Guild Wars 2

Ronah.2869:

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

Dude, that’s part of the development process, not just in games, but in anything. Its nice to look at how cool an idea will be, and how awesome it would work in the game, but, you kind of have to look at what the possbile negatives would be as well. It would be foolish to ignore and worry later, only to regret that decision halfway through development or after release because the downsides did end up outweighing the positives! We should be voicing our concerns now instead of creating an “I hate Anet!” thread three months later.

The Great Al.2546:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Shockwave.1230:

ColinJohanson.2394:

- Collect skins: Purchase them for currencies (which becomes play the fastest way to earn currency X), get them as rare drops (play fastest way to kill mob/content type X), or purchase them off the trading post. (Play the fastest way to earn gold)

This is good in concept. The implementation could be modified slightly. Implementing a universal token currency that is rewarded in combination with current dungeon tokens would be a nice addition. Dungeons could reward a smaller amount of their current tokens, but also reward some universal tokens that could be exchanged for specific dungeon tokens. Two way currency exchange with diminishing returns could be implemented as well, but I think it’d be better to stick with a one-way turn in of universal for specific to continue the promotion of people playing each dungeon.

You honestly see nothing wrong with a person running Cof but unable to complete Arah getting the Arah armor?
What is the incentive for running Arah specifically then? Cos slightly fast gain of an item doesn’t cut it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The downside is because almost everything can earn you most of the same rewards, this becomes a matter of choosing to do the things you enjoy the most, but getting rewarded slower because of it.

The downside is that you de-incentivise improvement and promote grinding the same thing over and over. The players see an item they like and go I think I’ll add that to my collection, There is no risk that they’re not good enough to get it, they are not challenged into doing a new piece of content and are in no way forced out of their comfort zone. Skill goes under-rewarded.

I think there should be one dungeon currency, and each dungeon rewards a different amount of tokens based on difficulty and could potentially even be a dynamic reward based on how frequently that dungeon path should run. I think it’s a really bad design flaw that each dungeon set requires a grind of the same dungeon over and over – yes, I know that there are multiple paths per dungeon, but for a game that strives to reward doing different things, I think this should be revisited.

A proposal I’ve made in the past is to have tokens be able to be interchanged… but they have a supply/demand interaction. Thus, something gained in great quantities like the CoF tokens would naturally be less valuable than harder-to-collect tokens like Arah, so the value of each token would naturally come to an equilibrium where its value is proportional to its difficulty to achieve.

You could also make buying a particular token type dependent on having beaten at least one (or all) paths of that dungeon.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m not sure which gathering tool would work best for silk and gossamer, but other than that and wool, everything else would work with existing game tools. This would help increase the quantities of cloth in the game, and give us a guaranteed means of acquisition.

Leather would probably require more work, as well as the addition of a ‘skinning’ means of gathering. I don’t want to see skinning implemented in the same way as WoW though. My thought was of using a nomadic herder npc, which we help him ‘skin’ animals that he’s already working on, rather than killing and skinning them ourselves (could get kind of gory). Since I don’t know precisely how Anet’s system is set up, I’m not sure what their capabilities are, which makes it a little more difficult to brainstorm this idea more fully.

There is some precedent for sickles cracking into non-vegetables (clams, coral) so continuing to use the sickles for silk and gossamer probably wouldn’t be too off. Needing orichalcum sickles to harvest gossamer might be a bit weird, but maybe it’s that only orichalcum can maintain an edge sharp enough to recover the gossamer without ruining it or something like that.

Hides could be done simply through being an automatic drop off certain creatures – gathering them could simply be a matter of hunting the relevant creatures.

ElysianEternity.6215:

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.

Alternatively, have it retain the same skillbar, but while some professions learn from it directly, other professions might learn skills that are themed towards fighting it.

For instance, consider an Eye of Zhaitan as an example. Mesmers might get a direct copy of one of its skills. Other spellcasting classes might not get a direct copy, but they might get skills that have something in common with one of the Eye’s skills – basically, they’ve analysed the Eye’s techniques and found ways they could be applied to their own magic. More physical classes, though, might get skills that are themed towards fighting something like an Eye of Zhaitan – warriors might get a “Go for the Eyes!” shout, thieves get a blinding venom, and rangers a blinding trap. Finally, an engineer might dissect the eye to get a better understanding of optics, allowing them to develop a new lens-related gadget or kit.

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.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

I’m just trying to imagine the caterwauling that would spring up instantly when someone realizes that my putting a Regeneration boon on them is depleting the effectiveness of their on-demand self-heal. Just thinking of it makes my ears hurt . No amount of math or logic would stop people from shrieking that they are being de-buffed by another character that’s on their own team . I don’t know that I’d even blame them as ultimately I am usurping their agency in their own survival, even if doing so helps them survive.

But I do feel strongly that the base values of many heals need to be lowered and the coefficients attached to Healing Power need to be increased so that at some middling value (400ish? 500?) the total remains the same, but dedicated Heal Power builds become more appealing and purely offensive builds experience greater risk. 1,000 Healing power doesn’t need to be double its current effectiveness, but 10-15% more effective than it is now (and 0 Healing power being 10-15% less effective…) might introduce some actual thought into the process of setting up your stats; present some meaningful dilemmas. Amongst other things it might prompt a few well trained max-DPS death-dealers to actually smile when I say “My banners give regen – hang near the curtains if you need to catch your breath” or “I have Battle Presence – you’ll get some green ticking just by being near me.”

Chrispy.5641:

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.

Again cosmetics things? No thank you. We have enough cosmetic things that no one uses or at least I have seen so few players using of them.
How many people do you see using the achievement skins? How many people do you see using skins from the shop?
The only thing I see is those tentacle back skin, the blue wings from dragon bash and red/ or yellow roses. Nothing else.
I think people are fed up with useless skins. They want something to stand out in the crowd. Cosmetic skills will be a lot more used then item skins because they can change them without a cost. They are just different skills in the panel.

Some player just want new skills, others want more challenges, other just want different animations. Nothing of these conflicts with the original post, which was kind of hard to find btw, because I am not following this thread so closely.

I think cosmetic adaptation of skills including animations, skins if there are items (banners, turrets, minions) and names will really fit the horizontal progression.
You want to have that different looking turret? Here is a challenge for you. To compensate this for those who don’t like the challenge, a different skin skill of turret can be sold in gem store. You can farm money in the game doing what you like and then buy from the cash shop. We need to have a difference between who has played the game and who is just using money. This doesn’t happen with the Legendary weapons: The person who buys it with cash looks the same as the one who has farmed all the mats and created it.
This should not happen so these skills added to the titles show who has played the game and who has not.

So I totally support the original idea and the unlocking skills system proposed in here even if being just cosmetic adaptations of skills. It is not our job to say if a feature is waste of money and resources or not. This is ArenaNet’s job. They know what funds they have, not us.
This CDI is here to gather ideas and little bits of implementation methods. It is not us to decide if this is good, profitable, expensive or time consuming.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Reading through a lot of the comments on various class diversification (or just stronger trait/skill diversification) concepts, one of the things that seems to be missing is a discussion on how you’d actually earn/unlock these additional abilities to make it a progression system.

One of the goals of progression, in this case horizontal, is to create an extended sense of game play and thus = reward for playing it.

For example, we’ve added more skills to the game recently, but those simply unlock with skill points, which basically means -> play any part of the game that gives exp, or kill champs to get skill point books. That’s ok as systems of unlocking horizontal progression go for the extended class diversification, but game play wise it generally means find the easiest place to get XP/champ-loot and do it over and over again for a large % of players, since folks most often gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

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

Maybe something along the lines of the Scarlet invasions, but with each reward dependent upon a specific zone.

For example, perhaps in one (or more) of the Eastern zones there could be massive invasions of Branded. Successful completion (perhaps multiple times) would yield a unique reward for that zone.

Part of my reasoning for this is that I think more needs to be done with high level zones generally. I understand why the Living World stuff tends to be in low level zones, so that newer players can access that content before it goes away (which is one of many reasons I’m not really a huge fan of the temporary content stuff.)

Anyway, it would be nice if players had more incentive to frequent less visited parts of the map, and I don’t mean just to have everyone funneled into a specific one as a one-of thing like once every several months, or just to all bunch up in one area to kill a boss and then map travel to another zone.

