Guild Wars 2

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

timmyf.1490:

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

Adding subclasses as a 40 point Trait option could work. The way the system is set up, players could only ever pick one trait line with 40 points. The game balance isn’t going to collapse into a black hole if a character suddenly has 100 more power and 10% more condition duration for example. The only problem with that is that if you can pick previous traits from that trait line in the 40 slot (such as a second 30 point trait) it would seriously destroy balance in the game. So that 4th major slot has to be something special that doesn’t mess up the balance.

Chrispy.5641:

timmyf.1490:

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

Adding subclasses as a 40 point Trait option could work. The way the system is set up, players could only ever pick one trait line with 40 points. The game balance isn’t going to collapse into a black hole if a character suddenly has 100 more power and 10% more condition duration for example. The only problem with that is that if you can pick previous traits from that trait line in the 40 slot (such as a second 30 point trait) it would seriously destroy balance in the game. So that 4th major slot has to be something special that doesn’t mess up the balance.

Make it a “minor” trait in that you can’t pick the effect. Instead, you pick an appearance modifier or something. Whatever would make Orpheal happy. ;-)

Sadly I’ve not the time now to answer to Chris’ posting regarding Sub Classes (bed is calling)
But tomorrow, after I’m back from work, I’ll post something about it.
So far I’ll say only, that I definetely think that Sub Classes are relevant for the CDI of Horizontal Progression. To me, there exists nothing better as a gameplay system, than Sub Classes, which can perfectly merge Vertical Progression with Horizontal Progression under all general aspects of Character Progression as hypernym.
Sub Classes offer simply for both ways a platform as unlock mechanism to add to the current professions new fundemental features to improve those professions and add more “flavor” to them. (I keep on saying to make them more custom and individual, as thats the way how I can explain it)

I understand alot of English and as I think very oftenly, I understand it in text form often alot better, than I can write it for sure xD But I simply think, thats due to missing feedback. If I wouldn’t write her,e I think my English would have rusted already totally ^^ So just some self therapy to prevent this I hope.

In regard on this CDI I just think, I could have explained alot of things surely better (so that in result lesser assumptions are made in response) regarding my idea of Sub Classes, if I wouldn’t lack so much in English as I believe xD
So I’m sorry, but I give my best

The only real “problem” I’ve see so far still after 36+ pages of discussion is only, that people assume, that Sub Classes would restrict them too much.
I naturally can’t speak for Chris, if that was something he meant also with assumptions, or if he meant something else only with the assumptions that people made so far regarding Sub Classes with their counter arguements.

But I believe, that it is an assumption too, to think Sub Classes would be too restrictive, when they in fact just expand our options to diversify our characters under certain “flavors”
Its just taking “Builds” and turnign them into gameplay mechanics and features, that could improve fundamentally the overall gameplay design ofa chosen class by either improving somethign, that is already there, or by changing something that is alöready there and exhangign it with a different working mechanic that simply makes more fun than the old “basic” version of that mechanic.

@ Chris:

If you think, its better for the CDI to put Sub Classes into an own CDI Thread, then go ahead.
I’m just happy, that you so far think, that they would be interesting and I’m just glad, if I can help out with my suggestions, thoughts and “proposals” (whatever this is, ive to google xD)
So happy, I just had to put it into my signature ^^ lol

However – more tomorrow I’ve too goo to beeed naooow zzzzzz…. so sleepy

I’d go with:

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

as my 1 choice as I feel this game as a whole lacks build depth/choice, ie: fixed weapon skills are too restrictive, forced heal/elite slot is too restrictive, traits aren’t balanced well.

Personally, I think the single biggest game improvement would be a relatively simple one: removing the requirement to slot an elite skill in #10, and/or heal skill in #6. I think you should be able to slot any utility skill in #10.

That said, I would love to see GW1-style sub-classes return, even if it were a limited form, eg: you can choose to slot weapon skills from a subclass’ weapon skills if your own class can use that weapon, eg: an Ele/Me using sceptre/focus and speccing for conditions could slot confusing images to replace one of their air skills.

scerevisiae.1972:

I would love to see GW1-style sub-classes return, even if it were a limited form, eg: you can choose skills from a subclass’ weapon skills if your own class can use that weapon.

I think you are misunderstanding, GW1 had dual-classes, we’re talking about a sub-class, e.g. thief —> assassin

A sub-class only the specific profession can choose.

Let me offer a more radical idea for brainstorming purposes:

What if the current classes themselves were to be subclasses of something broader as well?

Example:

BASE CLASS TYPE

• Sorceror

TIER 1 SUB-CLASSES

• Elementalist
• Mesmer
• Necromancer

TIER 2 SUB-CLASSES (Elementalist used as an example)

• Elemental Scholar
• Elemental Artist
• Elemental Soldier

TIER 3 SUB-CLASSES

• Elemental Scholar: Pyromancer, Aeromancer, Aquamancer, Frostmancer, Geomancer;
• Elemental Artist: Elemental Dancer, Arcanist, Glyphmancer, Auramancer;
• Elemental Soldier: Conjurer, Tempest, etc.

BASE CLASS TYPE – Determines your base armor type.
TIER 1 – Determines your base stats, skillset and mechanics.
TIER 2 – Further specializes your base stats, enhances your mechanics and unlocks specific weapon trait boosts.
TIER 3 – Defines unique playstyles based on specialization.

Traits would expand the higher the subclass tier

Tier “0” – A sorceror could switch between any spellcaster class in GW2 (necro, ele, mesmer). No need to create an alt.
Tier 1 – A single “generalist” trait line would be available.
Tier 2 – Would unlock a new trait line for the more specialized subclass.
Tier 3 – Would unlock a third trait line for an even more specialized/ advanced subclass.

Assuming an Elementalist (Tier I) – Battlemage (Tier II) – Conjurer (Tier III)

Trait lines unlocked:

• Elemental Mastery (Several traits and skills available to all elementalists)
• Battlemage Traitline (Several enhancements, traits and skills for melee range combat).
• Conjurer Traitline (Enhancements focused around conjure weapons);

But perhaps it would make more sense as a trait tree:

Sorceror
- Elementalist
— Scholar
—— Pyromancer
—— etc
— Artist
—— Attunning Dancer
—— etc
— Battlemage
—— Conjurer
—— etc

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

scerevisiae.1972:

I would love to see GW1-style sub-classes return, even if it were a limited form, eg: you can choose skills from a subclass’ weapon skills if your own class can use that weapon.

I think you are misunderstanding, GW1 had dual-classes, we’re talking about a sub-class, e.g. thief —> assassin

A sub-class only the specific profession can choose.

I think that’s too restrictive and overall too much development work, especially given how slowly new skills are being added in the current game.

I think it would be better for existing classes to earn access to other class’ (weapon) skills to create hybrids. The primary class keeps their class mechanic and doesn’t get the subclass’ mechanic. In the case of thief subclasses, the various weapon skills are given CDs.

