Guild Wars 2

Honestly HoT killed the game for me, I’ve never felt this disappointed with a game before, I’ve always had my share of issues with the game and all the unfixed bugs, but this expansion killed the game for me.

I’m sure I’m not alone on this, and with that said, I’m wondering, how would you shape GW2 to be your dream game?

I have my own ideas, but I can’t express them without being overly sarcastic and rude, so I will let others do the talking.

tl,dr: If you could change everything in the game to make it your masterpiece, your dream game, what would it be?

1.I’d get rid of grind rankings in PvP and instead have your rank based off your MMR. Top player in different categories would contribute instead of just win/loss record.

2.I’d have mounted PvP where you could steal their mount after defeating them and underwater weapons would be used as jousting weapons with a different skillset.

3.Bump up AI across the board.

4.Introduce super mobs that randomly attack players anywhere in the open world PvE zones. Their AI would be very sophisticated and have higher stats than normal versions of the mob. There would be shadow leaper, teagariff, risen, and other mob types but with more abilities so they can intelligently interrupt and crowd control players and know what skills they have. Super mobs wouldn’t be limited in location to where the normal versions are typically found. There are no teagariffs in Queensdale, but a teagariff super mob randomly spawning there at random is possible. All areas will have them spawn once per hour and would be picked from a pool of 20 super mob types at random in a random part of the map.

5. Minigames for thief players to actually steal stuff and similar class based quests for other classes.

TL;DR: This is a long post. Here are a list of things that are – in my opinion – currently wrong with the game. Here is a list of improvements (dream or not) and constructive feedback I am giving Arenanet so they can understand and handle the unified frustration players are experiencing.

1) Bug Fixes. This is first and foremost what needs to be done. Meta-events that sometimes freeze or don’t activate. Never-ending events because of a bugged mob. Items that don’t handle the way they are supposed to be. Though Arenanet is somewhat fixing some of the broken material in game, the problem is them trying to fix what is clearly not broken. Of course, they can put in an argument for disabling certain things, but the communication between Arenanet and their playerbase is extremely slim. It would be better if Arenanet could give players a full update on what is to be changed that is considered broken or not working. Personally, I feel that if something is not collectively decided as a group to be broken, it does not require fixing (e.g. Warhorn audio, auras and shields, the elementalist’s fireball).

2) Old content/skins. This is my primary focus. Why does Arenanet feel that it is necessary to take away things that are fun and rewarding? Because they don’t fit well with the story? Because it’s too much for an MMORPG of $50? This game used to be so prospective with amazing visuals and concepts like the Super Adventure Box, the Queen’s Gauntlet, the Festival of the Four Winds, or Dragon Bash? Players loved the content and gave feedback that it was something they would immensely enjoy playing in the future. To this day there are still people begging for this quality of an event. There are players who want old gem skins like the bunny ears or aviator sunglasses that Arenanet refuses to re-release for reasons I can’t comprehend.

Now, we’re given events or content that introduce nothing new or breathtaking, nothing near the quality of gameplay that Arenanet had produced before 2014. The game has fallen to a painfully average rating and I am sure Arenanet knows it at this point. The problem is they have done very little to fix or reverse it.

The way to a successful business and appreciative community is not with this descent to microtransactions and bundle-selling in the gem store, but to bring back old, themed content that were here for only a brief moment to let the newer players experience what Guild Wars 2 is really about. It would be amazing if new players could experience the Super Adventure Box and tell their friends about the game, giving them a greater incentive to buy it. Why take away something that was successful? Why not bring it back, or better yet – expand on it?

3) Nerf, nerf, nerf. Dungeon rewards, fractal rewards, instances, why? When John Smith introduced the concept of scarcity and the importance of scarcity to the economy, the dungeon rewards were nerfed, and players could only make a handful of silver per day from doing these dungeons. Not to mention rare skins such as Nightfury, the Invisible footwear, are painfully difficult to reach, as the prices virtually rival that of legendary weapons. This forces players to find an alternate means to earn money to buy something they want, but Arenanet seems to nerf rewards left and right. How can players earn money to buy the rewards they want if they only earn a little bit of money per day? This makes getting weapon skins a grind and already the no-grind philosophy has slightly been broken. An argument could be made that Arenanet isn’t forcing players to do anything, and that is absolutely correct. But it could be handled better by making things doable with less grind. Make them token rewards? Story rewards? Instead of taking away rewards and forcing them to RNG, maybe make rewards that can be adequately achievement-based? There are a multitude of possibilities.

The solution would be to reverse what was done, at least let players do dungeons with the old, adequate rewards system so it feels…rewarding. Rewarding content is supposed to be rewarding.

When rewards have been nerfed to downright near-nothing, this destroys the incentive of players to want to do them, to the point where several players only log in for the daily login reward until they can find something that is challenging, fun, or worth doing. Why does Arenanet not want players to play the game?

4) RNG. I don’t like it when my playtime is resorted to a dice roll or selected from a random number generator. Precursors- sure, because the concept of scarcity arises again and players want legendary weapons to feel legendary. Rare items ought to feel rare. But small exotic things that are RNG-gated feel very tedious. The Mordrem Saber and Invisible footwear are at ridiculous prices – from 1,000 to 2,500 gold – and offer low drop rates for players who grind to get these. It’s not a fun mechanic, and it isn’t the least bit innovative; it is annoying and something Arenanet should not endorse. Ascended and legendary items, maybe should be RNG gated, but adequately. But exotic skins should not be downright unattainable. Please remove the invisible boots as an unfair, unattainable RNG-drop and just make it a slot or a gemstore skin. Make Heart of Thorns rewards attainable through purchases with tokens from specific maps for the Mordrem Saber or the new exotic Mordrem greatsword. There are a multitude of better alternatives than the RNG-gated ones now that Arenanet could be better off with, and in return make their playerbase happy to support the game.

5) Bundles and gemstore. The bundles have to stop. The players are smart enough to know what to buy and when to buy them, and hate being forced to buy several things that are bundled together when they want one thing. What if I want just the outfit, and not the dye kit, total makeover kit, and glider? Separate them. Bundling is just unnecessary and players can figure out what kind of business Arenanet is “evolving” into when this kind of thing happens.

Along with the bundles, if Arenanet intends to want players to spend real money on gems, it would be good if they thought up interesting gemstore concepts. What happened to the instruments? Why not expand more on them? There are just multiple skins of infinite gathering tools that really do nothing new or innovative. Toys like the broomstick or dance books? Bring something new and innovative to the table!

Arenanet, stop trying to encourage players to convert gems to gold. To me, this doesn’t feel like a smart move, as it is Arenanet bluntly telling the players to “pay for ingame cash to buy items.” I’ve seen the advertisement in the gem store that endorsed the conversion from real money to gems to gold. It’s not worth it, and only messes up the in-game economy more.

6) Outfits. At the rate this game is going, I see virtually one outfit per week. Some I do like and some I don’t. The problem is the lack of customization. By halting the release of armor skins, customization is virtually non-existent. I like to be able to see what kind of armor combinations players come up with to make their character stand out and feel individual. I don’t like seeing several players dressed in the same [Name] Regalia everywhere I go. Customization needs to supported. Stop releasing uniforms. It isn’t good to hinder customization as players love feeling individual, and at the rate the game is going, customization is extremely limited.

7) Precursor crafting, masteries, etc. Players have been complaining about this for a while. There are items that are unattainable for players who are taking the longer, tedious, and more expensive way of obtaining a precursor for their legendary. Perhaps this could be looked into a little more by reducing the cost of certain items or not quantifying them.

8) e-Sports. There are some players who enjoy watching them, yet others do not. In my opinion, I feel that Guild Wars 2 is trying to attain a reputation for being a “famous, televised e-sport.” It’s not. There are parts of Guild Wars 2 that are competitive, but at the end of the day to me, it’s an MMORPG with rich, fantasy lore. I feel as though Guild Wars 2 is trying to be something that it isn’t, and in doing so – by pushing the game towards the e-Sport category – it will ultimately hurt the game. Personally, I’m not interested in watching e-Sports and in no way condemn or hate them, and would not mind if they took the focus away from e-Sports to better other parts of the game.

9) Gem-gated content. Living Story particularly is gated behind a gem paywall. To access the content, you need to pay Arenanet yet another fee to play. This doesn’t completely break the “buy once, play forever” promise, as the content is not necessary for progression, but it is sad to see Arenanet do this practice. While I am unsure of Arenanet’s current state as a business and how much money they are able to budget for separate gaming quarters, I’m slightly mixed about removing the gem gates. It would be great to see them go and have players access the story content whenever they please, but being a player who cares about the state of the game financially, I am unsure whether this is viable.

