Guild Wars 2

DarksunG.9537:

How about we just respond to his points? I think he makes some good ones & as far as i can see that’s very useful.

Let’s see?

Shakkara.2641:

The fundamental problems I see with the current mechanics are a very long list but here are a few:

• Levels – the problem with levels is that characters cannot explore the whole world from the start, each zone has a level check. Unlike GW1, Leveling takes a very long time and there is almost no level 80 content. In GW1 Factions and later, only the starter island was low level, the rest was max level content.

Not an issue which was solved by GW1, as GW1 Factions and later was rather heavily gated so one must progress in order to see more of the games. In short, it was also locked by vertical progression through the story.

• Character Stats – Totally uninteresting way of developing a character. Currently, stats > skill (both player skill and the kind of skill you use). Fundamental problems with stats and stat scaling include the dominance of Power as most important stat and the fact that hybrid characters and skills that have both direct damage and condition damage are inherently kitten, as you need two different stats to use them.

Agreeable in that it’s totally uninteresting to develop a character this way, something which D&D has been fighting for ages longer than its “vertical progression problem”. The problem is how currently DPS without conditions is sufficient to do anything while Condition damage just won’t cut it often enough to substitute.

Given it’s been said elsewhere they have something in mind to try to broaden this, I’m going to wait and see.

Also worth noting, GW1 had issues with this too. It was just far more efficient later to go for specific quick-kill built heroes than to bother doing anything yourself. Really got to a point where the player just needed to flag his heroes right and watch the fun . . . let’s not go back there, please?

• Skills being cooldown-based instead of resource based (I play Thief as they’re the only exception). This is going to be a very big problem, as it severely reduces tactical and build choices when they’re going to add more skills. And ensures that almost all the skills they are ever going to add are those with ridiculously long cooldowns.

Assumptions in future design choices, and also forgetting the shenanigans with Energy management and getting around recharges/durations in GW1 left some things really . . . interesting. Not always in a good way.

• Lack of synergy between skills. Skill categories not being used much. No clever skills like Keystone Signet or “On your knees!” that interact with a skill category to make an interesting build with. This is also a problem with the lack of interesting elite skills.

I’m not quite sure how they mean “lack of synergy”, if they mean obvious skill combos (Spirit Shackles + Mind Wrack, Spirit of Failure + inflicted Blind…) or things to load up to smash face with lack of danger (55 Monk)? Yeah I don’t miss those things in regards to any PvP interaction. There were some downright evil things which couldn’t be taken care of.

If talking about them just not quite working well together? Ranger sword can be incredibly useful when utilized by someone paying close attention, and harmonizes well with dagger off-hand I’m told. Warrior Mace/Shield combo worked pretty well for me to tank things I really probably couldn’t have normally.

I don’t know if it’s a lack of synergy or the narrowing of choices down simply making them feel there’s nothing there.

As far as the elite skills, there’s only one or two interesting/useful ones for classes/races and the rest are kind of dull or less useful.

Yoh.8469:

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.

Energy denial didn’t matter as much to some classes, from what I recall. Warrior could in theory run without Energy at all for a time until they busted up whatever was denying them and could recharge. Rangers didn’t need a lot of Energy in most builds due to Expertise mitigating their usage (lack of said Expertise made it somewhat questionable to employ Ranger skills outside of the class though).

First and foremost, what I am about to upload is very basic, and horribly drawn, so ignore all that.

Im basically talking about the trait system and reworking it to sorta have “subclasses”, or having two (maybe more?) professions for one character.

Basically, you choose your main class, in this example, warrior. Now lets say you progress down the tactics arms line, and when I hit fifteen points, I can either continue to go into warrior, or split off into thief (the other side could be say…guardian). So I split off into thief, either gaining an already in game minor trait, or a new one. Now, I can spend another five points down that thief path for a major trait, or go back to warrior, or go to guardian if I wanted.

Continuing with thief, I get a major thief trait (either taken from a thief line already in game or new). Then i can go along the path towards finishing thief or head back to warrior.

Now, problems I see here would of course be first and foremost, balance. The balance team would probably need to really kick it into high gear XD. Next, choosing which traits to allow (if not designing new), and picking ones that make sense. I mean, giving a trait that relies on stealing probably wouldnt be good, though, giving a warrior the caltrops when they dodge would be funny.

Next problem i foresee, and can be shown on the pic, is if allowing that once you take the second major trait in the subclass, do you allow going into the next tree for grandmaster? Or make it a pre-req that you have to have at least 10pts in that tree first? Again, allowing it would mean more class builds, but then more potential balance problems.

Finally, the way this is designed was on purpose. I wanted to keep the 5 trait lines in the main classes already, and not add more, and if you count the spaces in between, that leaves only room for 5 subclasses. So, excluding the current class already in use, that leaves 7 more, so two would be left out.

I figured for warrior, it would be Ele and Necro, since (other than ele using a summoned weapon) neither really go into melee combat.

Course, it doesnt even HAVE to go into current classes, this could start the subclasses, where that is the Shadow Warrior subclass, or something.

And speaking of subclasses, if anything, I would like to see a version of DnD 3.5 Frenzied Beserker, where vengeance auto activates when your hp reaches zero, letting you fight just a bit longer….:P

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.

Energy denial didn’t matter as much to some classes, from what I recall. Warrior could in theory run without Energy at all for a time until they busted up whatever was denying them and could recharge. Rangers didn’t need a lot of Energy in most builds due to Expertise mitigating their usage (lack of said Expertise made it somewhat questionable to employ Ranger skills outside of the class though).

Ah, true true.
But it was a factor. And it did give the game another dimension to work with, one that is now lacking.

Yoh.8469:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.

Energy denial didn’t matter as much to some classes, from what I recall. Warrior could in theory run without Energy at all for a time until they busted up whatever was denying them and could recharge. Rangers didn’t need a lot of Energy in most builds due to Expertise mitigating their usage (lack of said Expertise made it somewhat questionable to employ Ranger skills outside of the class though).

Ah, true true.
But it was a factor. And it did give the game another dimension to work with, one that is now lacking.

And I’m not entirely sure that is a bad thing, especially if they were aiming at trimming it down to something more accessible to new players without bogging them down in unnecessary minutae.

Yoh.8469:

Well, the problem your describing is partly due to your very narrow definition of what Control is, and again is part of the problem with control is, no one knows what the hell it is.

If your talking about just CC, then yeah it’s really ineffective outside of PvP, and even then it’s just an extension of DPS, your still a DPS at heart.

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.
While not having resources is good from a DPS gameplay perspective, all other forms of play seem to suffer considerably.

I really don’t know if it was the best course of action in hindsight. And it’s probably too late to add an energy system in now?

My definition of control is effects that cause, promote, restrict or prevent certain types of action. I don’t know if that’s narrow, but I seriously doubt it.

GW2 actually has more methods of control than GW1, but in dungeons they’re less effective. The walls, knockdowns, immobilize, and so on are on long cooldowns – you can’t usually block foes into tight spaces and wipe them all out with AoE, because they have too much HP to die before you run out of ways to keep them still.
Because there are no healers, you don’t need skills like Diversion, Distracting Shot, Power Block, etc. so much- though it sure would be nice to have something similar against a few of the GW2 bosses. But in GW1, failing to shut down elementalist bosses in hard mode meant that without huge defensive buffs, someone (or everyone) was going to die.

I think in a nutshell, the problem is it’s nowhere near as easy (if even possible) to stay alive due to judicious use of CC as it is to just DPS the target down. I don’t think adding energy to AI-controlled foes would change that at all – they don’t attack fast right now, because if they did it’d be impossible to beat them with that kind of HP.

And, actually, it might cause even worse lag problems on large-scale PvE events if they did use actions more frequently.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.

Energy denial didn’t matter as much to some classes, from what I recall. Warrior could in theory run without Energy at all for a time until they busted up whatever was denying them and could recharge. Rangers didn’t need a lot of Energy in most builds due to Expertise mitigating their usage (lack of said Expertise made it somewhat questionable to employ Ranger skills outside of the class though).

Ah, true true.
But it was a factor. And it did give the game another dimension to work with, one that is now lacking.

And I’m not entirely sure that is a bad thing, especially if they were aiming at trimming it down to something more accessible to new players without bogging them down in unnecessary minutae.

Yeah, I am of two minds about it.
For DPS and probably Support, I think you can work them so they work perfectly well with no resource requirement.
It’s just Control where you run into problems, as it limits your possible interactions.

Not to say there isn’t a workable solution, but defining what Control is and what that entails is a start.

I define it as a combination of CC, debilitating conditions (Blind, Weakness, Cripple, etc), and mobility/area denial. (ie, controlling the area around you, or where you enemy can and cannot be) Basically anything that controls behavior.

I’ll skip to the last part because it the one I think we have the most room to work with.
An example of what I mean by area denial is like Wards or Marks, one prevents you from going through while the other will punish you if you do. Thou with Marks it more build as another DPS option rather then a control one.

The problem I see with these abilities is either they are inertly a DPS options, Traps/Marks, or often times they have such short duration, and very long cooldowns, and there is very little you can do on either front.
If stats existed that say allowed by Guardian to perpetually have one or two wards up, I could see that being a fairly effective form of control in all modes of play.

So there are ways to do it, but it’s going to take a fair bit of creativity on Arenanets part.

Yoh.8469:

So there are ways to do it, but it’s going to take a fair bit of creativity on Arenanets part.

