Guild Wars 2

Guhracie.3419:

Make the Personality System Matter:

Make the Order Decision Matter:

Absolutely. The personality system doesn’t seem to be used at all despite it being a feature I was extremely pleased to see in existence upon starting up the game for the first time.

Also, the Orders play such a big role in the level 20 to 50ish range that you really do become attached to the choice you make. Heck, they even seem important earlier than that when you see them in the home cities. And then, with the arrival of the Claw Island mission and the Pact they become pretty much nothing. I can understand using the Pact as part of the Personal Storyline but there is so much room for the integration of the orders outside of that. New armour skins for higher ranks in the Order, new emotes, new skill appearances, etc. There are so many ways the Orders could be utilized, and seem like they should be, but instead there’s just nothing.

This is probably the main step that needs to be taken before cosmetics become an organized progression.

• Make skins Into an Easy to Use Collection
  This is one area I was extremely surprised that Anet is years behind the current MMO standards. DCUO is the prime example of how cosmetics should be handled. Having individual items with individual looks feels like nothing more than a reason to sell more bag slots. When I get an item, I should be able to use a transmutation stone to unlock the skin. once. I’m not talking about having skins like in the achievement panel or the pvp locker. I should be able to right click an arrow next to an equipped item & see a window of my skins, like the skill bar. then I can just click the one I want to currently use. Anything else just seems like a waste of UI space & time. This is a current MMO convention.
  I added a mock-up of this UI system below. The items you’ve unlocked should fill up from the top down, as to get rid of unnecessary scrolling. The reason I think this UI is better than the current lockers is that it is easier to use & requires less clicks. Currently the PvP/Achievement Locker requires:

• open locker>scroll to find item>double click>open inventory>double click item>open hero panel>drag item to skin window>click ok.

Whereas it could be:

• Open hero panel>click on item arrow>scroll to fin item>click item

Hi Chris!

First and foremost I want to thank you for your time in initiating and speaking with us all on this CDI. Character progression is something I’m relatively passionate about in games, and I’ve truly enjoyed reading everyone’s ideas and your responses in the other tread, and I’m happy to contribute to this one.

Horizontal progression:

There are two (somewhat related) topics I’d like to talk about that I think are very exciting and interesting ways to expand upon horizontal progression and really toss things up in the meta.

Topic 1: Horizontal Progression in the form of Sub-Classes/A Job System

You’ve stated a few times in a couple different ways that the Anet team has been discussing the potential of Horizontal progression in the form of a type of job system or “sub-classes” if you will.

This in my opinion is an excellent idea, and I would love to see something like this implemented in GW2. I think this is one of the best possible ways to expand upon horizontal progression. This is one of the reasons to why I have now participated in this CDI. I want to weigh in on this topic a bit more with my expectations/ideas for a system such as this.

Below, are three things that I would like to highlight regarding a potential job or Sub-Class System:

1: Further fleshing out the roles of “Control, Damage, Support” for each of the classes

In a lot of interviews with devs before this game came out, it was stated that GW2 wanted to do away with the original holy trinity of MMOs, and replace it with a trinity of Control, Damage, and Support. I feel like in the current meta of the game, this is new trinity is barely existent in PvE content. Most of this content is easier the faster you burn something down, so there is a very heavy reliance on DPS (even Tequatle is literally just a 15 minute DPS check with other mechanics thrown in). This is something I would LOVE to see expanded upon in the form of a Sub-class system, or heck, even without a sub-class sytem. New traits, new skills, new passive bonuses that the player has the choice to have active/slotted that can buff one of the three roles. This sort of leads into my second point.

2: New exclusive skills to each job (both weapon, utility, and passive).

This is touched a bit more on the next section, but new exclusive skills would really mix the meta up, and make it feel like No two Warriors/Thieves/Mesmers/etc are the same (which again, makes the game so much more engaging in my opinion)

3: Sub-Class development shouldn’t end with selecting a sub-class
This portion of my opinion might come under fire a bit because a lot of the GW2 community has lot of people don’t want things to feel too grindy (which is a completely fair and valid point). I still think there should be ways developing a sub-class furthar upon selection. A skill tree that uses your skill points would probably not be the way to go on this considering that makes it ALL about grind. Instead, perhaps, your sub-class or job could earn sub-class or job exp based on activities that the job performs well.

