Guild Wars 2

I have to agree Hyperion, I’m getting a little bored of this living story thing because it never seems to ramp up into any big epic conclusion or open up the world much at all. It’s achievement farming which is fun for a couple of days, and then nothing really new after. Nothing that lasts, the only time that happened was when we got the new Isles which we’ve abandoned twice leaving settlers there with an incomplete settlement as they get relentlessly slaughtered by karka over and over again. And then the other time was the Captain’s council election, and we’ve yet to see an appearance from Kiel or really anyone from that series of updates all this time later.

Ultimately, we’re just flippantly skipping around all over the place instead of any truly cohesive plot. We see tiny connections here and there to sew them together, but nothing overly concrete. It’s definitely time for them to examine larger, meatier, and more significant updates. Where are all these updates they’ve mentioned several times over the past year? The ones that have been in development but are a secret that can’t be revealed yet? We can’t get any information at all? I want to go back to the iconic places from GW1. That’s Cantha, and Elona. I want to see the Isles of Janthir, I want to find out what happened to the White Mantle, I want to see really significant plots play out instead of fleeting moments that get jumbled in together with the other fleeting moments we’re experiencing.

There really is just not enough tying the two games together. They share the same world, some of the same cities, some of the same bloodlines/dynasty’s (IE: The Queen) etc but there’s little else making it a true sequel. It’s only been 250 years, not 2,500 and honestly you would think it were the latter at this rate.

My colleague and I were having a discussion earlier this evening, about various topics, when I stumbled upon the thought of guild airships. I know all you bookahs want guild halls, but here me out. Would it not be more efficient for guilds to have giant, customizable airships to hold for meetings, events and/or even fast travel to other zones? I hope those of you that can read concur with my assessment that an airship base would be far more superior than a lame old fortress, stuck on the ground.

Know before I start, I’m not racist or Guild Wars 2 racist for all you Charr sitting on Human ruins, anyway.

I feel there needs to be some changes for the race skills mainly, before playing Guild Wars 2 I played alot of 1 – and I thought, wow when I play 2 I cant wait to be a Norn and turn into bear or wolf to aid me. These skills are rubbish! In fact most of the other races skills are worthless! In addition I think each class needs benefits! An asuran warrior would be more squishy than a Norn lets face it! Heres some ideas for both skills and traits.

Charr: Permanent speed boost – they run on 4 LEGS seriously they should be faster.

Norn: Small boost in toughness? Elite racials need to be buffed!!!!

Sylvari: Small perma regen since they are plants?

Asura: These little guys n girl I think should have something like, increased health or faster regen in endurance. For their skills, EVERY asuran who wants a golem should ALWAYS have that golem, like the rangers pet it should always be there until its killed. What stops me playing an asuran is the golem elite

Human: The “dying” race of Tyria, strong, persistent and loyal. not familiar with the race skills but I bet they could do with a boost like the ones involving the gods.

Anyway these are just ideas and I’m sure there is alot of input on the matter, I’m no game designer but I play alot – gamers are the best people to spot good and fun changes usually, speak up!!

Hey devs, how about some level 80 Medium Armor chestpieces that aint coats that reach down to the ankles and headgear that’s not masks?

The “Invader’s Rawhide Mask” for example is actually a good looking hat with a ridiculous mask hanging down in front. How about eliminating the weak looking mask and calling it “Invader’s Rawhide Hat” instead? And make some of these Medium armor chestpieces as a SHIRT and not a bulky ankle slapping coat. ok?

Believe it or not, not all of the Medium Armor wearers are wannabe Ninjas craving masks or Sam Spades who like trench coats.

1) I would absolutely love to see far more variety with all armors. Light armor doesn’t have to be skimpy to look good; A proper battle mage type outfit would be pretty cool as well as a more medium-armor type look but obviously not nearly as good as heavy armor.

2) Housing! It would be great to choose my character’s homes, like a plant-environment for sylvari or a more technologically advanced home for asura. The customization could be wonderful, and even more so with guild halls.

3) Emotes. These things carry reaaally far, and it’s kinda confusing at times. I’d like to see the overall range reduced, but I’d still love to see more emotes, like /hug, /giggle, /sigh, and /nod. These would be really fantastic.