It will, but it will also take some collaborative behavior of players actually using this stuff instead of going “frick it, Zerker gear”.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

So there are ways to do it, but it’s going to take a fair bit of creativity on Arenanets part.

It will, but it will also take some collaborative behavior of players actually using this stuff instead of going “frick it, Zerker gear”.

True that, but one of the core things that I think need to be added would be dedicated stats for Control, and probably one more for Support.
Because even if you do build a full control build under the current system, what stats do you go for? Your pretty much stuck with going DPS if you want to have any hope in being remotely useful.

So you need to have another viable option.

-

The question then becomes: What stats would function for control?
I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.

Yoh.8469:

The question then becomes: What stats would function for control?
I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.

Well, I guess it depends on where your control would be coming from. If you want One Stat To Rule It All, I would probably say Condition Damage/Duration. In GW1 it was easy as each skill ran of an Attribute, here not so much.

If you had to really sit down and work on it, it would take ripping out the statistics system as is and tinkering with it. Which makes me pine for the simplicity of how Ars Magica handles this sort of thing, or even the somewhat-clunky D&D3.5 method . . .

Both of those things, of course, highly reliant on an actual living person however, rather than code. Sigh.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

The question then becomes: What stats would function for control?
I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.

Well, I guess it depends on where your control would be coming from. If you want One Stat To Rule It All, I would probably say Condition Damage/Duration. In GW1 it was easy as each skill ran of an Attribute, here not so much.

If you had to really sit down and work on it, it would take ripping out the statistics system as is and tinkering with it. Which makes me pine for the simplicity of how Ars Magica handles this sort of thing, or even the somewhat-clunky D&D3.5 method . . .

Both of those things, of course, highly reliant on an actual living person however, rather than code. Sigh.

Ars Magica? I’m not familiar with it, how did it work?

Yoh.8469:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

The question then becomes: What stats would function for control?
I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.

Well, I guess it depends on where your control would be coming from. If you want One Stat To Rule It All, I would probably say Condition Damage/Duration. In GW1 it was easy as each skill ran of an Attribute, here not so much.

If you had to really sit down and work on it, it would take ripping out the statistics system as is and tinkering with it. Which makes me pine for the simplicity of how Ars Magica handles this sort of thing, or even the somewhat-clunky D&D3.5 method . . .

Both of those things, of course, highly reliant on an actual living person however, rather than code. Sigh.

Ars Magica? I’m not familiar with it, how did it work?

Semi off-topic, semi on-topic. It was a tabletop RPG which revolved around the concept of each player being a magi/wizard in Mythic Europe (basically “All Myths Are True, in a fashion” in Europe Middle Ages). The magic system allowed a lot of creativity but relied on the play group doing a lot of work interpreting things.

Horizontal progression met vertical progression in the sense of each magi had five basic prefixes for spells (create, destroy, control, change, see) and ten basic suffixes for what the effect was intended for (earth, sky, water, fire, senses, mind, human body, animal body, plants, and magic itself). You study to get experience points raising your potential with these so you could generate bigger effects – but smaller ones are incredibly important as well.

There are skills for things not magic which scaled on a different rate of learning and effectiveness, and you use experience points for those. Things like languages, liberal arts, knowledge . . . that fall under the skills.

Experience points are not an open pool, they are accumulated by practicing or studying what you wanted to raise. Wanted to get better at fire magic? Go study it, but while doing that you’re not studying how to create things with magic. How to defend yourself? Sure, but you could be using that time to study writing in French instead…

It is incredibly complex to handle the information and keep track of it, which is why a lot of play groups I was in called it “playing a spreadsheet”. And on top of that, it wasn’t a very active game since you could very easily get sick and die, or get injured and the injury festers into a fatal condition. Or you just fail at magic so hard you wink out of existence.

If you want to look at a skill-oriented game? This is a good choice since your skills and how you make use of them, how you sharpen them, define your character as much as “he only has one eye and walks with a limp” if not more.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

DarksunG.9537:

How about we just respond to his points? I think he makes some good ones & as far as i can see that’s very useful.

Let’s see?

thank you Tobias! I find it offensive when people try find a way to invalidate an opinion because they don’t like how something was said rather than look at the actual content which tends to be far more of a contribution than critiquing someone’s delivery.

That said, I think I agree with your points. I’d also love to see even more attempts to move away from stat progression. I think there is a tendency to forget the only reason stats were ever made up in the first place back in the D&D era was because it was the best thing they could think up at the time.

I also think Shakkara’s point about too much narrowness in combat style is not a good thing either. I think a major issue with people not feeling flavor/focus is due to the ineffectual nature of Control & Support. Honestly the current control is almost completely useless in PvE & even when it is actually functional it’s so quick & uninteresting that it’s totally unsatisfying. Really, why would you ever have a control ability that puts on a 0.5 sec root? I mean really? Roots don’t even prevent mobs from turning like they are supposed to.
I’d love Anet to play Neverwinter. The Control Wizard has to be the absolutely most fun control class I’ve ever played. It’s amazing. Compared to that, GW2 essentially has zero control whatsoever.

So over-focusing the classes isn’t a good thing, it’s more about the effectiveness of non-damage builds & not enough options than not enough focus.

DarksunG.9537:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

DarksunG.9537:

How about we just respond to his points? I think he makes some good ones & as far as i can see that’s very useful.

Let’s see?

thank you Tobias! I find it offensive when people try find a way to invalidate an opinion because they don’t like how something was said rather than look at the actual content which tends to be far more of a contribution than critiquing someone’s delivery.

That said, I think I agree with your points. I’d also love to see even more attempts to move away from stat progression. I think there is a tendency to forget the only reason stats were ever made up in the first place back in the D&D era was because it was the best thing they could think up at the time.

I also think Shakkara’s point about too much narrowness in combat style is not a good thing either. I think a major issue with people not feeling flavor/focus is due to the ineffectual nature of Control & Support. Honestly the current control is almost completely useless in PvE & even when it is actually functional it’s so quick & uninteresting that it’s totally unsatisfying. Really, why would you ever have a control ability that puts on a 0.5 sec root? I mean really? Roots don’t even prevent mobs from turning like they are supposed to.
I’d love Anet to play Neverwinter. The Control Wizard has to be the absolutely most fun control class I’ve ever played. It’s amazing. Compared to that, GW2 essentially has zero control whatsoever.

So over-focusing the classes isn’t a good thing, it’s more about the effectiveness of non-damage builds & not enough options than not enough focus.

Yeah, I’m not actually all that huge a fan of stats in the first place. I honestly see them as anachronistic and outdated a lot of the time. I actually really loved GW1 system where you pretty much didn’t even have stats, it was all about skill.
It made changing and experimenting on builds very quick and fluid.

GW2 by contrast just bogs everything down with their stat system. I’m not really sure what purpose it serves.

DarksunG.9537:

thank you Tobias! I find it offensive when people try find a way to invalidate an opinion because they don’t like how something was said rather than look at the actual content which tends to be far more of a contribution than critiquing someone’s delivery.

Delivery is as important as the message. If you’re being a . . . well, female dog . . . about how you tell someone something is wrong? They’re not going to take it seriously. Some maturity is required to temper the edge lest the message be lost in the reaction of “this one’s so rude”.

Ideally? It wouldn’t matter. But reality bows to psychology and how our brains work when receiving attitudes we don’t like. And if you ignore that reality when you present your case, I don’t have much sympathy if you get pushed out the door while proclaiming the roof is on fire. (Even if I’m the next one out the door.)

That said, I think I agree with your points. I’d also love to see even more attempts to move away from stat progression. I think there is a tendency to forget the only reason stats were ever made up in the first place back in the D&D era was because it was the best thing they could think up at the time.

It was based off wargaming, where most things we think of these days as essential to RPGs didn’t exist. And it still exists in some form because “that’s the way it’s always been”. Though recent editions have tried to staple over it.

But the core concern on that front is: “Sure we could do better, but would it still be the same game?”

I also think Shakkara’s point about too much narrowness in combat style is not a good thing either. I think a major issue with people not feeling flavor/focus is due to the ineffectual nature of Control & Support. Honestly the current control is almost completely useless in PvE & even when it is actually functional it’s so quick & uninteresting that it’s totally unsatisfying. Really, why would you ever have a control ability that puts on a 0.5 sec root? I mean really? Roots don’t even prevent mobs from turning like they are supposed to.

I was about to discuss this with some people off this CDI thread because frankly, it’s WAY off topic for here and deserves its own CDI thread. There’s a lot of problems with Control and Support but they boil down to requiring a heck of a lot more finicky details in code than DPS and they all may break at any point, making it a nightmare to troubleshoot.

I’d love Anet to play Neverwinter. The Control Wizard has to be the absolutely most fun control class I’ve ever played. It’s amazing. Compared to that, GW2 essentially has zero control whatsoever.

I play D&D 4th edition, where a Wizard properly set up can control the battlefield so elegantly and completely the GM pretty much doesn’t even need to be at the table sometimes. I mean, unless they take specific steps to prevent it but that’s a different thing entirely.

Another thing which is fun? Magic The Gathering with a control deck. Especially early ones where a good Blue player would have his opponent asking every action: “may I?” . . . these days it’s almost bad enough you might possibly get it to a point you can control what it is they draw and actively prevent them from having a chance to beat you.

