Hi Chris
Just looking at;

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Role Diversification: ‘Grail Quest’ (Personal rights of passage) style adventures through the open world (testing the player in combat, discovery, and puzzle solving) which others can engage in once the activities are activated which could reward the Hero with New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, and infusions.

Chris

And wondering about roles. Other then build content (weapons skills, skills, traits, armour etc..) not much else across the game affects roles. We made all these choices across the game like;

• Play in sPvP or WvW or PvE.
• sPvP – Custom, Solo or Team arena.
• Specialise in WvW ranks (Mastering Ram, Arrowcart..) become a Commander.
• PvE – Dungeons, FotM, Open world events.
• Crafting

I find myself agreeing with Devata looking for involvement of RP elements in HP and specifically RP elements for role gameplay in events & encounters. Tying overall game journey (Eg. sPvP ranks, WvW ranks, Crafting levels achievements etc..) into everyday gameplay interactions and journeys. This could open up event & encounter options tied to players overall game journey that allow other paths & choices to complete these events & encounters. Similar to the options given to players in Scarlet’s secret room at the Top of the Nightmare Tower (Solve the puzzles or choices to fight).

I think the proposal might be missing these RP elements other then that I think the proposal’s great Chris. Looking forward to seeing you all in CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

darkace.8925:

Nike.2631:

Player Housing. Customizable personal spaces displaying ‘furnishings’. Furnishing can be acquired across a wide range of activities, including most existing currencies, but particular emphasis on Open World activities (critter drops, Event rewards)

No love for a furniture-making craft?

Theoretically covered under “wide range of activities”. I only specifically called out Open World activities because that was in the notes left by ‘Da Boss’.

Personally I ‘d love to see Crafting be a major factor in Furnishings. But I’m totally a crafting junkie in all the MMOs I’ve played .

Also just letting everyone know I will not be covering any more summarises. So 53-58 will be my last one for this topic. Hoped they help and next time I jump in summarising I’ll look at improvements and staying a bit more up to date. Any feedback would be great (Maybe in the Evolution CDI). Chris would summarising and/or ways to improve summarising be part of CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Bezagron.7352:

Also just letting everyone know I will not be covering any more summarises. So 53-58 will be my last one for this topic. Hoped they help and next time I jump in summarising I’ll look at improvements and staying a bit more up to date. Any feedback would be great (Maybe in the Evolution CDI). Chris would summarising and/or ways to improve summarising be part of CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Feedback: You rock like something that rocks very much indeed. Thank you’s to all the people who took up that gauntlet.

I think should you partake in the next Evolution CDI, most people will extend you a fair degree of earned authority on matters of managing the accessibility of CDIs. I know I will.

(Oh, and I’ll be bringing up the possibility of Dev-directed ‘thank you’s’/rewards to CDI contributors again. Maybe they can mail you a few Laurels or something )

Bezagron.7352:

Also just letting everyone know I will not be covering any more summarises. So 53-58 will be my last one for this topic. Hoped they help and next time I jump in summarising I’ll look at improvements and staying a bit more up to date. Any feedback would be great (Maybe in the Evolution CDI). Chris would summarising and/or ways to improve summarising be part of CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Nice work. If you have the time I would suggest trying to summarize to 64. After that it’s more about how to form the proposal but up to page 64 you still see some suggestions.

Anyway you did a good job

Nike.2631:

(Oh, and I’ll be bringing up the possibility of Dev-directed ‘thank you’s’/rewards to CDI contributors again. Maybe they can mail you a few Laurels or something )

Much as it would be nice, I’d really rather they didn’t agree to reward contributors directly. I’d rather they surprise us with a reward for participating rather than us expecting it.

I hope you understand why.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Nike.2631:

Snip

That may be the first time I’ve ever seen you snip something .

Hi Nike,

Thanks for taking a crack, it is certainly well formatted and easily digestible.

Thank you.

I am still thinking in regard to how you have built/focused your proposal but my initial thoughts are that it is to much like a design document from a micro standpoint.

Question: What would you use a “design document” for? That may help us understand how a Proposal is different.

Observation: A lot of the contributions folk have made tend to operate at the micro level. I think many of us get a little antsy when the Proposal doesn’t at least mention some of those details… its easy to feel as if what you’ve said has been overlooked. We’re still building trust that everything has been read at all, and with weeks having gone by, its even harder to be confident that things said early on are still remembered.

The proposal should allow room for maneuver from a design standpoint and should be more goal focused from a macro standpoint.

Does that mean our individual suggestions/comments should also tend towards the overarching and philosophical? Or is the Proposal writer expected to bridge that transition?

I will think on it more and am excited by your show of initiative here.