To me, for Arenanet to produce painfully average quality gem outfits and horribly RNG-gated skins, they are getting desperate.

It would be a dream come true if any of these could be fixed- certainly not all of them at once. I still stand by what I say in another post. Towards the beginning of Guild Wars 2 and close to the end of 2013, the game was a solid [9/10] to a [10/10.] Truly deserving of its name for its original, innovative, and fun content.

But post-2014 and Heart of Thorns release, a great majority of the f-u-n content has been removed. At best, the current state of Guild Wars 2 in my opinion is around a [7/10.] Again, it is a painfully average MMORPG in my opinion at best. They have definitely done much better in the past, which I am sure why players are frustrated or upset.

If Arenanet can get its act together and listen to player feedback, then it has a chance of surviving beyond the release of the Maguuma Jungle. There are still plenty of unreleased content in Tyria yet, and only 1/5 of the post Heart of Thorns Map has been released. Guild Wars 2 has the ability to be great again, and not presently just average.

-Dungeon rewards back. Add a new dungeon path every 3 months or so, make it part of living story of something. Maybe alternate between that and a new fractal.

-Add a new raid every 6 months or so. Even if its only a couple bosses.

-Add new PvP modes. Simple/typical ones without weird cannons/vehicles or any other gimmick. I think these could be less often if the following is done:

-Separate PvP and PvE skills more often. With that make more balance passes far more often for the PvP versions to accommodate tournies and stuff before you start them.

-Actual MMR based PvP, let them queue anywhere, solo queue, spectator modes… sorry.. not a fan of sPvP in this game at all. Needs so much.

-Add more armor and weapon skins, consistently. Dosnt even have to be full sets, I’d even settle for 1 new skin obtainable outside of gemstore per massive gemstore push we get every week or two.

-If you push the open world stuff so much, we should be able to start our own megaserver shard with friends/guildies and/or reserve slots for X minutes to accommodate DCs, including remembering our involvement.

-I cant say what I think would fix WvW entirely, but I think they really just need more people. Something akin to megaservers wihout all the issues megaservers brought to PvE. Maybe for rewards somethink similar to what sPvP players get with reward tracks.

-SAB

-Document more changes when you fix stuff. Fix stuff more often. Still weirdly broken things 3 years later…

^_^

edit: I agree with the above poster. Original game was an easy 9 or 10/10. HoT actually feels like we lost content and what we have new feels like a 6 or 7/10.

I’d have em go back to 2012 when the dream was just becoming a reality.
Was it perfect, no it had many bugs. Was it enjoyable without all the grind, kitten yes.

I even enjoyed the zergfest content that was season 1 as it promoted a more friendly atmosphere than what we have now. Not to mention constant updates and no 1 year hiatus for content that is just a rehashed telling of silverwastes on timers. At the time I disliked Scarlet too, but compared to this XPac, I wish someone would resurrect the kitten!

-Remove Esports from the game. No more tournaments, PvP is now just a side mode people can choose to play much like WvW.

That is all.

Timers. I’d get rid of the fixed world/meta event timers. I don’t want my play to feel like catching a train. I didn’t like it when they put all the world bosses on a fixed schedule, and I like even less that the whole of the HoT zones are that way.

I would separate PvE from PvP (skill-wise).

I would halve the cooldowns of almost every skill in the game (GW2 has big kitten cooldowns).

I would give passive 25% speed signet to EVERYONE and passive signets would work without equipping!!!

I would get rid of Ascended gear (Exotic would be the best and easy to get, Legendaries would get Exotic stats).

I would make events and end-game content that have GOOD rewards.

I would get rid of costumes and make more armor skins.

I would get rid of all the time-gated crap.

I would get rid of elitism. I would make sure EVERY CLASS is needed and useful in any game content!!! I would try my best BALANCE everything.

I would get rid of ferocity and make crits 200% damage at all time.

I would get rid of preset stats and let people choose 3 different stats on their gear freely (I would immediately get power, toughness, con. dmg for my Necro)!

I would revert many things back the way they were and build from that. Megaservers gone, daily achievement to an older version, NPE removed, town clothes functionality returned, magic find I’m not sure but not THIS…
I bet I’m forgetting a lot of things.

And this current miniature wardrobe thing would get nuked, nuked, NUKED.
(I really hate it)

I like HoT alot but i still have some issues such as

Elite specializations: probably one of the things that i was most hyped for whilst waiting for the expansion my understanding was they would provide a different way to play your profession but in most cases they simply provided a better way to play your profession . I am hopeful in the future they will bring base professions up to the level of elite specs.

Grinds and gold: design choices like increasing the cost of ascended stuff just baffles me , completely un-needed nothing more needs to be said. As far as grinds go i don’t mind some things requiring a large time or cost investment but there needs to other things which don’t require any of that currently it is unbalanced with far more things favoring a grindy style.

Maps: I really love all the HoT maps it is clearly evident how much time and effort went into crafting them , TD which i realize many people dislike is truly amazing that it exists in an MMO . But i really wish there was at least one map which could have been a slower pace more like old tyria with random events around no huge meta , less dense with mobs and styled more as a light hearted exploration and adventure .

1. If I did Heart of Thorns, I would delay the release to give classes and quests the proper testing and bug fixes they needed.

2. I’d end all gatewaying as far as map exploration.

3. Access to all hero points, mastery points, and any point would not be based on access to any masteries. Access would be gained based on skill, insight, and perseverance.

4. I would not have achievements in the game that were not accessible nor impossible because I didn’t put them in the game for some reason.

5. Success on any achievement would not be based around failure.

6. I would communicate more openly with my customers.

7. I would add Hearts to the expansion much like in the core game.

8. I would not make my maps a convoluted mess.

9. I would remove meta events and replace them with events similar to the other bosses throughout the world.

10. I would completely overall Legendary Crafting.

And NONE of my skill balances in PvE would be based on the actions or complaints in PvP!

Swappable weapon skills in the same vein as utility . The revenant spear set has two auto-attacks which makes it viable for both power and condition builds, which got me thinking… Why aren’t we doing this for every weapon? Why can’t I have a set of warrior sword skills that have no bleed and deal more damage?

It could look the same for all I care, but I think it could open up a substantial amount of builds and create some variety in playing.

Mea.5491:

I would separate PvE from PvP (skill-wise).

I would halve the cooldowns of almost every skill in the game (GW2 has big kitten cooldowns).

I would give passive 25% speed signet to EVERYONE and passive signets would work without equipping!!!

I would get rid of Ascended gear (Exotic would be the best and easy to get, Legendaries would get Exotic stats).

I would make events and end-game content that have GOOD rewards.

I would get rid of costumes and make more armor skins.

I would get rid of all the time-gated crap.

I would get rid of elitism. I would make sure EVERY CLASS is needed and useful in any game content!!! I would try my best BALANCE everything.

I would get rid of ferocity and make crits 200% damage at all time.

I would get rid of preset stats and let people choose 3 different stats on their gear freely (I would immediately get power, toughness, con. dmg for my Necro)!

Strongly agree with separating PvP and PvE and making 200% crit ferocity baseline. In theory pretty much every game developer wants to make every class feel useful in every game mode but the job is quite difficult even for those experienced trained professionals. That’s why they resign themselves to making specs and even entire classes dedicated to PvP or PvE usually implicitly. Let’s say you have a class that does lots of CC and good burst damage, but is relatively squishy…but big dungeon bosses are immune to CC and with their millions of HP what that class excels in can’t be felt whereas in PvP that same class would be awesome to have around.

1) Fix Fractals : Toughness, bugged collection, mobs hitting like noodle at level 100, only 1 daily from 50 to 100, reward behind RNG needing us to pay, broken ascended drop, etc

2) Small rework of dungeons. The power creep was real since lauch and all mobs in dungeons should have a increase in HP. Between 150 and 200% of their current HP. In return they should get the rewards back into dungeon, but not in gold since that would increase inflation. They can add more rare, exo, crafting material and tokens instead. They also need to give a better ratio or time vs reward. Some easier path give more reward than some harder path. It’s just to get dungeon back how they were 2 years ago.

3) A big feature pack with a improved LFG with different tab and to make it function with Squad, a build template, raid lobby, tonic working like minis, etc.

