Guild Wars 2

Build Diversity and Replayability Through the Guild Wars 1 Dual Profession System

If, or when, this game gets to the point where it needs something major to revolutionize it, try injecting the Guild Wars 1 approach into it.

One of the main reasons why people loved Guild Wars 1 was because of the insane build diversity. There were many skills per class, but what really made Guild Wars 1 interesting was the ability to use skills from a different profession.

Say, you roll a warrior. Your warrior could become a warrior/necromancer, or a warrior/ranger etc.This granted you access to the skills that your secondary profession offered.

How is this relevant to Guild Wars 2?

If ArenaNet ever feels the need to really bring lots of interest back into the game through a radical approach, they could allow classes to use utilities from different classes. Let me go more in depth.

The Somewhat Balanced Approaches

1. Sacrifice your elite to use a utility from a class of your choice. A warrior replaces signet of rage to get ice bow as a utility. A thief replaces basilisk venom to get endure pain etc.

2. Sacrifice a utility to use a utility from a class of your choice. A warrior simply replaces one of his utility slots with a utility from a different profession. A warrior replaces a slot that could have had bull’s charge in it with ice bow etc.

The More Radical Approaches

1. Allow a class to take as many utilities from another class as they want. A warrior/thief takes shadow step, shadow refuge, and devourer venom as his utilities. A mesmer/guardian takes sanctuary, contemplation of purity, and decoy.

2. Allow a class to have trait trees from both classes. A warrior/thief has access to Strength, Arms, Defense, Tactics, and Discipline as well as Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes, Shadow Arts, Acrobatics, and Trickery.

More specifically, this warrior could take Furious Retaliation, Critical Haste, and Executioner if he wanted to, while spending the rest of his trait points in his trait lines. If he wanted to, he could spend all of his trait points in the thief trait lines.

The Extremely Radical Approach

Do both of “The More Radical Approaches.”

So what’s the good thing about all of this? There will be build diversity like never before. There will be many OP builds, but there will be so many builds available that everyone can run crazy builds that may be OP. Build crafting will be extremely fun.

Speaking of OP, this would be very hard to balance, if balancing was needed. When you have so many options, there will be awesome builds for everyone.

The bad thing is that this will require people to re-learn some things. For instance, when someone fights a thief, they don’t expect to be immobilized in a well-bomb. They also don’t expect a thief minion master using thieves guild.

People are used to fighting different classes a certain way, and for the most part, they know what to expect. If any of these approaches are taken, there will be chaos. People won’t know what to expect. In a sense, that is a refreshing change to some people.

Lastly, this approach could build really well off of the ideas in the April 15th patch. What I mean is that ArenaNet decided to have us new traits through quests or gold. Skills from other professions could be unlocked in the same fashion.

This would create nearly infinite ways to play the same game simply through exploring countless builds, and that replayability factor would bring new life to Guild Wars 2.

I don’t see how removing any resemblance of class balance would revive this game.

And yet the same thing would happen that happened in gw1 with that skill system. Certain Bars would become the meta, and the opposite side of the coin: bad builds would become worse as people would be bringing completely useless skillsets. Not to mention the higher learning curve that would be required for new players.
Besides if people wanted the skill flexibility of GW1…why would they not just go back and play GW1.
-1

GW2 took 90% of the GW1 population when it was released due to it being a sequel. No one wants to go back to a game killed by its sequel. Besides, most people who have been playing GW1 have been playing it for years. GW2 is something a little newer. Adding something like this to GW2 would be completely different seeing how combat is not very similar in the two games.

I’m not suggesting to add this any time in the near future. I’m talking about adding this when the game needs a revamp that will really throw things in for a loop and bring people back into the game to try new things. This wouldn’t even require the developers to actually develop much of anything – the skills are already there – they would just need to change how things work.

I’m throwing the idea out there in case something needs to drastically change later down the road so that there is a new way for players to enjoy themselves in a game that was previously stale and out of options. GW2 is not that game right now, especially with the big feature patch around the corner. This is an idea for when GW2 needs this to re-spark the interest of its playerbase.

This isn’t really aimed at bringing new players in. It’s more so aimed at keeping the current playerbase interested and potentially bringing back players who were waiting for some big changes to hit GW2 to play again.

Lastly, I think your point about the learning curve is valid, but I’m an average player, and I had little trouble with getting into GW1. GW2 is very simple already. Adding something like this won’t make it much more difficult for new players. It will however keep them entertained longer.

If you really wanted to, you could save the new players from the higher learning curve by reserving dual class builds for level 80. To be honest, I don’t think it would really be necessary as PVE players would probably have a blast with it.

If it was really necessary, the game could go as far as to split into modes of the old and the new for things like PvP (e.g. servers/arenas where people are allowed to run dual classes, and servers/arenas that run on the single-class system). That way, people who liked the single-class system would still have the option to play that way, while others could play with a dual-class system.