Please do. I’m more interested in nailing down what a Player-Proposal-Compiler is supposed to be trying to accomplish than in actually being one . Its probably more an Evolution topic, but we had such a useful laboratory here to experiment in.

@ Devata if I can find the time before to topic closes I’ll look at trying for 64. I’ve let a few things slide while summarising that I now need to do.

Also thanks Conski Deshan & Chrispy for the encouragement, I’m probably better at one sentence summarises then overall proposals and again if I can find the time I’ll take a shot.

Nike great proposal, I always find your posts very well thought out and easy to understand.

Maybe future proposal will be a collaborative combination of Developer and Player proposals. Something for CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is the proposal I believe we are making, please discuss and let me know if anything should be added or removed. Note many of us have read the thread internally and thus there has already been valuable impact.

Our Horizontal Progression Proposal

The Reward and Associated Journey

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Map Wide Meta events unlocked through Order progression (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

— Role Diversification: ‘Grail Quest’ (Personal rights of passage) style adventures through the open world (testing the player in combat, discovery, and puzzle solving) which others can engage in once the activities are activated which could reward the Hero with New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, and infusions.

— Hero Recognition (Reward) is a by product of the above two types of Horizontal Progression leading to 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.

Global Rule Proposal governing the above:

- Where possible use the above design paradigm to reinforce and evolve the existing world.
- Players should be able to have multiple methods of achieving ‘Grail Quests’, rather than a section of the journey being based on Jumping Puzzles and that alone for example.
-A reworked (cleaner) version of Signet of Capture would work very well for Role Diversification.
- Sub-classes will be discussed again in a CDI once Arena finishes its current balance work in regard to roles.
- QOL features such as a wardrobe should support this global design.
- QOL: More customization options regarding our armor and weapons. (Things that came up in this regard were: pattern dyes, texture options (other types of wood and different metal polishes), customizeable features like long sleeves vs short sleeves, emblem design.

Once we have discussed the proposal and the thread reaches conclusion we will sticky it and move onto CDI Process Evolution Phase 2.

Note this is the formulation of a collaborative proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of associated actions or schedule.

Thank you all so much for your hard work and your passion toward making GW2 awesome. This has been a really good CDI and I want to thank you on behalf of Arena for caring so much about the world we love.

Here is a write up about the current CDI from Anatoli at Massively:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/14/flameseeker-chronicles-taking-guild-wars-2-job-specialization-t/

Chris

Updated proposal.

Change Log

Terminology Change: Faction to Order.

Chris

Ha, now i know what didn’t felt right as i was reading your summary yesterday. Its too heavy focused on PvE. Wheres WvW and PvP? I feel they are quite missing/underrepresented. Player housing? PvE. Guild Hall? PvE. Order progression? PvE. Grail Quest? PvE.
Don’t get me wrong, all whats up there is pretty good and important. But still…

Currently the game is pretty much split in 2(3) parts, more or less losely tied together (this topic needs an extra CDI in the future i think). Should not something like this progression talk involve the whole game and not only a part of it?
From such an important topic/CDI that will affect how Anet will approach the game and gamedesign in the future i think it also should include that the decisions based on this proposal will be done with GW2 as one entity in mind. (you can probably word it better)

A little rephrasing and an example for WvW+PvE:
“Sociopolitical Diversification: … Map and/or Server Wide Meta events unlocked through player, team and guild progression (Leading to individual, group and server rewards)”
If a WvW server reaches a certain goal(points?), it will unlock things in PvE, like a dungeon given access to certain skins, gear, better droprate. Maybe some free gems, given the goal in WvW is hard to get. Now if the dungeon gets cleared for a certain amount of runs, it will unlock things in WvW, faster dolyaks, sturdier walls/gates, WXP boost, better drops from rank chests and so on.
This could tie the different gamemodes closer together, like leading to PvE and WvW guilds working together.

Right now the game feels way to split up. Progression, player and character progression, if done right, could bring it closer together.

Nimrod.9240:

Ha, now i know what didn’t felt right as i was reading your summary yesterday. Its too heavy focused on PvE. Wheres WvW and PvP? I feel they are quite missing/underrepresented. Player housing? PvE. Guild Hall? PvE. Order progression? PvE. Grail Quest? PvE.
Don’t get me wrong, all whats up there is pretty good and important. But still…

I don’t really think this is about WvW or PvP, is the thing. It’s about the character progression. PvP has always been a case where progression is kind of stamped into “none needed” in Guild Wars. In the first one you entered at maximum level, unlocked skills as you could, and generally it was expected you never got better at anything, you just looked better or got shiny things.

