Guild Wars 2

Would like the suspicious bush if it’s interactable.
When the owner interacts with it, it says “It’s acting suspicious.”
When another player interacts with it, it says “It’s really suspicious.”

As for the unsuspicious rabbit, it’d have to chomp on you and take 50% of your life in one hit, and then lick you a few times, restoring it, and then chomp again – only when you’re not looking.

Mini Caithe would stalk female characters.

Updated the suggestion.
The default amount of stacks consumed would be 5.
Alternatively, each type of Boon would consume a different amount of stacks, representing that Boon’s importance.

@unleashed – ofcourse the condition removal would need to be balanced.

Actually, it could finally become balanced.
Right now alot of condition removal just remove “everything”.

With my suggestion, there could be some that remove X stacks = X players’ worth of that condition.
Or it could remove 1 stack from each type of condition = 1 player worth of each type of condition.

That’s ridiculous.
When you reach level 80, you’re usually wearing greens and blues.
You then obtain exotics.
Ascended is beyond exotic, so you will be doing some content wearing exotics.

So requiring level 80 to gather ascended materials is only an issue for bots and gold sellers.

I hope ANet keeps it as it is, and mercilessly bans bots and gold sellers.

Despite alot of your ideas feeling really cool, I don’t like the idea of ridiculing the already weak atmosphere of GW2.
We need to make GW2 deeper and more immersive – not turn it into an overachieving comedy that completely lost any semblance of “world”.

I disagree with this.

First, we had the ridiculous “logout to rob enemy of kill” attitude.
This suggestion just brings it back with a different flavor. No.

Second, the real problems with the Downed state, are:
- You some skills that are more powerful than the normal ones. How stupid is that?
- It feels like Downed Health is bigger than your Normal Health.
- Rally system is annoying and unfair.

Solution:
- Give downed proper defensive skills, but none stronger than your normal skills.
- Make downed health about 50% of normal health
- Make rally only heal 50% of downed health (25% of normal health)

Essentially, make downed state less cheesy.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Except for the part where you can just talk to a speed NPC over and over again until you change your personality from one to the other. Your personality is only tracked from the last 100 conversations with an NPC. There are also 10 types of personality and you’re idea of getting a special reward for maxing each one negates 7 of the types (though the finisher tied to your personality isn’t a bad idea).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personality
“Personality affects gameplay by offering certain dialogue options only to some types and altering the reactions of certain NPCs. However, the game is designed to avoid extreme consequences, i.e. players are able to take on different personality types without fear of losing out on overall rewards or benefits.”

I have gotten some dialogue options tied to my personality at some time or another, but I can’t really remember with who. And I haven’t played around with it enough to see if NPCs actually act different to me based on my personality.

Not to be bashful, but yours is the kind of posts we don’t need on these forums.

The OP started by saying that the system needs to be changed to be more meaningful.
From there, you miraculously:

1. - Assume that we would only be able to get 1 reward
   I don’t see where the OP said anything to suggest this.
   In fact, the current system is perfectly compatible with all the suggestions the OP presented – you might be able to get each and every reward.
2. - Assume that all the “speed exploits” would be available
   Where did the OP hint at that?
   Your claim doesn’t make any sense either.
   If you can only get 1 reward as you “feared”, then the “speed exploit” would be meaningless.
   If you can get all rewards, then the “speed exploit” will not give you anything special other than a severe headache.
   Nevertheless, if something meaningful was added to the personality system, perhaps it would become slightly harder – and certainly not spammable – to change your personality.

Too add some constructive criticism, I say that so that players aren’t encouraged to have multiple personality disorder or severe cases of bipolarity – by changing the character personality to obtain all rewards – perhaps the system might reward you first with the personality’s respective reward, and then grant you something cool weekly/monthly for keeping a consistent personality, rather than changing it.

The personality rewards should be purely flavourful, like titles and equipment skins.
Any non-vanity rewards – like crafting materials, currency or consumables – should only be rewarded weekly/monthly for “keeping the same personality”, and should be the same across all personalities, so that you don’t get encouraged to pick a personality for its reward.

I simply disagree with your “burst damage” idea as a fix.
It’s alot more than a healthy encouragement to teamplay – it heavily encourages build stacking.
Condition Damage is usually higher than direct damage, but dealt slowly.
With your idea, you’d eventually see everyone stacking Bleed builds and exploding targets from afar in a couple seconds.

It would certainly be awesome as a specific profession’s perk – like your Elementalist able to cause a Conflagration for X% of your current Burning stack’s total damage, every time the stack reaches Ys – or a multiple of Y, or something.

My suggestion doesn’t change the way players use conditions.
It doesn’t change the way players use the UI.
It doesn’t change almost anything, while allowing more than 10 times the current amount of players from contributing with condition damage, and allowing players to actually focus on burn or poison.

“I don’t think any class should be able to do everything.”
I sympathize with the notion, but that’s not what I suggest, anyway.
I am merely saying all classes should not only have access to but be competitive with all damage archetypes (condition and direct damage) – that’s not the same as doing everything.

You can put into a game 50 builds focused in the same type of damage, and they can all have fundamentally different playstyles and flavors.
So it’s irrelevant whether a profession has access to condition damage and/or direct damage – it is not directly related to its flavor or uniqueness.