Guild Wars 1, as successful as it was, remained a niche game because it was too hard for a lot of people. They couldn’t figure it out. They couldn’t make a build to save their lives.

Anet intentionally changed that system so that people wouldn’t have bad builds. That was the point of linking skills to weapons.

If you make it hard enough for guys like me to enjoy, you’ll end up with less people playing, which isn’t the best business model to fund an ambitious project like Guild Wars 2.

I’d personally welcome more build diversity and a lot of other people would as well. And I think in time that will come.

But going the Guild Wars 1 route is probably a mistake.

Well, stealth killshot thief might add at least a hundred hours of hilarious troll capability to WvW.

Oh I am pretty sure that they could come up with better ideas to keep people being interested in this game. Heck all they need to do is look at a few other games for ideas. It’s not a matter of them not having ideas for content here I’m sure, it’s just a matter of them actually getting those ideas into the game (or fast enough for us demanding people) due to whatever reasons….

Vegito.3048:

GW2 took 90% of the GW1 population when it was released due to it being a sequel. No one wants to go back to a game killed by its sequel. Besides, most people who have been playing GW1 have been playing it for years. GW2 is something a little newer. Adding something like this to GW2 would be completely different seeing how combat is not very similar in the two games.

I’m not suggesting to add this any time in the near future. I’m talking about adding this when the game needs a revamp that will really throw things in for a loop and bring people back into the game to try new things. This wouldn’t even require the developers to actually develop much of anything – the skills are already there – they would just need to change how things work.

I’m throwing the idea out there in case something needs to drastically change later down the road so that there is a new way for players to enjoy themselves in a game that was previously stale and out of options. GW2 is not that game right now, especially with the big feature patch around the corner. This is an idea for when GW2 needs this to re-spark the interest of its playerbase.

This isn’t really aimed at bringing new players in. It’s more so aimed at keeping the current playerbase interested and potentially bringing back players who were waiting for some big changes to hit GW2 to play again.

Lastly, I think your point about the learning curve is valid, but I’m an average player, and I had little trouble with getting into GW1. GW2 is very simple already. Adding something like this won’t make it much more difficult for new players. It will however keep them entertained longer.

If you really wanted to, you could save the new players from the higher learning curve by reserving dual class builds for level 80. To be honest, I don’t think it would really be necessary as PVE players would probably have a blast with it.

If it was really necessary, the game could go as far as to split into modes of the old and the new for things like PvP (e.g. servers/arenas where people are allowed to run dual classes, and servers/arenas that run on the single-class system). That way, people who liked the single-class system would still have the option to play that way, while others could play with a dual-class system.

1. People still play GW1, even i still log back in from time to time to run FoW/UW for fun.

2. When it gets to the point the game needs a revamp… why wouldn’t they just introduce new weapons for the professions and at the same time add/modify profession traits to work with new weapons. Trying to emulate GW1 skills and how they work in GW2 would be a nightmare from a programming perspective.

3. People would come back for new explorable zones, or new dungeon content plain and simple. There is a lot of the map that isn’t available to us (yet). The biggest thing I hear from people about GW2 is lack of “endgame” content. Of the 26 available zones to explore only 4 are level 70+. Of the 8 dungeons, the only one that gives any kind of challenge to endgame geared players is Arah.

So respectfully, rather than mess with a skill system that works for the type of game it is. All they need to do is add content for people to explore and experience at the level 80 range. Give us something to do, don’t change the way we do it.

Nage.1520:

Guild Wars 1, as successful as it was, remained a niche game because it was too hard for a lot of people. They couldn’t figure it out. They couldn’t make a build to save their lives.

Anet intentionally changed that system so that people wouldn’t have bad builds. That was the point of linking skills to weapons.

If you make it hard enough for guys like me to enjoy, you’ll end up with less people playing, which isn’t the best business model to fund an ambitious project like Guild Wars 2.

I’d personally welcome more build diversity and a lot of other people would as well. And I think in time that will come.

But going the Guild Wars 1 route is probably a mistake.

The very fact you’re aware that you need to have a build to play the game properly probably excludes you from the population you’re talking about.

Still, though, you’re quite right.

Directly @ OP; realise that huge, sweeping changes can both revive a game and murderously butcher it into death.

Also, MMOs are marathons, not sprints. Big Daddy WoW took something like 3 years and 2 months before it got to 10 million subscribers. The world (of guild wars) isn’t going to end just because growth slowed down a little.

I refuse to fight stealth killshot warriors.

Press F to revive.

Mixed professions. The first thing I would do is make mine secondary thieves on everything as I find Heartseeker and Shadow Refuge too useful.

Stonemist fights would take ages when every class is */Me because of the enormous amount of portals.

Alright alright, thank you for all the constructive feedback. I see your points. But at least think of the possibilities (for fun)! The stealth killshot warrior idea made me chuckle a little bit.

Thief/Mesmer would just shadowstep and blink away to disengage any enemy lol. Zerg inc? Nope, I’m already stealthed 2100 range away.