Guild Wars 2

Hey Josh,

I’d like to discuss a few things for you. Just some things I’ve thought about.

First is that a long time ago, dont remember when, I remember seeing Anet talking about how only 10% of the playerbase in WoW didn’t see endgame content. It seemed like you were saying this because of the gear grind and it often took a lot of dedication. Another thing to note is that the number was also because some people were simply bad at the game. The increase in skill required to do content often caused better groups to form. Someone at fractal level 1 for the first time is probably going to be a lot worse than someone at fractal level 50. WIth the new content you’re allowing any player to do it. This is awesome, but you have to consider player interactions. You have to ask yourself is it good. With no ways for players to really decide who is in the map with them, you have to think about how much a event can fail based on a personal players skill level. Marionette is an example where you guys messed up on this. I see a lot of people talk about the people who fail platforms are bad, newbs, champion train farmers, thinking the game was easy, etc.

The second thing i think we need to consider is the the new content effect. When games recieve new content, the entire playerbase is going to want to play it. Even if it doesnt directly cater to their playstyle, they’re going to want to play it and they’re going to want it to be catering to their playstyle. Thats where you see PvErs saying enough with the PvP content. Where you see WvWers saying enough with the PvE and PvP content, etc. That was one of the big things with expansions is that they usually contain content for all types so this kind of outcome isn’t as large. The point of me saying this to you guys is you may want to try to find some way to fit PvP, PvE, and WvW changes into these patches you do.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

snip

What do you think about the whole dhuum theory? I mean other names for Dhuum are “The Mouth at the Edge of Darkness” and “The Voice in the Void” which could hint at the whole whispering and the sea of darkness.

Hey,

I have a few questions about the lore. Some relating to the LS, some not. Some have may have answers, wouldn’t be surprised if most are theories.

1. What is going on in Godlost Swamp? Whats up with that place?

2. What is going on in Brisban Wildlands? Why do the Inquest/Nightmare/Bandits all have an interest in it? Why does the Queen of the Humans have an interest in it? Why is there such large super natural presence?

3. Why did Tequatl rise in power? (Keep in mind that Anet doesn’t want to make paradoxes with the personal storyline. Tieing it to Zhaitian would not only create a paradox, but make a HUGE spoiler for any new players).

4. Why did Scarlet want to kidnap the queen?

5. If an Elder Dragon is behind Scarlet, why does he need to raise such large armies? Why not just corrupt them?

6. Who whispered to Scarlet that would require the being to be directly connected with the “eternal alchemy”?

7. What happened to the Gargoyles?

8. How exactly did the thermonova reactor tie into the living story?

9. How would have the abbadon fractal done the same?

Josh Foreman.8250:

StriderShinryu.6923:

I suppose what it boils down to with me is a question of why the content needs to be an elite level challenge in the first place. Would it really be all that bad if an average group of players could win?

snip

Josh, I think a lot of people are confused about where the frustration is coming from.

Let me make something clear, Mechanic wise these events are AMAZING for this game. You guys did a great job designing them and the mechanics are great. There are 3 major flaws that I think you guys are slowly getting better at, though need to find a way to solve them. I call it the three Ws. The Who, the What, and the When

Who: Who you play with. It is very hard for people to play with who they want unless they get there super early. Blackgate is an example on this. I went in there and there was an hour + que on the main in lornars pass. If you want a lot of players to work together, they need to be able to choose Who they play with. That is why raids in other games are so successful in promoting guilds. They require coordination amongst a lot of people. Since it wasn’t based on overflows or random chance they will get into the same server they can plan times and build their freetime around that.

What: The thing about this game is that most Vanilla content is able to be easily completed by most “meta” builds right now. I’ve mostly played Necromancer and Engineer, but I found that my builds can easily do all types of content. Most vanilla content is really easy to adapt too. I haven’t done dungeons/fractals in a while, but most of the time I found myself just casting a ton of offensive skills while dodging the occasional attack from an enemy. I never felt like I needed to adapt on the fly and quickly. Most of the newer content you’ve been releasing is almost the exact opposite of this. So I kind of think you’re giving players a bit of a “combat shock” in which you’re placing them in situations way different from what their use too.

When: The big one. Everything before this can be reduced in the effect it has on the population by a TON if this problem is solved. Timed spawns are the devil for this hardcore content. The great thing about queen’s jubilee that if a player wanted too, he could get into the gauntlent over and over again. It was very easy for them to learn by trail and error. I remember seeing people die in the arena and get pushed out. I rez them and talk to them about strategies for a bit. Skills they could be using. They agree, immediately replace those skills and jump back in to the fight. You cant’ do that with things like Wurm or Marionette. Once you fail you have a long time to wait. Most of the players will leave the zone. The ones I just bonded with through battle will most likely not be there next round. Allowing players to learn by trial and error is a HUGE requirement for games. Darksouls, Raids in MMOs, etc. They all allowed players to immediately try again after dying, not waiting 1 hour or more. I’m not saying make these events farmable, but the current system is putting a ton of strees on the community’s overall enjoyment.

tl;dr Allow players to have more control over who they play with and when a boss spawns along with adding in more smaller content that represents these more advance styles of play and you’ll see a lot of the frustrations and overall anger toned down.

Open world raid content can work, but being split off from your friends and guild scare off a lot of people. They aslo need to be careful on how easily a mistake from 1-5 players can cause the entire event to fail for a 100 people do this. We may not see it too much right now, but if every world boss were to be made “hard” like wurm; I can easily see a community similar to MOBAs forming around them.

Monoman.2068:

I’m sort of depressed. In that siphoning thread I even mentioned how these would be the stats I feel will best fit my build for my weapons but I invested in ascended clerics thinking it would take ages to happen.

Well if I come back to the game after the balance patch drops I have some fairly big plans for these stats.

Zealot, from what I understand, is a temporary stat only accessible through crafting (can’t be bought on the TP). I’d advise you to buy the recipes for them now while its cheap, even if you dont have tailoring leveled. Who knows when it will be added back.

Now the second big thing I’d like to talk about. Timers. I’ve said before on this forum and I’ll say it again. YOU MUST stay away from timers. They just aren’t good and promote waiting (which you don’t want players doing). Many will say well theres plenty of other stuff to do while you wait! This is true, but it doesn’t mean players will do this. This is an example of “You’re not playing our game right”. If you ever find yourself thinking this about your game, that means something is wrong with the game. Games are successful if players like it. If players are playing it wrong in your eyes and the outcome is resulting in a poor outlook, then something needs to change. I understand your need to prevent farming. That being said, putting 1 hour + cooldowns is not the way to do this. An example is queens gauntlent (again my favorite piece of content). There was no wait time. If I failed I could try again. I could learn quickly. The main thing that was keeping me from farming it was the tickets. not an hour spawn time, but tickets. Things that I was awarded with for doing actions, not waiting.
So basically if you need to find a way to prevent farming through bosses like this, do it by requiring an action to be done to participate. Not waiting. Pre events, tickets, whatever. Anything is better than waiting.

