Guild Wars 2

The incidental voice acting is often excellent. That is, the banter that goes on around the world, especially with the Asura males. It’s definitely also worth noting that some of the storyline voice acting, again especially when there’s an Asura involved, is really rather good. However, as with pretty much any other game I’ve ever played, there always seems to be somewhat of a disconnect between the writer and the voice actor and even more so between the actors involved.

When I used to act on stage, one could quite often determine which actors had the innate chops by observing how they listened to the other characters in a scene. Some people walk in “to become actors”, think it’s all about delivering lines, and completely destroy their scenes by not paying attention to what the other people are saying, even if they already know their lines. It’s my impression that much voice acting is done solo, which would emulate this disregard and make it difficult to create a real rapport between two actors. You can sometimes see this in television and film as well, when a scene is notably cut from takes where the two actors deliver their lines independent of one another. It’s often very easy to pick out. Some directors opt to have the other actor there if possible, even if they’re not on camera, just to limit the disconnect that otherwise takes place.

Another thing that may contribute is the way scenes are set up in the game. Only two characters can be there at a time, so you’ll sometimes have a notable pause in dialogue when there’s a swap. This doesn’t work well for dramatic scenes or quick exchanges between multiple characters. In addition, the animation variety is limited, so “things happening” that aren’t reflected in the characters also do nothing but emphasize a disconnect. If two actors are in the same room and do a scene together, you probably wont see unnatural pauses, but if the lines have to be recorded separately and spliced together, then even decent dialogue can suffer. I have to admit I’d take the risk and record things as a real scene, and then find a way to fit the game around the acting. This makes it near impossible to change individual lines later, but if it’s good, it’s good.

The writing is, as I’ve also seen in most other games, wildly variable. Some of it admittedly makes me think “really…?”, while other parts are quite excellent. The plots in video game stories often have a child-like simplicity to them, a trend that permeates film and television these days as well. It can be difficult to deliver lines that are “off” or completely unreal, especially if they’re meant to be for a quite serious plot or situation. The Asura banter is often very well written, and it is easy to see that the voice actor had good material to work with in many cases. Occasionally the lines being spoken do not match the text in the game, so I presume that some lines were changed quickly during the process.

Anyway, just my two cents. I could point to specific things that really irk me and specific things that I really like, but I try to go in with the intent of enjoying myself, while also keeping the limitations of the medium in mind. I suppose my plea to the person who directs the voice actors (if they’re indeed recording alone or don’t always have proper context), is to guide them more clearly in the direction of the other dialogue their lines will be used with.

I think it would be neat if sentries fired a warning flare when they spotted enemies (line of sight within a certain generous range). It would place a temporary mark on the map to show that there’d been activity there, perhaps color coded or with an approximate number of players spotted, such as 5/10/25, etc. The sentries could randomly “patrol” an area very near their sentry point to ensure they covered all the directions at intervals.

This would give sentries more value. Perhaps they could also be capable of stopping dolyaks with some efficiency, increasing the importance of keeping the routes friendly.

Other ideas for sentries

• Add the ability to upgrade sentries with an additional ranged guard, or perhaps add an additional guard if the point is held for a certain amount of time
• Sentries could lay down random traps near their location
• Have sentries provide a lasting buff to dolyaks passing near them
• The ability for sentries to call a few temporary NPC reinforcements if a larger group approaches
• Make sentries more varied; sometimes they have high health and crowd control, and other times less control and more damage
• Have sentries grant swiftness or a morale boost of some kind to friendly players passing by them. Perhaps if you fight near them, you gain a buff of some kind

Right now they don’t contribute much to making the map feel like a battle zone.

John Smith.4610

Essence Snow.3194

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

First I’ll quote myself from another thread, as I think it fitting here.

Kosmo.5187:

I find that the individual experience is often sacrificed when all your decisions are based on percentiles of millions. It’s great, for example, that an intended number of people have a precursor. The statistics speak for themselves. On an individual level, though, I would presume that the person who dropped 12 items in the forge to get it is somewhat happier than the guy who dropped 1200 items and still hasn’t gotten one. On an individual level the effort doesn’t match the reward, but statistically things are the way they’re supposed to be. Games are for many people, but those people are all individuals.

I don’t think Essence Snow.3194 deserved a snide response – the intent conveyed was obvious. ArenaNet can pat themselves on the back all they want for inventing awesome ways to get rid of items from the game, but during this magnificent feat they forgot to make the hunt for a legendary actually feel as such.

This is Guild Wars. Not economy/market wars, not gambling wars. It’s great that there are people who enjoy the market aspects offered by the Trading Post, and it is, to some degree at least, fair enough that some people enjoy gambling. However, I will never understand why one of the pinnacle rewards in the game is so far removed from the actual core game play as is the case with legendaries. It seems unimaginative to simply throw some stuff in a bucket and “here’s the best weapon ever”.

I’ve read that they’re going to be adding another way to obtain specific precursors (it’s been over a year). But is it going to be more thoroughly integrated with the game play?

There is room for vast, vast improvements of the trading post, the way gem store items are handled, as well as how the mystic forge works. If player frustrations are met with comments like the one offered to Essence Snow.3194, then I can only express my utmost disappointment. Then of course, I am only one of several million…

I think there is a large amount of excellent, well-written and constructively presented ideas, feedback, and concerns on the forums. The problem is that many of those posts often get one or two responses, a few hundred views, and then fall dead into the wayside because they didn’t incite some controversy (nor garnered any official responses or explanations of why things were done a certain way).

If the development team switched their resources to reply (even very briefly) to more of these constructive threads, I think you’d see a notable improvement in the community. Sometimes people just want to know what’s left and right. ArenaNet do not directly serve the forum community nor do they need their approval, but that doesn’t mean it is bad to explain why unpopular (on the forums) features are implemented, or why good suggestions can’t be implemented.

After all, metrics only tell you so much and you have to be careful what you derive from it.