So a D/D Ele/thief with backstab, heartseeker and CnD would be possible, but they wouldn’t have access to traits and heartseeker might have something like a 5sec CD, CnD a 30sec CD, etc. Note that said Ele/thief would also not have access to thief traits or utilities (at least in the first rev), nor would they have initiative, but they would be able to stealth.

In terms of “earning” the subclass skills, they could be purchasable using the existing concept of skillpoints, eg: 25 skillpoints per subclass skill.

I think this version of subclasses offers way more build/gameplay options for way less development effort than effectively creating whole new classes.

I think it’s too late for dual classing now, but we could always get dual subclassing.

EDIT:
And that would simply work based on my many-pages-old concept: each subclass = each traitline. Instead of having 5 restricting and broad traitlines, we could get X (more than 5) trait lines (which would be less restricting) with more specialized effects (which would be less broad).

Elementalist’s traitlines:

• Pyromancer
• Aquamancer
• Frostmancer
• Attunement Dancer
• Battlemage
• Etc
• Etc

FourthVariety.5463:

GW2 has plenty of gameplay reasoning why you can attack all the time pushing skills. GW2 has few to none gameplay reasons why you can push buttons to keep alive. Sub Classes are a new way to provide more. Gameplay deepens because instead of exploring 30s attack chains, you can now look into 30s of defense play with button presses other than wasd + roll.

In general I like your thoughts about this, but…
1.) GW2 has tons of other defensive abilities which are more important than dodge and wasd imho, because you can’t use dodge unlimited + wasd doesn’t makes you evade certain attacks. You have quite a few reflection skills, you have invisibility, there are ways to block attacks and a lot of interruption too. It’s not as trivial as you make it look like. There are just more than 1 way to deal with certain situations, which is a good thing, because theoretically no specific profession is required to do something.

You could ress a downed ally by guardian bubble / reflection wall. You could ress him with thief invisibility or you could even ress 3 allies with elementalist mass-ress. Ranger could make his pet ress an ally, or the healing-elite spirit.

The problem here is imho, that a lot of those skills aren’t balanced well enough / they have little use for something else. Some of the skills also don’t seem to work properly. Imho Skills like the Rangers Heal-spirit should be much more versatile, should work more like a bundle. Use it and you have a few new options like mass-ress, huge cleaves who knock back enemies while having strong retaliation and protection on. What I’m trying to say: make certain skills more attractive by giving them more utility instead of being useful for 1 thing only.

2.) Now what I would like to see from you are specific examples. How would you implement subprofessions which take the focus off pure damage dealing builds? And how would you do this to make WvW still possible? When you have 30+ players in one spot using defensive skills, it’s already quite effective – even if it doesn’t look so when you’re playing with 2-4 buddies.

Given the extent that sub-classes will likely work with and require a modification of the standard vertical progression of the classes, I think it’s a subject for a different day.

Orpheal.8263:

But I believe, that it is an assumption too, to think Sub Classes would be too restrictive, when they in fact just expand our options to diversify our characters under certain “flavors”
Its just taking “Builds” and turnign them into gameplay mechanics and features, that could improve fundamentally the overall gameplay design ofa chosen class by either improving somethign, that is already there, or by changing something that is alöready there and exhangign it with a different working mechanic that simply makes more fun than the old “basic” version of that mechanic.

This is what I imagine when I think of sub-classes. I feel like the different trait lines which correspond to various disciplines already move in that direction, and that sub-classes or sub-archetypes would be a good way to let players express what type of character they’re playing.

The Secret World does something like this with their deck system, which is basically just a way to guide people in building their character. However, it gives names, concept art, and unlockable outfits to each deck, therefore creating unique identities for builds. That adds a lot of flavor to a character, as other people have mentioned before; it was a lot more fun to play a “Spirit Lord” in GW1 than to think of my character as a “spirit spammer” or to define the build by the skills equipped to it.

I’m in favor of new skills/traits, and weapon proliferation.

Subclasses and new weapons are iffy. It would depend heavily on the proposed implementation.

That said:

I would like to see more skills available for each weapon, so they are actually somewhat customizable to your play-style and build choice. As it stands, to run certain builds, you are shoe-horned into certain weapon sets, whether you like those weapons or not.

More traits or simply cleaning up trait lines to make them more coherent would be nice.

Weapon proliferation would be interesting. e.g. Elementalist with a magic rifle, Warrior with a non-magic staff, etc. Within reason to the classes, mind you; I really don’t want to see a Thief with a two-handed hammer. That’s simply anti-thematic.

As for new weapons, the only one I can think of that is in-game but not player-usable is the whip used by some of the Nightmare Court npcs.

timmyf.1490:

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

Ok, how exactly would you go about extending the trait lines to 40 without completely blowing out balance? Would you increase the level cap to 90? Which in itself would have a whole host of minor issues with gear to consider.

Because a sub-class system would be something everyone could get at a certain level, which would bump everyone up in power proportionally.
Your suggestion opens the door so that some may have it, and other not. Having anything too powerful would also have people skew their build in favor of a trait that they might feel obligated to get, limiting potential build.

I don’t think you’ve thought this through enough.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Well, in some respects if Sub-Classes exist at all, they had better be horizontal progress… because I’m not sure the game can absorb a lot more vertical progression under any heading. I think its a real and pressing complaint that the game is not very challenging. I think that those parts that were still challenging are rapidly being trivialized by the introduction of the Ascended tier, and I think IF Sub-Classes go down that easy, seductive path of offering even more potency in the name of theme or effort to acquire, they will shred what challenge remains. That’s not a knock against sub-classes, that’s a plea to focus on horizontal gameplay development over vertical.

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

I feel that one of their greatest strengths is also their curse: They give you a sense of certainty that you are on the right path. The curse being in a game that has miraculously managed to offer us such flexibility that all professions can be molded to serve in all roles, sanctifying ‘right paths’ strangles all other paths.

My Support guardian is build around extremely high crit rate, fast cycling attacks, extremely long might-boon-duration and the Empowered Might. I can maintain 6-15 stacks of might party-wide forever and still radiate Battle Presence along with it and hit pretty hard all things considered (since nearly every attack is a crit…). Is it a brilliant build for a party otherwise stuffed with genuinely skilled Zerker-Greatsword-Dodgerific Warriors…? Yeah, actually its not bad. But put it in a random pug and it inserts a spine of Deldrimor steel into folks that might otherwise get pulverized.

No one will ever make a Sub-class that fits my tastes in support (and I don’t expect them to), but right now no one is shuffling me off to the ‘dust-bin of non-supported builds’ either.

My DPS Necro uses +95% vulnerability duration and an axe as her primary weapon. I’ve had conversations on these boards where the almighty groupthink that so loves their one true build couldn’t even begin to grasp what I’d done and why it turns some very formidable enemies to dust.

