Guild Wars 2

The Lost Witch.7601:

Rin.1046:

Every profession being able to wear all types of armor

Something to keep in mind:

If every player could wear any type of armor, that takes away a tool for identification.

I hear this a lot, but think of it…

• Asura are already too small to make out armor details, even from a few yards away (watch combat here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFLoModaqdo)
• new Skins like Grenths Hood already blur the lines (example: https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/125080/gw335.jpg , what’s his profession? His/Her?
• some armorsets are already designed to look like a different weight-class (example: http://argos-soft.net/GW2/ArmorGallery/index.php?color=10&sex=0&race=3&w=1&skinID=kodanli&lang=en) I love that set.

Most of the time I play WvW and before I can see which armor the enemy is wearing I see his skills and weapons – or none of it (Zerg).

When we engaged a golem in WvW yesterday, the player who used it obviously used a speedhack and “ran” away much faster than we could to hunt him down.

I was pretty angry, what can I do to end this in our current match? Just a report for… botting? Or is a fast response by Anet possible if I record it and post it here in the forums?

Also, shouldn’t be the whole server who supported this / played along be punished? Guys were attacking alongside this hacker.

Have you experienced such a thing?

OneManArmy.9732:

does anyone talked about titles?

I have a suggestion how to progress with titles:

Create new titles which can be unlocked when merging other titles. You need certain requisites for these.

example
Playing a thief + Title for completing all jumping puzzles + Title “Sanctum Sprinter” = Title “Shinobi”

draxynnic

Simply expanding the options within a profession, without restricting them to subclasses, allows players to come up with their own combinations without being hindered by unnecessary artificial restrictions.

Nicely said, I agree with your post.

In my opinion, if there were a subclass-system in GW2, I’d make it 100% cosmetics only, but even then it would be quite restricting.

In contrary, instead of restrictions I’d open the game even more. Give heavy armor professions the ability (I had a suggestion earlier how to do this, for example) to wear medium and light armor. This would vastly increase the possible armorsets one can wear considerably. Not to think of all the possible combinations.

To balance the lack of armor, you could give Warriors and Guardians a 5% speed-bonus when wearing light or medium armor. Elementalists on the other hand would get a bit more armor but lose 3% of their power and condition damage.

Or make it cosmetic only (I’d like that more, since it should be about horizontal progression) and make the armor-bonus characterbound, not armorbound, so that Elementalists would still have their low armor when wearing heavier stuff.

Romek.4201:

Fractal Speedclear-Leaderbaord per path

• on lvl 20, 30, 40, 50
• special Rewards for being near Top Speed 10% slower 15% slower and so on

meh, I can see all the berserkers out there rejoicing, but nobody else

idea for Order progression:

Priory progression:

• There are tons of artifacts in the game. For each artifact you complete, you gain progression for the order of Priory.
• Each artifact consists of 6 or more parts, which have to be combined to complete it.

But where do you find these pieces? Each artifact belongs to a creature family, like the “Dredge Codex of the 1st Age”. Think of it like this:

• some pages drop from specific/non-random dredge veterans (droprate: 100%) all over the world
• some pages can be found in dredge structures
• some pages are the reward for completing specific dredge-related events

Of course these artifacts / pieces of artifacts are non-tradeable. Once you have all parts of an artifact, you need to talk to one specific related npc. Almost all of the related npcs can give you a hint where to go to combine the artifact. Here: talk to any friendly dredge in the game while having all parts of the dredge artifact. 70 % of these npcs will give you a name of a location and the target zone. Now you’ll have to look for this location on your zone map or (if you haven’t found it yet) look for yourself in that zone.

Now what happens if you’ve arrived in the target location? There may be various things that can happen now in order to complete your artifact.

-) You may find an npc who is able to combine the artifacts, like a specific smith
-) You may trigger an event where assassins try to kill you, but as you defeat them you get a missing piece from them which completes the artifact.
…

reward
A complete artifact not only drives your progress at the Order, but also unlocks that artifact for you to use (unlimited uses). It’s stored in the Priory Archives for you. The “Dredge Codex of the 1st Age” might be a codex with lore about the dredge race. You might also have artifacts in form of weapon skins, unique bags, environmental weapons (like the fire elemental powder), etc.

but why like this?

• You get the pieces while playing the game
• You get little missions when you’ve found all parts of one piece…
• … and a very specific reward for completing it
• this means new lore, new reward types,… it can be anything
• You get more and more pieces over time when playing a variety of content – a reward for going out in the world and explore it
• There is no farming here, just tons of shortterm goals which combine to a huge longterm goal: Priory progression. Each Priory rank also unlocks new rewards and achievement-categories.

