Guild Wars 2

Thank you for your articulate and highly detailed opinion. I’ve bought virtual items from various games in the past – and the items I’m most likely to purchase are those that allow me to personalize my avatar’s appearance in a unique way, which is why I suggested the items I did. The items I listed may not be great ideas, but the marketing concepts behind them could work to ArenaNet’s advantage.

ArenaNet could start having random, unannounced Gem Store “events” – sell limited-edition, exclusive items (minis, toys, costumes, skins, hairstyles, appearance enhancers, vanity mounts) for a few hours, a few days or a few weeks (the amount of time it would be on the Gem Store would also be random) – and then either never list the item again or list it on unannounced, random and rare occasions. It would motivate players to keep checking the Gem Store for new items, especially if they missed out on a really cool one from a previous store event. As well, ArenaNet would be able to charge more for these items because perceived rarity increases an item’s perceived value.

There are extremely rare vanity pets from another MMO that are selling on eBay for $850-$2500. Though that’s an extreme example, it shows that people will pay an exorbitant amount of money for exclusive/rare virtual items.

I’d pay 1500-2000 gems to have a stone that would allow me to continually apply ghostly wings and a matching halo onto my Guardian’s gear….or bony, demonic wings with horns, skeletal boots and an evil aura around my Necromancer. As long as it’s permanent to that character, even when I change my gear.

What would be really cool – if they sold musical instruments, and if you came across another player that had one, you could jam together…you could have in-game bands. LOL! Weird idea, but I’d totally love that and would pay good money for that.

I’m new to GW2 and the forums, so I apologize if my ideas are unoriginal, terrible or have already been brought up.

I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know how difficult these suggestions would be to implement. I’m a writer with a background in marketing and advertising, so my suggestions may or may not be helpful in the context of ArenaNet’s business model.

I know people have suggested some of these things as a free option to be added to the game later, but if that’s not feasible given time/financial constraints, this could be an opportunity to give players what they want while generating revenue to justify it.

1. Hairstyles. You can either sell these in packages of 2 or 3 or individually. Players will have a chance to try it on their character in the Preview screen before purchasing.

Hairstyle packages can be sorted according to race & gender and each new hairstyle can be applied to one character. If this proves to be popular, you can release special hairstyles tied to events or special times of year. You could also have rare hairstyles that are available for a very short period of time (see #2 for details).

2. Unique, limited-time mounts not bound to a special holiday that come out at random for a few hours or a day and then disappear for an undisclosed, indefinite amount of time (no speed boost, purely for vanity). You could make them unique to a certain race (ie: a golem for Asura) or available to all races. My reasoning behind the limited time “one day only” offer is that it will encourage players to log in more frequently to check the store for rare sale items and to play.

3. Special gems that enhance the appearance of existing items/gear. If they’re one-time use, you could sell them in packages with random appearance alterations (with the chance to get a really super-rare one that looks awesome). Some possible examples:

A. Jewelcrafting stones/runes/etc. that, when added to a weapon, give that weapon a cool glow or animation (ie: fiery glow, frosty glow, a green trail of leaves) as well as a rare chance of giving the weapon a trait that grants it exotic/legendary status.

B. Jewelcrafting stones/runes/etc, that, when added to certain armour pieces, adds an animation or glow (some ideas: super-rare ghostly wings to the back of a chest piece, a glowing belt, a vanity animation ability similar to the melting witch costume, a stone that converts your head piece to a glowing halo, etc.). Again, it would have a chance of giving the armour piece a special trait that upgrades its rarity.

4. A low-medium price point (ie: 25-150 gems) mystery lottery box that gives players the guarantee of getting a minimum number of useful items (ie: karma potion, mystic coins, resurrection stones, Black Lion chest keys, etc.) with a rare to extremely rare chance of getting the following:

A. Varying amounts of gold (1 to 50 gold). This would have to be rare so the economy won’t be adversely affected.
B. 500-1000 gems (this would have to be an extremely rare drop to maintain the integrity of GW2’s gem-based/non-subscription business structure).
C. Pirate outfit or some kind of unique skin or fashion item.
D. Minis.
E. Extra character slot, bank slot, bag slot.
F. Makeover kit.

Think of the above as a lottery ticket with a low chance of getting the really good stuff but still providing players with the excitement of having the CHANCE to get rare items, in addition to giving them items that are useful and give them value for their money (even if they don’t win a bonus item).

Anyway, I don’t know if these ideas are good or bad or even doable, I was just thinking of items I’d buy with gems if they were available.

I disagree, as I believe this gives a distinctiveness to the races, and there is some cross-over. One option that I’ve done, DejaVuGurl, is make a really short Norn if I like a certain hairstyle but want to look more human, or you can make a really tall human if you want her to look Norn-ish. Doesn’t solve the story-lines, but it’s a quick-fix.

That being said, it would be cool to see more hairstyles for the other races, as they tend to be more limited, particularly the Asura and the Sylvari females.