Now a bit of a suggestion tied to timers. You are slowly coming to amazing world bosses. Each one getting better and better. You’ve done an excellent job with involving the world with things like siege equipment (by far my favorite) and interactables. Now theres 2 more blocks you need to add to this formula. Enviroment and NPCs. These are two important things when it comes to world bosses and the open world. Involving these in boss fights will make it feel more like an open world and less like raid content in the open world. Lets do Wurm as an example. First NPCs. You can do this in a few ways.
So say you wanted to put ina timer of some sort to help prevent farming. Lets throw in some fun pre events! Say you wanted some help dishing out some solid dps against those wurm heads! Well if the players do a pre event over at Stormbluff Beacon, the Lionguard will send in ships to where the heads are located to help. The players can then talk to a NPC by a rowboat and they will ferry you to the ship and put you on board where you can drive cannons and shoot at the bosses. Want some bombs to use against the boss that pack an extra punch and require less to do their job?Well head on over to Moriatity’s hold and help the pirates with a few pre events. They will then let you borrow a few of their special bombs/gunpowder! Want to weaken those wurms and maybe take down their defense by 10%? Well head on over to Gran Barrier isle and help the Priory with some research and they’ll offer what they find to help defeat the boss! Those darn champions and spawns really being a thorn in your side? Well help the hylek over at laptl grounds and they’ll send in some warriors to help distract mobs (not just instantly die, they actually are good). Thats the NPC interaction you should be shooting for. You can also do pre events to “lure” the wurm out. These take a bit of time, have 5 mins in between spawns and can help alleviate quick farming. Doing pre events for an hour is a lot better than waiting! Throw those in there with the optional pre events and you got yourself amazing NPC and world boss interaction! The second thing is the environment. This one is a bit simplier in terms of how to describe it. It could be simple things like causing rocks to fall on a boss to do damage and stun it (by pass the anti CC boon). It could doing something with water or lava. Things like that. I think if you increase the NPC interaction, environment interaction, and do prevents rather than wait timers; you’d have yourself the perfect formula for World Bosses

I hope my feedback will prove useful, if you have any questions or perhaps like more of an explanation on something I described, please reply. I’ve been thinking about this stuff since I first did shatterer way back in the first months of release.

Hello,

So I decided to try to put into words what I think of the new bosses and the Pros and Cons of each. I’m going to try really hard to keep this as constructive as possible and I’d like responses to do the same (I’ve noticed some heated debates breaking out haha). I’m no way a specialist in this field and most forum goers aren’t. I could be absolutely wrong. I’m just presenting what I think for the consideration of people whose job it is to do this type of stuff. Thank you.

First the Pros.

1. Mechanics. So many fun mechanics of the bosses that really caused my experience to be a lot more enjoyable. The champion mechanics in marionette were new and very fun. I enjoyed those fights a lot.

2. Graphics and look. I really enjoyed the looks and the rework of a few of the zones

3. Rewards. Great reward system. On marionette especially. You did an amazing job with the reward system here with the cyphers. They were just the right amount that it didn’t feel grindy, they offered rewards at a very good RNG rate that rewarded dedication without making it feel like you were grinding. There was lore tied into the rewards which was amazing. Great job here. Unique looks on the wurm gear too.

Now the Cons. For this its going to be a bit of a paragraph because I feel like it isn’t something that can be easily expressed through number notation.

So when making large scale hard content (such as raids) it is important to look at something I call Player success rate vs Group success rate. What this means is how many players does it take to have one player be successful at something. So an example would be Queens Gauntlent (best piece of content you guys put out imho). It was 1:1. 1 player required for 1 player group to succeed. So now lets look at marionette as an example (more people I found have done her more than wurm). Say theres a 100 people in the zone, 25 per lane. It takes the success of all 100 people, so it is 100:100. Keep that in mind. Now lets look at player failure rate vs group failure rate, basically what a player failing does for the group as a whole. In marionette it can be as small as 2:100. That means if 2 people fail, it could mean that the 100 person group can fail. Reason this exist is because in lets say the platforms. 2 people of the same group die because they made a mistake. Now its 3 verse the champion and they get decimated. Now every person in the group can’t do anything to help that platform and they fail the event. So many games do this. They will make it so that events can fail if one player messes up. I’ve seen it in Raids and other large scale content. However, when you have ratios like this there is one major thing you need to account for, Player Control. If a player’s success rate is determined by another players skill level, even on a small scale, the player needs to have control over who he plays with. As the player count increases, the need for this increases. I believe this is where Anet has made a mistake with these bosses. They didn’t properly put in enough player control. I know many people here will disagree with me, and as I said in the first paragraph I may be wrong. If you make hard content, then you need to let us choose when and with whom we play with. It makes it harder for people to blame you (Anet) for bosses being hard and to blame other players. If you’re not careful with these type of world bosses, I can easily see a community like MOBAs forming around these world bosses. Many will say they haven’t seen this, but let me ask you; where will you be once this living story ends (this patch)? Those who continue to do this boss will get more and more strict on the subject of pugs in their groups. I’ve seen it happen a lot when I do tequatl. Another common thing for people to say is to get with a guild. The problem lies with how hard it is to get everyone in the same overflow. Say my 100 person guild has been waiting all week for friday so they have everyone on. We get ready to go kill wurm. If even one person can’t get into our group, its bad. If anyone finds themselves in the player that is missing position, they will be mad I promise you.

So my basic point is that if you decide to do open world bosses and make the harder to the point where an entire group’s successrate is being determined by the individual successrate of players, you must allow groups to choose who and when they play with.

Hey guys,

Last patch added a new stat combo, zealot’s. This stat has power as main, with prec and healing power as secondary. From what I understand the recipies to craft such items only come from twisted (so their temporary, get them while you can!) and they are account bound when crafted (so they can only be crafted).

Although the acquisition leaves some to be desired, the stat combo seems amazing for vampiric style builds.

What do you guys think? I’m personally going to get a set because even though Vamp may not be the best, it will always have a place in my necro.

Also if you’ve tested it out post what you think of it!.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Didn’t they say that the Marionette boss would be more casual? Right now we need to organize people through our website and TS to kill that thing at least once for our server.

We’ve had dozens of people in there, doing their best, and still wiping after breaking about 2 or 3 chains. This was not tested properly for lower populated servers. Why don’t any of these bloody events scale? First Tequatl, now this.

I mean I’m ok with it being this hard. I dont mind. I just want to help other players when I’m done. I’ve done it close to 10 times now. My platform has only failed once, and that was because 3 of our 6 members decided the AoE markers weren’t anything useful and stood in AoEs repetadly. Another decided to face tank the boss. I ressed atleast 5 times during the fight before they finally went down. Me and 3 other people had to 3 man the monstrosity boss (forgot name, really big with spider legs and stuff) from 50%. We killed it and almost got gen but we ran out of time.

SO since it is so reliant on other players, I’m seeing more and more anger in map chat. Calling people noobs. need to learn to play, gtfo if they dont know the fight, etc. Even if it is a vocal minority, it builds up a reputation over time. It is the same way in Dota. Only 1-3 players in dota fights are usually verbally abusive in chat, yet those mobas have a reputation in the public for having horrible communities.

Also look at blackgate. People are flooding into that server in an attempt to be on a “good” team. You have to get there like an hour before the boss spawns just to not get into an overflow. That is a huge red flag anet needs to take note of.

Agreed. I really wish they’d do a patch asap to make it more teamwork and casual friendly.

The biggest lesson I think Anet needs to take away from this is this. Having a event which requires teamwork, yet a situation can arise when one player can feel absolutely helpless in helping another player that he is playing with is a very bad thing.

Justin ODell.9517:

I’m all for making money… but not like this. =|

I feel like sPvP is lacking for some really solid gemstore interaction. These are some ideas you guys could do in game or in gemshop (or both).

1. Emotes. Special emotes and what not. Simple, yet effective

2. Medals. You know how if you do world completion you get a fancy medal? Build off that. Medals in gemshop, medals for winning turnys, etc.

3. Announcer sounds. Pregame players can apply a special announcer or something like that.

4. UI changes. Simple things like it changes the colors or decorations. Adds effect, etc.

5. “Press Pass”. You can buy it once (probably be a good idea to let players buy it with gold in game too, but a considerable amount if you want) and they can spectate ranked matches and talk in spectating chat

6. VIP areas in the mist. Special places for players to hang out. You can have one that you buy off the gem shop, a special place for gem shop winners, etc.

7. Titles, duh

8. Guild rewards. Things maybe like special looking banners (apply it and changes all your banners). Special looking banquet items. Special Emblems. Special Back pieces. There are so many choices when it comes to guilds, I’m still baffled why it hasn’t been expanded on sooner.