I think many people are difficult to please, and I think many passionate people are very difficult to please. I also think sometimes people mistake passionate people for unreasonable ones; we have to be careful to make a distinction between whining and someone seeing a great potential in something that can nevertheless be improved.

It would be neat to see more mini-interactions in WvW. I have much more fun roaming and fighting in smaller skirmishes than watching or being steam-rolled by huge “zergs”. The more small activities there is to do, the better. Something like supply-runs would make things a little more interesting.

Imagine that you, as a player, could pick up a bundle of supplies from a supply camp. How much supply is in the bundle would have to be decided; not too much. You would not be able to use your normal skills while carrying the bundle, and perhaps you would also be immune to swiftness. Your goal is then to carry the bundle to a tower or keep, at which point you get some WXP. You can, at any time, drop the bundle to fight, but other people can pick up (or maybe destroy) the supplies laying on the ground. Successful drop-offs would be added to the supply at the destination.

Using a waypoint while carrying a supply bundle would drop the supply on the ground.

I think an activity like this this would add an interesting dynamic, without taking away the importance of dolyaks. Teams would have to decide if it was worth devoting resources to running a little extra supply, how many players should carry it, and so on. When roaming with few players, it would also be a fun alternative activity that would give people more reasons to spread out and fight.

There are many nuances and additions that could make this really awesome.

Be careful with polls. They may seem like a good solution to many people, but they can also be incredibly deceiving. Different people often answer from various contexts based their own interpretation of the question, but the results are still piled together in specific predetermined groups. Polls are inherently limited as well. Forums may take longer to sift through, but they allow thoughts to be expressed (in both directions). The game is also a very mutable experience and everyone is different; letting the majority decide is not necessarily a good thing, as there are many aspects of the game that appeal to different people. As someone touched upon above, having someone who doesn’t play an area much affect it to the same degree as someone who plays it a lot could be odd.

I don’t think you’ll ever reach an equilibrium where people enjoy everything, and at some point, as much as we players want to have influence and give feedback, some of us also want to be surprised and see new features that we didn’t expect. Influencing a game with feedback is a very good thing, but stifling the creativity of the development team is not in anyone’s best interest. I guess it really depends on what kind of feedback you collect. “Was that fun?” is way too nebulous a question to have meaning in such a complex machine.

If you ask questions certain ways you can almost be guaranteed certain answers, but they will not always be the correct answers that you can use to guide yourself to better ground.

I’m speaking as someone who’s shared several ideas and tried to start several discussions with other players. I like the prospect of better dialogue, but apart from the disruption of immersion, polls are just not useful to the extent that some people make them seem. Some of forum ideas expressed in the posts above me are better, such as covering certain topics over a period of time.

Chasind.3128:

I wanna marry Logan….. c:

She probably wants to marry you too

It should be a surprise to no one that people are rushing out to farm champions, given that it was suddenly made the easiest way to obtain the latest shiny things in the game, as well as being fairly profitable to boot. Looking at it as an approving nod that everyone find it to be the most fun or compelling thing to do is probably a mistake. If there is one thing I’ve learned from playing, it’s that people are willing to do things they don’t find fun to get their fix of equipment or reward. If new, involved and compelling dynamic events were the easiest and best way to obtain the materials and items people wanted, those would no doubt see a lot of attention. I find it unwise to pretty much stealth add a bunch of dynamic events a year ago, find that no one seeks them out (I didn’t know they’d added them then), and then surmise that people don’t want to do dynamic events.

Looking at the fact that people are choosing to play content is not even half the story. If you don’t know how fun they find it or how satisfied they are with it, making it the key cornerstone for future updates seems suspect at best. I’ll grant you that there are probably people who find it fun, but I’d like to suggest that if you switched the rewards around, you’d see the commitment to champion farming go back to the state before they were loot dispensers, and a lot more people would do other events.

I think the key pitfall may be to presume that just because a lot of people are doing this, you’ve struck on the only thing people want and how to make them play. I doubt that and I sincerely hope that just because this has become popular, it is not an indication that the bulk of resources will be committed to more of this sort of thing.

A lot of players also tend to follow the snowball effect. If a critical mass of players is doing something, they’ll naturally be joined by players who seek things to do.

As for the resources available to the development team; I think as players we don’t really have to concern ourselves with that. Not sharing ideas because we suspect the developers don’t have the resources seems detrimental, and it isn’t like they really have to listen to us anyway. Also, not having enough resources for certain things is in essence a choice. It sounds like they’re doing really well and raking in millions, so surely they could hire a few more people if they really wanted to. In that sense, this is a choice a developer makes.

It is OK to do some things that aren’t the most popular. It is okay if not everyone wants to do everything, just as I certainly opt not to do some of the things currently in the game. If you only cater to the majority when you don’t have to, I think you’re missing an opportunity to create some brilliant game play. There is no doubt in my mind that a balance between compelling content and reward mentality can be struck. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive to the extent they are now.

It’s not just about preference. The selection is severely limited. It is rather clear that they’re going for the “currently featured” model where they throw up one item/style and then everybody buys that, then another and everyone buys that, ad infinitum. In addition, they have also latched onto the “limited time” mantra, creating an artificial scarcity and sense of urgency which has almost always proven effective in short-term marketing. They use this for many of the incidental items.

The latter wouldn’t be so bad if the permanent selection was greater, but I still consider it a very tacky method to encourage interest in one’s goods. If it’s something done every now and again to mark a special time, sure, but that’s almost invariably never the focus.

So what if it works on the sheeple; is it really what creates the best game experience?

I’m with the OP. More stuff. More choices. If you’re going to re-skin anyway, or base your items off existing items, offer up some simple stuff that doesn’t sell for ten dollars. Perhaps since they’re building from existing skins anyway, it may allow a better mix and match ability than what many of the items currently offer.

