Guild Wars 2

Now I realize there have probably been many topics on the subject, though I’m not sure anyone else is exploring it the same way I am, so I decided to make a new post anyways. GW2 is unique, all classes can essentially do the same exact things only in varying degrees. Not only does it cause some classes to simply be better than others, it makes it harder to distinguish what sets the classes apart. As it stands, the main reasons to play a certain class are how it feels to play or how it looks, unless you are looking to max a certain thing (like dps for example). This can make it hard to determine which class is right for the player. It’s very frustrating to get all the way to level 80 only to wish you could be a different class. Currently the only way to “change” the profession of a character is to buy a name change contract so you can free up their name and re-make them as a different class, but this is very messy and uncomfortable to do and you lose everything. Sure, you could just make a new character… but you still lose your progress, and won’t get to use the same character.. which is a problem for people who like to stick with just one character. There are many reasons why I think the ability to change profession would be good, and I think it could really help the game.

1. Some people like to bond with a single character.
A surprising amount of people like to play just one character. Building up a sense of identity with one character is important for immersion and socialization (I can’t even count all the times guildies didn’t recognize me because I was playing an alt). Some people who play also don’t have much free time to spend on a new character and would rather just get to WvW, Living Story and such.

2. It would give players something to do once they have finished everything.
Of course, it isn’t fair for someone to level up a thief, unlock all the skills and traits then POOF magically have a fully complete elementalist. Still, I don’t think it’s reasonable to reset their level because that would come with several problems. If they had finished exploring their world map exp would be very difficult to come by and resetting world exploration would be too extreme. This combination would lock players out of content and would make them feel like they really are starting over, so there would be no point to the class change. Resetting traits, utility skills and weapon skills on the other hand would be completely reasonable. They would likely also need new armor and weapons. This would give players the option to progress their character again without starting over or being left out of content and for those who don’t have the time they could simply purchase everything and go off on their way. This could help keep the interest of long-time players and more players is almost always a good thing.

3. Easy money for Anet.
For character changes at the moment we have the hair-style kit (2.50gems), the total-makeover kit (3.50gems) and the name change contract (800gems.) They could sell a class change for 1600 gems or more and I think it would be more than fair considering on what you are getting. There are probably a lot of people who would pay for this, meaning more money for Anet meaning possible more content for us players. It’s a win-win!

Hair, appearance and names are all things that can change throughout a persons life, and so are professions. People are always changing jobs, so I don’t see why it be bad for our characters to be able to as well. Sure there’s the fact the only thing left that wouldn’t be changeable is race, but I think that’s fair. Race is the only thing out of those things that can’t be changed in the real world.

I would love to hear other peoples’ opinions about this and ideas on how a class change could benefit the game, and for those of you who don’t like the idea feel free to share why.

Agree with point 1.
In every MMO I play mostly Warrior and Guardian…here in Gw2 I found this 2 class so common and underrated especially the warrior,that I started playing with a Thief.

I really love it’s style but not the playstyle I like to be somewhat unique to feel that I achieved something but here ingame I just cannot…even legendaries starts to be so common.

About classes I really wish more diversity beside Zerk,same armor same skills same everything…from dungeon point of view warrior and guardian is a vital one I get in on every ride but with a thief I sometimes get kicked without even laying a single attack on any NPC…

Agreed. I wish I could just buy a “change everything” contract and restart my female thief as a male guardian. Even if I had to play the storyline from zero, it would be worth it. Currently, she’s sitting on level 46 because I can’t bother to level up a class I didn’t really enjoy.

And there’s no way I’m going to just “make a new character”, because I’ve spent a birthday experience scroll on that one.

It all goes back to this: it takes a long time to unlock enough skills and traits for you to get a real feel of the class, so it’s a hit or miss thing. I did previous research on wiki and thought I’d enjoy thief, but it turns out I didn’t.

So it isn’t immersion breaking that your level 80 burly warrior, who has only ever been a burly warrior, has now suddenly become an adept magic user who can shoot fire balls, summon weapons, swap elements, etc. (warrior—>ele conversion).

That would be so utterly immersion breaking it isn’t even worth considering.

For fun though: I would be in support of a down-level, up-level system for class changes. It would work like this: You are level 80 warrior. You want to become an Elementalist. You have to commit to it through some NPC and all XP you gain from that point on actually decreases your level. Once you decrease all the way back to 1, you can swap classes and then level back up to 80.

That would be pretty interesting, IMO.

The immersion issue is one I agree with. If this kind of change was to be implemented, I imagine it would erase your whole storyline and ask you to start from zero. And I’d still pay for that.

That’s an interesting idea Draknar, though I don’t see the need to require players to down-level from 80. Just let them start training as a different profession from level 1.

I see it pretty similar to the crafting system – have any two professions you can swap between, and there could be a fee to change to another one, but it would be possible for one character to master all the profession disciplines.

This kind of system would have worked really well in GW1 as well where you could take skills from a secondary profession. I’m not sure I’d like to see it in GW2 though due to the balancing requirements.