4) The cycle of all 4 news map should be of around 1 hour not 2 hours. Now it’s too huge of a commitment if you want to do all the Open World content. Open World is about casual and should stay that way.

5) Variable difficulty in raid. An easy mode and an Infernal mode would be nice and make raid accessible to more people.

6) More diverse way to acquire ascended gear. Not easier ways, just diverse. Right now you can get ascended from raids and crafting only. You can get it from other source but with RNG only. The RNG from fractal was good enough that it wasn’t a problem, but try to get a full ascended armor/weapon if you only do WvW, Open World or PvP. Same with trinkets which are only easy to get one way. Rings are super easy to get from fractal, but from other source? The price is way bigger. Better have a guild doing mission if you want accessories, etc.

7) More stats configuration and make all current stats configuration available for every type of gear. I want those Zealot trinkets, those Viper rings, Magi Amulet, etc. And less variance in the price of those stats. Zealot and Celestial shouldn’t be 10 times more expansive than other stats.

8) All outfit should be in the form of outfit AND armor.

9) Get rid of WvW and PvP guild missions and transform them into Guild PvP and WvW achivement. A list of stuff that everybody in the guild can fill over the week and the more of those you complete the more reward the guild have. At the same time we should get access to every PvE guild missions each week and you can choose which difficulty you gonna do this week (easy, medium, hard).

10) I would get Influence back like it was and as the main currency for guild upgrade. Influence was a way better system to push guild to work together. I would transfer all the gold/material cost from crafting consumable for the guild into influence cost. I’m ok with paying gold to unlock new type of consumable, but not to pay each time I use one, that should be paid by influence.

Re-introduce 1g15s gold rewards from dungeons, I used to be a strict dungeoneer but that has since changed due to the fact it just isn’t worth the effort and time.

I wish personal stories affected you more and had more of an impact down the road.
Basically a full personal rework of story/rewards for obtaining certain achievements through personal story. This would be my idea – but im not going to go all into everything I would change just the top basics.
-Norn spirits actually attuned with you more and when you chose a spirit that was the only one you could choose – make the Norn more like how they were in Gw:EotN. More (better) personal story for Raven, Bear etc. You could gain renown through deeds for your Norn legend to be passed down.

-Human rank affected the way your character talks to people and how you are treated in return, if you are a peasant then you look like a peasant, a noble then you look like a noble even talk like a pompous kitten , and so on.
Sylvari – you could join the nightmare court. Why do we have to be wholly good? Why can’t we be a little bad? and have some real character growth instead of watching the characters around us grow.
Charr – Charr story isn’t as bad but I do wish your warband title mattered more so, and not just through personal story – maybe throw in some things that give you the option to command your warband through Charr events, something along that line, and more I can’t quite put my finger on it though.

Asura – Asura story is just annoying and I would change everything about it.

Add more racial armors and weapons.
Add more PvP modes
-1v1 Arena with a queue where waiting or spectating players watched the two dueling players in the arena while the rest sit above and could bet on who they think would win and get a small daily reward for it
(new maps that don’t promote zerg point capture or zerging at one area)
– Deathmatch elimination PvP, structured playstyle but the goal would be to eliminate the other player/team in a maze or jungle use traps, special hiding places, etc.
More prestige to veteran PvPers who played during the old rank system and obtained the old rewards and new rewards for new PvPers + a training ring (not mandatory)

No more wings. This is Gw2 not Aion.

Full rework and balance of underwater fighting- introduced through underwater games so that players can get the hang of it.

More interactive world, better more ferocious world bosses, I mean really standing in a large group pressing 1 is the way to defeat a world boss… c’mon Anet add some challenge!

Add more class titles/rewards gained through feats of completing them on that specific class.
– make Ele water look more like water and meteor shower look less like falling cheeseballs.

- Guild capes/sashes
– More customization options for facial and body features, scars, tattoos, moles, freckles, yes/no checkbox for makeup, normal looking ponytails for women and men, African American hair-textures + hairstyles, more facial hair options for men.

MMR PvP
In old PvP ranks meant something much like how MMR is, minus the matchmaking – it was really unbalanced since you could be a dolyak rank and go against a rank of bears/sharks. (rank was harder to get back then for those who didn’t know.)

more tameable pets for ranger (griffons, wargs, etc)

More class related armor (that would look amazing by the way and keep you from envying another player because of it) like in Gw1 so that you won’t see an ele that looks like a mesmer or a warrior that looks like a revenant.

LESS trenchcoats!!! for medium classes less leather looking armor too – all leather.. that can’t be comfortable.
Blood splatter with an option to show or not too.
I mean our characters are practically Gods since they can be caught on fire, stabbed with a greatsword/dagger, frozen solid and so on and live! Give us some character effects with it like temporary blood stains or armor burns.

I would remove the people in charge that are destroying the game PERIOD.

Baratta.1083:

I would remove the people in charge that are destroying the game PERIOD.

^^^Agree 100%. Maybe if enough people leave and there’s a big dip in profit, NCSoft should start cleaning house. Who knows, this game might be dead before they notice.

1. No more development into spvp/esport. Spvp will join dungeons in a forgotten corner for the f2p crowd.

2. A small nerf to mastery/and new zones. Keep raids/fotm for the hardcore players.

3. Replace Gem store management/team. Armor sets>outfit&bundles

4. Start focusing on PvE, balance, and WvW. WvW being a game mode this genre desperately needs.

5. Hire more qualified employees.

6. Remove tedious walls. Event locked zones, time-gate crafting, mastery points+xp bar (I would prefer Mastery points to work like mini xp tomes).

7. After changes send a mass email offer/gift to all accounts. Lets bring those players back that left.

8. Open communication.

I’d make open world HoT a bit easier.

Where do you want me to begin? Not that I dislike GW2, it’s easily my favourite game, but I’ve thought about this a lot and…

Well put it this way. My first answer would be to say I’d love it if Guild Wars had never happened because just before Mike O’Brien, Jeff Strain and Patrick Wyatt left Blizzard someone called them into a room and said “You guys are right about everything. We’re going to put you in charge and do everything your way. Oh, except the instancing, we’re sticking with a persistent world.”

I found it somewhat amusing (and more than a little frustrating) when I spent several months thinking that GW1 with the Warcraft lore could have been the best game ever, and then found out the history of ArenaNet.

But, forget about that. Skipping ahead to the development of GW2 here’s some ideas I’ve had, in no particular order:

Reduce the level cap

I’d make level 40 the maximum, or maybe even 30. (20 would be nice for continuity but possibly too low.) So you’re unlocking skill slots and other functions (like weapon swap) and getting skill/hero points every single level.

But I’d keep the same number of zones (or add more), story chapters etc. which means you’ll hit max level very early on when you obviously haven’t come close to doing everything. I think this would help reinforce the idea that this isn’t a game with a clear distinction between levelling and ‘end-game’ and you’re not supposed to drop everything you were doing to do something different.

Or no levels

That could work too IMO. You’d still have the system of gaining XP and periodically earning hero points to spend on new skills, traits etc. but there wouldn’t be a single number to indicate your overall progress, and obvious areas wouldn’t be level-gated, you could go to zones in any order you like. (Although some could still have more complex mechanics, or simply more/harder hitting enemies, or both.)

More skills

I really liked the system in GW1 where you had total freedom over which skills you used, within the ones accessible to your profession. But if that’s too complicated then maybe a compromise, like having 2-3 skills available for each weapon slot. Obviously some wouldn’t be as good as others, but that’s part of what makes the choice meaningful.

More stat combinations

I’d like to see every possible combination of 3 stats available on all items. As with the skills there would obviously be better and worse choices, but that means the choice you make would be meaningful. And someone might find a way to use those seemingly ‘useless’ choices. For example an item which reduces your HP seems like a terrible choice on the surface, but the 55HP Monk (a max level character with just 55 hit points) was one of the most powerful PvE builds in GW1 and those items were essential to it.

Wardrobe in the game since day 1

This is a pretty minor point now, but I really like the wardrobe update and I wish it’d been in the game since the start.

Tradable cosmetic items

I’d make all mini pets, tonics, finishers and other cosmetic/novelty items tradable. I don’t see any harm in it and it would make a lot more items accessible to a lot more people, whilst turning boring/useless drops into something nice (gold).

Bring back town clothes

I’m not totally against outfits, I can see how some wouldn’t work as separate pieces. But I think those could easily be 1 piece town clothing, which hides anything else you’re wearing. Like how the pirates top and trousers (which were one piece) hid whatever other leggings you were wearing.