Zerker is the strongest because it’s the only combination of 3 stats that multiply each other.
You have power multiplied by crit, wich is then multiplied by prowess.
Other combinations of stats often have 1 multiplicative stat, and 2 additive (example: power+condition damage + precision).
This also means Berserker is weaker at low gear tiers – since the exponential growth curve means exponentially weaker startup.

That’s why I suggest – in another thread linked in my signature – that they change a few things regarding stats.
Make sure to check it out.

Imo, it might make more sense an NPC that takes tradeable MF gear for the exact materials needed to craft it.
I agree with you on Ascended, Dungeon and Karma gear.

Esplen.3940:

Actually, Nurvus edited his post 3 hours after I posted my message.

Additionally, Critical Crafting (which is already in place) does not refund your materials (because that’s illogical, how can crafting a Bolt of Jute with 2 Jute Scraps not take 2 Jute Scraps?), but gives you bonus Crafting Experience (and thus more character Experience).

Gathering has a chance of “Critical Gathering” which allows the node to not break, allowing players to gather more (thus more experience and loot).

Killing has a bonus experience based on how long the mob has been alive (a “veteran” system, so that mobs like Moa’s will get killed by the people who actually want to level up).

Exploring will grant more bonuses in the near future, and be a requisite of the new crafting levels. (Not sure how “critical exploring” would work, even in your methods.)

All I see in your words are:

I want to sit in town and craft to 400 so that when I go out, I can gather and kill and level up super duper ridiculous fast, instead of having systems that don’t punish players for playing the game properly (leveling up your crafting as you’re leveling not TO level.)

But what do I know, I’m a troll.

If you’re not a troll, you certainly aren’t posting anything constructive.
Two posts – one to attack me, and one to defend yourself.

Yeah, I edited my post.
I merely added some bolding and underlining to make it more readable, and the WvWvW-related suggestion.

You would’ve known that if you had read my post beyond the first 3 sentences.

All you see, is what your eyes are adapted to.
So much contempt for someone you don’t even know, it’s sad.
I hope you feel better for venting, at least.

What I want is what I said in the suggestion.
I specifically said – before editing – that the point is to reward those who engage all kinds of activities, not those who rotate 2 activites, and certainly not those that spam just one activity.

As for the suggestion to keep some materials, it’s merely an idea.
You’re right, it wouldn’t make much sense – or maybe you can consider that you “usually waste” materials, and my suggestion makes it so that you don’t waste any.

But you don’t care about that.
You don’t care about the overall idea of what I suggest.
You seem to be here to bash.
Why don’t you just ignore all my threads from now on?
I’ll do the same kindness for your posts.
—-
Sitcaz, you know XP grants you skill points beyond Lv80, right?
Perhaps the XP bonus associated to this suggestion only applies after you reach level 80.
That way it isn’t abused for leveling – not even through crafting.

Zoid, are you somehow disagreeing that it’s simply better to make MF “extra” stuff found in consumables?
Are you saying it’s okay to have MF compete for 1 combat stat?
Please explain to me why it’s not okay on armor, but suddenly it’s fine on consumables.
How is it any different?

I provide a simple solution – make it an extra.
Please provide a better one.

You tried really hard to distort my words.
I only added resting bonus at the end of my suggestion – but it’s far from a mere rested xp bonus.

Plenty of MMos have resting bonuses – or penalties, wich is essentially the same with a different flavor.
I’m suggesting something else – a way to encourage engaging diverse activities.
I’m suggesting bonuses that you build by doing things.
I merely added at the end that you might also build the bonuses while offline.
If leveling is too fast, forget the XP bonus – grant only the non-xp bonuses I suggested.

That attitude of yours, however, is something these forums can do just fine without.

Some people have suggested Rested Bonus to be implemented into GW2.
I agree with it, but not in the way it was implemented in games like World of Warcraft.

Instead, I think GW2 should reward players for engaging in various activities, rather than repeating a single one.
This would actually add some advantage in the players vs bots scenario.

What I mean is, something like this:
1 – You have 5 bonuses (exact bonuses are hypotetical):
1.1 – Crafting – XP & chance to keep some of the crafting materials
1.2 – Gathering – XP & chance to gain more materials
1.3 – Killing – XP & Magic Find – applies to anything you kill (except players) that does not belong to Dynamic Events or Renown Hearts
1.4 – Exploring – XP & Treasure Find – applies to XP/Items obtained from Jumping Puzzles, Treasure Chests in the Open World (not dungeons); or discovering Vistas/PoI/Areas
1.5 – Reputation – XP & Karma – applies to the completion of Dynamic Events and Renown Hearts

2 – Everytime you engage in one activity, you accumulate Bonus for all other 4 activities – but not the activity you’re engaging.
2.1 – This means Killing creatures gives you a bonus to Crafting, Gathering, Exploring and Reputation.
2.2 – As encouragement to engage in WvWvW, it would give bonus to all 5 activities mentioned above. This applies both objectives and killing players.

3 – These bonuses are separate and spent separately.
The idea is to be rewarded the highest for doing all activities, not to rotate 2 of them.

4 – Being Offline could award you a Bonus on all 5 activities.

5 – If leveling is already considered too fast, ignore the XP bonus.
Still, since skill points are useful beyond level 80, the XP bonus might be worth keeping.
5.1 – After Sitcaz’s considerations, perhaps these XP bonuses would only apply to level 80 characters.
The other bonuses would apply to any level.

6 – This rewards, rather than forcing or limiting.
You are still able to play in whatever way you want.
It simply doesn’t give players a tremendous advantage for spamming DEs or Dungeons.