I think that you are always going to have this dilemma between trying to provide incentive for doing specific tasks and letting people “play their way.” Maybe I’m just not imaginative enough, but I don’t think you can really have it both ways, to be completely frank about it. I think the thing that probably frustrates people the most is when they have to do specific content and there is a limited time period in which it can be done, which is how things have been…well, since shortly after launch, really, as far as a bunch of cosmetic rewards and certain titles go.

Anyway, I’m trying not to veer too off course from the topic at hand, but that is kind of my thought process. Really, I think a lot could be done with instances in terms of horizontal progression, but I know you are trying to avoid doing a lot of that.

One more thing: I also liked the Eye of the North stat boosts, except for having to “equip” a specific title. I suppose that was vertical progression rather than horizontal, though. (I did not like having specific skills tied to those title tracks.)

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? We’ve seen if the path of progression isn’t relatively clear, most our every-day casual players won’t bother doing it, which isn’t a system that buys us much game play over-all.

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? I think you can get away with no real messaging around something like a rare skin, but if it’s a system that expands your characters profession diversity it needs much clearer communication.

These are the kind of questions I ask the designers coming up with the systems we’ll use in the future, so it’s a fun opportunity for you guys as well

Perhaps something like those books that were completed via missions in Guild Wars 1, but in the UI instead of being an actual item.

Malchior.5042:

• Something like… “50% bonus xp for completing events in Fireheart Rise.” – 60 min
• “50% bonus Karma from events in Mount Maelstrom.” – 60 min
• The Call to War! “50% bonus WvW experience!” – 60 min

A bit like “Zone Alerts” (as far as I remember, haven’t played the game for a while) in Planetside 2? Brilliant idea. Those really do get people active in Planetside (even though the rewards aren’t even nearly as lucrative as 50%).

It could also fit in quite nicely with the idea I had of another passives system. Instead of having to create an entirely new map you could have daily events in each map that grant you the rank points.

You could do something with the ley lines . This is a bit difficult to explain in text, but here we go:

• Participating in zone alerts gets you some form of rank XP similar to WXP. In the same way you would get ranks every say 5000 points. The ranks are account-wide (but can be selected per character) similar to the new WXP system.
• There is a passive skill tree that follows the shape of the ley lines. You would need to have a “completed path” to a slot in order to unlock it (similar to the Path of Exile skill tree – you need to join the dots). Unlocking a slot consumes, say, [distance in slots to the central slot] ^ 2 ranks.
• Each slot in the skill tree has a options of multiple passive abilities. Each of the abilities takes a fixed amount of ranks to unlock. The passive abilities can be freely switched outside of combat.
• Slots closer to Wayfarer would be mediocre Karma/XP/MF/GF bonuses, while slots nearer the dragons would have combat bonuses (as well as extremely powerful Karma/XP/MF/GF bonuses), the combat bonuses could be as useful as the current sigil effects.
• Each map would have a few slots on the ley lines.
• Ranks are map specific; meaning that once I had unlocked a path to Queensdale I would need to participate in the “zone alerts” on that map in order be able to progress through it (progress = unlock the slots or purchase abilities). In order to draw players back to map (in the event that it goes dead) you could add branches off the main ley lines and add additional slots – allowing you to infinitely give us more horizontal progression options as you decide to release them.
• There would be no way to tell how far another player is on the map.
• These passives would not carry over to WvW – the players would likely crucify you if you did that.

So as a user story :

1. I open the game after the update and find that there is a new button at the top of the screen “Lines of Power”.
2. I click it and see a map of lines with slots placed on the lines (in the shape of the ley lines). The middle slot is already unlocked, so I click on it.
3. There is already a passive ready to select for that slot (with a range of locked abilities) – “5% additional power points”, so I select it.
4. I am currently on Queensdale and a Lines of Power event starts. The game warns me that I wont receive any power from the map because I don’t have a line connecting to it.
5. I waypoint to wayfarer and participate in the event on that map.
6. After a few events I have earned enough ranks to unlock the next ability on the unlocked slot, something like “5% additional magic find”. I unlock it.
7. Eventually I earn 2 ranks and decide to unlock a slot that leads me toward Hirathi Hinterlands.
8. The final slot to get to Hirathi Hinterlands costs me 4 ranks, I unlock it and can start earning Hirathi Hinterlands-specific power points (as I have the final slot before the map unlocked).
9. The first slot in in Hirathi Hinterlands costs me 8 ranks.
10. I decide to try and unlock another map so I start unlocking slots towards Frostgorge Sound.
11. The first slot toward that map in Wayfarer, once again, only costs me 2 ranks.
12. I find out that there are new challenges on the map, which once completed give a once-off rank bonus (in some cases more than one rank). I start completing them on different maps and find that they range from jumping puzzles to puzzles and combat challenges. I’m not a very good player but do eventually complete them after a few attempts.
13. I find that I am really enjoying the challenges and attempt to enter ones on a map that I have no connection to – the gates leading to them are deactivated.
14. I decide to roam in WvW with the intent of using my unfair advantage. I open the “Lines of Power” panel and notice that it is completely disabled indicating that the power does not extend into the mists.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

-trainers teach skills quest-

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

It could work somewhat similar to how the Queen’s Gauntlet did?

timmyf.1490:

I thought it would be worth the time to flesh out an idea that I’ve been pushing, Order Missions.

The Vigil – Vigil Assault

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The Vigil meets the challenge of dragons with overwhelming force. In Vigil Assault missions, a party must join a dungeon in a special Vigil Assault Mode (unlocked by completing the Explorable Mode path), complete each event, and kill every enemy. A standard reward will be given for completing the assault. Bonus rewards will be given for completing the Vigil Assault for each of the following conditions met: no full party wipes, no party members defeated, no party members downed, speed clear (faster than a pre-set time per path), path of the day.

There will be leaderboards for each path showing the fastest times and, for harder paths, all players who have completed the path without any party member being downed. (Harder paths might include the Arah paths, the Aetherpath, etc.)

In addition, certain paths have an additional Vigil Challenge mode with more and tougher mobs and special challenges for the most skilled of players. (For example, Challenge mode might keep you always in combat.)

Order of Whispers – Infiltration Puzzle

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The Order of Whispers is in need of masterfully stealthy agents. Test your sneakiness by completing jumping puzzles filled with Whispers Guards. You must successfully complete the jumping puzzle without being seen by a single guard. (Being seen teleports you back to the beginning of the puzzle immediately so you can try again.)

This puzzle introduces a new mechanic: enemy line of sight. The guards will patrol the puzzle looking for infiltrators, but you can sneak behind them unseen. Draw their focus away from you using a set of skills you receive when starting the puzzle. Options could include Throw Rock, Throw Voice, Create Diversion (our friend Agent Zrii still has some explosives handy!), and more!

Like Vigil Assault, each run is timed and has a leaderboard where players can compare their performance to see who sneaks supreme!

Durmand Priory – Fractured Histories

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Snipped this one for message body length

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!

These are in a way very similar to the challenge mission proposal that I mentioned earlier in the thread. Hacking the Inquest

Basically what I’d do different, is to build these order missions to be an everlasting challenge. And not bind the rewards to your place in comparison to other players, but in an achievement style. (In comparison to your personal record, since competing against thousands of other players may put your awesome result in a very humbling perspective, which is ok for the leaderboard, but I don’t think it should have titles or unique rewards other than being on top of the leaderboard)

These challenge missions would keep a score that is influenced by a variety of sources. And there would be choices to make within the mission that lead to different results. (So that we are eager to try again with a different approach.) Perhaps some of those choices can be unlocked through accomplishments within or outside the order mission. (Like bringing NPC K instead of NPC A, or bringing a hyperbeam cannon instead of a steamtank)

Good ideas though, I’d really like to see instances in this game that push you to perform better in other ways than just speed. (Accomplishing sub-goals, keeping things alive etc…)

I just want to say one thing- I am very much a fan of open world and not instances.

If for some reason something has to be instanced- please make it scale-able from solo to 5 man.
Instead of just 5 man.

Starting with the end of my personal story that has been hidden form me because it sits in a 5 man dungeon- to some cases in the LS that I missed the the conclusions because the instances don’t scale.

I am fed up with this mechanic- so for the love of all the gods don’t tie my personal horizontal progression to other people by force.

Howell Qagan.9752:

It could work somewhat similar to how the Queen’s Gauntlet did?