Want to know a secret? Those things are not fun to the person on the other side. So, don’t forget that. There is nothing fun being on the receiving end of a stun lock or other sort of lockdown complete enough to keep you from doing anything other than taking it up good ol’ Talus Chute.

We really need to think about that. As much as “we should be able to do X”, following with “and if X was done to me….”

HP summary page 47 to 52 Part 1
Ok next summary update. Took a bit longer then I though, tying to catch up is burning me out a bit but very happy to finally feel like I’m getting there. Thanks Chris and everyone for all the encouragement. For anyone looking for up-to-date topic information and a complete index of all summaries over the Character Progression CDI The Lost Witch has created CDI – Character Progression – Summaries. Again if I’ve missed anything let me know.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I got back into the office this week and have been SUPER busy. So I sincerely apologies for not contributing over the past few days. I need to catch up from page 44 )-:

I intend to put a proposal together on behalf of us all this weekend. Feel free to carry on chatting and brainstorming in the interim. I am looking forward to getting back into thread and seeing it come to its conclusion.

Chris

First from Chris Whiteside posts on page 51 I believe anyone looking to contribute should jump in as it looks like we might be winding up for a proposal.

• Nike starts with an open reply to Colin and brings up the idea of a Paid Expansion. Adding a large block of new content in one hit, as well as enticing new players and players back to GW2 with a new GW2 expansion box in stores.
• Thrawn comes back to GW2 after a break find no overall change. Likes the idea of HP but feel like your gained or achieved nothing. A nice write up with a view from a player that left for 8 months.
• Sinope writes and interesting post talking about DE designs relating to rewards and achievements in The Mystery of Lazy People.
• Tumult brings up the feeling of Being Forced look at Dailies hoping any HP system doesn’t create this forced feeling.

Character Progression

• Aveneo looks to city activities for HP giving life to cities other then Lion’s Arch.
• Randall accepts Colin’s challenge of outside the box and comes up with Advance Skill Bar adding another 6-10 skill bar which can be swapped in similar to swapping weapons.
• Gnomehunter brings up Living Story Collection Panel feeling many players are tempted to destroy the living story items due to clogging up inventory space. This follows through to any HP collections as at any point inventory space becomes hot property.
• Devata continues the discussion looking at WvW progression in PvE look to Weinstein ET for comparison. The Lost Witch has some questions about quick in-game progression. Devata believe a quick in-game progression system could only work in specific areas.
• Shongaqu investigates the Global Dominance looking at Southsun for so in game comparisons. Then takes a look a Weapon Unlocks, Skill Hunting & Secondary Professions and Decks.
• Marcus Greythorne looks to explain and clarify the Expedition idea.
• Erick Alastor joins the discussion talking about Sidekicking, All Items Account Bound, Skins Permanently unlocked and looks at the TP & Black Lion Company.

HP summary page 47 to 52 Part 2
Again if I’ve missed anything let me know.

Player Housing

• DarkWasp thinks out the thought process of housing through Conski Deshan’s post and looks to expand and explain the idea here
• Cliff replies to DarkWasp’s imaginary game update notes wondering about the system but not wanting to be forced to visit other players houses.
• Tobias & Zamalek looks to]answer DarkWasp’s questions and Donari looks to LotRO regarding housing and housing visits.

Order Progression

• Latinkuro looks at unlocking by the Orders and worries about the personal story were we join one Order. Were Tobias Trueflight wants choice to matter. Nike has no problem with Order masteries but believes players ‘must not frozen out of masteries because they picked an Order ignorant of the consequences’. Tobias still wants the choice but looks solutions to being frozen from the other Order masteries.

Build Content

• Gingelyr looking for build flexibility but finds gear and inventory space in the way and wonders about a Stat wardrobe or Skin wardrobe. This beginnings a discussion on role diversification and how players are starting to feel locked in to certain builds after reaching level 80.

Sub-classes / Masteries

• Chuggs adds How to Introduce Players to Mastery further expanding the Mastery concept.
• Nike discusses with Colin unlocking sub-classes / masteries through events.
• videoboy looks at sub-classes as primarily cosmetic.
• Lance Darkrage applies sub-classes through Weapon Roles. By 2-3 traits that change based on weapons chosen changing the weapons skills and effects.
• Frost’s sub-classes joins in on sub-class discussion presenting another take on a skill-and-trait-unlock system.
• Tobias Trueflight extrapolate into sub-classes discussing further ideas with Malchior.
• Adagiophoto see’s class specialization accomplished through weapon skills looking to add more weapons instead of sub-classes. Providing a druid example.
• Misterdevious looks to variations of existing profession mechanics for sub-classes.
• Bobocell follows the thought of sub-classes through weapons with Master Weapons looking for a hybrid horizontal/vertical/quality of life increase
• Nopoet ties sub-classes to the Orders looking for flavour.

HP summary page 47 to 52 Part 3
Again if I’ve missed anything let me know.

And then on sub-classes Darkace starts a great discussion with Tobias & Cliff starting off. Which I believe is looking for the reason sub-classes keep get being brought up. Overall I think Tobias nailed it on the head when labelling that were looking for a Framing System to deliever Colin’s journey.

• Tobias Trueflight talks about sub-classes enriching options using D&D for comparison and explores the reason for sub-classes other the trait, skill expansion.
• Cliff wonders why add a sub-classes like system if the existing system can achieve similar results.
  The discussion continues below and over the next few pages with others joining in.
• Nike joins filing a complaint for the plain-wurms and looks at Horizontal Specialisation – Archetypes.
• Chrispy provides a great example of this framing / journey with A Ranger’s Grand Journey. Zamalek runs with Chrispy’s idea adding forced trait were Chrispy was not looking to have any forced traits.
• Draxynnic sub-classes are a key not a lock.
• For Sarrs sub-classes could adversely affect the stories preferring build content to be release through living world content.
• Gulesave’s Current State of the “subclass” & Zamalek’s Post listings are a great summery of the discussion so far.
• VOLKON is against specialisation were specialisation creates the path of least resistance.
• Malchior just doesn’t see how sub-classes would work for horizontal progression.
• Ghotistyx looks at sub-classes as a themed skills and traits that could swap in or out just like different skills & traits now. The writes a mutli-post covering Role Diversification, Housing/Wardrobe ideas & Sociopolitical.

Author Note: Sorry just thought I’ll jump in, as role diversification is close to heart and with summarising I’ve had little time to post, thanks. For me when I look at sub-classes they are the journey / packet to delivery new build content. They can give explanation for this content and modularises the content for easier further expansion in the future. In truth I see no differences in just adding new build content. Any new weapons, skill & trait will create specialisation anyway. As they should, they should perform better at certain roles and jobs then existing, if not what is the point to adding them. In this way a build is just the same as sub-classes a specialisation, something we create to achieve a specific role we just call them builds. Also just adding any new build content can be viewed in a vertical progression way as you now have more options to over come challenges. Some of the option will be better meaning you are now more powerful at these challenges.

HP summary page 47 to 52 Part 4
Again if I’ve missed anything let me know.

The Journey

• Adubb investigates the daily / monthly system adding Profession Specific Quests looking at tying profession and race choices into the system
• Zaoda thinks about GW1’s Factions and looks to the Six Gods, wondering could there be a re-emergence in GW2 of the Gods.
• The Lost Witch reaches out to Lands Long Forgotten tying all area’s of GW2 (PvE, WvW & sPvP).
• Sir Arthur hits the nail on the head with looking for a GW2 take on GW1 Crystal Desert Ascension.
• Timmyf asks about waypoints feeling they trivializes much of the exploration & journey. Sir Arthur & timmyf post’s bring up many other posts remembering stories and journeys from GW1. This is what we should be aiming for with GW2’s journeys. Future stories to be remembered and retold.
• After all the remembering Tobias comes up with a waypoint-less Crystal Desert and Ben K ties in the Ascension journey (subclasses/proficiencies/traits/whatever-they-might-be) below.
• Mikuchan expands Personal Quest Arcs looking for epic quests.
• Nasedo likes DiogoSilva’s open-world mini scenarios but looks at tying the concept to guilds. Were Devata looks at open-world mini scenarios and ask isn’t this Orr.
• Zamalek looks at explaining the journey through the individual components with Synergistic or Freeform missions.
• Deified says No to More of For Progression exploring the idea of tying all these journeys back into the LS. Devata investigates Deified’s idea.
• Septemptus’s out of the box idea explores Exploration.
• Gaebriel adds Journey Challenges easy tracking that encourages players back out into the world.
  *Chrispy talks about sub-classes as a reason behind the journey looking for a Epic Multi-afternoon Journey.
  PhiLL comes in with the idea of World Missions tying in the Order.
• VOLKON & DiogoSilva wonder if darkness could create and ’lead to a very dangerously exciting open world experience’. For any interested VOLKON links another thread discussion dark nights.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

DarksunG.9537:

thank you Tobias! I find it offensive when people try find a way to invalidate an opinion because they don’t like how something was said rather than look at the actual content which tends to be far more of a contribution than critiquing someone’s delivery.

Delivery is as important as the message. If you’re being a . . . well, female dog . . . about how you tell someone something is wrong? They’re not going to take it seriously. Some maturity is required to temper the edge lest the message be lost in the reaction of “this one’s so rude”.

Ideally? It wouldn’t matter. But reality bows to psychology and how our brains work when receiving attitudes we don’t like. And if you ignore that reality when you present your case, I don’t have much sympathy if you get pushed out the door while proclaiming the roof is on fire. (Even if I’m the next one out the door.)

