Guild Wars 2

Guhracie.3419:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Guhracie,

The point you made that bothers me is this:

‘And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion.’

We are very passionate about the game, the community and the CDI. As such a huge amount of effort goes into it both from a Dev and community standpoint. I am sorry if I have upset you, that is not my intention. The point I am trying to make is that the CDI isn’t about what the Devs say, it is about the discussion we all have and the conclusions that are drawn from this. Thus if I am saying that somehting is an interesting idea I am saying that I am thinking about it and that it is worth group discussion in my opinion.

I hope this makes more sense?

Oh and in regard to folks questioning how I play. Well that really is water of a ducks back, and I would rather expend my energy having a healthy conversation than spending time explaining the obvious.

Cheers

Chris

Okay, I see where we broke down, and I totally understand why that sounded insulting. That is absolutely not what I meant by it. I don’t believe you are brushing us off by responding with “interesting ideas,” but I feel like there’s a point where the discussion does become circular due to your own constraints of not making promises or getting into specifics (both are totally reasonable and understandable).

As for me sounding impatient…. that’s because I am. I came into this thread excited by the topics, and I feel like the topic has become “ascended armor” when it was supposed to be about progression. I am not even slightly interested in discussing ascended armor. If I have a single crafting skill above 400, it was on accident. I am in no way saying that it’s not a valid topic of discussion for vertical progression, please do not misunderstand me. I just had a different expectation of what this topic would be covering, and I wasn’t expecting it to be dominated by ascended armor.

I’d be totally happy to sit out of a CDI called “Ascended Armor” and let the people who feel strongly about it discuss it. But I currently feel like I have to plod through posts about ascended armor so I don’t miss something that might be relevant to my interests… which is why I mentioned a summary of what has been mentioned about vertical progression. I’m anxious to get to horizontal progression because it’s one of the biggest reasons I switched to GW2 from WoW. And if I knew I wasn’t missing out on any of that discussion (or other vertical progress ideas not pertaining directly to ascended armor), I’d probably be spending way less time in this thread.

I’m terrible at portraying tone in text, but I am seriously sorry you felt like I was diminishing your efforts in this thread. That’s not what I meant at all. Thank you for your clarification. I think I’m going to take a break from foruming for right now- sometimes I get too stuck in my own head, as well.

<Virtual hugs>. I too am anxious to get to the Horizontal Progression part of the thread and I think we will get there soon, but I still think there is some discussion to be had before moving on. Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt and understanding my passion around GW2, the community and the CDI. I look forward to continuing to discuss the game with you whatever the topic may be.

Chris

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490

Still no Dev comment that I’ve seen on Time Gates, something that many players brought up early in this thread. Sort of disappointed by that.

So I know time gates is a pretty hot topical overall as I’ve had some pretty heated debates in the past over it. So here is my view on them.

Summary
Overall I think time gates are important for an MMO, while they have pro’s and con’s for sure, in my opinion the overall gains come out ahead. That said I think there is diminishing returns to the number of time gates in a game. This brings up a core design philosophy which is “it’s always easier to add to then it is to take away” (while in this example it is a bit inverse, as adding a time gate is “adding” but it’s really taking away the players ability to repeat the action as much as they want). Meaning, we error on the side of time gating as we can always remove a time gate if needed but it’s really hard to add one. One clarification I would like to make is there are two different time gates: One time and repeatable. I think most of the complaints about time gates are all on the repeatable end, so I’ll focus my thoughts on that one.

Con’s
- Time gates hurt players with more time (by this I mean players with more time run up against time gates more and their time becomes less rewarded over time.)
- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to complete the content before the gate resets, this can add fatigue to players play experience (If I have 15 things I need to do every time I log in, I never feel like I get to do what I want to do.)
- Time gates are very calculable (You know how many dailies you need to get x reward.) It’s hard to say how many days it takes to hit level 80 as it’s very dependent on too many factors. Knowing the time can sometimes make it feel more daunting or tedious.

Pro’s
- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)
- 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.)
- Time gates equalize players by bringing the hardcore and the causal players closer together. (Players play at an variety of different times and intensities. This makes balancing wealth disparity and play times/progression much harder without actual gates.)
- Time gates help group players up (guilds 1 week timer helps group a large amount of play times into the same time frame.)