Mikuchan.7261:

The story instance in LA was absolutely wonderful.
So many conversations to listen to and a big network where everyone talks to everyone.
Really well done.
The network-talking makes it feel much more believable than if they would just be talking to eachother 2 by 2.

The weird thing is that everyone was randomly gathered there and you didn’t really get an explanation for why.

But that said, really well done. More of those!

Explanation: Where do most players go when they’re not doing dungeons/bosses? Hang out in LA

Lord Kuru.3685:

Just be patient, the next patch will surely be epic! /s

This patch was epic. The boss fights are fun. IT is just the horrific timed spawned and overflow/none instanced design that is causing a lot more frustrations and angers among the playerbase.

If they just let players have more control over the groups they go with and when it spawns (like raids for example), it would be soooooo muchhhh betterrr. If I can get on, organize a group of 50 players from my guild, then we go to an area and join an instance to start the boss fight; I would have SO much more fun. We fail? Then we would just get kicked out and do it again.

This stuff they have doing is you are grouped with 50 other random players and it spawns every 2 hours so it is a big hassle to set a time when you get the most of your friends online.

First let me say a few things.

The mechanics of the boss fights are amazing. Love them.

The looks of the new stuff is great, love them.

The NPCs and dialogue stuff is amazing, love it.

The lair and stuff for the lore junkies is amazing, love.

However, you made a huge mistake. The same mistake you made with Tequatl and I really really hope you guys don’t do it again. I love hard bosses, I love the mechanics (whole tower defense feel is awesome), they’re great fun. What I don’t like is having to wait 2 hours for them to spawn. What I don’t like is how hard it is to get a large coordinated group together to do a boss that requires a large coordinated group. Since there is no way for me to get my guild together and work together to tackle this world boss, it becomes very frustrating.

Anet, I want you to imagine MOBAs for a quick second. Imagine the community for them, LoL, Dota, etc. What kind of reputation do these have? They have the reputation of being poor/mean communities. This is because for players to win, they must rely on the skill of other players. This mean when players pug you often get verbal assaults and anger because it just takes one player to be “bad” and it is holding back the rest of the players. Now imagine this, and multiply it by 50 and thats what you have with these boss fights. First time since I’ve started player I’ve heard people in my guild who rarely get mad start getting really mad at other players.

I know I know, it will get better over time. However, I still dislike it. When you introduce these large scale coordination bosses I want to be able to do them in a timely manner, not wait 2 hours or hope that when I have time to play that he’ll up. I want to be able to organize my guild who can have a max of 500 players to do these and not have to hop around overflows repeatedly.

The giant robot fight is particularly troublesome because when someone dies inside the area after going through the gate, it is A LOT more punishing for the team. 2-3 people dieing can ruin it for the entire 50 man group and because of this I’m seeing a lot more players getting frustrated, angry, and dishing out verbal insults. Please do not do this again. If you guys are going to do this, allow players to pick their instances or instance it all together for commander groups.

The fights have amazing mechanics, it is just executed horribely. Anet needs to realize a few things

1. No body likes waiting for timed spawns. I understand the need to do it to prevent farming, but I’d rather spend an hour filling up some meter by collecting items from around the map then waiting 3 hours just standing. I know you can go out and do anything, but I’ve played since release. I don’t feel like grinding/“collecting” for a legendary/ascended item so I don’t have a lot to do. I also don’t have all day and have a limited time I can play. So when I do play I’d like to do the boss, not wait 3 hours.

2. Coordination with pugs is frustrating. If I could just hop into this fight with 50 of my guildies, I’d have a ton more fun. Instead I have to try to communicate with 50 random people, most of whom dont listen. I can’t tell you how many times in these fights i saw people just standing still in red circles or just absorbing a ton of unnecessary damage.

Yeap, I’d love to play this with my guild. However, getting a bunch of people into the same instance is a big hassle. They should at least let us change overflows to ones we select.

I keep saying that timed bosses are a no no they need to stay away from.

Actually scratch that. The robot isn’t in Lornars pass. It is south of lornars pass. That none enterable area that is a perfect circle that is also near one of the zones with the highest destroyer presence

Mot Bone.4632:

why the giant robot… is using a knife as a weapon??? not laser gun?

My theory on this is Scarlet was “doing” good the entire time. She has been doing all this to fight the Elder Dragons. I believe Scarlet has found where Primidoius is currently, Lornars Pass. I mean I can’t really think of any other reason why she would build a giant robot and all these toxins and what not simply to test it on this tyrias inhabitants. I mean its pretty clear now that if she wanted to she could probably have overthrown any governing establishment.

DarcShriek.5829:

Pifil.5193:

Egotist.3940:

wurm is like Tequatl.

God, I hope not! I’d hope they’ve learned from that.

Teq is great. However, it sounds like the worm gets it’s own region.

Posted wurms location in the original post.

Tequatl has a few problems but the fight itself was great. However it doesn’t sound like they fixed these problems with the new wurm, so I predict the forum will be full of complains again. Big two problems I found was that it required mass coordination and with that you could not easily join the same instance as your friends (overflows and what not) and the timed spawns made it very hard to coordinate with a large group of people (in terms of timing when to be on).

Noah.4756:

Deified.7520:

JonPeters.5630:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip.

All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.

Jon

I can also see the skill cap in each. Actually coordinating your combofields in a teamfight can help immensely and it is punishing by spamming them as said by OP in which someone else messes up his combo.

Here is my idea. It isn’t something as simple as prioritizing. It is the meta. I’m sorry to say this again kitten many have brought up, there are a lot of mechanics in Gw2 that are very very spammy. Just the way it is. Ignoring the many, combofields is one that is spammy. There are so many combofields being cast during battles it is ridiculous. This also adds to the problem of watching PvP. People say that the screen gets cluttered, rainbows everywhere, headaches, etc. I think reducing the spammability of combofields could greatly alleviate OPs problem.

The problem isn’t prioritizing. The problem is how much they’re able to be employed on the field.

But what exactly is your solution to the problem then? Combo fields are closely tight to skills that also do damage and have other side effects such as blinds, protection, etc. In some cases they are even part of auto-attacks. Players spam them because they are also beneficial in other ways than just being a combo field. For example, although the guardian’s hammer auto-attack Symbol of Protection is a light field which is not very useful in PvE, but the protection aura allows everyone inside the field to take 33% less damage.

I believe the spammy mess is caused when multiple combo fields are stacked on top of each other and you don’t know exactly which field you are going to finish. Especially in the current situation where it’s hard to see which combo field is on top. I think that by letting players customize the priority of blasts this could alleviate the problem and also make it look less chaotic.

Perhaps, but how would you prioritize it. If each player has their own priority then the whole mess on the screen wont be fixed.

Fixing the spammy meta wont be an easy task because a lot of things factor into it. It is mostly about skill punishment. Things like lack of a resource, passives, AoEs, availability of boons, availability of conditions, availability of defensive skills/support skills, lack of cast times, lack of long cooldowns, etc.

Since Anet would most likely want to stay away of adding a resource to classes that load is going to be put on the other parts of the game. One way you can do this is by increasing the cast times of skills and increases the cooldown of a skill when it is interrupted. I will not likely be able to come up with a significant solution right here and now on my own because this problem is very complex problem to have for a game. Every game usually has it in some way or another. My main point is that allow players to prioritize what blast finishers affect what combo fields really won’t solve any problems in the long run and will only cause players to further ignore one another during battles.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhrVVkHmwt4

Possible things shown

2 new world bosses. One…giant robot, the other a giant wurm (supposedly a three headed wurm)

Some kind of huge floating platform in the sky

2 locations are lornars pass and bloodtide coast.

edit: Thanks to julian for this post : http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/14/exclusive-preview-of-guild-wars-2s-origin-of-madness-release/

Things from the article

1. New team member for the Rox/Braham/Kasmeer/Majory team. An asuran! We’ve never seen him/her before.

2. Jungle Wurm is perm with its own spawn timer. The underground structure of the wurm spans the entire zone. Location of Jungle wurm: http://imgur.com/a/V126t

3. Scarlet is apparently recalling all of her forces to Lornars Pass and is testing this entire machine against us.

4. “the final four chapters of Scarlet’s story have been written in such a way that players who have missed previous living world content can jump right in.”

