Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,
Today I’m here to talk about Anet’s coding and their public admittance that they cannot change certain aspects of the game – I’ll break this post down into issues, concept and funding. I hope you enjoy the read.

The more skins we get that are super expensive and rare, the less likeliness of us investing gems into the shop, I have made a proposal in this concept about how ArenaNet could potentially flip this around to generate more gem sales and still provide quality items for us to invest into.

Please note:
These are just some baseline ideas. I would greatly appreciate the chance for ArenaNet to reach out to me so I could fully expand these ideas in the form of a concept plan and delivery (although, with my rng, I’d have more luck getting Invisible Shoe Box, haha).

Issues:

• ArenaNet’s coding prevents them from allowing weapons / backpieces and such to become dyeable.
• ArenaNet have quite a small team of only 400 staff members.
• ArenaNet dedicate funding and resources to Mac client, monthly BLC skins, outfits & more. we can assume this is where their income is coming from and will be addressed in the funding section.

Foreground
We know other games have struggled with their code and trying to improve aesthetics, such as WoW – but they have changed this with Legion, as such, releasing new weapons with variation of colours.

The Concept

• Give legendary weapons some colour choices that can be unlocked through:
• A) Personal Housing (if it comes)
• B) Guildhalls – if unlocked via Guildhalls, you must rep the guild that you unlocked it with otherwise weapon reverts back to default skin (just a little extension).
• C) To be unlocked via actual questing and not long collection grinds which involve every piece of content to force people into it. Something refreshing, maybe within an episode.

Weapon Skin example:

• Weapon skin 1 – weapon skin is default, will be the same as the legendaries we have.
• Weapon skin 2 – The hue of this weapon is reversed for all weapons (simple concept) i.e. If weapon A is Bifrost, weapon becomes black with gray aura instead of pure white rainbow aura.
• Weapon skin 3 – the effects of this weapon become flame-like or fluidy like, water vs fire theme. If weapon is Bolt, it has red lightning instead of blue. Again, fairly simple change to make.

These weapons will not be dyeable but will simply be new weapons with new IDs and slightly altered aesthetics.

Backpieces

There are currently only two legendary backpieces, thusly, recreating them in different colours shouldn’t be as difficult as it would be for legendary weapons.

• Ad infinitum skin 1: default skin
• Ad infinitum skin 2: reversed hues, instead of blue and gray/white it is red and black.
• Ad infinitum skin 3: “I’m Rich, you know” feeling to it, turns the plates of the Ad infinitum to Gold, much The Ascension. The glow is now purple, because purple represents the colour of royalty.

Funding

• Funding is a difficult topic to talk about. I would suggest asking the team that creates all the black lion skins, the new outfits to step back a moment and develop something truly unique that everyone will buy into.

Read on:

The more legendaries you release, armor, backpieces and weapons, the more redundant the BLC skins become. They become less popular because most people seek to have a legendary.

I am only suggesting making a halt on them so you can develop the ideas below:

Two new hero customisation panels in the H menu;

Auras

• Auras (not infusions): you create new auras, fairly simple, right?
  • Aura examples: burning effect (altered, of course), Necro elite Shroud skill.

Animations

• This would be the most lucrative incentive to create something. Concept behind my first idea for this would be a Mursaat themed hover/float animation.

What would an animation do?

• An animation would alter the following: Idle, walk, strafe, cast / attack, stance & dodge animation. Obviously quite complex at first to make, but once it’s in the game, again, something we currently don’t have so thus would be high demand.

How would ArenaNet cost these so they can create enough profit AND development money for the team to design the legendary weapon system?

• This is a simple answer, pack sales. Just like you sold the weapon skins inside the 2,000 gem packs, sell only these in high-cost packs.

These packs would fly off the shelves if they contained something truly unique and something that no one currently has, I would argue that this would skyrocket gemstore sales on initial release of this concept idea.

DakotaCoty.5721:

How would ArenaNet cost these so they can create enough profit AND development money for the team to design the legendary weapon system?

• This is a simple answer, pack sales. Just like you sold the weapon skins inside the 2,000 gem packs, sell only these in high-cost packs.

Here are the release dates for those 2000 gem packs with the Immortal Weapon Choice:

• Crystal Arbiter Appearance Pack – Nov. 2015
• Bandit Sniper Appearance Pack – Nov. 2015
• Winter Solstice Appearance Pack – Dec. 2015
• Ironclad Appearance Pack – Mar. 2016
• White Mantle Appearance Pack – Jun. 2016

It has been nearly a year since we last saw Anet release one of those packs. If this were a successful model, you would have seen more of them.