Even though I’m inclined to disagree with the OP, Eve Online kind of tells me it would be a good idea.

If it is possible, I think it’d be a nice plan for the future.

Final Fantasy 7 had a spherical globe :P

Error.6290:

It would still add tons of job for Arenanet. since they need to remake all abilitys or classes who some how have Boon “specs” Let’s say this rune in PvP Don’t know the name but it buffs Dur and dmg done when having might buffs up. That will be usless if they add “Forsaken de-buff”
if i am also not misstaken Ranger or elemental have a trai that gives them bonus dmg per boon active. also usless in PvP.

ANet already plans on adding new skills.
Forsaken would be a nice candidate for future Necromancer, Guardian, Mesmer, Ritualist and Dervish skills.

Hehe.

Zoid.2568:

Delete MF stats from gear. Use food and account magic find only.

I think both MF and Experience should be an “extra” bonus in Food.
Which means Food should give 2 combat stats + xp + mf.

If player A is using food that gives 2 combat stats, and player B uses food that gives 1 combat stat + MF, it’s just the same as having MF replacing 1 stat in gear.

There should be absolutely nothing in the game where you are able to choose MF over combat stats.

Nope, I’m portuguese.
And thanks for the correction.
What about the thread?

Is there any particular reasoning of mine you didn’t understand or agree with?

GW2 is less of an esport than GW1 ever was.

If ANet focuses on Balance in detriment of Enjoyment, they’ll get plenty of undesired results.

Skill variants would be small improvements, mostly changing the way you use the skill, to accomodate different builds.
I gave examples already.

There should be 3-5 variants per Weapon.

The point of Variants is introducing the “Skill Hunt” from GW1, without introducing more skills.
It merely gives you alternative versions of existing skills.

This is:
Easier to balance than adding more skills.
Easier to implement (from a resource/budget point of view) than adding more skills.
Easier to implement than adding new areas/bosses/content.
Adding alot more to the game than any of the above.

That being said, we should also get more Weapon skills – I suggested that in my Expansion Concepts thread (signature link).

No, ANet isn’t doing it for free – they got paid, and still get paid.
Furthermore, the game would benefit from this.
And it takes ALOT less effort than designing new content.

Well, Kjeldoran, my suggestion is “almost” the same as healing as a % of HP.
However, Healing as a % of HP would make Vitality too good.

So I suggest something halfway:
Vitality gains the role of Healing Power, but ONLY for Healing you RECEIVE.

So someone (including yourself) tries to heal you for 4000. Depending on your Vitality, you might increase that to – hypotetically – somewhere between 4500~6000.

I’d simply remove Power, Precision, Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality and Healing from trait line bonuses, and replace them with interesting bonuses instead.

Different classes have different themes and flavors, so it makes sense they have different pairings available to them.

Let me give you an example of what I would do to Necromancer.
I would change the Curse Trait Line to provide something along these lines:
1 – Critical hits have a 3.3% chance per point (99% at 30 points) to cause bleeding.
Note: This is equivalent to the bonus granted by the Adept Curses Trait Barbed Precision, which would be removed with this change.
2 – Your conditions deal X% more damage per point to Bleeding targets.

I have revamped and improved the idea.
Please tell me what you think of it.
I really think Guardians could use a stacking condition, and Necromancers could use some more “Unholy” themed condition.

The Boz.2038:

I absolutely agree that the trait lines need to be redesigned, together with their linked attributes. Power should go with the class-specific attribute, precision with crit damage, condition damage with condition duration, vitality with toughness, and healing power with boon duration.
It would open up more build options, but I can see how someone could understand that as a flaw. The thing is, you only need to tone down the most powerful combinations, if their power is deemed too much; you don’t need to touch the niche builds.

The thing I’m talking about is the fact that giving flat Precision, Power, Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality or Healing Power is not fun or interesting, and as you obtain better gear, becomes less important.

On the other hand, bonuses such as Condition Duration or class mechanic are interesting and do scale as you improve your gear.

The Boz.2038:

However, I do not agree with the rest of the “axe healing power, merge malice and prowess into skills” suggestion. I don’t think that would work well at all.

Healing Power is an unfair stat.
I can pick my favorite stats while using Protection, Blind, Aegis, etc.
But if I want to heal, I need to sacrifice 1 stat – this is unfair.

As for my suggestion on Malice, Precision and Prowess, let me explain again why.
Currently – you either build for condition damage or direct damage.
Some direct damage builds may have bleed as an extra, but still use Berserker gear.
Condition damage builds will almost never have Power.

And even if they do, it’s kind of unfair.
Berserker damage scales to the power of 3 – you have 3 stats multiplying each other.
Condition damage only scales to the power of 2 – you can have precision proccing additional bleeds.
Even if you mix power+precision+condition damage, it’s still 2 types of damage scaling to the power of 2, each – since direct damage increases through precision+power, and condition damage increases through condition+precision.

You don’t see viable builds combining Power+condition without precision.

So my suggestion is actually increasing the number of viable combinations you can make with stats, by making skills use more than 1 stat.

Allowing burn/poison to crit or scale from precision %, and allowing all conditions to scale from prowess, will give condition damage users an equivalent scaling to Berserker users.

The Boz.2038:

Also, zerkers. Zerkers everywhere.

This happens because only direct damage has access to 3 damage stats.

