Someone asked why do the champion train in one of their earlier posts (sorry I can’t find it now).

Basically, because it’s one of the few areas of the game that are rewarding. I can go kill mobs in Orr and get nothing, or do the champ train and make nearly 5-10g an hour, depending on luck.

Champ trains are one of the only profitable areas of the game for a casual player.

I miss easy to obtain, non time gated, BIS gear.

Walking into a zone I don’t know yet, exploring new territory…

I miss the lack of grind for Best In Slot gear, only having to work really hard for cosmetics.

Really enjoying reading all the idea’s and suggestion.

Just a quick note:

Horizontal Progression should not have an end point so keep focused on things that can continue to grow / be added over time.

Also its not about adding more content so we have stuff to do, its about adding things that make you feel more developed, grown, valued, rewarded etc.. but not be more powerful, effective etc…

Keep up the good work!

I don’t know how feasible this would be, but I honestly would love to be able to craft “epic” dyes in gradient form.

All of these dye color options combined with the artistic liberty of choosing two colors to make a gradient blend in the Cooking craft.

THE NEW MASTERS
“I haven’t seen that trick before!” — famous last words

The fighting spirit of Tyria has lead to countless styles and techniques, handed down through the centuries, mixing and flowing across the years like 10,000 streams of courage. Its time for you to drink of these waters. Welcome as Guildwars 2 reveals the next level of horizontal gameplay in this permanent Living World release.

Just Something I Picked Up
‘Class Mentors’ have been added to the world. Each mentor belongs to one of the existing Professions but has their own unique take on what that means. They may be masters of lost arts, privy to secrets from foreign lands, or simply picked up ‘a little something’ along the way. Each mentor offers players a series of tasks in their zone culminating in a new mini-dungeon. Characters of any class can answer the call… But for characters whose class matches the mentor’s, there are even greater benefits.

Completing the instance for your class mentor will immediately unlock a new weapon type for you to use and reveals three new utility skills (listed on a line between the 6-point utilities and the elite skills). These skills typically cost 15 skill points and often share tags with existing skills allowing you to blend them into and enhance existing builds or combine them to unleash entirely new creations!

Now I am the Master…
Once a mentor’s tasks are complete, they will also become a karma vendor offering 3 new weapons skins for the weapon type they teach and specifically themed to go with the skills they reveal. Show off your new moves in style!

Master Kaigen-Li (Elementalist)
While the lands of the Tengu remain shrouded behind secrecy and vast stony walls, there are still those who feel wisdom must be shared or it is not wisdom. Meet Master Kaigen-Li a Tengu elementalist who needs your help finding a scroll lost since the Rise of Orr…
Weapon Granted: Main-hand Sword
Skills Revealed: Conjure Night’s Sword, Riddle of Silence (cantrip), Signet of the Starry Heavens

Centurion Crushstone (Engineer)
Looking for special detached duty, Legionnaire? Word’s come down from HQ that Centurion Crushstone needs support at the Nolan Hatchery. An infestation of spiders threatens to cut off this crucial component of the Black Citadel’s supply chain. If an old hand like Crushstone can’t handle it alone, you know something’s up…
Weapon Granted: Hammer
Skills Revealed: Signet of Progress, Signet of Synchronicity, Signet of the Forge

Roabb the Sunchaser (Guardian)
The ancient Way of the Paragons has not been forgotten! Help this traveler from afar fulfill his ancient oath and bring lasting peace to a tortured spirit from another age…
Weapon Granted: Terrestrial Spear (2-handed)
Skills Revealed: “For Honor, Forever!”, Sunshield Signet, Welcome the Dawn (meditation)

Singing Crystal of Marith (Mesmer)
Come, listen to the mysterious music that pours from this recently uneathed stone. If you listen closely enough, you might even begin to hear words…
Weapon Granted: Main-hand Pistol
Skills Revealed: Double Trouble (phantasm), Rippling Shock (glamour), Who-What-Where? (clone)

Ogenvar Ravensbite (Necromancer)
Come swiftly! Raven has discerned the shape of Jormag’s next scheme to consume the spirit world. Where Bear or Wolf might rush in to face the Serpent of Black Ice head-on, Raven speaks to me of a more… indirect solution. Why just beat a foe when you can play him for a fool? But first, we’ll need some feathers…
Weapon Granted: Greatsword
Skills Revealed: Spectral Voices, Succumb to Despair (corruption), Summon Blood-haze (minion)