For the sake of example, suppose a thief has the Sub-Class “Nightshade” — a support based subclass that focuses on stealthing, healing, and buffing itself and its allies with the sacrifice of some DPS. This player should earn “Nightshade” exp by Stealthing, healing, and buffing it’s allies.

As the Sub-Class/Job increases in level, new passive and slot-able skills become available.

Topic 2: Horizontal Progression in the form of new weapon skills (not new weapons)

Some have mentioned new weapons, which is great and I’d still like to see, but I’m talking about multiple sets of skills for each 1 – 5 slot on each weapon. New skills for each weapon would increase build diversity exponentially, and it would make creating a build so much more engaging. There would be new combos to figure out, more diversity in combat — I’m sure there would be new animations etc. Generally speaking I think this another item for Horizontal progression that would be extremely healthy for the game, and the game’s meta. This can even tie back to sub-classes — certain sub-classes could have some exclusive weapon skills. The mixing and matching of weapon skills would be very engaging.

There are times where if I’m running a certain build, some of my weapon skills feel 90% invalidated. For example, take Death Blossom on the Thief D/D set-up. If you’re running a back-stab build for maximum power and crit damage, this skill is virtually worthless. It is semi okay for AoE, but if I want to do that, I’ll just switch to Short bow. I’m not saying it needs to be another raw damaging ability — but I’d hope to at least see something useful in that slot.

I never want to feel like because of my build, one of my core abilities in 1-5 is invalidated. This can be alleviated by adding multiple skills per weapon slot.

Some additional thoughts I’ve had regarding horizontal progression and the living story: The LS would be a great place to add rewards like black lion chest keys, exclusive dyes (maybe a choice between 3), a black lion ticket on occasion, hair/makeover kits, namechange contracts- any number of cosmetic-type things that are not back-slot or skins that otherwise take up space.

And speaking of skins that take up space… Wardrobe. Reusable skins. (I’m sure other people will have much more developed ideas about this, I just wanted to add my voice to the throng.)

Miniatures need a better display system. I should, at the very least, be able to flag one or two items not to be deposited with “deposit all” instead of using one of my bag slots for those items.

My Wishlist:

- Like many others, I’d like some type of system (PvE skin locker, wardrobe tabs, something) implemented that allows me to change to more than one outfit without sacrificing my stats and/or running another complete set of gear. I don’t mind if more options are required by gem unlocks, I’d gladly pay.

- Mini Pet slot on UI; ideally with some type of on/off ability like “show helm”.

- Options via UI to have alternate weapon set-ups/trait builds that can switch out of combat only (i.e. as an elementalist, I understand that I can only have one weapon/no swaps in combat, but out of combat, I have to open my bag, swap out my weapons, and if switching from two to 1-handed, my off-hand item goes to default first available spot in bag, which I then have to find and put aside so that I don’t somehow lose it, etc. If I could store that weapon as “secondary” (or in other class cases, 3rd/4th/etc), then it’s not taking up a bag slot and I can swap to it (with perhaps a long CD and/or gem unlock), ideally this would also automatically switch traits (even if only swapping the selective traits and not requiring a complete build change, though that would be even nicer).

- Personal story completion should reward characters the ability to buy cosmetic armour from all 3 orders; after all – we’re “Pact” and I’m the Commander – if I can lead them, why can’t I dress like them? Besides, choosing an order and later learning that the “look” you like best is a different order really sucks, and the story meshes so well with the ability to have all 3.

- Crafting panels to have “main item type” with selectable specifics (i.e. for a tailor, show “masquerade coat” and when selected, then the option to pick “Carrion”, “Berserker”, etc.). The current list system is so long and clunky. It would also be really nice to have (or at least the option to turn on/off) the item level in brackets in the list, for easy searching.

- Trading Post to have search features by armour type (heavy, medium, light) – still surprised this isn’t already in-game.