I’m going to revise my previous post where I said I won’t try dungeons again. I really want to give it a chance, because I appreciate the intentions that developers had in making this change.

I tip my hat to developers for creating a dungeon system that is the most challenging I’ve experienced in an MMO. High dungeon difficulty isn’t necessarily a bad thing because high difficulty = high sense of accomplishment upon completion, and this makes it a more satisfying experience for players if there’s a balance between difficulty and achievability.

However, in its current form, dungeon content is excessively difficult and accessible only to extremely skilled players due to some minor design issues. With a few tweaks, dungeons can be a more organic, functional, collaborative and less frustrating aspect of the game for players, especially in the lower level dungeons. Dungeons can maintain difficulty while being slightly more forgiving.

I have some suggestions on how to solve this without compromising on the much-loved challenge.

I will bold suggestions for developers (for ease of reference). These are constructive suggestions intended to help developers achieve their vision of a collaborative dungeon experience and are not angry demands.

1. Create a tutorial dungeon (similar to the PvP tutorial) for inexperienced players to run either alone or in groups. This will act as an introduction to GW2’s innovative dungeon paradigm. This will be especially useful for players who are accustomed to the “trinity” model and will help them to make a mental shift out of the formerly established way of playing after years of being accustomed to that model.

It would consist of one boss encounter (random boss with different abilities), and a random group of 4 NPCs to run with whose classes are also random. Each time the player runs this tutorial, they will be able to practice different roles/spells/weapons with their class and tweak their talents/skills if they desire. It’s important not to make these tutorials too easy because the point is to prepare them for a real dungeon so they won’t be in for a shock. The advantage of this is that a player can play with a group of NPCs and/or a group, decreasing the feeling of hopelessness and increasing a player’s confidence & skill.

In real dungeon encounters:

1. Increase auditory and visual cues of boss spells & actions. Make the animation/voice prompts of bosses more obvious when they’re about to cast a major spell (ie: when Lieutenant Kholer is about to pull everyone in, he can yell something like, “C’mere!” a second or two before doing it, giving players an auditory cue to dodge).

Players are so busy trying to DPS bosses like this down while watching everyone else that it’s not always easy to keep your eye on the boss to watch for when they’re casting a major ability.

2. Increase rez time in lower level dungeons only (ie: AC) and scale rez times to be slower in higher level dungeons.

3. Create a temporary buff on players rezzing others, especially in encounters like the Spider Queen where there are AOEs everywhere. Some possible examples:

A. A short (5-6 second) immunity buff when rezzing FULLY dead players (no damage taken, immune to getting pulled to boss, etc) with a moderate (ie: 20+ second) cooldown. Once the rezzing player starts taking damage, they can dodge out and other group members can go and continue rezzing when another player is on rez-immunity cooldown. This will motivate players to rez downed players while maintaining a reasonable amount of difficulty.

B. While rezzing a partially or fully downed player, the player doing the rezzing gets 10 seconds of health regeneration. It’s not much in terms of health gain (especially when the immunity cooldown runs out and they’re in a boss AOE) and will maintain the challenge.

4. Give players a more obvious visual (or auditory) cue when a player is partially down (ie: like raid messages in other MMOs), ie: “[Player Name] is fighting for survival!” or “[Player Name] has died!” In the heat of battle players don’t always notice when a player is down until it’s too late.

5. When a player is partially down, make it so right clicking/double clicking on them makes your character jump to where they are to expedite rallying them. If they’re on the other side of the room, this saves time running to them through AOEs, etc.

These suggestions are my theories on how developers could achieve their artistic vision of a collaborative dungeon experience. I’m not educated as a developer/programmer, so I don’t know how difficult these suggestions would be to implement.

Developers, thank you for this wonderfully innovative game. I understand that, in the light of remodelling an entire genre, there will be kinks to iron out. When reading the more emotionally charged posts, don’t take it personally, people are just frustrated and it’s not personal.

I am someone who tries to keep an open mind and despite my reservations about the new dungeon system, I decided to give it a try this evening.

HUGE mistake. I will never, EVER get talked into attempting another dungeon in this game. I’ll stick with events, WvW, PvP, quests and gathering and leave the dungeons to the top 1% of players who can do it, because the difficulty is beyond ridiculous now that you can’t resurrect and run back and at at least contribute to the fight.

The entire experience wasn’t anywhere near fun. It was humiliating. It was frustrating. I contributed almost nothing, between dying, being rezzed, dodging and then dying again. Pre-patch, the PUG group I was in had no problem killing bosses and getting through it, because at least the people who were inexperienced could run back and make some kind of contribution (while learning in the process). You can’t learn while you’re dead and unable to do anything at all.

I tried several times to get the group to kick me. I WANTED to leave (but was staying out of politeness), but they wanted me to stay because they couldn’t get anyone else…so I spent my time as cannon fodder, lying there like a moron while the “You have been defeated! Lie there in shame, you ineffectual simpleton!” music droned a shameful dirge of my disgraceful deeds.