Supporting the game by making purchases in the gem store should be somewhat of an easy decision for people who enjoy the game and see potential in its future development. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve spent more money in the gem store than I would have paid if the game was subscription based. However, it has left me with a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth, and given the feelings I gather from some of the posts here, I am not alone.

I’m not even talking about the fact that some of the items are, in my humble opinion, priced in such a way to almost warrant ridicule. I don’t mind spending money on things that have a sense of value or could provide me with some fun, and we are certainly free to ignore items that we see as meaningless. Granted, we can each have our opinions about it, but this post will with a few exceptions steer clear of simply addressing the price points.

Why? Mainly because only lowering the prices would not come close to fixing the cumbersome and restrictive feel of how many of the purchased items work. Let’s take the Aetherblade medium armor set I purchased. One pays $10 for this item, which seems to be the price point for new armor sets. It’s also roughly 1/5th of the entire game’s cost. You then get to use this skin once on one character. Additionally, if you ever decide that it’s time for a change of stats while keeping this look, you have little choice but to purchase a set of transmutation crystals. Essentially, as you progress through the game and if you decide to change up your play style, the initial investment in the skin is not enough.

I’d actually like to purchase more armor sets (I have several different ones), but the above restriction and the sheer lack of options in the store holds me back. The gem store doesn’t have a very friendly layout for listing a lot of items either. Huge icons piled together in a long list. Not much in the way of mixing and matching, and excepting a lot of “quirky” items, the choices in general don’t seem to reflect one year into a store that’s supposed to keep people interested and supportive by offering cosmetic upgrades.

From my perspective as a player, who goes into this with the intent of enjoying the game, it just seems like a very bizarre way to squeeze a little extra profit out of things. Rather than me really enjoying that awesome new set, I instead feel mixed about the purchase. Why doesn’t it get added to a collection I can access any time? Everything from how the armor is initially applied to how it is managed afterwards is lackluster, largely because it’s not designed to work optimally for the player. I like collections. I like collecting things. I like the feeling of purpose, progress and ownership that comes with it. A missed opportunity.

Even something like having two slots for each armor part would be easier than it is now. One has the stats item and one is for the skin to be used. You could have made the game entirely without stats on armor this way; one is the item responsible for your visual appearance, the other is a simple token with your stats. No silly mish-mashing items together using clicks and drags and dancing around the room while singing an incantation.

The current system is also not very future-proof. What if another medium armor set comes out that tickles my fancy? Am I to replace my current one? If I don’t want to do that, my choice is what? Obtaining another set of the same stat armor and putting it on that so I can switch back and forth? That’s far from ideal if someone is in full ascended gear. At what point have we paid enough money for a skin to simply be available to us?

And so far this is just about armor skins! I’ll stop here, but the whole experience of the gem store from purchase to application to enjoyment could be magnitudes better.

To me it doesn’t feel like it’s for the player. It could.

The infrastructure of the game seems to support a much more compelling style of event chains than what is currently being presented. I’d like to see dynamic events (and perhaps even some hearts) be updated to have more meaning in the world. It doesn’t feel that interesting to clear out 10 centaurs wandering aimlessly around, or those spawning wave after wave only to be easily put down ad nauseam for 7 minutes. Once done, the cycle just repeats on a very short interval. There’s no impact.

It is my impression that players of MMOs are often in it for the long haul. They may not all play very much per week, but they come back and very often find themselves in the same places. I think it would be perfectly OK if one day, or half a day, a zone has certain characteristics depending on how events have been unfolding, and then another day it’s something different. This would only add some flair. Maybe one day the centaurs are mounting a serious offensive on Shaemoor, and if you beat them back, they scatter to recover. If they take the garrison, the surrounding events would change to gather materials and forces for a siege to take it back. The doors would be closed and the centaurs would be wreaking havoc with siege shots from their new fortification. During the centaur siege, the event may run for a long while, with many “sub” events going that award players who only have a certain chunk of time to commit. Bring ammo bundles to the trebuchets, kill the centaur patrols, rally and escort soldiers across the map, finally lay siege, mount the assault, and then take down the leader inside the garrison as the grand finale.

In one area you may have an NPC asking for help gathering certain resources, e.g. some of the stuff we find around the zone. When they have obtained enough, an escort quest begins which spans across part of the map. Maybe you get to vote on the route, or the route changes depending on how quickly the enemy waves are handled, or perhaps it’s random. If the destination is reached, merchants will set up shop and sell unique or useful items. Perhaps multiple escort quests take place, and if all of them are successful, a small settlement is built with all sorts of convenience vendors. Then the defense events begin at certain intervals and become increasingly intense each time they happen. Perhaps a steady flow of supply also has to be kept to keep the settlement running.

Then in some other area, you have an NPC asking for your help regarding very specific acquisitions. If the combined efforts of the players succeed, a buff becomes available for everyone on the map; this could be extra magic find, for example, or more vitality, or something else entirely. Perhaps there are multiple of these on each map, all with different buffs or perks that can be kept up given enough supplies.

Once you’ve completed a heart, instead of just having the eternal gratitude of the person, perhaps you can continue to perform small tasks for them for pocket change karma. You’re in the area anyway and happened to loot a few extra tools or revive a few extra soldiers. Make it feel more like an ongoing effort; after all, the hearts remain even when you’re through, with little to no evidence that you’re done making a difference.

I could keep suggesting forever, but I’m interested in hearing some of your ideas.

This is one of those odd items I’m never going to buy. It seems way too bizarre to me that people are willing to pay more than 3 gold for the “convenience” of being able to reset their traits anywhere. Seriously, even with waypoint and time cost included, it takes all of two minutes and a few measly silver to reset your traits now – color me surprised that some people find the cost of this item justified to save such little time. I can’t really think of any area in the game where you’re not better off economically just porting back to town. You could redo some dungeons entirely and still come out on top financially. Who finds themselves in such a pickle, with a sudden outrageous need to hemorrhage currency so they can change their traits right now? It’s just really weird to me.

