more powerful skills? maybe the new skills are purely some new cosmetic animations for the exiting ones. Is that sovereign you would agree with?

For example, the seed turret for silvary is pretty simple now: a flower. How about a new skill that looks like a toxic spore and shoots other type of ammo.
This could be enough for making a player feel different without making it more powerful.

Making my Longbow shoot Killer Bees instead of Wooden Arrows is just a waste of resorces if that is the only effect I get from getting a New Skill, you know, something we haven’t gotten any of for almost two years (minus two very situational healing skills). If Anet spends their time on making New skills with Cosmetic effects only, then it is a complete waste of effort and time, because those resources could be put into making entirely new skills, or at the very least, skills with differing effects on the flow of Combat, and increasing Build diversity in the process. Anet should be spending their time on that first if its anything related to skills, and While I have made a Suggestion that alters the visual effects of skills, it is through an equipment slot, not through new skills. Its also nowhere near the top of my list. That way, all your skills (or a certain set of skills) are affected, instead of just one.

Ok, it seems you know better then me how the game works. How would you re-make the suggestion so it will comply to your expectations. it is easy to point out issues but it is harder to create a solution. I let you this privilege, if you don’t mind.
As a brainstorming discussion, all participants should develop an idea not only one do the thinking and others point out the negative things.

I

Yoh.8469:

Regeneration should just straight up scale better with Healing Power. Lower the base amount of Regeneration, and vastly increase the scaling. If your going to pour into Healing Power, you should get a lot of bang for your buck.

So that you’d become invincible? If you have good healing on yourself AND a good self-heal, what will kill you then? There are a lot of possibilities to keep Regen running most of the time / permanent.

I’d say if you have good regen on you, deplete your selfheal. Both combined is just too powerful imho.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Yoh.8469:

Regeneration should just straight up scale better with Healing Power. Lower the base amount of Regeneration, and vastly increase the scaling. If your going to pour into Healing Power, you should get a lot of bang for your buck.

So that you’d become invincible? If you have good healing on yourself AND a good self-heal, what will kill you then? There are a lot of possibilities to keep Regen running most of the time / permanent.

I’d say if you have good regen on you, deplete your selfheal. Both combined is just too powerful imho.

Depends on the game type. sPvP would have to keep with within sensible realms.
WvW on the other hand, ha!
DPS completely outstrips any and all defense besides stealth. You’re not invincible, as Poison and conditions of equally high condition damage could more then easily cancel out whatever you could possibly get from Regeneration.

If you want to be able to support, it had better be effective vs the DPS options and require more then just facerolling the keyboard to overcome, like boon stripping.
Otherwise what’s the point?

Healing Power I think should have a greater effect on outgoing heals rather then self heals, but it’s still only part of what needs to be done to make support actually viable.

Yoh.8469:

Healing Power I think should have a greater effect on outgoing heals rather then self heals, but it’s still only part of what needs to be done to make support actually viable.

Well I agree that healing power is quite a poor option compared to all the offensive options we have. I feel though that a rework of Regeneration is more needed than a rebalancing of it.