Guild Wars 2

I’m going to start off by saying that this is my personal opinion of where I would like this game to go. There will probably be a lot left out as I’ll try to state the things I would love to see the most. This also means that I will not give full examples of the progression I would like to see to keep things clean.

- Instances
It’s been said before, but playing with people you don’t know can be problematic when something happens to the instance leader. Simple solution: create a new host after the instane leader is no longer in your party. And on top of that let vote kicking require at least 3 votes, considering 4 people can vote, I feel 3 is a better amount to warrant a kick.
Que’ing for a zone should come back. ‘’Join in’’ should redirect you to the que if a map was full. This should solve a lot of the issues people are having when they are doing world events.

- Gemstore
More meaningful items that increases user friendliness.
An example would be a 6 slot bag that you can purchase that is shared amongst all your characters.
No ’’lottery’’ themed items.

- Living World
More impactfulness on the world. Often people come back to the game from a break and ask ’’what’s new? what did I miss?‘’… and sadly now the answer is ’’not much’’. Not because the content was few, but because it was temporary or non-replayable.
For example, the LA events were fun to do. But when I got there after the events, I was done exploring after 15 minutes. Thew new fractals are amazing, but there’s a good possibility a lot of casual people will not get to see them in a timely manner.
The aetherblade path is a good example. Although there’s not a real incentive for replayability.
I feel the story part of the living world has been discussed enough.

- Dungeons
Balance the rewards. Fix the exploits. I can’t stress this enough.
Get a topic up to create the top priority issues in dungeons and address them.
You want the community to know that you’re listening? That’d be a perfect way.
Take a better look at scaling down. Since the ferocity all of the lower level dungeons are too easy. More dungeons that offer interesting rewards and have interesting mechanics. Right now there’s too much of an emphasis on ‘’line of sight’’ in most of the dungeons. This creates boring gameplay and less replayability. So, whenever new dungeons will come around take that in consideration to make for a better experience.

- Fractals
Balance the rewards. Fix the exploits. Same deal, get a topic up in the same fashion as dungeons would get one. The biggest issue right now I feel is that the rewards are too random. You can’t work towards a nice reward, and I feel really sad when I get something I don’t want. Another issue is that fractal relics (prestine and normal) don’t really have any use after you get what you want. In comparisment, you can use dungeon tokens to get rares to salvage or exotics to forge.
The instabilities are not increasingly becoming harder. They are a random mixture of quirky mechanics.
On a side note, there was a preview stream up for the ’’fractured’’ release and a lot what was promised still has to happen. More clarity on this subject would be greatly appreciated. As well as more feedback on the ’’Fractured’’ sub-forum.

- Exploration / New Zones
If there’s going to be new zones they have to have interesting mechanics to them.
Southsun cove is a good example of how not to make a new zone. After the events that happened there, there’s not much reason to go back except for the karka queen.
So, what makes an interesting zone?
Right now we only have: Exploration / Events / Bosses.
Take a look at what worked in other games.
For instance the ‘’Fissure of Woe’’ in Guild Wars 1.
The area was challenging, rewarding, not always accesible*, gave you things to desire, offered a special merchant, interesting enemies/bosses, fun mechanics, surprises and special loot.
Another simple idea you could do is make the whole area transform you into a special being depending on where you are. Go through sand: Wurm, water: Shark, grass: Panther.
But in conclusion: make the area interesting enough for people to come back to.

- Horizontal Progression
Stats are a possibility, but not in the way of replacing gear.
Ascended gear should never be replaced. But, you could think of adding an additional slot for ascended gear. Another slot for a special ring that increases a certain condition damage in PvE? Definitely a lot of possibilities / cool stuff to come up with.
Do more of what people like! Upgrading an item multiple times, according to what I’ve seen, is what people love. Spinal backpiece and the fractal backpack as examples.
Another possibility would be ‘’the more you use something, the better it becomes’‘. This could be tied in to exploration / new zones.
What I don’t want: watch out for power creep. Ascended already snuck a bit of overpoweredness in. As I said, this is manifesting itself more heavily in downscaled content with ferocity.

