Guild Wars 2

Maybe it is too early to suggest changes to a system that was only announced one week ago, but i wanted to try anyway.

TL;DR Separate all skills into categories of 1 heal/4 utilities/1 elite based on specializations. You can use skills only from chosen specialization skill categories or core profession skill category.

My suggestion is to make every core skill in the game to belong to one of six groups – core group and one devoted to every specialization. Ideally every such group has 1 healing, 4 utilities and 1 elite skill.
Example: Elementalist
Core: all 6 glyphs
Fire:
1)TBD fire heal skill
2)Conjure Flame Axe
3)Cleansing Fire
4)Signer of Fire
5)TBD fire utility skill
6)Conjure Fiery Greatsword
Air:
1)Arcane Brilliance -> Static Recharge heal skill
2)Conjure Lightning Hammer
3)Lightning Flash
4)Signet of Air
5)TBD air utility skill
6)Tornado
Earth:
1)TBD earth heal skill
2)Conjure Earth Shield
3)Armor of Earth
4)Signer of Earth
5)TBD earth utility skill
6)TBD earth elite skill
Water:
1)Ether Renewal
2)Conjure Frost Bow
3)Mist Form
4)Signer of Water
5)TBD water utility skill
6)TBD water elite skill
Arcane:
1)Signer of Restoration
2)Arcane Blast
3)Arcane Wave
4)Arcane Power
5)Arcane Shield
6)TBD arcane elite skill

After that the character has to choose three specializations, and he can only use skills either from core group, or from one of the chosen specialization skills. This will help achieve several goals:
1)Make choice of specializations much more important for the build
2)Help with identification of the character: if i use Armor of Earth, that is because i made an investment of being this specific profession
3)Make design of specializations more elegant and enjoyable to think about
4)Make it easier to expand the system both in width and depth.
During specialization reveal stream developers said, that they have troubles with creating skills that have vague theme (such as general ranger skills rather than druid skills).
This change allows to add both new elite specializations that are consistent with specializations by design and add individual skills in existing specializations. In addition they will not have restrictions on mechanical nature of skills assigned to elite specializations, such as only wells for chronomancer.

Lets discuss pros and cons of this change:

Pros:
Increases the importance of available build choices
Makes specializations more consistent by design with their elite counterparts
Allows more creative freedom for developers to create skills, since they are combined thematically and not mechanically(i.e. as in dev’s version of specializations)
Can be easier expanded. Chronomancer specialization DOES NOT HAVE to only have wells as utilities. Possible to add individual skills to specific specializations or core set of skills
Can be implemented after HoT release, make HoT incorporated into it

Cons:
Reduces number of available builds
To make design consistent requires to make 36 core skills instead of current 27. Requires more dev time
It is somewhat tricky to adjust certain professions skills to evenly fit specializations.

What do you think, is it worth it to implement this system?
And please, do not use the argument “I use earth/water/arcana elementalist and your suggestion does not allow me to use Lightning Flash, so it sucks”. The purpose of suggestion is to improve the overall design and enjoyment of all the game, not the individual builds.

No for the only thing this does is add a layer of restriction and remove a good deal of diversity from the game. I disagree that any of the Pro’s you mention would actually be achieved with such a move.

World of Warcraft did this and the end result ending up being nothing but mindless and trivial rotations with minimum effort. The worst type of elitism that forced players into set builds rotations on play styles. PvP in that game is nothing but nonstop carbon copies going after one another and the term off heal is completely non existent.

In this game where we already tie skills to weapons and the choices are already so few. The support and heal skills are already so few and they don’t work in every situation neither due the utilities. Either you want lock pvp into a linear path in which you can tell the heal and elite skills of any character based on there initial skills or you just want to force other people to your will. At any rate I’m completely against such a move and at a time when play styles and builds are getting removed from the game already thanks to HoT changes this sort of topic screams trolling.

If they do anything else for our skills and traits it should be a template system and reworking the system and unlocking skills for underwater combat.

Doam.8305:

No for the only thing this does is add a layer of restriction and remove a good deal of diversity from the game.

And we’re not there already? People have complaining about it for a while now.

Doam.8305:

No for the only thing this does is add a layer of restriction and remove a good deal of diversity from the game.

So, first of all, let’s discuss diversity. After my suggested change every character with 3 chosen specialisations (with elite or without) will have 4 healing skills, 16 utility skills(4 less than now) and 4 elite skills(1 more elite than now). If you do the math, the number of choices is almost the same. But that is only for 3 chosen specialisations. 10 ways to choose 3 core specialisations and we have much more options.

