My idea of a dream MMO, or rather, to transform GW2 in this dream MMO, would be to mix and match with elements that made other games so fantastic (for me)
Ragnarok with their class evolution system.
Tera with their BAMs
Ultima and Tibia with their housing system.
etc.
So let’s start with the basic:
The initial experience
Making your first character in GW2 and many other mmos is probably the most boring experience you can have in a game.
What can a new character do in their starting zone? Press 1, that’s it, auto attack everything.
If you start a sylvari you have a huge dragon to fight, but all you can do is press 1, where is the fun in that?
My idea is that instead of being able to choose your class at the start of the game, you start as this basic adventurer, you are free to pick whatever weapon you want to use, and all of them will have the 5 weapon skills.
To make things even more interesting, make it so that each race has their own approach on how to handle a weapon, similar to how racial skills were supposed to be a differential to each of them. This way when you start the game you have a set of weapons skills and Racial skills all tailored to your character and race.
Variety from the start.
Leveling and Story
First and most important, the story needs to be approached from a group perspective. Although I really like the story in GW2, I always hated the fact that I’m this single hero off to save the world, and it just so happens there are 1000 others just like me.
I would love if every story element of the game was designed around the idea of this 5 man party.
Back to the leveling process, make the story take you through the hoops of choosing a class, maybe tie them into each one of the orders?
Since the Priory prides themselves on being scholars and even the npcs acknowledge the fact that they are not fighters, it never made sense to have a warrior joining their ranks.
And speaking of orders, please, get rid of that stupid “None of the orders can agree on how to approach a fight with the elder dragons”, it’s like we are dealing with kids that can’t see the big picture, it’s just stupid.
If the story takes you to the process of chosing a class, then have the party split and each follow their own little story line based on the class they chose.
Again, this adds variety to the experience of each player. And they can later share that experience with one another.
Improving your class
For me personally, Hero Points are a complete mess because of the fact that they are tied into both specializations AND skill unlocks. If you don’t pay attention you will reach lv35 with all of your skills and no traits.
That needs to go.
Leveling up should grant you points for leveling the specializations, maybe a system similar to masteries where you chose to focus one until that finishes and you move to the next?
So when you reach lv35 and is summoned to your first dungeon you already have that trait line + your skills.
I honestly don’t know what I would do with the Hero Points of today, first there needs to be a difference between places of power and Fight challenges. But what would they reward? I’m not sure.
Dungeons – Fractals – Raids
Considering all of them have some sort of story, tie them with the actual story, consider them an introduction to Fractals and Raids, increasing the level of difficulty and challenge with each one.
In order to avoid the whole “80’s only” for them though, the scaling system needs to be improved.
If the best gear for lv35 is masterwork, make the gear a lv80 is using equalize to masterwork.
If a lv35 only has access to the first specialization, the same should be true to the lv80.
Dungeons need to be fixed and redone from the ground up. Honestly, the story is the same childish approach like the 3 orders “We have these 3 horrible things happening, but for some reason we can only deal with one”.
Either allow us to choose to deal with everything at once (with even bigger reward) or something else, don’t know.
Gear – Stats
This is my biggest gripe with the game right now.
Some stats are extremely easy to get (berserker) and others are just a time gated pain (celestial).
For a game that promised the freedom to play how you want, this is the biggest turn off.
I would prefer a system where when finding a new gear I can pick the stats I want for it, after I pick the stats the armor is either bound to the character or account and given a name based on the stats chosen.
For the runes and sigils, I would rather have them changing my gameplay rather than just increasing my stats. I want more things like air and fire to add effects to my weapons, or vampire runes to make a character cenetered around life steal.
Runes and sigils need to add a new dynamic to your character rather than increse in stat.
This would solve my second biggest gripe with the game.
Crafting
This system is a nightmare, it desperately needs a completely revamp. Making every gear a blank state where we can chose the stats ourselves would be the first step in cleaning up.
I understand some people love to use crafting to level alts, but for me personally, I would preffer if this was tied directly into your account.
No more losing recipes because you deleted a character.
In the case of scribing, their new crafting profession, it needs to be tied directly into the guild, this can’t be tied to a person that can leave a guild at any time.
World Bosses – Champions
World bosses are a completely disappointment for me, the fist time I saw Shadow Behemoth was amazing, but then the fight ended up being a simple “Press 1 to win”, and this seems to be the biggest joke in the game, with world bosses and even the fight against Zaithan.
First and foremost, every starter zone needs to have their own World Boss (there is none in Plains of Ashford).
Second the encounter needs to be far more enganging than just pressing 1 button while standing still.
In the case of Shadow Behemoth, this is a creature that is trying to break free into our world. So maybe make the event centered around the players protecting a group of scholars perfoming a ritual to send the creature back to its world?
In the case of Tequatl, instead of stabbing his foot until he’s dead, focus more on the turrets, on the champions he spawns, make him fly more, why would a dragon even stay so long on the ground? Make the fight more centered around keeping the turrets, cannons in one piece, rather than stab his foot.
Most important, we need more NPC’s explaining the encounter, more events leading to it where we learn what to expect from it, or even why that is happening.
In the case of Tequatl, we could have NPCs screaming to the players that they need people covering area X and Y, and that those turrets are still empty, etc.