- Combat
More emphasis on how combat works. Offer more custimization (to tone down effects). Less ‘’on hit’’ effects, these clutter vision too much. The marionette is an example of something that worked really well.

For players I would personally love a lot more colors/shapes to distinguish certain area of effect. Some examples:
Things that work well: Sanctuary / Wall of Reflection / Feedback / Portal / Banners
Things that don’t work well: Hallowed Ground / Null Field / Healing Spring / Wells

For monsters: More emphasis on telegraphing of boss attacks. These offer the best gameplay I’ve experienced in any boss fights. Make it obvious what the boss is doing, what you need to do, but keep it challenging.
Less ‘’one hit KO’’ mechanics.
Take Mai Trinn for example. Her own attacks are not telegraphed enough, but the shots from Horrick are. It’s obvious what you need to do, but it’s not too easy. No one shot KO’s, but you’re being spammed with damage and conditions while maneuvering.

- Class balance
I’m totally open for a new way to approach class balance. Right now I feel that a lot of the tweaks and modifications are minor and are pushing classes closer to eachother, but the tempo at which this is happening is too slow for a lot of people.
I hope to see the CDI on professions have shed more light on what the community wants. But, I would like to see this realised by more drastic changes. Heck, let’s go crazy and double the damage of a ranger with a longbow. If it’s too strong, tone it down. Give that pet a mighty shout, granting swiftness for 3s every 30 seconds to your party.
In other words: I would love it if you were more open to drastic changes and see how the community likes them!

- Stat balance
Make conditions as viable as zerkers when they spec for full damage. Specifically in PvE this is needed.
There’s several ways to achieve this. My personal preference:
So first of all I would love to specify should make bezerker damage different from condition damage. Condition damage is flat, as in a constant stream of damage (bleed ticks for 300 damage every second). Bezerker damage is fluctuating damage. (100 – 300 – 500 in 3 hits over 3 seconds).
If you look at how you can increase condition damage, it is simply lacking.
You can use: Condition damage (and might) and condition duration. That’s it.
Bezerkers can use: Power ( and might), Precision, Ferocity.
The biggest issue here is that all the stats of a bezerker amplify eachother.
You don’t really achieve this with condition builds right now.
I would love a rework to power to give it some sort of amplification to condition specs as well. My idea would be to add the ‘’weapon damage’’ to the total damage pool of the condition damage you would deal.
Easier to show what I mean in an example

Scepter auto attack on a necro now does this:
Blood Curse – Damage: 204 – Bleeding(6s) 471 Damage
Rending Curse – Damage: 204 – Bleeding(6s) 471 Damage
Putrid Curse – Damage: 292 – Poison(4s) 624 Damage

What I would want the Scepter auto attack to do:
Blood Curse – Damage: 204 – Bleeding(6s) 471 +202 Damage
Rending Curse – Damage: 204 – Bleeding(6s) 471 +204 Damage
Putrid Curse – Damage: 292 – Poison(4s) 624 +292 Damage

This way, you can utilize your power just as efficient on a condition necromancer as on a bezerker warrior.

- New skills
Give weapons skills to choose from. To keep it ’’easily’’ balanced, give each slot 2 weapon skills to choose from. Then when they are in a good state, go to 3 choices per weapon slot. It is essential that you keep them bound to the slot so that balance won’t be too big of an issue.
First things first, I would love to see more Elite Skills. I feel these would add the most to gameplay.

- New legendaries
Greater variety of legendaries. I have the hunch this is already in the working and will be related to the new way to obtain pre-cursors. All I can say is I’m looking forward to it. PvE tracks rewarding you with a pre-cursor of your choice in the end would be awesome! One track to choose a specific rifle-precursor box at the end? Use it to make the new legendary or The Predator. I’m really looking forward to this, and the sooner the better. Heck, why not tie it into the Living Story season 2? Make it an epic adventure to go through your reward track and get pre-legendary loot!