P.S Possible location for Scarlets giant robot was hard for me to find. It looks to be a new area or a heavily modified area. Mostly because of the visuals we got and the fact that there’s a waterfall. My guess are False River Valley or Jotun’s Shoulders.

JonPeters.5630:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip.

All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.

Jon

I can also see the skill cap in each. Actually coordinating your combofields in a teamfight can help immensely and it is punishing by spamming them as said by OP in which someone else messes up his combo.

Here is my idea. It isn’t something as simple as prioritizing. It is the meta. I’m sorry to say this again kitten many have brought up, there are a lot of mechanics in Gw2 that are very very spammy. Just the way it is. Ignoring the many, combofields is one that is spammy. There are so many combofields being cast during battles it is ridiculous. This also adds to the problem of watching PvP. People say that the screen gets cluttered, rainbows everywhere, headaches, etc. I think reducing the spammability of combofields could greatly alleviate OPs problem.

The problem isn’t prioritizing. The problem is how much they’re able to be employed on the field.

Hello,

I’ve played engineer as my main since release. Although I’ve tried many classes (many of which I felt were better at filling the roles in the game) I stuck with him because he was fun. After seeing the graphs indicating that Engineer is the least played class in the West, and recently he is also the least played class in China, I’ve been trying to think of ways to help us fulfill our role better, to let give us a special way that allows us to play and give us a position in groups without knocking out another class for that role.

Engineers should receive buffs and debuffs depending on their position in battle. An engineers play would change and his buffs/debuffs would change depending on factors that account into his position in relation to things on the battle. This will greatly compliment the adapt playstyle that the engineer is advertised as having.

Here are some examples

Turrets- Turrets will buff each other based on other turrets on the field. So a Rocket turret + flame turret means that it shoots flares instead of rockets which do less physical damage, but have increase fire damage. Its overcharge is now Flare Barrage which will reveal stealth targets and do fire damage and a small amount of physical damage. Flame turret would not shoot out blobs of napalm which would create a blast finisher, do a good amount of physical damage, and a small amount of fire damage. However its attack speed is slower. Its overcharge would be shooting napalm out in all directions around it. This is just an example I quickly thought up to demsontrate what I mean. Then the Engineer himself would receive boons based on which turret he is closest too. Why is this good? This would not only help compliment our playstyle of adaption, but it would also compliment little used skills such as healing turrets with our toolkit, using jumpshot on our rifle for movement instead of on top of us, and the trait that lets us throw turrets.

Gadgets- gadgets right now deal heavily in the CC department, I have two ideas. One would be making the traits heavily deal with debuffs/buffs given to the engineer based on the position of enemies and allies on the field. This would compliment gadgets greatly in their current state, but also make the tree overpowered. Another idea would making gadgets themselves act differently depending on the position of enemies and allies. An example would be PBR. If PBR is used on an enemy who doesn’t have any allies (other enemies) near him, it would stun instead of knockback. However if it is used on him near other enemies it would just do a simple knockback. That is just an example again.

Trait Ideas- I feel like there should be more traits dealing with the position of a engineer, allies, and enemies. Some examples, not balanced but just to demonstrate the idea
Scope- If you are 600 range aware from your target, your crit chance increases by 25% however you attack speed slows by 15%
Pass the Drink- When throwing elixirs, if you are hit by the boon the effect it will cause the default effect you see, however if thrown and it hits only other allies; the effect will be 25% more potent. If only enemies are hit by it, enemies will receive the boon’s condition brother (so basically how corrupt boon causes conditions based on what boons you corrupt, this would be like that except it will be from the actual application. I wouldn’t recommend this if you plan on fixing the boon/condi spam meta however).
Last Stand- Rifles abilities receive a cooldown reduction of 30% and a damage increase by 20% if there are more enemies than allies within 300 yards of you for 20 seconds (30 second CD). However, if this effect starts and ends while you’re still alive; you will receive a debuff that increases the CD by 15% and reduces damage by 10% for 10 seconds.
Mechanical Support- Turrets will now also offer buffs to allies so long as the engineer is not in the raidus of the turret. This is to the turret idea above, so that those buffs I talked about the engineer getting? Those will be given to teammates as long as the turret itself isn’t next to the engineer. So that means the engineer wont get the buff, but the allies will.

Those are just examples. Basically I feel like the Engineer has a lot of CC and some great mobility; however the traits and skills don’t compliment this at all. I think that in order to correctly show that engineers are useful and are not outclassed by the other classes (which is what is going on right now and why we see they are the leased played). To show that they have something to bring to the table that others can not. The ability to adapt and benefit teammates based on the battlefield and not based on personal stats/boons/buffs.

If any players/none developers read this; I’d also love to hear your ideas on the concept and any other ideas you may have.

Although we should all take this type of thing as being put in the game with a grain of salt (as in its likely they wont do it), we should still give our constructive criticism on the topic in case anet does start considering it for the west.

So anet, I personally would be disappointed in something like this unless it was obtainable via ingame some how. No I have no idea what is in the gift bag and the “much much more”, but the convenient trading, resurrection buff, and teleport to a friend are three things I am not happy about. If you do decide to do something like this with the same features in the west, I sincerely hope that the base game is in a good position. I know a huge portion of the fans with this game play it because theres no subscription. It is also a major point when players are arguing about other games and playmodels. Installing something like this will reduce this argument and perhaps cause a loss of customers to other games.

First lets all think about our own education here. I’m sure a lot of people here aren’t economist. We probably aren’t experts on the subject. Some us probably do have the educational background, but I’m sure not everyone here is qualified. John’s job is make sure the market stays in a good position. He has education in it. Before we just throw his comments into the developer defending his game basket we should really take what he says to hear.

John, I think the reason why so many people get irked by this isn’t because the economy is in the a bad position, it is just the horizontal progression. Right now this games main horizontal progression for players is gathering/crafting ascended gear and legendaries. Many players don’t have faith in the drop rates and feel that they will never get it via dropped, so they’re kind of being funneled into a system where they’re forced to either buy the materials to further progress their characters or craft them. So they decide hey, I’ve got all this gold on me from doing dungeons and playing the game; lets see if I can bypass all this gathering and buy them. They look at the amount needed (250 usually or more), look it up on the TP and see it is a very large price. Then they hear that players are “manipulating” them and “causing” the price to rise. They realize they can’t convience these players not to do this because they’re making great gold (I know a TP trader who says that if they were to do it every day like they did a few months after release, they can make 100+g a week). So they come here and demand anet does something.

If this games horizontal progression CDI produces some good content into the game that isn’t based around gathering/collecting and using gold on the TP; you will see A LOT less complains about TP traders.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A lot of the ideas boiled down into variations of one of these two options, and really both have a lot of cool concepts and ideas. Can folks think of anything else that’s a bit more outside the box for something bigger?

Let me say things we do not need more of for progression

1. Gathering/Crafting. There is so much of that already. Ascended and legendaries are a huge portion of the endgame and are mostly gathering/crafting.

2. Achievements. We have enough rewards centered around Achievements. Achievements are good, but not immersive. So having them as a main reward system (in my opinion) is bad.

Anyways, heres another idea I have for it.

Tie it to the living story through perm questlines. Same idea as before of an NPC with a blue outline who starts it, but it deals with the living story. An example for kessex hills is that say next patch you put in a NPC thats part of the lionguard or something and is charged with cleaning up the mess the toxic alliance left. He could put you on a 4-5 step mission that involves search and rescue of npcs, finding hijacked supplies for the refugees, building defenses against the toxic creatures, putting in air cleaners around the map, then finally a mini dungeon where you kill some kind of toxic boss.