WvW is weird because it’s accessible from PvE and people are supposed to be drawn into it. Thing is, a lot of the time WvW players don’t seem to want PvE players in there. (To be more specific, they don’t want people there who don’t know what they’re doing, which can be attributed to not playing WvW . . . which means they don’t want new players unless they already know how to WvW. Weird, huh?)

I try to remember there’s WvW and PvP in the game. It gets hard sometimes because I don’t go to PvP and I feel WvW doesn’t need more content as much as it needs people playing it. The content in WvW should be, and please forgive me for saying, players from one server facing two other servers’ players and outplaying them. Not “what new shiny thing is there this month”.

Currently the game is pretty much split in 2(3) parts, more or less losely tied together (this topic needs an extra CDI in the future i think). Should not something like this progression talk involve the whole game and not only a part of it?
From such an important topic/CDI that will affect how Anet will approach the game and gamedesign in the future i think it also should include that the decisions based on this proposal will be done with GW2 as one entity in mind. (you can probably word it better)

I don’t know if the players who are into WvW and PvP want anywhere near the same things the PvE players want, and what the PvE players want hold little to no interest to the other two. At least, that’s the vibe I keep getting.

If a WvW server reaches a certain goal(points?), it will unlock things in PvE, like a dungeon given access to certain skins, gear, better droprate. Maybe some free gems, given the goal in WvW is hard to get. Now if the dungeon gets cleared for a certain amount of runs, it will unlock things in WvW, faster dolyaks, sturdier walls/gates, WXP boost, better drops from rank chests and so on.

This is . . . interesting, but I can already see problems in there. Mostly summed up in the phrase: “Oh you think you saw bandwagoning before?!”

Nimrod.9240:

Ha, now i know what didn’t felt right as i was reading your summary yesterday. Its too heavy focused on PvE. Wheres WvW and PvP? I feel they are quite missing/underrepresented. Player housing? PvE. Guild Hall? PvE. Order progression? PvE. Grail Quest? PvE.
Don’t get me wrong, all whats up there is pretty good and important. But still…

Some of these could be co-op’ted into Pvp and Wvw, In Gw1 guildhalls were actually used for GvG combat, this could be tied to either ,
-Server guilds fight one another to earn points towards the WvW score.
-Pvp GvG matches for guild ranking.
-Internal guild rankings leaderboard shown in the guildhall with statues for top 3.

Order progression:
-Order arena, to aleviate tensions between the pact forces friendly arena competitions are held between members of each order, earn glory for your order and rise through the ranks. (PvP)
-WvW I can’t really think of anything that wouldn’t internally split a server causing issue.

Player housing
-My player housing proposal includes items only earn-able through Pvp ranks and WvW. I’ll admit it’s not much but it’s still something.
-Workshop, has the ability to make “Homemade siege” different skin for siege same efficency.

I believe Pvp in this game was to be considered it’s only separate thing, which is mostly about rankings as opposed to rewards?,but they are changing that over time.
As for WvW , there’s a balance there, if too much PvE stuff is added people will complain, and have. I think WvW not meant to be considered exclusive from PvE but rather part of it.

This is all from the perspective of a WvW player. Important points are bolded.

WvW players are fine with PvE stuff being in WvW… as long as it doesn’t disrupt gameplay. For example: the DO NOT TOUCH thumpers? Totally fine. In fact, a lot of players were actually pretty amused by them. One night when the map was quiet, our guild actually had a competition to see who could die the fastest by repeatedly touching one of them. On the other hand: the giant plants placed in the middle of the mercenary camps? (In the middle of the season, no less?) No one liked that because it was disruptive to the actual matches going on.

WvW players enjoy it when PvE players come in to play WvW with them, though a few vocal players get extremely frustrated with newbies—most of us do understand that there’s going to be turnover and we need fresh blood coming in to survive as a game mode. But WvW players don’t like PvE players coming in to WvW to do PvE things. Any initiative that encourages entering the map but ignoring the match in favor of doing something else is going to make a lot of people very angry.

With that in mind…

Nimrod.9240:

“Sociopolitical Diversification: … Map and/or Server Wide Meta events unlocked through player, team and guild progression (Leading to individual, group and server rewards)”
If a WvW server reaches a certain goal(points?), it will unlock things in PvE, like a dungeon given access to certain skins, gear, better droprate. Maybe some free gems, given the goal in WvW is hard to get. Now if the dungeon gets cleared for a certain amount of runs, it will unlock things in WvW, faster dolyaks, sturdier walls/gates, WXP boost, better drops from rank chests and so on.
This could tie the different gamemodes closer together, like leading to PvE and WvW guilds working together.