On a side note, I was under the impression that trait templates were not only on the table but pretty much a given for a future update. If that’s true, I’m even more perplexed that anyone feels the need for an item like this. But hey, to each their own.

It’s no more odd than $10 single use outfits. I’m going to follow up on that some time.

Rather than having many of these encounters on an arbitrary timer, why not make a decent chain of dynamic events that has to be completed before the boss appears? The minimum time needed to complete the events would have to be set so that the boss couldn’t appear more frequently than what is healthy for the game. However, it would be more fun if one knew it was always possible to work towards getting the encounter going. This would also eliminate timer hopping between zones, and encourage people to work together to get fights going. Once a boss is down, the first event in the chain goes back up.

This could take advantage of the whole map. There could be variations in some of the events from encounter to encounter, or there could be multiple chains going that eventually converged on the boss. There’s tons of possibilities to make this awesome.

As for the bosses themselves, some good suggestions have already been made, but anything that creates a little variation would be welcome. There are rarely any doubts about the outcome as the fight progresses for many of the bosses. It’s just the same stuff on repeat. One of the penchants of PC gaming is decision making, and there isn’t much of that here.

It’s worth noting that years ago they talked about adjusting the delay for NPC chatter so it wouldn’t be so obnoxiously frequent. When I came back from my break they’d added the Silverwastes, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that it almost seemed more frequent there! At that point it must definitely be someone who purposely decided that this would be a great idea. These things could trigger every 5 – 10 minutes and you’d still hear them frequently. People tend to play for quite a while. If they’re worried that people will miss out on this glorious dialogue, I don’t think they have to.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

At first I didn’t want to post my take directly in this thread. Despite the inclusion of DEs in the discussion it seemed like another topic altogether, but the thread has evolved a fair bit in this direction, and I’ll simply link my contribution to avoid duplicating it here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Design-your-own-Living-Event/first

It may be a little lengthy for a basic concept, but I think it could bring life to the world.

The bottom part in particular outlines what could be a good reward system for events.

Edit
I should say this addresses, in part, both some of the Living World concerns, as well as the dynamic events and associated reward concerns. Making all these more intertwined, especially in regards to the permanent content, should be a definite consideration.

One of my biggest beefs is with people who reject ideas on the forums based on the notion that more important things need work first. Nothing will ever get accomplished if this is the train of thought applied. Furthermore, nothing really speaks against the possibility of both working on the core game and adding quality of life and other updates. In my humble opinion there should be a team dedicated exclusively to “meaningless” updates. The other nine hundred teams can continue to add champion farms, but I’ll forever be puzzled by the community’s rejection of good suggestions based solely on their idea of resources.

I would personally even take it one step further. I’d easily sit out several updates (not that I think this is necessary) if it meant adding a bunch of cool tweaks to the game. Killing thousands upon thousands of punching bags only keeps my attention for so long, and after that point it would be nice to see the living world actually be living and very much a world. Using a waypoint to go kill robots doesn’t do that for me.

DevonCarver.5370:

While it is very unlikely we would put supply runs in straight up like this, it is very likely something of this nature will make its way into the game in the future. I too think there would be a serious value to allowing supply to be strategically moved by players. One note is that we would not likely set it up such that players could pull supply from a depot and move it to another directly, because that would almost definitely create some serious conflict and open the door to griefing and sabotage even more than it already is. It’s definitely on the table though.

Thank you for replying. I wanted to make a note about this and the poster above you. For me personally, I wouldn’t even need the incentive of the supply actually moving for this particular idea to be fun. The concept of moving an item under pressure is compelling, and if there is a WXP reward, that in itself would be just fine for me. If other people would need additional incentive, but moving the actual supply is out of the question for various reasons, then perhaps it could provide some minor useful upgrades to the destination if enough is delivered, or something could be thought up for these people.

As for work being done in regards to supply (not particularly this idea), that would be a welcome addition as other people have also said in this thread. Some deeper element of strategy in logistics would definitely add some spice to the game play.

If something like the original suggestion was ever implemented in some form, I only hope thakittenwouldn’t be just one single item on the map that everyone fights over. Part of what makes the supply idea compelling to me, is thakittencould be started from many different locations and is a minor activity. In this way I hope it would encourage the small skirmishes that I’ve come to enjoy in WvW.

With many posters being all up in arms about the upcoming changes, I’m happy that smaller things are still on the table for future updates. While it is difficult to combat the fact that more people can often do things faster/better than few people, I don’t think it should preclude attempts to give smaller groups something fun to do. So, thank you.

Edit:

Most escort events are in PvE.

I don’t think we want more PvE in WvW.

Well, to be fair to Pathos, in PvE you don’t have players trying to kill you. That’s a significant difference when it comes to the game play between the two, and the yak escort events already exist. From that perspective it wouldn’t be more PvE in WvW.

To me, it seems a bit early to make absolute predictions about the game’s economy, as we have yet to see any significant additions or actions taken that would modify it. Seeing what happens when several all-new elements are introduced will perhaps be a good starting point to make more reasonable assumptions. We may be able to determine “it seems to work” or “it doesn’t seem to work”, but the actual reasons could remain opaque depending on the information available to players.

I’m actually surprised that there aren’t more “fluff” items available to purchase for gems, as well as more items available for a very small amount of gems (say, 25 – 50). Once a large portion of people have gotten their extra character slots, bank space, and so on, there will be a “need” for something to create a flow of gems. After having dropped $50 on gems, just to check it out and buy some items, I can say that I don’t personally feel that 75 gems is a very attractive price for a dye, for example. The current prices make me a “careful” spender if you will, which is obviously not good for any economy that depends largely on a consistent flow.

The game is young. Once there is a sizable collection of items to purchase and the flow of the economy has settled into a more stable state, it will likely be much easier to get a better picture of any bottlenecks that prevents it from flourishing. It’s not that long since it was obvious that the economy revolved around the leveling items. Once it reaches a state where several main aspects of the market is vying for people’s resources, then you’ll probably see an economy that is much easier to adjust.