Anne Ocke-Linn, 3rd Lionguard Skirmishers (Ranger)
“Bows never worked for me. Too much twanging and thwiping. But rifles? After a few rounds of being shot up by Skritt, I thought ‘hey now’…” Help Anne clear out a little Skritt problem and she’d be happy to show you some durn-fine shootin’!
Weapon Granted: Rifle
Skills Revealed: “Brace for it!”, Deadly Aim (survival), Hunter’s Blind (trap)

Maintainer Tassi (Thief)
It all started out as a little bet to see who could clear more elemental parasites from Rata Sum’s arcane core… And nobody said she couldn’t get help! Meet Tassi, but don’t be fooled. Under her sweet demeanor, this Asuran thief has ruthless moves that more than make up for her… absolutely perfect size.
Weapon Granted: Off-Hand Mace
Skills Revealed: Mirror Trap, Revealing Dust (trick), Two-Man Job (deception)

Sashean the Black Arrow (Warrior)
There is no blade so sharp it couldn’t benefit form a little… natural… augmentation. Sashean is determined to combine Sylvarii arts with martial prowess to bring something new into Tyria. Here’s what he needs from you…
Weapon Granted: Shortbow
Skills Revealed: Banner of Serenity, “I will have Revenge!”, Venomous Pouch (physical)

DiogoSilva.7089:

• As race discrimination is an important issue, consider a proposal to make all racial skills unlocked to all races, but gated by territory-context “quests” (hearts and dynamic events). Yes, this would come at the cost of some distinction between races, but let me ask you: which distinction exists now, when those skills are underwhelming and no one uses them? Let me ask another question: what is better for world immersion, underwhelming skills gated by race, or appealing skills obtained from exploring the world? Under mathematical terms, there would be more potential for world immersion if all races could obtain them (1. Because it would add less restriction for balance, and thus players would actually use and “feel” them, and 2. because they could be tied to territory and thus add personality to each map) than not (because it would remove race distinction, which barely even exists at the current place for the sake of race balance). Two points against one in favor of racial skills be made available to all races. But let me ask a third question: World immersion aside, how fun would it be to all players in GW2, if suddenly they had 24 (!!) new skills to try out, and 30 new skills (by including the racials they already had) buffed to become stronger? I can tell right now that I would personally love it, and make the gameplay a lot more refreshing, while Anet wouldn’t even need to design 24-30 new skills for this single purpose: they are already there. Anet would have to rebalance them and design “quests” for each of them, though.

This is a terrible idea.

Racial skills add to uniquness and make my race choice matter. I don’t play a sylvari to watch it summon charr warband or draw hidden pistol. I play a sylvari so even in burned ashford plains i can bring the power of nature into the fight!

Tying it into given map makes me feel like i’m the map’s she-dog and not master of my own fate, walking down my own path.

Not to mention how ridicilous it would look lore-wise:

• charr warshipping human gods (to use human racials)
• sylvari morphing into animals (while they’re plants)
• asura becoming “9 feet tall!” when doing same
• norn who aren’t into science using radiation fields and golems…oh wait they can do that via runes…yikes!

You want to make racials on pair with normal profession skills – i absolutely agree, more power to you if you do. But if you want to make them a communistic “if you have it so should everybody else, only on our terms” then i say “HELL NO!”

Did I mention Order-based unique dyes were hella sexy?

Well they are.

But I think another thing I’d like to see as a reward for advancing with your chosen Order is a vendor at each HQ that sells 3-4 of the existing colors of dyes for karma. However, buying them doesn’t give you a bottle to click – it directly unlocks it in that character’s dye panel.

No using them in the Mystic Forge, no flooding the market with them – the reason they are there is to let that specific character represent their Order by always having the Order’s preferred colors in their palette.

This simple benefit that could be granted much earlier in the course of ranking up in your Order. Quite separate from those wonderful unique dyes you get towards the end of the journey.

Those guidelines are great to have! I’m way excited to get started on this thread. Here’s what I’ve been working on so far:

Make the Personality System Matter:

Emotes should vary based on your personality.

• The downside is that there are ten personality types. This would require a distinct effort at expanding the emotes system, because each one presently in the game would require nine variations.
• Solution: Hold a contest. List the ten personality types (or link to the wiki) and the emotes available, then ask for email submissions. Have a community leader type person select the best, then all you have to do is submit it to the proper editors to make sure there’s nothing inappropriate or misspelt in the final batch, so you don’t have to slog through all the entries. Winning IS the reward. Immortalize the winners somewhere on the website and they get to see their emote go in-game.