This would not be welcomed by WvW players as written. Asking for a points goal encourages stacking on one server so that players on that server get a reward, and stacking leads to imbalanced matches. Goals other than point goals, however, are also not going to be well-liked because they would encourage ignoring the overall matchup in favor of doing something that may or may not be helpful. And believe it or not, I don’t think that WvW players would like getting bonuses as a server from PvE players either. If a server’s PvE was not particularly strong or active and another server in the same matchup had a very active PvE crew, it would create an imbalance in the match. WvW players ideally want wins to represent skill. (This is part of why WvW players tend to resent Ascended gear.)

Guild Halls would be welcomed by WvW players as a place to hang out outside of WvW. (It would be super cool to be able to unlock portals to each WvW map in your Guild Hall!) Player housing would also be a cool way to spend downtime. Cosmetic rewards for guild/player housing exclusive to a game type are fine, but there should be ways to unlock any functional rewards in each game type. Functional rewards are things like portals, mining nodes, storage, or whatever devs think would be cool that does something.

The Grail Quest sounds very cool, but it does make me a little nervous. If a task for a player involves multiple game modes, it should never encourage ignoring the objectives in a PvP match. That should be true for both sPvP and WvW. Additionally, sPvP should remain a place where all skills, traits, and weapons for each class are available from the start.

WvW players are likely to be resistant to having to leave their favored game mode in order to unlock skills, traits, and weapons. However, if the devs think that having ways to unlock these things within WvW would be even a little disruptive to the match, then it would be far better to send people out of WvW to do things in PvE. Remember that a small disruption to the match is a big deal when multiplied by thousands of players.

Taking off my WvW hat and putting my PvE hat on, I’m very happy with the proposal as it stands.

Nike.2631:

Observation: A lot of the contributions folk have made tend to operate at the micro level. I think many of us get a little antsy when the Proposal doesn’t at least mention some of those details… its easy to feel as if what you’ve said has been overlooked. We’re still building trust that everything has been read at all, and with weeks having gone by, its even harder to be confident that things said early on are still remembered.

A lot of micro-level ideas get thrown around in these discussions. Including them all could be cumbersome, but how would we decide which ones to include and which ones to leave out?

Hey Chris, I know you plan on discussing sub-classes after the current balancing changes, but I fell like I should mention this now before I forget it.

In GW1, subclassing gave you access to the skills and most traits of the class being subbed in. Now if this was done to GW2, it would create a huge amount of balance issues that would have to be sorted. In the past, I believe Devs have said they’d prefer to give classes access to different weapons, or even bring in a new type of weapon. Well I think you can do both at the same time, without having to worry about altering the current state of class balance (at least not by much).

First, instead of a subclass giving you access to all that classes skills, it only gave you access to skills usable by your main class. For example, a ranger with a guardian subclass would gain access to different guardian style skills than a warrior with a guardian subclass. I assume this would lower the amount of balancing the team would have to do compared to the GW1 style of subclasses. As if everyone gained access to all classes skills, and one skill would have to be altered to obtain balance, it would affects the class it originally came from. That class might end up needed to be balanced again, which would change the skills that everyone has access to, and so on. But by having the subclass skills be like 3-4 skills that are different between all the other classes, balancing a thief subclassed with mesmer shouldn’t affect the mesmer main class. Or any other classes mesmer subclass abilities, for that matter.

Second, having a subclass could be used to open up new weapon sets. Take for example a ranger with a warrior subclass would allow them to be a bunny thumper by gaining the ability to equip a hammer. Perhaps it could change the skills of a current usable weapon. Like a thief with a necromancer subclass would gain altered dagger weapon skills that act more like blood magic touch skills from GW1. Or perhaps a mesmer subclassed with an engineer would gain the ability to use the pistol as a main hand weapon, and the offhand pistol gains different skills.

Finally a subclass could possibly be used to alter the trait tiers of a class. Though this could be quite difficult as there is a large amount of ways to go about this. One way is to maybe just have a subclass have a few major trait choices that are only accessible when that subclass is equipped, much like the skills I mentioned above. Do you have a mesmer subclass? You can use these extra weapons, use these extra skills and these extra traits.

This could easily broaden the amount of tactics a single class can use. A necromancer with a ranger subclass could be more minion master oriented, or with a mesmer subclass be oriented towards illusion based fear CC or domination magic. A ranger with a guardian subclass could be a more supportive spirit build, while a ranger with a warrior subclass could go bunny thumping with a hammer.

This could even be done in series. Like, at first you have to unlock the subclasses you can use with the “grail quests” you have mentioned. By using the classes as they are currently, with all the balancing and stuff being done to them, as a template, subclasses can be used to alter the skill, trait and weapon layout of a class. This would allow for more build diversity, hopefully without completely undoing the current balancing work.

Spritemage.4609:

Hey Chris, I know you plan on discussing sub-classes after the current balancing changes, but I fell like I should mention this now before I forget it.

This looks good.