My suggestion makes it so that all types of damage dealing can benefit from at least 3 stats, so that your gear choice actually starts becoming a choice – for everyone.

You say zerkers everywhere, but condition users also have their gear pretty much set in stone – condition damage + 2 defensive stats. Or if you use bleeds, condition, precision + 1 defensive stat.

There’s nearly no -real- customization.
When you pick a weapon, it’s almost like the Traits, Gear and Upgrades are picked for you.

That’s one of the points.
It’s more than just “give us more content”.
It’s – above all – enriching the whole gaming experience, and giving the world of GW2 a truer feeling of world.

Allow me to correct you, JorneMormel.

You are correct when you say direct damage has more available stats for damage dealing.

Condition Damage, however, for quite a few Professions, uses Precision as means to proc Bleeds – wich is one of the main damage dealers among Conditions.
So Condition Damage has 2 stats, rather than 1.
Still, it means you can be more defensive than direct damage dealers while dealing your maximum damage.

That being said, I believe all Professions should have access to stackable Conditions – I’ve suggested the Forsaken condition in another thread, wich would be available to Guardians, Mesmers and Necromancers.

Dean Calaway – not saying this is your case – but surviving at the cost of doing significantly less damage.
Lower defense means you need to be extra careful, wich will lead most players to play in a way that barely contributes with damage.

Now imagine no one in the party uses MF.
As a result, everyone is doing things at full power.

Now, alternatively, imagine MF is averaged in the party, wich prevents players from leeching.
This would also be a decent alternative.

What ANet is doing, is the best of both worlds:
Everyone plays at the max.
Everyone gets MF as well.

What implications will this have in the Economy? Not really thinking about it, yet.

This would be particularly interesting as it would help ANet add the concept of skill/monster hunter or bestiary into the game, wich would add a whole new layer of endgame progression and activities to the game, at a very low resource cost.

I agree it would be a nice addition, but only if they added alot of gameplay around it.

What I mean is, as you suggested, missions.

To be honest, they should first implement Skill Hunting back into the game.
I also made a suggestion (check my signature Expansion Concepts and Skill Variety) that would greatly combine with the concept of Bestiary.

Essentially, giving all Skills a few possible enhancements (you pick 1 at a time, kind of like Diablo 3), and to obtain these enhancements, you must defeat specific creatures scattered throughout the world (no hints, though).
So you’d really want to defeat all of them to “inspire you” to discover better ways to use your skills.

Greatly improved legibility.
Please share your views on these ideas!
Tip: They’re inside the Spoilers.

Or is it possible that no one really cares about crafting or the economy, and just rather go about spamming instanced content?

Oh, I see you were commenting on someone’s suggestion to make 25 stacks just deal a bunch of direct damage in one go.
My apologies, then.

As for what I said about current Conditions being bursty, I meant that when you apply them, they all act simultaneously, instead of coalescing into a single DoT.

An example – 5 stacks of Bleed are applied to you:
0:00 – 20 over 5s
0:01 – 8 over 2s
0:02 – 8 over 2s
0:02 – 20 over 5s
0:03 – 20 over 5s

As a result, this is the damage you see – assuming 1 tick per second:
0:01 – 4 = 4
0:02 – 4 + 4 = 8
0:03 – 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 16
0:04 – 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 16
0:05 – 4 + 4 + 4 = 12
0:06 – 4 + 4 = 8
0:07 – 4 + 4 = 8
0:08 – 4 = 4

This means you have periods of high damage, based on the different durations of the various stacks.

My suggestion doesn’t do that.
Instead, it goes more like this – since the damage adds and spreads evenly across the new duration.

0:01 – 4
0:02 – 7
0:03 – 13
…
Essentially, everytime a new stack is added, its damage and durations are adjusted into a new stack with evenly spread damage.

And Nretep, the “wall” you speak of is always there, in one way or another.
Either you get a somewhat broken system, with no “apparent” wall – and the fact that it is broken, is the wall itself; or you get a balanced system with walls that may (or not) slightly affect you in specific situations.

I suppose all of this problem only exists because ANet wants to track the contribution each player has towards each enemy, in order to determine rewards and threat.
So unless you throw that out the window, and risk breaking other parts of the game, then the solution to condition stacking isn’t that easy.

I just believe my solution works, and doesn’t require huge changes – neither to the game itself, nor to the way players use condition builds .

RollingBob.8502:

If it really gave you more for less why aren’t you using it as a personal advantage instead of trying to dictate how you think others should be enjoying themselves? Voyeur much? Get real. It replaces a major stat and it wouldn’t even be worth using in a dungeon repetitively.

If it exists and gives an advantage, 99% of players will use it, regardless of how much it screws others.
That’s the way things go.

The stat doesn’t make the game more fun.
It gives you MORE loot for being LESS effective.

In some cases, you’ll even be getting less Loot over time – because, hypotetically speaking, getting 40% better loot, but killing 33% slower, results in less overall loot.

It’s not great solo, and it sucks in groups – for others.
It’s a great stat for selfish players.
It’s a stat that promotes the worst kind of behavior, such as leeching.
No one will miss it.

ANet will be doing all GW2 players a GREAT service by making MF account-bound and passive, and removing that cancer of a stat from gear.

Spectre.6452:

Just throwing it in there, condition damage is not supposed to burst, and it is not the same as direct damage. Please stop comparing the two as they are the same.

Stop misreading, then.