In a more recent post he asked for a way that doesn’t lead to the current “press 1; get loot” outcome. I probably agree with you that the Queen’s Gauntlet was definitely a serious step in the correct direction but it did quickly devolve into a mindless “follow commander; press 1; get loot” scenario – I think Colin is looking for something more (in that regard even my latest post is a little crappy).

I like the idea of the various forms of missions, but it worries me that that the concept will devolve into the current personal story issue – by my 6th alt I can promise you that the personal story is an absolute chore and bore (all my alts are now at the pale tree vision and no further). ANet would need an incredible amount of variety in order to keep the missions interesting.

It somehow needs the best of both worlds, queens gauntlet and personal story (I have a mediocre idea along those lines too). Creating something fun, repeatable but not zergable is challenging to say the least.

My opinion, you know .

Rebekka.6875:

Again cosmetics things? No thank you. We have enough cosmetic things that no one uses or at least I have seen so few players using of them.
How many people do you see using the achievement skins? How many people do you see using skins from the shop?
The only thing I see is those tentacle back skin, the blue wings from dragon bash and red/ or yellow roses. Nothing else.
I think people are fed up with useless skins. They want something to stand out in the crowd. Cosmetic skills will be a lot more used then item skins because they can change them without a cost. They are just different skills in the panel.

Some player just want new skills, others want more challenges, other just want different animations. Nothing of these conflicts with the original post, which was kind of hard to find btw, because I am not following this thread so closely.

I think cosmetic adaptation of skills including animations, skins if there are items (banners, turrets, minions) and names will really fit the horizontal progression.
You want to have that different looking turret? Here is a challenge for you. To compensate this for those who don’t like the challenge, a different skin skill of turret can be sold in gem store. You can farm money in the game doing what you like and then buy from the cash shop. We need to have a difference between who has played the game and who is just using money. This doesn’t happen with the Legendary weapons: The person who buys it with cash looks the same as the one who has farmed all the mats and created it.
This should not happen so these skills added to the titles show who has played the game and who has not.

You could add cosmetic skin unlocks to the title track, specific ones related to what each subtitle completes. I.e you finish the Wvw subtitle and your arrows can now be bastilla bolts instead. When you complete the Grandmaster title you get a racial skin for all your skills, i.e you unlock grandmaster sylvari you shoot roots, your fields put down flowers and vines.
Charr: all your skills are explosive (visually) Norn: animal aspects are added to your attacks Asura: etheric tinges are added to attacks, summons could be more robotic. Human: errr can’t actually think of one for them, carnival themed attacks?

I’ve been advocating ways to tell a person whos just buying stuff from a person whos earning stuff the whole way through the thread I just agreed with the skill removal as I want the idea to go ahead where as the skills were useless to me anyway.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

I still dream of a system that would look a lot like WvW progression in PvE. There are countless things you can store in there: more dmg/def to champs/elites/veterans.
It can be also used to gather support for fractions political/racial like skirt/humans/orders etc, that would unlock some nice vendors, skins even non racial cultural armors for those that have the most support. Clearing maps should allow 0c usage of WPs. Mastery in crafting that would reduce cost or give a chance for that.
There are many, many things that you can add for some higher goals.
I would love to rebuild HoM and make it a great convenience spot similar to royal trace or guild hall or personal instance that would allow us not to go to WvW to use banks/crafting stations already.
Making legendaries creatable by only account bound items and allowing legendaries swap looks from menu (like stats), making ascended items evolving weapons, by allowing to add stat combos and looks to the by rituals or mystic forge (to make them mini legends – then legendaries will have convenience and still have a cosmetic advantage).
Allowing for spreading ascended for cheap for alts especially for 2+ alts.

All my general ideas of what would move me a lot is in 2 posts:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/7#post3411436
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/7#post3411437

It would be great if you even consider those points of my that I wrote in there.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There has been a huge amount of discussion around sub classes. I would love to see you guys close out this particular area by either putting a sub class proposal together (Sentence detailing how it would work) or deciding as a group that it isn’t relevant at this point.

Personally I like the idea behind sub classes and see quite a few of the counter arguments based upon assumptions around balancing etc. Where possible we should try not to make decisions around feasibility of ideas through assumptions.

In short I would like to see if the CDI group thinks it is a relevant part of Horizontal Progression at this stage of GW2’s life?

Chris

As for classes I think we have everything we need.
On the other hand going for specializations would be great.

I would see it like the school system. You specialize more and more into some ways you work, just like real live.
You are a guardian and that is abase class.
Then you can specialize to become “defender” and you loose the ability to fight 2 handed weapons but you get some neat bonuses when you use a shield and any other one handed weapons. It would work like very defensive guardian build with extra tiers.

On the other hand you could become a “holy knight” and loose shield but focus on two handed weapons or torch with one handed weapons, but you would not get any additional boosts to defensive, yet a lot to offensive.

I think both paths can have progression not bound to level.

You should be able to switch them like crafting: NPC will do it, you can pay (very little or none fee) and you will be swapped to another specialization to exactly the point when you stopped your previous progress in this path.

You can add a way to swap auras around guardian holy/dark. It can be purely cosmetic.

Elementalist idea
Specialization in here could go 2 ways (5 ways)
Specialization in any attunement. Like “Fire Master”. You would regain the ability to use 2 weapon sets but you can only use fire spells. Of course additional tiers to make fire better, stronger etc.
The same with mastery in earth, ice, thunder.

The last one would be an “Arcane Master”. He could use all schools like now, but his spells would be weaker (on the level of normal elementalists). He would have more utility than strength.

There can be any other ways to improve classes you have now, but I would not add purely another class. Maybe aside from 3rd heavy class, but subclasses/specializations would be way better.

Septemptus.7164:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

I still dream of a system that would look a lot like WvW progression in PvE. There are countless things you can store in there: more dmg/def to champs/elites/veterans.

Since this is in response to the question about unlocking systems: do you mean, just progressing for playing? In the same way that we progress the WvW ranks through just playing WvW?

Because I can imagine that this would create a larger gap between those that play a lot, and those that play less regularly.

Making the game too easy for those that play it often, while perhaps too hard for those that do not.

In addition to that, it could scare off people that jump in and see that they’ll probably have to keep playing for months or even years before they’ll be at the same level of strength as their guildmates. And by then, those guildmates are probably far ahead. Personally, I dislike this system in WvW, and I believe it should work more like traits. (Where you have a limit as to how many points you can spend instead of becoming stronger indefinitely)

Nike.2631:

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.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

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.

I’m just trying to imagine the caterwauling that would spring up instantly when someone realizes that my putting a Regeneration boon on them is depleting the effectiveness of their on-demand self-heal. Just thinking of it makes my ears hurt . No amount of math or logic would stop people from shrieking that they are being de-buffed by another character that’s on their own team . I don’t know that I’d even blame them as ultimately I am usurping their agency in their own survival, even if doing so helps them survive.

But I do feel strongly that the base values of many heals need to be lowered and the coefficients attached to Healing Power need to be increased so that at some middling value (400ish? 500?) the total remains the same, but dedicated Heal Power builds become more appealing and purely offensive builds experience greater risk. 1,000 Healing power doesn’t need to be double its current effectiveness, but 10-15% more effective than it is now (and 0 Healing power being 10-15% less effective…) might introduce some actual thought into the process of setting up your stats; present some meaningful dilemmas. Amongst other things it might prompt a few well trained max-DPS death-dealers to actually smile when I say “My banners give regen – hang near the curtains if you need to catch your breath” or “I have Battle Presence – you’ll get some green ticking just by being near me.”

Naturally I agree.
Honestly I think we need a CDI just on DPS-Control-Support, and ideas as to how we could balance it out so the three are equal, because it’s a very deep and complex problem, that even if we do come up with a solution, would probably take 6-12 months to implement well. (thou this could happen gradually.)

And unfortunately it is at the core of a lot of problems that have anything to do with combat. Like the lack of social interaction between characters. DPS is an inherently isolated experience. The only thing you really get out of being with other people is… that things die quicker…. joy.

Oh, and particle effect maelstroms as well.

zamalek.2154:

Howell Qagan.9752:

It could work somewhat similar to how the Queen’s Gauntlet did?

In a more recent post he asked for a way that doesn’t lead to the current “press 1; get loot” outcome. I probably agree with you that the Queen’s Gauntlet was definitely a serious step in the correct direction but it did quickly devolve into a mindless “follow commander; press 1; get loot” scenario – I think Colin is looking for something more (in that regard even my latest post is a little crappy).

