Guild Wars 2

Chuggs.1682:

Something similar can be done with entire PvE zones – put a Vanquisher option into those by coding each mob upon zoning in with a tag that pops up on your map. Hunt down and kill every single tagged mob in the zone for the achievement. This also synergizes with World Completion. Vanquishing world zones would also provide a possible alternate pathway to Ascended or some of the other high-end itemization so that players who prefer solo-grinding in the world to instanced/group content can do that.

I agree with the idea to have players spread on a map instead of repeating the same events over and over. Be aware though that GW2 is a non-instanced world and zones are much bigger than GW1’s zones.

Do you really think it’s fun to kill every single mob in a zone with respawning enemies and other players who kill “your” mobs?

It’s tricky. My suggestion of finding and killing each veteran in a zone suffers from the same problem: what if an other player kills it in front of you? One solution could be: each veteran guards an item which has to be collected (channel). This could be a trading card of that mob or a part of a treasure map.

Rift is also a game about statistics, less about active combat. Huge talent trees with mostly uninteresting statistical advantages and a lot of similar skills. Correct me if I’m wrong. Would be a balancing nightmare if you ask me.

just found out that WoW has some sort of the arena fights / queens gauntlet already implemented since MoP O_o

Brawler’s guild
http://www.icy-veins.com/brawlers-guild-guide-wow

I’d love to see that as a permanent addition… sounds awesome imho. Queens Gauntlet evolved and put in as permanent content with a progression-system (e.g. Zone progression unlocks new enemies etc.). I loved doing arena battles when I didn’t know what else to do during Queens Gauntlet. It’s bite sized content which can be completed in a few minutes and leaves you wanting more.

A small housing idea: “neighbourhoods”

This idea combines guild halls and housing.

• Some locations in the game (example: Lion’s Arch) have neighbourhoods.
• There are various (10-30+) homes in a neighbourhood – it’s a instance for 30+ people
• guilds can purchase a neighbourhood for themselves, or:
• you live in a neighbourhood with other random players or friends as neighbours
• a neighbourhood isn’t a city only, but a whole new mini-map

Now what happens in a neighbourhood?

• each citizen has not only a base for a house but also area-slots for activities
• possible activities:
  —> horde mode (you can fight monsters you’ve unlocked via exploration in the open world / dungeons)
  —> 1vsAll king of the ring PvP arena
  —> racetracks for rollerbeetle racing including time trial (records are on a leaderboard at the entrance of that area)
  —> jumping puzzles (unlocked via finding certain structures in the open world) – including time trial leaderboards

But not only minigames…

• dynamic events happen in that zone as well
• think of it as Ebonhawke 2.0 + surrounding area

risky idea:

• each home is part of a block of 2-6 houses —> you have 1-5 neighbours
• each block has a shared mini-HoM for specific rewards (you can work together to get it filled)
• visit other blocks to take a look at their mini-HoM
  —> fill your mini-HoM with new people / friends / guildies

Now there are tons of possibilities: Shared calendars, postboxes in front of your home, invites, challenges (This is my highscore – can you beat it?), a portal to a linked waypoint appears next to your house —> you quickly find other players (from your neighbourhood) in the open world by using this personal waypoint,….

EDIT: I think it’s good for leaderboards to have a limited number of participants. Having 10.000 players who compete with you… only very few shine. A leaderboard for 30 players however would feel totally different – and you might know the people on the board as well and build strong friendships with them.

some totally unrelated idea, but it would probably fit well to zone progression:

A map-ui has 3+ layers. Make the top layer (the sky) dynamic – like clouds which get darker, the more evil is around. This should be a way to see the status of big metaevent-chains ingame without the need to be on the same map.

Imagine you are in Lions Arch. You look on the map and see how the weather above Sparkfly Fen gets worse. Dark clouds grow – which means: Tequatl might rise soon.

Now people wouldn’t sit in Lions Arch the whole evening but rather are interested what these dark clouds over zone xy might imply. This technique can be used for anything in the game, not only boss encounters.