- Class specific armour styles. I want to see beautiful armours available only to each specific class, have them each stand out. Ideally I’d like this to be something along the lines of a long, challenging, multi-zone “epic” quest, but since this is a horizontal progression discussion thread, I’d even be happy with gemstore options and just graphically different.

- “In-between” armour graphics with more variation. Light armour shouldn’t always be a skimpy bikini outfit or something from the 1800s – sure, show some skin, but have some nice looking stuff in the middle for the ladies. Medium armour shouldn’t all be 98% trench coats and the sort. Simple isn’t necessarily bad, I’ve seen so many good looking NPCs that I’d love to see options for players in-game.

- Long hair fix. I love long hair on my toons, but I can’t stand entering combat stance and finding that it all disappears into her back 50% of the time I’m playing. If I have the option to have long hair, make the graphics work so that it’s realistic (or at least it lays on my skin, not disappears through it).

Hello there, i’d like to contribute with my 2 cents:
1)Add some sort of Hall of Monuments-like structure where characters can display achievements related stuff: like many of us suggested, having something to track down and display what we’ve done so far it’s a nice feature to have. Gathering nodes are a good start, i’d like to see more stuff in that direction (Slayer achievements, explorer, jps, LS related and so on). GW1 HoM was something really well done imho.

2)Add new Titles for the already existing achievements (jps, slayers, explorers and so on)

3)Release a new set of armor skins with each LS arc, so that we’ll end up with a whole new set upon arc completion: doing so we’ll get 1 new piece of armor every 2 weeks and a whole new set every 3 months. This amount of work should be manageable .

3) Adds some way to improve/modify slightly some of the existing armor skins (t3 light human cultural->flamekissed is a good example of that) using recipes involving skill points and something else. Doing so the amount of work on Your end will be less than making a new skin from zero and at the same time we will get some more customization (and new goals). The same thing can be done for Orders Armors, Dungeon Armors, Cultural Armors and maybe a new Pact Armor.

4)PVE Locker: as many of us suggested, it’s a highly needed feature. Getting the Emperor title for example give us 90 armor pieces (iirc). That’s 90 new skins that occupy 90 slots in our bank/bags. We really need one place to store skins that we’ve earned through the game, so that we can collect them and use them on demand.
This should have been a core feature given that the endgame in GW2 is purely cosmetic.

I’ll add more things later, thanks for giving us this opportunity.
Best regards

To me horizontal is all about broadening options available to the player. There’s tons of substantial potential in there, and some stuff that gw2 already does well.

• New weapon skills and utilities
• New Traits
• New skins
• Dyes – seriously, can we get glowy dyes?
• Faction reputation – earnable minis, finishers, etc
• Guild progression – halls, new social functionality, banners to plaster about, etc.
• Non-combat utility stuff like account wide xp or crafting xp bonuses
• Home instance customization
• Special titles

Anyway, there’s tons – and it only starts with combat related stuff. One point I’d particularly go after that gw2 missed out on is faction reputations. They tend to be something you can work towards at your own pace and that offer a bit of something to show off your love of a particular faction – themed gear, pets, etc. I know I’d personally be slaving hard to earn that endless skritt tonic and skritt-themed finisher. We have so much potential for that and only a bit of it – like the order armors. Yet you really don’t have to do very much to ‘earn’ those armors.

I also hate to bring it up.. but even if they’re utterly uselessly slow (as fast as a movement signet only), mounts! Holy cow. People utterly ADORE mounts. One of the best feelings I ever got playing WoW was finally getting that netherdrake for my warlock. Plus it’d let us be less shoehorned into movement speed traits. Those could just be ‘in combat’ sorta dealies.

But why stop there? You could factionalize all the major cities and orders and other groups and let people work their way towards free teleports to each of them, special date nights with Queen Jenna or hunting parties with Rytlock or any other crazy stuff that comes to mind. Maybe the dredge have special communist themed rifle abilities to earn. ‘Firing Squad’, yes?

I know those are ‘fluffy’ kinds of options, but one of the better options discussed in the vertical progression thread was letting people undertake an epic quest to unlock stat combos for their gear. That’d be pure horizontal, and very compelling.