Most importantly this would enable each outfit to have it’s own dye channels, the fact that they share them puts me off using more than 1 outfit per character because it’s so hard to find a dye scheme that works for multiple ones and it’s a pain to have to change them each time I change outfits, which completely invalidates the way they’re supposed to be used (as a quick and easy way to change your appearance).

Oh, I’d also bring back the option to key bind the armor/town clothes toggle.

1. New dungeons. I don’t care about the monetary rewards, in fact I like where they are now. I just want new dungeons because they are so much fun and a great story-telling mechanism (instanced content for groups is great), and HoT has provided so many opportunities to tell more stories

2. SAB – seriously, we want the SAB! And don’t take it out in the interim’s between world releases, just leave it in!

3. Tiered raids with tiered loot. GW2 has always been about providing accessibility to the majority of players and right now raids are NOT accessible. Before anyone claims I want raids to be nerfed, I like where they are now but I also want a lower level with reduced rewards so that more people can experience it and learn the fights to eventually do the harder content – basically, institute a better opportunity for a learning curve

4. Communication between players and Anet employees. It appears as if there has been some kind of moratorium on most Anet employees speaking on the forums. This is not a good way to handle it as these are designed to be places that the devs can get feedback. When you have Colin go to Reddit and make sarcastic remarks about how people commenting their frustrations or providing negative feedback are desiring GW2’s failure, that’s just plain insulting and also completely wrong. Engage in dialogue with us and you will find that the angry people will stop being angry pretty quickly

5. No stealth fixes/nerfs. Don’t hide stuff from the patch notes! Don’t hide stuff from the patch notes! Don’t hide stuff from the patch notes! When we have to get the full list of changes from data miners, something is seriously wrong. This loops back into engaging with us and communication. As a player who has been with GW2 since original launch and a human being, it feels like (and is) being lied to and that is not an appreciated feeling.

6. Armor skins in-game instead of in-gemstore. You’ve made enough money off of a lot of those, instead of doing the piecemeal DLC crap that you know we all hate put some stuff into the game for us to work towards and find rather than simply buy. You are focusing all these efforts into short-term money grubbing and it’s very frustrating.

7. More fractals! Please! We love fractals, and the dailies added to them are great! You’ve got so much Season 1 content that could be put into fractals, and new ones would also be very very welcome!

8. Dungeon dailies in the same vein as fractal dailies

Mea.5491:

I would get rid of Ascended gear (Exotic would be the best and easy to get, Legendaries would get Exotic stats).

I would make events and end-game content that have GOOD rewards.

How would this work for people who don’t care about cosmetics and whose idea of a good reward is something useful to them and/or valuable to someone else so they can sell it for gold (to buy something useful to them)?

If exotics are the best and easy to get, what would those good rewards be? More exotics, identical to the ones they bought/crafted as soon as they reached level 80? Ones they can sell for the same 1g it cost to buy theirs?

MORE kittenING STORY

AND

MORE kittenING MAPS

Things I’d change:

1.) Completely rework the LFG System to a much more powerful and complex system that is very helpful and detailed, which also helps people in finding Guilds by giving Guilds over it a platform where Guilds can recruit over it new Members, describe themself ect.

2.) Add to the Game a simple but easy to handle Build Saver-System which allows playersto change outside of Combat via Chat Code or Button press on keyboard completely within a second their whole Character Builds consisting out of Equipment, Traits and Skills used.

3.) Implement 3rd Party Features and make them integral part of the Game, like adding an integrated Support for Gaming Controlers, like adding an integrated Team Speak Feature, like improving the Games Shaders to support SweetFX so that everybody can use it, without that you need a 3rd Party Program for that active in the background

4.) Completely rework the whole WvW Rank and Reward System and synchronize it with the PvP Reward Track System, making it alot more equally rewarding to how rewarding PvE/PvP is. Also making it alot easier and simple to receive your Bonus Reward Chests making them automatically Login Rewards on a weekly basis

5.) Implement Ascended Runes and Sigils to make Upgrades for PvE same as simple to handle, like building your Character is simple to handle in PvP, because of upgrades there being an acokittenbound mechanic which you can quickly switch out on the fly and where you need only to unlock for your account permanently the Rune and Sigil Effects

6.) Implement new Gathering Features with Fishing and Digging, which by themself will then provide also new Crafting Materials for the finally implemented Jeweler and Chef 500

7.) Completely split up the whole Skill and Trait Balance of the Game between PvP Versions and PvE/WvW-Versions, so that any PvP balance Changes will never again screw up anything else of this game

8.) Add to the Graphic Settigns the personal Options to decide if you want to have for your Account Personal Skill Noise Intensity to be on either minimum, medium, high or ultra setting, so that you can decide for yourself how intense the Skill Animations should be for you with also the option to make them flashier than normal.
Included to that an Option to activate or deactivate your personal setting to be copied upon every other players around you to be affected also or not by either activatign or deactivating the Option Player Noice Reduction.

9) Make 200% Crit Rate baseline and remove the Stat from the Game.
Merge the Effect from Healing Power into Vitality to improve the effectiveness of Vitality and make it this way a better and more desirable Stat, so that Vitality does both, increasign the Max Health and increasing your Heals.
Adding of the new Stats and Stat changes to Celestial Gear – it is ALL STAT GEAR, so it needs to have also all stats, this includes the new Stats Expertise and Concentration also too and that without nerfing for that all other Stats.
Add two new Stats for the Removal/Merge of Ferocity and Healing Power:

• Agility = So higher your Agility, so better regenerates your Endurance and so faster do your Class Mechanics like Steal, Death Shroud ect.recharge percentually
• Courage = So higher your Courage, so lesser are the Durations of Conditions you suffer on as a Counter Stat against Expertise which increases Condition Durations, so that a High Courage Build will counter a High Expertise Build.

10.) Add new Weapon Categories to the Game with Greataxes, Lances, Crossbows, Gauntlets/Claws, Whips/Chains and Throwing Weapons like Chakrams/Boomerangs/Shurikens

11.) Make the aquisition of Ascended Gear alot more diverse, not massively easier, but simply more diverse through the Redesign of WvW Reward, adding Ascended Equipment as UNIQUE rewards to Dungeons that you can earn only with Tokens and not with PvP for some nice new duungeon unique Weapon and Armor Set Skins.
Rebalance the Drop rates of ascended Equipment from World Bosses and add a Boss Token System that makes it possible to earn Ascended Equipment like Tequatls Sunless Weapons, if you don’t get them as loot from his Reward Chest – players should always receive for the defeat of a world boss also Boss Tokens that you can turn in for rewards like Ascended Equipment if you turn in enough tokens for them…

12.) Completely rebalance and redesign the whole Underwater Content of the Game, adding for Underwater Content complete own Underwater Traits and redesign the Underwater Skills, so that all of them are also useable under water. If a Skill can’t get redesigned to work also underwater, that skill will get removed from the game and replaced with a new Skill, WHICH SIMPLY CAN WORK EVERYWHERE. (What does not fit, is made to fit-principle)
Adding of more Underwater Content in form of Underwater PvP Map, Underwater Dungeon, Underwater Town “Atlantis”

13.) Adding of new playable Races starting with the Tengu, followed by completely redesigned Largos and ending it with a third and last completely new and never before seen race

14.) Remove and redesign all of the Racial Skills and rework that System into “Racial Masteries” which give each played race a much bigger difference and playing experience, that isn’t based on any in combat useable skills

15.) Completely redesign the Daily Achievement system and improve it to a on different Order Guild’s rank and reputation based DAILY JOB SYSTEM.
Return of Monthlies as part of that Redesign.
Introduction of Weeklies . Daily Jobs, Weekly Jobs and Monthly Jobs all will have their own limited Achievement Point which will be for all 3 categories fix 15000 AP.
So by reaching the limit for all these 3 categories, a player will have 45000 AP.
All 3 categories will be reachable in the same amount of time effort, as Weeklies and Monthlies will give significantly more AP than a Daily.
Daily = 1 AP
Weekly = 7 AP
Monthly = 30 AP
This will include also class based Order Guilds, a Thief for example will naturally be able to find a Thieves Guild for which he can do thief unique daily, weekly and mothly jobs that require of you to steal, stealth, stalk, assasinate alot more, than for example a guardian in their class based order guild, where you need to protect and escort more

16.) Completely rebalance all Sigils and Runes, making alot of them far more useful and competitive, while removing completely useless ones or porting them over into the Mastery System, like all the senseless Slayer Sigils and rebalance also all the Gemstone Upgrades to make them alot more useful and effective compared to Runes, so that the impact of Stats from them is significantly higher over the Stats you get from Runes, which have theirfore their passive effects that oftenly are more useful than just only Stats.