Should I expect the Necro Sub-classes to cater to lateral thinking solutions that required 3 pairs of runes to pull off or to best serve the obvious approach and those who flock to them?

Right now the game spends the entire band from levels 31-80 teaching you about Traits. It’s the most complicated player-decision system in the game and it could still benefit from better explanations and tutorials. That sense of confidence – that you are on at least a sound path could very much be improved. That is where I think these ideas of theme and iconic names are best used.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Their other strength – the one thing they can potentially do that Traits as they exist now can’t is introduce conflicting effects. For example you cannot have two Traits that completely replace weapon skills with different weapon skills for the same weapon unless both of them are Grandmaster Traits in the same tree. You can do that with Sub-classes, because you can presume that a Warrior will never be a “Duelist” and a “Gladiator” at the same time. making “Sub-classes” into a separate set of Grandmaster traits is something I outlined earlier (didn’t seem to get much attention, but hey, its a crowded room ). I’ve had another thought on how to approach it, but I want to do a bit more research before I present it. Hopefully a solution that addresses the perils I see – not the threat of power creep from poor implementation, but the damage to the versatility and openness of the build-space we enjoy now.

I’ll try to boil that down to one sentence and get back to you.

Yoh.8469:

timmyf.1490:

Yoh.8469:

• Mesmer’s could have two sub-classed, the Illusionist and the Duelist.
• The Illusionist gains a maximum of 2 more clones, for a max of 5. Including new skills and abilities that specialize in support via deception and trickery.
• The Duelist on the other hand gains new version of Shatter skills, specializing in control via interruption and CC.

If you extended trait lines to 40 points and added these as the 40-point option, you could do exactly the same thing. I don’t think there should be any gating of utility skills (beyond profession), but one could argue in favor of utility or weapon skills that require a trait.

Doing it this way saves substantial development time which could be used for Order Missions, housing, or hey, maybe a third heavy armor profession.

Ok, how exactly would you go about extending the trait lines to 40 without completely blowing out balance? Would you increase the level cap to 90? Which in itself would have a whole host of minor issues with gear to consider.

Because a sub-class system would be something everyone could get at a certain level, which would bump everyone up in power proportionally.
Your suggestion opens the door so that some may have it, and other not. Having anything too powerful would also have people skew their build in favor of a trait that they might feel obligated to get, limiting potential build.

I don’t think you’ve thought this through enough.

I would not increase the level cap. Still 70 trait points. That said, this was just one idea. I’m pointing out that the Trait system could be made more flexible and incorporate many of the ideas suggested for subclasses in this thread.

Of my ideas, this is not even my favorite, but I still think it’s better than subclasses.

Nike.2631:

snups

Sounds like what I’ve been trying to explain the past few posts on sub-classes (I’m convinced its mostly my ability to explain, rather than the community’s ability to understand). My thoughts are that sub-classes would best work as a series of traits and skills that are all related in both name and theme to one another.

Since they’re traits (or variations of current skills, along with brand new skills if needed), you can expect that many will be mutually exclusive. If you choose all of the “Infiltraitor” traits, you can’t take the “Thug” traits (should they be in the same line). Sub-class traits in different lines would be able to be taken together, to allow people to continue, as you’ve mentioned, to make their own builds and “themes” based on the choices they want. Maybe you want to be pure Battlemage, and so you’d take all of those traits and skills because they extend that theme. Maybe you really like conditions on a Guardian, so you combine Templar, Inquisitor, and Monk sub-classes because certain traits or skills make a condition build more effective. Or, maybe you’re just taking certain traits and skills because they feel good to you. In any case, you’ve been able to further customize your character.

You could almost think of them as rune sets for traits and skills instead of equipment, but rather than have a bonus based on number (or maybe we want one? I personally don’t), the bonuses are inherent in having that particular trait or skill. The differences in sub-classes are mostly nomenclature, as its basically only adding skills and traits at the core of the idea, but it would be easier to reference, and help bring out the story of GW2. “I’m playing a Monk” (Guardian subclass that makes it easy to see what traits and skills they have equipped) or "I’m playing a Brawler with Defender skills (Warrior that’s physically/CC based with some Defender skills used to supplement defense). Its almost already in the game, we just need a bit more expansion on available (and then viable) build options.

Archetypes (SubClasses)

Archetypes beyond the default can be unlocked after level 80 by completing difficult profession-specific challenges. Once unlocked, archetypes can be changed at the expense of some skillpoints. Each archetype for a profession has a distinct visual theme and variation of their F1-4 primary mechanic. Traits, weapons, and other skills would be unaffected.

The examples below try to introduce more control and support.

Example 1: Mesmer

• The Tragedian’s Monarch (default)
  • Theme: Lavender phantasms & butterflies
  • Mechanic: Shatter illusions for damage and conditions
• The Comedian’s Pariah
  • Theme: Red-violet phantasms & bats
  • Mechanic: Shatter illusions for area healing, boons, and fear

Example 2: Necromancer

• The Mortician (default)
  • Theme: Fleshy minions
  • Mechanic: Attacks during Death Shroud
• The Ritualist
  • Theme: Spirit minions (they function the same, but look different)
  • Mechanic: Reflects attacks, buffs minions, and heals allies during Death Shroud

I feel like actual meaningful discussion on horizontal progression is being rail-roaded by ‘sub class’ discussion.

I’m not saying that sub classes don’t provide interesting and thought provoking discussion, just that in the grand scheme of things and those things which are likely to be considered and acted upon; they’re probably not up there.

Additionally, we can discuss the pros and cons of sub classes all day every day, but unless people are making actual proposals on how the system would work, it’s all just theory.

….

Could we have a profession/class development CDI at some point to appease the sub-class enthusiasts?

I just want to say that I’d rather have a team focus on giving us the best, most polished iterations of each profession rather than get involved with sub-classes right now. In other words, not only do I oppose a sub-class system, I think it’s a terrible idea to do a CDI on sub-classing without doing one on the existing professions first. And then, I think underwater and downed combat both deserve some attention before sub-classing. Basically, sub-classes don’t even make my top 3 list of class-related discussion.

I think Chris only suggested we focus on Sub-Classes because we were getting pages and pages of people arguing about it.

That said, perhaps discussing the sub-classes could lead to ideas on how to improve the primary classes?

Baels.3469:

I feel like actual meaningful discussion on horizontal progression is being rail-roaded by ‘sub class’ discussion.

I’m not saying that sub classes don’t provide interesting and thought provoking discussion, just that in the grand scheme of things and those things which are likely to be considered and acted upon; they’re probably not up there.

Additionally, we can discuss the pros and cons of sub classes all day every day, but unless people are making actual proposals on how the system would work, it’s all just theory.

….

Could we have a profession/class development CDI at some point to appease the sub-class enthusiasts?