- Skill Balance
I would love to get more statistics here.
For instance, least used skills should be made more interesting.
Some skills sadly serve no purpose. Such as Signet of Mercy.
That’s my biggest concern.
I feel individual topics would cover the more problematic issues better regarding utility skills.
But please, get a topic up for each specific weapons for each profession.
Take a good look at how each specific skill functions, and how to make more skills as usable as others. There’s several weapons that need some love.

And on a small sidenote, perhaps show people in wvw with basic weapons and no backpieces when you use ‘’Best Performance’’. Thanks for reading!

GW2 should be going pretty much in the direction it is now but with
- better quality of story
- more permanent content in the living story
- more ways to cycle historical content (like the marionette)
- ongoing resolution of old problems (like graphics flare)
- improved design so that things work when delivered (eg contested waypoints with megaserver)
- improved design of open world events with total scaling solutions rather than the haphazard scaling we have currently

In other words, it just needs a lot more technical quality in the design.

Stooperdale.3560:

- improved design of open world events with total scaling solutions rather than the haphazard scaling we have currently

Scaling, yes. Very scaling. Much needed. wow…

This would be pretty much the only way to restore my faith in this game. Heavy, zerg-punishing scaling.

Asmodeus.5782:

Stooperdale.3560:

- improved design of open world events with total scaling solutions rather than the haphazard scaling we have currently

Scaling, yes. Very scaling. Much needed. wow…

This would be pretty much the only way to restore my faith in this game. Heavy, zerg-punishing scaling.

Zerg-punishing is the wrong way to go. Players participating in the zerg do it because they have nothing else to do. Anet should be encouraging them not to do it by offering better options, rather than discouraging them from doing it, which is, in essence, telling them not to play.

better decision making
/ end thread
n_n

cheshirefox.7026:

better decision making
/ end thread
n_n

Bingo.

I agree with a lot of that.

For the new zones to have a purpose though, Anet will have to surrender Gem Store tie ins. Meaning, new armor sets and weapons skins will have to be exclusive to those new areas so that people that want them can earn them in those new areas.
Anet track record thus far is: Add a playable Commercial (the LS) and toss in some time limited gear into the Gem Store. —- IMO, this reeks of cheap f2p games and doesn’t fit well with Anet reputation.

I would also like to see dungeons be scaled per person: Allowing a single player to go in and “solo” it. Why? I’ve had each of my characters get kicked from a group and or people leave the group if I’m not in full exo gear… I’m trying to get that gear with the dungeon tokens… so of course I don’t have it yet. Endlessly frustrating and annoying. If I could go in solo and get the “goods” then I can go back with my gear join the rest.

In Beta players complained about a lack of racial armor diversity. All races starting in human armor and for the most part stay in human armor. Yet the nameless NPCs doing nothing but drinking or standing around with a finger in their nose look more “Epic” and more like their race than most of the players do… ugh

Finally, I think they should ditch the LS and go with the full blown expansion a B2P title should be focusing on.
An Expansion would add staying content worth taking each alt through and keep me playing vs the LS which I’m able to rush one character through and then stuck grinding out the temp stuff it comes with… not fun, nor entertaining.

Anyway, just my two cents (opinion) on it.

Better bug fixing and content implementation too.

I agree with much of what you said OP.

I think my own personal want in this regard are some elite non-solo friendly zones. Nothing but groups of elite-thru-champion mobs who act like player built teams. Perhaps something like you see with the aetherblades or some mobs from the LS events.

Only problem I see with that is that it may result in zergs going from first wp in map and mobbing from there to other side of map.

I guess what I want is a better LS Lions Arch under attack type of zone, harder and larger with chances at some real rewards/crafting materials. If this could be done while breaking up the zerg, I guess that would be my ideal play area in this sort of everyone can get credit from a kill type game. Scarlets invasion (the one that hopped zones) was the other version of this. Just add many end of invasion bosses with special loot at the end of the event chain.

Reward wise, make use of zone only armor/weapon sets.

Anyway, once again, agree with much of the OP’s post.