We need new cultural armour sets and weapons. Something that really looks different and stands out, something that really gives you the feeling “THIS is a CHARR”. You know what i mean?
This armour should be a legendary armour, as it is always hard to make an armour set for all races, it usually only goes well with 2-3 races and looks ugly on the rest. More cultural armours would fix this problem, not all legendary though but i really think you nailed it with cultural armours and weapons.

Then you gotta take the type of game this is into account. The original coining of the phrase mmorpg wasn’t to a immersion themepark mmo, but to an RPG sandbox game (UO). In sandbox games are where you find the RP’ers, not so much in themepark games.

Sandbox games, players are more spaced out in the open content, among their communities, but in themepark games players are more so led though instant active gaming hubs. They are by design immersion games, they attract immersion gamers who care more about the general immersion of the game rather than the RP interaction of the world around them. They all want to play the hero, while RP’ers find that restraining to their individuality.

So really, development here cries out for more content hubs to be led through. RP’ers want more land, more structure, more world interactivity to RP with other like-minded players forging their own story.

Vol.5241:

One of the devs already commented awhile back on why we don’t have sitting animations.

For one, you have several distinct races, which presents problems when sitting. You’d have to animate everything from a tiny Asura to a huge Charr. And don’t forget the wide range of heights that you have to deal with…

As an amateur modeler and animator, I can tell you that those excuses are simply bogus.

All of these problems are solved with naked-eye measurements coupled with judicious application of inverse kinematics, which the game already supports to adjust the position of actor’s legs.

Vol.5241:

Not to mention the RP community in GW2 is a very, very small minority.

So is the number of people who have Legendary weapons.

Then again, how do you expect to have any RP community in a game that doesn’t support RP? And why do we assume that it’s only the RP community that benefits from these features? They’re universal.

PVE list:

1: Expansion
2: Dungeon
3: Living Story

A video to coincide with my thoughts on PVE:
Extra Credits: When Difficult Is Fun

edited to move WvW related items into the WvW thread

1. Roleplaying (support for RP, clothing, animations, housing, guild halls, mounts …)
2. Living World (Let’s talk about much more permanent stuff and how it could be done.)
3. Skills (viability, cooldowns, variety, look and feel and so on)

PvE:
1) New zones. With hearts and dynamic events, vistas, skill points, and new jumping puzzles. The whole free exploration thing was my favorite part of the game. NOT zones like Orr or Southsun. Regular zones for all levels, new max level zones like Frostgorge.

2) Expanding professions (horizontal progression!)… new skills, traits, weapons. Maybe new professions.

3) Stopping the loot pinata releases that are just a bunch of grind and RNG, and releasing new personal-story-like content which has real impact for the player, CAN BE SOLO’D or scales for a group. A longer release schedule is totally fine for me if we get quality content.

4) Player housing and all the items, trophies, storage, and customization that could go with it.

MORE ALT FRIENDLINESS IN THE WHOLE GAME

Thank you so much for the fantastic game, and for requesting this feedback.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

After a couple of days we will choose the number 1 topic in each area and then create the threads within the specific areas for us all to discuss, brainstorm and share our opinions on.

Chris

My choice is:

PvE

• New zones and more complete lore (not few hints and silence…)! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!
• housing/guild halls//real home instance that reflects your achievements (not achievement points that are useless, I’m saying about real achievements)
• Alt-friendliness and Ascended items (like for example after crafting few, allowing re-crafting existing exotics to ascended so we wont need tons of mats and transmutation stones, again and again) – comes from 8 character player…

WvW

• Making WvW more stable (all buildings are waiting for zerg to be taken why other server sleeps)
• WvW progression account wide
• Can we make it more like field progression (instead of threating each target as separate thing)
  PvP
• Transfer look from PvE to PvP (make look not bound to PvP lvl) it stops me from focusing in on PvP
• New play styles / maps!

PvE

1. Balancing (between classes, traits, utilities, runes, sigils, stat inequality, retaliation, confusion)
   -> Condition dilemma/ heal dilemma/ tank dilemma (not holy trinity, but a bit balance)
2. New content (maps, mobs, dungeons, paths) >> temporary content
3. QoL/ color blind mode/ UI customization

PvE
1) Challenging PvE content with progression – My ideal progressive challenging content would be a system that rewards you with account bound items based on doing it a certain number of times as well as a chance at RNG drops that can be sold/traded.