Greener.6204:

DakotaCoty.5721:

How would ArenaNet cost these so they can create enough profit AND development money for the team to design the legendary weapon system?

• This is a simple answer, pack sales. Just like you sold the weapon skins inside the 2,000 gem packs, sell only these in high-cost packs.

Here are the release dates for those 2000 gem packs with the Immortal Weapon Choice:

• Crystal Arbiter Appearance Pack – Nov. 2015
• Bandit Sniper Appearance Pack – Nov. 2015
• Winter Solstice Appearance Pack – Dec. 2015
• Ironclad Appearance Pack – Mar. 2016
• White Mantle Appearance Pack – Jun. 2016

It has been nearly a year since we last saw Anet release one of those packs. If this were a successful model, you would have seen more of them.

This only adds to my point – the more ultra rare skins we get, the less likely we are to invest into the gemstore, hence why something unique must be in them.

How many players in your guild(s) would buy these packs if they contained completely new animations or auras that weren’t obtainable from anywhere else? I know in my guilds they would.

DakotaCoty.5721:

Greener.6204:

DakotaCoty.5721:

How would ArenaNet cost these so they can create enough profit AND development money for the team to design the legendary weapon system?

• This is a simple answer, pack sales. Just like you sold the weapon skins inside the 2,000 gem packs, sell only these in high-cost packs.

Here are the release dates for those 2000 gem packs with the Immortal Weapon Choice:

• Crystal Arbiter Appearance Pack – Nov. 2015
• Bandit Sniper Appearance Pack – Nov. 2015
• Winter Solstice Appearance Pack – Dec. 2015
• Ironclad Appearance Pack – Mar. 2016
• White Mantle Appearance Pack – Jun. 2016

It has been nearly a year since we last saw Anet release one of those packs. If this were a successful model, you would have seen more of them.

This only adds to my point – the more ultra rare skins we get, the less likely we are to invest into the gemstore, hence why something unique must be in them.

How many players in your guild(s) would buy these packs if they contained completely new animations or auras that weren’t obtainable from anywhere else? I know in my guilds they would.

That wasn’t the issue. The packs had a large problem of selling a bundle of items of which many players only wanted one or two, and were therefore unwilling to buy the full set. In order to make the sales, Anet had to change its sales strategy and sell the items independently.

For example, the Bandit Sniper Appearance Pack was first sold in November 2015 with two unique items: the Soul River Glider and the Bandit Sniper’s Outfit. These were later sold separately in August 2016 and October 2016 respectively, just months after Anet stopped producing those packs.

What are you proposing Anet would bundle with your animation item which would (a) incentivize people to buy the pack and not anger them by making the bonuses too special (b) not cost even more development resources as you need most of the 2000 gems to cover the animation costs, and ( c) make it worth bundling in the first place instead of just selling the animations directly for what it would cost to make?

DakotaCoty.5721:

Today I’m here to talk about Anet’s coding and their public admittance that they cannot change certain aspects of the game

You’ve confused “have chosen not to” with “cannot change.” There are hundreds of people working at ANet, so there’s very little that they ‘cannot’ do. The question is: which of the 18,385 good ideas should they work on? Even if they doubled their staff, there would still be great suggestions that they wouldn’t have the resources to consider.

The question usually isn’t “can we do this?”, rather it’s “what else could we be doing with the same resources?”

So even if you gifted Mike O’Brien with the cash to hire 100 more people (and we ignore finding & training them and that developers aren’t interchangeable), ANet isn’t going to suddenly decide, “ohey, we can retrofit LW Season #1 into the game” — they are going to look at everything that’s on the list of good ideas. It’s not going to magically make it easier to do the things that they have decided to put off indefinitely.

In short, the issue isn’t a lack of resources; it’s that there are always going to be more good ideas than there are people to design, test, and implement them.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DakotaCoty.5721:

Today I’m here to talk about Anet’s coding and their public admittance that they cannot change certain aspects of the game

You’ve confused “have chosen not to” with “cannot change.” There are hundreds of people working at ANet, so there’s very little that they ‘cannot’ do. The question is: which of the 18,385 good ideas should they work on? Even if they doubled their staff, there would still be great suggestions that they wouldn’t have the resources to consider.

The question usually isn’t “can we do this?”, rather it’s “what else could we be doing with the same resources?”

So even if you gifted Mike O’Brien with the cash to hire 100 more people (and we ignore finding & training them and that developers aren’t interchangeable), ANet isn’t going to suddenly decide, “ohey, we can retrofit LW Season #1 into the game” — they are going to look at everything that’s on the list of good ideas. It’s not going to magically make it easier to do the things that they have decided to put off indefinitely.