That said, I think I agree with your points. I’d also love to see even more attempts to move away from stat progression. I think there is a tendency to forget the only reason stats were ever made up in the first place back in the D&D era was because it was the best thing they could think up at the time.

It was based off wargaming, where most things we think of these days as essential to RPGs didn’t exist. And it still exists in some form because “that’s the way it’s always been”. Though recent editions have tried to staple over it.

But the core concern on that front is: “Sure we could do better, but would it still be the same game?”

I also think Shakkara’s point about too much narrowness in combat style is not a good thing either. I think a major issue with people not feeling flavor/focus is due to the ineffectual nature of Control & Support. Honestly the current control is almost completely useless in PvE & even when it is actually functional it’s so quick & uninteresting that it’s totally unsatisfying. Really, why would you ever have a control ability that puts on a 0.5 sec root? I mean really? Roots don’t even prevent mobs from turning like they are supposed to.

I was about to discuss this with some people off this CDI thread because frankly, it’s WAY off topic for here and deserves its own CDI thread. There’s a lot of problems with Control and Support but they boil down to requiring a heck of a lot more finicky details in code than DPS and they all may break at any point, making it a nightmare to troubleshoot.

I’d love Anet to play Neverwinter. The Control Wizard has to be the absolutely most fun control class I’ve ever played. It’s amazing. Compared to that, GW2 essentially has zero control whatsoever.

I play D&D 4th edition, where a Wizard properly set up can control the battlefield so elegantly and completely the GM pretty much doesn’t even need to be at the table sometimes. I mean, unless they take specific steps to prevent it but that’s a different thing entirely.

Another thing which is fun? Magic The Gathering with a control deck. Especially early ones where a good Blue player would have his opponent asking every action: “may I?” . . . these days it’s almost bad enough you might possibly get it to a point you can control what it is they draw and actively prevent them from having a chance to beat you.

Want to know a secret? Those things are not fun to the person on the other side. So, don’t forget that. There is nothing fun being on the receiving end of a stun lock or other sort of lockdown complete enough to keep you from doing anything other than taking it up good ol’ Talus Chute.

We really need to think about that. As much as “we should be able to do X”, following with “and if X was done to me….”

Yeah, one thing that constantly has to be taken into account, esp with Control, is Counter Play. Where the skill in question gives as many new (enjoyable) options to the person using it, as the person it’s being used on.

And CC doesn’t really do that, it’s just frustrating most of the time, because you can’t really do anything. Where as certain conditions, like Torment and Confusion have good counter play.

HP summary page 47 to 52 Part 5
Again if I’ve missed anything let me know.

Unlocking & Skill Challenges

• Zaoda talks about the Signet of Capture from GW1 and how you truly felt you had earned skills. Ben K wonders about Signet of Capture and WvW, can it work. Bonefield looks to Final fantasy XI and the Signet of Capture looking for a solution for WvW. Ben K challenges PvP trainers with a gauntlet style system for WvW.
• Nike puts the STOP lights on ALTS, with all this new unlocking how do they affect alts and could this create grind. Mikuchan looks at alts and account bound unlocks and see a problem when repeating content.
• Partrikan Habaton looks to a large META Achievement that holds all sorts of challenges.
• Melliarc goes with new story branches unlocking as “upper level character enlightenment” are very personal to the character level.
• Dreaude joins the discussion ’thinking about the acquisition side of things, specifically the mission based ones revolving either around the orders or a kind of personal quest line’ to unlocking.

Skill, Skill Gating & Hard Mode
Quite a large discussion starts up about skill and skill gating and how this relates to any progression, reward system.

• Continuing with skill currencies & skill gating Partrikan Habaton replies to The Lost Witch talking about what skill is starting discussion below. It a really good question ’What is skill’ Parkrikan sees reaction time as a primary element but is that so?
• The Lost Witch does not and looks at some problems skill gating could causes.
• Devata lastly list 2-3 elements to make a game more skill-based.
• The Lost Witch discusses with Conski Deshan rewards and gating. Tobias Trueflight also joins in disliking rewards and progression locked behind skill gating.
• In all this discussion Patrikan Habaton looks for system that could work for Casuals & Hardcore Players
• Ghotistyx is looking at Hard Mode for a solution with gambits as an option.
• Conski Deshan & Tobias Trueflight talks about elitism, excluding and describe one meaning for Casuals and Hardcore players.
• Cliff jumps in agreeing their should be rewards for skill.
• The discussion of Hard mode really takes off after DarkWasp asks Do you feel that open world or solo content needs a “Hard Mode” of some sort?’ and carries over the next few pages (Pg52 has a large block of the discussion). For any interested it’s quite a great discussion.
• In all this talk about hard mode DiogoSilva asks about the middleground.

That’s all of it everyone, going to take a break now.

Yoh.8469:

Yeah, one thing that constantly has to be taken into account, esp with Control, is Counter Play. Where the skill in question gives as many new (enjoyable) options to the person using it, as the person it’s being used on.

And CC doesn’t really do that, it’s just frustrating most of the time, because you can’t really do anything. Where as certain conditions, like Torment and Confusion have good counter play.

I would hazard saying Torment might, but Confusion if stacked high enough and strong enough will pretty much shut down people. Exhibit A? Level 80 Princess Dolls.

Bezagron.7352:

That’s all of it everyone, going to take a break now.

I swear I’m gonna send you cookies if I find a recipe on my Master Chef which is worth using I might settle for ice cream.

Snowballing random idea on adding flavour to current classes….

With regards to the notion of improving the feel of professions with sub classes and what not, what about a ‘weapon specialisation’ system – or something of the like. A toggle on-off ability that changes the specialisation of your weapon.

I.e. Guardian staff original role – support / minor control.
New role – mid ranged melee weapon (far-fetched example, but you get the idea)

So this toggle alters the role of an existing skill-set for a particular weapon.

The issue I see with adding new weapon skills to existing weapons is the overall balance of those weapons – as they would have been carefully tuned to be the way they are. If you allow players to add a heavy dps skill to the Warrior’s hammer – balance would go out the window even more so.

To put a damper on my own ‘suggestion but not a suggestion’.. The more you think about it, implementation reveals itself to be rather difficult. Weapon skill-sets are in part what separate professions. If the warrior is granted a more defensive hammer, and the Guardian a more offensive – the lines are blurred.

Another far-fetched example; the warrior’s offensive hammer is very CC orientated, whilst the Guardians could be based around AoE burns, etc. (given their love for blue fire..)

Approaching implementation:

I will say that weapon specialisations would be quite approachable through horizontal progression. There could be a whole line of activities (and perhaps an interesting story) involved in the learning of the specialisation. Though this could be applied to the implementation of a new trait line – sub class, or any number of examples.

Where we are learning a specialisation, we may be sent on a grand adventure by a master swordsman that has you scaling difficult JP’s to find an ancient weapon, defeating a difficult enemy or enemies that proves your worth (thinking queen’s gauntlet style – but obviously locked the into 1 weapon for extra challenge/specialisation), besting a master swordsman… winning a handful of PvP matches (PvE’rs would whinge on that one) etc. These activities could (and probably should) be scattered throughout Tyria. (as I’m sure has been suggested countless times)

As for how long these activities may take – time gating should be discarded on this one. You may add enough content and an interesting story to the acquisition of the new specialisations which take a few hours to complete, but as long as that content was fun and engaging – nobody would complain. They’d also get a new toy to play with at the end of the day. Additionally, you have a large number of weapons and fun little stories to work with… but given how many weapons, I can see that such a feat would take a up a large amount of time and resources, potentially. Although, if well written, the writers could probably do it in a way that has us re-visit existing content.

That concludes my probably terrible idea.

Baels.3469:

Igor, bring me . . . the knife! It’s time to dissect this post. For science!

With regards to the notion of improving the feel of professions with sub classes and what not, what about a ‘weapon specialisation’ system – or something of the like. A toggle on-off ability that changes the specialisation of your weapon.

I’d just use the stuff we have already – your weapon skills get an up-arrow and you can filter in skills as you see fit. Again, difficult for those balance testers but for the players wanting skill customization on weapons? Worth it.

The issue I see with adding new weapon skills to existing weapons is the overall balance of those weapons – as they would have been carefully tuned to be the way they are.

But this is the trouble with adding any new potential to weapons. The three basic questions:

- How does this work with the general class idea? (Does it make a ranger less like a ranger to give their bow a melee-range stab with an arrow?)

- How does this work with what the class can theoretically do? (Would said arrow stab be a problem if they immediately switched to a melee weapon set and used it as a lead-off attack?)

- How does this work with what other classes can do against it? (Is this of any use at all in PvP situations, or is it of too much use?)

To put a damper on my own ‘suggestion but not a suggestion’.. The more you think about it, implementation reveals itself to be rather difficult. Weapon skill-sets are in part what separate professions. If the warrior is granted a more defensive hammer, and the Guardian a more offensive – the lines are blurred.

And it really depends on how much blurring the game can actually take before it becomes “everyone can do anything everyone else can just as good”.

I will say that weapon specialisations would be quite approachable through horizontal progression. There could be a whole line of activities (and perhaps an interesting story) involved in the learning of the specialisation.

I think we’re all in this topic on agreement this is a great PvE implementation. PvP and WvW players probably would just rather have the option of getting them without having to saddle up out into the world.