A dynamic world, not hidden behind loading screens but for everyone to see – without breaking immersion of having APIs running. It might surprise you (spawn secret new events rarely).

Something I noticed very early in GW2’s zones: there are a LOT of veterans in the zones, and a lot of them are hidden behind mini-progress-architecture (I don’t know how to say this). They sit at the end of cavesystems, the end of wall-structures,…

It seems to me that somewhere during development skill-hunting ala GW1 was planned and then scrapped, leaving the well hidden veterans without skills.

I don’t know if this is the case, nontheless I’d like to suggest that you use that to your advantage. It would be a good start to hunt down the specific veterans on a map imho, since they are already positioned with thought in mind (it seems).

I sure know that it’s too late to implement skill-hunting, but I feel giving each veteran specific “things” people want would be the way to go.

Some spontaneous (maybe bad) ideas:

• each veteran you kill unlocks a corresponding trading card. The artwork of that monster shouldn’t be a 3D-model but drawn from one of Anet’s artists.
• —> the trading cards can be looks only OR an actual ingame card game. Killing the same type of veteran increases the level of that card – up to lv.4. Once in a city you can visit a bar and play this trading card game with others. Rules could be relatively simple.
• —> when you find additional veterans of the same type, each kill unlocks a bit of intel / lore on the card

• Find a veteran and kill him to unlock an arena fight. You go to the nearest arena and find a new battle unlocked: the veteran you killed in champion-status (maybe with 1-2 new moves). You may enter the arena with up to 2 friends (grouped). Others can watch the battle (similar to Queens Gauntlet, but with invisible barriers – battlepit). Killing the champion opens a picture on a UI-page where previously has been a question mark. Catch them all! (maybe add minis as reward-milestones)

• each veteran drops a champion-lootbag once, then never again.
• each veteran has a 20% chance to drop a piece of a map. Combine 3 parts of one map (like a puzzle) to unlock a secret encounter which triggers when you are at the target location which is then visible on the map. (secret encounter could be anything. Surprise the players!!)

…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also note I do agree that we need to continue to balance some build paradigms. Specifically support and crit. We have been working extensively on this toward the end of 2013 and will continue to do so.

Chris.

This is interesting. Are you talking about a change to these mechanics (e.g. you can only crit others from behind) or changing a few numbers? I don’t quite get what you mean with balancing build paradigms.

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.

Vick.6805:

I think the player stats are the problem, rather than the level you’re downleveled to. When I go into an area where my character is downleveled, my stat totals still seem really high compared to when I was leveling.

IMO, if a player is scaled down to level 10, then their stats should be scaled down to be equivalent to a level 10 player wearing level 10 gear.

jep, just what I was saying

Exotic gear is 13% better than rare gear if I remember correctly – but there is no exotic gear at those low levels. Wouldn’t it be enough (or too much also) to scale the weapon to the same level as the character, but only as an exotic version of a lv.10 weapon (as example)?

maybe the next stories are in the new Living Story UI which was stated to be worked on

about the exploding presents:

isn’t it like this: the ones which appear first, disappear first.

I’d love to have the Tengu as playable race. If their Dominion of the Winds became a new racial city, I would design it like Ebonhawke though. Lots of dynamic events, a hell lot of things to do, contrary to the other main cities.

As only one main city with action going on would seem a bit odd, I’d suggest designing a lot of events for the current main cities as well.

building your own skills out of skill pieces would not only be a nightmare for balancing, the profession-specific feeling would also get lost as well as the possibility for other players to “read” your actions and react the right way.