I would assume he meant the solo arena aspect not the mindless zerg in the pits. As that would make more sense.

Septemptus.7164:

Making legendaries creatable by only account bound items and allowing legendaries swap looks from menu (like stats),

It’s too late for the current round of legendaries to implement this as even if they did it now their prestige value is gone. They could however do it for the next round of legendaries and the further legendary items. I support the all account bound approach to getting a legendary.

The open Fractal reset Question:

First post in this whole discussion:

Before talking about character progression, horizontal or vertical, I think it would be necessary to have a word on Anet view about progression reset.

With the Fractured patch, many players saw their progression (fractal level) resetted to 30, without any kind of compensation for that loss.

Many threads were opened on the forums to talk about it. The first few got deleted, even some pretty big threads, like this one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractal-personal-level-reset/

Another was locked here (over 850 posts):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Fractal-levels-above-30-to-be-reset/first

And finally the last one active is this one (over 1000 posts):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fractured/Merged-Fractal-level-reset-is-equity-wiped-Discuss/first

Over 2000-2500 posts were made, without any concrete answer from Anet. The only answer we got, 3 weeks ago, from a community coordinator, is that “the Developers are reading these posts and we are gathering feedback.” But not a word from those developers since.

Of course, in those 2000 posts, some were quite vindicative, especially after seeing we were completely ignored, but quite a few were also constructive, like this one from Abramelin:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Fractal-levels-above-30-to-be-reset/page/15#post3236535

So, before talking about progression, let’s talk about progression reset. Because if Anet consider it’s okay to reset a player progression without any form of compensation, why talk about progression anyway, it can be reseted at any time…

Than there was a single time answer by Isaiah:
As we were looking at the fractal reworks we wanted to change the relative values of how hard it was to work through the fractals, because of this we wanted to bring everyone to a common starting point. We knew this was going to be controversial but we really wanted everyone to be on an even play field and once we got the feedback about it we started looking into ways we could mitigate this risk. This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech. It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen. We wanted to create a new scaling paradigm that would give us more room in the future for adding fractals and we felt the current systems was harder to scale. Our original design was for players to go past 50 but this wasn’t able to happen in time.

Right a very Lawmen like answer that didn’t answer the question asked. Besides if every development is a tradeoff it only means that a progression reset can happen at any time and if this is a fact actually it is pointless investing time on talking about progression that can be taken away at any Point without a garanty for compensation. we kept asking for a more clear answer and after Romo posted this:

I’m still having a hard time facing the fact that you guys think it’s ok to reset progress and don’t offer anything for it. New fractals are not a compensation since everyone is getting it regardless of what level they were. I just wanted to say I’m disappointed. Weeks of discussion in “Fractured” sub-forum ended up being a total waste of time just like leveling my alts to level 50 in fractals. Just wanted you to know that I believed in you guys till the very end to at least attempt to make it right.

We got this answer from Chris:
Really good start to this topic folks. Excellent discussion, and really good ideas.

I am blown away, thanks everyone you have made my day. I love the CDI and so far this is a really good example of how I imagine it should be.

Romo regarding your last post I am going to spend some time thinking about how you feel and get back to you if that’s ok?

So the next "Post about it " was from isaiah to kinda ignore the Topic by saying he already have given an answer:

As chris said going to be hard to keep to a 3 page summary with this one but I’ll get started

Topics
*Fractal Resets
*Ascended Gear
*Horizontal Progression
*Vertical Progression
*Grind
*Art Progression
*Alts
*Gates
*Map progression
*Ascended creation time

There where a a lot more topics but I figured I’ll get a start before I head home

Fractal Resets
See my above post on this.(refearing to the post I posted at start wich is completly unclear and doesn’t answer many of our questions)

As our community was not statisfied we kept asking and this is what we got from you ( besides the fact you we’re thinking about an answer):

The Fractal progression reset conversation is something I am still thinking about so please bear with me.

Regarding ascended mats and ascended gear drop balancing across WvW and Fractals: We are in the process of looking at the numbers and acquisition accessibility.

The next answer we got from you:

All,

This is my last day at work before the holiday season and I am going to be very busy!

Once I am on vacation I will have more time to respond and engage.

I am therefore going to postpone the focused discussion on Horizontal Progression until tomorrow. I will catch up post page 36 today (or at least try).

Meanwhile I have a question. This thread is BIG. Would the folks who have already commented on Horizontal want a new thread which is just based on Horizontal or should we just carry on with this thread?

Regarding my reminders from you about comments on some kind of reward for the Fractal reset, I am still thinking about feelings around it.

Chris

The next Thing that might be about the reset but possible is not:

Romo.3709:

Chris, is there any update regarding fractals in general? Maybe suggestions that we can tune in on or possible balancing of dredge fractal? In general, anything at all?

Hi Romo,

As soon as there any updates we can discuss we will let the community know.

Maybe we could do a CDI on the Fractals next year?

Chris

another answer still I’m not sure if you just going than to completly ignore the reset that happenend and just will talk about Things you should do with fractals in future ( This is a cdi you should have done a year ago). Or you actually mean you going to have finally has an answer to all our questions regarding a reset:

Romo.3709:

Chris, is there any update regarding fractals in general? Maybe suggestions that we can tune in on or possible balancing of dredge fractal? In general, anything at all?

Hi Romo,

As soon as there any updates we can discuss we will let the community know.

Maybe we could do a CDI on the Fractals next year?

Chris

I know it’s a Long post but it’s a recap on what we got so far out of continously asking in various forms our questions, and I really hope it helps to see that there are many unanswered questions and maybe to understand that it’s hard to not be asking over and over again if your answer is that you’ll get an answer somewhen but made the experience that if you ask things about fractals ( For example when I asked a year ago if scale 80 is the cap) You can wait for a year and still has no answer. Anyway best luck finding the answers:)

The Lost Witch.7601:

Septemptus.7164:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

I still dream of a system that would look a lot like WvW progression in PvE. There are countless things you can store in there: more dmg/def to champs/elites/veterans.

Since this is in response to the question about unlocking systems: do you mean, just progressing for playing? In the same way that we progress the WvW ranks through just playing WvW?

Because I can imagine that this would create a larger gap between those that play a lot, and those that play less regularly.

Making the game too easy for those that play it often, while perhaps too hard for those that do not.

In addition to that, it could scare off people that jump in and see that they’ll probably have to keep playing for months or even years before they’ll be at the same level of strength as their guildmates. And by then, those guildmates are probably far ahead. Personally, I dislike this system in WvW, and I believe it should work more like traits. (Where you have a limit as to how many points you can spend instead of becoming stronger indefinitely)

I mean having system that would progress your character after level 80 with some horizontal progression by adding to it points that you participate in or another set of xp like Wxp. Somehow people in WvW weren’t scared off but they were very excited by the idea. You don’t have to add a lot to the system. WvW gives you like 10% after 225 points/levels. Thats a lot of play before you can max that.

This is a simple and fast example. Imagine what you can do if you sit and think a bit about it. This system can provide you with one system of experience or few.
One like Wxp or few like combat xp for all kinds of fighting, fraction xp to increase your support for fractions like asuras, orders and such, dungeon xp tied to reward at the end and maybe some resists. There is a wide range of you can do with system like that and WvW provides a template for that already.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Septemptus.7164:

Making legendaries creatable by only account bound items and allowing legendaries swap looks from menu (like stats),

It’s too late for the current round of legendaries to implement this as even if they did it now their prestige value is gone. They could however do it for the next round of legendaries and the further legendary items. I support the all account bound approach to getting a legendary.

No it’s not.
There will be new legendaries, new types, new weapons.
You can even change the recipe and those few in TP would rise the price and vanish soon after.

It’s just that certain part of the community enjoy the fact they can farm they way through everything without an effort. That is why legendaries lost so much of meaning and got tagged as “farmer items”, or “TP players items”.

Because there is nothing hard except having time to get them/farm gold to get them.
They aren’t outstanding visually anymore after so many good looking items, swapping stats aren’t worth few thousands gold, they have no prestige since you can buy them always (supply wont vanish), they have no meaning since only gold is needed to obtain them.

Septemptus.7164:

I mean having system that would progress your character after level 80 with some horizontal progression by adding to it points that you participate in or another set of xp like Wxp.

