Guild Wars 2

My overall experience of GW2 has been great. It is a game that has yet to unfold itself completely, there are still a lot of tweaking to be done before they are satisfied with it, I reckon, and after that we just might be seeing more zones and better content. That is, of course, their goal.
- We, the community, is what helps them getting there. So lets get on with it!

Progression
In every MMO there are certain aspects that needs to be there. Those include skills, gear and of course a lot of zones with content to explore.
- These three aspects needs to have some progression as we continue onwards.

First up: Skills
- The skill system in GW2 is pretty basic. You get five skills depending on your weapon(s), a healing skill and four utility skills. The trait system is set up so that you can make a build to fit your utility skills, and at times they will also aid a certain weapons set of skills.

- It gets more advanced as we also need to be mobile and keep an eye out for potential combo fields to max damage, and believe me, it can make a whole lot of difference if you’re good at utilizing them.

- The only problem with the skill system is that you can very quickly get the five weapon skills for each weapon, and there is no real sense of skill progression after a certain point in the game. You hit level 30 and then you’re free to use the Elite Skill slot as well.

- If we’re to look at GW1 there are lots of skills to choose from and they are not all available in some panel but in different towns and outposts. More skills means more work than previously, when talking GW2, because of the combo fields that needs to be taken into consideration.
- Still, I believe it is worth it. Personally I think there should be balance between the classes/professions, but all it really comes down to, when I’m really enjoying myself is when I got those skills that suits my playstyle. I might not have the best possible build, but I’m having loads of fun playing it all the same.
- (I have more arguments for this subject on my “Lets Talk Skills” thread. I also discuss the subject of unbalance with another guy there. Feel free to check it out, if you disagree and want to make a statement)

Next up: Gear
- When it comes to armor and weapons in GW2 I like what I see. Gear progression in games and especially MMO’s are important for the player to feel unique and to stand out. In other MMO’s gear progression sometimes meant getting the same gear, but with different colours. GW2 makes that pointless since we can master the look and style of our character ourselves.

- Still, when it comes to uniqueness I have seen all the different sets out there. Yes, they can be combined for new and more unique looking characters, but we’ve mostly seen all of it.
- I think GW2 could do with more armor and weapon sets. I like the gear in GW2, don’t get me wrong, but there is definitely room for more variation.
- Maybe adding some class/profession based armor sets that really make other players say “Wow, there goes a Guardian.” or “Look at that Ranger” and so forth.
If you look at the first Tier sets in WoW you could easily tell which set were meant for which class. That is not how it is today (and the Death Knight. Sure you looked like it for the first five levels, but later on the only way people could spot the difference were from your blue glowing eyes. No unique look, sadly).
- But adding profession based armor that makes your character look like your class should definitely be an option.

Last but not least: Zones
- This may seem less of a deal to many of you, but feeling that we tread into more dangerous areas, or more unique areas, is something that I don’t remember doing in GW2. Not yet, at least (I’m levelling a new character up, so maybe his journey will be more memorable).
- You start out in a more peaceful zone that still has its fair share of trouble to be dealt with, and then, when your character progresses and leaves the zone, he/she finds that a huge world opens up before their eyes and that there are those who are not afraid to tread out of their comfort zone to find power (which might not necessarily be good) and glory in the world,
- Just think about it. All the bad guys seem to have been around most places and seen so much of the world. They have, although gone bad, achieved greatness, which is the same journey ones character should be making, with choices for better or worse along the way (I think this might also include our Personal Stories).

Some final words:
Your feedback is, of course, welcome, but keep in mind that you are adressing other people here, so flaming should be kept at a minumum… frankly, it should be non-existent.
- I hope you guys have liked this post, although a bit long.

Skills

I loved the skill system in GW. Hunting down Elites (as well as skins), playing around with my build when I got new skills. Cracking stuff.

I would love for them to bring that sort of thing back.

Maybe have ‘skill challenges’ but you have to use the weapon that the skill is for (I.E you can’t use a Hammer if you’re after a Greatsword skill). Maybe mobs have unique skills. Maybe Dungeon Bosses have skills that have a unique animation (but function the same way as an open-world counterpart).

However, I think part of the reason for the reduction of skills is Traits.

Before, we used to have skills that had additional effects (if Bleeding, also causes Poison). However, these sort of effects have been placed in the Traits.

Gear

IMO, statted gear gives a false sense of ‘progession’ (you can’t move forward on a treadmill unless you move faster than the treadmill), as well as a sense that gear is disposable.