Read about the halfway point in this Article ::: Looking Ahead: Guild Wars 2 in 2013

Anet has talked a little about wanting to add new skills in the past, and they talked about it in relation to Horizontal Progression, no different than housing, zone progression, or anything else. The thing is, its the end of the year, and there has been no new traits without replacing old ones, erasing them, and moving around others. We have gotten a total of 2 new skills, both of them being healing skills.

The reason why we see so many Sub-class ideas (and skill expansion ideas from earlier in the thread), is that many, many players (myself included) are getting frustrated at the lack of Character progression at level 80 (related to combat and killing things). A Ranger has been the same Ranger for over a year, and a Warrior has been the same Warrior for over a year. There is no diversification going on, and there is no increase in skillset either.

Sub-Classes and Skill Expansion can be a meaningful way to discuss horizontal progression. Its not derailing and moving away from the talk about Housing, because the idea of Horizontal progression is at the heart of just about everything talked about in this thread so far.

(And there is a Slightly better Sub-Class proposal I am working on, just not done yet, and I am waiting to see if we are going to save Sub-Classes and Skill expansion for a future CDI thread, or if we’re going to get that discussion taken care of right now)

Guhracie.3419:

I think it’s a terrible idea to do a CDI on sub-classing without doing one on the existing professions first. And then, I think underwater and downed combat both deserve some attention before sub-classing. Basically, sub-classes don’t even make my top 3 list of class-related discussion.

We need to talk about those as well, because it has also been discusses at length in this thread and many others about how all classes are not created equal.

I suggest to Chris that we get a Seperate Profession CDI in each of the Profession Forums. Those will not get as much Anet love and attention as others, but no one loves a profession better than the people that play it, and each individual Profession CDI will fill as many pages as any two CDI threads so far. (So, just like these threads, we should have a person summarizing each thread to make the Devs’ lives easier)

Gulesave.5073:

Archetypes (SubClasses)

Archetypes beyond the default can be unlocked after level 80 by completing difficult profession-specific challenges. Once unlocked, archetypes can be changed at the expense of some skillpoints. Each archetype for a profession has a distinct visual theme and variation of their F1-4 primary mechanic. Traits, weapons, and other skills would be unaffected.

The examples below try to introduce more control and support.

Example 1: Mesmer

• The Tragedian’s Monarch (default)
  • Theme: Lavender phantasms & butterflies
  • Mechanic: Shatter illusions for damage and conditions
• The Comedian’s Pariah
  • Theme: Red-violet phantasms & bats
  • Mechanic: Shatter illusions for area healing, boons, and fear

Example 2: Necromancer

• The Mortician (default)
  • Theme: Fleshy minions
  • Mechanic: Attacks during Death Shroud
• The Ritualist
  • Theme: Spirit minions (they function the same, but look different)
  • Mechanic: Reflects attacks, buffs minions, and heals allies during Death Shroud

I’m really a bit of two minds regarding subclasses; while I like the idea of further specialization and as such ‘progressing’ your class, on the other hand it shouldn’t impose restrictions in a ‘subclass A is sooo much better for damage’ way.

That’s why I find this idea I quoted above quite interesting! It adds minor alterations to the function key mechanics – which I think is quite an elegant way to do it, and definitely better than the restriction of certain traits or weapons to certain subclasses. But most importantly to me, it offers possible ‘horizontal’ variations for the character in terms of atmosphere and visual distinction.

But then again I’m a bit of an altoholic and character customization ‘addict’, I totally could make 5 rangers and make them all entirely different right now, as well. :P

Since I finished adding to my earlier half-baked sub class idea, I will go on and post the whole thing, since it (sub-classes) is at the center of the discussion right now.

Sub-Classes
Sub-Classes can be a way for Players to diffrentiate themselves from another Player at Level 80.

What Subclasses Should not Do

• Sub-Classes should not Lock Players out of any Skill or Weapon. Any new weapon or skill that gets introduced to a profession should be available to anyone at any level so long as they can fufill the requirements to unlock them.
• Sub-Classes should not introduce power creep in any significant way, though they should still allow a greater specialization in a certain gameplay aspect for any given profession (such as Healing, Support, or more specifically Banners or Traps), otherwise there is no point in a Sub-Class to start

What Sub-Classes Should Do

• Sub-Classes should introduce a wider variety of Character Builds that encourage Players to try out different things. At the same time this happens, New content should be made so that DPS is not always the most important aspect of any team. This way, a Character with more Control or Support is just as important as a Character that goes full Glass cannon. (this can be done for example by having bosses with unique mechanics, such as bosses that take double damage when inflicted with a certain condition, or deals less damage so long as you are getting a certain boons, etc…)

How could Subclasses be Implemented in the game?

• Unlock Access to Subclasses by paying for them with your Skill Points, or by spending Gold and buying a Manual from a Class Trainer.
• Another way to do it is by Collecting Page Scraps for a Manual from the game world by doing events and buying the pages from Karma Vendors.
• After you collect 10-20 Page scraps, you double click on them, and it turns into a Manual that you can then sell or use yourself to be able to Unlock a Sublcass.
• Tie Subclasses to Traits. Fully Investing 30 Trait Points into any two Trait lines will give a Player access to a Subclass with bonuses.
• There are 10 Possible Subclasses for Each Profession based on the number of Trait Lines currently available, but even that could be expanded in the future by allowing you to pick different subclasses after fully investing into 2 traitlines with different benefits.
• I forgot to mention that in order to take the subclass, you have to spend the remaining 10 Trait points you have. That way, there is no question of balance, just greater specialization into any of 10 areas depending on sub-class.
  (Continued in Next post)

(Continued…)
Example
- For this Example, We’ll be using the Ranger again. This is only an Example, and should not be taken as an end Solution. The Values are not taken with Balance in mind, just again, to show an example for how it could work……

(01) Marskmanship and Skirmishing : Sub-class Becomes Sniper
- Increases Range for all Ranged attacks (Bows, axes, daggers, warhorn, traps, GS#4, etc.), and increases damage dealt by weapons when at Maximum range.
(02) Marksmanship and Wilderness Survival : Sub-Class Becomes Scout
- Increases Endurance Regeneration, and Regain Opening Strike when Interrupted.
(03) Marksmanship and Nature Magic : Sub-Class Becomes Tracker
- All Shouts Inflict a Revealed Debuff, and your Pet can ‘sense’ Stealth Enemies.
(04) Marksmanship and Beastmastery : Sub-Class Becomes Beastmaster
- Increases Signet Duration and Reduces Signet Cooldown.
(05) Skirmishing and Wilderness Survival : Sub-Class Becomes Warden
- Reduces Physical Damage and Condition Damage taken and Increases the number of Targets affected by Traps.
(06) Skirmishing and Nature Magic : Sub-Class Becomes Swashbuckler
- Attack Faster when Dual wielding, and Remove a Condition when you are Struck by a Critical Hit.
(07) Skirmishing and Beastmastery : Sub-Class Becomes Trailblazer
- Increase Movement Speed, and gain swiftness for you or your pet whenever you or your pet inflict a Critical hit.
(08) Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic : Sub-Class Becomes Shaman
- Dodging Removes Immobilize and Cripple. Spirits have twice as much Toughness.
(09)Wilderness Survival and Beastmastery : Sub-Class Becomes Woodsman
- Pets gain secondary Stats based on your Secondary stats. You gain Power based on your Toughness, and your Pet gains power based on its Toughness.
(10) Nature Magic and Beastmastery : Sub-Class Becomes Druid
- Increases Healing and Boon Duration, and Shouts Also Apply Protection.