Yes, I think a little PvE is good for the soul, but it’s their choice and they have a right to complain about being forced into other play types to stay competitive. Imagine if the only way to get a Precursor was to get to PvP Rank 20. How loud would the complaining be from people who don’t like PvP or (like me) plain stink?

Where we are learning a specialisation…. (snip)

Going right back to my “order-centric” approach – this is the Vigil’s style of training. You need to get an instructor, and they set you a combat-related task. Naturally, you could approach it how you like but the general thrust is it’s going to involve confrontation.

The Priory on the other hand, would send you to investigate a Point of Interest or Skill Challenge position and report back, a slow trail of riddles culminating in calling the ghost of the mentor from the Mists to teach you the trick. Knowledge leads to power.

The Order of Whispers wants you to go investigate people who are known to be “unusual” in their styles and you are told the general whereabouts of a Whisper Agent who you need to identify yourself to with the code phrase. Then they set you to training on the use of the weapon before demonstrating the skill during a sparring match. Block it, evade it, take it, and the match ends with them congratulating you and unlocking it.

These are just one way in PvE open world to weave each of them in there.

As for how long these activities may take – time gating should be discarded on this one.

If, and this is a big if, we go by my playbook you’d at least need to be with an order before they start training you. Assumedly once you get to the Pact unification, any one of the paths is open to you.

Otherwise, I’d say allow it to happen sometime after you unlock Elite Skills.

That concludes my probably terrible idea.

Not a terrible idea.

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

CONTINUED…

Account-wide Crafting
One measure that I’m surprised hasn’t been implemented is Account-wide Crafting disciplines. Since one character is able to max all crafting disciplines, and since the Achievement System is account-wide, there is truly no incentive for a player to go through the grind once more on a different character.

I suggest merging crafts across all characters to the highest one in each discpline currently on the account, and once unlocked at the highest level once it will be available to all characters on that account.

• ASCENDED PRECURSORS AND LEGENDARY GEAR
  I believe the opportunity exists to enshrine Ascended as milestone towards gaining a Legendary, rather than feeling as if one is wasting their time, spending resources and money to gain items that are on the same level as Legendaries, but sub-par in the sense that they lack stat-switching. I’ve seen much jaded talk about holding back on crafting Ascended in order to wait for the Legendary tier to be added to other slots.

Legendary Weapons are a great addition to the game, similar to how Ascended currently functions they encourage players to partake in activities across a broad spectrum, to enjoy the game to the fullest and work towards this long-term goal organically through normal gameplay.

The end goal should be to have Legendary Items available for all equipment slots currently in-game, and with the path to acquiring them, with perhaps the exception of Legendary Weapons because of the already-existing precursors, going straight through Ascended.

As was mentioned earlier, I proposed expanding the Infusion mechanism to incorporate Ascended weapons and armor, as this would allow us to progress further into Fractals, give the brackets more meaning and disperse the rewards across a broader range of levels, whilst also expanding the progression of the Ascended tier, another goal to work towards to infuse all of one’s gear.

This Infusion mechanism could then be used in the crafting of Precursors; the precursors for Legendary Weapons are already in-game as exotics, and changing this might be difficult at this stage, as I would propose using Ascended weapons as precursors instead.

However, for Legendary Armor and Trinkets, Ascended could be used as the precursors. Once a piece of Ascended armor has been infused, one is able to use it as a precursor component to crafting a corresponding Legendary piece; this will ensure Ascended is not perceived as a waste of time, won’t place it in competition to legendaries but will instead become an integral component to it, and will also connect these different kinds of progression to one another, so that those who have Ascended gear at the moment, and those who are working towards it, won’t feel as if their efforts were reset on a treadmill once other legendaries are gradually released.

One proposal given by Shriketalon.1937 was to craft Legendary Trinkets through the following method:

Uisng different orbs to craft exquisite jewels, these can then be combined in sets of 4 in order to create a “Chimeric Prism” and an “Iridescent Prism”. Combining these 2 with a “Chaos Diamond”, from salvaging Ascended items, and Thermocatalytic Reagents would then yield an “Inscribed Secret”.

This “Inscribed Secret” is then combined together with an Augur’s Stone and 2 items made from recipes containing the yet-to-be-added Ascended materials, Xunlai Electrum Ingots and Crystalline Ingots, which would then yield a Legendary Trinket.

See attachment at bottom for detailed description
Image is curtesy of Shriketalon.1937 (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/5#post3369475)

To conclude: One should be able to acquire Ascended items through a wide range of activities, ranging from Fractals and Crafting to general PvE. These Ascended items should then be expanded, allowing players to infuse them to gain Account-wide Agony Resistance. The Infused versions of these Ascended Weapons, Armors and Trinkets should then become the precursors for crafting their legendary counterparts, creating a chain of progression for players to go through until the end goal of full Legendary is achieved, through normal and organic gameplay.

For me it would be bad if we still craft legendaries with normal items instead of only account bound.
We need to stop making legendaries run a cash farm way. Ascended can be for that, but legendaries should be about the skill and variety of things you do.

The idea of diamonds is great thou and with some modifications it would be great.
I would prefer using dung tokens (PvE) and some other components dropping from PvP/WvW, with laurels and karma instead. People who just play have those. Those who farm gold usually don’t. So that makes a difference.

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

PVE RANKS/PARAGON SYSTEM
We gain skill points, but we’re still locked down in levels in PvE. Some other games, such as Tibia and RuneScape, have no such lock on levels, but the whole game is based instead on gaining as many levels as possible.

What I suggest is adding a sort of PvE Rank System, similar to the one in PvP. Allow us to level to 80, and then expand into ranks beyond that, similar to the Paragon System in Diablo 3.

This rank system would be separate from levels, as we wouldn’t be gaining power. It would function as follows; a character that reaches level 80 would, in a party for example, have his level color changed to, e.g., blue, which would show his rank level, in a range of 1-80, to begin with. This rank could then be expanded in future updates, but 80 seems like a good number to start with, since that’s where PvP rank cap and Level cap are both at.

At each 5 and 10 level interval we would gain purely cosmetic rewards, for example, new titles and ranks, new portrait frames and so on.

See attachment at bottom for example

This PvE Rank System could be tied to the existing Achievement System, so that we might gain, for example, boosts to Karma Gain, Experience Gain, Magic Find and Gold Find at different intervals.

If ArenaNet desires, they could add different kinds of boosts to this system, for example passive movement speed boosts, loot pickup radius and so on, boosts that would be disabled in competitive environments such as sPvP and WvW, but be active in PvE, to reflect the fact that this is a PvE System.

PvE Leaderboards could then be added, showing the players with the highest PvE Ranks in the game.

This Rank System should be a blend between the WXP and sPvP Rank Systems in difficulty and time, since it’s ment to display personal dedication, experience and active time in the game, the design would be similar in its mindset to that of Ascended and Legendaries; it’s a nice goal to work towards, encourages one to take an active part in community activities, since all PvE activities would add rank points, and is ment to be maxed in an organic manner through normal gameplay.

For me if we could tie it to a master title system like GWAMM and we could give players those cosmetic circles around their character names (check attachment, its from Eli Stormstrike post) it would work so awesome.
GWAMM2:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/22#post3379651
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/22#post3379653

@ Bezagron.7352
Once again, Good freaking job! I don’t even want to think about how long it took you to summarize 52 pages of this stuff!

…Also, since the talk of subclasses is still going on, I would like to take the opportunity to shamelessly post a link to my subclass idea that I posted earlier last week. Maybe some of you will get an idea or two out of it.

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

CONTINUED…

HALL OF MONUMENTS, ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM AND PLAYER HOUSING
One of the great things about the Hall of Monuments in GW1 was that it gave you an overarching goal so to speak; it inspired people to go out and enjoy gameplay and different parts of the game that one might never have tried out without the HoM. GW1 became re-vitalised through the implementation of the Hall of Monuments, because it gave people a goal to work towards, it implemented a new reward system that incorporated all areas of the game, and it encouraged both new and older players to once again become active members of the community, through dungeon running, mission running, vanquishing, zaishen dailies, farming and all manner of different areas of gameplay.
…
I think GW2 would benefit greatly from adding a Hall of Monuments to its core game, to give players a place to show off their achievements, trophies, accolades, titles, rewards, armors, weapons, miniatures and legendaries.

I ask for a HoM for a long time, and I agree 100% we should get a place like that. I would move home instance, all nodes and such to HoM, divide it like it used to be to 2 parts (public and instance). It would again be a gathering spot for many players (I often trades in there. It was the 2nd bes spot for it) instead of LA leads nowhere.

If you would add to it crafting stations and merchants etc you could make it the place to go to spend time every time you need something. Also you can increase character cap and make it rather small map, so people can interact with themselves more and load rather quickly (not like huge LA).

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

There are only benefits and no detriments, and it could be a part of a new Living World Update to retake and rebuild the Hall of Monuments in the game, as part of a Dynamic World Event with a progression tick box, similar to Tower of Nightmares.

Just revive dwarfs that will suddenly wake up because there is another prophecy coming to be and for that they will need again HoM and heroes, so they will rebuild it to find heroes who will be able to aid them to fulfill another prophecy.

It would be neat. I really want do see more dwarfs (and yes, game can still be unique even if we have dwarfs and elves).