Is it horizontal though? Is not vertical? The WvW wxp system is vertical. You become stronger the more you play.

Septemptus.7164:

Somehow people in WvW weren’t scared off but they were very excited by the idea.

The specialisation is pretty cool. I like the idea of being good at shooting cannons or carrying supply. And I think that it is the specialisation bit that the WvW crowd is most excited by. The problem for me lies in the fact that it is not just specialisation. Unlike the trait system there is no maximum to it. It works like this: play more = become stronger. Which may still be really cool for WvW veterans and progression fans. But not so much for players like me. (Who still play a lot, but not as focused on one thing)

I would like it to work in a way where you can easily reach the maximum amount of points, and spend it through specializing. (Perhaps you can respec by using excess specialisation points gained through WxP)

I guess I desire to one day be able to say: My character is complete.

Instead of an ongoing strength progression like the one in WvW.

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

Hi Chris!
I am listening to your interview while at work writing SQL and making reports.

I want to give you kudos for answering some of those ‘put you on the spot’ questions because thats the sign of a good interviewer! He asked a few loaded questions and kudos to you for not ending the interview.

I’ll probably post back when I have more comments..only 27 minutes in.

Edit: #1— Good point about staying close with the community and PART of your reason for it…keeping your idea the first and best before other developers try to cash in on your learning mistakes. Good point, I bet none of us ever thought of it. While, I don’t think the ‘living world platform’ is necessarily genre-defining yet, it is a good start. I just think the Living Story aspect of it was executed poorly and I personally am not a fan of it. I think you can make a living world with the current content that you have as I have pointed out in previous CDI posts. But, again..learning curves, and kudos to you for answering some of these hard questions.

Edit #2— Swimming in December?

Septemptus.7164:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Septemptus.7164:

Making legendaries creatable by only account bound items and allowing legendaries swap looks from menu (like stats),

It’s too late for the current round of legendaries to implement this as even if they did it now their prestige value is gone. They could however do it for the next round of legendaries and the further legendary items. I support the all account bound approach to getting a legendary.

No it’s not.
There will be new legendaries, new types, new weapons.
You can even change the recipe and those few in TP would rise the price and vanish soon after.

It’s just that certain part of the community enjoy the fact they can farm they way through everything without an effort. That is why legendaries lost so much of meaning and got tagged as “farmer items”, or “TP players items”.

Because there is nothing hard except having time to get them/farm gold to get them.
They aren’t outstanding visually anymore after so many good looking items, swapping stats aren’t worth few thousands gold, they have no prestige since you can buy them always (supply wont vanish), they have no meaning since only gold is needed to obtain them.

I said they could do it for the next round of legendary’s (that includes the weapons) I wasn’t disagreeing?

I feel for the amount of player that now have legendary’s it is too late to change current ones..
1. It changes the achievements value which is something I’ll address in a second as it links in with the fractal progression issue raised above.
2. People will always second guess how a person earned their first gen legendary you can’t change that perception now too much time has passed.

Personal opinion
An achievements meaning
Lets take a theoretical example, A new challenge is added that lasts for a week, it rewards a unique weapon, however only 10 people in the entire game successfully complete the challenge.

You cannot then go, “oops” and make it a far easier challenge
You cannot release the skin in a second way
You can re-release the exact same challenge again for a while but that partially diminishes the rarity but leaves the prestige intact.

Those 10 people did it , and got the reward for doing so, 10000 people complaining that it was too hard for them, or unfair , or they did’nt play back then, Is irrelevant.
The feeling and value you’ve given to the 10 people is worth far more than the grumblings of those who couldn’t.

In the fractal reset you seem to have for no particular reason (a leader-board is not a valid reason for resetting a persons progress) decided to punish your more skilled players.
The opposite is also true to a point, if you have a fairly common item/achievement you can’t just make it super rare because it changes the base value of the achievement/item.

The 10000 will grumble for a bit then move on as they don’t really have a valid complaint. The 10 however are far more likely to quit or in a worse case become vengeful about something like that happening.

As a last note as apparently this happened in Gw1 , there is no expirely date for an achievements meaning, you did it 10 years ago? it should still be maintained.
As an upside it creates genuinely rare items, “oh wow what is that I’ve never seen one of those before” “It’s the 2006 wintersday hat only a few of us that still play have them”.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Septemptus.7164:

I mean having system that would progress your character after level 80 with some horizontal progression by adding to it points that you participate in or another set of xp like Wxp.

Is it horizontal though? Is not vertical? The WvW wxp system is vertical. You become stronger the more you play.

Septemptus.7164:

Somehow people in WvW weren’t scared off but they were very excited by the idea.

The specialisation is pretty cool. I like the idea of being good at shooting cannons or carrying supply. And I think that it is the specialisation bit that the WvW crowd is most excited by. The problem for me lies in the fact that it is not just specialisation. Unlike the trait system there is no maximum to it. It works like this: play more = become stronger. Which may still be really cool for WvW veterans and progression fans. But not so much for players like me. (Who still play a lot, but not as focused on one thing)

I would like it to work in a way where you can easily reach the maximum amount of points, and spend it through specializing. (Perhaps you can respec by using excess specialisation points gained through WxP)

I guess I desire to one day be able to say: My character is complete.

Instead of an ongoing strength progression like the one in WvW.

I disagree that the WXP system is verticle. You become stronger but not in the sense that it makes it verticle. In a straight up fight between you and me using only the class abilities at our disposal, pure skill (and, yes gear) will determine who wins. Having a fully maxed out Siege Mastery or Guard Mastery(I cannot remember the name) will make little difference.

What septemptus might be looking for is the system in Rift. You hit max level, you still gain levels(althought your actual character level never changes) similar to how we ding and get skill points. But in Rift you can spend those points to beef up your preferred style of gameplay. For instance, if you are a warrior that used axes, specifically, you can put points into axe mastery to increase crit chance, increase crit dmg, and whatever else. Its actually a honeycomb(literally, the GUI is a honeycomb) of skills that you unlock via points.

That may lean more toward verticle… Maybe a modification of this idea is needed. Instead of power increases, have other sorts of buffs or horizontal progression changes. Like a consumable(infinite amount but on a CD) for a speed/swiftness increase(I know most classes have switfness at their disposal..just throwing a thought out) or unlockable skins(put points into the honeycomb to reach the weapon skins you want to unlock). Holy crud, I actually like my own idea there, I will post in its own response.

Horizontal Progression idea – unlocking skins…

A Rift-esq honeycomb(or whatever design you want/GUI), where the player uses skill points to unlock areas of the…‘design’ to reach the area where she/wants to unlock skins. So you start in the middle, and the greatsword skins are in the upper right hand corner. You start spending points to get to those skins that you want. But you can only spend points in a box that is adjacent to one you already have unlocked. Each box might take 3 skill points to fully complete.

Yes?
Quaggan happy?

Edit: This idea could be morphed into more than just skins, where the player can unlock other non-statistical horizontally based…things. Maybe unlock minis, or consumable swiftness(on a cooldown), or skins, or universl abilities that any class could use, or waypoint cost reduction…keep it horizontal, put it in the honeycomb(or whatever you choose..maybe a triangle!)

SKILLS
For horizontal progression I’d like to see more skills of all types (heal, utility, and elite). In addition more weps (which is really the same as more skills tbh).

The goal of the skills is to provide more build variation. I think a worthy goal is making the various GW2 roles completely viable across all professions. This is not “make all professions the same”… not even close (so don’t waste time on that point). All professions could be excellent at “support” but with different mechanics. This is difficult from a design point of view, but that’s what makes good games great.

This would be my #1 item for horizontal progression.

Well I haven’t posted in this thread yet and it is already 45 pages long so I haven’t read any of it… but here is my opinion.

Horizontal progression will never happen as long as gold reigns supreme. Everything in this game can be obtained just by having enough gold. No matter what you add right now the progression part is lost because gold is so abundant and you can just buy your way past the barriers. Before any other changes are made gold needs to re significantly devalued.

This issue of course goes much deeper to the fact that there are no loot tables or rewards in this game, only crafting materials. This means you never have to beat content, you never have to organize a group and you never need to achieve anything. You just need to grind gold until you can buy the mats you need to craft the thing you are looking for.

This needs to be eliminated and then you can add in unique, skill based challenge related rewards. This can apply to both horizontal and vertical progression, but it needs to be done either way. Legendary weapons used to show you had mastered the game, now they just show that you saved up 1000g.