I said the way condition damage works NOW, actually is somewhat bursty.
If you don’t understand why, sorry but I’m not going to explain again, read above.
My suggestion removes whatever burst there is from condition damage.

My suggestion only applies to damage conditions and Regeneration.

Adding more effectiveness to the damage portion of Poison and Burn is not a bad thing, as currently both the Fire COmbo Field and the various Burn skills are extremely lack luster.
No one truly focuses on Fire – it’s always a secondary damage source, and a blanket condition for PvP.
Guardians that bother with fire is mostly for the Runes/Traits that grant extra damage against enemies with condition/burn.

The purpose of my suggestion is simple: Make condition damage system solid, intuitive and reward teamwork, rather than penalizing it.

My system does solve duration stacking conditions.

As I said:
1 – Each player owns 1 stack of each damage condition type.
1.1 – This means 1 burn and 1 poison per player
1.2 – The poison “heal reduction” does not stack.
2 – The calculation I use for the new Stack is called Weighted Average.
2.1 – What you were doing wrong in your calculations was that you were indeed weighting the new duration, but using the full old duration.
I didn’t change my suggestion after you posted.
You did misread that little bit.
3 – Not everyone knows this, but every stack of every condition is handled individually. This means the game tracks the timers of up to 25 stacks of each condition, and dynamically calculates to reflect your stats at all times.

My suggestion doesn’t increase the number of stacks being handled. It merely adds a quick calculation.
The stacks could be lowered to 20 per creature – it would still be a massive improvement over what we currently have.

Currently, 1 player can max out 25 stacks of bleed for a few seconds.
Two players easily maintain 25 stacks, but already penalize each other since a single player can easily maintain over 15 stacks.
This means the 3rd player and beyond are completely screwed.

3.1 – Even less people know this – Burn and Poison are also handled in tiny stacks “queued” one after another, each stack with its own duration.
So if you apply 5 times Burn, the game is handling 5 stacks of Burn, each with its own duration.

With my suggestion, since each player owns a single stack of Burn and Poison, whenever you add more Burn or Poison, it merely adds duration to your own stack.

4 – With my suggestion, without increasing the number of stacks or timers being handled, I multiply the amount of players that can fully cooprate in terms of condition damage without penalizing each other by more than 10.

However, practically speaking, it’s not likely for there to be 25 players applying burn, poison, bleed and confusion – even with the help of Combo Fields.

Wich means that in most situations, there will be less stacks of damage Conditions being handled by the server at a time, than we currently have.

5 – I’ll tell you what the main flaw – in terms of gameplay – of my suggestion is.
It doesn’t offer the same burst damage that the current system does.

Currently, if you apply a 6s Bleed and 2s later (4s left) another 2s Bleed, your new 2s Bleed will take 2s to deal its full damage – ending 2 second before the 6s Bleed – while in my suggestion, it would “mix & dilute” into a duration somewhere between 4 and 2.

But it might not entirely be a flaw, as that “burst potential” that condition damage has might – arguably – be one of the problems that needs to be solved.
If such is the case, what I consider a potential flaw, might actually be a quality instead.

20 damage over 5 seconds.
3 seconds later, 8 seconds left and 2 seconds left.
Another 20 damage over 5 seconds is added.
The duration will become smaller than 5 seconds.

Because I said the new duration is the PROPORTION of the Old + PROPORTION of the New.
You don’t add the full Old duration. Where did you read that?

Here’s how it goes:
8 damage is truly ~28.6% of 28, my mistake there.
20 is also ~71.4% of 28.
You add 28.6% of 2s = 0.572s
and 71.4% of 5s = 3,57s
for a total of 4,142s
So you get a new stack that deals 28 damage over 4,142s = ~6.76 DPS

I hope this helps correct your incredibly hyperbolic calculations.
A small misinterpretation somtimes leads to extremely wrong conclusions.

Magic Find should not be replaced with a new stat.
The pieces that have Magic Find should simply be replaced with pieces that already exist.

Did you even read what ANet said?
They don’t want you to choose between wealth & weak or strong & poor.

Wich – for those that didn’t understand – means they want to get rid of stats in gear that are not good for combat.

That being said, I approve of Marcus Greythorne’s suggestion.

Hello there!

Trading and Crafting are two very delicate subjects in any MMO.

First, the value of Crafting.
What should its value be?

My Suggestions!

I agree with the OP.

It’s inadmissible that Crafted Items are more expensive than the items they are made of.
Crafting needs to be more than a gold sink for leveling, or a stepping stone to enter end game content.

Crafting – wich takes dedication and effort – should be better than your average means to acquire gear – not just equivalent, and certainly not inferior.

Not entirely related, but I loved Guild Wars 1 NPC Traders – who bought and sold items with a margin of profit – wich was a sink, in itself.
The value they sold or bought items for was directly connected to supply and demand.
Players could trade directly, to their benefit as well.

If implemented in a true MMO, it would really give it the feel of World.

Now let’s talk of a way to implement these NPC Traders in GW2.
1 – There are all kinds of “NPC Traders” in the game.
2 – These traders include “Rune Trader”, “Fine Material Trader”, “Cooking Ingredient Trader”, “Metal Trader”, “Wood Trader”, etc.
3 – Any items from the Black Lion Trading that are also sold by NPC Traders, and are placed for sale below the price the Traders are willing to offer players for the items, are automatically bought.
4 – Any items from the Black Lion Trading that are also sold by NPC Traders, and are placed for sale above the price the Traders sell them for, won’t be sold anyway.
This creates a floor and a ceiling.
5 – There should be places like Restaurants and that you can “Cook” for, and Garrisons that you can craft gear for.
These would be handled just like the Dynamic Events that require you to deliver X items. There would be NPCs coming near the “Discipline Masters” and shouting their needs, like “Restaurant X is in need of a Chef! It’s just down the street, to the left.”