Do yourself and all of us a favor. Save it somewhere on a notepad or email or something, and when we get to talking about it directly, post it back up. If you feel up to it, expand on it in the meantime.

That increases the odds of it being visible and looked at.

darkace.8925:

A lot of micro-level ideas get thrown around in these discussions. Including them all could be cumbersome, but how would we decide which ones to include and which ones to leave out?

A question I too am uneasy leaving to be resolved by someone on our side of the street.

Amongst other things for the effort of writing a composite proposal be fully successful, I suspect it has to be informed by conditions inside ArenaNet we cannot be privy to. Certainly I would not be comfortable arbitrarily shelving lines of discussion for later – that last section drew heavily on Chris’s comments.

darkace.8925:

A lot of micro-level ideas get thrown around in these discussions. Including them all could be cumbersome, but how would we decide which ones to include and which ones to leave out?

Hm. Don’t decide. Collate them together by topic like the summary threads. All of them. Attach it to the proposal for them to look at if they feel they need to look at the micro level instead of the macro one.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Spritemage.4609:

Hey Chris, I know you plan on discussing sub-classes after the current balancing changes, but I fell like I should mention this now before I forget it.

This looks good.

Do yourself and all of us a favor. Save it somewhere on a notepad or email or something, and when we get to talking about it directly, post it back up. If you feel up to it, expand on it in the meantime.

That increases the odds of it being visible and looked at.

Ok, I saved a quote of it for later. Hopefully I’ll remember to look into the subclass discussion when it comes around. As for expanding on it, I would like to hear some feedback first, but I’ll think about it some more for now.

Spritemage.4609:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Spritemage.4609:

Hey Chris, I know you plan on discussing sub-classes after the current balancing changes, but I fell like I should mention this now before I forget it.

This looks good.

Do yourself and all of us a favor. Save it somewhere on a notepad or email or something, and when we get to talking about it directly, post it back up. If you feel up to it, expand on it in the meantime.

That increases the odds of it being visible and looked at.

Ok, I saved a quote of it for later. Hopefully I’ll remember to look into the subclass discussion when it comes around. As for expanding on it, I would like to hear some feedback first, but I’ll think about it some more for now.

Feedback? Looks good to me. It’s not the idea I was having but hey, we can use many different ideas and this one sounds like it could work out.

And that’s all I am gonna throw into this thread I’ll save a copy too.

I would like to be able to get married in game, and have some type of couples skills and quest available to us. Seriously!!!

Manny Lennix.4236:

I would like to be able to get married in game, and have some type of couples skills and quest available to us. Seriously!!!

Practice your combo-field/finisher techniques !

But yes, I could see a new combo field/finisher set based on shared bonds like marriage, same Order, same Race, or same Personality. Could be a new field, or just a buff to the effect of existing fields. When your spouse sets up a condition removal combo, it also grants you a 2% of health max heal… ah, true love .

Bezagron.7352:

Nike great proposal, I always find your posts very well thought out and easy to understand.

Imagine me sitting up extra straight and looking pleased.

’Cause I am .

Thank you. I’m especially glad to you find them understandable. I do strive for clarity in communication .

Nike.2631:

Snip

Horizontal Progression CDI: Our Proposal

PRINCIPLES
- Where possible new content should refresh and evolve the existing world.
- Players need multiple paths when pursuing mechanically significant rewards, respecting all major modes of play and play-styles within those modes (i.e. jump puzzles vs. combat).
- Secondary cosmetic rewards (titles, weapon skins, mini-pets, town cloths, furnishings) can be tied to unique feats to enhance the prestige to those feats. Primary cosmetic features (armor, faces, hairstyles) are not advised in this role. Example: The mini-Liadri the Concealing Dark specifically announces the player’s mastery of the Queen’s Guantlet.
- Be inclusive, respecting all in-games choices such as character race, profession, Personality, and Order. Example: if new Racial Dances are introduced, make sure all 5 races have a new dance to seek out.
- Consider Quality of Life improvements that communicate progress to the player, organize goal selection, and showcase the results of their effort. Example: The PvP Locker allow players to quickly review what they have, what they might still want, and enables them to flaunt what they have already accomplished.

REWARDS and THE JOURNEY

— Building Identity: Giving players more say in how the world of Tyria and their fellow players see them.