2) Guild System improvements – Last online, unified influence system to allow for a guild to span multiple servers, easier ways to communicate without representing with all your guilds.

3) Reward system that is not so gold focused – One major issue with GW2 right now is that a lot of people tend to focus on the path of least resistance for money. Challenging content is not something people will do once they have their achievements as long as it is not the easiest way to make money. This whole issue can be relieved somewhat by introducing skins and items that are account bound in locations that provide a challenge.
4) New zones – I want to see new high level zones. We have not had a high level zone since Southsun (excluding temporary zones) that provides a permanent location in the game. I understand that there are not many systems in place to drive traffic towards a new zone currently, but this would need to be in place as well. Southsun should not be an excuse to not make a new zone (If it is for ArenaNet currently). It should absolutely be improved, but the only reason most people don’t go there is because there is no reward system that makes it compelling enough currently to go there.

5) More compelling events in the world with long lasting results – The event system is great in it’s current form, but it needs to evolve. The sense of permanenence that events once had has been shattered completely. Events that scale was a great start, but events need to last a long period of time with rewards to support it. The invasions were a great start to this, but there should be more. This would also be a great structure to support new reward systems and zones.

6) Dungeon Rewards – Simply put, dungeon rewards are not good enough. Even with the money that you get at the end, it is not worth the time. Looking back, the system would have been great; but now we have updated rewards across the game and dungeons have already been shrugged off as one of the least rewarding parts of the game.

7) Skin Locker – The amount of skins we have is absolutely getting insane. We need a place to infinitely withdraw them from. Without a system that encourages the collection of all the skins in the game people could very well end up getting overwhelmed by the amount of skins, and just stop caring about new ones. I understand ArenaNet needs to make money, but perhaps a way to unlock skins permanently to withdraw them with the cost of a transmutation stone. Living story meta achievement skins should be free when they are unlocked as part of this system and skin sets from the gem store should not cost to withdraw once purchased the first time.

8) Ascended Availability – I understand that weapons were just introduced and that armor is being introduced later this year, but there needs to be more ways to get these items. People who like to play a ton of alts get royally messed up over this. You should not HAVE to craft to get these items. I know they are available via RNG, but there is no time gated method of acquiring these items otherwise. All other ascended gear in the game has these mechanics, but weapons/armor only have crafting. Yes, I know that crafting is time gated, but everything else (short of Backs) have 2-3 time gated mechanics to acquire them.

9) Fractal Rewards – Fractals need a better reward system. The amount of time you have to put into a fractal run at higher levels is absolutely insane compared to the amount of reward you get out of it. This is especially an issue when you compare it to other, more rewarding parts of the game.

sPvP
1) Better Reward system – This is absolutely the most important thing that sPvP needs right now. There needs to be a system that can stand the test of time and provide a compelling sense of progression for sPvP players.
2) Reward Crossover – While better rewards are part of this, I feel like this is an independent topic. A better reward system alone would make a ton of people happy and potentially bring in some new sPvP players, but this is what will really do it. sPvP players and PvE players should be able to benefit from both sides of the coin. An sPvPer should have ways to earn money, experience, karma, and PvE skins in sPvP. If a PvE player earns skins through other parts of the game, they should be able to bring it into sPvP. I understand that currently this is the main reward structure and skins are an indication of progression, but as part of a changed reward system for sPvP this won’t matter as much.

1. Lore, lore, lore! Better implementation, lore being in-game, not in interviews and on website. (Book feature, VO lore other than “Centaurs are attacking!” etc.)
2. Dynamic Events – more DE that have real impact on the world. When we fail, it has consequence. There are some, bur some…not that much. And also…let them fail! For example, most escort DEs have dead NPCs that are waiting forever to be resed. If NPC dies, I call that a fail. If most of the events basically cannot fail, they can´t have real consequence either. Also, less “defeat in the timeframe” fail conditions, more like at temple of Grenth or Balthazar.
3. Interactable world – houses you can go in, chairs you can sit in, objects to interact with (remember the comic you had in the first blog-posts about GW2? “By the gods, he´s picked up a mug!” – something along those lines ). Just things that make the world feel more alive.