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

ACCOUNT-BIND/SOULBOUND
To encourage alt’ing even further, I suggest that soulbound be removed whereever possible and be converted to account-bound; considering currencies are account-bound, there is no reason for us not to be able to use the same armor sets for our other characters, instead of having them purchase it again with the tokens grinded for on our mains.

I have to agree. It often stops people just handing over their old stuff or cool skins to their alts. It forces to use double transmutation to whites and all that stuff.
It’s SO ANNOYING for us… Please make all account bound. Freedom of use your stuff is greatly needed if you want people to spend time on playing other characters and still be in game.

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

LEGENDARY DYES AND ACCOUNT-BINDING
This suggestion has been brought up before, I don’t recall where, but it’s yet another method of customization and cosmetic progression which is only positive.

First of all, Dyes should become account-bound on acquire, which would further ease and encourage alt’ing and be a simple quality-of-life update.

As for Legendary Dyes, the suggestion that was put forth was to add effects to the armor similar to those gotten from Legendary Weapons, with fogs and glowing effects added to the character and its armor.

I also agree.
You really have to support alting. It helps people to swap characters and thus makes game more fun and people spend more time in it.

Nobody will make 2 legendaries if they will want to stop playing guardian and start warrior, but having legendary on different character will alway make them irritated…

The same goes with dyes, especially with those very expensive like celestial, abyss, and all those from TP that are worth over 10g and way more. I can’t imagine buying them for more than 1 character and I have 9. So for me it means “color choice will always suck whatever I do”.

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

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

These two are extremely important to me, because they give the player a much more rounded sense of accomplishment in the game world over all, rather than in one or two specific areas limited to gear and itemization.

Currently, I really feel too little connection between my character and the game-world. I don’t feel like either the game world itself, or the live community of players in the game have absolutely any idea of each other’s accomplishments or impacts and are therefor not even thinking much about it. In the end, we’re just sitting around bored after we do our typical activities for the day.

Earlier on in the thread I talked about wanting “faction alliances” in a sense, because it could nicely bring you back to the core decisions you’re making with your characters and also introduce new decisions to make. I talked about the fact that when we created our characters, we made all these choices from the start but really only seemed to skim through them in the first 20 levels of the game. Everything after that is relatively the same as the next character, and we never really got to explore and learn anything about them outside of that, which then the story itself basically got hijacked by Traehearne and his wyld hunt to cleanse Orr etc, I could go on ranting about that particular situation but I won’t lol.

One of the examples I gave was, my first and main character in the game is a human mesmer, she’s a member of the aristocracy/nobility and joined the Vigil. Being able to do missions for “factions” joined could be very interesting, and even potentially converge at different points which could offer a more diverse experience while playing by making the decisions we’ve made since the start have more of an impact on our experiences. I’m a massive fan of story, lore, and also of political intrigue. So as a human noble, being a part of the Queen’s court would be a really exciting thing for me on my main, and being able to work up my rank within the nobility, thus granting titles and other prestigious rewards over time would be really fun. The same goes with my Order choice, where I could choose to specialize in a specific “area of expertise” within the faction (such as diplomacy, or battle). The possibilities there could be with other races and different options provided also seems more limitless and diverse as well.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

A lot of the ideas boiled down into variations of one of these two options, and really both have a lot of cool concepts and ideas. Can folks think of anything else that’s a bit more outside the box for something bigger?

I had suggested several times about Global Dominance system. Similar to WvW…we as players and as a server, complete events across the entire map of Tyria and receive passive bonuses based on the % of the map that we control as players. So if we leave entire zones(say the lesser traveled zones) to be completely occupied by centaurs, for example, we won’t be receiving maximum benefits. And you can use most of the existing dynamic events to accomplish this. There are many DEs that take over way points and camps that we as players can complete and push enemy NPCs back…thus acquiring a larger portion of the world.

This encourages players to play in more than one zone, get sthem out in the world, etc.

On top of this, put in a reward system for completing unique(different) dynamic events in a month. I.E. Complete 90 unique dynamic events in January and receive a Cesmode mini(just kidding). But you get the picture.

Is that big enough and outside the box?

Just catching up now. I really do like this idea, always have. I see this as a base system that would be applied to content across the board that would impact many features and mechanics, not just Horizontal Progression. I bet this idea comes up in many more CDIs as it has already done in the past.

Chris

The idea is good in theory but has one MAJOR flaw – SERVER POPULATION.
The thing is that my server Underworld has a very little players playing, since WvW S1 we lost many more but since those are dead accounts they still count and we see our server has a Very High population.

No one moves in here to play and system like this will be like a slap in the face.
We have a very little people who are in world events, we are maybe not always outnumbered by any server in WvW, and there are alway almost empty Mist area. LA has NEVER overflows and while I do maps I can see 5 characters at most. So when I say we have no people but many dead account I mean it. Its checked across all 24hours in many months, cause I really play a lot.
Many people know that you count dead accounts in server population, even thou you never confirmed it, so I would love a statement on that (but I think we will never get it).

Yet making a system that would harm servers like Underworld even more is just bad.
*If you would disconnect inactive accounts (4 or 6 months+) it would probably make us on medium population and some people would consider joining this server but as it stands now you will only harm us even more.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Aeonblade.8709:

Swagger.1459:

I hope that if a “grand journey” to horizontal progression is introduced, the paths are equally offered to wvw, pvers and dungeon/fractal players or you’ll run into the same issues that we currently have with ascended vertical progression.

This, remember, WvW centric players aren’t going to be pleased if they have to farm PvE for their progression, be it horizontal or vertical

I certainly respect your points.

Chris

I have a point in mind also.
WvW has a horizontal progression system already, you can try to modify it and it should be cool.
PvP has rank system and will have some additional rewards soon so I would call it also a horizontal progression.
PvE has… Map completion? Few grindy achievements like slayer, hero and endless daily/monthly routine?

We would need more than anything a progression system that is a core PvE centered and maybe has some equivalents added to other system. That is basically the issue for me that only in PvE we feel like nothing is more to do so we farm gold, because what else can we do after doing map, JP and dungeons few times? Achievements are grindy and only for a short time and after that. If you are satisfied how your character looks you wont change that (it costs too much transmutation crystals) you can only grind more for legendary (which is a boring absurd) or log in once or twice per update to do meta.

For those of PvE players we need systems, juts like PvP needs more play modes.
Please bear this in mind.

Exosferatu.2961:

*Extend the level cap to 999.

*Leveling should be extremely difficult from level 80.

*Tome of Knowledge and any item that grant level will not work above level 80.

*Each level grants the character 1+ all attributes/stats .

*Add the rankings for high level characters on the Leaderboards.

*Every time a character reaches a hundred levels they unlock a new weapon (maybe?).

*You don’t have to grind for this because you level up as you enjoy a particular activity in the game like WvW/sPvP/PvE.

*This is for elitists.

I’m sorry but you are proposing a very bad (in my opinion) vertical progression.
So its bad and wrong place for it.

The worst part would be major unbalance. Also as players already said in CDI before, we don’t want vertical progressions. Just check last CDI.

Chrispy.5641:

Yoh.8469:

Given the Elite Signet some even more though, namely in regards to WvW, I don’t think we should have the idea contorted to fit with WvW honestly broken model.

Here’s what I mean. The core of this idea is about going on a journey to gain new skills.
But in WvW there is no journey, for anything. It’s not designed for that, everything from one point to another is pretty much a straight line on fairly flat terrain, and no real mobs to speak of.

Now if it was more like Edge of the Mists, which actually has decent terrain and effects, throw in a few PvE elements like roaming randomized elite/champion mobs, then this system should work just fine.
The Elite Signet idea shouldn’t be changed to fit in with a badly design game mode, but rather wait until WvW catches up. Until then, tough luck I say.

Using a Signet of Capture in PvE or any game mode doesn’t exactly scream “Journey” to me if all the skills can be aquired in an afternoon. Temporary and Living World stuff should be able to be accomplished that quickly (and mostly, it is). Permanent content should be designed to take significantly longer. I’m not saying an epic 50+ hour investment for one measily skill, but doing a 2-3 hour long task sounds alot cooler than buying a signet of capture, then getting your skill ten minutes later.

I have to agree.
I enjoyed it in GW1, but we should have something a bit bigger in here. Especially since our enemies use unique for them skills. It’s not that good balanced like GW1 was.

I have to say i really admired GW1 for that. Every enemy was as strong like me and I could become like him with the right skills. Thats some great quality that we lost in GW2 and if we will get it someday I will be really pleased.

Shakkara.2641:

And just a reminder, Guild Wars 2 was advertised as having “everything you like about GW1”.

So let’s sum up everything I liked in GW1…
1) Getting max level in a few hours
2) Getting best in slot equipment in a few hours
3) 100s of skills to freely choose from
4) Dual-classing
5) Party-based content with heroes and henchmen
6) Being able to customize heroes with gear and skills
7) Title-based progression
8) Almost all monsters playing the game in an identical way the player would, using skills available to players and having similar HP pool as players
9) Much instance-based content so I can choose who I want to play with (or alone)
10) Repeatable storyline missions with secondary objectives
11) Awesome believable villains (eg Shiro being corrupted over time)
12) Hardcore story (Rurik gets banished by his father and almost everyone dies!)
13) Player-owned towns (factions) – could use improvement but idea is nice
14) Guild Halls
15) Hardcore skill-based PVP with deep tactics due to 3 and 4
16) Being able to burn through the gates and unlock everything very quickly, due to 1 – I finished Nightfall and EOTN in less than 2 days each, upon release, and was then free to access all the content in the regions to capture skills and farm and play dungeons and purchase armor etc. I hate content gates, levels and gearchecks in particular!