You tie all that to the living story and it offers some perm content you can do with the LS.

Step Three: Order Contacts
Depending on the order of the contact will depend where the player goes to start the quest to get the skill. Each of the contacts will be in the Orders main base. They will have a unique name and a title (like players) pertaining to a lore friendly name. Example
Asuran Priory Contact- Vred Bruffuz. Title: Priory Lead Researcher
Charr Vigil Contact- Kofarm Gutblade. Title: Senior Forward Scout
Slyvari Whispers Contact- Evyn Bluetree. Title: Master Lightbringer

These characters will be outlined in a faint blue/light blue (same color as the skill points to be easily identifiable by new players) when they have a skill for a new skill. You want to tie things into the living story so you can move tehse guys with forward camps for each order for the living story and tie it into the LS. This example I wont. I will be using Priory in this example.

Step 4: The Quest

A. Player must talk to Vred. He goes through well written dialog about why he is sending the player on his way. “We recently killed a Risen and found a wear glowing flame inside of its body, similar to the Foefire. This is troubling news for our effort in Orr. I need you to go to the ruins of the Ascalonian Abby and look through their records for anything that may give us a clue on where and how these risen have this”.
B. Players go there and you can do a couple things here. Have players do a quick puzzle, solve a quick riddle, or do a mini dungeon (or just do all three). At the end of the dungeon/after they have done the required event is what they need
-Ideas for puzzles. Something to do with translation of some old text. Solving a riddle. Placing objects in correct placement. Emotes. Things like that.
C. At the end they interact with the object and “take notes” on it ( you can do some good immersion and put a different way each order collects the information). You take it back to Vred. He looks at the ancient text, talks about it some, ask the player for his opinion. Theres only one right answer and no matter what he chooses he will get to the same conclusion, it just promotes a different response from Vred and helps with immersion.
D. He discovers an old text of an ancient structure in Orr that they used to craft the sword. He writes down a special saying on the text and tells you to use this at the entrance, it says in the text only royalty who knew that text were able to get to the structure.
E. Players go there and interact with the door and are able to enter it. Players who haven’t started this chain can’t enter the door because they don’t know the saying. This works similar to the order of whispers base in Lornars Pass.
F. Players go in. They do a quick boss fight. Maybe do another puzzle. They find the structure and its ancient power source. They interact with something to send a signal to the order members near by that they’ve secured it and they can come in to secure the area. This completes the “quest”. Players can now “commune” (similar to the way the skill point acquisition in the open world worked) with the power source. It unlocks the ability to use skillpoints (don’t want to make these useless) on a new skill. They can reenter the area whenever they want, help otherplayers, etc.

Side Notes: I think you should hint at some of the quest objectives and not straight out tell them like I did. An example for the Abby would be they found some kind of riddle or ancient asconlonian text and ask you to go to Plains of Ashford and ask around the Charr encampents to see if any of the commanding people at the camps know anything. They players can go around and just do guess and check till they find the right one, or they can look at the text and try to solve it for themselves. Eventually they can either go straight to the abby or talk to the charr commander who directs them to the abby.

I also advise making these fights challenging. Remember, a ton of HP isn’t necessarily hard or challenging for the players. A great boss fight I think you guys should work off of is Temple of Dwayna. The final boss is amazing. Very obvious but not screen cluttering animations. Punishing but easy to counter. Not spammed. Boss didn’t have a ton of HP. Its an amazing boss fight.

ColinJohanson.2394:

VOLKON.1290:

Well, new personal story arcs could send you off on paths that lead to unlocking something specific from the Order you chose at the beginning of the game (which would add more substance to the Order you choose mattering)…

Also just want to quickly add, I think this would be really cool and is an example of an approachable system for all players that’s relatively easy to message, understand, and could be available to everyone.

Yes, finally a someone started talking about this! I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. So I noticed that the current skillpoint system wasn’t going to last in the long run mid summer and the recent skills kind of helped enforce this. A majority of the people and guilds I interacted with didn’t do anything different. They unlocked it, either said it was bad or interesting, then went on doing what they’ve been doing.

So I notice a trend that you guys should watch out for. Discussions. A very certain kind of discussion with a certain format. You need to look for instances where players from all walks of life are communicating with one another on HOW to do something. Many discussions we see now a days on the forums are complaints, people talking about how to improve something, about what to add, things like that. Every so often (not often so far) you’ll see a bunch of players talking about how to do something and helping each other. I’ve been taking note of these things for the past year and here is what i’ve seen it happen

1. Initial release (happens every game as everyone figures things out).
2. How to farm something (CoE, Champion paths, etc. Not my favorite of the bunch)
3. Final Rest, Reaper of Souls, Darkmoon Shield PvE search effort.
4. Queens Gauntlet
5. Tequatl (after patch)

These are your keys. These are what you guys need to take special note of on the forums. When players act like the way they did with these 5 things, it means you’ve done something that is good for horizontal progression. The rest falls on reward and keeping the player interest with those things. Lets dissect 2-5.

2. Economy based. Improves players horizontal progression in the economy/token sector. We have plenty of this if you ask me.

3. Look based/Armors

4. Player Challenge, Player skill heavy

5. Large group Challenge, group skill heavy

Now I’d like to focus on one thing for skills. #3. The search for final rest and the other lost artifacts. Tons of threads with player theories, people translating things, people trying to look for patterns. It was glorious. It was the most fun I ever had in this game and with the community was looking for final rest. Now when you revealed that final rest dropped from SB, the 2 other lost artifacts were given up on and the community around it disbanded (many were disappointed).

So lets take this interest and put it to something skill based. Send the players on an adventure that doesn’t necessary tell you what to do right away but gives you hints and pretty much sends you on an epic quest.

Now lets take a look at things you need to take advantage of to make this thing work. It wont be as simple as saying hey, read that orange text and follow what it says.

1. Orders/Personal Story Factions.
2. Mini dungeons
3. In game languages/translation.
4. Puzzles (Tears of itocotol was a very fun mini dungeon imho)
5. Named Champions/Enemies
6. World Bosses
7. Secret Passages/Bases
8. Doors. So many people are not acustomed to doors actually being able to be opened. When I show them the secret whipser base in Ebonhawke, it always amazes them. The one in lornars pass always is cause for awe too.
9. Allied Towns/Friendly NPC towns.

So we have the nine building blocks of setting up a good quest for players to embark on. I’m going to throw in a quick example of getting a skill. If you do like 3-4 of these every month or 2 months it would do a lot for the game, especially endgame players.

Step One. Requirements
Level Requirement (optional if you see it fit)
Be in an Order on the character you want the skill on(make personal story more meaningful)

Step Two: Contact
Notify the players of a new skill. Avoid Mail. Mail is boring and allows players to continue to sit in LA. Put Order bases in each of the capital cities. At these bases will be “Couriers” or “Messengers”. Players talk to them and if you added a new skill there will be a chat option for it. These Couriers will acknowledge the player as a part of their faction and if the player has done the Personal story last mission they will have a special dialog greeting for them.

Please look at my next reply for the rest of the example below

I think we should all take a moment to thank Chris Whiteside. Whether or not our ideas or suggestions see the light of day, hes been on these forums almost every day during the holiday/vacation. Its good to see that type of dedication with an employee of any company.

So thank you Chris for your hard work during this CDI!

Chrispy.5641:

Deified.7520:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Snip snip snippity snip

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

.

Housing and Guild Halls will improve the experience for just about everything, generally, except for the act of running around killing things.

How will Housing and Guild Halls improve on the experience of running around and killing things, which does eat up a rather large portion of gameplay right now?

