Guild Wars 2

Funny, she looks like a Tiefling…. Everyone is just ripping off D&D, who ripped off Tolkein, who ripped off previous legends and cultures…

mallas.9836:

The fact they have to double team as they have done even when BG is out manned (aka 30 man force could take garrison), is the reason out TS channels have had so much fun. Lots of laughing, points fingers and giggling and fun had by those in the channel. Sadly many of the PUGs do not join TS (and arent showing up) so they can’t feel the morale many of us have.

This has been the most fun BG has had (i am sure i can say that for the major WvW guilds and the members that are playing actively these past weeks) in a VERY long time.

There’s definitely some truth to this. Several members of my guild have been enjoying the fight and the bags despite the scores. I, on the other hand, don’t play for bags. I have 29 years of playing soccer under my belt and I never got a single drop from another player, so I come into WvW with a slightly different attitude. Nothing about this has been fun for me, and I actually don’t mind double teaming to keep the servers on relatively equal footing. Once it became about win trading, then I was done with WvW for the season. I just can’t play WvW for fights and drops alone.

Now, having said that, I also don’t like blowing the other teams out of the water. I want better balanced matches. I want the other servers to challenge me, but overwhelming double team for win trading isn’t that.

adagiophoto.4512:

Sorry, I can’t keep up with this thread. I just jump in every so often, and then jump out.

On the subject of subclasses, I really feel like in this system class specialization is accomplished with weapon skills. Aesthetically it would be nice to say, “I’m an assassin thief” or “I’m a templar guardian,” but as far as mechanics and playstyle, that role is determined by weapon and utility choices. I feel like adding more weapons would be a better way to add diversity rather than subclasses.

A hammer warrior is a different beast from a greatsword or rifle warrior or from a hammer guardian. I wonder how subclasses would be any more of or a different distinction, other than being a more permanent choice. I would think that the better design process at this point would be to look at each class and decide what it is missing and build from there, either with new utilities, traits or weapons. I think there are so many good (and bad) weapons that could be added that would accomplish the task.

I’d like to give an example of subclasses via weapons. This is an imperfect example, granted but I think it illustrates the point and gives room to think about it.

In a lot of class suggestion threads, people ask for a druid class. Players then proceed to tell them to play a ranger or a norn elementalist. If we were to add a weapon to the ranger class that would make the ranger play more like a druid, it would give more options to the players who want that playstyle or aesthetic. For example, give the ranger a staff (not melee). The skills on that weapon would consist of nature-style magics. Combine that with the right set of traits and utilities and then you would have a good druid-like class. Though, ANet would have to make an armor set or two that would aesthetically support that character type.

Just a thought.

Sorry, I can’t keep up with this thread. I just jump in every so often, and then jump out.

On the subject of subclasses, I really feel like in this system class specialization is accomplished with weapon skills. Aesthetically it would be nice to say, “I’m an assassin thief” or “I’m a templar guardian,” but as far as mechanics and playstyle, that role is determined by weapon and utility choices. I feel like adding more weapons would be a better way to add diversity rather than subclasses.

A hammer warrior is a different beast from a greatsword or rifle warrior or from a hammer guardian. I wonder how subclasses would be any more of or a different distinction, other than being a more permanent choice. I would think that the better design process at this point would be to look at each class and decide what it is missing and build from there, either with new utilities, traits or weapons. I think there are so many good (and bad) weapons that could be added that would accomplish the task.

Ok, so my thoughts on horizontal progression.

In the previous thread I discussed my dislike of vertical progression, so naturally I would likely prefer horizontal progression. Personally I want to see as much horizontal progression in the game as we can get.

Being an artist I tend to speak in broad terms because I don’t feel telling people specifically what to do actually helps anyone but by speaking more generally better results can come about. Here I will make an exception. I really think making ascended gear have the ability to change prefix/stats (zerker, cavalier) will make the vertical progression into a more diagonal progression. Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I just have to.

Beyond that I think there are some important things to take note of with the GW2 systems. It’s already feeling bloated and contrived. So I would suggest not building too many new horizontal progression systems onto it and modifying current systems to be stronger or more approachable. As an example, the stat system on gear coupled with the stat system in traits makes for an unwieldy system. Do I match the stats of the trait line or build in opposition to it? Do I min/max or fill in holes in the stats? I feel like we need fewer systems building on our stats to simplify the whole thing. I have friends coming into this game and they are completely overwhelmed by it all and they are still low levels. My wife has two level 80 characters and she doesn’t fully understand it and I have to advise her on how to handle it all. It’s cumbersome and ugly. The system needs to be simplified and streamlined.

Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t have horizontal progression though. We just need to build a small set of systems that each do something but not conflict. I like the idea of traits and I think they add some diversity to builds but combined with stats they tend to pidgeon-hole builds. By freeing them from stats we should have more options in build diversity. This would take looking at traits heavily too though, because we want to make sure there is that diversity.

Ok, I’ll shut up for now.

Josh

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

I just want to make a quick comment on changing gear stats. I’m not a fan of stats on gear to begin with. The reason being that it limits builds. I either have to have several sets of gear for different builds or I stick to a small subset of builds. One of the best parts of the original Guild Wars was the ability to change builds and experiment. By giving ascended gear the ability to change stats you open up much more options for build diversity. I can run PVT armor with hammer in WvW and zerker armor with greatsword in CoF without having to have two different sets of gear. Additionally, there would be a lot more retraiting going on, which could be a nice additional gold sink. So, yeah, for me stat changing would be a huge boon.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

You could even do a variety of tokens from various areas of the game and use the mystic toilet. Say something like X world boss tokens + X dungeon tokens + X Badges of Honor + something to indicate the gear type. That would make it more scavenger hunt type of content.

Finnway.2183:

adagiophoto.4512:

I basically agree. Now, I don’t like the idea of too much being account based and levelling an alt is in my opinion a pain in the behind, but you’re right that ascended gear is a problem for altaholics and the stat system does pigeon-hole us into a small subset of builds. That’s why I don’t like stats on gear.

I think something people misunderstand about Ascended gear is that the stat increase is only 6% over Exotic gear and it is designed for Fractals, since enemies in Fractals grow in power as the Fractals scale.

Yes, the power difference between exotic and ascended is small and for most PvE it’s completely unnecessary. I don’t do much fractals, so ascended doesn’t affect me there, but I do like WvW and it is an issue there. Honestly, that’s my biggest issue with ascended gear.

Finnway.2183:

A suggestion I might make about Ascended gear, and maybe I’m way off, is to reduce the crafting requirement and link unlocking it to Fractals since this is what Ascended level gear is designed for.

This would solve the problem with people feeling like they have to craft Ascended to compete in WvW, and it would allow people to focus on having fun instead of feeling like they have to farm gold (grind) in order to craft Ascended gear.

Honestly, at this point I almost want WvW to go with the sPvP gear system. Just drop all those stats and simplify it and standardize it. Of course I also don’t like consumables in there so I want that dropped as well, but I don’t see either happening.

Harbard.5738:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Grind
Alts

I group these together because I think they have some relation. Grind well I think grind is a kittene to fully describe because it really comes down to each person own personal feeling of I can only do x action so many times before its fun faction goes down and thus starts to feel grinding. For some this can be do something twice others 100 times, our goal with how to keep grind out of the game is the relation between time based and skill based gating. I think this is an area we are always trying to get a better sense on as we start to make things harder to add more challenge to the game sometimes we cross the time gate and skill gate too much and things feel more grindy then we intend. As for alts why I lump these up is I think often leveling up alts can feel grindy, our goals here are really about how we make things feel a little less grinding for some actions and we’ve been making a lot of steps with that combing WvW xp, adding tradable level up books, birthday gifts that level you up ect..I think we are not done with the initiative to progressing alts being a bit more smooth and it’s something we will keep working on as we move forward.

The problem with alts is not XP, and you know it!

Ascended just forces you to pick a main, give up all the varied gameplay for ONE char, ONE build (which might be nerfed/get stale at some point).

I basically agree. Now, I don’t like the idea of too much being account based and levelling an alt is in my opinion a pain in the behind, but you’re right that ascended gear is a problem for altaholics and the stat system does pigeon-hole us into a small subset of builds. That’s why I don’t like stats on gear.

Subclasses and weapon skills.

I think we might be able to kill two birds with one stone here. So, weapons determine a profession’s playstyle. So hammer warrior and greatsword warrior could be thought of as subclasses of warrior. If you want to add variety to weapons there’s a few ways to do it. One would be to add skills so we can adjust our weapon build. Another would be to build sets of skills for each weapon and let players pick which build they want. This second option would be easier for balancing, because you have set builds, rather than trying to figure out all the things players will do. Along that line, you could also add new weapons, giving more options and playstyles to players and keeping it fairly easy to balance. Just be careful of powercreep, however slight. (Though I think weapons are an easier way to keep powercreep in check than say new professions.)

Yeah, I never got the “exotics were obtained too easily” thing. Max gear was easily obtainable in Guild Wars, but that never stopped me from continuing to play. Hell, how many hours did I put in to get two suits of obby armor, and that had no statistical advantage?