Other things.. well, how about getting dungeon master unlocks explorable modes on all your characters? How about finishing all the jumping puzzles gives you a small movement speed upgrade? Make the bazaar love you and get to use those awesome movement abilities out in the rest of the world. How about leveling one of every race to 80 gets you access to special diplomat-themed quests?

Possibilities are endless. If horizontal really is the focus going forward I’m excited.

The biggest things I want to see (and to be honest, expected in the game on release):

• Proper player housing. There was all this awesome artwork circulating on the internet about these sylvari houses that we could own. There was talk about your house being updated and expanding based on your accomplishments in the world. I really don’t feel at home in GW2 until I have my own house, with interactive furniture, ability to upgrade and decorate, and all that.
• Much more diversity in skills. I really feel we should be able to customize our weapon skills. Right now we get weapons with sets of skills, but no way to customize them. I don’t like that we get sets of skills, but usually 3 out of 5 are not seeing any use (esp on thief, as all skills compete for initiative points). I don’t understand why the biggest selling point of Guild Wars 1 didn’t make it into GW2. I feel that I do not have enough customization abilities for my character in GW2 and that all of the characters of the same class are mostly the same.
• More cultural/dungeon armor. Ascended made all the armors except one obsolete, so we need many more new armor skins of ascended quality. A whole new tier of dungeon gear and cultural armor.

Besides that, I really would like to see more faction based stuff. Pick a side to work for and build up a reputation. Each with its own reward in titles, gear, minis, and of course quests that are only available for you and people that progressed in the same faction.

Factions shouldn’t just be a race, but instead subgroups within a race. And the three Orders are something that really can be expanded on too. At the moment, I just don’t feel that any of the choices I make matter (if I get any choices at all – in the living story I don’t, except with that election, which was rather limited and nothing I could influence on an individual scale). I would like to see more meaningful choice, with exclusive content (quests, items, titles) only available to those that followed a specific path.

Again… I posted this at the end of the other thread, right before it was closed.

Part 2 – Horizontal progression – Weapon skills

Other kinds of horizontal progression should cover skills and skills and utilities acquisition.

When I first heard of the skill system for GW2 (as an avid GW1 player) I never imagined that it would be so static. For instance, I fully expected that although swords would come with 3 skills, that there would be more than 3 “sword” skills with multiple types of swords with different skill combos to be found. I expected some swords would be more offensive and others more defensive.

For example:

• Bonetti’s rapier: (1) Auto attack, (2) Riposte, (3) Bonetti’s defence.
• Gladius: (1) Auto attack, (2) Gash, (3) Hamstring.

Introducing skill variety within weapons could be a great way to introduce build diversity. This seems very long term.

Horizontal Progression – Elite Skills

I also feel that a good avenue for horizontal progression would be to have a long and hard look at Elite skills in GW2.

There is a pretty big difference in philosophy regarding the role of elite skills in GW1 and GW2: GW1 elite skills were build defining and the majority of GW2 elites are not.
GW2 elite skills have such high cooldowns that they are often an afterthought (with some exceptions like war banner in a banner build on warrirors). In general, GW2 elites are in an odd place, they have low uptime, high cooldown, and their impact is debatable across different play types (PvE, PvP, WvW).

It would be nice to see some progression related to class skills and class elites in the following forms:

• Class-related personal story elements
• Class-related crafting

This would lead to unlocks of new and reworked elites (think necro guild, warrior guild, etc.).

I really would like to see “build-around-me” elites that really help define a build. These elites could have a lower immediate battlefield impact than something like the Guardian tomes, but a more sustained and reliable impact on gameplay.
For example (forgive me if my examples aren’t the best but you’ll get my point):

• A skill like GW1’s broadhead arrow (i.e., a low cooldown source of daze) could open up more controlling builds for rangers.
• Warriors could have elite battle stances that either increase adrenaline gain or reduce the cooldown on certain types of skills.
• Necromancers could have an elite effect similar to aura of the lich (on a signet with with a drawback maybe?) that could really support minion master builds.