Reasons for time gating
- Exploits (Many time gates are there to avoid exploits)
- Overflow issues (the way our tech works without a time gate, you can use overflows to reset your timer)
- Reward Equalization (keep the time to do something more even between hardcore and causal)
- Character vs Account (some things we want to reward the account and thus an account time gated reward allows us to do that cleanly, which stops people from deleting characters and renaming in order to acquire a large number of things)

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. MMO’s also have what I like to call “mass” to them, the more people playing and logging on, the more fun they are and systems which encourage people to log in often help create that mass. People see their friends regularly even just to say “hey there is an event this Sunday with the guild” or “hey lets set aside some time Friday so we can do fractals”. Now this doesn’t mean I feel like we can just add time gates everywhere. In fact I think you need either a very large amount of time gated stuff so a player can play for ever and never run out of things to do (which is a bit unrealistic) or you need non-time gated rewards and game play. This is why we create places for people to farm for all types of things. We like people who farm a lot, we are just always trying to make sure farming doesn’t blow out an item so much it’s no longer worth farming as it sort of defeats the whole reason to farm. A nice mix of time gates and non-gates is important. I think there are some valid complaints that we have over time gated some areas of the game and we should do some reviews of our time gates to see if adjustments should be made, but the game needs time gates for many reasons and if they were not there the game would be way less fun for any type of player.

FeveredDreamer.2693:

I realize this is a bit behind the current debate but it was a good question which seemed worth answering.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.

Chris

While I prefer horizontal progression, vertical progression does not in and of itself suck, the problem is that ANet chose perhaps the poorest quality way of developing vertical progression. Vertical progression via items is particularly terrible because of its innately “temporary” feeling, bottom line sooner or later all of the effort you’ve put into vertical progression via item grind becomes pointless. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the subject succinctly below.

What is fun about vertical progression?

• The feeling of character growth
• The thrill of progress and the feeling that your efforts are being rewarded
• The ability to display your time and effort spent

What is not fun about vertical progression?

• The invalidation of all of your past efforts
• The feeling of monotony

What might be done to make vertical progression in GW2 more enjoyable?

• Attach more progression to your character rather than gear
• Make gear upgradeable rather than disposable

People rarely point out SWTOR as a brillaint show of MMO ideas, but lots of the account unlock ideas worked into SWTOR would work nicely in GW. This material was all doubtlessly vertical progression but it wasn’t attached to RNG and the newest “Sword of Pwning +1” that would soon be made worthless by your “Sword of Pwning +2”. Even in GW2 the new approach to infusions (though it sucks that they can’t be removed, fix this) is built on developing strength rather than replacing it. You combine your +1 infusions to get +2s, rather than just throwing those +1s away.

Good post Dreamer. Excellent food for thought.

Chris

jsduke.6537:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I play a PVT AOE Heal shout War. I have played this role fora long period of time and have never played a DPS War. On top of this I am also easily able to hold agro and support my group. My DPS is terrible but I keep my team alive while they run around destroying everything…

I like you believe that Horizontal Progression should be about role differentiation, however I feel like this system is already very core to the game…

Chris

It’s an excellent point that I think gets overlooked because of the prominence of popular cookie-cutter builds. I feel like those builds are good teaching tools, but it’s easy to lean on them as crutches. There seems to be a reluctance to stray too far from the “tried-and-true” builds.

I’d like to see Horizontal progression in terms of role diversification and hybridization. I’d love to see more options for “exotic” builds that step outside of the normal comfort zone of the professions to add more flexibility to builds, and new ways to engage content (read as: wreck kittens).

It seems to me that there are a lot of options for dps and damage mitigation, but there is tremendous opportunity to expand the meta game in other aspects of combat:

• Toggle Abilities
• Inter-profession Synergy
• Environmental Synergy

Toggle Abilities are Player States that are either on or off, depending on what the player needs at the moment. Risk and Reward should be a big part of Toggle balancing. For example, Warriors could have a “Determined Stance” that, when on, provides the Warrior with Stability, but drops Critical Hit Chance to 0% while the Toggle Ability is active.