17.) Add more Minigames to the Game, like the long overdue and missing Polymok, Bar Brawls and especially a collectiable Trading Card Minigame that works similar to either FF8’s Triple Triad or similar to the Witcher 3’s Gwent.

18.) Adding of tons of alot more EMOTES to the Game

19.) Adding new Tier 4 and Tier 5 cultural armor sets (Ascended/Legendary)

20.) Completely redesign the Shatterer and the Claw of Jormag to make them alot more challenging battles with significantly improved rewards and complete own Achievement Sets like Tequatl

21.) Completely redesign all Dungeons, removing this silly Multiple Path System and make Dungeons into also persistent maps with their very own events and multiple floors where needed, where only the Story Parts of them are instanced

22.) Improve the Gameplay Modes Raids, Dungeons and Fractals of the Mist with more different content, which can be played also SOLO if you want:

• Heroic Fractals = Special Fractals that work like Bonus Mission Pacts and let you replay things of GW history out of the view of other Characters.
  Example: A Ghosts of Ascalon Heroic Fractal, in which you can replay the complete story of the Book out of the view from Dougal Keane or any other relevant Story character (Solo Fractal Content)
• Dungeon Crawlers = Special unique Raid Dungeons which you can play either solo or as group, which will always be different whenever you enter them, like for example a huge 100 floor tall tower dungeon that you need to climb up to reach at the top of it the divine sky temple of dwayna to receive a blessed reward from an avatar of dwayna for doign that challenge successfully reaching the temple alive and beatign all of the challenges over the 100 floors…
• Hunting Grounds = special raid maps which work like Monster Hunter, where you need to hunt down monsters of epic scale and defeat them to receive some unique rewards from this that you can find nowhere else and to rank up your reputation among the games Monster Hunter Guild to cash in more and better rewards and loot from more dangerous Hunting Jobs you will receive on higher Hunter Ranks when you have much better reputation as a monster hunter in the guild
• Guild Crusades = Special Guild only Raids, and a much more advanced form of the Guild Missions

23.) Add tons of new achievements and complete all the incomplete cheesehole mess that Anet left behind over the time, example add for all Regions of the Game their own Region Achievements, add own Guild Mission Achievements, add alot of missing Slayer Achievements, add missing and still bugged achievements like the Hero chievement for collecting all the rare loot bags from dungeons, that still isn’t implemented. Why hasn’t this one been fixed and implemented yet, while all others got fixed and implemented now???
Also completely rebalance alot of the existing achievements that give way too less AP for their efforts to give more AP.

24.) Completely rework the new Borderland Map, first scale the maps significantly down, they are at least like 25% way too big, then let players have in WvW also access to Masteries, especially GLIDING, the very high designed desert borderland is absolutely made for Gliding, so it doesn#t get into my hea,d why Anet disables for them then Gliding.
I’d also rework the vanilla game maps so that gliding can be used in them, so making basicalyl out of gliding a central tyria mastery that will work also in WvW.

25.) Completely redesign the WvW trait Effects to let them have all 10 Tiers of effects under the new WvW Rank System.
Add also completely new Class Specific WvW Traits so intensify with them each classes own specific roles in WvW, like a Thief in WvW becoming able to stealth longer in Wvw, to infiltrate Towers/Keeps better and to steal enemy supply without having to flip camps for that, so that you have a good reason for Wvw to play a specific clas,s because all classes in Wvw should be able to do something unique in that game mode for why the class will by useful and needed in WvW. Each class needs to have specific roles in WvW, strenghs and weaknesses agaisnt specific enemy types.
An Elementalist for example should have the wvw unique ability to be the only class, that is also able to deal damage with their skills against walls, so that Eles will be helpful by themself in destroying walls without needing to have siege weapons for that, while still siege weapons are by nature the most effective and fastest way, but eles should be able to support the destruction of walls with their skills, what should be something only THEY can do in WvW to give them a useful role as wall/gate destroyers, while guardians should be superior in wvw at everythign that includes defendign something, os that guardians get bonus effects when using siege weapons for defense or when protecting npcs and are better at reviving npcs and can give them unique buffs, while they are in their near.
The possibilities to make WvW in a class specific way alot more fun is endless here!!

And many more things I could list up that I’d change in this game…
Its simply after 3 years of playing this game way too much stuff that comes into your mind, that you’d change to the better, than you can list up here in a single post before your fingers start to bleed from all the writing ^^

Here’s somethings I still don’t see anyone else talking about:

Belt Pouch – a new UI element that has up to 4 key-bindable slots for at least consumables if not for weapons and armor as well. The first slot is obtained at Level 20, 2@40, 3@60 and all 4 at 80. If weapons/armor are possible they are still only swappable out of combat. Could even consider making it so you can stow an improvised weapon (one you just picked up off the ground) in the Belt Pouch for later use.

Action Camera – is great but we need to be able to change what Mouse1 and Mouse2 do. Simply make two new special binds in the list called AC Mouse1 and AC Mouse2 that accept the input of any key but only work if that key is also bound to something else like Walk Forward or Strafe Left or Dodge for example. Hardwiring what the mouse buttons do in Action Cam makes it totally useless to me and, I’m sure, many others.

Almost forgot, bring back personality traits, Charm, Dignity, Ferocity, and have them make a slight increase to certain stats, maybe even expanding beyond the three originals to encompass all available stats. Or find something else meaningful to give this part of the original concept of “My Story” new legs, because it’s not gone but it’s not really there anymore either.

I would get rid of RNG for everything.

I would rather grind out 1000 tickets of something knowing that I WILL get what I want rather than wasting my time essentially gambling with the possibility that my effort will go wasted and I never get what I want.

It’s a common design flaw in many MMOs because developers view RNG as a way to pad out gameplay, even if it’s at the cost of player enjoyment.

Even though this game isn’t very gear dependent, there is still a lot of annoying RNG stuff in the game.

My idea of a dream MMO, or rather, to transform GW2 in this dream MMO, would be to mix and match with elements that made other games so fantastic (for me)

Ragnarok with their class evolution system.
Tera with their BAMs
Ultima and Tibia with their housing system.
etc.

So let’s start with the basic:

The initial experience

Making your first character in GW2 and many other mmos is probably the most boring experience you can have in a game.

What can a new character do in their starting zone? Press 1, that’s it, auto attack everything.
If you start a sylvari you have a huge dragon to fight, but all you can do is press 1, where is the fun in that?

My idea is that instead of being able to choose your class at the start of the game, you start as this basic adventurer, you are free to pick whatever weapon you want to use, and all of them will have the 5 weapon skills.

To make things even more interesting, make it so that each race has their own approach on how to handle a weapon, similar to how racial skills were supposed to be a differential to each of them. This way when you start the game you have a set of weapons skills and Racial skills all tailored to your character and race.

Variety from the start.

Leveling and Story

First and most important, the story needs to be approached from a group perspective. Although I really like the story in GW2, I always hated the fact that I’m this single hero off to save the world, and it just so happens there are 1000 others just like me.

I would love if every story element of the game was designed around the idea of this 5 man party.

Back to the leveling process, make the story take you through the hoops of choosing a class, maybe tie them into each one of the orders?

Since the Priory prides themselves on being scholars and even the npcs acknowledge the fact that they are not fighters, it never made sense to have a warrior joining their ranks.
And speaking of orders, please, get rid of that stupid “None of the orders can agree on how to approach a fight with the elder dragons”, it’s like we are dealing with kids that can’t see the big picture, it’s just stupid.
If the story takes you to the process of chosing a class, then have the party split and each follow their own little story line based on the class they chose.

Again, this adds variety to the experience of each player. And they can later share that experience with one another.

Improving your class

For me personally, Hero Points are a complete mess because of the fact that they are tied into both specializations AND skill unlocks. If you don’t pay attention you will reach lv35 with all of your skills and no traits.

That needs to go.

Leveling up should grant you points for leveling the specializations, maybe a system similar to masteries where you chose to focus one until that finishes and you move to the next?

So when you reach lv35 and is summoned to your first dungeon you already have that trait line + your skills.

I honestly don’t know what I would do with the Hero Points of today, first there needs to be a difference between places of power and Fight challenges. But what would they reward? I’m not sure.