There. That’s my idea. I’m sure it could be expanded on, or a better system could be suggested instead. But, this is the last I’m going to go into this area for now, because, Guhracie.3419 is kind of right. We should be addressing the various shortcomings that each profession has before we try to get into Sub-Classing or Weapon/Skill Expansion. So my suggestion from a previous post still stands. A CDI for each profession should be made in all the Profession Forums, so those can be worked out first before we get into more complex things like this…

Also, I didn’t get into any visual cutomization, because I think that This Idea can fulfill that purpose without blocking players into any specific build of any kind…:::

Horizontal Progression and Visual Customization

Sub-Classes could be a good idea to finally be able to change (at least one of) the 5 weapon skills. Each sub-class (it would be nice to have 2/3 sub-classes per profession) could have access to different versions of the skills associated to each weapon, and players should be able to change sub-class relatively easily in game. This kind of solution would add the opportunity to go deeper in choosing the way you want to play the game with regard to the combat style.

However, while I think it will be important for GW2 to allow changing the first 5 skills sooner or later…
1) I do not think this is horizontal progression (sub-classes should be available well before level 80, and they would just change the way you fight)
2) I do not think this is important as much as the addition of new options/contents for gameplay at this stage

I was actually wondering how much would break and how much would be fixed by having 80 trait points instead (levels 71-80 grant you two trait points per level). Without thinking about it too much:

• For obvious reasons the build diversity would be broadened quite substantially.
• Certain classes (Warrior and especially Thief) would become ridiculously powerful – this could obviously be re-balanced (this would likely be tricky, expensive and most definitely completely broken for the first few iterations).
• Other classes (Elementalists and most significantly Rangers) would have quite a few of their concerns addressed: although definitely not all of them.
• Having levelled 6 characters to 80 I can definitely say that 70 – 80 is actually quite boring (where the rest is quite enjoyable). Being rewarded with two traits per level might make this a tad more exciting.

I haven’t though about how it would break/fix things too much – just throwing it out there.

Chrispy.5641:

What Sub-Classes Should Do

• Sub-Classes should introduce a wider variety of Character Builds that encourage Players to try out different things. At the same time this happens, New content should be made so that DPS is not always the most important aspect of any team. This way, a Character with more Control or Support is just as important as a Character that goes full Glass cannon. (this can be done for example by having bosses with unique mechanics, such as bosses that take double damage when inflicted with a certain condition, or deals less damage so long as you are getting a certain boons, etc…)

I think that new encounter design should be a prerequisite for this subclass system. Without it, the new subclasses can’t all be valid, unless they are basically doing the same thing. Chris asked the question: is this a good thing for anet to work on in this phase of GW2?

If subclasses are released without a use for all of them… I think the balance complaints will be overwhelming, and justified.

So the proposal of Guhracie to have a balance discussion first is probably a very good idea.

On the other hand, I don’t think it has that much to do with profession balance in PvE and more with encounter design.

Profession balance has to be done on three fronts: PvP/WvW and PvE. While encounter design can focus just on one area. This means that weak skills and traits in PvE can be strong in PvP. We cannot fix that by making them stronger, but we can fix that by making encounters in PvE more varied so that it allows for more builds to shine.

Of course, subclass balance concerns PvP and WvW aswell, but I think that this is a balance that can (only) be tweaked and finetuned after release, while PvE balance has it’s roots in encounter design. So it is on behalf of PvE that I suggest to atleast postpone subclasses until we have more encounter variety.

Chrispy.5641:

There. That’s my idea.

Unfortunately its pretty much all vertical progression. Every time the payoff is you kill plains-wurms faster or more safely.

It also locks together things that have no connection. If I want to be better at dual wielding (your “Swashbuckler” benefit) I have to pour 30 trait points into Beastmastery? I realize its just one way of setting things up, but any Sub-class systems becomes so reliant on the particular vision of just the designer(s), when the purpose is to serve a million-plus players who may hold wildly different expectations of what a swashbuckler does and how to go about becoming one.

Finally it hoses every possible build that doesn’t commit 30 points to two trait lines. They are now the old and inferior – second class citizens for not following ‘the format’.

videoboy.4162:

I think Chris only suggested we focus on Sub-Classes because we were getting pages and pages of people arguing about it.

That said, perhaps discussing the sub-classes could lead to ideas on how to improve the primary classes?

This is something I’d been thinking myself. It’s taking over because, to put it bluntly, it’s controversial. We have a couple of people who are fanatically for it, and a few people who are against it and are afraid to stop posting their objection to it lest their silence be taken as tacit agreement, however tired they may be of the subject.

Personally, I’m against having it as an explicit part of game mechanics, for reasons that have already been stated by myself and others (doesn’t add anything that can’t be done through adding new options and improving the existing systems, and it restricts what people can do to the specific archetypes catered for by the subclasses rather than coming up with their own – Nike gives a great explanation of how people can find ways to do their own thing within the broad professions that are available now, but who would easily be left in the dark by a subclass system).

Where I could see the concept working is in the following:

1) As a vehicle for inspiration. ArenaNet doesn’t need to hard-bake subclasses into the system to use the idea of a particular subclass to drive development of skills and traits. Furthermore, similar to the PvP templates in GW1, the idea of subclasses could be used to present players with sample builds, to show off what can be done by the various professions and give new players with starting points from which to start refining their own build concepts.

2) As a vehicle for cosmetic differentiation. Something like a subclass system could be used to unlock things like skins associated with that archetype (but I don;t think you should be restricted on when you can use that once you’ve earned it), skill graphics, and animations. An earlier poster mentioned things like fighting styles inspired by different cultures – in a hypothetical Canthan or tengu expansion, for instance, warriors might be able to learn skills from and prove themselves to a blademaster that specialises in samurai-like fighting styles, and along the way they earn the ability to change their animations to a set that matches those styles. (Once earned, though, you can continue to use them regardless of build).

Finally, as a note, I think there’s a bit of misrepresentation of how things worked in GW1, particularly the secondary profession system:

First, GW1 did not require you to pay a fee for changing your secondary profession, as long as you were changing it to one you’d already unlocked. Unlocking was a one-off 500 gold fee, cheaper than buying skills after the first few… or for Prophecies professions, you could do the quest and pay nothing at all. Apart from the cost of unlocks, and possibly acquiring new equipment for a new build, GW1 never applied a fee to changing your build. Something which, IMO, GW2 could do better to emulate.

