Guild Wars 2

I’ve read a few other posts in regards on how to do this, but one thing I haven’t seen yet is this.

Make them instanced.

You can still allow hundreds or thousands of people into the instance if you like but this way they can completed on your own time. You can take a queue for your previous game with bot NPCs as your partners. As people join these NPCs are replaced and as people leave they come back. There are a number of ways you can have that dynamic play.

One of the biggest complaint I saw was the fact that the rewards were not simply cosmetic (as was GW1) so players felt punished for not being able to participate unlike before where it didn’t quite matter if they did or didn’t. By making it instanced people can all have the opportunity to earn the rewards (almost like how you did the Halloween event.)

Also by making it instanced people can do the event on their own schedule. For example, you say for a ONE DAY ONE TIME EVENT!!! That translates to: You have TODAY to log in and get into the instance and you can only do it ONCE. That sounds fair to me. I can find sometime during the day to play, when though is a variable.

Lastly handling things like disconnects or crashes or severe lag is far easier in an Instance. For one the amount that attend the event can be scaled so no one is playing a slide show (at least the majority). Second if someone disconnects or crashes they can rejoin that instance readily. Third I’m sure it will be a bit easier to track who did what. Lastly it will be easier to limit how many times someone does the event on their account.

Some of these ideas can apply to other areas too, such as bringing back mercenaries from GW1, or making rewards cosmetic. The first because despite tons of people playing, its still hard to find groups for certain things. The cosmetic rewards are just a courtesy to other players. The ones that did it get to show off, the ones that didn’t aren’t punished.

Anyway, hopefully this is a repeat, I know that there are some out there that are more common thoughts or particular ones that I’ve used.

If I had the same idea or borrowed your idea and posted it here then I’m glad we think alike / thank you very much for posting the great idea!

Both of their replies are not invalid at all. One addressed the enrage timer and the fact that a dedicated healer will be rendered useless after some time. See RIFT and its support class role, save for edge cases in dungeons it is a useless role at all gear levels and its quite sad as it was a good idea. The other addressed the design concept of GW2 and a personal opinion, which is something you’ve stated as well. Thus both are not invalid.

With that said I also disagree with your idea.

- See RIFT example, if the dungeon can be completed without, then why would it be used.
- Players already accomplish the roles much as you said, with pseudo-roles. Consider how many groups desire a tanker or a support.
- Despite pseudo-roles I’ve seen many players build a solid build around these roles and accomplish them quite well, damage sponges and healers / (de)buffers.
- Also Despite Pseudo-Roles and their desire to have them in the group, I’ve seen many professions who “can’t” do that role, do it. Elementalists for example being a tanker or a warrior being a support.
- Lastly despite pseudo-roles and their desire I’ve also seen everyone having no role and accomplishing the dungeon just fine.
- With all of that said, this is the design Anet was aiming for. That you shouldn’t be punished ever for what profession you chose and you should be able do everything. (a fantastic idea that RIFT had but alas ended up falling a bit short on as things progressed in the first iteration of it.)
- Enrage timers are a bad thing I’d say. For one then it gets into gear. I understand your point of having them, so you can’t do minimal dps and just heal through it all, but that should be just as viable an option as having maximum dps with minimal healing. That balance you speak of would greatly alter the dynamics of groups. I’ve been in groups where we can finish a fight in no time flat, and in others where we’ve survived extended periods of time as everyone learned how to perform the mechanics properly and eventually clear it. I’d hate to be punished in those later groups for all that hard work I put in, and again, its still a viable strategy.

Ultimately I thoroughly enjoy the design choice ANet has gone with and I hope that they continue down that path in regards to profressions and how the relate in groups. I think its fantastic to have a use regardless of your build or profession. I think its fantastic that despite gear, level (in the areas that level you up), and build, as long as you play well you will do well. Granted the aforementioned always make it easier, the skill or play well do well idea is the emphasis here.

While the above is my argument against I will say that IF Anet decided to implement those role changes you’d be spot on for making it being able to be completed by any group of any composition, which is the case now despite some being more effective than others. I think that is your main point that we could have them and it wouldn’t muck up too much and definitely you are right but as I try and show in my arguments above that a change like this would not be for the better as where things are now there is a very happy and enjoyable medium.

Here is one of my suggestions on resolving it (If needed I will post more):

Probably the most effective: Enact an encrypted e-mail system.

Pros: even if the e-mail is intercepted it is not vulnerable to easy viewing.

Cons: Not always consumer friendly and if private key is compromised the entire system is defeated.