They offer a new reward system for players to get. Furniture, trophies, vendors, etc. Now I’ve posted my idea before, but basically guild halls would not exist in instances like in gw1. If they did a similar gw1 system then towns would be even more dead, they would have to not put in TP, banks, etc. If they did that then they would be pretty useless for a lot of people, like the personal districts in the towns. Basically it would be a combination (my idea) of the faction towns in factions from gw1 and guild halls. There would exist 2-3 guild halls in each zone. These guild halls would have special guild only area they the guild can choose to open to the public and a regular town area. They would be tied to the stabilization of an area selected in the zone for the guild hall. You do more events, kill more unique bosses, and do mini dungeons in said area, the stabilization goes up. There are tiers and each tier unlocks something in the guild hall. It would be the only place in a zone to find a TP and a bank. Could unlock special karma vendors with unique looking gear for level 80s along with rares/greens/blues for lower levels in the area. You can also unlock special structures that give you long buffs that last a considerable amount of time, don’t take the place of any currennt food buffs, and can be used in WvW, dungeons, fractals, etc. Everywhere except spvp (could do a special part of it that gives an increase to glory and what not to make guild halls useful in pvp too). You could also unlock special quest giver of sorts (I noticed a lot of people have requested quest) for a special daily that offers a good reward, but is challenging (in terms of skill, like queens gauntlent. Not just a grind).

You’re right, adding in guild halls wont directly affect killing things, but it could offer a branch point for anet to implement things that make running around the open world and killing things more rewarding for the player, world, and community.

EDIT: Guild halls would be tied to the amount of influence a guild has. The higher level zone, the high amount of influence required to claim and “maintain” a guild hall. It automatically puts guilds in charge of halls so they can’t claim low level ones because it is easier. There would be a influence drain to help get rid of afk guilds/inactive guilds. This influence drain would go down slower of the zone that the hall is in is stabilized. This means lower player count guilds would have a chance of getting a guild hall, but high player count guilds halls would be put in zones that would properly use the higher player count (higher level zones mean harder events, sometimes more people required). If an event fails it could also cause the stabilization to go down more.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Snip snip snippity snip

My original three were:

— Role Diversification: New skills/traits, new weapons, access to inaccessible existing weapons, infusions and hybrid professions.

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

— Hero Recognition: Unique Skins, Titles, Rewards, followers and NPC reactions/opportunities based on the players individual feats in the world of Tyria regardless of how he/she chooses to play the game.

And my top one is:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The other two were extremely close but I feel this one would have the best bang for buck for the community.

Finally note we are working on horizontal progression, with many of ideas (some of which may even be in this thread), so I can’t stress enough that this exercise is about further ideation focus refinement. Not a dev list.

Chris

Le Bump!

Chris

Bump

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

The skill system will improve over time. With this kind of mix of a class system while making every class can do everything, you need to find the right way to balance it and make specializing in something (damage, defense, or support) more rewarding in the specialized aspect while more punishing in the others. Along with that some of the PvE “inbalances” (such as go DPS or go home) can be alleviated with specialized dungeon designs that center around all that and the PvP meta can be easily changed if the new game modes are designed correctly to require other builds not in the meta to optimize your winning potential. So new skills and traits I dont think will do anything for the game till you guys (anet) figures out what you want to do with the skill system and build around that. Right now you dont and with the new skills I know many players ignored them or don’t use them. When I start seeing new skills that are properly made in a sense to promote build diversity and the current skills/traits are redesigned to promote build and trait diversity, then I will back putting in new skills to the game.

So thats why I pick Sociopolitical Diversification. By making guilds, factions, and player housing have a more importance, you can greatly improve the experience of the game for players in all game modes. This also opens up tons of doors for new content. Some of the most popular mods for games like Skyrim are housing mods. People just love customizing things and making it their own, I feel like this type of thing (with guilds/factions its even better) would greatly help promote guilds, player social involvement, and can offer a way to make various big actions in the game (like killing an elder dragon) feel more rewarding but offering you or your guild specialized thins for their halls, houses, and bases. I still stand by my stance of heavily incorporating things like guild bases and faction bases into zones, dynamic events of zones, and the open world in general. Its beautiful out there and we really need to find ways to get players to move back in there.

Another idea I had last night was how you acquire items. You don’t only have to rely on drops from monster and RNG.

Gw2 is a universe full of lore and a beautiful world. Use it! Make finding and build items an adventure instead of something they just drop. Ill use final rest as an example and what I would have done with final rest. I was one of the ones that tried to find final rest when it was still unfound and was very disapointed in how you actually acquired it.

The item would be split into three pieces. A head, shaft, and power source. The first clue players encounter of the item is in AC. In the library room you’ll see a old torn tapestry with a picture of the staff as a whole. If you translate a few papers in the room you’ll find that it was buried with a white mantle leader in the ruins of holy demetra, however they need a key to get into the room where it is at. Luckily you can activate a hidden book that doesn’t have a name (so you can’t push alt) and whose locations is said in the trasncription that opens a secret door. In this door is the chest containing the key. Once in the ruins in harathi they can open the door, defeat a quick white mantle spirit boss and take the staff. However they find the head is missing. Near by is a note from bandits saying they found a strange looking head piece of a staff while running from a rampaging ghost. They mention that they can probably sell it to some flame legion in diessa plateau saying its some ancient artifact in a tone that is usual banditry/deceiving for money. You can then go into disseau plateau and talk to a charr or priory member in the camp. If you have the staff shaft in your inventory he has a special chat option where he talks about the head pieces and gives you a key into a special room in flame temple tombs. You can then go in there, find the hidden room, defeat a flame legion shammy boss and take the head piece. You then bring it back to the priory member who talks how it needs a power source so it can be back to its original powerful self and to talk to a necromancer in god lost swamp. You then go to the necromancer thats in the middle by the PoI. He tells you there is some ancient powersource he read about in the ruins of orr in zho qafar catacombs. You go in there, defeat the world boss and get the power source. You then activate one of the staff pieces in your inventory like the tri piece key and it forms the staff.

Heck if you add 1-3 of these weapons each patch, it will IMMENSELY improve the game for endgame players and new players. Also open up a whole new method of progression with items. You can also do different power sources for different stat combos.

Talking about other games with horizontal progression, I think skyrim is the best example. Skyrim basically scales the game to your level, so no matter what happens its pretty much level with your character. I think we should look at the very popular mods and take those an example for horizontal progression.

1. Player Housing- Some of the most popular mods were houses, player castles, things like that.

2. Armors/Weapons- these are very popular mods too, ones that add on custom housing.

3. Skills- Midas Magic has always been a very popular mod since oblivion because of the variety and “cool” factor of the skills and abilities it adds

4. Campaign/Story Missions- the living story is kind of taking up the reigns of this. Its slowly being improved over time and it has so much more room to expand and get “better”.

Those are the type of mods I think people really enjoy. Now some of the default aspects of skyrim that lead to its success

1. Great replay value. There is so much of a difference in playstyles in the classes that it allows players to replay things and play them very differently.

2. Skills matter. The skills you level up drastically change how you can use those skills. In gw2 most of the traits don’t really do this. They may increase somethings duration or add an effect, but they don’t really change it in a sense. This is also something that a certain TES game that involves a massive amount of players has. You can evolve skills and it changes to a great degree on how you use those skill.

Special Note: I’ve said it a million times, ill say it a million more. KEEP AWAY FROM TIMED SPAWNS. These are not good for the game. They’re hard for groups of people to organize for. They encourage a bad gameplay style of waiting around. If you need to put in a “cooldown” on the spawns, no more than 30 mins. Its better to have players doing events that last 1 an hour to complete or are hard to spawn a boss then have them waiting around for 3 hours or browsing the web while staring at timers. Doing none timed spawns also helps the community interact with one another. I loved the days before there were timers. When I could spawn the event whenever I wanted because no one did them (before the rare rewards). I met so many good people, I talked with so many people. I had a blast. When the timers came out everyone just ignored one another and I lost touch with a lot. It was a sad time.

Here are my quick thoughts about it, I wrote extensive post in the vertical progression thread because I thought it was about progression overall, but I know chris read it so thank you for that.