You get Rare gear, and then when you get Exotic, you get rid of the Rare gear. When Ascended gear comes out, you’ll get rid of the Exotic, and so on. All the while, the encounters have to be scaled up in terms of damage, health ect to compensate. This is what happens in GW2, WoW and practically every MMO ever (even GW to a lesser degree)

The problem with profession-based armour (and weapons) is resources. The resources to design and create sets of armour for each profession now, and professions to come, where they (although maybe one set for each profession wouldn’t be so bad based on certain criteria i.e. Elementalists have to master the four elements and beat Firelord Oz…ahem, imbue armour with them. Engineers have to create theres out of stuff, Warriors have to kill stuff ect).

Maybe having certain armour tied to Achievements as well to give a sense of progression in gathering gear. I.E Giant Slayer armour would have to be pretty epic, while doing all Jumping Puzzles nets you Explorer armour. Doing Boss Achievements nets you armour (I say mostly armour, because it’s less resource consuming than weapons).

Zones

I had the feeling of ‘danger’, simply because I go into these zones earlier than I should. However, I understand what you mean.

In GW, the higher level areas had mobs that exceeded the level cap in which the only way you could beat them is by being careful. Mobs would walk around in patrols, as opposed to just standing around.

Maybe they could have a few Champions roaming around with a group of Vets. Maybe they could have mobs in higher levels that exceed the level cap. Maybe have other threats, such as Environmental Effects (maybe certain areas of that map inflict poison, or chilled, or cripple. Maybe there’s earthquakes that periodically knock you down).

Also, one form of progression you’ve forgotten; Achievements

When done right (and not simply awarding for playing the general play-through of the game), these can give a sense of progression in that you’re discovering more and more of the game.

You’ve got an achievement for a Jumping Puzzle Bob over there doesn’t? Or maybe a hidden mini-dungeon? You’ve progressed, in the sense that you’ve discovered more of the world than Bob, therefore getting more out of the game).

Unfortunately, what with the Internet, it kind of cheapens these sort of achievements a little, since you can just find the location.

My idea with gear progression is more like the look rather than the stats.
- Yeah, we get dungeon gear, but more armor sets in general would add greater variety.

I never liked the idea of getting outgeared in PvP as an example. As an RP’er it would be great to design the look of your character even more than we already can. The designs already here are awesome, but many I see in the world are nothing new. It is very few that I see used, always the same skins on many.

Main problem in this game team game. How you can find team if they don’t have a proper LFG system. Age of Empire 2 have better lfg system than this game. I have open these horrible websites: http://gw2lfg.com/ and http://gw2lfg.net/. And always press f5 to refresh website. I don’t care about other horrible things that they done. But if they call this game MMO, so at least make it easy to find player.

That’s a good post, OP. I agree we need more variation in gear, and I’m sure it will come over time.

What I’ve been pointing out, over and over, is that this game is not Guild Wars 1 with three full games and an upgrade. It’s the equivalent of Prophecies 7 months after launch. And if you look at your post with that mind, some things seem to fall into place.

For example, Prophecies didn’t launch with a hard mode. The hardest zones in world were the Southern Shiverpeakes and the Ring of Fire Islands. Once you had a 20th level character, anything before the Crystal Desert was a total waste, because there was no danger going back to it at all.

Guild Wars 2 opens up the world in a way Guild Wars 1 couldn’t. You can still be killed in Wayfarer foothills, a starter zone, if you’re not careful. I daresay it would be a lot harder for a 20th level Guild Wars 1 character to be killed in Ascalon.

The only really hard areas in Guild Wars 1 at launch were the Underworld and Fissure of Woe. Later, Sorrow’s Furnace was added, which was a reasonable modest upgrade.

For the stage of development, this game has more high level content than Tyria did in Prophecies. It has dungeons, fractals, and of course, WvW, all of which are considered ‘end game’ content.

And more will be added. By the time this game is out the same amount of time as Guild Wars 1 was when Eye of the North launched, we’ll have lots more armor sets. Because the range of looks in Prophecies alone wasn’t that great either.

I’m sure more armor sets and more high level zones will be coming in the future, along with other kinds of content we haven’t even guessed at yet.

Edit: I stayed away from the skill bit, because that’s a matter of opinion. I didn’t really enjoy hunting skills in Guild Wars 1, but I understand why some people did.

How about No Progression period? The new skills will come with new weapon sets. But it won’t really matter because everyone is pretty much 100% invested in and dedicated to their build at this point. You can’t switch it up like you could in GW1.