A 100% free market is a pipe dream ripe for abuse [in the real world]. We have seen what people and corporations do without or with very little regulation. They saturate it beyond capacity, milk it dry, and show us remarkable displays of irresponsibility and carelessness, sometimes with devastating long term effects. Luckily, the game can’t really give us a free market anyway, because players cannot introduce new items into the mix or branch out the market outside of the developer-induced parameters.

It is interesting how a game’s economy can say a lot about the players’ priorities, and that is perhaps a more interesting angle to approach things like gem/gold pricing from: rather than trying to regulate the “key market” into a satisfying equilibrium, then identify and create new markets that can divert some of the pressure across multiple significant things.

After all, what we are trading here is really time and vanity.

This topic still has some relevance now that more armor skins have been released in the gem store. Frankly, even if I wanted to purchase the flame armor, any characters that’d use the skins are already locked down with looks that I don’t want to compromise. My points above stand, in that purchasing the armor would in itself not be a sufficient investment if I also want to keep my existing purchase intact.

Besides, the price of ten dollars (already steep considering one-time use) for a remake of existing skins doesn’t really inspire me to make an impulse purchase.

I suppose my suggestion is to start making all aspects of the game with the player in mind. Including the gem store. There’s plenty of people who want to pay money, but doing profit maximization on fun never works, regardless of the various tired “rationalizations” that are usually used to justify it. Just make the customers happy and roll with the income you get. Maybe you’ll be surprised at what happens when you have a customer base that supports and perpetuates your decisions, view your prices as favorable, and find the use of your service as streamlined, all rather than whatever it is you’re trying to do now.

Despite the optimism and support I’ve displayed in many of my prior posts since launch, I freely admit that it’s all spent. I may only be one person, but there it is. The whole gem store experience is by far the least impressive aspect of how the game has been handled, and I don’t speak from a point of view of someone who doesn’t want to spend money.

Your business is getting in the way of the leisure, when it could be augmenting it.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

keep your filthy pecking worm eating flammable clocking food rations away from my asura’s home instance! Applied development lab is a lab, not a farm! No chickens in asura home! Or sylvari one for that matter! Charr seem to love eating them (“Meat” or “Meal” named chicken in town of Nageling:) and humans…well they got straw sticking out their boots anyway…Norn? I think they eat bears..for appetizers. But only good chicked for my pointy teethed genius is a fried one!

You don’t want chickens. You think it’s a fowl idea. That’s okay. Everyone has flaws, even severe ones, and I essentially forgive you because you just haven’t understood why chickens yet. It is still positive to see you point out some of the versatility inherent in chickens.

I have an idea that would fit the Asura lab and still allow chickens.

Step 1
There are chickens.

Step 2
One of the chickens is named Unfortunate Krewe Member.

Step 3
Some days when entering the instance, that “chicken” gets zapped by a giant lightning bolt. This makes it grow absolutely huge.

Step 4
Another krewe member comes running to the electrified chicken and says “you’re a big chicken!” while the other chickens are like what? or something. Maybe they pause and drop a little seed they’re eating.

Step 5
The big chicken starts to chase the krewe member around. Eventually he catches him and knocks him back. The big chicken then becomes a vendor (but it’s of course still a big chicken). It sells a giant chicken potion for 100g. That’s quite cheap to become a giant chicken, but chickens are generous. That’s nice.

Step 6
When you drink the potion out in the world, other chickens will follow you. Because you’re big. Chickens like big chickens.

Step 7
If you get 50 chickens to follow you at the same time, there’s an achievement. You get the title King of the Chickens. Or Queen if you’re one of the beautifuls.

Step 8
Once you have the title enabled, some chickens become vendors. Maybe the chickens at home or maybe random chickens. You can then buy chicken themed armor and weapons from them. Maybe you pay with eggs or seeds or gold. Chickens like those.

I think this would make you realize the usefulness of chickens and it would be okay with chickens in Asura labs. If the Asura are smart they will like chickens.

Step 1 is the best step.

Most of the things I’d say about this topic have been covered in some shape or form by other posters, though I do want to point out my disdain for the segmentation of age groups in the manner some of you seem to exhibit. Perhaps this is mostly because of one group I happened to belong to as a boy, which is often overlooked in these exchanges: young people who are perfectly capable of and willing to absorb content not necessarily geared for children. It is frustrating for kids/teenagers who enjoy Beethoven, Kurosawa/Bergman movies, complex plots rife with intrigue, travel, advanced science, and so forth, to so often be lumped in with the stereotypical children of their day.

There is an abundance of people, in all age groups, with no attention span. That said, I still think we should be careful not to lump everyone into convenient brackets. As I’ve said in a previous post, I think the plots in video game stories often have a child-like simplicity, but I also think that such content is often unnecessarily dumbed down. You don’t have to name your villain Evil Bad Guy. You don’t have to make the bad people point out at every turn that they’re bad. It doesn’t mean your content is for kids when you do those things, it means that you are probably underestimating your audience.

I didn’t opt to play this game because of bows that shoot little colorful ponies. I don’t particularly mind that such things exist in limited quantity, though I think it’s possible the game could be better if it was reeled in just a bit. However, I also don’t know any kids who weren’t going to play this game, but then said to themselves “oh, well it has colorful pony-bows, so I am sold now”. It would surprise me if such people dominated the demographic.

It’s another world to explore; the other stuff is just incidental.

I would find people’s ideas to improve on the above rather interesting. Score modifiers, for example. I’ve been thinking that maybe capture points further away from your home base are worth more points to hold than those close to your spawn. Encouraging people to engage in combat and hold positions deeper into enemy territory could create an interesting dynamic when deciding which points to attack. When paired with the ideas in my original post, I think it would have a positive effect on the combat scenario as a whole.