Ronah.2869:

A-Net can launch design contests for all these weapons and armors and those added to the game will receive an attribute “made by XYZ” as a reward for the designer.

the only thing I approve of, from this post

more RNG… yeah sure…. not. Thausands of armorpieces… facepalm

levels are fine, I just think the stats of your gear should get downscaled a lot more. Yes, there should be a difference between a badly geared lv.20 and a well geared lv.80 – but the current state is ridiculous. VOLKON, have you watched the clips above? If so, how can you be proud of anything you do in low level zones once you’ve outleveled them? (outleveled – a word I thought wouldn’t exist in GW2 anymore, when thinking of backscaling)

I mean… why scale the characters back at all, when there is no difference between a lv.80 and a backscaled lv.80? What more than one/two-shot can you do to an enemy?

I don’t think that I have to say too much here, in my opinion downscaling is bad and makes playing lower level zones FAR too easy

2 clips to demonstrate what I mean:

You can literally stand afk and let your passive skills / autoattack skills do the rest.

These are older clips, but I haven’t seen big changes that adress this ingame If there’s ever going to be zone progression, please tweak downscaling so that fighting is as fun as during the leveling phase.

Tecca.4036:

While they haven’t said there’s an “expansion” being worked on, there is indeed a separate team working on larger content, as the Living World team is a different team. Whatever they want to call it, expansion or not, there is something large being worked on. Beyond that, nothing else has been said. They’re contemplating how they should release these larger chunks of content, so I’m assuming they’re looking at the risks of selling them vs offering them for free with your original purchase. Though that part’s just speculation on my end.

exactly this. Can’t believe that some people still have no clue that Anet is working on “large content” that can be released in any way.

cesmode.4257:

Im comparing this thread to verticle progression and living story threads where we had much more participation.

…before the holidays

no comment.

Something I forgot to mention when I was suggesting zone progression as a way to progress your character:

I’m of the opinion that backscaling works too harsh. I once mentioned this (as a direct answer to a dev who worked on this, he asked me where I two/threeshot my enemies and I answered) but never got a response on that. I don’t feel like I have earned my gold medal in dynamic events from low level zones when playing as a lv.80 because enemies are non-threatening most of the time. I could go afk in enemy territory and my passive self-heals keep me alive (no joke).

If zone progression happens, backscaling should see a considerable rework imho. I want combat to be fun, and while leveling it is, but when going back it lost a lot in the current state imho.

Does anyone agree with me on this?

This is an older clip (GW2 AFK Slayer Achievement ), but I don’t feel that anything has changed since then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpwBkuoyuzQ

there are holidays… respect that, please! Chris already mentioned (in his leisure time) that he will be back soon and discussing with us what’s important.

Seriously, O_o

Dominus.2360:

All this talking about housing, build-variety etc. is nice, but it won’t help if players don’t get something which makes them “more shiny” compared to others. In GW1, this ‘who has more’ were basically the titles; in other games, it’s the best gear, the coolest mount, and so on.

Well this “something” could also be bigger houses, rare trophies you only get for killing strong enemies,… Housing is horizontal progression. As well as build variety (who has more skills? Who has this very special alternative skill?,…). Everything that makes you progressing in anything connected to your character(s) as long as it doesn’t make them more powerful – this is horizontal progression as far as I would understand it.

people still believe that NCsoft is the developer? O_o

petespri.6548:

What happened to the adding of new skills in 2013?

you must have missed a new heal skill for everyone and a specific new heal skin for each of the professions, which change most gameplay significantly. I mean… I love the Mesmer-heal signet which is basically a HoT when I have clones up AND it recharges my phantasm skills. It’s awesome.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

All of the major addons get updated within a few days after a patch release.

a lot of minor but still very good ones… not so much

Also a lot of major ones aren’t polished, something Blizzard never would have released.

Easlay.3297:

i joined WvsW for 1st time during the D/D ele gold age and got stomped pretty hard aswell, and was looking rly overpowered from my pov.
reason? i was totally a newcomer and a noob, and like in every PvP game, u have to pay that by get tons of kicks before learn how to walk

This isn’t the rule, I’ve had some difficult encounters first, yes – but never to the point of having me trolled for half an hour like it happened to my friends.