• Trophies & Recognition. Unique Skins, Ranger Pet Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the player’s individual feats or the completion of major multi-stage tasks in the world of Tyria.
• Choice & Consequence. More NPC dialogue that responds to the player’s Personality, Race, or Profession. Alternate animations or utterances that convey Personality. May also unlock ‘shortcuts and side-paths’ with minor opportunities to simplify challenges or reap additional rewards based on these choices.
• Player Housing. Customizable personal spaces displaying ‘furnishings’. Furnishing can be acquired across a wide range of activities, including most existing currencies, but particular emphasis on Open World activities (critter drops, Event rewards)
• Guild Halls. Shared, large-scale spaces which can house personal furnishing and special guild-specific items. These items reflect success in mass-play activities or pooling huge amounts of currency beyond the means of most individual players.
• Order Progression. Strongly thematic rewards based on repeated service to the Order’s Goals, including titles, skins, lore, emotes, furnishings, utterances (“For the Vigil!”), and NPC dialogue. Order progression also allows players to unlock new large-scale events for themselves and others, reflecting the order’s interests & with flavorful rewards.
• Public Monuments. Permanent or rotating open world sites for recognition of players. Populated by server-specific competitive achievements like server firsts or potlatch-challenges.
• Personal Resources. Continuing growth of the Home neighborhoods as a ‘private garden’ of crafting nodes and possible cheap/fast travel hub.

— Role Diversification: Giving players more options when creating their build.

• Grail Quests. Personal rights of passage through open world adventures, testing the player in combat, discovery, and puzzle solving. Once activated by the player others can join in the activities for basic rewards, while the central Hero earns New skills/traits, previously locked weapons/new weapon skills, or new Ranger companions.
• Item upgrades review and expansion. Rebalancing unpopular Runes, Sigils, and Infusions to promote greater variety of builds. Introducing new upgrades as both specialized rewards and new crafting opportunities.

FOR FUTURE DISCUSSION

— Sub-classes will be discussed in a later CDI, timed for maximum advantage in light of currently ongoing Skill and Balance changes.
— Entirely new end-game activities like Polymock and their supporting progression systems.
— Fractals. where we are now, what can be improved, new shards to conquer, redressing inequities from the transition to the new scaling system.
— More personal customization options regarding armor and weapons. Includes pattern dyes, texture options (other types of wood and different metal polishes), customizable features like long sleeves vs. short sleeves, emblem design.

I don’t suppose you can add Engineer Kit skins to that list.
Seriously, this is why I gave up on playing my Engy, gaudy looking backpacks.
Kind of wish there was a way to earn new skins.

My Mesmer on the other hand, I get to see her awesome gear in quadratic.

Nike.2631:

Please do. I’m more interested in nailing down what a Player-Proposal-Compiler is supposed to be trying to accomplish than in actually being one …

I was very impressed that you quite possibly made room for every suggestion that was in scope of the thread. Good job Nike, looking forward to seeing the proposal after you learn what you need to do instead.

That being said, the ideas we all came up with for Nike’s first draft sound incredibly exciting – I think we can all pat ourselves on the back.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Dreaude.9205:

This is my first post in the forums I believe and I am making it because of how much I have enjoyed reading all of your ideas and hope I can contribute to the discussion even in a small way.

I was 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 unlock/acquire the desired step in the progression.

I think player triggered dynamic events for single steps in the process of the unlocking could be one option.

DiogoSilva mentioned this in his mini-dungeons post except I am thinking the player currently pursuing mastery etc. would be the Only trigger as opposed to it being a timed event, or the result of an open dynamic event chain. To me, making it something more personal in scale.

As an example:
A character could receive notice of a dangerous risen enemy that has popped up in the Maguma Jungle and the Vigil has asked the Character, as a champion of the order, to go deal with it.

When the player arrives in the area of the report the player would specifically choose to trigger the event. It would be an open event in which other players in the area would receive a dynamic event notice for and can participate in.
The player would receive a completion for the, for lack of a better term, step and the other players participating could receive the usual dynamic event completion rewards.

To try and explain a little further; I was thinking of this simply as a mechanic in how the player could pursue the horizontal progression. I was not thinking of the full system of mechanics that would could be needed or used. I saw a few posts about the different variety of mission types and themes that the player could be required to complete to unlock skills, weapons, traits, armors etc. and I think this could be One way of doing those missions. It might not be for each step, but maybe as the culmination/end of a number of prior steps or the result of meeting certain conditions. One tool in the box so to speak.

The “player events” could not be limited to just Kill X creatures or kill Veteran Y but could use the exiting dynamic event styles such as escorts, collection, scavenger hunts etc. or possibly introduce new ones/hybrids such as a race between an NPC. Through gangs of enemies or not, possibly with a timer: “stop him before he reaches the ship or we’re sunk!”

Players participating in the “player event” could also receive some kind of reward relating to the horizontal progression the triggering player is working on. If for example all the steps are linear they could receive partial credit for that step, or perhaps unlock it for themselves. The dynamic event UI notice could also be updated to so say something to the effect of “CHARACTER NAME is fighting for their life – help them!”