I’d like to point out a few things from the perspective of someone who doesn’t command, might or might not pick up an icon in the future, but still spend most of their active play time in WvW.

Some of the stuff suggested seems too convoluted or intrusive, even with cooldown timers and what not. I’m sure a simple, streamlined system would trump those with lots of slash commands, auto mass invites, and so on. If I’m just wanting to roam around a bit, I don’t want stuff from 4 different commanders cluttering up my experience. Even things like the game message constantly telling me I’m in an overflow is completely unnecessary to me.

The best solutions are context sensitive. You hardly know that they’re there until you want them to be. I think a lot of good stuff is hidden far away in the UI currently (if it is even part of the UI), and I bet a lot of commander tools would not be (and are not) widely used because they’re so far from the game play. I know the LFG tool is probably fairly popular, but I don’t understand why it was relegated to sit under contacts. I think other features sometimes suffer a worse fate when they’re hidden.

I know UI work is pretty involved, but I’d consider investing the time in making a context UI that will only show based on what the person is doing. If you enable your commander icon, useful commander stuff shows up, if you join a squad, useful squad stuff shows up, if you equip a music instrument, music stuff shows up. Using the action bar is obviously not viable for commander functions, yet it has been the go to for other features and morphs so far. Developing a system to better handle the more advanced features of the game would be nice. When you equip a music instrument, you expect to play music, for example. When you equip your commander icon, you expect to command. Context additions to the UI would not needlessly clutter your experience, as you’d always have made the choice first. With a toggle to temporarily hide it, you’d be even better off.

As for squads, the obvious question is what would be helpful? The squad system is currently one of those hidden features. The game doesn’t ease you in to the experience as you go along. I’m not sure of how to browse who’s in the squad at a glance, maybe even with their supply count, or how the squad chat beats the map chat. There doesn’t seem to be a benefit to it right now where I go “I should really be in a squad to make this better”. It feels too arbitrary and not like a camaraderie. Whatever functions added should create a clearer connection between squad members, especially when there’s multiple commanders on the map. This comes back to delegation and organization.

I must stress though, I think commander features should be almost completely passive. Not everyone wants to be led. It should always be opt in, and even then, I think the commander’s tools should be mostly information gathering; nothing that interferes significantly in the UI or experience of other players. I get that some people take command delegation and the kind of team work that comes with it seriously, but there are also groups or individuals who don’t want to (or don’t always want to) be part of that system.

There are also some bad commanders out there, and they will have these tools too.

Music instruments are fun and have a lot of potential. Some of my statements below were pointed out in a post about the Marriner’s Horn specifically, though now that a flute is also available I thought it’d be interesting to widen the discussion a bit.

There’s a time for killing stuff, definitely. There’s also a time for arranging orchestral gatherings with fellow musicians. I’d be thrilled to see some more work put into the music aspects of the game, particularly because for those who enjoy it, this art is an ongoing experience that just keeps on giving. The current system is, however, a bit limited. For one, there are no accidentals on the instruments, and this significantly limits the amount of music that can be played. Secondly, it is pretty much impossible to play along with other people, so multiple people have a difficult time jamming out together. These are two really great opportunities that would add immensely to instruments. They’re also something like $10 a piece, which means purchasing several of them quickly adds up to the cost of some music software.

Being able to hold a modifying key could be a great way to add accidentals. And wouldn’t it be awesome if you could play some music, and then have an option to sync up that performance with other players? I’ve seen people gather around so they could listen to individuals play; imagine having little trios and quartets or even orchestras if more instruments are ever added. I know it’s probably a lot of effort to add a music interface, but once implemented, this system would be something that could keep many people entertained for a very long time without extra effort.

Music is in itself a variable experience. Once you have access to the notes and sounds, the sky is the limit. You don’t need to add new bosses or provide new locales to keep this aspect interesting. The sheer combination of notes and instrumentation would preclude such a need, and new instruments would pay for themselves via the gem shop. The current system is just shy of achieving this flexibility.

What say you, musicians and composers of Tyria? With all the accidents happening at the various celebrations held in this world, surely some are bound to happen to our instruments as well. People could use some entertainment in these very difficult times, so let’s rally and bribe someone to upgrade the means of our expression.

I’m positively surprised your post has stayed in the general forum. The thread I started was moved to the Black Lion forum where it suffered a predictable death in a short time.

Speaking of digital goods. For $1 I can purchase one of the greatest works of art ever created. I can listen to it as much as I want. If I want to copy it onto another device, I can do that. It’ll play on my computer, a stereo, in a car. If I delete it or damage my computer, I can re-download it. It’s just data. There is no time limit on it. I can even share it over my network so that my family members can all listen to it and I can listen to their stuff if we have different accounts. This is all sensible. I could even see there being less restrictions.

Here? Well, if I pay $10, I can get one skin, I may use it once, on one character. That is provided that I don’t already have a skin on that character. In that case I’ll also want to buy some transmutation crystals so I can keep my old purchase. In fact, I’ll want to do that every time I change my stats or buy a new skin from now on. If I accidentally delete a piece during this process, too bad for me. If I stop playing this character as much and would like the skin somewhere else? Too bad. The skin may even be based off another skin already in the game to save them some time and money. Maybe they will pass some of that savings on to me? Nope. If it flies it flies. It didn’t with the flamekissed light armor and now they “agree” that it looks a bit too much like human T3. Well, I guess no one looked at it and thought that when they approved it for the game?

Needless to say, what the OP describes seems like one obvious way to implement a system like this. All these attempts at squeezing out extra profit is making it much harder for them to change their mind and re-implement how items work in a more user friendly way. Look at the gathering tools, for example. They should never have been soulbound. Now they changed them to account bound, but subsequently had to deal with people wanting refunds, and they decided to up the price for them too (800 was already very expensive for one tool). The best way would have been to make each tool permanent unlock from the start across all your characters. The fact that you have to switch them around between characters now is still a curious inconvenience. The tool slot should just contain the permanent tool icon on your account for all characters. If you have multiple different ones (for effect, I guess), there should be a menu to select which one to use when you click it.