Second, as someone else has already pointed out, secondary professions did not represent a specialisation of an existing professions like subclasses do, but a blending together of existing professions.

The Great Al.2546:

I think that anyone that is suggesting guild halls/player housing, etc, has to ask themselves the following -

Assuming that items related to player housing are achieved through the living story /achievement system (i.e. like some of the existing nodes so far, things like the dragon wings which we have obtained in similar ways), are you more likely to play through otherwise potentially repetitive/uninspiring (in my opinion) tasks/progress bars snip..

It depends on the implementation. It would work if there is real challenge involved in acquiring these unique items. If they put real challenge into them they’d have value because it would be a trophy celebrating a real achievement. If on the other hand they’d go for a numbers game then I think you’re right.

My idea is each of these trophies should be its own sort of Liadri, a real challenge that takes a while to conquer that goes over and above the standard affair of the content in question. Simply speaking it should be a skill challenge first and formost. It definitely shouldn’t be something like kill 1000 champions to get the champion trophy, thats only a challenge of how much repetition you can take not a skill challenge. On the other hand if the achievement is solo a champion or kill 50 champions with 3 or less people fighting that champion then that has meaning. It shouldnt be complete say the not so secret jumping puzzle 20 times, it should be complete the not so secret jumping puzzle in x amount of time which would mean you did it without a single mistake while seriously hurrying up etc..

Of course we’re speaking of trophies here, people who arent into hardcore challenges shouldnt be left out so its important they’d have some serious customization options without having to go through hardcore challenges as well. There needs to be a balance here but hard to get stuff is a very good motivator and shouldnt overlooked not just cause its fun trying to overcome a challenge but also because it makes the reward meaningful since you feel you truly deserved it.

Guhracie.3419:

I think it’s a terrible idea to do a CDI on sub-classing without doing one on the existing professions first.

I agree. Do a CDI about existing classes, about the existing combat (dps > everything) and give us a lead toward what could be improved. The balance in this game is off already, subclasses would only add to it.
Also, why the base health differences between classes? Why the stat differences (a war can get high armour & high dps same time?)?

I really think the subclass idea is not so relevant at this stage.
Not only is it a massive topic that really needs it own CDI- it is too dependent on other things in the game.
I propose that we shelf it for now until it can be discussed at length and on it’s own.

I also do not want it to detract form things like housing, Guild vs Guild, factions and Order quests- which I think at this time in the game life will open more modes of play and be easier to implement into the game

Nike.2631:

Chrispy.5641:

There. That’s my idea.

Unfortunately its pretty much all vertical progression. Every time the payoff is you kill plains-wurms faster or more safely.

It also locks together things that have no connection. If I want to be better at dual wielding (your “Swashbuckler” benefit) I have to pour 30 trait points into Beastmastery? I realize its just one way of setting things up, but any Sub-class systems becomes so reliant on the particular vision of just the designer(s), when the purpose is to serve a million-plus players who may hold wildly different expectations of what a swashbuckler does and how to go about becoming one.

Finally it hoses every possible build that doesn’t commit 30 points to two trait lines. They are now the old and inferior – second class citizens for not following ‘the format’.

Swashbuckler was actually Skirmishing and Nature Magic, and it was a random name. The Benefit I thought of was based mostly on the traits you have in those two trait lines, though some are kind of out there (like the dual wielding thing, but in my defense, you can take a trait that gives you more critical damage when wielding an axe in your mainhand, so why not get a bonus for dual wielding?). Some aren’t (like the critical hit related part of that sub-class benefit, That is specifically Skirmishing, period). Again random ideas that should be worked on.

Also, I did write that out (for not having 30 points in anything), but erased it because the post was too long, then forgot to put it back in after splitting the post into two…, here it is (actually, I’ll worry about it later)

These are all what-ifs and what-hows, none of which should be a concern right now.

I’m not against it so much as feel it does not benefit the game or myself at this point in time.
Do people really feel this is the best way for developers to spend their time? tacking on another element to combat rather than developing an additional game system.
I’m not entirely certain how to express my concerns with it so I’ll put it into three questions.

1. How much new Gameplay content does this add? (That is, not repeating existing content with new skills as in completely new content.) it seems like however long it takes to unlock the subclass and that is it.

2. What new goals does it add for the short,mid and longterm?

3. How does it progress player A from player B, in achievement they both have a subclass? (i.e I could have a Radiant helm the other player has a hellfire helm but we are both equal in terms of achievement.)

4. Is it fun? (subjective I know but I’d get far more enjoyment messing around in a house than having to rejig my skills to get an effective combination.)

I agree with The Lost Witch and timmyf… Sub-classes at this point, wouldn’t bring anything good to the table and wouldn’t be worth Anet’s developing time. Like some people have noted, PvE encounters are heavily in favor of pure direct damage, hence why zerkers are the best choice.
To introduce Sub-classes we need to change pve encounters so support and control should have influence on the battlefield… For those who forgot Anet removed holy trinity in favor for their own trinity and it went something like this damage/support/control. Awesome idea, terrible execution if you ask me. It works in sPvP but in PvE damage is by far superrior to other two roles.
So if we were to have subclasses it wouldn’t change anything, it’s not going to introduce new builds, since everyone will spec into damage.

Bottom line, we need to change how PvE encounters work in game, and then we can talk about adding subclasses. This is mandatory and I urge people to support PvE discussion first.

My suggestion would be to:

• Properly scale toughness and healing
• Make Condition build in PvE be as good as in sPvP
• Remove or change how defiant stack works.

If these 3 things were to change, we would have so many viable builds and good options in PvE… and not Zerkers.

I didn’t had much time to post during the holiday, but here’s my contribution to this awesome thread.

Since most of the others sujects have already been widely discussed, I’ll focus on the form of horizontal progression I’m the most attached to, achievements.

Overview

The original goal of the achievement system is to record the progress of the player towards a variety of predetermined objectives, which, upon completion, rewards the player with achievement points and titles. Later, Anet introduced achievement rewards, awarding currency, unique skins and titles depending on the raw number of achievement points obtained.
Players choose to work towards achievements for various reasons: specific rewards attached to the achievement (mainly living story ones), achievement rewards, or just for the personnal satisfaction of completing what can be seen as a challenge.
I will split the achievements in three categories: permanent, living story and daily/monthly. I’ll start with some thoughts about each of these categories

Permanent achievements

Those have already been largely discussed in this thread, mainly in the form challenge vs grind. Overall, people have been asking for more permanent achievements, and especially for more challenging achievements actually rewarding skillfull play rather than time invested. While agreeing with this, I want to point out that grindy achivements are not necesserally bad since they can hold a feeling of progression, the best example being the rank achievements in sPvP. Despite skyhammer farm broking the whole rank system, players have shown that they were still attached to their rank when Anet considered removing it.
I think grindy achievements are ok when they:

• Track a progression with displayable tiers and a good progression curve. Despite the last rank being extremely hard to get, sPvP ranks fit this description quite well. On the other hand, the various WvW achievements fail because they have only one displayable tier and the requirements are insane.
• Does not require to be specifically grinded. The point is even if it takes a lot of time, players can progress towards the achievement without playing specifically for it, like the weapon master or slayer achievements that will progress while doing other things. On the other hand, they can be rushed with a boring and repetitive farm.