I know ascended gear isn’t “needed” for most content, but for the content it is needed for it really feels like it falls into the “preparing to have fun” catagory Colin talked about so long ago. I’m sick of preparing.

Wow, this thread is filling fast! I’ll just put my thoughts down briefly if I can.

Ok, let’s start with ascended. I have never liked ascended gear and up until recently I didn’t actively pursue it (except for a quiver, but that was for aesthetics). The reason was that I didn’t “need” it for any content. It doesn’t exist in PvP and no content in PvE requires it except for fractals, which I play very little of. That all changed with WvW season one. I do not want to lose fights in a competitive environment because I’m not geared. I’m fine with getting beaten because they’re better than me, but I’ll always have doubts if I lack best-in-slot gear. At this time I’ve decided that ascended armor is too much trouble to get and I’m not sure how that will affect my WvW participation.

As to vertical progression, I don’t mind a small amount of it, though my definition of small is probably much smaller than others. I believe the hero at the end of his epic tale should be twice the man he was before, not 1500 times. I really dislike the bloated progression systems in games today and I feel like level scaling is a band-aid fix, granted a necessary one. I’d rather see a level-less system, but I understand why we have it the way we do.

Horizontal progression is the best option, in my opinion and I would like to see that expanded. More skills and more traits are fine, but I’d like to see more versatility given to it. I’d start by separating stat modifiers from traits. This would add some complexity to building, but that complexity already exists by having stats attached to gear (PvE). I would additionally remove stats from gear and add that to the stat pool. So in my system, gear would only have gear values (the exception being runes/orbs) and traits would be only traits. Then there would be a stat pool so players could restructure their stats as needed for whatever build they want. Now, this would turn the whole gear system on its ear and I realize how heavily that would affect other systems, but in my opinion it’s the best system.

Now, I know my system is too much to ask for. So I guess the next thing I should mention is progression pacing. Progression in the first 15 levels feels great to me. You gain weapon skills at a good pace and even some utility skills and weapon swapping. After that the pace gets sluggish. Levels 15-30 you start to drag and get bored waiting to unlock a couple of skills. After that it drags miserably. It takes a long time to reach 80, and honestly I don’t really care about my traits all that much until I am max level. It really feels like a grind designed around feeding us traits at a snails pace.

As to Colin’s question of systems we liked, my favorite was Guild Wars. The system felt fairly simple and manageable. Vertical progression was minimal and the progression ceiling was low. It was easy to change builds and roles.

Ok, I’ll shut up now.

I’d actually love a level-less system, but this is the closest I’ll get, so I’ll take it.

Yeah, I’m still missing Dawn of the Season too. I doubt I’ll get the chest, but I’d still like all the achievements I can get.

I really like the temporary content. It gives a sense of urgency and it provides experiences that are special, because you can’t just do it whenever.

I understand the argument against it. This weekend I broke my hand and I will be unable to complete a lot of this patches content, but all in all I’m ok with that. Hell, it’ll even give me more drive to do the next Living Story content.

Centaurs will not be a playable race. Devs have already stated as much. There were two key factors that make centaurs unavailable. One was that centaurs are one of their “bad guy” races and as such it was unlikely to be a playable race. The other was armor design. They need a biped in order to be able to easily design armor for it as armor styles are shared between the races. Centaurs would require considerably more work in armor design (and animations, I would guess).

Having said that, centaur would be awesome.

JonathanSharp.7094:

• For those afraid of drastic differences between the game types – we’re not doing this. We’re mostly just splitting #’s (damage, healing, recharge, durations, etc.). Our old philosophy holds – once you learn a class in one area of the game, that knowledge should transfer to other areas of the game.

Good. I don’t know if it has been mentioned here, but something I brought up in the GW2Guru discussion was barrier of entry. I mostly PvE, but I occassionally play some PvE and in GW1 I found that if I spent twenty minutes designing a build only to find out in mid battle that it didn’t work the way I thought it would because of a drastic PvE/PvP split I would end up logging out frustrated. If other players are experiencing something similar then that would be problematic. You need the rate of players entering PvP to be greater than or equal to the rate of those leaving (big picture, not individual matches), otherwise you have a dwindling community. Any and all barriers to entry will in some way reduce your rate of players entering. It’s something to be very conscious of.

I run scepter/sword in a shatter build. Fight starts, I block and create a clone with scepter skill 2, then block and create a clone with sword skill 4, then dodge away to create a clone (trait) and I’m all set up for my first mind wrack.

None. I feel that adding new weapons would be a better way to add diversity and playstyles while limiting power creep and balance issues. Honestly, I think new professions would be bad in the long run.