Inter-profession Synergy is something that could be really exciting. It could also be really complex. It could work something like this:

• This would be a Party mechanic that you would set up when you form your Party.
• Each Profession has 1 Synergistic Effect with each of the other 7 Professions.
• Each Party Member can only have 1 active Synergy Effect at a time.
• To set up the Effect, you target the Party Member and “Offer Synergy”.
• The Party Member accepts or declines the Synergy.
• Synergies can be changed at any time outside of combat.

When the Synergy is active, both players benefit from the relationship. An example would be “Bond of Blood” between Warrior and Necromancer. While the Synergy is active, the Warrior’s attacks generate Life Force for the Necromancer. While in Death Shroud, a portion of the damage the Warrior takes comes off of the Necromancer’s Life Force Pool instead. This encourages players to work together in new ways.

Environmental Synergy is another Party Mechanic that could work in a number of ways, but basically it changes the ways professions operate under different circumstances. For example, a Guardian could have “Valiant Avenger” that grants the Guardian +Power or +Might for every Party Member that is either downed or dead. Necromancers could have “Parasitic Bond” that grants +Condition Damage for every Party Member that is below the Health Threshold. Rangers could have “Alpha Dog” that provides +Critical Damage for every active pet/minion in the party.

Hi JSDuke,

I agree with your initial points and also your ideas are very interesting. Certainly thinking out of the box, but at the same time building on core foundations.

Chris

Player.8373:

I came up with this long ago but never made a post about it.

What about a diffrent part of Fractals of the mists that’s sort of a boss. Everytime when a party defeats a boss, they will fight against a harder boss. When the party is wiped, the party will get tp’ed back to the instance and have to start over. This will be hard content. I bet Arenanet and the community could think of bosses/ enemies from the past/present. Everytime you defeat a boss you will get better loot. (and mayble punish the players by letting them do it once a week.)

This is just my idea for progression (hard content).

Interesting Dark.

Chris

The Lost Witch.7601:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think it would be cool if we can get a proposal together for treatment of stat based evolution as it currently stands in the game and then concentrate on Horizontal progression ideation.

Chris

Awesome inspiring ideas from everyone. And while it would be great to have the best of everything, I feel that we have to be practical about this. So far the overall thoughts in the thread lean towards more horizontal progression and more accessible vertical progression. So while I really like some of the more elaborate plans to make stats less gear bound or introducing new gear systems… I tried to think up a proposal with the following in mind:

The fewer resources it takes to make vertical progression manageable, the more resources we have available for horizontal progression.

So without further ado:

Proposal for the treatment of stat based evolution.

In chronological order:

• (Early 2014) Announce a large increase of ascended gear sources.

• (Early 2014) Announce the end of stat based gear tiers. (Even if just for the forseeable future, 2 years?)

• (All over 2014) Use the time bought by vertical progression to come up with horizontal alternatives.

• (Mid-late 2014) Increase the amount of ascended gear sources dramatically. Everyone who plays about 8 unfocused hours a week will have multiple characters in ascended gear at the end of 2014.

• (2015) Final destination: ascended gear is just about two/three times as hard to get as exotic gear currently is, so we can afford to make different sets for different builds. By then there should be enough horizontal progression in place to keep us busy.

Interesting proposal(-:

Chris

barabajaga.7652:

All this thread seems to me ,that you (anet) have derailed so much from the original idea of the manifesto and what gw2 were suposed to be ,that you dont have any idea of what direction the game is going.

All since the introduction of ascended gear,you have craeted such a kittenstorm that now you are sinked to the knees in it and do not know wich direction to go.

What makes me angry about all this ,is that you got it right in Gw1,so i still can not understant how can you manage to screw it up so much,yeah sure Gw1 has its flaws and whatnot,but instead of improving on the idea of Gw1 to create Gw2 ,you just converted this game in to a massive grind ,and its not a grind for aestethics like Gw1
its a vertical grind for better gear (that was absolutley no needed ,exotics should have been the las tier of gear).

And you now what the worst part about all of this is?,well the game is no fun anymore
its just a massive grind.
People didnt want ascended gear,nor living story(another grind ,this time for achivements).

What people do want is ,new skills ,new traits ,new weapons for each professions,new wvw maps,new spvp modes,new zones new enemies new classes…..

Any way im just angry at what this game could have been ,and what it sadly have become,i dont know if you are stil on time to fix it but i hope you can come with a solution to all this mess .