NPC’s – Allies and Enemies
This is the thing I love the most about this game, NPC interactions, the two kids near the bank in LA, or the two kids near the Hylek camp in Caledon Forest, I absolutely adore how NPC’s feel alive.
But it can be better, to start, they move slower than the player, and that is infuriating when doing an event where we have to escort them.
Second, they are weak, so weak, if an npc is a trained soldier with years of training on his back, he should’nt go down in a single strike after trying to use only a single attack.
For the enemies, the only difference a champion and a regular enemy have seems to be the total HP, that’s lame.
We have Regular, Veterans, Elites and Champions enemies. Instead of just increasing their HP, make it so that each increase in rank gives them new abilities. FAR more abilities.
One of the things that GW2 lacks the most is that combat are not engaging, either the enemy hits too hard and you will die in one hit, or they don’t hit at all and you can just dps like crazy.
Enemies need more attacks, more diversity.
And when doing so, we need a new effect for the enemy AOE spells. The single Red Line is near impossible to see in some cases like when dealing with the Harpies in Fractals above scale 10.
Maps and events
Meta Events maps like the ones presented in HoT need to go, honestly, having to separate 2h of my life to do a map is not my idea of fun;
Specially when the map punishes you for exploring instead of advancing the meta. This needs to stop.
GW2 was a fun game because you had the freedom to explore the land and find an NPC doing something on his own and then discovering that was leading to an event.
It’s fun going to a map I already got 100% on and discovering that there are still events I’ve never seen it happen.
We need more of that, far more variety on the events in a map, and to make sure they work (because after 3 years there are still events broken)
Exploring should be the major selling point of any map, and exploring should be rewarding at points.
One of the things I hate is finding a tresaure chest guarded by a champion and getting nothing but junk.
I want more treasures, more Jumping Puzzles, more exploration. I want to explore a cave and find the journal of a previous adventurer, with just a tiny little bit of lore about that place, about that body, there doesnt need to be any reward for stuff like that, but it still feels awesome to come across.
Jumping Puzzles and movement skills
Jumping Puzzles right now are a major letdown for me, with the current system what you see the most are Mesmer completing them and offering a portal to others.
This way anyone can have their achievement, without actually doing anything.
Every class needs to have a movement skill of their own, and that skill needs to be allowed to be used in all aspects of the game. No more of that silly “No valid path” because there was a tiny piece of rock in front of you.
If the current Jumping Puzzles would be too easy to complete with a single teleport, make them more challenging, where you are presented with a choice to either wait every time for the cooldown, or simple do it the “legit” way.
One concern raised by this is that WvW would be too easy for people to infiltrate forts. In that case forts should be designed with defenses for that.
Consider for a moment the story in Season 2, Kasmeer a mesmer can open portals in any place she wants, but because of the Asura technology in DryTop her magic was not working.
Not only that, her magic has a range limit, just like players, so even if someone can infiltrate the first gate, maybe they will find themselves surrounded by traps and elite mobs? There is a world of possibilities on how to approach that.
WvW and PvP.
Combine the two into a single beast, since both are already happening in the mists. Make PVP an area inside WvW, with duel and arenas, and all the game modes we currently have.
With WvW being combined into pvp, the current pvp system needs to go, allow people to choose the stats for their gear as well as the runes and accessories.
This system should be completely separated from the PVE aspect of the game, with its own ways of generating gold, its own dungeons and raids. Can you imagine a dungeon where two teams are racing to the finish and they are allowed to kill each other in the process?
As for the maps, get rid of those 3 copy and paste maps, that is ridiculous, WVW needs to be a proper world, with a space as big as Tyria for PVE.
Balance
Balance should be defined by WvW/PVP, period. I find it horrible the idea of a skill working one way in PVE and a completely different way on PVP.
But when I say I want the balance focus to be for WvW, is because I expect the AI to behave more like a playe instead of that brainless single attack type we have now.
Trading Post
The current trading post is a completely nightmare to use, I’ve never seen a system so slow, the whole things needs to be redone. It needs to be faster, have a better search functionality, default to my max level when searching for weapon and armors, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t think right now.
Map rewards / Level up Rewards / Non stop clicking
If I use tomes to level a character to 80, I’ll have to spend the next 10 or so minutes clicking over and over again until I get all those useless level up rewards.
Every time I complete a heart, I have to click on the little heart and then OK.
Every time I complete a meta event, I have to open the chest on top of the map.
Every time I complete a reward track, again click that chest.
For all of those, I would then gain new containers with more containers to more clicking.
After you finally open all those, you would salvage all those useless gear into materials, deposit all of them, and then consume all your luck.
There’s WAY TO MUCH clicking, too much time is spent with useless stuff rather than enjoying the game.
I can’t think of how to improve all those system, but anything would be better than the current.
Npcs that salvage everything for you? Luck is removed from the game and magic find as well? Those are some possibilities.
Bundles
Make them more useful in different situations of the game, and a good option for combat, or getting out of combat, this way people have the freedom to not depend on other players when they want to do something. Stealth kits for example should last a bit more.
So many other things
I loved so many of the suggestions on the thread that I wish I could just add all of them in this document, but I just don’t have the organizational skills to do that.
