Guild Wars 2

For those not familiar with it, Guild Wars 1 used a five-attribute system, with each profession having its own.

Let’s say you were an Elementalist. Your 4 standard attributes were Fire Magic, Water Magic, Earth Magic, and Air Magic. These were available to primary and secondary Elementalists and each of these lines directly boosted the effectiveness of skills under their line. They also had a 5th unique attribute (as did every profession), called Energy Storage, which raised their energy and boosted skills under the Energy Storage line.

Guild Wars 2 uses a much more generic system of Power, Precision, Ferocity, Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power, Boon Duration, and a Profession-specific attribute.

What is the philosophical difference between these two systems?

It’s a pretty important one. In Guild Wars 1, your attribute point allocations directly determined how efficient you were not at dealing damage, tanking, or supporting but rather at how your individual skill types functioned. That’s a pretty important distinction, and it is one that has created serious contrast in how group scenarios in the two games work.

Gear choices and builds in Guild Wars 2 are one-dimensional. Adapting one’s build to a game mode is all-too-often more about one’s stats than their utilities. In PvE, for example, Berserker Gear is largely regarded as the only optimal choice (and there are a plethora of reasons for this) because damage is more important than any other factor and there is no advantage to alternate gear forms.

In Guild Wars 1, on the other hand, item nomenclature was irrelevant. An Elementalist could be just as situationally effective on a build that ran Earth Magic as with one that ran Air. Both had their uses as damage dealers and both had their uses as supports. There was no drastic difference in how much damage, support, or durability any given character was capable of unless their choice of skills (and corresponding attributes) made it otherwise.

And that is the main problem here. Guild Wars 2 sought to achieve free-form roles by using an archaic system that is counter-productive to this goal. The first game had already achieved that goal swimmingly, and had done so with a much more innovative, customizable, and simple system.

In short

Guild Wars 1’s system was about doing your role(s) – defined by your skills – the way you wished in your own specific way. The Guild Wars 2 system is all about min-maxing to a role defined by your stats – and the game has suffered for it.

Not that it means much, considering GW2’s rigid skill system means that “playing your way” means playing your way out of a very small selection of options.

It’s no secret that most of the game’s content – the majority of open world maps – are grossly underplayed. And this is a shame, because a lot of said content is really good. The problem is that there is not enough incentive to play these maps – other than for the joy of experiencing that content. Unfortunately, because most players are reward-driven, the low populations in these maps reduces the enjoyment to be had in playing them. Group events go undone. Waypoints remain contested. The journey through GW2’s beautiful world often feels like a solo experience.

Now, how can we fix that?

The tricolor chest in Kessex Hills was a step in the right direction. It represents a form of map-specific loot. That’s a great idea, but it doesn’t go far enough. Not nearly far enough.

Give every map its own equivalent to the tricolor chest.

And you don’t even need a massive living story arc to do so. Even a single LS update would suffice. “Priory explorers have discovered hidden treasure chests all over the world. Help them retrieve them.” Next.

These chests could contain map-exclusive rewards. Weapon skins, miniatures, armor skins, etc.

Give every map at least one unique exotic weapon skin for each weapon type.

These skins would come from random drops and the map chest. More could be added with time – but don’t tell us about them. Let us discover them for the Hell of it.

Edit – Options for reducing the skin workload

Option 1: Make that 1 exclusive REGION exotic skin per weapon. Each map in that region offers a few weapons in that region’s line up (IE: Queensdale offers the Sword, Scepter, and Shield while Harathi Hinterlands offers the GS, Shortbow, and Torch). You can eventually, if you wish, expand on these to eventually become 1 exclusive skin for each weapon type for each map.

Option 2:
Use Guild Wars 1 weapon skins (for the applicable weapon types) to save effort. Many of these skins looked good AND would would be popular among GW1 enthusiasts.
(Credit Tobias Trueflight).

Up karma rewards for dynamic events.

Making DE’s the main source of karma was a step in the right direction, but it needed to be accompanied with a general increase to all karma rewards from events.

Edit – Chain Multipliers For Karma Rewards

Participating in events in rapid succession (such as in a chain) will award significantly more karma.

Completing a dynamic event rewards a temporary buff that increases your earned karma by 5%. This stacks up to 3-5 times and refreshes with each successive dynamic event completion within that time. The close proximity and relation of events in a chain make event chains a natural way to optimize this buff.

(Modified from Galen Grey’s suggestion).