Living Story

The main characteristic of LS achievements is they’re time-limited. Again, this subject has already been discussed, mainly last summer because of the Aetherblade retreat and Liadri achievements that were considered too hard by many. I feel like LS achievements are used by Anet as a listing to tell the player what is available in the current release, which is not too far away from the original goal of the system. The problem is since they’re time-limited, they can’t be too hard without punishing players that don’t have much time to play during a certain release and can’t train for a particular achievement, even if they’re willing to spend time on it later.
With the tower of nightmare releases appeared LS achievements that only required to spend a quite large amount of money (Aftermath Treasure Collector, Aftermath Toxic Consumer). I really think this kind of achievements shouldn’t exist at all, they’re not an achievement. Same could be said about Karma Spender, Big Spender or even Daily Feast, but at least those are rather cheap and require regular currency.

Daily/monthly

These time-limited achievement have been in the game since launch, but have experienced extreme changes since, especially the daily. Their goal was to reward the player for regulary login in and playing the game with a some currency and a chance to a BLTC item. To make this reward easier to get, a new daily system was introduced, where numerous daily achievements are available (9 at start, 15 currently) and completing 5 of them gives the daily reward, any additional daily still awarding 1AP and some experience. This system has recently been extended to spvp.
Starting last summer, every day contains a LS-related daily for every active arc, contributing to both the daily reward and the the LS meta. The objective was to make it easier for casual players to achieve the LS meta. Monthly achievements evolved less, the pve-side only having 7 options when 4 are required for the reward.
The problem is the scale of some of the daily and monthly options are completely out of touch with each other. How is talking to a npc in LA (Daily Laurel Vendor) the same as earning 2 WvW levels? Why do I only need 50 WvW kills for the monthly option when the daily is 10, meaning around 300 kills a month? How is playing 3 sPvP matchs the same as winning 3 soloQ tournaments?
I feel like the various Anet teams are throwing their own ideas into the system without thinking about its coherency, with the last sPvP daily as the culminant point: currently, finishing all the sPvP options take 3-4 times what is needed to finish all the PvE options, for half less APs. The new spvp dailes were designed to give a better AP income to the spvp players or to drag more people into tpvp, probably both, and both objectives are good but these dailies just don’t fit with the rest of the system.

Balance between time-limited and permanent achievements

The main problem of the overall achievement system is the lack of balance between permanent and time-limited achievements. What was supposed to register a player’s achievements, like the titles and Hall of Monuments did in gw1, currently registers the time spent in game. The total amount of APs available from daily/monthly is already around the same as both permanent and LS achievements together. For many players, the fastest way of gaining APs, be it to reach the next chest or just to improve their score, is now to grind dailies and the occasional Living story that can usually be finished in a few hours. In comparison, the permanent achievements they have remaining are both too long and not very rewarding.
Of course, Anet should add new permanent achievements to increase their weight, but I think the problem won’t be solved unless a cap is put to APs gained from dailies, like it was done for Agent of Entropy. Different implementations for this kind of cap are possible (and some have already been discussed on this forum), from a simple hard cap to something smoother like a slowly increasing cap. Same goes for monthly, but the problem is less important since the AP income is smaller. The main inconvenience will be to set this cap, since it would probably have to be higher than what any player already has because of the achievement rewards.
Another possibility could be to merge PvE and PvP daily. Since the rewards are already being merged, the only reason I see not to completley merge both dailies is that in the current state it encourages people to play spvp since the rewards are exclusive.

Balance between game types

The second problem of the achievement system is it rewards PvE way more than other game types. WvW achievements are ridicoulously long and unrewarding, WvW players get most of their achievements from the PvE-related content in WvW (finishing events, gathering, etc). sPvP achievemtns are more consistent but PvP players are completely cut from other sources. On the other hand, PvE players have access to most of the achievements and can still easily gain APs from the other game types with minimal involvement.
Unfortunately, devs already said the current WvW achievements can’t be reworked, however I think a workaround can be find by adding new achievements, especially with the new EotM map. It won’t fix everything, but it’s a start.
For sPvP, new achievements could be created tracking the various ways of increasing the score (kills, points neutralized/captured, etc), and the current proffesion-specific ones expanded with a repetable capped achievement like Agent of entropy: veteran champion genius/mage/illusionist, etc. I don’t expect much dev commentaries on this though, since the spvp rewards are already being reworked.

I don’t really like sub-classes as a concept. I don’t feel they offer anything to the game that couldn’t be done better by just offering more options in trait lines, skills and weapons.

For the customisation options listed by Chrispy above regarding the Ranger, for example, you could achieve the same effect by adding Grandmaster traits that have more significant effects than they do now, whether as part of an across-the-board grandmaster trait buff or additional traits that sacrifice one thing for something else. But I suspect part of the problem with more customisation in terms of class roles isn’t necessarily the lack of options available now, but the game simply not supporting that style of play.

For example, I like the idea of a mesmer build that specialises in stealth/evasion – but in PvE, a character that can enable its allies to slip behind enemy lines doesn’t really achieve much. In WvW, it would be horribly overpowered – if you changed Prismatic Understanding so that, perhaps, it allowed ultra-long-duration stealth and Decoy to affect party members/allies, you’d need to add revealed debuffs of 15 seconds or more to prevent spamming, and change Portal so only the caster could use it in WvW.

Then there’s a ranger that specialises in tracking – although it could be useful for spotting stealthed enemies in WvW, there is absolutely no way to use the concept in PvE.

Those two concepts, and likely more, would seem great in a storybook – actually, I’m pretty sure something close to both has appeared in Edge of Destiny – but GW2 is really just a combat game that doesn’t have room for that many RPG archetypes. Maybe it could change? But that’s probably beyond the scope of this discussion.

Chrispy.5641:

These are all what-ifs and what-hows, none of which should be a concern right now.

Actually, I responded to it because it got into the details where the Devil lives and illustrated my concerns beautifully . Pardon my error of Beastmastery vs. Nature Magic, but I’d be just as confused or skeptical as to why I needed to pour points into Nature Magic to dual wield better. Doubly so if I knew that 4-6 months earlier somebody could have instead worked that mechanic into a Trait that would more likely have demanded the specific allocation 20 of my precious 70 points instead of 60 of them. I might want to dual wield because I’m pursuing my image of a dual-wielding ‘sword-dancer’ rather than a swashbuckler, but because that wasn’t on the designer’s mind when they carved up the designspace I’m paying an extra 40 points for it. Under this system I’d be out of luck, where a free-form system would have let me come (much) closer to my ideal.