I think that there is a lot of potential to be found in elite skills, and in as much as it doesn’t strictly involve a level/stat/gear upgrade I think it’s something that should seriously be considered as a key aspect of horizontal progression.

I’m probably forgetting a few things but I’ll probably end this post here.

Thanks for reading.

Diogo made good points. One of them touched on the home instance. That could use a heck of a lot more customization, per all the threads on housing, trophies, and so forth. Adding a few nodes is hardly the same as developing a Caudecus Manor of our very own … /dreams.

Horizontal progression, chasing looks, that’s one of the core things about this game that drew me in. It offers such beautiful art that I can crave more, more, more. It can’t be the only thing the game has to offer, of course, but the game does offer solid mechanics, lore, cooperative play, all that good stuff. It’s time to deepen the immersion by providing more differentiation and individuality.

Along those lines: town clothes like all the NPCs have. More merging of town/combat looks as we’ve seen happening already. More account-wide use of skins: I adore the gas mask and doubt I’ll ever use it while I have only one to decide which of my 2 warriors, 2 guardians, 1 thief, 1 engineer, 1 ranger, 2 mesmers, 2 necromancers, or 1 elementalist get it. That was bad design to limit it to just one armor weight. Far better to make it like the Zenith items, in my opinion. We’re only playing one character at a time, what harm in letting us have the look we want on each? The gas mask isn’t even a gem store item, there’s no lost money for the company in letting us duplicate it across our account.

Here’s a few things that I’d like:

1) Skin Locker for PvE with all the skins I’ve put on a character.
2) Account-bound Legendary Dyes which put special effects on my gear (fire, mirror, glow, black hole, electricity, etc)
3) Minipet slot with Visibility checkbox (like we have for helm)
4) Inventory Bag Type: Shared Bag – same items across all characters to keep from constantly having to hit Bank. Could put my unlimited gathering tools, Salvage-O-Matic, etc in there

Just a few quick thoughts, don’t want to blow up everybody’s screen… (wink wink Diogo! :-P)

Other topics

• The problems with personal story, home instancing and world exploration/ dynamic events are also complex on their own, and I’m tired for now. I’ll just skip them and let other discuss solutions for it in the meantime.
• I’m also interesting in making a comparison between GW2’s crafting and the crafting of a game called Vagrant Story (made by the Final Fantasy Tactics team, btw), which felt a lot more personal and satisfying. Vagrant Story’s crafting allowed you to dismantle all the small parts of your gear, re-combine them the way you wanted, and ultimately give you an option to rename them. I can’t express by words how great of a system this is for horizontal progression. It’s very personal yet flexible and there’s plenty of opportunity for experimentation. Perhaps a system like this should be taken into account when discussing or implementing an ascended/ craft system to change stats. Vagrant Story also allowed you to create stronger gear by fusing together several pieces of unnecessary gear, kind of like mystic forge, but with less RNG and more “visible”. This one feels great for vertical progression.

CONCLUSION
By lacking visible or tangible progression (be it vertical or horizontal), the player won’t feel that they are progressing at all, even if the progression is clearly there in the game.

That’s why Anet keeps throwing new horizontal progression items each patch (new stat combos, new skins, new recipes, new mini-pets), yet players barely feel that they are progressing their own characters. Why is that? There’s a disattachment here between Anet and the community, for while Anet believes that they are expanding the game with horizontal progression at a steady pace, the player base does not feel that progression in practice. This is all because many of the new horizontal progression items that Anet is adding to the game lack a “visible” progression rate and a “tangible” consequence rate.

Thank you for reading.

Appealing Skins (Again)