Dungeons – Fractals – Raids

Considering all of them have some sort of story, tie them with the actual story, consider them an introduction to Fractals and Raids, increasing the level of difficulty and challenge with each one.

In order to avoid the whole “80’s only” for them though, the scaling system needs to be improved.

If the best gear for lv35 is masterwork, make the gear a lv80 is using equalize to masterwork.
If a lv35 only has access to the first specialization, the same should be true to the lv80.

Dungeons need to be fixed and redone from the ground up. Honestly, the story is the same childish approach like the 3 orders “We have these 3 horrible things happening, but for some reason we can only deal with one”.

Either allow us to choose to deal with everything at once (with even bigger reward) or something else, don’t know.

Gear – Stats

This is my biggest gripe with the game right now.

Some stats are extremely easy to get (berserker) and others are just a time gated pain (celestial).
For a game that promised the freedom to play how you want, this is the biggest turn off.

I would prefer a system where when finding a new gear I can pick the stats I want for it, after I pick the stats the armor is either bound to the character or account and given a name based on the stats chosen.

For the runes and sigils, I would rather have them changing my gameplay rather than just increasing my stats. I want more things like air and fire to add effects to my weapons, or vampire runes to make a character cenetered around life steal.

Runes and sigils need to add a new dynamic to your character rather than increse in stat.

This would solve my second biggest gripe with the game.

Crafting

This system is a nightmare, it desperately needs a completely revamp. Making every gear a blank state where we can chose the stats ourselves would be the first step in cleaning up.

I understand some people love to use crafting to level alts, but for me personally, I would preffer if this was tied directly into your account.
No more losing recipes because you deleted a character.

In the case of scribing, their new crafting profession, it needs to be tied directly into the guild, this can’t be tied to a person that can leave a guild at any time.

World Bosses – Champions

World bosses are a completely disappointment for me, the fist time I saw Shadow Behemoth was amazing, but then the fight ended up being a simple “Press 1 to win”, and this seems to be the biggest joke in the game, with world bosses and even the fight against Zaithan.

First and foremost, every starter zone needs to have their own World Boss (there is none in Plains of Ashford).

Second the encounter needs to be far more enganging than just pressing 1 button while standing still.

In the case of Shadow Behemoth, this is a creature that is trying to break free into our world. So maybe make the event centered around the players protecting a group of scholars perfoming a ritual to send the creature back to its world?

In the case of Tequatl, instead of stabbing his foot until he’s dead, focus more on the turrets, on the champions he spawns, make him fly more, why would a dragon even stay so long on the ground? Make the fight more centered around keeping the turrets, cannons in one piece, rather than stab his foot.

Most important, we need more NPC’s explaining the encounter, more events leading to it where we learn what to expect from it, or even why that is happening.

In the case of Tequatl, we could have NPCs screaming to the players that they need people covering area X and Y, and that those turrets are still empty, etc.

NPC’s – Allies and Enemies

This is the thing I love the most about this game, NPC interactions, the two kids near the bank in LA, or the two kids near the Hylek camp in Caledon Forest, I absolutely adore how NPC’s feel alive.

But it can be better, to start, they move slower than the player, and that is infuriating when doing an event where we have to escort them.

Second, they are weak, so weak, if an npc is a trained soldier with years of training on his back, he should’nt go down in a single strike after trying to use only a single attack.

For the enemies, the only difference a champion and a regular enemy have seems to be the total HP, that’s lame.

We have Regular, Veterans, Elites and Champions enemies. Instead of just increasing their HP, make it so that each increase in rank gives them new abilities. FAR more abilities.

One of the things that GW2 lacks the most is that combat are not engaging, either the enemy hits too hard and you will die in one hit, or they don’t hit at all and you can just dps like crazy.

Enemies need more attacks, more diversity.

And when doing so, we need a new effect for the enemy AOE spells. The single Red Line is near impossible to see in some cases like when dealing with the Harpies in Fractals above scale 10.

Maps and events

Meta Events maps like the ones presented in HoT need to go, honestly, having to separate 2h of my life to do a map is not my idea of fun;

Specially when the map punishes you for exploring instead of advancing the meta. This needs to stop.

GW2 was a fun game because you had the freedom to explore the land and find an NPC doing something on his own and then discovering that was leading to an event.
It’s fun going to a map I already got 100% on and discovering that there are still events I’ve never seen it happen.

We need more of that, far more variety on the events in a map, and to make sure they work (because after 3 years there are still events broken)

Exploring should be the major selling point of any map, and exploring should be rewarding at points.

One of the things I hate is finding a tresaure chest guarded by a champion and getting nothing but junk.

I want more treasures, more Jumping Puzzles, more exploration. I want to explore a cave and find the journal of a previous adventurer, with just a tiny little bit of lore about that place, about that body, there doesnt need to be any reward for stuff like that, but it still feels awesome to come across.

Jumping Puzzles and movement skills

Jumping Puzzles right now are a major letdown for me, with the current system what you see the most are Mesmer completing them and offering a portal to others.
This way anyone can have their achievement, without actually doing anything.

Every class needs to have a movement skill of their own, and that skill needs to be allowed to be used in all aspects of the game. No more of that silly “No valid path” because there was a tiny piece of rock in front of you.

If the current Jumping Puzzles would be too easy to complete with a single teleport, make them more challenging, where you are presented with a choice to either wait every time for the cooldown, or simple do it the “legit” way.

One concern raised by this is that WvW would be too easy for people to infiltrate forts. In that case forts should be designed with defenses for that.

Consider for a moment the story in Season 2, Kasmeer a mesmer can open portals in any place she wants, but because of the Asura technology in DryTop her magic was not working.

Not only that, her magic has a range limit, just like players, so even if someone can infiltrate the first gate, maybe they will find themselves surrounded by traps and elite mobs? There is a world of possibilities on how to approach that.

WvW and PvP.

Combine the two into a single beast, since both are already happening in the mists. Make PVP an area inside WvW, with duel and arenas, and all the game modes we currently have.

With WvW being combined into pvp, the current pvp system needs to go, allow people to choose the stats for their gear as well as the runes and accessories.

This system should be completely separated from the PVE aspect of the game, with its own ways of generating gold, its own dungeons and raids. Can you imagine a dungeon where two teams are racing to the finish and they are allowed to kill each other in the process?

As for the maps, get rid of those 3 copy and paste maps, that is ridiculous, WVW needs to be a proper world, with a space as big as Tyria for PVE.

Balance

Balance should be defined by WvW/PVP, period. I find it horrible the idea of a skill working one way in PVE and a completely different way on PVP.

But when I say I want the balance focus to be for WvW, is because I expect the AI to behave more like a playe instead of that brainless single attack type we have now.

Trading Post

The current trading post is a completely nightmare to use, I’ve never seen a system so slow, the whole things needs to be redone. It needs to be faster, have a better search functionality, default to my max level when searching for weapon and armors, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t think right now.

Map rewards / Level up Rewards / Non stop clicking

If I use tomes to level a character to 80, I’ll have to spend the next 10 or so minutes clicking over and over again until I get all those useless level up rewards.

Every time I complete a heart, I have to click on the little heart and then OK.
Every time I complete a meta event, I have to open the chest on top of the map.
Every time I complete a reward track, again click that chest.

For all of those, I would then gain new containers with more containers to more clicking.
After you finally open all those, you would salvage all those useless gear into materials, deposit all of them, and then consume all your luck.

There’s WAY TO MUCH clicking, too much time is spent with useless stuff rather than enjoying the game.

I can’t think of how to improve all those system, but anything would be better than the current.

Npcs that salvage everything for you? Luck is removed from the game and magic find as well? Those are some possibilities.

Bundles

Make them more useful in different situations of the game, and a good option for combat, or getting out of combat, this way people have the freedom to not depend on other players when they want to do something. Stealth kits for example should last a bit more.

So many other things

I loved so many of the suggestions on the thread that I wish I could just add all of them in this document, but I just don’t have the organizational skills to do that.

Wolfeng.3784:

Honestly HoT killed the game for me, I’ve never felt this disappointed with a game before, I’ve always had my share of issues with the game and all the unfixed bugs, but this expansion killed the game for me.

I’m sure I’m not alone on this, and with that said, I’m wondering, how would you shape GW2 to be your dream game?

I have my own ideas, but I can’t express them without being overly sarcastic and rude, so I will let others do the talking.

tl,dr: If you could change everything in the game to make it your masterpiece, your dream game, what would it be?