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In short, the issue isn’t a lack of resources; it’s that there are always going to be more good ideas than there are people to design, test, and implement them.

Isn’t that what happened with the rollback a year or so ago? They tried to alter some old coding and messed it up pretty badly, or I’m assuming that’s what happened and it had a catastrophic event. If not then completely ignore me as it’s only an assumption.

I think ultimately, the more rarer and expensive items they create within the game the less incentive there is to invest. If you had an invisible shoes drop on your character and you decided to keep them, valued at 3,000g nearly, why would you buy outfits? I guess my statements revolve around status and wealth in general but I know there are newer things and ideas that ArenaNet could invest money and time into, whilst still receiving a very hefty profit back from it.

@Illconceived Was Na:
It is no secret that a game code, where you change one thing that alters something completely different alongside and thereby messes it up, cannot be considered good coding in the first place. And that is exactly what we have in GW2, with story-missions suddenly no longer working etc., even though the update had zero to do with that specific content.
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Anyway, @OP:

I am not a fan of your Gem Store suggestions. The game already has enough effects that can be considered annoying to a certain extent, it doesn’t need the addition of people buying auras and new animations to add to that blinky-blinky “I can’t see ****, where is my toon, where is the enemy??” mess on-screen.

As for the different hues or color versions for a weapon: That would still require there to be different versions of an item with different item IDs, which would additionally complicate coding. You would need to add new database entries with different flags, and with all the database tables linked, it could mess things up even more. It would probably be easier than recoding everyting to make weapons dyeable, but it would still require a lot of work. It’s an idea, though.

Ashantara.8731:

@Illconceived Was Na:
It is no secret that a game code, where you change one thing that alters something completely different alongside and thereby messes it up, cannot be considered good coding in the first place. And that is exactly what we have in GW2, with story-missions suddenly no longer working etc., even though the update had zero to do with that specific content.
.
.
.
Anyway, @OP:

I am not a fan of your Gem Store suggestions. The game already has enough effects that can be considered annoying to a certain extent, it doesn’t need the addition of people buying auras and new animations to add to that blinky-blinky “I can’t see ****, where is my toon, where is the enemy??” mess on-screen.

As for the different hues or color versions for a weapon: That would still require there to be different versions of an item with different item IDs, which would additionally complicate coding. You would need to add new database entries with different flags, and with all the database tables linked, it could mess things up even more. It would probably be easier than recoding everyting to make weapons dyeable, but it would still require a lot of work. It’s an idea, though.

The Aura and Animations idea is just a sketch to how they can receive quick funding to make a program of legendary weapons in different colours. It could be anything, it just needs to be creative and innovative, which is something the gem store lacks the more rarer skins we are getting.

Ashantara.8731:

@Illconceived Was Na:
It is no secret that a game code, where you change one thing that alters something completely different alongside and thereby messes it up, cannot be considered good coding in the first place. And that is exactly what we have in GW2, with story-missions suddenly no longer working etc., even though the update had zero to do with that specific content.

It’s common in large systems for things to interrelate in ways that folks aren’t always aware of. To the player, these things were unrelated; to coders, they might well have been.

I can’t say if the issue was the coding or the documentation or people failing to follow protocols — it’s not certain that it was “bad” code.

But let’s say it was “bad” code — do you really think that bad coders are going to do any better with the OP’s proposal? If ANet has already done a bad job of hiring, would having more money mean they do a better job when expanding the staff?

The point is that the OP’s assumptions aren’t accurate about the issues at hand, which leads to unsuitable suggestions (at best).

I see several flaws with your idea:

• not everyone likes the legendary things for their appearence, but also for their QoL, prestige and as a goal.

• The ability to change colors would be nice, but is appearently something they decided against it (at least in the gemstore) on several occasions.

• Legendary stuff, as many others, are based on a theme. Bifrost is a rainbow, because it is based on norse mythology and the rainbow road of the same name for example.

• More colorchoices would mostly clutter the inventory even more. Right now every new skin takes up a place in the menu. Having six colorvariants sounds great at first, but then you remember having six skins taking up your UI realestate that you might not even like. Like the current cheap “smith weapons”, which just change the color of the blade, based on their tier (copper, iron, darksteel, etc…)

• Why would I buy these overpriced pakages? 2000 gems are aprox 25€ for one weaponskin an outfit (I don’t want) and a gliderskin. If I want the other weapons, I need to pay 25€ again, for less gain, as I already unlocked the skins. Which means they would have to create at least 11 (or how many weapons there are right now) different packages, to make buying them for the weapons not renundant.