And how much of that list does GW2 ultimately have? None with the exception of 2, as promised by Colin, which was then burned down as well with the introduction of ascended.

Which is a shame, as you only need to look at GW1 to see a lot of very clever mechanics that actually can be integrated into GW2 to make the game infinitely more fun. In particular, points 3, 4, 10, 13, 14 and 15.

Although I don’t like the way you write things, because you make the feel very offending. I have to agree that a lot of great quality from GW1 wasn’t transfered to GW2. I really hope it will be added over time.

Especially crucial seems to be fractions, PvP modes and replaying story/living story content so people might catch up what they lost (without unique rewards so items can be an asset for those who played content as it was released).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

I know you can’t give details, but I was wondering if you guys figured out a way to separate the LS from the PS? I remember several Dev comments mentioning that the PS was reducing what could be done in LS (example: Killing Jennah because she had to be alive in the PS.)

This is definitely something we have been discussing.

I cannot give anymore details than that however.

Chris

Darn, I totally tried to phrase it in such a way that you could just say yes or no. LOL I’ll try harder next time. =D

Sorry (-:. Not trying to be evasive. It is just an area I am unable to discuss.

Chris

Please let us know when you will find a way.
I really look forward to know that you found the way since that for me will mean its a start of greater changes in the game.

Eli Stormstrike.8637:

T*THE ASCENDED TIER*

Good grief man, that is a great write-up. Some feedback though:

FoTM is extremely vertical and quickly becomes exclusive. You may have a player who can only really play the lower levels of FoTM who should also have a different way to acquire these stats items: grind (I just went there). Keep your designations as-is, but also add:

• 650 Fractal Relics (FR) – One of the next 5 fractal runs you finish is guaranteed to give you a stash of ascended materials.
• 1300 FR – One of the next 5 fractal runs you finish is guaranteed to give you a random fractal ring.
• 1950 FR – One of the next 5 fractal runs you finish is guaranteed to give you a random fractal ring (infused).
• … all the way up to:
kitten
• FR – One of the next 5 fractal runs you finish is guaranteed to give you a choice of a fractal armor piece (infused).

At ~60 FR a run you would need to do 74 runs in order to afford an armor piece – which seems like you essentially deserve it (if a little over the top in terms of grind, the skilled route is obviously more rewarding).

Ascended Salvaging I like it. Add an ascended-quality salvage kit as well – have it nearly as good as the current black lion (minus the upgrade recovery chance) and re-balance black lion kits.

Paragon System in Diablo 3. The current MF system is very similar to the D3 paragon system (although a little more complicated) – not sure if that would make complete sense; but I like the flair that gets added (maybe they could do cosmetics on your name tag based on your base MF% ?).

Shakkara.2641:

Shadow Blade.1324:

i really don’t get why people are talking about sub classes when ROLES outside of damage aren’t even properly supported

want control? defiance says good luck with that

support? good luck passing the Damage threshold for loot

more items like the toxic krait tonic that let players not interested in gear treadmills dump their ascended materials is required, that or make them tradeable/ vendorable

Hear, hear…

If they add subclasses now, everyone just picks the one that gives the most DPS.

Right now it’s Zerker or GTFO almost everywhere in PVE land, for good reason. The game mechanics are just too limited to allow for any variation in strategy.

What I said somewhere in page thirty-…
Subclasses are bound to fail if they don’t fix their unholy trinity of Dps, Control, Mitigate and add a bigger need for Support, Utility and Tank.

Sirendor.1394:

Subclasses are bound to fail if they don’t fix their unholy trinity of Dps, Control, Mitigate and add a bigger need for Support, Utility and Tank.

This arises because of the fact that you can “kill or be killed.” You don’t need Support, Utility and Tanks in the group if the group can rush in and kill the boss in 6 seconds – before the boss can put out any meaningful damage.

The original intent (as far as I have read) was to avoid damage in the first place; instead of soaking it up (Tank) or undoing it (Healer). I agree with ANet as far as this goes – Healer/Tank/DPS leads to braindead gameplay that is more like The Typing of the Dead than a challenging fight.

Unfortunately the current design leads to the braindead stacking behavior we see (as well as zerker) and this means that the design needs to be tweaked. Players will always find the path of least resistance.

So while I agree with you about the current problem; I also agree with ANet because they were trying to fix another problem. Here is an idea that is within the parameters of what ANet were originally trying to do by eliminating the [brain dead] trinity:

Drop a whole bunch of new boons, support conditions and statuses; that are very useful and are exclusive to the support/utility classes (when built in a support/utility way). E.g. Apply a shield to nearby allies – the can absorb Healing Power * 3 hit points and explodes for Toughness * 3 damage when destroyed.

Edit: Completely off topic: another thing you could do to encourage diverse builds is to introduce a panic mechanic – similar to enraged; but instead it activates if the boss loses HP too fast. A super-reflective shield for 1-2s (100% reflected back to the source, no cast time)? Another panic attack could be one that deals more damage the closer you are to the other players. Maybe have a pool of 15 or so that every boss has access to?

Awesome ideas in this thread… I think CDI is starting to show it’s power and is growing into something that will, hopefully, help Anet improve GW2 over next few years.
That said, I would like to offer some of my ideas, which are similiar to the ones we have already discussed. (BTW I can’t belive I’ve read all 56 pages of this thread )

About HoM, I think we can use already implemented systems rather then have Anet make new ones. Home instance should be new HoM, and to a certain degree I’m sure devs wanted it to be like that, but obviously they didn’t have time to develop it.
I can see us having our own gardens, where we can plant seeds which can be earned by spending karma at the NPC in a zone. Each zone would have different types of seeds, and that NPC should be avaible at the end of DE, just for the funsies This could extend to minerals, trees, all sorts of stuff. Furnuture for our houses, trophies, etc…

Working upon that idea, we could also see return of NPC similiar to Nicholas the Traveler. He would stay in one zone for 3 days (time can be changed, after set period of time he should move to next zone), and would offer items, such as tonics, minis, weapon and armor skins, backpieces, dyes (maybe even new skill animations?, also you can sell it in recipe form so as to make horizontal progression a little bit longer and make Nicholas sell some special materials for those items), in exchange for karma and “zone item”. Zone item (new tokens?) can be earned by doing set number of DE and/or after killing set number of champions in the zone where Nicholas is located. Maybe we can even go further than that, incorporate some of the dailies that Nicholas would require you to do in that zone, like Jumping puzzle. OR we can even introduce some questing mechanins back in the game by adding list of stuff that Nicholas needs you to do for him.
In my opinion this would make old zones more attractive for people to visit and only thing that Anet would have to develop would be new items.
Only thing I dislike about my idea is that it would introduce new “token”, if I/we can figure out a way to do it without that “token” I would say in my humble opinion this would be AWESOME

Serophous.9085:

First and foremost, what I am about to upload is very basic, and horribly drawn, so ignore all that.

Im basically talking about the trait system and reworking it to sorta have “subclasses”, or having two (maybe more?) professions for one character.

Basically, you choose your main class, in this example, warrior. Now lets say you progress down the tactics arms line, and when I hit fifteen points, I can either continue to go into warrior, or split off into thief (the other side could be say…guardian). So I split off into thief, either gaining an already in game minor trait, or a new one. Now, I can spend another five points down that thief path for a major trait, or go back to warrior, or go to guardian if I wanted.

Continuing with thief, I get a major thief trait (either taken from a thief line already in game or new). Then i can go along the path towards finishing thief or head back to warrior.

Now, problems I see here would of course be first and foremost, balance. The balance team would probably need to really kick it into high gear XD. Next, choosing which traits to allow (if not designing new), and picking ones that make sense. I mean, giving a trait that relies on stealing probably wouldnt be good, though, giving a warrior the caltrops when they dodge would be funny.

Next problem i foresee, and can be shown on the pic, is if allowing that once you take the second major trait in the subclass, do you allow going into the next tree for grandmaster? Or make it a pre-req that you have to have at least 10pts in that tree first? Again, allowing it would mean more class builds, but then more potential balance problems.

Finally, the way this is designed was on purpose. I wanted to keep the 5 trait lines in the main classes already, and not add more, and if you count the spaces in between, that leaves only room for 5 subclasses. So, excluding the current class already in use, that leaves 7 more, so two would be left out.

I figured for warrior, it would be Ele and Necro, since (other than ele using a summoned weapon) neither really go into melee combat.

Course, it doesnt even HAVE to go into current classes, this could start the subclasses, where that is the Shadow Warrior subclass, or something.

And speaking of subclasses, if anything, I would like to see a version of DnD 3.5 Frenzied Beserker, where vengeance auto activates when your hp reaches zero, letting you fight just a bit longer….:P

I think it is an interesting idea. How the skills would work? I mean, one would be able to get all the skills of all classes? or one would unlock skills based on the traits they unlock?

I was thinking in a system of specializations. Each job would have 1 or 2 specializations, but the specializations wouldnt be restricted to the first job. For example, a warrior specialization could be berserker and/or warlord but each class could pick those specializations. This mean you can have, for example, a thief-berserker or a mesmer-warlord.