• Example 1 for underwhelming armor: Male Light Armor from the nightmare dungeon. If we look at its artwork, it makes male humans look intimidating, “evil” and very, very mysterious/ enigmatic, especially with the mask skin that takes the pupils out of their eyes and adds a face tattoo. Looks very otherworldly, and isn’t that an awesome recipe for an appealing magical individual? But when we look at the model that exist in-game… Oh my. First, the mask skin does not even exists, and it’s incredible how much of a difference that makes, stripping the entire other-worldly, surreal feeling from it. The result is an ordinary male-looking guy within a weird dress. It’s clashing and not very pretty. And then the horns have lost their symmetry from the artwork, and look something hunted from a random animal instead. And then the chest hole seems somehow bigger in the model than in the artwork, giving way too much emphasis on their skinny chest (or worse, on their hairy chest!). It just… doesn’t works. Yet, the artwork version looks great.
• Example 2: Male Light Armor again, this time the Winged set that can be crafted at rank 225+ in Tailor. While the female version looks incredibly awesome (as usual), the male version is another disaster. The artwork for this piece of armor gives a very stylized, ancient/ mystic look to spellcasters. Again: wouldn’t that make an awesome recipe for awesomely-looking spellcasters? Again: the in-game version does not even come close. In fact, this one is so poor, that I can’t stop feeling that it was rushed or no real effort was put into it. First, it looks as if made of plastic or paper – it has a very fake feeling into it. Second, the feathered strap through the body looks like a toy instead of real feathers. It could’ve been a beautiful detail, but it’s ugly and it sticks. Third, it’s not even possible to dye the armored part of this piece of gear individually from the cloth part, for no apparent reason (isn’t the point of GW2’s flexible dye system to prevent something like this from ever happening)? Forth, when we look at the artwork, the shape and the curves of the hood are more stylized than their model version, looking very appealing in paper while being completely forgettable in-game. Fifth, the artwork for this piece of armor has some magical runes/ words ornamented within the cloth or the armor (if my memory does not fails me). This is yet another very appealing detail that could have made the armor piece look awesome, but which barely if even exists in the actual model. All of this adds up to the point that a cool-looking drawn set looks really bad in-game.
• The solution for this? Anet should make a “skin pass” – go through most of the armor sets that already exist in the game, compare them to how they were envisioned by the artists, and improve their models in an attempt to make them as impressive as possible as they are on paper.
• I used to think that GW2’s artists couldn’t simply draw male scholar armor, but the few artworks available in the net have shown me that the problem lies in the actual models and not so much on the artists.
• If Anet is unsure of this “skin pass” solution due to time or budget restraints, and the uncertainty of being well-received by the player base, why not target such changes for a future patch that would introduce – say, ascended pieces to dungeons and the like? This way, in a single patch, players would not only replay dungeons for their ascended stats – they would also do so for the improved skins (if they haven’t stored them already)!

Appealing Skins

• There are some serious issues with many of the skins in this game, be them technical or artistic issues. And no, I’m not talking exclusively about clipping issues, which I understand it is a complex issue. I won’t even mention it anymore.
• Technical: When you zoom out, many of the tiny armor details are lost or get incredibly blurred, making any ornamented armory look ugly whenever the camera is not too close to it.
• Technical: Some armor pieces seem to have better textures/ shaders/ whatever while others look incredibly plastic or paper-made, when they could otherwise look really awesome.
• Technical: There’s a shaders mod out there called SweetFX that makes GW2 look much prettier than it otherwise does with its default shaders. If GW2’s default options looked this good, more players would feel motivated to look better.
• Technical/ Design: The dye system was designed to paint different parts of each armor piece – it’s a very flexible system that allows you to make the metal, cloth and jewelry parts of your armor individually distinct from each other, yet for some unknown reason, some pieces use the same color for different parts, making them impossible to look great. More on this bellow.
• Design: Dyes with shaders (F&F, etc) look awesome, and sometimes can make or break a skin. Yet, they’re incredibly scarce and costly. For a game like GW2 where cosmetics are one of the core progression systems, the game should have its more appealing dye options more accessible and less obscure.
• Design: Dyes being soul-bound take away the motivation from working towards alt looks, especially when the best ones can take two digits worth of gold each on the TP.
• Technical/ Artistic: There’s a lack of diversity for many light and medium models.
• Artistic: Anet’s artists seem to have trouble working on some types of gear over others. There are plenty of heavy armor skins that look intimidating, powerful or majestic, plenty of female light cloth skins that look elegant, majestic or beautiful, yet the same can’t be said for, to give as an example, most of the male light clothes. I know this is very subjective subject, but there are specific types of armor for specific genders that seem to have an overabundance of details, lack cohesion, or simply lack any sense of power, intimidation, majesty or other stylish impression. Taking a low-level priest model and adding strips and jewels into it won’t suddenly make it appealing. Sooner that makes the character look like a Christmas tree than an intimidating and powerful individual. It’s hard to make a male character look like a strong, or enigmatic, or intimidating – or anything – spell caster, when most of their options simply consist of generic models over-ornamented with random stuff.