I know that this i not a constructive post,but come on this all thread just reeks of the fact that anet have lost northwith the direction of the game.

It is a ‘discussion’, a chance for us all to talk about the game we are so passionate about. An opportunity for the community and developers to brainstorm, theory craft and ultimately evolve a pioneering game with. If it makes you uncomfortable then don’t be part of it. But don’t for one minute assume that we don’t have direction, of course we do. However we are a ‘live’ game with an amazing community and thus the CDI provides us all the opportunity to evolve the game in a much more informed and valuable manner. So please try not to confuse assumptions around lack of direction with the reality of community/developer collaboration.

Chris

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

For what purpose or benefit would said proposition bring? Currently Fractals works very well as it is because of how it is currently set up. How would the idea improve fractals? (ie can you expand a little more on the idea?)

Well let me be devil’s advocate then and give one example. Make it easier to play through earlier fractals when playing with lower level friends.

Chris

I dont see that as attractive to do though. The game has a fantastic feature in its scaling which maintains challenge at lower level content across the entire game, whether it is zones or dungeons.

If higher fractal player was with me, I’d hope for us both to experience challenge. Otherwise the lower fractal player would feel carried (me) and the higher lvl fractal player would feel bored. The sense of achievemnt for us both would be gone. Remember, people are getting to higher fractals because they are skilled not because of their stats.

It would go against a fundamental ideal of the game you implemented.

Yep.

Really the point of the question was to see if anyone would want to see vertical style progression live anywhere in the game. The question is essentially a forcing function to get a more macro level question answered.

Chris

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

For what purpose or benefit would said proposition bring? Currently Fractals works very well as it is because of how it is currently set up. How would the idea improve fractals? (ie can you expand a little more on the idea?)

Well let me be devil’s advocate then and give one example. Make it easier to play through earlier fractals when playing with lower level friends.

Chris

I dont see that as attractive to do though. The game has a fantastic feature in its scaling which maintains challenge at lower level content across the entire game, whether it is zones or dungeons.

If higher fractal player was with me, I’d hope for us both to experience challenge. Otherwise the lower fractal player would feel carried (me) and the higher lvl fractal player would feel bored. The sense of achievemnt for us both would be gone. Remember, people are getting to higher fractals because they are skilled not because of their stats.

It would go against a fundamental ideal of the game you implemented.

Yep.

PopeUrban.2578:

Vertical Progression
This is a hot button issue. People are fairly well adjusted to the idea of ascended now, but simply taking the easy road and adding another and another 5% stat hike down the line is going to result in new and returning player alienation.

Gates, not Grinds
Vertical progression needs to be handled in terms of gates, not grinds. A good example is the way fractal levels, hearts, and waypoints are handled. You don’t theoretically need to grind 31 to gt to 32, or 32 to get to 33, etc. and you don’t need to collect 4 milliong whatevers to unlock a waypoint. You need to prove your ability to pass the prerequisite, and you need to do that one time. Doing a thing, even if it’s difficult, costly, or time consuming to first time is often fun. In terms of gated content, it isn’t about the equipment and stats as much as it is about accomplishing something. Putting laundry lists of “a stack of this and 200 or that, and five of these” in place of some sort of questing, boss fight, or other content diminshes that sense of accomplishment. Getting one of each of five things, all from different places/methods, and combining them to get the “key” for the sixth thing is fun.

You already did it better once
If we’re going to progress characters, it needs to be meaningful, fun, and content driven. The EOTN systems and guild wars 1’s mission systems were very good at this. You could earn skills by progressing thematically through content related to those skills. You could unlock a “boss dungeon” by defeating several other dungeons. You could access later fights by doing easier ones. The goal of these methods of advancement didn’t just boil down to “do one thing” or “Collect currency” as much as it encouraged you to go out and complete a variety of content. In these systems my advancement wasn’t ever measured by the numbers on my character sheet as much as it was measured by all the things I had access to, and a lot of those things were placed in a strict vertical acquisition heirarchy despite not adding mechanical power to the character.

Horizontal Progression
Horizontal progression is a term that should really read “customization and options” as that’s what we are really saying when we talk about it. The main problem with horizontal progression is that so many of the trait and skill systems are extremely high impact per choice, leaving little room to have a skill or rune set or whatever “for fun” because taking that one “fun” thing can seriously cripple your overall effectiveness.

