Guild Wars 2

First i’d like to say this is long. But thought i’d speak my mind a bit from my experience and reference a few games to help share what i am suggesting. I am not a game designer (outside some mods for starcraft/wc3) just a guy with an opinion.

So to start.
I think its a huge step in the right direction with the recent changes. A large part of the reason people quit playing “atleast from my experience” is due to simply a poor competitive scene.

No rating system and matchmaking system like league of legends being one of the largest issues.

The next most logical step to salvage the pvp in this game would be to start holding regular mini-tournaments where players can earn another teir of unique armor and weapons (similiar to legends of norrath, they hold bi-weekly and weekly short online tournaments where you can win loot sometimes unique to that tournament for infinite bragging rights!).

Also, the ticket system just added another grind mechanic to pvp that was discouraging and annoying to most players who wanted to be competitive.

Speaking of grinding, the earnable cosmetics is mostly limited to stuff you can get earn in PVE and only through MASSIVE amounts of grinding in casual matches. I had a lot of friends who did this, till they realized how slow it is after 30 and just werent willing to spend the next few months of their lives trying to get just to 40-50…thus got burned out and quit.

Grind mechanic was dumb, shoulda went with TF2 style reward system. Where your rewarded for skillfull accomplishments. As long as the acheivements were given for doing things that would be in line with what you would want to do to win the match anyway (defend X amount of capture points, kill X amount of people on a capture point, etc), there would be no problem. and TBH they shouldnt require you months of your life to obtain them anyway, true bragging rights would be from stuff earned in the mini-tournaments.

continued… These next ideas are gonna turn off a lot of readers as they might seem very opinionated. but i thought i’d share them anyway.

And a couple more things that shoulda been done originally…but may be harder to impossible to do now.

Shoulda toned down RNG on abilitys and sigils. (this is kind of an obvious one)

(i know i’ll lose some of you with this next one and its a rant)
Less sigils and runes. I dont think the gameplay strategy needs to really lay so heavily on the pre-play. This might be ok in CCG’s where 80% of the strategy is how you build your deck before a match, but in a competitive game like this, i think it should boil down more to how you work with what you have and as a team. You already have skills/amulets/traits to tinker with. Also, you have (and will always have) runes and sigils that are simply not as good in ANY scenerio, while you have others that are ideal in MOST scenerios. This creates what we call a “nub trap”. Something in the game that exists that is a poor option for new players to choose and be punished for doing so (they’re even weaker for choosing it). You also just give yourself ANOTHER thing to have to balance around in a game that already has hundreds of traits/abilitys across 8 professions, why do you want to make it even more impossible on yourself to balance?

You made the right decision on seperating damage simply into dot damage and direct damage. As the two must be balanced seperatly. You did away with multitudes of resistance against fire, ice…and just toughness vs direct. GOOD! Taking out extra variables makes it easier to manage.

Truth is there will always be a meta, there will always be a very few combination of traits/skills/sigils/runes that are the most ideal for each profession. You either litter the floor with a bunch of “nub trap” options for the illusion of 100 strategic choices, or you tighten in on it a little. You will still have those few viable options but able to balance them more correctly. Like i said, the gameplay should be more about HOW you play on the battle field, not what you came in with, not saying its bad to have some of this, just not to the degree this game has. Competitive fighters, shooters (for the most part) RTS dont have pre-game (deck building) style strategy (or atleast not near as many)…and no one is complaining. And most importantly, like i said earlier…it makes it realistic and easier to keep balanced.

(may lose more of ya here)
Also, if i had designed this game, i would have had each profession wear its own styles of armor or have its own looks to make it more clear to new players what profession is running up on them, and restricted playable races to 1 size/type. Large norn with tiny asura running around poses an obvious visual advantage in the mess of a battle. (higher skilled players may not suffer as much, but it definitly is another hump for new players to over come) Take gears of war 3 for example, two different races…but both are bulky in the same way ones just uglier. Same visual advantage = no advantage.

I think these last few game flaws (what i consider flaws) are here due to the desire to make the game have more of an RPG feel with tons of customizations and sizes. But they do work against making a purely balanced and competitive game. So if i wanted to make an E-sport i would have cut them out as much as possible. Imo the core play style of the game is incredibly fun by itself!

Anyway, end rant. If you read it, feel free to comment on it. I dont care if people disagree or tear apart what i wrote. I just like to share ideas and hopefully inspire others to think. But i do beleive these are some things that would make this game better or atleast are worth consideration or thought.

I like what you’ve said.

Choices are good, but when we have too many Runes and Sigils they just become the same as the poor traits we all have somewhere on our Professions – a trap of a choice that makes you worse if you try and use it.

Less choice but more viable choices would promote a healthier game by players being guided into better builds.

I like the idea of the Profession style armour, though that’s quite a tall order.
Perhaps to start with we could just get something like Profession based helms.

I’d like to see unique Profession based weapons for the winners of special tournaments.

Competitive play using just human models for players would make more sense, if GW2 aims for true competitive play with a combat system designed on players watching for animations rather than cast bars etc then I don’t see how a system where a tiny Asura with a candy cane for a hammer can be comparable to a massive Norn wielding a hammer the size of a tree.

I agree that the ranking system is just a dumb grind, but some people want that, the PvP content locusts that grind in whatever game they play.
People with jobs and lives are still in the 30’s and not going anywhere towards being 40 quickly even while they continue to enjoy playing the game.
Then you have people rank 50+ who have played 8 hours a day since launch and complain loudly on the forums and in map chat about how the game isn’t e-sports >.<

Your absolutely right on the specific armor being a tall order.
And i agree the profession based helms would be a great help.

ya profession based weapons (maybe armor) from tournaments is kinda along the lines of what would be a reasonable aid as its something everyone would strive for and wear proudly. After awhile there would be enough diversity of these that people could have their profession based weapons etc, but still look unique amongst each other.

Human woulda made sense, sylvari are atleast the same size. Its one of those things that while it would have been healthiest for the E-sport spvp side of things. They still tie the spvp world to the rest of it in sense you can bring your PVE character into the mists to pvp on. Seperating entirely the PVE fantasy part of the game from the spvp woulda helped the health of the e sport side of things. But i doubt they’ll ever do it now, one of those things thats better figured out and executed in beta, not after release when people already grew accustomed to having something, even if it does hurt the gameplay.

I think my biggest concern with the glory grind would be solved by the addition of the mini-tournaments etc. Giving people a more healthy way to obtain cosmetic gear that is rewarded for excellence rather than simply time spent playing. Which is what the glory grind feels to have been developed for. I beleive they slowed down the rate at which you get glory because they knew they had no near future plans to implement a system for other ways to get cosmetic gear. So they had to make sure that even the hardcore players always felt they were working towards something better. (this is all speculation of course). But the rate at which your progression slows down is so extreme even in the 20’s to the point it can feel incredibly discouraging. Its weird because the system they developed for pve (constant progression pace from beginning to end so you always feel like you accomplished what you were able to yesterday when you log on) is completely forgotten about when setting up the MASSIVE glory curve.

In short, great ideas. Very well thought, and i entirely agree.