I think maybe two out of my nine 80th-level characters have two trait lines at 30 in their day-to-day builds. The other six function quite competitively, but would not be eligible for the new toys. This is the exact assault on diversity I dread unleashing.

And we still need to be mindful of power creep. If Sub-classes provide anything that’s “in addition to” what we have now, its vertical progression and in many ways leads to all the frustrations and lack of challenge issues or mandatory time sinks before being at your final, finished capabilities that prompted so many people to say “please, no more tiers of gear”.

I too think Sub classing doesnt really fit Gw2 in general and certainly not Horizontal progression since technically its the opposite of what Horizontal progression is. One thing that makes Gw2 stand apart is that classes are pretty flexible. They can pretty much do everything short for a few small things that distinguish one class from the other.

Restricting skills based on a subclass would take that away. Instead of progression horizontally it seems to me like you would be progression vertically, (you got less flexibility but more power)

Another problem I think I’d get with specialization to become more powerful is that it would trivialize content even more. Most of it was already easy using Exotics back in the day, with ascended gear it became easier still and specialization would make the situation worst.

Hey,
I’m also rather against a subclass since :

timmyf.1490:
I think subclasses are wrong for this game. Those who support subclasses seem to want a lot of things, none of which actually require a subclass system. I’d far prefer a redesign of the trait system to be more flexible, but even that is questionable because of balance concerns.
Adding subclasses opens up ZERO additional fun content or customization options.
Want more armor? You can have it without subclasses.
Want more skills? You can have them without subclasses.
Want more traits? You can have them without subclasses.
Want more weapons? You can have them without subclasses.
Want profession-specific weapons? You can have them without subclasses.
Want cosmetic options tied to specific roles? You can have them without subclasses.
Want control and support builds viable? You can have that without subclasses.

I think we can have everything that subclasses could offer without having them IG. Furthermore, it could be going backwards instead of going forward since it would mean losing some things to get others, it does not go well with the notion of build diversity. It’s more of “showing off” or kinda aesthetic change for no real impact.
I’d rather have more focus on adding new skills, weapons, traits, balancing etc …. than wasting time adding subclasses.

The biggest worry I have with sub-classes is the potential to lead to specialization. Specialization is bad in this MMO because you’ll be walking down that dark and dangerous (and sometimes smelly) road towards “required” builds. It’s bad enough already that some people are foolish enough to think you need certain party make-ups for dungeons and the like, sub-classes would potentially make it much worse if they in any way give the appearance of being better at a specific role.

The problem with Specialization, is that its going to happen, no matter your objection to it, even if Subclasses was never a factor. Now, It was kind of fun to entertain the idea of subclasses, but consider this :: a class that doesn’t have an Elite Signet skill, or healing signet skill suddenly gets one. Well, guess what, that just made your signet build more specialized than it was before, and that dark and dangerous path of Required builds ends up getting taken anyways.

Adding more skills to the game (even as a form of Horizontal progression by adding new weapon skills or any skill really) is going to force people into new builds pretty much no matter what system you chose to go with.

Chrispy.5641:

The problem with Specialization, is that its going to happen, no matter your objection to it, even if Subclasses was never a factor. Now, It was kind of fun to entertain the idea of subclasses, but consider this :: a class that doesn’t have an Elite Signet skill, or healing signet skill suddenly gets one. Well, guess what, that just made your signet build more specialized than it was before, and that dark and dangerous path of Required builds ends up getting taken anyways.

Adding more skills to the game (even as a form of Horizontal progression by adding new weapon skills or any skill really) is going to force people into new builds pretty much no matter what system you chose to go with.

Bah, nonsense. You’re using the concept of specialization wrong. I’m talking about a “better” healer, “better” tank, etc. If an elementalist suddenly gets a sub-class that is more proficient at group healing guess what everyone is going to demand from the ele’s in their group… yep. A signet build with an additional signet doesn’t become more specialized in a role simply for having another signet. The new signet can easily add a balance of damage, control and/or support and avoid specialization altogether.

Yes, but to select that new Signet Elite you must give up the EIite you are already carrying.

Its a well understood principle in constructed card-games that adding new cards will always lead to some evolution of decks even if the cards are individually on the fixed plane of performance simply because some of them fit better in the composite engine of the deck. And the net result can still be constrained within the overall limits you want the system to perform within. The new healing skills are pretty awful individually, but competitive combination are emerging (at least for some professions…).

It’s certainly possible to create a new Signet Elite that does not result in faster plains wurm kills than other builds available to that profession, but does elevate some builds that were doing far worse than peak performance to something closer to the acceptable limit.

But if any Class is supposed to fill any role, whats the problem with Specialization for any profession to start with? If Anet does it right and actually balances things like that, why would you demand an Elementalist healer over a Guardian, or a Necromancer, or even a Warrior? Seems like a pointless argument to me.

Chrispy.5641:

But if any Class is supposed to fill any role, whats the problem with Specialization for any profession to start with? If Anet does it right and actually balances things like that, why would you demand an Elementalist healer over a Guardian, or a Necromancer, or even a Warrior? Seems like a pointless argument to me.

The problem is that classes aren’t meant to fill any role, you’re meant to do your share of all the roles. We all do damage, control and support; we don’t choose to be a damage, control or support build only. Even the skills themselves show this often having multiple aspects tied to them. The problem with specialization is that you would start having the professions getting tied specifically to roles and begin to lose some of the combat dynamics that keep you thinking on your feet and observing the fights around you in order to choose the right skills at the right times for the best effects.

As a matter of fact… Chris, how about the possibility of new skills, when added, providing more nuance to them such that simply casting them when off cool down really isn’t the most efficient way to do so (such as most skills already are). I’d like to see skills have greater conditional effects, such as (as a quick example) casting skill “A” on an opponent causes damage and applies a condition or three, yet if you cast the skill on the opponent when he already has conditions you get added effects, such as a boon on yourself or the length of the existing conditions increased. Things that make you look at the depth of the skills more and get you to be more selective in using them. If I cast Chaos Storm, for example, on opponents when they’re knocked down perhaps it takes them longer to get back up or adds an extended confusion. Things of this nature.

Wait a second! You mean that there is actually strategy in Combat right now outside of “Press 1 to Win!”?

Because not including PvP, what I just said is almost always the case. And besides, I was never talking about Healer in the effect of making it the only role a profession has available to it at that time. However, making Healing Power, etc more effective for people who actually invest in it, instead of very obviously making it and every other stat not scale even half as well as power is a problem, and is the main killer in build diversity right now (also, just the general way that PvE is designed also kills Build diversity.)