The reward would be a value that is considerably higher than the sum of the materials used to make the items, according to the NPC Traders.
There might be some Karma thrown in as well, or other kinds of prestigious rewards such as Chests with random materials and a chance to obtain a rare Recipe.

Actually, I’ll make a thread about this in particular.

I didn’t mean to say my idea is flawless, merely that it’s a clear improvement.
Your sarcasm just makes you look bad.

Nretep.2564:

Talking about flaws.

Nurvus.2891:

Suggested Mechanics

1. There is still a maximum number of stacks (can stay 25).
2. Each player owns 1 stack, wich makes it fair for everyone when there happen to be multiple condition builds

So, the 26th+ player is not allowed to cause conditions …

It’s better than the 3rd player not being allowed to cause conditions.
25 stacks is hypotetical – I am merely assuming a limit is needed for the sake of server performance.

Nretep.2564:

Nurvus.2891:

Example:
- You apply a 20 damage over 5 seconds bleed.
- It does 4 damage per second
- 3 seconds later (3×4=12 damage done), 8 damage and 2 seconds remain.
- At this point you apply another 20 damage over 5 seconds bleed.
- It will add the remaining 8 damage to the new 20 = 28.
- Since 8 is 35% of 28 and 20 is 65% of 28, it will add 35% of 2 seconds to 65% of 5 seconds = 3.95 seconds.
If it simply added the durations, you’d lose Damage per Second everytime you applied a new effect.
If it simply used the the new duration, you’d gain Damage per Second by applying a shorter duration effect.

Current system:

• 3s @ 4 dmg each
• 2s @ 8 dmg each
• 3s @ 4 dmg each
• total of 8s with total of 40 dmg

Your suggestion:

• 3s @ 4 dmg each
• 5.95s @ 4.706 dmg each
• total of 8.95s with total of 40 dmg

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So … inflicting bleeding while the target bleeds gives a penalty. … Let’s exaggerate it a bit: Imagine you deal 10x a 10s bleed of 1000 dmg (10 skills x 10 ticks x 100 dmg) at the very same time.

Current system:

• 10s @ (10x 100=) 1000 dmg
• total of 10s with total of 10000 dmg

Your system:

• 3811.65s with total of 10,000 dmg, so @ 2.624 dmg/s
• total of 3811.65s with total of 10000 dmg

Flawless system. It’d just decrease your D/S by factor 381. And btw. its not just exponentially, even the factor slowly increases. If you’d manage 20 skills (20 times 1000 dmg over 10s), you’d reach a duration of 3,892,934 seconds … 45d of bleeding with a summed damage of 20,000. Be patient my necro.

And at the same time, it’d increase the stress of the server due to recalculating the duration and the additional stacks once there are more then 25 players. (and for duration stacking increased stress for more than 1 person).

It looks like you flawlessly misread my suggestion.

You presented a situation that is in no way affected by my suggestion, since – in your example – the various stacks are applied only after the previous expires.
Furthermore, you even changed the rules between the “current” and “your suggestion” examples.

Current system – Here you assume you mean they add one after another:

• 3s @ 4 dmg each
• 2s @ 8 dmg each
• 3s @ 4 dmg each
• total of 8s with total of 40 dmg
  This example doesn’t “overlap” stacks so it has no bearing on my suggestion.
  It simply does damage like so: 4-4-4-8-8-4-4-4.

As for your interpretation of my suggestion:

• 3s @ 4 dmg each
• 5.95s @ 4.706 dmg each
• total of 8.95s with total of 40 dmg

Here you suddenly somehow assume the 2nd and 3rd stacks applied simultaneously, and you even calculate it wrong. How did you do that?

How about you present a situation where stacks actually overlap?
I presented one in my suggestion.

Read it properly this time?

Simplicity.7208:

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How would your solution work with burning or poison that can only have one source? In the case of two people using burning/poison, the one with the higher condition stat erases all damage done by the person with the lower condition stat. It removes their burning/poison damage and simply puts theirs in its place. The only reason I think this isn’t the #1 problem is because bleed is a more common type of condition than burning.

Also, you realize that a great number of DD builds have bleeding as a secondary effect? Warriors bleed on crit 33% of the time (my warrior bleeds on crit 100% of the time due to weapon runes) and my warrior has a 70%ish crit chance. So my DD warrior gets a condition slot in your solution, even though her conditions barely hit for any damage and have a very short duration? What about the other 20 people that may proc conditions with their own DD builds? They all get condition “slots” as well? Capping at 25 condition sources has many problems and ignores confusion, burning, and poison. But it’s the best solution I’ve seen yet.

EDIT: A thought occurred…How about this; if you hit a monster that’s at 25 stacks of bleeding then either all or some portion of the condition damage you would’ve done from your “blocked” bleed is dealt immediately? This would mean excessive amounts of condition users wouldn’t be working against each other as your bleed damage would be converted to DD until the stacks start to go down, at which point you start applying conditions again.

EDIT2: You misspelled “solution.” Thought I’d bring that up.