Right now Gw2 has some excellent collection in horizontal progression. It has literally been carrying the game since release. Everyone I play with is either collecting for a legendary or ascended gear. I don’t think this game needs any more collecting right now.

First lets talk about what makes horizontal progression good. Most players want recognition for their actions and success in the game. That is a main reason why you saw many players go into WvW instead of sPvP. This is because it is easier to “show off” what they did in PvE.

Secondly players need to be challenged. If a progression route is easy to get or doesn’t really challenge the players mentally (looking at your champion train skins), then they don’t really give the same satisfaction of getting an item from killing a endgame high dungeon tier boss in a vertical progression. It also takes one exploit, one “easy way” to discredit an entire set of items in terms of impressiveness. This is what we saw with CoF during the initial release and farm.

So lets talk about some possible ventures into this realm of horizontal progression.

1.Armor looks. Again, rewarding the players for what they do and not how long they have grinded is important now. You could do enchanced culture version where first you have to buy the cultural gear, then you can add effects to it by doing something hard in the game. You can go with themes for each of the elder dragons too. You evolve your armor sets, almost like pokemon. Could be a viable route.

2. Skills. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, gating skills solely behind skillpoints will not be viable in the long run. It helps improve the game for collectors and new players, everyone else is left in the cold. When I wanted to get a new skill in gw1 I had to get to that part of hte level/story, kill the boss, then spend money to use the sig of capture. Imagine if they made it so you just had to spend a currency that you got every time you leveled up. People would by every skill the minute the expansion came out for gw1 and it would probably have discouraged many players

2. Hard Mode- Do instanced 10+ player versions of meta events. Perhaps you need to have world completion done for that zone to do it. Unique skins and rewards, the likes. I know you’re going to be doing harder bosses like tequatl, heres the problem. Tequatl is insanely hard to organize for. Players get discourage because of how hard it is to get a bunch of people organized on at the same time and in the same overflow. There is a guild of tequatl runners that is huge, they will actually leave an overflow if there are too many pugs. Doing hard large scale organized groups in the open world will never work. It must be instanced or we should be able to easily choose our overflow.

3. Involve the open world more. The open world and the looks/dynamic events/ npc interactions is what makes this game unique. It will be the deciding factor in if it survives when new MMOs are released. You need to put more emphasis on exploration/open world actives that offer none grinding rewards, the satisfaction of doing something good, and the things i discussed in the first paragraphs of this. I think one of the biggest things you could do is long/large scale zone wide chain events that lead up to like a boss fight or big event that is big, but not just fighting a boss. These pre events will be challenging, they will challenge the player mentally(puzzles), reaction times will be tested (platforming), and just a mix of a bunch of cool stuff.

4. World Bosses. Tequatl is a good step in the right direction. However, if you keep it open world like this keep in mind on how hard it is to organize a ton of people. Good scaling will be key to open world bosses. Also involve the world more. More zone wide and NPC interaction. Like I said tequatl is a step in the right direction, but it can be so much more. Like make it so that up at the sun temple players can defend it from risen during teqautl. If they do this they send hylek reinforcements which fight risen but also decrease risen spawned at turrets. The defenders get the same credit as the dragon fighters (maybe make a chest spawn up there for them). Things like that. World bosses NEED to include the entire zone if you decide to keep them open world

timmyf.1490:

Question for Deified and videoboy, who seem to like “working for rewards.” Is it enough if the rewards are cosmetic, or must the rewards be stats?

I had a lot of friends who came to GW2 and quickly left for Rift because they got exotics and there was nothing more powerful for them to grind out. “I have nothing to do!” they said.

“Do you have a Legendary?” – “No.” – “Get one!” – “Does it make me more powerful?” – “No, but it looks cool!” – “meh.”

I imagine most of the grind-for-stats types have already left, but as somebody who plays for fun, it’s always interesting to understand other viewpoints.

The problem with legendaries is they take an insane amount of time to get for players. I never cared for them because I didn’t come to gw2 to farm gold (which is what evey person in my guild who has a legendary did) to get. So while collection rewards is good, we have more than enough of those in the game currently and need to start getting more rewards that you work for in terms of skill level. A example of this was the queens gauntlent. I loved that event. Players who beat the final boss have a mutural respect for one another without even saying a word. I helped and gave tips and I received help and tips too. Once many of the ragers left, the people left over were a awesome community. I think it would have been a lot less of a forum rage lash if it wasn’t there for 2 weeks and players could keep working for it.

On the topic of rewards, they can be ascended if anet feels the difficulty is high enough, however I’m fine with cosemetic. Personally ascended only represented a advantage in fractals which I rarely do. I’ve killed plenty of enemy players in wvw with ascended gear and I never felt like the stat increase they add over exotics was big enough to make me think “If I had ascended items I would have won”. So I’m perfectly fine with cosmetic.

Only the topic of your friends leaving, this games horizontal progression currently is way too based around collection. Many times they don’t really challenge the player mentally. A lot of people like vertical gear grind because you always have something your working towards and it is often challenging because in order to get to that you have to do dungeons that were normally hard. It is another reason why I felt Gw1 had a amazing horizontal and vertical progression because most of the horizontal progression was gated behind where you were in the personal story. The story in Gw1 I felt was hard. Wasn’t always had, but there were more than a few times were I had to try 10 times, look up guides and viable builds, team comps, etc. So those story missions kept players interested and challenged. Then you had underworld and “farming” in there was a challenging and also satisfying because it wasn’t a thing you could just port instantly to. Then you had faction points and alliance battles and such. Gw1 wasn’t perfect, but in terms of horizontal progression it is in a much better state than gw2.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Deified.7520:

I think the biggest thing Anet needs to start working for is item uniqueness based on skill level. Right now an item is considered to be very unique or rare because the drop rate for such item is very low or the collection requirements are very high.

That’s a good point as well. I would love to see some content that demanded real skill, and had unique rewards tied to it. With Super Adventure Box we had Tribulation Mode, which already offered us a special backpack for conquering some of the hardest platforming the game had to offer. And I liked working for my reward.

But should such an item be tradeable, or remain account bound?

Account bound.

Making an item tradeable immediate deminsihes and almost entirely elimintes the items unqiueness and what it represents in game. An example is the Pact weapons. If they would have made it so these were account bound, they would be so much more impressive and actually meant something. Now you can buy most of them on the TP for 1g-5g I believe, which isn’t hard to make once you get endgame.

You can’t tie everything to the TP for it allows gold to bypass any horizontal progression it added. I like their ideas of making some ascended armor pieces sellable, but they can’t make them all sell able. Also they will most likely just be the same price of the materials required to make them, as we see right now with most mystic forge exotics. So it really wont change anything for players unless they change the current drop rates for many items and ascended items.

This is a bug I’ve noticed since released. Now it isn’t something that happens often, but I do see it happen. Every once in a while when a boon or condi finishes its duration, it continues with no duration timer thingy around the icon. I noticed this in all aspects of gameplay since release. Sometimes mobs get it, somtimes the player gets it with condis, other times i see it in spvp. Last week I believe was the last time I saw it and it was in spvp, someone had stability and despite the stability’s duration counter going up on the UI, the icon stayed with no timer, he continued to resist fears, and I couldn’t corrupt it (I was on my nero). This lasted for a good 5-7 seconds before it went away.

Like I said this bug doesn’t happen often, but I do see it and just wanted to report it.

Calae.1738:

Too much spam.

Ground effects, conditions, Mesmer clones and Necro minions cluttering the screen with so much crap. Then there’s other rules that don’t make sense and are mixed in like downstate, rally, out of combat health regeneration and movement speed boosts.

Take all the screen clutter spam you can think of and add a bunch of game rules that don’t make sense into a blender and you get GW2 combat.

Yeah screen clutter from everything is a bit much. I really wish I could heavily reduce of the size of the UI stuff.