Despite having a smaller skill bar, GW1 did a slightly better job of this. A large number of builds had around five or six “key” skills, and two or three “optional” skills. With the GW2 system, there’s very little wiggle room due to the limitation on slot types. You can’t take a fun but lackluster skill because it takes up all or 1/3 of your options. When looking at Horizontal Progression we need to look at low impact but useful customization hand in hand with high impact things like traits and mainline skills.

Adventuring Ranks
Skill points are vastly underutilized. Take a look at the WvW ranking system and envision a version of that, only for general PvE. Allow players to “rank up” passive buffs to acquire effects like those found on consumables. “favored enemy” bonuses, minor stat buffs. Conditional bonuses when in certain areas, and other things that help to individualize characters.

Teamwork!
What if there were a way to customize the effects of your combos with other players? What if there were more ways for characters to meaningfully interact in combat? What if these were highly customizable, both visually and mechanically?

Weapon skill customization and collection
What if there were several cosmetic versions of each weapon skill, and you could learn them via skill capture, looting, or some other method? Mechanically they would always work the same, but let’s pretend you could get unique or rare versions of these skills with altered effects, character animations, shouts, projectiles, etc. This could be an entire new and fun subset of horizontal progression.

What if it were possible to add over time slot-limited skills to weapons? Use the weapon slots like the heal and elite slots to make it easier to balance, but how about it?

My Home Town and/or Guild Hall
You know where vertical progression is awesome? When you’re building something massive. Adding content to allow players to upgrade, improve, and customize things like these adds an entire new subset of potential shinies to acquire, none of which upset the power balance of player skills.

Some great points. Pope.

Chris

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

You may recall that in the first Guild Wars there were two factions. I believe they were called the Luxons and the Kurzacks. In that game it was possible to compete quest for a particular faction. Doing so resulted in rewards such as special armor and weapons. I would like to see the orders work in a similar fashion (or if no one likes the orders, then create some new factions for us to be a part of. I just pick the orders because there already in the game and I like that incorporates the personal story back into the game)

Also, I believe it would be great if completing quest didnt stop at skin and title rewards. If npc’s in the world could react to you based on which order you joined that would be cool as well. Have npc’s sell you cheaper food based on the order your in. For example, the vigil could sell you cheaper food that has power at its base, where the order of whispers could sell you items that deal with vigor or stealth. Discount food has already been done in game. The dragon bash festival introduced food that could be bought with candy (which is basically another currency when you get down to it) The food had buffs similar to that of food that was already in the game it just didnt last as long. Please dont stop at just food, Im just using this as an example.

Maybe put some animosity between some of the orders and provide us with some conflict we can participate in. Thats all Ive come up with for now. Anyone else have any ideas?

Would this kind of ‘Faction’ progression outside of how NPC’s perceive you in the world allow you access to exclusive Faction based rewards? Would this be grindy?

I like the base idea a lot and obviously it is something we could build in and thus am keen to hear the thoughts of everyone in regard to this?

Chris

DiogoSilva.7089:

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION
The flaws with its execution in GW2

Skill/ Build Progression
What is skill/ build progression? It’s about getting new tools to improve or customize our builds.

• It is crippled by some of the systems set in place for vertical progression, like stats being tied to gear, which in turn is tied to huge money and time sinks.
• It is further restricted by how trait allocation works, and the lack of build templates.
• Non-profession skills are very underwhelming. Although this is done on purpose for the sake of balance, when they aren’t worth using, they do not serve their purpose to enhance world immersion, as they are left unused, nor do they add any form of horizontal progression, because no build will be created around them.
• Skill hunting is generic and lacks the charm GW1’s elite skill hunting had.
• The skill system is generally very restrictive, with few weapons per profession, very few utility slots tied to high cooldowns, and an elite skill system that isn’t acchieving the epic feel it was meant to acchieve.