Right off the top of my head I would like to see soulbound to be banished from GW2. By all means keep account bound and turn everything soulbound to account bound on use.

It would make altoholics happy and you can’t play GW2 without having multiple alts. GW1 vets you know what I am talking about.

The only demographic I see being hurt are the TP flippers. IMO GW2 wasn’t supposed to be “Stock Market 2”.

Horizontal progression = things a character can achieve without making it more efficient in combat or in other gameplay mechanics compared with another character who doesn’t have these things

- increase the number of titles and diversify their acquirement process = it is fun to see a new title pop up on your screen “you have earned the […] tile”

- weapon/armor/gear skin wardrobe = a goal for all collectors

- costumes crafting

- in-game leaderboards similar to GW1 challenge missions

- further customization for armors and weapons (weapon dyes)

I would like to see a greater focus on customizing armor appearances. As I understand it, every set of armor that is released has 10 versions which means a crap ton of resources time, money, and manpower are needed for a single set of armor. This may not seem feasible so why not aim for the ability to customize the appearances of the armor?

Is it possible to add variations of the armor E.G: female phoenix armor with sleeves on both arms instead of 1 sleeve on the right arm, or removing the floating bits of feather as an option? Anything that allows current existing armor sets to be customized beyond a simple degree of dye channels could be a very big draw to me. Personally, I’d love to be able to remove the floating feathers (not the ones already connected to each other) on the phoenix set.

Another option could be to the ability to add particle effects so that I can set a “theme” for armor sets. Unlocking the ability to add a single particle effect on a single piece of armor could be a very nice reward outlet and adding different types of particle effects such as glowing embers, glimmer snow, or bolts of lightning could change an armor set’s “theme.”

Imagine a set of armor with the grenth hood and the darkness particle effects seen on the sunless weapons. We’d end up looking a bit more like Liadri the Concealing Dark but hey, it’s a theme.

The focus I’d like to see for Anet’s stance on horizontal progression is customizability of what already exists. Or rather, if Anet can add 2-3 variants of certain armor pieces on armor sets without having to sink 2-3 times the resources to add it. It was mentioned before the helmets, shoulders, and gloves are the least resource intensive (cheapest) for artwork. Why not give us variations of these artwork where we unlock a base item and can further unlock additional variant artwork, much like alternate costumes/appearances found in fighting games?

you’d probably be real upset with me on your team then. you know the guy that gets 1 note right out of 100? warrior faceroll tactics ftw.

I’ve been thinking recently. One of the main reasons why I got into MMOs all those years ago was because of the subscription-free model of GW1. With other games at the time, you had to pay somewhere around $15 per month in order to have access to a game. This was on top of the box price of games. Now as a Casual gamer, it made no sense to pay money each month, regardless if you played or not. It was almost like I would be forced to play, because if I didn’t, the subscription I paid would be a waste.

GW2 followed this model. You pay once for the game, and you can play as much as you want, whenever you want. If you want to take a break, you can, and the account goes nowhere. Casual gamers aren’t hit with reoccurring creditcard charges, and still have access to 100% of the game content from day one. What could be better? How about free content updates every 2 weeks? SCORE! It’s like buying one game, and getting another game for free twice a month.

But wait, GW2 gets even better! There are games where players can pay real money to be more powerful in-game than non-paying players. These games are call Pay 2 Win. GW2 isn’t one of these games, so Casuals will never have to worry about feeling like second class citizens. No wonder GW2 was voted the best MMO in 2013!

I think I’m going to have to agree on the OP with this.

I’m sick and tired of jumping puzzles everywhere. I can’t do them at all, and it seems all Anet wants to do is release them. Yes, I get it. We can now jump in GW2. Wonderful. But let’s not revolve all your content around jumping.