Honestly, at this point they would have to change so many base mechanics that it would be impossible to do.

1) Fractals are boring, RNG and mistlocks (read: not difficult… but annoying).

Fractals being their “go to” for a dungeon replacement was simply a bad decision.

2) The ’difficulty" in this game, is simply defined by not getting 1 shot. Rather than being able to outlast mechanics and using your classes mechanics to their peak. For example in other MMOs: the healer is doing their job, the tank is doing his (actually having to build for survivabilty, rather than a dps class with 1 toughness piece on. All the while avoiding high dmging mechanics that would get you killed (read: not 1 shot. because 1 shots are stupid, please stop putting that in the game anet). The dps is pumping out as much dmg as they can while not standing in fire, and taking out adds and kitten.

You could say VG was a step in the right direction, but that needs to spread to the rest of the game. Dungeons NEED to be updated, kitten fractals, frankly.

3) Liquid rewards in game need to be a thing, and anet needs to stop making every decision based on making more money from gems.

Legendary pre-cursor crafting taking 50+ ascended mats, more ascended mats requried to make ascended armor (damask patches)… to say the least… yeah its all for kittening gem sales don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

Yes they need to make money… but make a game people want to play, and put gem shop items that are cool and people will buy them, it’s simple. Trying to force it upon us with these kittenty decisions only make us hate you.

a) on the topic of putting more liquid rewards in-game. Take out gold to gems conversion, and make all items in the gem store able to be sold on the TP and traded to other players (much like TERAs cash shop method). It works great for them, and would work wonders in this game.

4) Balance classes more often if you want to not be a joke when claiming to be esports. Releasing HoT, then not doing a proper balance before leagues, was just plain amateur. Whoever made this decision should have a serious talking to from a higher up.. if your higher ups even understand wtf is going on.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m so done with this game right now I don’t even want to continue this post.

Wolfeng.3784:

tl,dr: If you could change everything in the game to make it your masterpiece, your dream game, what would it be?

GW1 combat and classes (only updated for modern tech) in the GW2 world.

Honestly, HoT brought out the intended combat in PvE, which was not used in vanilla maps, as mobs were too simplified, too much HP as difficulty scale, very low attack power and harmless abilities that required no need for active defenses or any kind of skill.

As of now, I’m only playing in Maguuma jungle, Dry Top and Silverwastes. Only reason for me to revisit old maps and dungeons, would be farming of Hero Points, Daily Achievements and materials for the guild (although I despise wasting my time farming instead of playing the game). My vanilla masteries are levelled up by material farm mostly.

Active Combat all the way! Not those passive ones that pretty much all free to play MMOs do.

What I would change in GW2?

1. Restore human Necromancer’s Axe skill 1 animation to the original. The new one sucks donkey!
2. Fix the object directions in skill effects (many objects spawned as effect for skills have broken axis atm, which makes them to face odd directions)
3. Update all mobs and events in Vanilla maps, fix the kitten game content so that going “Full-Berserker-DPS” is a glass cannon, not a “Superior build for everything” which trivializes every other build.

I’d change every personnel in charge of the PvP scene.

Long term success is built around a backbone that ironically can’t be changed, and since it ain’t broke nobody need talk of ‘fixing it’.

If GW2’s backbone is considered ‘meh’ then start work on a GW3? lol

“Although I really like the story in GW2, I always hated the fact that I’m this single hero off to save the world, and it just so happens there are 1000 others just like me.
I would love if every story element of the game was designed around the idea of this 5 man party.
Back to the leveling process, make the story take you through the hoops of choosing a class, maybe tie them into each one of the orders?”

I see lots of problems here:

1.Lots of vets wouldn’t even bother helping lowbies help with their story, resulting in long queue times. If anything story mode dungeons should be made soloable since they’re needed to unlock PvP reward tracks.

2.Makes the gameplay bend to the story too much instead of the other way around.

3.Too story-centric, meaning focus and resources go into cutscenes and voice acting instead of actual gameplay elements.

4.Story carries with it the baggage of limits. Imagine this discussion:

“Let’s add this cool outfit!” “Nope, that wouldn’t logically exists in the world” “Fine, scrap it.” Because of the rules and “logic” of lore and story great ideas get the ax. Fun and mechanics must always come first. Story just gives us the excuse to do awesome stuff, a story should be written to accommodate doing cool things and seeing cool things. In other words when writing a script for Batman minimize Batman’s time as Bruce Wayne and fit in as much action as possible while still making sense and being plausible in that universe.

5.I made my thief join the priory and elementalist whispers on purpose because I liked the neat contrast.

“In the case of Tequatl, we could have NPCs screaming to the players that they need people covering area X and Y, and that those turrets are still empty, etc.”

Problem there is people would get penalized for listening to their Ipods, keep cues visual.

“For the runes and sigils, I would rather have them changing my gameplay rather than just increasing my stats. I want more things like air and fire to add effects to my weapons, or vampire runes to make a character cenetered around life steal.
Runes and sigils need to add a new dynamic to your character rather than increase in stat.”

They already do. For example I know that eagle runes give precision and extra damage to those below 50% health. This means mobs I’m fighting have a decreased chance of recovering and ensures my advantage and pressure stay up. Likewise against champs their HP goes down faster. I also have gear that lacks precision on it for my thief, so eagle runes and critical strikes are a good way to make up for that (zealot has no ferocity, crusader has no precision though I only have a helmet, and marauder has less precision than berserker.) I also use fire runes. They do change gameplay but in a subtle way. For major gameplay changes you need traitlines or even classes.

“Fix the object directions in skill effects (many objects spawned as effect for skills have broken axis atm, which makes them to face odd directions)”

Yeah I sometimes aim druid staff 4 in odd directions because aiming it while moving is difficult since you need to either hope the mouse cursor is in the right spot or stop and turn it. It should always face target if AoE lock under target is selected.

The management

The guildsystem.
And alot more, but I’m thinking about it right now!

The multi-guild system blows, I like the guilds in other games way more.
You get a real guild feeling there. You can ofcourse archieve this too with 100% represent guilds.
But you can also archieve the same things multi-guild system provides with a Linkshell option from FF14. It basically lets you make a groupchat.

I don’t like that non-representing members can see what I say!
Some people are never representing, yet they see every word I speak in guildchat.
(Though I do block them then)
I don’t want some random eavesdropper, not that I’m so interesting.
But if they wanna talk with groups of friends or ppl for some specific content, an ingame groupchat sounds alot more practical than another guild.

Thieves, every skill they use would turn them into an ambient Rat…

Timers and 2-hour meta event cycles (and the associated “taxi wars”) need to die a horrible, fiery, Dhuumscythed death. I’m really disappointed that the entire open world content of HoT is based on this.

Replace with Silverwastes-esque way to push the map forward and leave the participation % system to discourage people from map-hopping at the last minute.

The person(s) in charge and get a group together that could take charge and return the game to its’ roots.
and a new forum.

-Make gameplay smoother and faster; increase overall running speed by 10%, no decrease while under attack unless you use attack skills yourself.
-Increase itemdrops. Every item should be droppeble so you have a chance to get it without having to grind for crafting materials.
-Make PvE soloable for everyone
-Jumping puzzles and Fractals; only as sideboard games for fun, but no need to do them for any reward.
-Seperate PvP / PvE in a way that PvE can level up beyond 80.
-Monthly a new set of items to drop (armor & weapons – replacing old ones which are added to the gemstore)
-Maybe hard to realize, but I would love it to see the Diablo III adventure mode (a random set of instanced -already excisting- events with great rewards) in GW2, for PvE and randomly replaced everytime you log in.

Upper management and CEO===>>>>>>> buh byes!

Redfeather.6401:

Long term success is built around a backbone that ironically can’t be changed, and since it ain’t broke nobody need talk of ‘fixing it’.

If GW2’s backbone is considered ‘meh’ then start work on a GW3? lol

Are you nuts? How long did we have to wait from GW1 to 2 and we get an unfinished rushed beta for a core game. You should have been here for the Karma BS and farm nerfs because devs have ZERO foresight.

The power creep that went too far with HoT and elite specs

1. Balance skills separately for PvE & PvP

2. Greater variety of skills/traits and a separate pool of weapon skills

3. Increased availability of ascended gear (via drops or currency; overall acquisition to be about 2-3x harder than exotic) and stat-changing; legendaries with rune/sigil change.