We need less dependence on gold and more dependence on team work, skill and challenges.

Until this is done nothing else matters because regardless of how you implement it it will quickly be bypassed and done by gold farmers. Farming gold currently gets you basically unlimited “skill” points, and unlimited gold. Karma isn’t far behind. If you use any of those currencies then there is no progression, just more grind.

“SKILL”-GATED CURRENCY

Zudet, the poster above me, made a good point.

For this I propose a “skill-gated” currency, much like laurels are a time-gated currency. A type of currency that is awarded for completing tasks designed and perceived as very difficult.

And by very difficult, I don’t mean at the level of the current guild missions or most of the dungeon paths, which you can generally beat it in one go as long as your party is there to revive downed allies, but more like queen’s gauntlet, tequalt or the harderst jumping puzzles, where players will fail and must fail several times until they analyze the situation, learn with their mistakes, build around the challenge, and overcome it.

This type of currency could even substitute most of the other currencies in the game, especially dungeon tokens (have dungeon merchants be only available to players who have beaten all explorable paths instead).

I think this game needs only a minimum number of currencies: 4. Gold, for general purposes. Gems, for income. Laurels, as a time-gated currency. And a new, skill-gated currency. If we want to add a 5th, Karma could be re-utilized as a story-driven currency for personal/ living story rewards, world exploration rewards, and role-playing purposes.

Then, most types of challenging horizontal progression content could unlock merchants that would require gold + this new type of currency. You beat the new content, receive X of the new currency and unlock merchants. And then you buy from those merchants using the obtained currency. Of course, this currency would be used game-wide, but you would still be forced to beat each (hard) piece of content in the first place to even unlock the merchant first.

This way, not everything could be brought in the TP. Exclusive (or very rare) account-bound skins, dyes, recipes, foods, etc, could be gated this way.

Nike.2631:

I’m just trying to imagine the caterwauling that would spring up instantly when someone realizes that my putting a Regeneration boon on them is depleting the effectiveness of their on-demand self-heal. Just thinking of it makes my ears hurt . No amount of math or logic would stop people from shrieking that they are being de-buffed by another character that’s on their own team . I don’t know that I’d even blame them as ultimately I am usurping their agency in their own survival, even if doing so helps them survive.

I think you misunderstood my suggestion. The idea was that the self-heal only depletes for the exact amount healing which you receive from the regen-boon (and only if you’re damaged). The result would make no difference – healing yourself with regen (depleted selfheal) would heal the same amount as healing yourself without regen (unchanged selfheal).

Regen would have the benefit that you don’t have to stop doing damage while you heal, so in this case the one who provides the regen-boon would give the one to be healed more DPS.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Legendary weapons used to show you had mastered the game, now they just show that you saved up 1000g.

We need less dependence on gold and more dependence on team work, skill and challenges.

Until this is done nothing else matters because regardless of how you implement it it will quickly be bypassed and done by gold farmers. Farming gold currently gets you basically unlimited “skill” points, and unlimited gold. Karma isn’t far behind. If you use any of those currencies then there is no progression, just more grind.

This is so true and has been beaten to death on the forums since release. Things like this are just plain “duh” moments. I understand that, especially after watching Chris Whitesides recent interview, that sometimes the “duh” moments are blurred by everything else going on. I definately get it. It just seems that there are so many of them. I can list about a dozen off the top of my head right now. Its hard to swallow that this wasn’t forseen during conceptual design of the game.

Having 1000 gold and or having 1000 hours to play the game doesn’t make you legendary nor does it entitle the player to a legendary status. Skill and masterful play of the game, defeating the most epic solo battles should do this. Even the scavenger hunt, while an improvement to the current design of precursor acquisition, might still pale into comparison to what we need. It still might be an egg hunt and we eventually get the precursor, rather than a list of hard bosses to fight or something that depicts our skill.

Zudet,DiogoSilva and cesmode’s latest posts I agree with completely they explain the problem better than I have.
In addition DiogoSilva’s token idea is acceptable (to me) because it still requires skill but relieves some of the grind. i.e you haven’t escaped doing Arah path 4 but you now don’t have to repeat arah path 3 each day to get your tokens.

So some questions about this skill based currency or skill-gating even perhaps:

• What defines skill?

• Can skill not be bypassed by clever tricks? I know beating Tequatl with a Tequatl slaying guild isn’t particularly skillful for anyone but the organizer.

• What percentage of the playerbase do you imagine can be called ‘skilled’? And how would it feel to not be part of that?

• Can skillful farmers outspeed regular farmers? And by how much? And if there is a perceived gate of how much investment it should take to get a particular thing, will this be off for the slower farmers?

• Will the hardcore players be the most skillful and thereby gain more riches because they don’t have to spend money on things that they can pay for with a skillbased currency? And will this increase the gap between the hardcore and the casual? How will this reflect on the economy?

• And how will the established difference between skilled and not skilled content affect the playerbase psychologically? If you failed at doing something that is apparently not even rewarding the skillcurrency.. what does that make you?

Having trouble jumping in here, what’s the current discussion topic on Character Progression, please?

The Lost Witch.7601:

So some questions about this skill based currency or skill-gating even perhaps:

• What defines skill?

Defeating many of the Queens Jubilee gauntlet bosses, getting some of the unique achievements like..kill X monster before it reaches 100 stacks of PWNYOURAGE. Or defeating Liadri…

I think the gauntlet has been one of the only TRUE skill testers in the game so far, PVE wise.

We need many more of those to gate folks to gear. Defeat Liadri, get a skin. And its done solo too so its not like you can get your guild to zerg it down.

Edit: The gauntlet fights have been regarded by many as a great addition to the game. Developers have stated that they tested each fight with many builds…so it is possible that a more tanky or support build could have defeated liadri…its possible…but this idea of skill testing like this is a great avenue to go down.

Infact, when I first heard of skill points in beta, I was like “awwww yeah, a place to test my meddle solo against some PVE baddies….” But many of them are so faceroll…“drink X to get skill point”…“defeat the slow old norn warior bathing in a spring”…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Having trouble jumping in here, what’s the current discussion topic on Character Progression, please?

I recommend that you start with the link in my signature. It was up to date until yesterday. Especially Bezagron & Guhracie’s summaries are useful.

The current topic has evolved from Colins question as to what would be good systems to obtain horizontal rewards. Currently we seem to be talking about skill currency as one such system. (But that is only one of the discussions going on today so far. So don’t be afraid to respond to other posts made earlier.)

The Lost Witch.7601:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Having trouble jumping in here, what’s the current discussion topic on Character Progression, please?

I recommend that you start with the link in my signature. It was up to date until yesterday. Especially Bezagron & Guhracie’s summaries are useful.

The current topic has evolved from Colins question as to what would be good systems to obtain horizontal rewards. Currently we seem to be talking about skill currency as one such system. (But that is only one of the discussions going on today so far. So don’t be afraid to respond to other posts made earlier.)

@lostwitch: Im not sure if you checked out Chris Whitesides interview that he posted in this thread a few pages back…he gave you big kudos for the summaries and all.
.

The Lost Witch.7601:

So some questions about this skill based currency or skill-gating even perhaps:

1* What defines skill?

2* Can skill not be bypassed by clever tricks? I know beating Tequatl with a Tequatl slaying guild isn’t particularly skillful for anyone but the organizer.

3* What percentage of the playerbase do you imagine can be called ‘skilled’? And how would it feel to not be part of that?

4* Can skillful farmers outspeed regular farmers? And by how much? And if there is a perceived gate of how much investment it should take to get a particular thing, will this be off for the slower farmers?

5* Will the hardcore players be the most skillful and thereby gain more riches because they don’t have to spend money on things that they can pay for with a skillbased currency? And will this increase the gap between the hardcore and the casual? How will this reflect on the economy?

6* And how will the established difference between skilled and not skilled content affect the playerbase psychologically? If you failed at doing something that is apparently not even rewarding the skillcurrency.. what does that make you?

1* Being able to accomplish or overcome a designed challenges within the confines of the skills and class you have chosen better than the majority of players. Skill is separate for each area of the game, You could be a skilled jumper but awful combatant, You could be a great Pvp’er but fail the easiest of dungeons.