So now I can’t even get the meta achievement cause we have to get all 16 for it, and most of them require jumping puzzles.

I am so sick of jumping puzzles. I guess this game is just not for me anymore if this is the direction Anet is going.

Without expansions….does that mean we won’t get new classes or skills? My god the skills are getting really old by now. Especially when many classes have weapons that they all avoid.

Vol.5241:

It is unreasonable to expect a new map every 2 weeks.

The 2-week schedule is something Anet has imposed upon themselves. I can’t say I’ve read very many endorsements of that schedule either, most people seem to feel it’s too much and I agree with them.

I would personally prefer more of a 4-8 week schedule with ‘beefier’ content instead of run around for a week spamming “F” on objects, grinding mobs for achievements, and maybe a 5 minute story instance. It feels like filler with no real substance or enjoyment. I don’t want or need that every 2 weeks.

Believe me, I don’t mind the RNG boxes at all. I’ve defended them in the past, and place the blame firmly on the shoulders of the players who can’t control their buying impulses. Many of whom are adults, by the way, so this isn’t even an age thing. Anyway, I digress…

I can’t exactly say i’m on board with this larger plan.

I love expansions because they represent a whole, large infusion of content. There’s just a lot at once, and they have the liberty to change major things. Entire quest lines, new classes, new abilities, new continents, a whole revamped trait system, skill system, etc.

This little trickle of content is currently nowhere near that of an expansion, even if you add it all together. If you consider what permanent content has stayed in GW2 from release till now… does it even equal half an expansion if all added up? I seem to recall the words “whole expansion worth of content” used in a ANet post describing these patches long ago, which I assume must be a bad joke. 0 new skills, 0 new classes, 1 new map. Same 3 WvW maps, same 1 sPvP mode. The only significant (again, permanent) additions are a few sPvP maps, fractals, guild missions and a WvW trait line. The rest of the gigantic patch notes have been 1) temporary content, 2) balance changes, and 3) bug fixes. Even the new items (ascended) were added in an extremely lazy manner (i.e. plopping them all into one vendor for daily completions) – I would’ve loved to see these tied into some rare world boss drops, some rare dungeon drops, with names befitting where they come from.

I love the frequent content of course, I do all the living story things, I like it! I show my appreciation through paying a self imposed sub fee by purchasing gems, and want these to continue. However, I stress that none of this matches the feel of an expansion. Not even close. These 2 week patches have not yet scratched the surface of content i’d want in an expansion. Can you imagine one of these patches releasing a new class? Can you picture one releasing Elona, or Cantha? I can’t even imagine it without a proper boxed expansion, which I would be more than happy to pay for. If this is written out of GW2’s future, that would really make me a lot less optimistic about this game.

My gripe with only focusing on fast paced live story content is the amount of QA (Quality Assurance) that goes into each update. The faster you push out content, maps, weapons, armor, etc. the less time you have polish, review, etc. The idea is great, but the product might not be up to par with what they are promising. Take for example players receiving all the dragon helms a week before the finale. A huge bug that got through, something that isn’t as common in slower paced updates. Also note the accidental achievement section ((DELETE ME!!)) that found its way through to the live client. They are working very fast paced and have increased workloads. Broken Content isn’t good content. As players, we shouldn’t be the “ultimate” testers. We want to enjoy the content that the game has promised us. People who take up the testing role should be doing that, not us.

It would be cool if they let you have all your mini pets from your bank collection run around in your home instance.

Synesence.7546:

Worst downed state skill? NOBODY suffers like the thief in that aspect. A downed thief is under most circumstances, a dead thief.

Thief: Spam #1 profit
Engi: Spam #1 cry

Henchmen, or variation of hero units using the appearance of your alternate characters. Obviously limited in some capacity, such as only having up to two hero units in a party with no real players, and give them the ability to self-resurrect after 15 seconds.

I’ve been wanting them to add new armor skins to the gem store for ages, but these are just hideous. I’ve come to the conclusion whoever is responsible for the design for GW2 gear doesn’t share my aesthetic. Plus, female Charr and Asura sharing the male model armors is just lazy.