• I would gladly pay a few bucks monthly for reasonable priced items on the gemstore. Right now I have either too much, or not enough per exchange (a cheap item costs 400 gems, but you can only buy 800 for 10€, which means you got 400 gems left over. Unfortunatly most items aren’t that lucky and you got prices like 500 or 600. I have 350 gems atm for 5 month now and nothing to spend on.)

I haven’t read all the comments, and this is how I understood this topic.

Buy buy buy with gems really cool stuff.

How about content where we can earn all the cool stuff and not buy? Where is the sense of achievement if you just plain buy a weapon or armor? Or something rare?

If I got the topic wrong, sorry, my bad.

But, I always preffer content where you earn cool things than putting cool things in a gem shop.

Elodium.7263:

I haven’t read all the comments, and this is how I understood this topic.

Buy buy buy with gems really cool stuff.

How about content where we can earn all the cool stuff and not buy? Where is the sense of achievement if you just plain buy a weapon or armor? Or something rare?

If I got the topic wrong, sorry, my bad.

But, I always preffer content where you earn cool things than putting cool things in a gem shop.

It seems you didn’t read the topic at all, like not even the very beginning of the idea.

TL;DR
Add questing / unlocking schemes for different legendary colours – by process, removing your current legendary and all relative upgrades/infusions and giving you a new item with the new stuff.

Auras & Animations a sketch idea, to be added to the gemstore to fund this development, which in turn, takes the place of BLC skins inside chests rather than having them developed the energy is focused on the new funding scheme.

I don’t often take a tone with people, but why bother replying if you didn’t even read the first part? Christ.

Jaken.6801:

I see several flaws with your idea:

Not everyone likes the legendary things for their appearence, but also for their QoL, prestige and as a goal.
I already addressed this with a generalisation rather than cold hard “this is what we all want”.

The ability to change colours would be nice, but is apparently something they decided against it (at least in the gemstore) on several occasions.
I addressed this point too, I am not talking about dyeing weapons, but changing the weapon.

Legendary stuff, as many others, are based on a theme. Bifrost is a rainbow, because it is based on Norse mythology and the rainbow road of the same name for example.
Just because it has a theme, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.

More colour choices would mostly clutter the inventory even more. Right now every new skin takes up a place in the menu. Having six colour variants sounds great at first, but then you remember having six skins taking up your UI real estate that you might not even like. Like the current cheap “smith weapons”, which just change the colour of the blade, based on their tier (copper, iron, darksteel, etc…)
Again, another issue I addressed, I never stated these weapons were to be new weapons, but ones that would be changed in a select system, wherein, the old one is removed and new one is created.

Why would I buy these overpriced packages? 2000 gems are approx 25€ for one weapon skin an outfit (I don’t want) and a glider skin. If I want the other weapons, I need to pay 25€ again, for less gain, as I already unlocked the skins. Which means they would have to create at least 11 (or how many weapons there are right now) different packages, to make buying them for the weapons not redundant.
I never suggested selling the weapon colours in the gemstore, it seems people just didn’t bother reading it and saw “gemstore” and “colours”.

I would gladly pay a few bucks monthly for reasonable priced items on the gemstore. Right now I have either too much, or not enough per exchange (a cheap item costs 400 gems, but you can only buy 800 for 10€, which means you got 400 gems left over. Unfortunately most items aren’t that lucky and you got prices like 500 or 600. I have 350 gems ATM for 5 month now and nothing to spend on.)
The gem prices need to be park of a package so they can make the money to develop my idea. It was just a sketch, not a fully developed concept for funding.

I am sorry, but that wasn’t really understandable.

Your problem is the lack of an color option and you suggest supplementing systems that would be able to give a certain degree of it.

Here the thing:

• “New weapon variations with different effects/colors = new seperate skins. As long as there is no new system, which adds a selection screen to a certain skin type, these will all be new skins in the wardrobe, cluttering it. Like the Several different colors of the super adventure box or ascended weapons.

• Legendary weapons have a theme for a reason. Changing it, would be nothing more than a new skin, which has the prerequistion of owning it. Like your Nega-Bifrost idea. Build Bifrost, do a quest, yay, you got Nega-Bifrost unlocked. This would actually devalue the original legendary skin, as it would just be a stepping stone to 2 or 3 other legendary skins.

• Why would you want a system that takes something unlocked from you? Why would I want my spiffy black sword selection gone, when I unlocked the other color variant?