With this the problems of traits would be solved bcs the specialization would have its own line of traits. There would be less problems with balance, since can balance the first jobs for one side and the second ones for another.

The very bad part is that is that a thief-berserker (for example) would have all the thief skills but not the warrior ones and would be limited to the berserker skills.

Crazy idea about how to do specialization
What if wearing Berserker armor changes some of your weapon skills, but only if you want it to? Maybe we can do specialization of classes this way? Honestly I have no idea what rings, backpiece, etc would do in this implementation, maybe they can stay as they are.

Faerun.3091:

Working upon that idea, we could also see return of NPC similiar to Nicholas the Traveler. He would stay in one zone for 3 days … and would offer items, such as tonics, minis, weapon and armor skins, backpieces, dyes … in exchange for karma and “zone item”. Zone item (new tokens?) can be earned by doing set number of DE and/or after killing set number of champions in the zone where Nicholas is located. Maybe we can even go further than that, incorporate some of the dailies that Nicholas would require you to do in that zone, like Jumping puzzle…

The amount of good ideas I have just seen is impossible.

He could even be the Master for Chrispy’s idea

Faerun.3091:

Only thing I dislike about my idea is that it would introduce new “token”, if I/we can figure out a way to do it without that “token” I would say in my humble opinion this would be AWESOME

Adding a new HP token may not be a bad idea. You could even stave off some of the nay-sayers by e.g. allowing players to trade in dungeon tokens/WvW badges for HP tokens.

On top of what you said; these HP tokens could possibly even be converted into Black Lion weapon skin tickets. You could even allow the player to purchase permanent boosts with the tokens (MF% etc.). You also forget that ANet asked for a way to unlock abilities, which this is a great for. The more powerful abilities could be unlocked using a combination of the HP tokens and the dungeon on the map (if present, otherwise maybe laurels). E.g.

• Ember Sword – Elite – 100 HP Tokens + 500 CoF Tokens – Either: A re-skinned Fiery GS (CoF-inspired), or: the missing summoned sword.

This would make these abilities somewhat unique in that they are time-gated; but you won’t be locked out of them forever (you will have to wait until he re-visits the map with the skill that you want).

Faerun.3091:

Crazy idea about how to do specialization
What if wearing Berserker armor changes some of your weapon skills, but only if you want it to? Maybe we can do specialization of classes this way? Honestly I have no idea what rings, backpiece, etc would do in this implementation, maybe they can stay as they are.

I like that. I remember a game in which each piece of equipment give a skill.

We could have a new skill tab with “equipment skills”. This tag would have all the posible skills in gray and when a player equip that specific item, the skill become available to be selected at the quick bar.

zamalek.2154:

Adding a new HP token may not be a bad idea. You could even stave off some of the nay-sayers by e.g. allowing players to trade in dungeon tokens/WvW badges for HP tokens.

On top of what you said; these HP tokens could possibly even be converted into Black Lion weapon skin tickets. You could even allow the player to purchase permanent boosts with the tokens (MF% etc.). You also forget that ANet asked for a way to unlock abilities, which this is a great for. The more powerful abilities could be unlocked using a combination of the HP tokens and the dungeon on the map (if present, otherwise maybe laurels). E.g.

• Ember Sword – Elite – 100 HP Tokens + 500 CoF Tokens – Either: A re-skinned Fiery GS (CoF-inspired), or: the missing summoned sword.

This would make these abilities somewhat unique in that they are time-gated; but you won’t be locked out of them forever (you will have to wait until he re-visits the map with the skill that you want).

Well incorporating dungeon tokens as well would be nice addition for some of the items that NPC would have. So for some items you can have karma+zone_token or karma+dungeon_token+zone_token. I think this would add a lot of replayability to old content while Anet is busy making new.
If this would be implemented in the game theoretically you will always have something to do and work for, dungeons that aren’t played a lot would see at least slight increase in interest, and zones like Timberline Falls, and other slightly forgoten zones would have more players on them and it wouldn’t feel dead

Nadesh.7953:

Faerun.3091:

Crazy idea about how to do specialization
What if wearing Berserker armor changes some of your weapon skills, but only if you want it to? Maybe we can do specialization of classes this way? Honestly I have no idea what rings, backpiece, etc would do in this implementation, maybe they can stay as they are.

I like that. I remember a game in which each piece of equipment give a skill.

We could have a new skill tab with “equipment skills”. This tag would have all the posible skills in gray and when a player equip that specific item, the skill become available to be selected at the quick bar.

To be honest that is my ideal system, to not have any stats tied to gear, but to have passive bonuses like minor traits and some new version of our skills tied to them But I have no idea if it would suit GW2, it was just my wish to be honest haha

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Sytherek.7689:

DevilLordLaser.8619:

That makes sense, and it’s occurred to me as well, but I’ve certainly seen my share and a half of completely nonsensical garbage out of all manner of game developers, almost always justified by some variation of the excuse “We don’t have the time/resources to do that. Make do with what you have.” It’s made me…twitchy…over the years >_>

I’m a game developer but not from ANet, so perhaps I can try and clarify. Exactly why does “we don ’t have the resources” make you “twitch”?

Is it that you don’t believe the developers? Is it because you, a non-developer, think these things are easy?

Do you think they should hire more staff? Can they, given the economic model of the game?

A company exists both to pay its employees and make a profit. A great idea may simply not be economically or logistically possible, no matter how much it may make you “twitch”.

Here’s another angle — just how much do you expect to pay, in real dollars, for guild and player housing? Will adding such items improve player recruitment and retention, and if so, to what extent?

For example, I would pay $25 (2000 gems) for player housing that is meaningful and flexible and useful. Would enough players pay that much to justify development by ANet?

ANet must allocate resources effectively to stay in business and grow the game.

A well made point Sytherek.

Chris

Let me then make a point.. No if people pay $25for 2000 gems to get player housing that might indeed not be enough.

Then again, many people are asking for expansions and imho the whole model based on micro-transactions does not fit GW2. It’s something for a F2P game.

Base income on expansions. In that case releasing a big expansion will give the money you need for quality content.

Having advanced housing options available in an expansion is that sort of quality content that will be a huge selling point for expansions.

I and many with me have rather less LS, no cash-shop but in stead expansion with higher quality content.

Chris saying it’s a well made point when on a reactions that says “For example, I would pay $25 (2000 gems) for player housing that is meaningful and flexible and useful. Would enough players pay that much to justify development by Anet?” is basically agreeing that micro-transaction and the living story model reduces the quality you can deliver.

It’s nice to see a developer say something about that, but then maybe it’s an idea to rethink that model.

As a company you do not only want to make money but also deviler a good product I would think.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Colin asked us about the journey if I remember correctly. How do we introduce horizontal progression so that it is interesting and doesn’t feel like a grind?

• events currently don’t feel like a journey to me. They are closed szenarios. It’s certainly a good thing to have those side stories. I LOVE some of the more interesting event-chains which tell a story (the boy in the Norn starter-area who summons bears) and aren’t generic defend/attack loops – much more of those please! But it doesn’t feel like a journey to me.
• quests would tell stories – huge world-wide stories – but they don’t fit in Anets design-idea. Classic quests aren’t repeatable, so when you’ve done one, the zone gets emptier for you. If you’ve done all quests, you’re out of content and find nothing more to do in the zones. They are also static and the wold feels not alive in any way. This is bad as well.

It’s quite hard to think of a system which takes the best of both, because things contradict each other.

Then Anet stated that they want to go away from instanced content (came up with the Queens Gauntlet update). I agree with this, since it takes people out of the world.

quite a nut to crack

I think the traditional quest are exactly what you need. The only way they really don’t fit in to the design-idea is that it has to be different but then maybe change that idea.

The fact that quests aren’t repeatable also makes them give you more the feeling of having some small form of impact. A dynamic event that keeps repeating feels sort of useless to do.
When you done all the quest you are indeed out of content but they can add quest and there are the dynamic events that still keep on going.

I think the combination of the two would work great. It are both nice systems but not substitutes for each other while the dynamic events are now supposed to be substitutes for the traditional quests. Thats part of the problem.
Mix the two and you have the pro’s of the dynamic events and the journey and story feeling from the normal quest.

Devata.6589:

Chris saying it’s a well made point when on a reactions that says “For example, I would pay $25 (2000 gems) for player housing that is meaningful and flexible and useful. Would enough players pay that much to justify development by Anet?” is basically agreeing that micro-transaction and the living story model reduces the quality you can deliver.

It’s nice to see a developer say something about that, but then maybe it’s an idea to rethink that model.

As a company you do not only want to make money but also deviler a good product I would think.

I disagree with this. If anything, having a consistent cash-flow helps reduce the risk of developing the game. Expansions can sell poorly, so there’s an inherent risk of losing money and business pressure to constrain the overall effort required. By having a cash shop, ArenaNet should be seeing a consistent revenue stream.

They know their funding model, they know how many resources that buys them, and they know (to some extent) that they’ll keep getting that money in the near future.

That isn’t to say that 1) expansions are a bad idea or 2) ArenaNet isn’t secretly working on an expansion without telling us, of course.

You are correct, though: the developers DO want to deliver a quality product. For most of them, not only do they play the game, they work with it 40, 50, 60 hours/week. This game means more to them than I’d venture it does to us.

I believe they made the decision to go without subscriptions or (frequent) paid expansions because they truly believe it’s the best way to deliver their game, both from a quality and from a profit standpoint.