One exclusive ascended armor skin per region.

Ascalon, Kryta, Orr, the Shiverpeaks, and the Maguuma Jungle should each offer one exclusive ascended armor skin. You earn the pieces (very rarely) from drops and (rarely) from map chests in that region.

You can also earn pieces of this armor (at high karma prices) through region exclusive karma vendors.

Edit – Save effort by using popular legacy (GW1) skins for these armors.

The artwork for these already exists. Just bring it up to date, put it in the game, and give us a way to earn it. Again, this should reduce effort on the devs while pleasing GW1 enthusiasts. Pick the right skins, and their great aesthetics would please fans too.

Region-exclusive karma vendors.

Each map should have one or more (depending on the number of maps in that region) elite karma vendor associated with that region (Ascalon, Orr, etc.)

These vendors could offer:
One piece of the region-exclusive ascended armor per vendor.
Ascended weapons.
Ascended trinkets.
Map exclusive exotics.
Various other rewards.

Orr already has suitable vendors in the form of its temple karma merchants.

Edit

Attach region/elite karma vendors to quest chains.
(Tobias Trueflight).

Edit – Expand the rewards system to include WvW and PvP.

Earn Zaishen Keys (for winning) or Zaishen Key Pieces (for losing) sPvP/tPvP matches. Use them to open the Zaishen Chest in the Heart of the Mists.

Earn Garnet, Sapphire, or Emerald Key Pieces at random for killing opposing players in the appropriate borderland. Earn guaranteed Key Pieces for capturing towers or supply camps. Earn a guaranteed full key for capturing a keep.

Earn Obsidian Key Pieces at random for killing opposing players in the EB. Earn guaranteed pieces for towers or supply camps. Earn 1 full key for capturing a keep. Earn 3 full keys for capturing Stonemist.

(Modified from Tobias Trueflight’s suggestions).

All guaranteed key rewards have a 3 hour cooldown (to help prevent cross-server abuse through flipping). May need to be extended or the rewards adjusted.

(My addition to the suggestion).

Thanks for reading.

As just about anyone with a male Sylvari would know, armors often have a horrible skirt effect on them. Despite being roughly the same size as humans, male Sylvari are apparently incapable of wearing the same clothes without jacket/longcoat bottoms hanging a bloody foot away from the character’s hindquarters. This RUINS a number of excellent chest armors that would otherwise look great, including the new medium ascended.

Basically, what’s the issue here. Is it really that impossible to tailor armors to fit these near-human models? The problem has lasted long enough.

For the love of all that is holy, it looks like we’re constantly breaking wind when we wear one of these things.

It’s ironic that most of the nerfed farming spots (such as Pen/Shelt) were nerfed into oblivion for rewarding based on intended mechanics (completion), while this Shank Anchorage farm has been going on without the immediate hotfix that it needs and deserves. It is, in my opinion, the single most toxic example of farming that has occurred in Guild Wars 2 to date.

1. Shank Anchorage Champ Farm rewards failure.

Massive zergs of players intentionally fail the mission over and over again to earn a profit.

2. It brings out the absolute worst in the community.

Anyone who attempts to do the event as intended (by, you know, actually DOING the event) will be harassed for hurting the profit of the zerg. Somehow, I sincerely doubt that this was in Anet’s (or anyone else’s) vision for the game.

3. It is exploitation of one of the most important dynamic events in the game.

Arah is permanently locked because of exploitation of the Shank Anchorage event. The farmers’ response to this? They will tell you to guest to another server, as if that excused their actions.

4. It is unhealthy for the economy.

The potential for profits is obscene. With a full dps group, the resulting profit can (and probably will) make pre-nerf CoF1 look like a joke. Unfortunately, just like CoF1, a large percentage of profits gained from this farm involves the introduction of new gold into the economy, rather than profits earned by trading. If the farm continues to exist in its current state, there will be lasting damage to the ingame economy.

5. Even the game itself dislikes it.

It literally breaks the game in that spot. It highlights all of the worst aspects of the current game engine and mechanics by culling out mobs and spells (getting instagibbed by an invisible AoE from an invisible Champion is always fun) and requiring full teams of berserker-only high dps characters just to get any significant amount of loot at all.

Basically, this event needs a hotfix.

It’s okay to nerf the rewards of this event into oblivion (temporarily) to solve the issue as quickly as possible, but DON’T leave it like this and DON’T leave it nerfed. After nerfing it, take the time to think out a more healthy rewards rework for this event chain and any other problematic event chains.