Nevertheless… different people have different experiences, ok. But I think mechanics to WvW – profession mechanics – should be taught in PvE. You learn to dodge in PvE. You learn to use stunbreakers in PvE (Orr). Why not design difficult encounters who teach you how to best deal with stealthed enemies?

@mcnick: leveling a skill to make it more powerful?

Easlay.3297:

@marcus: give up on WvW after 1h is nosense; means they are not suited for player vs player games, but just for limited player vs IA opponent games, that are easy predictable to deal with and rather boring.

I’m sorry, but you don’t know my friends. I totally get that, if I had been in the same situation – encountering good thief-players when still new to WvW – I probably would have left too, especially since it just looks overpowered.

(they got trolled pretty hard and never made it to the zerg)

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Stealth is not difficult to deal with. I learned how in realation to what I played, so can you if you just apply yourself instead of asking for things to be changed to suit your difficencies.

The thing is: you have to learn how to deal with it, which is much harder than learning how to deal with a charging warrior or dodging out of red circles. Most players who don’t spend too much time in PvP/WvW don’t know any of that since this was never taught by any content in PvE.

And then look at PvErs who try WvW for the first time. Two of my friends encountered a few thieves in their first hour of playing WvW / any PvP content in that game. Well, this was last year and none of them has returned to WvW yet.

I also agree with Latinkuro about the addon statement. I played WoW for years and used tons of addons which all seemed to be too good to be true. Well, you surely can understand the frustration when suddenly addons won’t get supported anymore and WoW brings the next big update.

And seriously, if you played WoW with fully configured keys (and you need more keys in WoW than you have fingers on 3 hands) and then go back to the standard settings… no way!!

Latinkuro.9420:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

@SweetFX question: nevermind, just read that I can’t use Teamspeak and SweetFX at the same time —> not interested anymore

huh, where did you read that crap ? hahahahaha
I use sweetFX and I use teamspeak all the time mate, no problem what so ever.
my guild requires team speak for any multi player activity so.

Thanks, seems it was a very old comment. Tried it and it’s awesome. Haven’t experienced any zerg battles with it, but I’ll see

thanks for the suggestion, trying overwolf now… seems to work fine

you know what? I just watched a few youtube clips on how to play a thief and it just looks like too much fun. I’m going to level up my thief and start having fun in WvW against some poor solos. Don’t nerf stealth now. :P

nexxe.7081:

You are wrong. Holding right mouse button down doesn’t turn your character. It never has. There have been countless threads on this subject in the suggestions forum since beta. Holding either left or right mouse button down function the same.
Read the last 2 words in my quote… it only works while moving.

I can only assume that we both mean different things my friend. When I’m standing on the gates of our keep I constantly hold down the right mouse button and watch my surroundings that way. I can do the same with the left mouse button.

When I hold the left mouse button while running, I can watch behind me while running in the previous direction. If I do the same with the right mouse button, my character runs in the direction I’m looking.

Edit: I think I begin to understand what you mean. Yes, your character doesn’t turn around while holding right, still the camera turns and you can see everything in front and behind you.

vincecontix.1264:

in team play only takes one second to kill a thief out of stealth and sic em is long range skill and cannot be dodged. I know lots rangers who have caused the death of many thiefs using this skill.

And what build did those rangers play? O_o Furthermore: thieves are a danger to small groups, not bigger ones. How likely is it to have a Ranger around all the time, when playing with 2-5 random players?

Can other professions to the same thing?

I’d approve of the idea that at least cc-skills should reveal thieves.

nexxe.7081:

The only way to effectively turn your character, is with the right-mouse button, but this can only happen while moving.

ehm… no. I turn my character all the time with only using the mouse.

Left click hold + move the mouse turns camera but not you,
right click hold + move the mouse turns your whole character.

Wasbunny.6531:

@Marcus Greythorne: The ways to obtain Dragonite don’t seem that limited to me. I don’t WvW so I get all I need by doing temples in Orr, world bosses and dungeons…I guess my point being I enjoy doing those things anyway so I never feel like it’s a grind.