Even using this method, if you purchased all three tools, you’d almost have paid for entire game again, and that would only be for the convenience of harvesting without restocking.

My confidence that the people who run the gem store thinks about the player experience is non-existent. If they do, they haven’t really been out to prove it.

Although I cannot vouch for this thread or any numbers, I can say that people are in general really bad at interpreting statistics. Secondly, even if someone had access to the actual numbers and were able to ascertain the usage of WvW, it says absolutely nothing about people’s enjoyment of said content. It is not entirely unfair to presume that even people who dislike aspects of the experience still choose to play, and given that it’s an MMO, are even willing to go to great lengths to play without any particular enjoyment (especially if there is a reward or they merely see potential in the game play). Asserting that numbers are equal to approval seems like a very naive view.

Also, I have seen people proclaim that because only 5% (I don’t know if this number is correct) of players peruse the forums, that means they’re just a minority unworthy of serious consideration. How can that assertion be made without asking the other 95% first? It would seem incredible to me if the few percent who post here don’t have some representation amongst those who don’t. I doubt there are 95% other opinions out there.

If deciding what should happen in a game or any other media could be extracted from merely reading some numbers, no games would ever be taken off the grid, movies would never tank at the box office, and so on. I’ve seen people assert some truly bizarre things from completely irrelevant statistics. People make it this very black and white thing, when the reality is that the machine is much more nuanced and complex than that.

I find that the individual experience is often sacrificed when all your decisions are based on percentiles of millions. It’s great, for example, that an intended number of people have a precursor. The statistics speak for themselves. On an individual level, though, I would presume that the person who dropped 12 items in the forge to get it is somewhat happier than the guy who dropped 1200 items and still hasn’t gotten one. On an individual level the effort doesn’t match the reward, but statistically things are the way they’re supposed to be. Games are for many people, but those people are all individuals.

There are some odd ones for sure. The guardian “Retreat!”, for example, which is rarely used to retreat, yet your character will boldly scream the imperative from the top of their lungs. Here a rename would have to be supplemented by a re-recording of lines as well, or the lines would have to be dropped altogether.

I wonder how the numbers would have turned out if the two had switched places. I’m sure far from everyone have an emotional investment in Ho-Ho Tron, at which point their location is no doubt relevant despite their proximity. Marcello has what I would consider the best location of the two. My hypothesis is that the robot would “win” by an even larger margin should the two decide to reverse positions.

I came back after a 1 1/2 year break and don’t have Living Story season 2. I find the price to be somewhat extortionate for the content it promises, which is how I feel about the HoT expansion as well. People have been telling me that before the Lion’s Arch update and new skills (needed for HoT), there hadn’t been any significant updates since January.

So they basically just took the resources they once used for content financed by the gem store and made an expansion they’ll now charge $50 for? I can’t be the only player who finds this approach to be something that will fragment the story for different players. If you add that to the cost of the Living Story season 2, it’s quite the investment when you then also add any gem store purchases on top of that.

Furthermore, I found that some achievements aren’t locked either but still require Living Story season 2! I started working on the luminescent achievement, only to realize too late that the ascended items required to complete these are behind a gem store pay wall. This whole business about using in-game gold is nonsense; the time required to earn a sufficient amount of gold (which then can’t be used for other things) far exceeds that needed for the direct cash cost. In addition to that, there is no way to get the first season either which must be a bummer to some players.

The lore, story, game flow, events, and so on are just all over the place. Look at the mash that is the achievement panel. It’s like there is no red thread. No consistent modus operandi. Some people may enjoy the eternal experimentation, but it leaves a lot to be desired in regards to aesthetics and people who don’t play all the time.

This is an interesting discussion, and I’d like to add another dimension to it: Many of the thousands of suggestions made in the forums are duplicates or variations of existing suggestions. It seems reasonable to presume that if a developer responded to a particular suggestion, each subsequent time a duplicate was posted, the community of players would step in and make the new poster aware of the prior developer acknowledgement. If, in addition to this, only realistic high quality posts receive the royal treatment, then you’re nowhere near an expectation of thousands of responses.

It doesn’t seem unrealistic that the top 100 suggestions in a 6 month period would receive at least a few lines about feasibility, potential development, or even be shot down (which the community of players could also perpetuate to future forum goers who make the same suggestion). Some of the suggestions that can be read on these forums are really good, well thought out, worthy of serious consideration. If the forum staff is already funneling some stuff to the developers, there doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable distance to get responses to some suggestions regularly. It’s not a matter of entitlement; it’d just be nice.

In the end, I really do think it would make it indirectly easier to read the forum, as it would cut down a little on duplicates and some variations, or at least put some players minds to rest on certain matters.

Another thread that would be fun is one that documents player suggestions that were directly implemented in the game.

Here are some concrete suggestions to how fishing could be implemented.

1) Purchase a Rod from the Gem Store

This will unlock the ability to fish in various locations where water is present. Equipping the rod gives you certain abilities.

2) The Abilities

Once you cast, certain interactions begin to randomly shuffle around in the action bar, depending on what the fish is doing. The quicker your response time at doing the right things in the given situations, the greater your chance of reeling in your catch quickly.

You could also require the mouse to be moved around in a specific pattern or to specific points on the screen. Doing so successfully would perhaps lower the time it takes to reel in your catch as well. In order to avoid flailing, the mouse should perhaps be held over a point for a variable amount of time.

A combination of the two might be fun, so if you do well with keeping your mouse in the correct position, the abilities in your action bar will shuffle slightly slower.

Some fish would require very little interaction, while certain rare fish should be much harder to reel in. This would emulate a quiet experience, with sudden bursts of “huge fish!” moments. The more difficult reels would provide better rewards for the effort.