Solutions

• Separate the concept of (ascended) gear crafting from the concept of equipment stat customisation. Make it easy or easier to change stats, or at the very least, to craft new copies of the same gear with different stats.
• Add an universal build template system, and allows us to change traits on the fly (while not in battle, dungeons, etc). Creating and saving builds should be free. Loading/ changing them could still require a small money sink, if Anet feels it needs to be there.
• Revise how non-profession skills should be balanced. Instead of making them bad on purpose, make them decent but only fill a certain niche/ tied heavily to a specific area or situation. In theory, the new spray skill does that, but it’s a poor skill even for its intended purpose.
• It’s probably too late for a better skill hunting system, but perhaps that can still exist for something other than skill collection. More on that later.
• Anet is already adding new skills to professions, so this area is already covered.

I’ll talk about skins next.

There are some good ideas here which I would like to see us discussing as a group.

What do you all think about these ideas?

Chris

VOLKON.1290:

One of the huge draws for me to GW2, and one I still love today, is the flattened progression system. I’ve played enough games that were based around the vertical type with the gear treadmill involved, with WoW being a major one, and believe it or not they have far FAR less endgame then we have here in GW2 with the horizontal style. Really… what do you do for endgame in the WoW model? You either raid or prepare for raiding, that’s really it. So, from the heart and most emphatically, please let the ascended tier be the final tier of gear. We don’t need higher and it will be so incredibly much easier to create new content based on a known and expected level of power while keeping that new content accessible to all.

That last part… that’s the most important. Accessible to all. You shouldn’t be forced down a narrow road of required content in order to progress to further content later. You don’t need the WoW style of gimmickry where you toss a new raid every now and then and watch the lemmings run along to the next expansion while you suck the sub fees out of them. You’ve proven that already. Keep ascended max, keep content tuned to exotics and the sky is the limit for what you can create while simultaneously making sure the vast, vast majority of players will be able to experience it all. NEVER sacrifice accessibility!

So, progression. Horizontal rules. I’d like to see more and varied options towards that horizontal… a growing choice of ascended (and exotic) skins for example. Cosmetic things that maybe go a little beyond just an achievement and a title, but I’m not exactly sure what. Well… I have an idea, remember the statues in the Hall of Monuments? Of course, that would require a housing type of setting, but it would be great to have a place of our own to progress with our accomplishments as opposed to a power grind. Imagine a fireplace/hearth carved out of one of Jormag’s teeth that you can craft after defeating him? A lovely couch made of genuine naga hide? That type of progression, showy instead of powerful, would go a long way.

Of course, this is all my opinion, others will vary. I like the path we’re on progression-wise and the potential that is available using this path can be endless. (And yes… housing could really benefit the whole thing… but that’s a topic for another CDI…)

Edit: Just saw the later post – regarding speed, exotics are (now) fine but may have been a little to quick originally. If you speed up the rate of ascended progress you’ll need to more quickly offer alternative skins and the like to shoot for. Some people will push the speed to it’s maximum allowable, and they’ll be the loudest ones shouting that there’s nothing left to do while the rest of us cruise along at our own pace.

Hi Volkon,

‘So, progression. Horizontal rules. I’d like to see more and varied options towards that horizontal… a growing choice of ascended (and exotic) skins’ I agree.

Chris

2014 is going to be an amazing year for GW2 and the community!

Chris

Snipped from TheDaiBash

Thanking you.

Right…left…diagonal…

My one would probably have to be: Traits and Skill Progression.

Including, but not limited to:

On the Skills side of things:

and a note on providing a reason for new skills

[/quote]

Lot’s of really cool ideas here to. I really like the carpentry idea which you and others have mentioned in the past. In regard to the idea about bosses that learn. Do they learn within the world they reside in for example SoR or is it level based like in fractals or based on an item the group has (essentially gated)

Chris

timmyf.1490:

I have an idea for you, Chris. One which might seem a little radical, but here goes:

Have an all-(relevant)-hands-on-deck release with the entire (relevant) development team building new Dynamic Events. Shoot for the moon: dozens or hundreds of new Dynamic Events. Call it a “Game Changer” because it is literally changing the game world.

Based on various loose-lipped comments I’ve heard, you have something big planned in the next few months. Why not follow it with a huge overhaul to the in-game world? Give everybody a reason to go back out and explore again.

And then… repeat. 3-6 months down the road, cycle out 100+ events and add 100+ new ones. And repeat. And repeat. That’s a real “living world.”

I think that’s a really interesting idea TimmyF.