• I never talked about weapon colors being sold in the gemstore. You brought up the 2000 gem packages with gliders and stuff in your original post and having these “new weapons” tied to them as a luxury rare item, or something (you edited your post, so I am not entirely sure about your original suggestion). I only said that that would be a bad idea, for the given reasons.

• You were using the gemstore as a means to fund Anet in general and subsequently your idea. Nothing wrong with that. It’s the reality. Doesn’t mean i have to like the current businessmodel though.

• btw. if Anet kinda has such a system in place. How else do you think we get these “new skins” of “old content” as much in the gemstore. Just look at the wings. black, white, golden, parrot… It’s kinda like your idea. Only unlocked through gems, though.

Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade and inovation and different thinking is always great to see, but some of your ideas were maybe a bit “unfitting”, in lack of a better word.

Freedom is always something to strive for, even if it is just a matter of being able to customize.
However there is still the thing called immersion, artist vision, overall presentation, etc.

I agree that some weapons should be customizeable. However “some” is the keyword here. Many would jsut feel wrong, given their origin.

That being said, I am fully in favor of a new crafting system, that allows the creation of a personalized weapon.

Jaken.6801:

I am sorry, but that wasn’t really understandable.

Your problem is the lack of an color option and you suggest supplementing systems that would be able to give a certain degree of it.

Here the thing:

• “New weapon variations with different effects/colors = new seperate skins. As long as there is no new system, which adds a selection screen to a certain skin type, these will all be new skins in the wardrobe, cluttering it. Like the Several different colors of the super adventure box or ascended weapons.

• Legendary weapons have a theme for a reason. Changing it, would be nothing more than a new skin, which has the prerequistion of owning it. Like your Nega-Bifrost idea. Build Bifrost, do a quest, yay, you got Nega-Bifrost unlocked. This would actually devalue the original legendary skin, as it would just be a stepping stone to 2 or 3 other legendary skins.

• Why would you want a system that takes something unlocked from you? Why would I want my spiffy black sword selection gone, when I unlocked the other color variant?

• I never talked about weapon colors being sold in the gemstore. You brought up the 2000 gem packages with gliders and stuff in your original post and having these “new weapons” tied to them as a luxury rare item, or something (you edited your post, so I am not entirely sure about your original suggestion). I only said that that would be a bad idea, for the given reasons.

• You were using the gemstore as a means to fund Anet in general and subsequently your idea. Nothing wrong with that. It’s the reality. Doesn’t mean i have to like the current businessmodel though.

• btw. if Anet kinda has such a system in place. How else do you think we get these “new skins” of “old content” as much in the gemstore. Just look at the wings. black, white, golden, parrot… It’s kinda like your idea. Only unlocked through gems, though.

Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade and inovation and different thinking is always great to see, but some of your ideas were maybe a bit “unfitting”, in lack of a better word.

Freedom is always something to strive for, even if it is just a matter of being able to customize.
However there is still the thing called immersion, artist vision, overall presentation, etc.

I agree that some weapons should be customizeable. However “some” is the keyword here. Many would jsut feel wrong, given their origin.

That being said, I am fully in favor of a new crafting system, that allows the creation of a personalized weapon.

I didn’t mean the item is taken away completely, I meant in terms of coding and putting the idea to practical code, it would be something along those lines. I.e. Weapon A (default) skin is swapped to Weapon B or visa versa, you lose nothing and gain a new skin colour.

Themes can be changed, this game is all about the art, the style behind it and also the level of detail that goes into a legendary is significant. How many people who currently find the default skins a bore would be interested in crafting them if they became more unique?
I can think of countless people that sit in map chat and say “I like Twilight but I’d never make it because too many people have it”, I’m not making stuff up, people refuse to make legendaries simply because the skin is overused, a couple colours added to their themes wouldn’t heart the meta attitude on them.

As for the implementation of the colours or the delivery, who wouldn’t want an actual questline instead of 2,500g money sink and being dragged through every collection for a total of 4 days straight? Right now, the guild halls are reaching max level, after that, people have an abundance of gold sitting in their trove they are just using for giveaways, this idea would be an extension of guilds and also the value that being inside of one would have for a player, thus, increasing immersion. Perhaps a free transmutation system for legendary colour variants or a new tab for legendary items specifically?

I wouldn’t consider having a new colour for your legendary, a new legendary but let’s not argue semantics. It’s a subjective view which can’t be properly concluded.

It’s a concept I would love to fully write up in full but I have reached the character cap on my OP so I cannot expand the idea any further.