Also…you guys are great, keep up the good work!
(edit: changed one and changed the order a little)

PvE :

1: Roleplaying
2: Guild Halls
3: Living World / Less frequent but bigger, permanent updates to the world

McM :

1: Bigger group (Team up to handle 4 groups in the same chat, and view players location in a color, for example)
2: Anti-zerg gameplay and tools
3: Profession Balance

1. New Zones / Professions / Races / Dungeons / etc. basicly Expansion ?

2. Harder Dungeons that actually require build composition / teamwork and cant be just zerked thru, which reasonable reward

3. Ascended Gear Treadmill

1. Story and lore presentation post-personal story. Return of long lore rich scavenger hunts or alternative text rich story events.
2. New areas and expansion content
3. Player home instances revamp/housing

1) Roleplaying. Specifically: Can we please get more things that cater to us? Chairs that we can sit in would be lovely, maybe some more armor designs, -something-. Even selling chairs on the gem store so you don’t have to fix -all- chairs.

2) Living Story. Specifically: Dragons. Jormag is knocking on Hoelbrak’s door, but yet we are still dealing with Scarlet. I appreciate that you want a super bad villain, but I’d love to move onto the other five super Tyrian villains.

3) Guilds: Specifically: Guild halls and their future.

1) New Weapons / Skills
2) RP and Lore
3) Armor/Weapon Skin Storage and accessibility

PvE:

1) New open-world Zones
2) Next Dragon
3) New Dungeons

1) new armors – theres not enough armor options. some work well for the professions and others fall short of the mark. medium armor especially is well suited to thieves and engineers but ranger it just doesnt sit right at times.

2) Dungeons – Make story completion acc bound for all char, meaning we dont have to re-do story mose in order to start exp mode on an alt.

3) Living Story – make old content replayable? rewards and achieves can be disabled but itd be nice to be able go back on some of the content now and again.

1. New Areas(i want to see cantha,elona and the rest of tyria!)
2.Minigames(specificaly bar brawl)
3.Player Housing

PvE:

1. Please tie up some loose ends. I know you have to have stuff going on all over the place, but I watch Wooden Potatoes, and there are more loose ends in Guild Wars than a bowl of spaghetti.

1. Tokens instead/as well as RNG.

1. Class fixes Weapons skills specifically need a balance pass.

PvE:

1) Expansion – new exploration, dragons
2) Living Story – permanent content
3) Dungeons – 5-man, concerns over replacing current path in TA, no platform play

I am not expecting my guild’s concerns to actually be addressed (as I don’t believe we are the customers ANet wants to delight) but I promised them I’d post.

1) Amours from GW1
2)New Armours
3)Realistc medieval Armours(like german Knights in 14-15 Century)
4)Capes,cloacks quivers and stuff like that)
5)New voices
6)break dance kit (if that’s posible)
7) Water Armours

Guild Wars 1 armor sets. I’ve said it a million times – I’ll keep saying it till we get it.
There’s no reason not to have them. Me and others would pay for it. Why isn’t it in yet?

Now that the game has been out over a year, I figured I should speak up about some missed opportunities for ANet to get me to part with my precious $$$.

Town Clothes
There have been some good additions to shirts and hats/glasses/head pieces in the store, but the rest is a bit lacking. The cargo shorts are nice, but really, unless your default town clothes give you a normal pair of pants (like humans), there aren’t many options and there are even less for characters that want a dress. For shoes, the options are even worse. My sylvari has the option of leafy shoes, riding boots with spurs, or pirate boots and none of these match any of the hoodies or other shirts.

Tl;dr – The value of some of the shirts/hats is vastly reduced by a lack of pants/shoes to match

(Also, you should give cross-dressing options for characters. It may sound strange, but I can assure you, a lot of players will take advantage of this, whether it be out of a sincere desire to cross dress or simply for the lols)

Character Emotes
The closest we’ve gotten so far is the dance item. While I like this, there’s a lot of potential money to be made from roleplayers who just simply want to be more expressive. Hell, even non-roleplayers would probably like the option to /flex or /roar after killing a particularly tough foe.

Musical Instruments
The flute, bell, and horn are good starts, but let’s get a guitar, bass, and a drum set. Creating these items should b relatively simple since the mechanics are already created.