I assume this would still work with the armor system so that eg if you change from heavy to light profession, the game would require you to change armor.

Profession change option in the gem store has been requested for ages-not saying it won’t ever come, and by all means continue these suggestion threads to make them aware people really want this, but don’t hold your breath on it coming anytime soon. Your second point I disagree with-having to regear your character if it’s a different weight class is punishment enough (basically that’s what you and others are saying-people who change classes need to be punished so those who don’t will not have any problems…a ludicrous way of thinking imo, but w/e). Not to mention they have to pay either real money or the equivalent of a couple days/weeks (depending on how much they grind) in-game whereas the person who didn’t race change didn’t have to-again, that is good enough of a punishment imo. Finally, with the new traits system…do you really want to map fgs another time?

The resetting of the weapon skills and utility skills are just borderline acceptable punishment imo as those aren’t too intrusive. Under the old trait system, maybe I would have been OK with trait resets as to acquire them wasn’t a PITA but this system is just tedious and quite frankly almost renders class change irrelevant. I mean you still have to run around the entire continent doing low level things until you unlock everything anyway-might as well save the money and do it on a new toon then-if traits are reset upon class reset.

The pricing you suggest I also don’t agree with-800 gems just like the name change contract. As a matter of fact it could even be lower as there’s no benefit or exploit in constantly changing your profession-you find the one you like and stick with it. In any case…isn’t this basically what pvp players get when they start a new toon? So why do pve/wvw players need to get the short end of the stick? Now that I think about it, add a ‘change profession’ option to the profession trainers in-game without gemstore shenanigans and allow pve/wvw players to try out new professions with the same ease and convenience as pvp players.

Madness when you think about it-it’s pve and wvw players who keep saying ‘hey put this in the gemstore’ and get the short end of the stick while pvp players just log in and have fun w/o any restrictions yet always at the forefront of balancing changes.

Draknar.5748:

So it isn’t immersion breaking that your level 80 burly warrior, who has only ever been a burly warrior, has now suddenly become an adept magic user who can shoot fire balls, summon weapons, swap elements, etc. (warrior—>ele conversion).

That would be so utterly immersion breaking it isn’t even worth considering.

For fun though: I would be in support of a down-level, up-level system for class changes. It would work like this: You are level 80 warrior. You want to become an Elementalist. You have to commit to it through some NPC and all XP you gain from that point on actually decreases your level. Once you decrease all the way back to 1, you can swap classes and then level back up to 80.

That would be pretty interesting, IMO.

So you’re saying you’d want to level twice. Once for ‘delevelling’ 80-1 which brings a host of problems I might add-the most obvious is your lvl 80 asc/exotic gear instantly becomes unusable and you have to constantly play in decreasingly lower level maps and do….well…nothing really. You already finished your PS so there’s not much for you in lower level maps-that’s why everyone’s in lvl 80 zones you see (metabosses aside). Then after you gain enough exp to have already leveled a new character to 80, i.e. you delevel to lvl 1…you get to swap classes and do the whole thing over again?

Ah…not too sure about that. I’d rather have a little bit of what pvp players get-profession change into a new profession and have a lvl 80 with the traits unlocked. We still have to regear and reacquire the weapon skills and utility skills if people insist on some punishment.

Also in terms of immersion breaking…look, as far as I’m concerned when bosses are on strict schedules, arbitrary 15mins-or-they-leave-you-alone, floating green lights transport you into a dimension where what you do have no effect on the world, quaggan backpacks (-__-), disco ball as weapons, bows that shoot rainbow unicorns, every map being a little instance, when you can change your character physical features and even sex….the bar for what is ‘immersive’ had been lowered a loooooong time ago.

I guess somebody has to be the Negative Nancy here. There is positively no way class change will ever, ever, EVER, happen. We’ll be lucky if we ever even get race change, but being able to actually switch professions on a character simply destroys the replay value and Anet would never allow that.

An MMO that institutes a class change is doomed to fail. Nobody would level alts ever again, and alts are what keeps a lot of people playing. That’s the beauty of MMOs. I don’t want to only have one character. Sure I have a main, but when I’m done being a Warrior, I play my Thief. The problem is when someone feels like they’re done with being a certain class and switch, what happens when they suddenly feel like playing their original class again, pay for another switch? No way.

Reroll an alt. That’s basically all you can do. If you absolutely dont want to do that, then… well… cant help you.

What compensation would be given to those of us that have made multiple alts?

I asked about race changes in chat the other day (I’m new), and they basically told me to just reroll and it “takes a week to get to 80 if you know what you’re doing”.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me. I play with my husband anyway, which keeps me from rushing through everything. When we’re done leveling, one or both of us will probably like one class more than the others, but wish we’d done it as a different race, so we’ll go back and do it again. It’s not a big deal to me since there’s no monthly sub and I’m not “wasting my money” if I don’t play, if that makes sense.

/signed because Mesmer is still a beta profession and Anet clearly wants us to PvE Warriors.