I ended up logging out after they 4-manned the final boss without me so I could have a pity-drink while staring out the window, contemplating the bottomless pit of my ineptitude. I play games to relax and have fun…not to feel like I’ve killed a kitten because I’m so fail at life. LOL!

Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. Again. Dungeons in GW2 make me feel like I did when I played Demon Souls – a game that kicked my butt so hard I had to trade it in to recover some semblance of what dignity I had left.

I’m not a “video game Olympics” player. I am average – not outstanding, but not incompetent. If this is what developers intended when making these dungeons, then I shall tip my hat to them for their success in making these the most difficult dungeons I’ve ever encountered….and I’ll stick to things I am capable of. Dungeons were insanely difficult before…now they’re just ridiculous.

The hardcore players can have the dungeons. I won’t even miss the content. You couldn’t pay me to do that again.

Silidus.7985:

Hi Castrella,

The game design was flawed, and encouraged players to just keep DPS up while expecting their teammates to res and run back. No teamwork, no interaction, no comradeship. There is still a problem with some fights being too difficult under the current mechanic. Hopefully these can now be addressed properly now that players are forced to attempt the fights legitimately.

Hi Silidus, thank you for the suggestions (and for being nice about it), I really appreciate it. I will look on my Necromancer skill tree and see if any of those traits are unlocked yet (I’m only level 46). I’ve only been playing the game for a month, so any suggestions on how to improve my gameplay are welcome.

That being said, I will take a wait-and-see attitude regarding dungeons. I think the developers have the right intentions, though I don’t know if their implementation will work when you take human nature into account. Statements like, “dungeons. . .should only be for people that can play. . .so that I and others will only find people there worth playing with” don’t exactly bode well.

I really want to minimize my exposure to this kind of attitude, because one thing I love about this game is how developers designed it to be collaborative rather than competitive. It’s the first MMO I’ve played where people are, for the most part, kind and helpful – and this shift in attitude is due to the game’s design. It’s a refreshing change. I don’t want my experience to be ruined by elitist types, so I think I’m going to stay away from dungeons for awhile.

As an aside, I find some of the comments towards the developers in this thread to be outrageous. It’s possible to provide honest, constructive feedback without being cruel. Two founders of another well-known gaming company resigned because of the stress inflicted on them by “player feedback.” Developers are human beings who worked fracking hard to create this game, and are NOT evil minions who are out to screw us – nor are they our personal servants who are required to do our bidding at the snap of a finger. They are artists who are emotionally invested in their creation. They are doing their best to be loyal to their vision while trying to please their player base, and these can’t be easy things to juggle.

I understand why they made the changes they did. If these changes continue to result in “no teamwork, no interaction, no comradeship,” they’ll keep changing it until it does. ArenaNet has challenged the “trinity” and have provided us with an innovative new paradigm that hasn’t been done before in an MMO – and isn’t that what made the game so intriguing in the first place? That kind of risk takes guts – and it will take time to iron out the kinks.

If you want to see changes in the game, make your case without being obnoxious about it (because honestly – when customers are nasty to you at work, how motivated are you to help them?).

Given the most recent patch, I won’t be attempting a dungeon again and consider this aspect of game content a complete write off (for me) because of the difficulty of content that’s already excessively difficult. There’s “challenging,” and then there’s “unreasonable,” and I feel that the demands of dungeons in this game far exceed “challenging” to the point where only hardcore and highly gifted players stand a chance at success. Average players like me (and even talented players like my friend) find dungeons to be a chaotic, frustrating experience.

Though I agree with the developers on the point that dungeons should embody team work and rezzing players, in my experience, this has never happened. Though dungeons are designed this way, this doesn’t necessarily mean that players will be willing (or able) to play in a style that developers intended. I’ve always been told to run back when I die, and when I’ve tried rezzing other players I always die because I’m a light armour class and am usually killed in one to two shots. There’s too much activity going on to play in the way dungeons were designed, and in a group of only five, this is an extremely difficult task.

I mean no offence whatsoever by this (and I’m a writer, not a game designer, so I’m just theorizing here) but perhaps it should be considered that, if players are innovating their gameplay to find a way around a system of play that is too difficult, the problem may be with the design. I’m sure there are some hardcore players out there with the reflexes and button mashing speed of a cheetah who can handle this, but for the average player (or even “good” or “great” players), dungeons exceed the limits of what the average player is capable of, which is why players are compensating by rez-rushing.

I appreciate the spirit in which developers designed dungeons, but average to good players, especially those who are trying to learn dungeons in the context of this innovative design, will miss out on this content because we simply don’t have the ability to handle it while in the learning phase.

Some suggestions that might motivate players to rez others:

1. Players should get a buff while rezzing another player that either greatly increases their toughness or renders them temporarily immune to attacks for a few seconds.

2. Players (or the entire group) get an increase in health (or health regeneration) while rezzing other players.

Anyway, please don’t flame me because I’m honest enough to admit I’m not a hardcore, highly talented player. I’m not knocking the game, I’m merely trying to provide feedback in an effort to improve the game in the long run.