Well maybe the game isn’t handholding the player that much (which is a good thing to a lot of people), so many people “forget” that there are different options and feel that they have to grind to reach their goals.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Then again, I don’t like that people are using dragon wing backpacks because they break my immersion. Yet the popularity of the wings suggests that others don’t agree with me on that. So perhaps my opinion is that of a minority.

Haha, I’m with you on this. I really would love the option to disable any specific piece of gear from my view, but I guess such an option is unrealistic. At least you can’t wear townclothes in battle which guarantees that I won’t see things like boxing gloves in WvW.

I think you have a point, well I’d love to have more sets which blur the line – some of them are my favourites. People are already sick of trenchcoats for medium armor classes, why not give them two or three sets which look totally different?

I think Anet’s armor-designers also should take inspiration from many different fantasy-genre sources. Why not start a CDI where people could post their favourite suggestions (images) and discuss these with the designers themselves.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Zanshin.5379:

Thieves and mesmers should have a skill to reveal other stealthed thieves and mesmers.

Rangers have that skill. “sic’ em.” The pet will reveal those in stealth.

for 4 seconds on a 40 sec. cooldown while it takes away an important utility skill slot – I don’t think anyone feels like it’s worth it

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Sic_%27Em%22

@Wasbunny: I think most of the people who talk about grind in GW2 are those who limit themselves to one specific kind of content and ignore the rest. If you never play WvW, for example, your source of Dragonite Ore is relatively limited.

Ronah.2869:

As someone said before, if you’ve played other MMOs before GW2, there is a chance you may turn back to them, but if GW2 is your first MMO then you will not like others more

I’ve played WoW for years. After GW2 I couldn’t play without dodge, the ability to hit without target or casting on the move. And no Mesmer… no thanks!

I also agree on most points in OP, GW2 is just well designed.

I’m interested in the tool SweetFX but read in earlier posts that it doesn’t work with Teamspeak (overlay – what is an overlay)?

Since I’m playing a lot of WvW, this wouldn’t work for me. Do you have an idea if the current version of SweetFX works with TS3?

@SweetFX question: nevermind, just read that I can’t use Teamspeak and SweetFX at the same time —> not interested anymore

Latinkuro.9420:

- For the particle effects issue, there is actually something that does wonders atm.
SweetFX, has reduced my particle effects problem to the point I can actually see the Boss telegraphs and all, and I’m a melee warrior so.

what settings do you use for making SweetFX reduce the particle effects? I wonder if it’s worth downloading it.

Romek.4201:

qol

i want buff food slot in characterwindow where can put in a stack buff food and it use it when buff runs out on me – thx

I’m against more screen clutter, instead a reward could be a little gadged, where people could put in up to 4 stacks of buff-food and the gadget automatically uses the food inside once the current one runs out.

I’d have nothing against such slots in the hero-window either, just not in the game UI.
-) a slot for minis in the hero ui
-) a slot for that buff-food gadget in the hero ui
-) an additional armor slot for each piece for cosmetics in the hero ui

Turtle Dragon.9241:

No, it should be Stealthed players can see Stealthed players. That way Thieves become instant counters to Thieves in any 1v1 situation.

I love this idea, I’m not sure of all the rest of your suggestion though.

When I first heard about stealth in GW2 (I think it was long before Beta) it sounded more like this:

When you’re hit in stealth, you will be revealed for a short amount of time. Dots will reveal the stealthed character as long as he takes damage from it.

Wouldn’t this be a more interesting stealth-mechanic and more fun to 90% of the playerbase? What do you think?

Just to make it clear: I do report those players ingame, but there is no option for reporting “hackers” and I don’t know if the option “botting” is appropriate in that szenario.

Nike.2631:

I just saw a post saying Traits couldn’t/shouldn’t unlock new weapons… and I think that allowing them to do so is a fabulous idea.