Participation and completion of the player triggered events could also be used as a way to communicate to other players the existence of the horizontal progression that is available them in the future through the completion text. In the case of the Master suggestion, when the player receives their completion notice the text could read “You helped TRIGGERING PLAYER NAME defeat Oogalook The Wrathful and learn their prestige skill” or something to that effect.

One of the reasons this appeals to me is that it gets people, out in the world participating and working together which is one of my favorite things about GW2 and I myself would enjoy seeing that in the horizontal progression. It also has the feel of me affecting the world a little more in that I am making the event happen rather than me responding to the events of the world.

I don’t know what technical limitations this would come up against, or what ramifications this might result in play-wise for all players in the zones, but wanted to try and contribute.

Exciting idea that pulls and builds from the core of the social pillars in GW2.

Chris

Thank you for the reply

Nike.2631:

Shriketalon.1937:

The problem is not teaching the system, it’s challenging the players. Most of the content in this game consists of very crude opponents, mindless melee monsters who stroll towards the player or imbecilic ranged enemies who stand still while someone bashes them in the face. Likewise, most monsters have one single cooldown skill, a rather pathetic lack of resources.

Quoted for truth.

And really, the dumber monster AI is the more often you get calls to split skills between PvE and PvP behaviors. The effort spent making smarter, nastier, more vicious critters pays off double in the less you have to manage parallel skills between gameplay modes.

[…]
And this is not a call for the (un)holy trinity. The trinity is also based on BAD agro behavior. There is a reason the MMO-tank doesn’t exist in the real world: it is based on the attacker’s complete stupidity. You don’t attack the lowest threat + highest mitigation target first (without arbitrary mind-control… er, ‘taunts’). Games that rely on tanks as a role end up having to do backflips trying to make them relevant in PvP. Again: dumb monsters prompting dumb classes that fall apart when faced with human opponents.

Instead this is the call for more relevant Support and Control. If Critters were actually dangerous, there would be a place for helping the “priority target” survive either by healing/defensively buffing them (Support) or by debuffing or CCing the attackers (Control).

The issue of unsatisfying role balance is something to be laid at the feet of the AI design as much or more than any inequity on the player skill choices side.

I do agree with you in all points mentioned. However, I don’t think this would solve all issues.

So if the devs could make challenging enemies, we would see different groupcomps.

Current Groupcomps

• 1 Guard => Defensive and offensive boons, reflects
• 2-4 Warriors => Maximum damageoutput, offensive boons
• 1 Mesmer => Timewarp, reflects, other mesmer-things or
• 1 Elementalist => Maximum burstdamage, offensive boons or
• 1 Thief => Damage, stealth

Expected Groupcomps

• 1 Guard => Defensive and offensive boons, reflects
• 1-2 Warriors => Maximum damageoutput, offensive boons
• 1 Mesmer => Timewarp, reflects, other mesmer-things or
• 1 Elementalist => Healing, burstdamage, offensive boons or
• 1 Engineer => Healing, offensive boons or
• 1 Necromancer => CCs, conditions or
• 1 Thief => Damage, stealth

If you have read carefully, you should’ve noticed that I didn’t mentioned the ranger anywhere.

The Issue
The ranger gets outshined in every mentioned aspect. He adds indeed some unique buffs to a group, but those wont make up for his weak damage, condition cleansing and CC capabilities.

The Suggestion
It was stated, due to the “bearbow issue”, that the ranger is a selfish class, which can’t contribute much to the team.
I want to enhance this mindset, to evolve the ranger to a “lone ranger”.
To sum up my thoughts, before I’ve even started.

Damagechart
1 Ranger > 1 Warrior
2 Rangers < 2 Warriors

Basically, my idea was, that the warrior provides a large amount of offensive buffs to his team, rather than his pure damage. So if you want your team set up for fast kills, you should run with 2 warriors.
However, if the enemy is more challenging and you just can spend 1 partyplace to a pure damage character, you rather want to take a ranger due to his selfbuff potential.

• Double all buffs the ranger can apply to himself
• Bring the flat damage on par with warriors

The Effect
The Warrior excells at buffing the whole party. (Banners/Battlestandart, FGS, …)
The buffs the ranger can provide are on no match to the ones of the warrior.
While the ranger can at least buff his teammates a little bit, he benefits even more from his buffs.

I hope this isn’t too over the top.

The problem MMO mechanics encounter time and time again in handling the ‘godhood’ of each player when they reach endgame arises because MMO’s keep making the same design choices to work with the problem of new content, boredom, gearflation and levels.

Release new challenges that can kill the current gods, so all gods are forced to grind up a treadmill to once again achieve godhood. Those challenges typically come in harder areas, new gear like ascended with long grinds, or more levels but they’re all the same effectively supplanting the current meta with vertical progression.