The easy solution would probably be to back-end the rewards more, placing more champions at the final Arah event, Defeat the Risen High Wizard and Secure the Promenade of the Gods. With no failure state, the potential for outright exploitation is considerably lower, making this event an ideal place to shift the income. People will be able to freely complete the dynamic events and open Arah WITHOUT being flamed by a veritable mob of toxic players.

Furthermore, profession design is sketchy at best. In terms of professions that work properly within the design philosophy of trinity-free gameplay, we have the Elementalist, the Necromancer, the Ranger, and possibly the Guardian. Now, this is operating under the assumption that the design philosophy for the game is to adapt one’s playstyle on the fly to cover for your party’s weakspots, so that you play multiple roles in any one build. The Elementalist naturally performs this admirably. Attunement swaps allow him to output significant control, healing, boons, and damage within the same build. Rangers bring some of the best party healing in the game in the form of healing spring, while bringing significant cc through the use of their pet. The problem is that, because of borked pet design, the Ranger’s place in dungeon groups is sketchy at best.

Now why do I say that other professions are not performing within the game’s systems? Simply put, their support options are either too passive or mindless or sub-optimal. Let’s use the Warrior as an example, given that it is the main source of the disease in PvE. More specifically, let’s attempt to perform a popular “non-trinity” warrior with Berserker’s gear, 100b, and shouts. This is a mindless dps build that performs almost entirely passive party support. They press a few shout buttons in a fire and forget support that takes no thought other than basic positioning. They don’t even need to stop dps’ing to do so.

Adaptive and active support options, outside of those held by Elementalists and a few other professions, are simply lacking. Shouts are not interesting, adaptive, or even consciously applied forms of support. Banners, on the other hand, very much can be, as they take into account positioning, micromanagement of banner positions relative to the party, the support skills available to each banner, etc. Unfortunately, Banners do not tend to perform highly, even with recent buffs. It is not necessary, or even optimal, for Warriors to spec support and take Banners in dungeons. It’s entirely possible, and most definitely would be a fun playstyle if the process of picking up items wasn’t such a ridiculously clunky one, but it isn’t an optimal style of play because of poor balance and poor dungeon design.

And then we have combo fields – a feature of play that should work beautifully with the game’s design philosophy, but, unfortunately, tend to be too minor to encourage teamwork. Don’t get me wrong – the Thief spamming Cluster Bomb inside of a water field is doing a LOT for his team’s survivability, but outside of Fire, Water, and Chaos fields, they tend to be lacking as a whole. I often find myself wondering what the point of that poison field is or why I would want to blast finish the smoke field, only for the AoE stealth I applied to be quickly cancelled by everyone involved, resulting in a Revealed debuff for everyone. The problem with Combo Fields is that they are not balanced against each other by any means, on top of most Combo Fields being horribly redundant.

(TL,DR)
I’m probably rambling by this point. What I mean to say is that the lack of a holy trinity has nothing to do with the lack of coordination in dungeons. The problem lies in bad dungeon design, poor balance, and inefficiency of active support options.

It’s not the lack of a trinity that holds the game’s combat or dungeons back. I’ve heard it said far too many times that the trinity promotes organized play while the current system promotes mindless damage specs.

In principal, this is entirely wrong. Games that include the trinity promote bland, formulaic play. This guy is going to hold aggro. That guy is going to heal everyone. Those guys are going to use the same rotation over and over again to bring health bars down. If something new or unexpected happens, it is probably because someone did not do their job properly. In the Guild Wars 2 system, combat is theoretically meant to be adaptive. You change your role or equip skills to fill another role for the party if needed. Theoretically at least.

The problem does not lie in the system, but rather in other factors of the game’s design. There is little adaptation because the current dungeon design doesn’t require nor particularly encourage it. Dungeon mechanics in Guild Wars 2 typically boil down to “this guy has 2 million health and can sometimes one-shot you.” The result is a monotony that players want to end as quickly as possible. Because it is profitable and because it ends the monotony of boss fights faster, the dominant playstyles are damage roles. As a result, instead of a tank, healer, and dps, we now have 4 dps Warriors, all of which are more or less self-sufficient, and a support, such as a Guardian or Mesmer.

Herein lies the problem. Dungeons and open world PvE do not properly challenge players with unique mechanics. They do not mandate or even encourage the playstyles that the no-trinity system was meant to create.