3) The Items and Rewards

Since this would be a gem store unlock, the items reeled in should not provide an advantage, but rather be an alternate way of getting loot. Fish could be used in recipes that either have buffs similar to existing recipes, or buffs that are unusual but unimportant to the gameplay in terms of progression.

Sometimes other types of loot could drop, perhaps at a similar rate to spending ones time running around farming somewhere. This would make fishing an alternative to huge quantities of monster slaying if one needs a break from Orr, while still costing time.

One could also get Karma. Certain fish could be “events”, for example, comparable to running around and randomly stumbling upon events out in the world.

4) Trophies and the Community

Apart from related achievements and titles, a collection of one’s fish should be kept somewhere, perhaps on a board in the home instance. It would then be a collection game in itself to fish them all up.

Each fishing area could also have a fishing NPC that is responsible for that area. He would have a board stating the largest/rarest fish caught in that area (and who caught it), as well as vendor items like lures. Even if it would be possible to fish in all water locations, each zone could have such a character sitting around somewhere. Talking to these NPCs would also provide clues to where in the world certain really rare fish can be caught.

I’m guessing certain fishing areas would attract multiple people who would then hang out and fish together. The recluse fishermen could choose to pack up their gear and go to more remote locations. There’d probably both be a spirit of competition and a desire to help each other with tips and good locations.

5) Additional Items

There could also be a fisherman’s outfit in the Gem Store. The lures previously described could provide a buff that causes fish to be caught at a slightly higher frequency (or slow down the ability shuffle a little bit). There are many fun options for this particular feature.

Certain bait could be used for a chance to catch certain fish more frequently, allowing one to focus more on desired catches. Perhaps there would also be some secret recipes for special bait that allows one a chance to catch really, really rare fish.

I’d quickly smack down some cold cash for a fishing rod that unlocked this

I once suggested that repair canisters should be made a timed buff. Now I’d like to suggest that certain boosters are given the somewhat opposite treatment and are instead given charges. It would remove the imposed limit of needing to perform a specific action for the entire duration of the boosters to gain their maximum potential.

The numbers below are just examples.

Magic Find
The next 250 enemies killed where magic find is considered should expend one charge until the booster is exhausted.

Gathering
Rather than an imposed time limit that wont give you its value, this booster should be good for the next 250 nodes gathered.

Crafting
The next 250 masterwork (rare?) or greater items crafted will expend a charge until the booster is exhausted.

This would give the player freedom to switch up their play style and still benefit from boosters. For example, maybe someone only wants to craft for 20 minutes, then go PvE for a bit and return to their crafting later. The current boosters are impractical for this purpose. Similarly, with the magic find booster one is compelled to stay out in the field and continue killing until the timer runs out. Being able to spend some time in the cities, do a dungeon, hang around a bit, then do some PvE or WvW would greatly enhance the ways the booster could be used.

The numbers can obviously be balanced to make sense, but I definitely think that people would feel more compelled to enable boosters if they did not feel obligated to perform specific tasks for a specific amount of time as a result.

It would also encourage the mix and match of boosters. For example, one could enable a crafting, gathering, and magic find booster. One would no longer have to compromise between killing and gathering, and if desired, one could take a break to go crafting before returning and claiming the last of the bonuses.

It costs around a buck to unlock one of these. My personal experience so far has been that they don’t really contain anything of proportionate value. I purchased another bucket of gems to try out the Consortium Chests too; they obviously contain different stuff, but are at the same time also significantly more costly to open. 1800 gems is what, 20 dollars or so? Sure, it’s supposed be a bit of a gamble, but paying about 1/3 the cost of the entire game, with nothing to show for it, puts it in perspective. To provide additional contrast: if I had converted the gems into gold, I could have purchased the same items from the trading post about 10 times over. That seems a little odd to me.

I’m not advocating free handouts. I enjoy seeing people with amazing items that I don’t have, and I’d spend no less money if the chests were a little less steep in price or contained somewhat better “tough luck” loot – it’s a treasure chest. To me, 1 or 2 dollars doesn’t seem to be that sweet spot where opening a chest is always nice and sometimes really awesome.

I’m aware that some people are willing to pay the price, and indeed my purchases are part of that statistic too, but having tried it I think I’m done with chests for now, including Santa’s Special Chest or whatever it’ll be.

To make the intent behind my suggestion more clear: I’m talking about the feeling of opening a chest not matching its cost. I suppose I am suggesting a way to make it “nice” rather than “meh” when one opens one of the less interesting chests, which statistically will be all or most of the time. Very low drop rates for really awesome stuff is fine.

Some possibilities to spice up chests:

• Add a few more items per chest
• Add some crafting materials to the chests
• Make it relatively common to find a “rare” piece of gear in a chest
• Make the chests contain a random amount of coins
• Add some recipes to the chests that can only be obtained from the chests (these don’t have to be better than other recipes, just quirks or alternatives)
• Add a decent chance to receive an above-common dye as part of a chest

• Add a few events to the game that can be started by giving certain NPCs a somewhat rare trophy item from the chests. The end of the event could result in a vendor that sells interesting items (to anyone around) for a limited time

• ?

And how about:

• Add an achievement for opening a certain amount of chests

You could also make healing power scale significantly better but increase the cooldown on heal skills to make them a much more important choice. This would also place a greater play on various traits, skills, and sigils that provide passive healing. Adjust it so that they’re closer to how they updated condition damage; if you got no healing power it’s trivial, but as you ramp up on it the effects become greater.

Right now you’re just not “rewarded” for taking healing power in the same fashion that you are for taking condition damage, because base healing is designed to be enough to keep you easily alive at all times. Maybe no healing power should make that more difficult, more should make it somewhat easier, and a large amount should make it feel rather comfortable. I’m not sure the split with “Outgoing Healing” was a good step.

I don’t think you’ll be able to implement a healing power solution without a balance pass on traits and skills that surround this aspect of the game.