2* This has been identified as an existing problem (buying fractal/dungeon runs), the best way I can think of to overcome it would be making the challenges solo or requiring each person to pull their weight (I remember one mission in another game where your party is separated and each player has to successfully fight a boss monster solo or the mission fails for everyone).

3* I would have several levels of Skill challenges, Easy: 50% of the player base (I.e the minimum beating the average) Medium: 25% , Hard: 10% Legendary: 1%-0.1%
As for not being in those %‘s , it happens daily in the real world and every game you play I don’t think its a new concept. There’s always a more skilled player than you.

4* Yes, by an amount dependent on the skill required but by a large amount. I’ve described this before on other forums but Skill gates that are repeatable unfortunately must be coupled to a time gate, case and point the dead-eye farm. So theortically a highly skilled person can earn 10g in 15minutes but then has to move on to another activity for the day, where as the standard farmer can earn 5g/h and keep at it.
Ideally unique rewards are the draw for choosing Skill over farm not earning more gold.

5* A players playtime is not directly linked to their skill, I’ve played with new players that displayed more skill and understanding of their class than some people with 2k hours and 10k+ AP. The thing about skill is that a player can improve over time, and players improve much faster when encourage or forced to. So while you may not even make it into the easy catagory today, in a month you may have learned and improved.

Again I’d use unique account bound rewards as the draw rather than more gold which is the last thing the economy needs.

6* If at first you fail try and try again, my first Arah run we wiped a dozen times on lupi and then gave up for the day, came back a few weeks later having played more and had improved dramatically.
Again different aspects for different people, I see the occasional topic on the forum about people who can’t do the simplest jumping puzzles, or people who refuse to do any grouped content regardless of the ease, they’ve learned to live without being able to do it. There are other parts of the game they can enjoy.

I hope that answers your questions with what ideas I had in mind if not feel free to pose more ^^.

DiogoSilva.7089:

“SKILL”-GATED CURRENCY

Zudet, the poster above me, made a good point.

For this I propose a “skill-gated” currency, much like laurels are a time-gated currency. A type of currency that is awarded for completing tasks designed and perceived as very difficult.

And by very difficult, I don’t mean at the level of the current guild missions or most of the dungeon paths, which you can generally beat it in one go as long as your party is there to revive downed allies, but more like queen’s gauntlet, tequalt or the harderst jumping puzzles, where players will fail and must fail several times until they analyze the situation, learn with their mistakes, build around the challenge, and overcome it.

This type of currency could even substitute most of the other currencies in the game, especially dungeon tokens (have dungeon merchants be only available to players who have beaten all explorable paths instead).

I think this game needs only a minimum number of currencies: 4. Gold, for general purposes. Gems, for income. Laurels, as a time-gated currency. And a new, skill-gated currency. If we want to add a 5th, Karma could be re-utilized as a story-driven currency for personal/ living story rewards, world exploration rewards, and role-playing purposes.

Then, most types of challenging horizontal progression content could unlock merchants that would require gold + this new type of currency. You beat the new content, receive X of the new currency and unlock merchants. And then you buy from those merchants using the obtained currency. Of course, this currency would be used game-wide, but you would still be forced to beat each (hard) piece of content in the first place to even unlock the merchant first.

This way, not everything could be brought in the TP. Exclusive (or very rare) account-bound skins, dyes, recipes, foods, etc, could be gated this way.

The problem here is that it will make an unbeatable gap between “skilled” and “unskilled” players. The skilled will get the new currency, the unskilled will not. And over time, the skilled will continue to get those rewards, and more of them, while the unskilled still have nothing from this.

Note please that there is a difference between “unskilled” and “lazy”. Some people, for whatever reason, simply can not beat certain skill challenges in this (or any other) game. Maybe their reflexes are not that great, or their computer is slow. Maybe (like myself) they’re playing a less than optimal class/build for some reason. Even if they play their heart out, they’ll never be “skilled” compared to some of the challenges this game already presents.

I have no problems with skill getting you something faster, as long as everyone can get it eventually. But when it becomes a barrier to content and rewards, isn’t that a problem?

I’ll just try to leave the notes where they are, and maybe backlink if it becomes necessary. Just wondering if I missed the player housing bit. But to jump in:

The Lost Witch.7601:

1* What defines skill?

Something which requires some active effort to get instead of “stand here and autoattack”. In short, I need to do something actively instead of passively to obtain it. The skill level required (“Pull off a max combo on this DDR track” for instance) is something which some people will always find hard and others easy.

I suggest as a yardstick “SAB Tribulation Mode” is FAR TOO HARD while some daily achievements “Speak to a Laurel Vendor” is too simple. Extrapolate from there at your own risk.

2* Can skill not be bypassed by clever tricks? I know beating Tequatl with a Tequatl slaying guild isn’t particularly skillful for anyone but the organizer.

Still haven’t been able to get that done at ALL. And there will always be “clever tricks” to bypass things, so a counterquestion – is it permissible to allow them or is it better to try to anticipate them so there is no actual way to do it? IE, a jumping puzzle in the open world designed so portals CANNOT be used?

3* What percentage of the playerbase do you imagine can be called ‘skilled’? And how would it feel to not be part of that?

I feel the attempt to discern an average skill level of players is irrelevant, and it needs to simply be a scale from “dead simple” (just do a simple action, such as “talk to this NPC”) to “I Want To Be The Ghostly Hero” (theoretically possible but realisticaly unlikely, such as “Win ten rounds in a row in sPvP solo” or “earn Yakslapper within two weeks”).

4* Can skillful farmers outspeed regular farmers? And by how much? And if there is a perceived gate of how much investment it should take to get a particular thing, will this be off for the slower farmers?

The question becomes irrelevant if it can be done only once per character and not repeated for any reward.

However, dedicated and skilled farmers in the open world can often allow less skilled players to “piggyback” on their success. I don’t count farming of this nature to be a problem per se, it becomes a problem if it is exclusive instead of inclusive (only the farmer gets rewards for doing it, and nobody else can benefit).

For example? Someone doing jumping puzzles in a daily route but not assisting others versus someone doing it with a mesmer and dropping portals at the end for people to share in the rewards.

5* Will the hardcore players be the most skillful and thereby gain more riches because they don’t have to spend money on things that they can pay for with a skillbased currency? And will this increase the gap between the hardcore and the casual? How will this reflect on the economy?

Hardcore players will be more skillful on the basis of having repeated things often enough to get the method and routine down. That’s something which CANNOT be worked around short of time-gating. (From what I read every week, the whole community hates time-gates.)

Of course it will reflect on hardcore versus casual, if and only if the benefits are incredibly unbalanced and required to be obtained. And it will only impact the economy if and only if the results could be sold. Either through the TP or through “give me 5 gold and I’ll run you through it”.

6* And how will the established difference between skilled and not skilled content affect the playerbase psychologically? If you failed at doing something that is apparently not even rewarding the skillcurrency.. what does that make you?

A social problem and one which is incredibly hard to deal with or stop. Because this is the internet, and thus trolls and “Stop Having Fun Guys” (TVTropes link not included for courtesy) will always find ways of just making fun of the “scrubs and n00blets”.

Palador.2170:

I have no problems with skill getting you something faster, as long as everyone can get it eventually. But when it becomes a barrier to content and rewards, isn’t that a problem?

Getting stuff “faster” is only relevant to farmers, and it is already happening right now. Skilled farmers get money faster than unskilled farmers.

For players looking for a challenge, they could care less about speed and grind. If anything, they like to improve themselves at their own pace, and that’s why many people complained about the temporary nature of queen’s gauntlet.

Ultimately, you either choose to appeal to those people, or you choose not to. And anet did choose to appeal to those people several times: that’s why high level fractals exist, that’s why queen’s gauntlet existed, that’s why explorable dungeons exist (although not very good at their intended purpose).

I think it’s perfectly fine to have this kind of content “gated” to “skilled” players. Not all content is meant to appeal to every single player, right? However, in many situations, it’s possible to appeal both.

For example, any new instance added might have a “hard mode” version. This way, everyone can enjoy new content at “normal/ easy” mode, while some players can challenge themselves with hard mode. Another example, some areas in the world can be much harder to explore, but they don’t need to be linked to world exploration, so other players don’t need to explore them. This already happens with jumping puzzles.