……..’nuff said (-:

Chris

Ronah.2869:

Sociopolitical Diversification

Guild Halls

- Guild Halls should be accessible through an UI icon similar to PvP, WvW, TP, etc.

- Getting back to the place in the open world where you were should be done through the same UI icon
(Note: The same Ion should be found in |G| window for those who want to accesses it from there)

- The guild hall UI Icon will be available only if the character represents the guild (guild-less characters won’t have that button in their UI)

- Guild Halls should be instanced zones or various architecture

- Guild Halls zones should evolve in time depending on the guild influence, merits, points etc accumulated totally by it.
( I am not a fan of donating because this will force guilds on arguing of what is more important: banners or guild donations?. It should be automatically evolved once you get to certain amount of points similar to the achievement system: you unlock things the more you gather and it should count the total amount w/o extracting the usages of influence points

- Statues:
I would like to have a place in the Guild Hall where I could see Statues of the characters that have done the most for the guild, calculating the influence earned
it will be a sort of the Top 10 Players list only we can see statues of the last character the player has played.
The Statues will be updated every time the players logs off with the respective character he has been on and the Top 10 will be updated every week counting the activity of the last week (This will give the possibility that new guild members can be in Top 10 if they played more then old guild members)

Also regarding the statues, there should be one permanent statue of the Guild Founder so every one will know who is the founder of the guild.

- Trophies. These are items that can be displayed in some palce in the Guild Hall and they are earned by playing guild activities. They are like Guild Ranks and if we compare it with the WvW ranks, we can see a rabbit, a dolyack, etc

- Guild Halls should contain all services available in the game bank, crafting, merchants, etc.

- You should be able to receive a temporary guild invite to any number of guilds to be able to visit their Guild Hall. The invite will be shown in the Guild Window under the current guilds in a guest category

Housing

- I like Open World housing and not instanced based. I like to see player cities evolving. Zones like WvW maps only called sectors which can be accessed through UI icon
- the UI icon is available to every character
- the player houses will be account bound and it will reflect the players activity through all his/her characters
( the houses will have racial rooms in it and they will vary in aria depending on how many characters of that specific race the account has.)
expl.
if an account has 1 character of each race, the house will have 5 rooms of similar aria decorated in racial style.
if an account has 1 character the house will have 5 rooms but only one will be decorated because the account has 5 default character slots
if an account has more then 5 characters then the racial rooms will be larger depending on what race has more characters. NOTE: for each character slot added to the account over the default 5, the house aria will grow with 10 % meaning that if an account will have 64 character the house will be 640% larger

- players will buy a house space and a house model. When the existing land will be finished, A-Net would release a new similar zone. So the player city will have Sector 1,2,3,4 …. 100,… etc
Later, they can add new house models which can be purchased from a cash shop item called "House make over kit "

Some Awesome ideas in here Ronah!

Chris

Malchior.5042:

Shongaqu.5279:

Malchior.5042:

Hero Recognition based on Order choice, Player Housing, Guild Halls, etc…that could branch into further Diversification and Performance through new skills, events, challenges, etc…

So based on the above mix of Chris’ original categories, I’d say Hero Recognition/Sociopolitical development could set a solid framework for the different skills, events, and challenges that we’re all eager to see as well.

Are you thinking PvE skills like we saw in GW1? or something else? new weaopns based on faction even?

example faction system with necro that has attained mid rank

• Great Sword for Vigil
• Scythe for Order of Whispers
• Chakra Guides for Priory
  all three would be melee AOE type weapons but do differnt things GS is power based, Scythe is Siphon based, CG is conditon based. depending on what weapon you want to be trained in you chose a faction to gain rep with. Ultimalty you can unlock all of them. Add token buffs like the Kiel/Evon ones to WvW for your faction so everyon can work towards it regardles of game type. Make them unlocked in SPvP for free.

Just sort of going down a rabbit hole with this…

For GW 2, I don’t think PvE skills would be a bad thing. WvW has their specific skills through rank upgrades. PvE should get similar. It’s very important; however, that said new skills are not imbalanced against the existing skills, and even more important that new, difficult, challenging content is introduced that could be alleviated partially by the use of new PvE skills.