4. Heroes for instanced content; hard mode with a sidekick option/stat boost solo for regular pve

5. trading without tp/mail

6. dungeons scaling to party size (solo-friendly)

7. Re-re-worked reward structure (specifically for dungeons & fractals)

8. Districts from GW1

9. Build-saving

10. Better mechanics for 50+fractals instead of stacking instabilities

11. More armors & less outfits; bundled AND unbundled items

12. Bring back content like SAB, Queen’s gauntlet, etc.

13. Less RNG across the board

14. rework guild upgrades to work around primarily aetherium, resonance, guild missions, etc. (instead of draining member banks)

15. separate lobby for raids; multiple difficulty levels for raids; separate tab in lfg for raids

16. fine-tuning for adventures availability; remove mastery points from adventures & add them to other open-world/story content

17. remove timers from meta in hot maps; player driven meta progression (closer to SW)

18. participation credit reworked; lenient reconnect feature for disconnects

Oblivion.9032:

*TL;DR: This is a long post.

Wow, Oblivion, in your case TL;DR = Too Legit; kitten Right! Your comments should be a sticky… this entire topic should be a sticky!

Here’s what killed GW2 for me:
1) Nerfing rewards across the board in several ways.
2) As of the Nov 17th patch, my client is crashing & being kicked to my desktop a few times everyday (usually happens in major events like Octovine & Vinewrath).
3) The nail in the coffin, the visual nerfs to special effects (which according to Colin have nothing to do with E-Sports).

Because of the visual nerfs, I can no longer play in spite of some of my family & friends still playing GW2. Since ArenaNet is refusing to address the nerfing of special effects & to give players a graphics options for full effects, I feel I would have been better off buying a PS4 instead of the excessive gem store purchases I have made. I hope A-Net proves me wrong, but after nearly 600 complaints and 15,000 views, I highly doubt ever seeing one response from the Developers. Very sad.

The most important thing to change for me is a change towards more lore. Ways to do that are adding lore tidbits on loading screens (similar to the Elder Scrolls games for example, something like this was part of GW2 but scrapped before release) and a collection of information on cultures/history/enemies (similar to Mass Effect’s Codex, GW2 had lore books before its release, that was at least something).

Feature-wise I do not really desire that much. Things like build saving, solo queue, a seperate tab for raid party making and things like that would be nice but no where near as nice as more lore exposition in my opinion. Well, to some extent something like ME’s codex could be seen as content if the codex has to be filled by actually finding books/locations/monuments and by killing enemies.

Oh something else I wouldn’t mind but isn’t high up on my list of wishes: make activities (things like Sanctum Sprint) always available instead of having only one available each day. Also make it so that you can enter activities with a party so you can compete against friends.

Something that is somewhat high on my list: Make sure all professions have 1 healing skill and 1 elite skill of every utility skill type they have access to.

Oh and most importantly: Ignore most posts on the forum/reddit (including mine). Not only do they represent a vocal minority, they also contradict each other. Even if they were not contradicting, if those ideas were implemented the same people who said they wanted them will probably say they don’t them i.e. people are bad at knowing what they want.

I mainly pvp and balance has just gotten so bad it’s not even worth playing any more. I realise no game is 100% balanced but most competitive games achieve some form of balance. Anet refuses to split pve/pvp skills so the pvp aspect of the game will never be great because of this and many other factors

I sent this to Anet last night, and while it could perhaps do with a bit of re-tuning to fit this thread precisely, a quick copy & paste job will have to suffice. Thanks for bearing with me.

“As the (lengthy) subject title states: this game has a number of things going for it, however, the astronaut-walking-underwater-speed for all characters is not one of them! Even with perma-speed boost signets and haste effects (that are way too short to be really meaningful without tinkering about with other game mechanics which just isn’t fun), makes this game a tedious bore and chore to suffer through as opposed to enjoy. That’s a shame because you at Anet have created a beautiful, lore-rich game with both humor, challenges, and decent characters.

Why won’t you make the 25% speed boost status the default speed for all races and professions from the get-go? Then further add a 30% speed boost as the speed/swiftness boost from other abilities? Why this perceived need to artificially slow down the players? The game world is huge as it is with plenty of things to grind and quest for over many weeks, months, years even. There is no monthly subscription, so that can’t be used to justify the deliberately monotonous pace of the game.

I’ve already spent (too much) money on this game, it’s expansion, and various cosmetic trinkets. (The pricing for many of these are absurd, though that is a different topic.) For example, I just bought “The Witcher III” for PC for half the asking price of “Heart of Thorns”, and that game has a lot of similarities to “Guild Wars 2” and plenty of content (that I don’t have to pay extra for) to keep me busy for at least as long as GW2, if not longer.

I would like to continue playing GW2 and support Anet in making it a compelling and importantly a fun experience. Moving about as though stuck in a mud pit (even worse when for some bizarre reason one is automatically slowed down while near hostile forces even if one has no desire to stick around and fight – what happened to “fight or flight”?) makes it so mind-numblingly, soul destroyingly tedious and un-fun to face the prospect of doing that for any character build – let alone multiple ones, and especially the ones that have no serious speed boosts for long periods of time (ex. the otherwise excellent Revenant) until well past level 80+ and in to the end-game content. How many players are honestly going to make it that far? Why must this game be a chore instead of a pleasure? That is, after all, the purpose of games – to be entertaining, not something to be suffered through and survived.

If this isn’t the “proper channel” to voice these sentiments, then please pass them along to the right person(s) and/or department(s). These issues surely can not have escaped the technically adept sensibilities of the development teams at Anet.

Thank you advance.

Best regards,
KFD"

RoRo.8270:

I mainly pvp and balance has just gotten so bad it’s not even worth playing any more. I realise no game is 100% balanced but most competitive games achieve some form of balance. Anet refuses to split pve/pvp skills so the pvp aspect of the game will never be great because of this and many other factors

Totally agree! Many great MMORPGs ceased to be fun and died because of applying PvP class balances to PvE content; they should remain separate.

TheKFDCase.7068:

I’ve already spent (too much) money on this game, it’s expansion, and various cosmetic trinkets. (The pricing for many of these are absurd, though that is a different topic.) For example, I just bought “The Witcher III” for PC for half the asking price of “Heart of Thorns”, and that game has a lot of similarities to “Guild Wars 2” and plenty of content (that I don’t have to pay extra for) to keep me busy for at least as long as GW2, if not longer.

I would like to continue playing GW2 and support Anet in making it a compelling and importantly a fun experience.

Well spoken, counselor! What say ye in your defense, ArenaNet? Nothing? As far as I am concerned, the TheKFDCase is closed. Judgement for the players.

I’d add underwater content. More underwater utilities, and instances that are strictly underwater- add back raid on the capricorn in PvP & balance underwater fighting.
The main reason I got Gw2 was because I thought there would be as much underwater content as there would anything else only to be completely shut out of that.

I’d add more racial, tier armors. More profession specific armors, like how in Gw1 necromancers armors were different from elementalists, ritualists & mesmers- you wouldn’t see the same armor on a mesmer as you would an elementalist or necro basically.

More customization options, Like I hate seeing clones of my ele out there because you cannot edit faces much from what they already look like. I’d want more facial & hair customization options so visually you can look 100% different when you edit the face & hair as opposed to what you can already do now; which is barely change the length & rotation of certain proportions of the face, but generally you still look as you did before currently. I’d want options to change hair lengths, add makeup & change makeup color. Freckles, moles, wrinkles, scars wouldn’t be locked under certain faces either, you’d be able to add any or all of these to any face you wanted. Body shapes & sizes, not everyone wants to play a physically fit Solid B-C cup female or a bulky to extremely thin male. Some people want overweight or androgynous figures.

Visually change spells to give more awe & the option to toggle animations on & off with a slider. Example: Fire for eles currently looks like falling cheeseballs or the animation of a skill is so tiny you barely notice it due to the visual nerf. Basically you can toggle the effects of skills & they’d get a visual upgrade.

I’d make the shatterer & claw more like tequatl, I mean they’re huge dragons so where is the fun in standing in 1 spot & pressing 1. I’d be okay with having to dodge every few moments. So many aspects of gw2 seems so easy it’s not fun. I’m not saying make it all like HoT (which HoT isn’t hard, but you can’t really just stand in 1 spot & press 1)

If there was going to be an expansion released, I’d make sure it was expansion worthy, unlike hoT- which they called it an expansion to make you buy it for 70$+, but what they were really selling was a DLC which generally are only worth 15-25$.