Method:
ArenaNet would need to employ a public and private key encryption method. Everyone who wants to e-mail or contact ArenaNet would need to use this public key to encrypt their e-mail and then ArenaNet would use their private key to decrypt it. The public key readily available to anyone to send them a message however, the private key cannot be accessed and is kept secure by ArenaNet as it is vital.

Seeing as ease of use may become an issue, make it so tickets can only be viewed or sent via an online portion of ArenaNet (using SSL of course and the two key systems.) They may view the fact that there is an update to their ticket in their e-mail but nothing more.

Another issue that could come up is the fact that a customer could be trying to recover a password. To prevent interception of a password reset link, or minimize it, have a separate system (again using SSL and perhaps include some security training material for customers, much like the password comic strip) where they enter in the e-mail and their key or other information to request this reset. Seeing as the customer will be looking for it it minimizes the time it is left unused. What I mean by this is if someone is intercepting your e-mails, you (the customer) will generally get to this reset link first seeing as the person intercepting would need to be ready right then and there. Even if they get to it first you will probably request another one time use e-mail reset link and lock them out before they get into anything vital (such as a ticket with your serial key.)

Conclusion:

Overall, this method of compromising an account is not very common. The point is that it can occur. I appreciate how security conscious ArenaNet is and I wanted to identify this potential weak spot in one of their systems. I don’t believe it would cost very much to implement or alter interactions very much in comparison to how they are now, although I could be completely wrong on this. At the end of the day it would prevent a security hole from being exploited and give us, as customers, even more piece of mind that ArenaNet is being proactive in protecting our accounts so that we can continue to invest our time in their amazing product and reap the enjoyment of doing so!

Essentially I am making this post to suggest a solution to a potential problem. The first post will identify the issue and the second will propose a solution, as I’ve not been able to post it all under one.

Currently, if you have a major account change you need to go through customer support to have it carried out. For example, changing your e-mail address associated with the account and having it recovered if it was stolen.

To complete these requests generally speaking they request your Serial Product Key to to verify the account as “yours.” You can do this when submitting it to them via the support ticket generator tool that is used to communicate to them.

EX:

Hi my name is X and I need my email changed from Y to Z.

My serial code is 1234-5678-90ab-cdef.

Thanks!,
X

This all seems fine. You have sent an message to customer support proving this is your account (after all you are the only one who has access to that serial number) and they can verify this and carry out this action for you.

Here are the problems I notice though when looking at this system though:

All of this is essentially conducted via an e-mail support system. They communicate to you via e-mail with the ticket history and you communicate back, again, via e-mail.

E-mail unless encrypted is sent via plain text.

This e-mail system is not encrypted.

Plain text means that if someone sees that e-mail they see exactly what is in it. Encrypted means there is some sort of method used to hide the message (there are numerous ones with different degrees of effectiveness.)

That may not seem like much of an issue until you consider the following:

Assuming both the customer service e-mail account(s) and the end user’s account are secure, the e-mail is passed on to multiple servers / locations / computers as it makes its way to its destination. (Think of it like crossing multiple territories/states/countries to get to your travel destination.) The problem exists in the simple fact that during its travel between the two parties that e-mail can easily be intercepted by someone with a little bit of talent and know how. Now you may think, “What issue is that of mine?” Well, its a big issue and here is why.

If someone were to intercept that e-mail, they now have the entire conversation, which just so happens to contain the e-mail addresses of the parties that are communicating, probably the end-user’s name, and the serial key that is required to carry out changes and prove ownership of that account.

All of a sudden, you, the end-user, now share your account with someone else unwillingly. They are able to contact customer support with your serial key and cite your e-mail address and with a little bit of a story perhaps, impersonate you and take over your account.

While this seems grim, keep in mind they do not have access to any payment methods used or your password or anything extremely compromising. While they can get your password reset and e-mail changed and wreak havoc on your virtual characters and their wealth or reputation, you can always submit an e-mail or support ticket and get that account right back. Essentially you and the thief will play keep away as much as possible passing the account back and forth until it gets resolved somehow, which it probably would be very hard to do and faithfully know whose account this is. If you purchased it directly from ArenaNet you at least benefit from the fact that you need some more purchasing information and can potentially find another avenue of contact with them and give them the aforementioned information in its entirety and possibly get a serial key change. If this happens, please don’t use e-mail again as it was how you were exploited.

I hope I’ve been clear enough in explaining the potential issue or exploit that can occur with the current customer support solution.