Assuming the stack cap is 25, then a single creature can 25 stacks of each condition at any given time (we are talking about damage conditions):
25 stacks of bleed
25 stacks of confusion
25 stacks of burn
25 stacks of poison

- Each player can own 1 stack of each condition.
Assuming I apply all 4 damage conditions, it means that among those 4×25 stacks, I own 1 bleed, 1 confusion, 1 burn and 1 poison.
- Your own Bleed and Confusion stacks grow in potency as you apply more stacks to them – wich are combined into the 1 stack you own, in the way I suggest.
- Burn and Poison merely grow in duration as you apply more stacks to them – wich are combined into the 1 stack you own, in the way I suggest.

I must say I’m quite pleased to hear about the change in design indicated here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Finally we get non-item based progression that the game needs, wich a big step in the direction of the roots of what made GW1 awesome.

Removing Magic Find from items and making it Account Bound is also awesome refreshing news.

I still think much needs to be done, but boy is this a nice thing to read.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Customization in GW2 isn’t in your skill bar, it’s in your Traits and gear Prefix/Rune choices. Some of which are not useful in the least, much like in GW1. (You will have to convince me Frenzy in GW1 wasn’t a trap to put on the bar after you got something else for IAS, or that a lot of the Elite Skills didn’t measure up.)

I don’t know how else to put this but . . . I don’t think complexity is automatically a sign a game is better. I don’t think a simplified set of Runes shows a game is worse. I think a lack of reason not to go full Berserker gear is far worse . . . but that’s just me.

I think you are putting too much into one bag.

In GW2, the way in wich Weapon Skills, Traits and Gear combine, make it so that for every weapon, there are a few – few – meaningful builds.
So, instead of weapons broadening your choices, they actually narrow them down.

Furthermore, GW1 didn’t really have much complexity.
To me, it had depth.

It wasn’t the builds that could kill everything that made the game fun for me.
It wasn’t the “OP” stuff.

It was everything else.
So many ways to combine skills in a way that actually works and is effective – such doesn’t really happen in GW2, since you grab that “20% reduced cooldown on shouts” and suddenly you are encouraged to use shouts above other types of skills.
Most bonuses in GW2 seem to pigeonhole you into specific builds.

So they really changed their philosophy – what they understand by customizability, fun, challenge, and specially what they understand by progression.

I have to add something, regarding the heated discussion about what ANet really meant when they said “Grind” in the manifesto.

Throughout the whole Manifesto, ANet talks about mechanics you see in popular games.
I’ll cut to the chase and say they talk about WoW – not just WoW, but specially WoW, as it is/was the most popular MMO, and as such arguably the biggest source of potential players.
Afterall they want to offer something players aren’t used to.
What are the things players are used to? Those available in the most popular games – like WoW.
From the non-dynamic world, to the repetitive tasks, to the way you obtain gear.

But WoW isn’t a grind while leveling.
There are plenty of quests, and PLENTY of interesting quests – over 50% – and those that aren’t interesting are just as good as Renown Hearts – wich by the way are conventional quests in disguise.

WoW also has alot more Dungeons while leveling than GW2.
PvP is also available and encouraged in a more seamless way than in GW2.

So it makes absolutely NO sense that ANet would be referring to the process of leveling when they said “boring grind to get to the fun stuff”.

If I have to think about “boring grind to get to the fun stuff”, dungeons come to mind, and their “boring trash to get to the fun stuff” – bosses.

I could also mention all the meaningless monsters scattered about the world that just stand there, positioned just close enough to aggro you wherever you go – except there’s nothing interesting beyond the danger.
The amount of pointless grind and killing you go through in GW2, as well as the complete meaninglessness of your character – wich was supposed to be a hero – is clear as shallow water.

The last 30 levels in GW2 feel like a huge grind EVEN if – or maybe precicely because – you are constantly alternating between RH, DE, Dungeons – this constant rotation itself feels like a grind.

The only thing that doesn’t feel like a grind in GW2 – imo – are the jumping puzzles. Exploration, essentially.
Even gathering and crafting feels like a grind.

And when you add Magic Find and experience/mf boosts to the equation, it doesn’t take a genious to understand that ANet is FOCUSED/DEPEDING on grind.

Pretty much every single mechanic they added in the game, that is in any way associated with loot, promotes heavy grinding.
Think about it a little.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Nurvus.2891:

They are perfectly comparible, in that they have a completely different mentality behind them.

GW2 procs focus on numerical superiority – pure damage, healing, stat increases, etc.
GW1 procs focused mostly on gameplay opportunities – stuff that makes you use your character differently.

GW2 pretty much simplified everything interesting from GW1 into numbers.

. . . you sure about that?

Most Insignia were about numbers. Especially for situation-based defense such as “+Armor vs Fire/Slashing/etc”. Most weapon grips/hilts were about numbers, while the blades/strings were about elemental type damage (or increase of condition time). Most Inscriptions were not terribly reliable due to the random chance.

Also, I dunno about you, but I found more often people wanted “spike” builds (fast massive damage) over condition builds when going into PvP. So using things which had a random chance of going off over a guaranteed bonus wasn’t often asked for.

. . . oh, and there was almost never a point I found in the game where any of those bonuses were actually integral to me staying alive versus failing

Insignia is the equivalent to Prefixes in GW2, like “Knight” and “Berserker”, so I’m not sure why you brought them up, as I was talking about procs.
Procs you found mostly in weapons.