More weapon and armor skins? Yes. Tiered weapons and armor skins? Absolutely not. The game is already on the decline with release of ascended gear. If another tier gets introduce I’ll take my time and my money elsewhere. And the game has too many tiers at it is: White, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple, and Red. We could seriously get rid of 4 or 5 of them.

More zone? Sure.

-I’m fairly content with the skill system, although having more is always nice. I do hope we get some different weapon skills some time that we can choose from. It would give some more variety without the need to introduce new weapons.

-Gear progression up to Exotics was fine. Ascended can go to hell for all I care. I hate any gear progression that involves a lot of grind, and Ascended is just that.

-Zone progression is nice, I guess? I like most of the zones in the game.

I feel like skills and gear are handled well. If there was one thing I hated about other MMO’s it was half my screen being taken up by situational skill filled hotbars. I don’t miss having 100 abilities at a time at all.

As far as zones go, maybe we can get an update to zones that already exist? Make all events reward similar to boss event chests so maybe people go to the zones we have between 30-65 now.

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like skills and gear are handled well. If there was one thing I hated about other MMO’s it was half my screen being taken up by situational skill filled hotbars. I don’t miss having 100 abilities at a time at all.
[snip]

It’s not about having 100 abilities at the same time. Guild Wars 1 had 100s of skills/spells/signets/shouts/etc available, where some were elites that needed to be captured through difficult combat with bosses, and others weren’t available unless player progressed through the PvE campaign.

Yet that game had only 8 skills you could use at any one given time (and back then you could only switch them out in towns/outposts)

I don’t think any of us here want our screens cluttered by skills, but tbh way back when GW2 was announced, I expected a ton of obtainable skills, and had hopes that some skills would require solving puzzles/dungeons/story etc (you know, would require player skill) to obtain.

Obtainable skills like that would also give more sense to exploration (say you put it in an optional path of a dungeon, or a hard to reach place on a map)

That’s my two cents anyway.

I would like to see a gear progression system that uses what I call “silo’ed vertical progression.”

Whatever the top tier of gear is now, stays the top tier forever more. The base stats will never get any better.

A new mechanic is introduced (such as Agony). You are able to acquire upgrades to mitigate that mechanic (Agony Resistance), which can be applied to your existing gear. But those upgrades don’t affect the base stats of your gear — they are only relevant to the content where that mechanic is used.

Now, let’s say ArenaNet introduced a new set of content that uses a mechanic similar to Agony. Let’s call it “Spectral Fatigue”. You can now start earning new Spectral Fatigue Resistance upgrades, which can be applied to the same gear that also has Agony Resistance upgrades. There’s no need to acquire new base armor — you just keep stacking new resistance upgrades onto your same armor. Your gear never becomes outdated. But at the same time, your upgraded gear doesn’t give any advantage outside of the specific areas where these new mechanics are used. The player who enters a new area that uses Spectral Fatigue with max’ed out Agony Resistance gear is no better off than the player who skipped all the Agony-related content and is coming in with a base set of exotic armor. Both players are able to continue progressing and getting better gear (or rather, upgrades for their gear) in the new content.

Benefits:
- Your gear stays relevant
- You’re still able to improve/progress
- There is no power-creep in older content
- There is no gear treadmill. It’s more like a gear highway, and if you miss something that came before you can easily jump on to the highway at the next on-ramp.

I really like the idea that you get gear based on meta events like all jumping puzzles or world explorer.

Personally one of the biggest issue I see with gear is they based the game around cosmetic gear (which was awesome). But when asked about adding new armor they said it is a lot of work so they like to stick with weapons and back items.

I get that it is a lot of work, but a game based on cosmetic gear progression can’t just say it’s too much work so no or few new gear skins.

The biggest issue with gear is still ascended, I hate it and how grindy it feels.

As already mentioned in some other thread, having named weapons (and even armor pieces) based on some bigger champions or bosses will add a lot, don’t care about stats on them.
Imagine having (in your mythical home instance) weapon and armor display rack with items from your tougher fights and victories … epic.

And most importantly — please, please, do not change level cap and stats (ascended was enough).

Did anyone ever do the Incarnate Enhancement system in City of Heroes? I thought that was a great system, it was more vertical than horizontal, but the clever thing about it was, the further behind you were from the BiS, the faster you progressed. When a new enhancement slot came out, you could have it filled very quickly, and then improvements came more and more gradually.