Personality-bound titles

• Maybe temporary based on current personality or maybe permanent. I can see arguments both ways. I think it would be a great starter title, and my preference would be for one that changes based on a character’s current personality.
• This might be hard to implement, since titles are account bound and I don’t know if there would be a simple way to introduce either version of this. Certainly achieving a permanent title seems like the easier option to implement.

Personality influenced drops

• I would lean toward this impacting cosmetic drops only, and only when multiple versions of one item may drop- notably like the three elemental back pieces in Zephyr Sanctum. This would work if the primary personality trait made a slight difference in which one dropped, and not in actual drop rates. I think this would need to be included in the patch notes when it does happen, so that people may plan accordingly.
• This would not exclude the chance at (in my example) any of the three back pieces dropping, it would just be a slightly higher chance that one of the three could drop. So it wouldn’t be like “Oh, I’ll play on my character who has Charm as the primary stat and be guaranteed the Wind Catcher.” Your Charm-based character could still get any of the three.

Make the Order Decision Matter:

Ranks within Orders

• Ranks could grant new titles. (Titles are such an inexpensive way to show progress, in my opinion!) Again, you could offer a contest for naming these ranks.
• Ranks could be obtained by doing extended quests for their Order- I’m thinking something on par with the monthly quests, but not linked to it. Maybe have a daily and monthly Order quest. This would need to be character-based, which would then motivate people to log in on more characters. Or maybe it could be account bound and characters in each Order would contribute to those quests. (Higher ranking characters could earn more “points” for these quests, maybe.)
• Order rank should be long-term, not something that can happen in a week.

Add tiered Order-based progression

• Armor skins, based on obtaining ranks within the Orders. Maybe even just back pieces and/or gloves.
• If this is too costly, new weapon skins for progressing through the Order ranks shouldn’t be out of the question.
• Add access to soulbound or account bound Order exclusive dyes at the top rank.
• Maybe the top rank should award access to a full set of armor skins. Again, I can see how this might not be cost-efficient, but the upside is that it could be a pretty major gold sink.

PVStar.3658:

Of course it won, there’s was no competition in 2013 for MMOs.

Peetee.9406:

Testament to how bad the MMO market has become when a ‘C-’ title can claim to be the best of the bunch.

And thus the naysayers appear. This is why we can’t have people over.

all “pay to win” arguments about guild wars 2 are invalid.

because you can buy gem store currency using in game gold.

HiddenNick.7206:

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why it’s so bad? And why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

Personally, I see horizontal more as growth of options, whereas vertical is simply numbers going up.

As such, I prefer a focus on horizontal since allowing players more options allows for more varied mechanics, whereas vertical is more a case of ‘I did 10 damage now I do 12’ so the growth of options isn’t there, thus encounter mechanics have to stay within the limit of the tools the player has.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

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

((cracks knuckles))

Alright. Now I understand the stakes of these posts.

Lets talk.

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.

I’m slightly confused. “More ways to earn it” and “drop rates” feel like very separate things/bullet points to me. Probably just my brain stuttering when I read it.

More ways to earn: Yes. Yes, please. Yes, many, many times.

Better RNG drop rates: Eh. I find its kind of a cheap thrill. I’m not against it, but its not something I want soaking up a lot of developer energy or being used as a excuse validating failure to improve on other fronts. To me this points in the right direction but has the lowest potential of all points listed here.

A review of current RNG metrics.

If you just heard cheering in the distance that was probably me .

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

I want to clarify my opposition: I am against casual stat swapping. A number of schemes have been put forward that involve a very modest level of commitment to rotate a set. Those sound both interesting as in-game activities and less likely to invalidate parts of the system we have currently.

I still see these prompting a complex set of refunds for duplicate recipes/items to avoid punishing early adopters, but that’s not an insurmountable bit of coding.

It is my least favorite approach and I worry that it will compound poorly with other changes, but it is rich with potential. My vote would simply be “approach cautiously” not “no”.

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

Some of the item advancement schemes are very appealing. This is a promising concept in my eyes.

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

If there is an argument against this that doesn’t make the speaker look like a complete jerk, I can’t easily imagine it .

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

This. This times 10^26. Then add one more ‘This’ for good measure.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

((wipes a little tear from the corner of the eye))

14 of my 16 characters just got all choked up .

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.

Mount a web camera in the conference room. Seriously. I want a recording of that made so that however-many months later when the results of this EPIC meeting become public knowledge you can show us a (sanitized) highlights reel of the battles fought that day.