This has a number of key problems: *
you are effectively devaluing the achievements of people which breaks trust.
*players who paused have far less reason to return.
*old content becomes redundant content where the difficulty is all wrong.

Instead we should look at releasing new content challenges and areas where the current gods haven’t become gods yet, allowing players to make their characters endgame ready in one area easily, or in many areas if they have much playtime Imagine a new zone where you need to level up through a multitude of activities to reach endgame for that zone, without the levelling or the new gear or the new abilities have a huge detrimental affect on how each other area of the game plays, including current zones, wvw, crafting, economic/broker game goals and so on.

Stop negatively affecting existing content with worldwide serial linear and vertical powergrinds, instead offer parallel power progression where players choose to progress one path or ten paths as they wish, but can easily reach a reliable endgame level in a single path quite quickly.

Ascended gear is a classic example of a stagnant and uninspiring design route, it affects every aspect of openworld pve, fractals, events, dungeons, wvw, crafting, broker/economy etc.

Instead of the traditional limited vertical paths in series, think of progressing a single or many faction paths at once: to unlock access to tiers of new areas, better resists and damage to a factions foes, new combat skills and abilities to combat that factions foes, new additional traitlines for the faction.

Include improvements to the equipment system with tabs that auto-equip for relevant content to handle multiple progression paths. You could start in a small way by adding a talisman slot that expands out to show many slots allowing players to slot new progress as they make it, resistances, damages, abilities etc.

Dreaude.9205:

This is my first post in the forums I believe and I am making it because of how much I have enjoyed reading all of your ideas and hope I can contribute to the discussion even in a small way.

Well, I am tremendously glad you did post, because…

…The dynamic event UI notice could also be updated to so say something to the effect of “CHARACTER NAME is fighting for their life – help them!”

&

…when the player receives their completion notice the text could read “You helped TRIGGERING PLAYER NAME defeat Oogalook The Wrathful and learn their prestige skill”…

…Are INCREDIBLE as a way of building community. That is a &^(&#@%ing MIGHTY idea and it would be criminal not to get something like that into the game. Just imagining it makes me want to log in and beat down almost anything to knowingly help another player like that.

I don’t know what technical limitations this would come up against, or what ramifications this might result in play-wise for all players in the zones, but wanted to try and contribute.

You definitely did . Lets hope they recognize the jewel you just dropped into their laps, because I know I missed it the first time around.

Nike.2631:

• Item upgrades review and expansion. Rebalancing unpopular Runes, Sigils, and Infusions to promote greater variety of builds. Introducing new upgrades as both specialized rewards and new crafting opportunities.

I suggest a rework of the runes and sigils. Such rework could have its own CDI.

This idea could need a lot of polish (could even be a very bad idea, dont know) since i just thought about it:

All runes have some stats that are fixed among the runes of the same kind and other stats that change. My idea is to make each armor piece to have 2 rune slots: one for runes with stats like power, vitality, etc and another for runes with special effects. This would give the more options to customize their armors.

With the sigils could be done something similar, 2 slots, one for sigils with permanent bonuses (like extra damage against a specific mob or extra crit) and another slot for sigils that activate under x conditions.

Fantastic, Chris! Thanks for being so open to the community and for being the front-runner on Anet’s side of the CDI.

BTW, I sent you a PM regarding an idea for the next CDI. I imagine your inbox is stuffed with them, but when you get a chance and can send a response, I’d appreciate it.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Map Wide Meta events unlocked through Order progression (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

I hope this includes at least the concept of a new crafting profession to create household and other non-combat related items (Tinkering from page 3 or the like). If I get some dragon scales as drops of a dragon it would be nice having the option to use them to create a wall hanging, a table, chairs, a backboard for a bed, etc.

It would seem odd if Tequatl dropped a set of furniture however.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Malchior.5042:

Fantastic, Chris! Thanks for being so open to the community and for being the front-runner on Anet’s side of the CDI.

BTW, I sent you a PM regarding an idea for the next CDI. I imagine your inbox is stuffed with them, but when you get a chance and can send a response, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks for being so collaborative with us and helping to make the game the very best it can be. I think the CDI is awesome and it is nothing without all of your hard work.

Chris

P.S: I intend to catch up on my inbox this weekend (-:

Excellent, I also sent a personal PM regarding the CDI.

VOLKON.1290:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing (Customizable from rewards gained in the open world), Guild Halls (Customizable from mass play rewards) and Map Wide Meta events unlocked through Order progression (Leading to both individual and group rewards such as titles and skins)

I hope this includes at least the concept of a new crafting profession

I do too, but I don’t see any way to read “rewards gained in the open world” and think “new crafting discipline”.