But even if we talk about Insignia, in GW1 you had a few interesting ones such as “+armor while attacking” or “+armor if you have X spirits/minions active” – that affects gameplay.

GW2 has a few such effects, such as damage +X% against burning targets, but they are mostly found in Runes and are few and far apart.

Let’s see a small synopsis of interesting effects:
- bonus while attacking -> this requires certain skills to be categorized as attacks, as there is no “auto-attack”.
- bonus for X seconds after using a specific type of skill (like Signet)
- bonus while above X% health
- bonus while below X% health
- bonus against targets under a/per condition
- bonus while under a/per condition
- bonus while under a/per boon
- chance to halve recharge time/initiative cost for type of skill
- chance to halve cast time (double speed) for certain type of skill

Certain chance-based mechanics could easily be handled with stacks instead or as well.
“instead” would mean certain actions stack, and certain number of stacks grants next skill an effect.
“as well” would mean everytime the effect does not proc, chance increases, until it procs and resets chances.

Let me put this in a different way.
In GW1, do you remember weapon prefixes/suffixes that simply said “+X% damage”?
There weren’t any.
You know why?
Because ANet wanted all bonuses to be somewhat interesting and/or counterable.

Flat damage isn’t really very counterable, so all bonuses to damage were: while under a certain effect, whle target is under a certain effect, if you are above/below a certain health, etc.

Armor, on the other hand, is counterable, as there were plenty of ways to ignore armor, such as with hexes.
There was also elemental bonuses to armor, so you had to choose like between:
50 armor
40 armor and +20 armor vs elemental
40 armor and +20 armor vs physical

In short, you had plenty of interesting choices in GW1.
There are barely any choices in GW2, since your choice of Traits automatically affects your choice of Gear and Runes – and there is little freedom in that.

My suggestion is an obvious solution.
If they can’t find a better one, just implement mine. There are no meaningful downsides to it, neither from gameplay nor coding perspectives.

This may sound arrogant, but it’s the simple truth.
If anyone sees flaws in my suggestion, please share them.

But don’t start with hyperbole crap, please.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

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Do we have a recharge or cast time reduction proc in GW2? I am not entirely sure I saw any which weren’t traits . . . or Quickness.

The extra effects on most of the upgrades are not the same in either game, so I find it hard to compare straight across whether one is ‘better design’ than the other. They both fill different gaps. I will say I find many more of the Sigils and Runes less useful to me and don’t sweat which ones I use.

As opposed to GW1 where I went out of my way for that +30 Fortitude bow grip, that Zealous dagger haft, or that Inscription of “Hail to the King” . . . the Minion Master Insignia for my necro heroes . . .

GW2? “Meh, Superior Sigil of Life? Sure, it’ll do.”

Edit: Wow, you edited your post as I replied. Striking the old quote. New stuff below.

= = = = =

GW1 didn’t have “better” randomness, it was tighter in range so it feels due to numbers being smaller (the benefit of being constrained to a range like 15-28 on a weapon and no higher). Its random loot generation was as bad as what we have going on now, especially in the field of Ecto, Obsidian, and Gemstones. The “random match” mechanic was often a joke and could be gamed to a point, and WAS often “sync’d” to stack friends onto a randomly selected team.

Random was an aggravation and a problem before, and it still is.

They are perfectly comparible, in that they have a completely different mentality behind them.

GW2 procs focus on numerical superiority – pure damage, healing, stat increases, etc.
GW1 procs focused mostly on gameplay opportunities – stuff that makes you use your character differently.

GW2 pretty much simplified everything interesting from GW1 into numbers.

Yes, but the thing is that the procs available in GW1 were not like the ones in GW2.

In GW1, the procs were more interesting, and the game mechanics naturally restrained how powerful they could be.
The procs actually directly affected how you use your character.
Half recharge or cast time affects your rotation, but doesn’t mean you’re much stronger, since you are constrained by your Energy – even if you can use skills faster, you simply run out of Energy faster.
Furthermore, apart from stances, shouts and a few skills, you can’t really use multiple skills at the same time.

In GW2 they reduced the number of resources per skill from 2 (energy & recharge) to 1 (energy OR recharge).

Furthermore, the various procs you have access to in GW2 are:
- powerful
- are completely free – there is no drawback or compromise, you simply get a bonus that adds to whatever you’re doing
- do not make gameplay any more interesting, as nothing in the way you use skills changes because the proc activated

So I might be saying it wrong when I say GW1 had less randomness.
GW1 had better randomness.

Duke Blackrose, the kind of random that was present in GW1 was actually quite decent.

I’ll even add to your argument that there were procs on weapons with a small (10-20%) chance to halve the recharge or cast time of skills of a certain type.

However, almost all chance based mechanics in GW1 were always at least one of the following:
- meaningful
- not overpowered
- add depth and fun to gameplay

Examples:
Halved recharge means you can use it sooner, changing up your rotation
Crit chance was easily brought to above 50% on builds, there were several attacks that were guaranteed crit, and crit was usually 1.5x the max damage of the weapon.

In Guild Wars 2, however, you have things such as 2-6% procs, you can have 20% chance to crit for 250% damage, and all other kinds of situations that make it so that whether or not you win a fight has little or nothing to do with your skill, but with how lucky you got.

How about we discuss the topic, instead of talking about how 50% of the posts in forums are prime examples of Ad Hominem?

@Erasculio
I read your Guild Wars 2 review – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Erasculio – and I completely agree.