Yeah, the current armor system is inelegant. The original GW system did have a beautiful simplicity to it. The new armor system probably wouldn’t be too bad except that the complexity gets compounded by the trait system. It’s kind of like the secondary professions all over again. In GW, they had a complex skill system that became cumbersome with secondary professions. By themselves, skill complexity or secondary professions would be fine, but when combined the complexities compounded and became a mess. That’s essentially what’s happening here. Either the armor system or the traits would be a fine way to build your character, but when combined the complexities compound and become very cumbersome, especially to casual players like my wife.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

Personally, I think this is the best answer I’ve seen, however I do have an alternative possibility. You could add a utility skill, probably a shout, that grants the pet with aegis. This would give them one block like an evade and you can control the cooldown so that it doesn’t become exploitable but is still usefull. This would also allow it to be separate from the ranger’s dodge and as it’s a utility skill it would be used a lot in dungeons, but not so much in the open world.

Personally, I think your idea is better, but I just thought this might be a good way to work it otherwise.

I was just going to suggest this. I have 5 level 80 characters and one day I was able to farm The Stutterer three times, Tequila Sunrise four times, the Claw of Jorlag once, the Frozen Maw four times and the Lag Behemoth four times. That’s honestly too many chests to make sense. I was a serous contributing factor to the lag at these events. Had I and everyone else been only allowed to do them once each, then the lag would likely be a ton better. There will probably be some prime time lag, but hopefully nothing like what we’ve seen.

There’s been some talk about guesting being a factor. I have my doubts, but if you can bypass the limit by guesting then that needs to be taken care of first. If guesting is not an issue here, then I would like to see it either limited by account or use diminishing returns. Something needs to be done to make these events playable.

I just had a friend buy the game and really want to take him to the Shadow Behemoth event, but I don’t want to do it until the lag calms down. My wife did the Behemoth event the other night and the lag was so bad that she failed to even qualify for bronze as her actions just wouldn’t register. It was very frustrating and disappointing for her.

Last night the lag was so bad that my wife didn’t even get bronze for the Shadow Behemoth and no chest. The same happened to me a couple of days ago on the Claw of Jorlag. Very frustrating.

It’s probably a combo of race and height. My camera is much higher on my norn and charr than it is on my asura. So the camera is probably set for the race and as your norn is small it just feels strange, especially after playing a tall character.

I took a screen of my asura standing next to an NPC char and if you see there is a lot of footroom under the charr. If I were playing a charr the camera would be higher filling that negative space.

Spizz – Warrior

Abner Ravenward – Ranger

And the other one…

I did these for some of those signed collector’s edition contests that were going on recently. Obviously I was outdone by some very good art, but I wanted to have fun with it anyways. So I just did some simple screenshots and made little funny pictures.

Raskol Scarshadow

Oglaf.1074:

It would be sorta silly, since in the end all characters are Commander X.

I think there would be a lot of commander’s running around, sure. I wouldn’t be and I image a lot of people wouldn’t use it as everyone has it. Also, I think a lot of people wouldn’t use one at all.

Mistmane.6213:

I agree, though if you’re going to have those titles, other titles should be added for the different achievements for the personal story – like Centurion for Charr characters, or Advocate of the Crown for Humans, even the early titles your character is given by NPCs ‘Slayer of Issormir’ ‘Snaff Savant’ ‘Hero of Shaemoor’ etc.

Unfortunately the only flaw I see in this idea is the lack of titles for the Sylvari characters (I haven’t paid much attention to them, but from memory you’re only known as a Wyld Hunt Valient through the Sylvari PS, I could be wrong though.)

I think I would rather see those titles in the regular title section under your name like the “Been There, Done That” type of titles. I was looking at this more as a one work prefix type.

I emphasize the optional part because not everyone will enjoy this and I wouldn’t use it on all of my characters. I think it would be fun for some of my toons though.

Lightbringer Razum
Warmaster Spizz
Magister Abner Ravenward
Lightbringer Gerda Broofdottir

Some might suggest we also add out Pact title of Commander. I’m not opposed to it, but I probably wouldn’t use it.

Edit to clarify: The original intent is that this be a prefix to our character’s name, not just another title.

I found thief much easier to play in AC Exp then Ranger (leveled both of them in AC). I found taking a ranged pet helped a lot, but ultimately it comes down to you as a player. I didn’t have much trouble with either, but thief was easier.

I think buffing toughness and healing power would move us closer to a trinity in a way that is counter to the game’s design. What I’d actually like to see is a buff to several of the self-heal skills. A lot of them are so ineffective, at least at low levels, that I just don’t even bother with them. Basically, the most effective heal should always be our self-heal, so our self-heal needs to be effective.