Arken.3725:

This is my first topic made on the Spvp forums so here go my thoughts on the current state of pvp and the outlook on Esports. While many of us have our own idea’s of what needs to be adjusted and what pvp needs to be relevant and how we should be rewarded. We all have idea’s of what should take priority, whether it be balance, rewards or whatever. Here’s my take on it,

Balance should take presedence above all else for pvp. For me, a somewhat balanced fight against another player is all the reward I need. The recent changes to glory and adding vendors in the HoTM are nice but honestly, balance should be the #1 priority. I’m not saying you can’t do both because i’m sure they’re different teams for different content.

Here are my opinions on what needs to be adjusted:

-All proc on crit traits should be changed to a counter system. What I mean by this is instead of it being a mindless proc on your opponent, let it trigger every few critical hits with a counter on your bar so your enemy knows when to dodge/block. This will promote counter-play which is great for balance. This should also apply to passive traits that apply too much of a benefit without any thought process involved.

-Adjust Defensive/Condi amulets. I don’t like the idea of having amulets that are both tanky and provide damage. You’re getting the best of both worlds, this should NEVER happen. You are supposed to take a loss in this game when you spec into something. Whether it be damage, support or bunker. There needs to be give somewhere.

- AI/Passive skills should never see the light of day in a tournament. These skills should be available for new players to break into the game but should never be taken seriously. These specs require little thought involved and provide too much benefit.

-Skills that require effort(activation) should be heavily rewarded compared to those that do not(passive procs). This goes back to my previous points if you are to keep passive skills/traits as reliable as they are.

If anyone here has any other suggestions, please post it.

All of your suggestions I love and heavily agree with. I especially like the second one.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the uprising.6317:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

have u tried out guild wars 2’s sPvP before making this post?

in beta. I’m just wondering if the scene is dead

casually
- many people are still playing guild wars 2 ’s sPvP casually, for fun

competitively
- balance issues
- lack of competitive players
- match making issues
- etc

i think …
casually, gw2 spvp is doing okay. still got people playing everyday.

competitively, esports etc.
not good. many problems. not ready for esports or competitive scene.

but casually, good for laughs and sparring with guild members.

Pretty much this. The games pvp is fun and all. As he said though, on a competitve level it has quite a few issues they are going to need to work on.

Most DE are easy to do. Except for some group ones which are usually only hard if you’re the same level as the even or lower.

When people say the open world is an endgame piece they’re not only talking about events, but also world bosses, jumping puzzles, the mini dungeons, champion hunting/trains, and the living story.

There is also dungeons for your endgame, fractals for your endgame, WvW for your endgame, PvP for your endgame.

While it is true they have a lot to work on when it comes to horizontal progression for endgame players, to say there is none is not true.

I think the biggest thing Anet needs to start working for is item uniqueness based on skill level. Right now an item is considered to be very unique or rare because the drop rate for such item is very low or the collection requirements are very high.

Downed state can be in a competitve scene, but it needs tweaking.

1. The balance in downed state is horrible. Some classes have an amazing advantage on preventing stomps and surviving while others are useless.

2. I think in ranked matches the only way for a downed player to rez is they are the target of a rez signent or revie themselves with their downed state skills. I dont think rally or player reviving should exist because it is wayyy too forgiving in fights and “zerg” rezzing is ridiculous. 2v2, a engineer and necro vs a thief and guardian. The guardian starts rezzing his thief buddy that is stealthed and they were able to out heal the damage put out by a necro and an engineer. Luckily we stomped him but it was ridiculous.

So it seems a lot of people are talking about how the animations of the game don’t properly do justice to what is going on or cause too much screen clutter.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Deified.7520:

Part 3:
There’s a lot of other games that have really good horizontal progression. One of which is Skyrim. Some may not agree, however since the game scales to your level for the most part is is very much like horizontal progression. Look at the skill system. There is no just skill point you get each level. In order to unlock skills you actually have to find the in the world. Some require you to do special actions such as joining a faction or doing a quest.

Look a Guild Wars 1. To get a new skill not only did you have to be a certain point in the story, but also needed to know how to kill him. Most bosses had specific strategies.

Most popular RPGs in the world never had a skill system that was just level up and you get a point for a new skill. They usually had another gate.

Also if WvWers (all skills should be auto unlocked for spvpers) want, they can just buy skills with a combination of badges of honor and skill points.

Right now the endgame for horizontal progression of karma/gold/skillpoints/achievements is getting old fast. I’m seeing more people get burnt out faster. You either need to find drains for the karma/gold/skillpoints or split them up so its not so easily obtained to make them more meaningful.

Currently the game has more the enough horizontal progression dealing with crafting and collection. It has moderate to good horizontal progression for dungeon gear looks and WvW gear looks. Now its time to start introducing some new ways of horizontal progression.

Hi Deified.

The Tokens idea is interesting and I am sure you are noting that with our Mega Boss update Tequatl players can earn Ascended Weapons with Unique skins (Sunless) and that we will be moving forward with that paradigm. The idea of more challenging zone meta events was raised in the Living World CDI and a good idea. More to follow on that. I also agree that there is a huge amount of awesome progression to be found in guilds. ‘It has moderate to good horizontal progression for dungeon gear looks and WvW gear looks. Now it’s time to start introducing some new ways of horizontal progression.’ I agree.

Chris

I wouldn’t mind if you used my ideas or not. I would just love more progression in guilds, so quite frankly anything will make me happy. While I do love tequatl, I want to state a few problems that a lot of people I regualry play with talk about. The ascended weapon is RNG and some people have done this event a lot and not gotten anything. When something like that happens, they tell others. Others get discouraged and now you have not too many people interested in doing it. Also how many people you need. The biggest complain my guild has is how hard it is to get everyone from the same group into the same overflow. For an event that requires large scale organization, if we could some how control which overflows we join, my guild would have a lot better experience when trying to do a “guild” tequatl. I love the organization behind tequatl as most of my guild does, we just dont like how hard it is to try to play with our guild in it.

Thank you for replying to my comment/your hard work in this thread

EDIT: Also. The tequatl ascended weapons I think should have a more unique look. Many times they’re mistaken for crafted ones which annoy the people who get them sometimes.

So this is my personal opinion on the matter.

So I feel the combat has a certain level of fun, however it lacks interesting mechanics/fights. I think this is in part due to the game mode, but the combat overall.

So here are some things I’ve been thinking about doing with the combat to help increase its entertainment value.

1. I really like skyhammer’s movement adding things. Not the pitfalls to your death, but the jump pads. I was watching The Hobbit today and those both gave me an idea. Why not increase things in maps that add to mobility in a both negative and positive manner. An example is not only jump pads, but also rivers. Remember in SAB the rivers that if you fall into them they throw you back to the start of the level or make you fall. Put in rivers that if you fall into, you start “going down river” and you have to get out. You dont fall to your death at the end, but it similar aspects could make the combat a bit more interesting to watch.

2. AoEs and combat. Theres a lot of AoEs and a lot of combofields. I feel like combofields can really take up the reigns of the gap that is left by no roles. So today I went into the short list of common builds for each class and took one build that I felt like I see a lot. Out of all the classes a total of 52 AoEs are present in the current meta. This is not including cleaves. 14 of the skills provide a combo field. Some class have many combo fields compared to others. Some have none. Out of these combo fields the only ones that are good are etheral, lightning (which isn’t in the meta), and smoke. The rest are very poor due to the fact that what they applied is easily applied through common utility skills.

So what if we take these combo fields and heavily reduce their accessibility to classes. Make it so that each class only gets one type of combo field and that combo field is unique to that class. They can then trait and change that combofield and the skill its tied to. We then take these effects and make them a lot more meaningful in battles. Ethereal is good because of its simultaneous boon application and condi application. Smoke is good because of how strong a long lasting blind and stealth is. Lightning is good because of its stun lock potential. Then we make it so that not every one is just a circle combo. Some are walls. Others could be like a type of cone. Not everything has to be a circle. I just feel like the combofield system can be refined to something great and make combat 100 times more interesting.