In the Engineer class we already see the trade-off of give up a utility (or even elite!) skill slot for a new tray of 1-5 buttons. It’s not a big leap to allowing you to access a new left-hand tray with a Trait. And while you could do it as whole new weapon choices with something like an Elementalist’s adept-tier “Battlemage” trait that allows them to use 1h swords in either their main hand, off-hand, or both… it also could open the door to a whole slew of ‘Technique’ traits that substitute new skills for old on existing weapons. Imagine a “Dragonfly Dagger Technique” trait Thieves could take that would replace their Dagger buttons 1 and 2 and give them new skills in those slots that throw their dagger.

While opening up new weapon choices is something I might prefer to see as an unlock or the reward for a task-chain, the idea of managing the “I’d like new skills for existing weapons” that has been brought up might be handled very tidily by the addition of some new ‘technique traits’. And because they pay a trait as a cost, those new buttons could be pretty juicy in what they deliver .

I love that idea. Instead of creating grind in order to progress in a type of subclass, which would be horrible for alt-lovers since they’d have to spend huge amount of time on getting all their characters to subclasses, you create a new trait which opens up a subclass.

(a different idea with this in mind: allow everyone who uses the trait “Battlemage” to use heavy OR light armor skins – not in combination because of clipping though).

Guhracie.3419:

I’m on holiday for New Year’s, but one thing I really wanted to bring up before I forget is the thrill of finding loot. I recently got my necromancer to 80 and when I decided to gear her up, do you know what I did? I opened the trading post, because I wanted the Phoenix Reborn axe.

Maybe this is on me, but does anybody else miss loot tables? The idea of going somewhere to get a specific item with a reasonable chance of getting that item is something that I miss. I realize that karma gear and dungeon gear are starter sets of gear and can be obtained by doing specific content, but it would be nice if there were some rhyme or reason to where and how things drop. (This is kind of a supporting structure to visual customization, in case you’re wondering why this is coming up in a discussion about horizontal progression.) I kept meaning to mention this and getting side-tracked by all the good ideas. I’ll be back to posting in the New Year! Be safe, everyone, and have a good one!

I agree. While we have loot tables (e.g. Final Rest drops from the Shadow Behemoth) the % is just far too low to give skin-hunting a real chance of being fun.

BUT it makes sense in that kontext since the Shadow Behemoth is one of the auto-afk bosses which aren’t on the same level as Tequatl yet. The risk-reward ratio is quite fine here. Harder content should have much higher droprates though. I’d love to see such higher droprates in the open world, but it’s difficult because most content can be zerged down quite easily.

I like how low level hearts of specific zones have specific parts of armorsets and in order to get a full set, you might have to unlock various hearts of that zone. This is far superior to buying armor on the TP imho. Orr’s karma vendors also have sets with stats spread over the temples, so this is fine for me also. What I get from that is that getting new loot via karma is well executed in GW2, but when it comes to the TP it gets worse in the sense of progression and exitement.

What an awesome game GW2 would be without the Mystic Forge and the TP,… I wonder?! Blizzard realized this with Diablo3 and gets rid of the Auction House with the next Addon.

adubb.2453:

Isaiah actually replied to my original post about mixing and matching armor sets and giving you a choice between types of armor for all classes. First of all, without a major rework of how armor is rendered, you quite literally can’t mix and match armor types. It simply doesn’t work. Secondly, he mentioned that giving all classes the ability to switch between all armor types runs the risk of diluting the purpose of having separate classes altogether.

Compromise
What if the choice was purely aesthetic? No stat buffs whatsoever, you could just wear whatever the heck you wanted to, as long as all your armor pieces were the same type.

I’m all for your compromise, you don’t have to be able to mix different armor types, it would just be awesome to wear sets from other professions to expand the sense of being a unique snowflake. Imagine a warrior with dual swords wearing leather armor or a guardian wearing a light robe being more of a battle-cleric.