But let’s not forget about quality of choices! Because just the number is not always too important. And the quality rises dramatically, since if you are arcana/water/earth elementalist you can not now use distinctly fire or air skills, and you cant have a big fiery sword for your whim. So build choices are more distinct, and that increases diversity, not decreases it.

Doam.8305:

I disagree that any of the Pro’s you mention would actually be achieved with such a move.

Could you provide any argumentation as to why do you think that?

Doam.8305:

World of Warcraft did this and the end result ending up being nothing but mindless and trivial rotations with minimum effort.

I suppose you mean WoW locked skills behind specs. That is true, but the combat with trivial rotations was the meta in WoW when i played in WotLK, so the change did not do that exactly. And there are couple of differences. I suggest to lock skills behind specs and allow people mix and match specs to find the best combination. WoW just did 27 classes.

I completely disagree with OP: There are some things you learn by playing this game, and one of them is that alot of skills are situational. Being able to swap skills instantly while out of combat is something alot of people rly like about gw2.

Secondly, so yeah now you’ve narrowed down the amount of builds players can make. How does that increase the diversity? Making specs distinct by locking the skills into them is not a good thing.

The diversity comes from being able to choose any skill from the skillpool of that profession.

I can understand how it sounds cool to be able to identify specs by giving them themes just like archeage did. But that only allows for one thing.
The gap between effective (good) builds and less effective builds will increase. This because now players can not take that specific skill that counters another skill or effect.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

I completely disagree with OP: There are some things you learn by playing this game, and one of them is that alot of skills are situational. Being able to swap skills instantly while out of combat is something alot of people rly like about gw2.

Well, i am completely casual player, and i do not swap my skills in PvE basically at all. And i hugely suspect that 95%+ of players dont swap skills at all. Why? Because if all skills are available you can choose all skills that are most comfortable and stick to them. My change make it impossible to stack all your bar with most comfortable skills, and thus incentivises changing skills and specs moreso than current system.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Secondly, so yeah now you’ve narrowed down the amount of builds players can make. How does that increase the diversity? Making specs distinct by locking the skills into them is not a good thing.

According to math i did, number of choices stays almost the same.
And more than that, it actually increases diversity just like GW1 did. There you a)Could only pick skills from 2 chosen professions b) Most of the skills were very weak if you did not put points in assigned attribute. According to you all skills should be independent of attributes to make for more choice, but it would be wrong since then the attribute choice becomes less important.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

The diversity comes from being able to choose any skill from the skillpool of that profession.

I understand why you might feel this way, but you need to also make arguments.
Number of choices does little for diversity of gameplay. Quality of choice, i.e. impact of choice is what also matters. I argue that my change stikes much better balance of those two.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

The gap between effective (good) builds and less effective builds will increase. This because now players can not take that specific skill that counters another skill or effect.

That is funny, because the exact opposite is true. Look at this build. It goes into water/earth/arcana, but 3/5 skills on the bar are from other lanes.
Why is that? Because if you can make all the choices independent of each other, there is a best combination of the choices. But if choices are interdependent, then the choice of best spec does not allow to choose the best skill also. So you will not be able to cleanse yourself with fire and smash enemies with fire greatsword while enjoying sustainability and defense of water and earth specs.

No, this a fundamentally bad idea and goes against the core of gw2’s philosophy.

so, basically, what i read is: you want all core specializations to be more like elite specializations. you want elemental signets to only be available if the player slots earth spec. you want cleansing fire (a cantrip) to only be available when someone slots fire spec, even though cantrips are part of the water spec. you want arcane skills to only be available when the player slots arcana spec.

to me that seems ridiculous. the game was designed such that we choose our weapons based on our play style, and then we choose out utilities to either “fill in the gaps” to try to cover our weaknesses, or to choose them to enhance our play style through synergies.

gating the core utilities behind core specs DISCOURAGES trying out something different, because it means, that instead of swapping out a single utility skill that might help in ONE fight, i’d have to swap out whole entire specializations, and retriait. if i didn’t know which specilization the utility skill was locked into, i’d basically say “forget this! i’m outta here! This is too complicated!” except it would most likely include a very different word that starts with “F”

ArenaNet is trying to simplify the system, NOT make it more complicated.

my other disagreement stems from the idea, that by limiting core utility lines behind specializations, you might as well just hand me a build, and NOT let me customize it at all. and why not go further and just have the game play itself for me? oh wait, that sounds too much like a bot. and that doesn’t sound like fun to me either.