/signed,

especially with no waypoint zergging it can be intensely boring to sit there while the fight is around the corner and you’re defeated. As for the indicator that someone is resing you, they could use the same “A noble soul is healing you” that they use if you’re getting rezzed while looking at the map.

It would take a pretty hefty investment if you’re starting from scratch. The white raven requires 25 points in your Hall of Monuments. For long time GW players, that isn’t much, but starting new you would have to accomplish quite a lot or have a rich GW buddy to help you buy your way there.

Most obvious I think would be a two handed axe. It just makes the most sense. Polearms I think would be next and that could satiate some of the spear problems, because they are not going to have spears on land as it would be too easily confused with underwater spears, so a pike skin would make for a nice middle ground. The other spear alternative would be javelins, but I’m not a big fan and would prefer a nice pike skin on a polearm honestly. Crossbows would make sense as well. After that it gets muddy a bit. I don’t like katana as it’s too close to sword and doing a whole other skill build for a sword when they could be building a new weapon bothers me. I’m not opposed to a katana skin, but would prefer we wait until we are in Cantha. I don’t like fist weapons or throwing stars.If we really want to be creative, I’d like cloak as an offhand. Thieves could use it as a parrying weapon and mesmers could use it for a stealth skill and a phantasm. It would also fit the more renaissance feel to contrast the medieval GW original.

The snowflakes and recipe are probably expensive, but have you considered giver’s. It’s bonuses are +toughness +healing and +boon duration. If I was going to spec my guardian full support, I’d use that.

I apologize if this has been brought up before. In some ways, the waypoint system is counter to the dynamic world ANet was going for. As a cute anecdote, I was running my character through several zones because I was short on cash from crafting, levelling alts and so on. As I was passing through Blazeridge, I saw in map chat that the Shaterer pre-events were up. I decided to stay and do the events and kill the Shaterer. Had I used waypoints, I never would have seen that and no one in my guild was watching for it so it wasn’t in guild chat either. The point is that some of these bigger events would be happened upon, giving that dynamic world feel, more often if a different travel system was used. In fact, ideally we probably shouldn’t have waypoints at all for that reason alone. Now, if we had mounts, a lot of people wouldn’t use them in favor waypointing. I get that, it makes sense. I will still waypoint a lot, but if mounts were implemented a lot more people might experience this kind of content more organically, supporting the dynamic world and probably increasing the enjoyment of some of them.

Now, if I were ANet I certainly wouldn’t put a lot of man hours into it, unless they planned on doing cash shop mounts (which would probably bring in a lot of money).

My norn mesmer, Gerda Broofdottir

My Sylvardian, Razum

My Sylvardian, Razum.

10/10, those are great charr names. Gotta have the warband name.

Raskol Scarshadow (Ash legion thief)

Yup, same here. I imagine there’s someone working frantically on it.

’Tis ironic. I originally wanted to make a norn thief and name him Sammo, after Sammo Hung.

Gerda Broofdottir (bonus if you get the reference, double bonus if you get my wife’s, Olga Luggdottir)

They should make it so minis wander around and pick up loot for us.

I’m going to echo what others have said here. Expanding endgame is about content. A gear treadmill no matter how slight is a really contrived way to do it.

Crater.1625:

I don’t think it sends a message if you keep playing the game but just stay out of a couple new maps (which new content may or may not actually be 100% confined to). Aside from the fact that the new maps and a new dungeon is the good kind of content and the sort of thing that should be encouraged, the only data you’d really be giving them is “This player does not have any Ascended gear – and neither do these other hundred thousand people, some of whom don’t even have an Exotic.”

If you want to send a message, you can’t do it halfway. Quit, or get yourself permabanned, or something. Otherwise you might as well just not go out of your way for it.

We can agree to disagree as to whether a content boycott would be effective, I’m fine with that. The ascended gear is a necessity of some of the lost shores content, that’s the point of agony and infusion, therefore the content is not designed for me and I would rather just not play any of it.

Caedmon.6798:

Jeez…gamers are getting a bit nasty if your asking me.Where are the days where people were actually happy about anything and Stop complaining all the kitten time.Arent you guys getting tired of yourselfs ?

For the most part, I have been very happy with this game, hence why I’m encouraging a boycott rather than an exodus.

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Quitting + getting a refund is essentially boycotting.

Agreed, and technically it is a stronger message, but I feel it’s probably too rash often times (plus I doubt you’ll get a refund). If you are that serious about quitting, then by all means do so, but I would like to encourage everyone to consider this lesser boycott to start with.