Try tab targetting.

Not sure if those exact tools will be back. But they seem to bring out a new unlimited tool each month or 2. They are usually based on whatever holiday event is at that time or living story if no holiday is up.

Personally I think all the old unlimited tools should be on the gemstore perm, I really see no reason why not. I don’t believe that people buy these strictly for the “exclusiveness” of them.

I have bought them all so far strictly for the convenience of them and I intend to keep on buying them until each of my 8 chars have them. Ideally I want each char to have a different one so I can build up a roleplay type thing with them.

This is a dumb idea and when it dies it will leave a dumb corpse.

Still not sure why a plant could explode, but eh, the story instance was fun and the cinematic was cool to watch. The NPC dialogues back at the camp are probably the best part though! Bloomanoo+Peneloopee flirting, Kasmeer’s armor “revelation”, and Braham’s flirting with Marjory were all hilariously awesome. Kudos to whoever’s writing their dialogue!

I agree. Well done.

I also liked how it incorporated all of the previous stuff Scarlet has been involved in. The next question is.. What is Scarlet up to with all these pieces she’s gathered up and what is she planning on building.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I thought I’d weigh in with my opinion.

I truly hope ascended gear is the last tier of gear we see. I don’t think the ascended gear, in and of itself, is too hard to get. But I do think that leveling a crafting profession from 400-500 is punishing, particularly to more casual players. That said, it punishes longer term players too.

I was very very close to getting my third legendary. I already had the precusor. I had the dungeon and WvW components. In fact, I essentially had everything but the T6 mats.

Now the T6 mats I needed after the few I’d saved ran me about 400 gold. That’s an awful lot of gold for most people and it nearly made me broke. Sure I can make the gold back. What I can’t do, however, is work on ascended armor and leveling my crafting professions because I was forced to make a choice.

In a game where ectos are used for EVERYTHING, and T6 mats are needed too, there’s simply too much to spend them on. People are being forced to choose.

And this is from a player who was here day one of head start. What do you think someone who’s here two or three months is going to do. Unless they’re massively hard core (and most players aren’t), they’re going to feel that they are so far behind the curve, there’s absolutely no point in playing. New players in this game right now are going to have a really hard time “catching up”. Legendary weapons weren’t much of a problem when they had the same stats. They’re a problem now.

I don’t prefer vertical progression, I prefer horizontal progression. I even prefer story progression. I will play a game just to see what happens next (though I acknowledge most people won’t).

I’d rather see more skills and not only ways to make builds, but ways to have a couple of builds I can swap out on the fly, so I can easily go from WvW to open world PvE to a dungeon. It’s not the cost that’s really the problem for me, it’s the lack of the ability to save the old build. It’s just too annoying to do it often.

If you add more build diversity you need to add the subsystems to back it up. Give people the ability to have multiple builds and they’ll feel their characters are progressing.

I apoligize in advance if this post sounds a bit hostile, but some things I red in your post made me slightly angry.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)

Not sure where you’re getting this idea from. I’m one of those players and when I come home late during weekdays, I don’t want to spend my limited time on some kind of shopping list every single day. I’d rather do something fun like events, WvW or PvP, than waste my time on boring timegates.
However, the days I do have a lot more hours to play, I can’t catch up. Why? Because these timegates that are supposed to “help” me, are actually stopping me from progressing .

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)

What about making actual fun stuff that makes me log in? Instead of shopping lists and other psychological tricks to “make” me. Wouldn’t it be better to have players log in to do content because it’s actually fun, instead of just because it’s time-gated?
Don’t get me wrong, I like most of your content. Just not the heavily time-gated content.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Overall I feel like time gating is important for an MMO because it’s important to close the gap between the causal and hardcore group so you can make sure your future rewards and content are useful for a wider variety of players. For example if there was no level cap and everyone could level as much as they want, hardcore players would be at level 4561 and a causal player would be at like 100. Once that happens, it would be very hard to make anything that both of those players would be happy about getting.

I’m sorry, but caps and timegates are hardly the same. Caps eventually bring everyone to the same level. Timegates do the opposite; they segregate more and more people unless everyone keeps up with the timegate.
An improvement to the current system IMO, would be to change daily timegates into weekly timegates. That way, players that have less time on some days and more on others, can still catch up. Meanwhile (hardcore) players with a lot of time, are still weekly capped and (casual) players playing a bit every single day can still continue doing just that.