The bold is going to be the difficult part. Players have blown expectations out of the water with stacking, combos, killing Lupicus in seconds, etc…If Arenanet truly wants to create challenge, they will essentially have to kill the existing builds or curb their power down to make any new content feel challenging enough.

I wouldn’t do this through nerfs to any existing skills, but instead, I would give all new bosses in metas or dungeons an “armored” buff (non-strippable) that reduced critical damage by a flat percent. This would greatly reduce the current strength of Berserkers, but still be possible to keep that strength high if players could stack Vulnerability. (the existing % debuff).

Some good points here. I would however disagree about challenge.

I think since launch we have introduced some challenging content for example, Fractals, the Gauntlet, Kite City, and Teq. I love the fact that challenge can come from many different areas and I agree with your point that GW2 does indeed have a high skill ceiling. The challenge for us is not to make the ceiling higher but to work within it and use all of the variables within it to create new challenges.

Chris

VOLKON.1290:

Sytherek.7689:

Role diversification.

I’m not that interested in player housing; it has no actual gameplay.

Role diversification adds to gameplay.

I disagree. Halls and Homes can add quite a bit to game play by giving people specific goals to work for. People may be drawn to areas hey normally don’t frequent for needed materials both mundane and exotic. Events could be created that tie into this as well. So to say is has no actual game play… I think the actual game play it provides could become quite extensive.

Agreed. It could also lead to new gameplay opportunities such as events, tasks, adventures and much more.

Chris

VOLKON.1290:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

VOLKON.1290:

-snip-

I love reading your ideas, but they make my head hurt sometimes. XD

There is the possibility of offering too many options to players too. Devs have to balance between underwhelming and overwhelming, and having huge varieties of ‘what if’ options could potentially be extremely overwhelming.

I’d rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed. If overwhelmed, you can always catch your breath and get caught up.

Overwhelmed during the ‘Casting of the Net’ phase is awesome because we as a group will help to refine and reduce the ideas.

Chris

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My number one would be “Zone Progression” / “Order Progression”

Something that gives players a purpose to explore the zones.

• A lot of people miss quests, my main guess why this is the case is: they miss stories. Dynamic Events are cyclical in nature, so those stories have no real end – climax if you want. Time to give your writers something more to do and let them design unique events.
• even the most simple idea could make people exited. Today I leveled in Kessex Hills when I saw a bear walking alongside a skritt. Awesome I thought… until I found out that I can’t interact with that npc at all; it’s just a guild mission boss. Why not spawn such rare characters (dozen of them, but rare spawns) in the open world, give them a loottable and a few interesting dialogue-options or even a small event associated.

Fill the existing maps with tons of things to do. I mean: tons and tons of things. And may these be just little things… the world has to feel more alive.

…and then combine this with progression. The more people find, the more they unlock. And the more they can unlock for others (in the sense of triggering new events).

summary: progression in specific zones via a huge variety of things to do (something for everyone – fighters, explorers, collectors, lore-lovers, treasure hunters,…………

People should have some goals for each of the zones. Not for the world in general (Legendary – mats from everywhere). Zelda reference: the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods, not everywhere in Hyrule.

This idea makes me excited, it could also tie into nearly every Horizontal Progression idea that has been put forward in this CDI.

It is just a good global ongoing goal to have, and one I think we have been doing but dependent on priorities could do a lot more of, especially from the point of view of using/evolving the Map Completion Meta Game system.

Chris

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Happy New Year @Chris, other devs who read this and you guys! I haven’t seen such a dedication to a game from any other company so far, it doesn’t feel that Guild Wars is only a job for you, but your passion as well.

I’m not sure if others at Anet feel like you do, I have to say thank you for being this link to you guys. I’m looking forward to the following discussion about our brainstorming. All the best to you and your family.

The next game update is January 21, as mentioned by Colin, so you have until then to have fun in the Winterdsay event as well as complete any tasks for The Nightmare Ends. Hope that clarifies it.

I’ve just got to chime in here. When our team first brainstormed this release, we went into it a little bit nervous about how the destruction sequence was going to be pulled off and if it would match up to the visions we all had in our heads, but the end product when it came in, just took our breath away. We’re really happy to see that you all enjoyed it too!

Major kudos to Matthew Oswald and the entire cinematics and audio teams for helping us cap off that release, literally, with a bang! :-D