When it comes to rewards, challenging content needs two types of rewards:

• Prestige rewards. They’re entirely gated by skill, and there should exist no other means to obtain them. Why? Because that’s the entire point of them! Titles, minis, skins, etc. Something to show off, to make you proud, and to express your skill to other players and impress them.
• Easier to acchieve rare rewards. This is what you said about players getting things a bit faster than farmers, because time is substituted by difficulty. Those rewards apply to every other items that exist in this game, including easier access to ascended gear.

Palador, I totally see the point.

So let’s make two paths. One slow guaranteed method of progression, ala laurels and ascended crafting, and one quick but difficult ‘shortcut’ that perhaps gives you a title as an addition.

And I don’t think we need to make the ‘skill’ gate as high as Liadri for every aspect of horizontal progression.

The Lost Witch.7601:

• Will the hardcore players be the most skillful and thereby gain more riches because they don’t have to spend money on things that they can pay for with a skillbased currency? And will this increase the gap between the hardcore and the casual? How will this reflect on the economy?

I carefully crafted my proposal with that in mind:

• Items sold from special merchants would require both gold and the new currency. So skilled players would not become (much) richer than others, they would simply get some exclusive cosmetic stuff (or even save some gold by getting things cheaper). Chances are, spending time farming somewhere else would probably lead to a higher gold income than repeating content, retraiting and respeccing your gear to beat a boss.
• They would be account-bound items. They’re not meant to affect the economy at all (at least, not directly).
• It would reward the more hardcore/ dedicated players with some deserved prestige (from unique items that can only be obtained this way), or allow them to get other items faster than farmers.

I would also add:

• This new currency should be scarse and not “farmable”. Possibly weekly-gated from each source that can reward you with it. Afterall, if you have proved yourself worthy of beating a tough boss, you can very well repeat that feat as many time as possible, but you would only receive the due credit once. But in order to incentivate players to repeat content and to have a steady income of this new currency, then instead of being a one-time only for each piece of content, it could be, say, weekly-gated or monthly-gated.

Lheimroo.2947:

Palador, I totally see the point.

So let’s make two paths. One slow guaranteed method of progression, ala laurels and ascended crafting, and one quick but difficult ‘shortcut’ that perhaps gives you a title as an addition.

And I don’t think we need to make the ‘skill’ gate as high as Liadri for every aspect of horizontal progression.

That would be perfectly fine by me.

As an added reward for doing things the hard way, titles are perfectly fine by me. I don’t like the idea of skins being exclusive to it, though. Some of us unskilled players care very much about how our characters look, and it’s very frustrating to see an item that fits our character, but know we’ll never be able to get it.

I still think this game needs something like the City of Heroes badge system, so someone can right click on your character and call up a quick visual indicator of what you’ve achieved. It was a great way to show off not just normal achievements, but ones you got for impressive feats as well.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Maybe you could implement Expeditions.

• NPCs in cities would have short timers where they gather people (1-4min). They would then open a small portal to the borders of a zone where a meta-event might start soon. You then follow these npcs through the portal, to the event-location, and start the eventchain together. (like WvW breakout events)
• these NPCs would be doing this constantly. Once NPC a is through the portal, the portal disappears and a new NPC arrives with a new portal. You never know where the next portal takes you. As tons of event-chains in the game start constantly, there should be no downtime. New players could just go to the NPC (a big orange event-marker on the map, like the breakout events in WvW) and wait for a short time, to participate in any of the event-chains in the game.
• you could make this a daily: help NPC xy on his expedition.
• a few of the really big boss-event chains are added to these expeditions as well, so you don’t have to rely on boss-timers anymore.
• People in the same area as the NPC are scaled up to the zone-level

I had to stop catching up with this thread to highlight this excellent idea. There are many events (particularly group events) throughout the world that often lapse. Particularly the chain events, which can be a lot of fun to watch progress. If each capital city popped an NPC who did a zone-broadcast asking for volunteers to help with the Expedition, and put up a portal in a high-traffic area, people would naturally flow to these and go do the events in a live zone. Incorporating these as possible Daily options is great, and would naturally get people out in the world doing new events they haven’t experienced before.

The NPC could run a script to select between a list of potential events to visit, and check to see how long it has been since that event was last completed, and take players to the oldest event. That would guarantee all the events on the list eventually get visited, and keep content fresh.

This is more content than progression, but it could be tied into progression either by awarding skill points, contributing to daily, or completing X number of them being an alternative path to getting some other currency like laurels, or rare mats like Dragonite.

Palador.2170:

As an added reward for doing things the hard way, titles are perfectly fine by me. I don’t like the idea of skins being exclusive to it, though. Some of us unskilled players care very much about how our characters look, and it’s very frustrating to see an item that fits our character, but know we’ll never be able to get it.

I understand that concern, but see it from the other point of view: for those doing challenging content, unique skins for that is very exciting.

Also, do not forget that dungeon and fractal skins already work similar to this.

Chrispy.5641:

Ronah.2869:

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

Dude, that’s part of the development process, not just in games, but in anything. Its nice to look at how cool an idea will be, and how awesome it would work in the game, but, you kind of have to look at what the possbile negatives would be as well. It would be foolish to ignore and worry later, only to regret that decision halfway through development or after release because the downsides did end up outweighing the positives! We should be voicing our concerns now instead of creating an “I hate Anet!” thread three months later.

Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, criticism of ideas generated should be put ‘on hold’. Instead, participants should focus on extending or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a later ‘critical stage’ of the process. By suspending judgment, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

I am not aware of where they said this idea will be implemented so you should not worry yet that you will be forced to play something you hate
They didn’t even give a simple reply to it like “this is interesting idea” or else

Conski Deshan.2057:

2 This has been identified as an existing problem (buying fractal/dungeon runs), the best way I can think of to overcome it would be making the challenges solo or requiring each person to pull their weight (I remember one mission in another game where your party is separated and each player has to successfully fight a boss monster solo or the mission fails for everyone).

Hmm, but players conquering challenges on their own in an MMORPG to get the most rewarding stuff wouldn’t be very community building. Which might be fine, but could work against the community spirit that arenanet seems to have in mind.

Conski Deshan.2057:

3 I would have several levels of Skill challenges, Easy: 50% of the player base (I.e the minimum beating the average) Medium: 25% , Hard: 10% Legendary: 1%-0.1%
As for not being in those %‘s , it happens daily in the real world and every game you play I don’t think its a new concept. There’s always a more skilled player than you.

I remember reading somewhere that most people think that they’re part of the most clever 50% of the population. While statistically this cannot be true. And I believe this to be wonderful. For to feel good about ourself, that is a great thought to have. I would hate it if everyone was tested for cleverness and usefulness only for people to find out where they stand exactly. While in ignorance we could lead a much happier life.

Would a skill based currency not push the facts down too kitten us? And while the real world often makes us face reality and tells us where we stand, a game does not have to do that. That is the beauty of a game, it can be different, better.

Conski Deshan.2057:

5* A players playtime is not directly linked to their skill, I’ve played with new players that displayed more skill and understanding of their class than some people with 2k hours and 10k+ AP. The thing about skill is that a player can improve over time, and players improve much faster when encourage or forced to. So while you may not even make it into the easy catagory today, in a month you may have learned and improved.

And by the time the new players have learned… will the veterans be even further ahead looking for new challenges? And after a while… will the veterans remember the long way it took to get there? And how will that seem to the new players? And will they continue to do the same content together?

Thanks for answering the questions though! (All of you, just picked a few that I wanted to respond to for now) I think it is important to think these ideas through a bit more. I think they may have an impact that we underestimate.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Of course it will reflect on hardcore versus casual, if and only if the benefits are incredibly unbalanced and required to be obtained. And it will only impact the economy if and only if the results could be sold. Either through the TP or through “give me 5 gold and I’ll run you through it”.

Well, even if results can’t be sold it can still have an impact on the economy. If the obtained rewards are replacements of rewards that you would otherwise get with money.

Let’s say a weapon, or even a skin. If you were to get that through skill – related rewards, you wouldn’t need to buy the weapon or skin with money. The net result being: you saved yourself money -> influence on the economy even if the reward cannot be traded.

cesmode.4257:

@lostwitch: Im not sure if you checked out Chris Whitesides interview that he posted in this thread a few pages back…he gave you big kudos for the summaries and all.
.

Ah, yes I did! A nice interview, I’m eager to find out what systems can be put in place to help keep the CDI’s a bit more focused. Oh… and I should’ve used the lost wizard as my name I guess.