Guild Wars 2

Open world loot skins need to be improved: Scarce skin variety from 1-80

TL;DR below

Open world loot in this game isn’t very interesting. You always get the same skins from 1 to 80. It got a lot of criticism from new players at the first days, and still today new players complain about it, too. I do think it’s a problem, but don’t get my wrong, being able to get the best gear without needing to loot is awesome. I’m talking about skins.

The best part is we can fix this without developing any new models or skins, using the resources we already have.

WEAPONS: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_weapon_sets#Loot_weapons

Let’s analyze what we have:

• Basic weapons drop rarely, as white/basic
• Simple weapons drop everywhere, a lot, in any rarity
• Cultural tier 1 weapons drop as blue/fine and green/masterwork in the respective region of each race
• Cultural tier 2 weapons drop as yellow/rare in the respective region of each race
• Each region has a unique set of orange/exotic weapons, that can’t be found anywhere else

And that’s all. Only four different weapon sets per region, rares don’t appear until level 46 and exotics until level 62, which leaves us with only three different loot weapon sets for 1-45, in each region. If you don’t get out of your region from 1-45, you’ll only see those three different weapon sets in your entire journey: basic, simple and cultural tier 1. The fun thing is, the game does have a lot of weapon sets: 47 with release.

Now, how isn’t this a problem?

Things we could improve:

First of all, simple weapons should be limited to basic rarity, and maybe fine. No simple weapon should drop in any higher quality, there’s nothing more disappointing than getting an exotic with a simple weapon skin. This would leave us with pretty much a single skin for fine and masterwork loot on each region, that of the cultural tier 1.

There’s a lot of weapon sets that no one cares about, mostly rare discipline-crafting weapons. These weapons are themed around specific enemies. What if these enemies dropped these crafting weapon sets, in fine and masterwork rarities? We could add pirate, Ebon Vanguard and Modniir weapons, too, karma weapons that aren’t too mainstream. These would give us new sets in each region: (Really, wherever these enemies are located, but mainly these regions):

• Ascalon: Grawl, Ogre, Separatist
• Kryta: Bandit, Centaur, Pirate
• Maguuma Jungle: Hylek, Krait, Pirate
• Shiverpeak Mountains: Dredge, Grawl

When you kill one of these enemies, the fine and masterwork loot, instead of being cultural tier 1, would give their specific skins. Same for chests located in their territory. If you want rare versions of these weapons, you’ll need to use crafting or buy them from vendors.

Rare and exotic weapons are fine skin-wise, so they would stay as they are, with only one skin per region like now, rare as cultural tier 2 and exotic as the region-unique.

Another thing that needs to be fixed are the renown heart vendor skins. 95%~ of them are simple weapons, too. When they sell you a “Bandit dagger”, its skin should be that of the Bandit weapon set. When they sell you a “Lionguard sword”, its skin should be that of the Lionguard weapon set.

Of course, there should be exceptions for this. Only cultural tier 1, crafted rare weapons and the 4 pseudo-cultural karma weapon sets (Ebon Vanguard, Lionguard, Modniir and Pirate) should be available through renown heart vendors. The rest would remain unique.

However, maybe it could be good to make an exception with cultural tier 2 and order weapons. These are expensive in their vendors, but they aren’t bought in big enough quantities to make a money sink difference anyway, and it would help diversify renown heart skins.

And if there’s still worry, just make renown heart weapons (just the ones with cultural tier 2 and order weapon skins) non-transmutable, fixing the money sink problem. They would have a “Skin can’t be transmuted property”, and when players try to use them for transmutation keeping the skin, an alert would pop up warning the weapon is of bad quality, and to get the skin at a vendor.

ARMOR: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets#Loot_armor (The page isn’t organized too well, check: http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/ if your head hurts)

Let’s analyze what we have:

Armor sets are a mess, plain and simple. Lot of pieces with different names, missing pieces… Let’s say the biggest problem is the lack of naming consistency. And don’t get me started on each renown heart vendor having a different name for each piece of the same set.

From 1 to 40 you alternate between two sets, and then you get a new one you keep until you get to 80, the same from the dungeon vendors. You can get new skins from renown heart vendors, but as I said it’s too chaotic, and after all, loot is more motivating than vendors. Add the always-basic armor set, too, as well as one rare and one exotic.

So that leaves us with 4 loot armor skins for the entire 1-45 experience, same skins no matter the region. Worse than with weapons.

Things we could improve:

First of all, establish a generic name for all armor sets. Right now, we have sets with different named pieces, sets using the same name as sets with different skins… A complete mess. Medium armor users have one less armor than light and heavy, too (you can only get the head and two other pieces that only appear as personal story rewards). I’m working on another piece of text about armor naming, I’ll link to it from here once it’s done.

There’s a total of 5 karma-centric sets. The 5th of them is the exotic-only Armageddon armor from the temples, which leaves us with 4, which can be bought as skins with Badges of Honor, too. As for loot, there’s a total of 5 loot-centric sets. The 5th is exotic-only, and the 4th is rare-only, which leaves us with 3. A total of 7 Fine/Masterwork.

If we divide armor drops by basic level ranges, we get 7 ranges, perfect to rearrange armor drops with those 4 karma and 3 loot armor sets. We can add more variety by making the ranges overlap with each other. It could look like this:

• 1-20 – 1st loot – country/superior studded/worn chain
• 15-30 – 1st karma – devout/rogue/duelist
• 25-40 – 2nd loot – magician/swindler/worn scale
• 35-50 – 2nd karma – dry bones/duelist/pit fighter
• 45-60 – 3rd loot – cabalist/rogue/reinforced scale
• 55-70 – 3rd karma – stately/warden/plated
• 65-80 – 4th karma – tactical/conqueror/dark

This would give us different skinned fine/masterwork armor sets each few levels, as loot, letting people change their style easily as they progress, and making armor loot interesting.

Rare and exotic armor loot would remain untouched, with one unique set each. Karma armors would still be available through their original means, but they could be rearranged to make space for the three loot sets above, and add more variety to renown heart vendors, too.

IDENTIFYING EACH ITEM’S SKIN SET

Beyond basic naming, both weapons and armor have a skin-identification problem. That’s why I suggest adding a new property field to every item, detailing the skin set.

This way, no matter there will always be items with unique names, you’ll know easily if they’re part of an existing set, or have unique skins.

Additionally, aside from the new property field, PvE and PvP skin sets should have the same item names, both weapons and armor.

TL;DR

• Simple weapons no longer drop as any rarity that isn’t white/basic, leaving the cultural tier 1 of each region as the only blue/fine and green/masterwork weapon skin
• Enemies with thematic crafted or karma weapons drop those as fine and masterwork, instead of the cultural tier 1 of the region
• Armor names unified to avoid confusions and have a clear idea of where each piece belongs
• Divide fine and masterwork armor loot in 7 level ranges, adding karma armor as loot to give more variety
• Add a new property fields to all items, detailing the skin set

The basic idea behind this post is loot should encourage players to keep playing with their look, unlike the current situation where players keep the same skins for most of their leveling, and don’t change it until they are 80. This leaves many unused skins in the process, and makes loot be boring.

Loot is a way to entertain the players, and no matter I approve of the removal of requiring loot drops to have good stats, I can’t say the same about skins.

And well, that’s my analysis on how open world loot could be improved. You can find a first version of this thread on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1hv4kv/open_world_loot_skins_need_to_be_improved_scarce/ which I improved a bit before reposting it here.

I really hope something’s done regarding this problem. If you’re with me, support this thread.

Check this other thread, too: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Improving-the-guild-system-Long-detailed/first