Markus.9084:

- why don’t we have this kind of topic in other languages ? Not a single red post about Horizontal Progression in De, Fr or SP…. And you said here :
“Our plan is to localize all this into German, French, and Spanish, so everyone can participate equally across each of our forum communities.”

I hope you’ll improve this point in 2014.

I’m from Austria and I really don’t mind that there is no translation / topic in the german forums. Why? Because there is a very limited number of developers who read this thread and it would take ages to translate it and also read it. As we learn English even before secondary 1 it should be no problem to post our ideas here and understand it perfectly imho. Give the guys a break.

Imagine you’d be a teacher in a class of 200 people instead of 25… yes, there would be some great ideas, but the teacher would have very little time to focus on one of these without frustrating the other 199 students.

I think the question Anet has to ask themselves should be:

How can we combine horizontal progression with one of the core aspects of the game: exploration, without having it feel grindy. And how can we do this without having the player experiencing the same thing again when he starts a new character (avoiding traditional quests).

The Great Al.2546:

Thoughts? Would love to hear some interesting ways to go about obtaining these ‘horizontal’ rewards.

Well, I was exactly adressing that dilemma with my suggestions of zone progression (in a non-grindy way like finding unique events instead of repeating the same over and over) and dynamic order quests (NPCs who wander around in the world and have certain tasks for you).

I also like the idea about npcs who direct you to existing events in order to help one of the Orders and progressing via Duty Points.

Things where you have to do multiple specific open world activities – a big variety – rather than achieving goals by doing literally anything (which leads to grinding the most effective thing over and over).

I think it’s also important to value the dynamic aspect. GW2 was designed to be different each time you start a new character. In the end it didn’t work out quite as well, since events rotate in short intervalls and there aren’t enough of them – but still…
New content should lead players to explore the zones, not have them (as you put it nicely) follow a guide from one waypoint to another. This could be achieved by roaming npcs which need to be found first – which may trigger events.

Furthermore I also think that flagging things on the map is counterproductive to exploration. We had updates where you had to find gifts, halloween doors,… on the map, fight the things that come out of it and move on to the next. The fact that these were flagged on the map made a race out of it, rather than finding them while exploring the zone. I didn’t enjoy that.

Synergies gave me the following idea:

You can unlock Elite-Skills called Synergy-xy (where xy stands for a profession). Instead of using a standard elite skill you can start the synergy, but only if the chosen synergy-elite profession is in close proximity to you. If not, the skill is greyed out.

Example: A guardian has chosen the elite: “Elementalist Synergy”. He now has access to skill xy / passive xy, but only if an Elementalist is in 600 yards range.

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

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

@AikonFelcis II:
Those NPCs who give you direction (like Almorra in your example) could rotate orders, so that if feels less like a quest but rather than a guide to direct you to action.

At 5:00 Almorra sends you to Tequatl, he might spawn soon. (yay, no Dragontimer needed). 15min later Almorra sends a few of their troops towards a Metaevent in zone XY. Help the soldiers and get Duty points for each resurrected or buffed Vigil-member / assisted kills.

Give Almorra 40+ different tasks which rotate randomly / as the Meta-events begin.

@AikunFelcis:
I like some aspects of your idea, here a few questions:

1.) Are you aware that anyone can join in high-rank events (like the battle in Ebonhawke) once a event is triggered by a high rank member? It’s certainly a good thing, but it must feel weird since you have those higher rank battles and then go back to low rank activities like killing rats in the basement.

2.) You wrote: “other people from your order can help you”. Does this mean that now non-order players can’t join in those events? Confused.

3.) Quests in Vigil Keep. Did you read my post about Anets reasons why they didn’t add quests? It would feel the same to everyone who has joined the order. How would you adress this?

4.) I like the idea of npcs who send you to different regions of the world to complete certain events. Just wanted to emphasize this, I love it. It gives more direction to specific content other than having players find things by themselves all the time. Hearts are too static imho, you do your stuff in the heart-location and that’s it. Events can lead players to new locations. Chains of events.

Quests may feel static, but why not have Quest-npcs who wander around in the world? Find them and they send you to new locations. Once he sent you away a new event related to the quest might trigger and stays active for a limited time at the target location.

Chrispy.5641:

At that point it kind of becomes less house, more Littlebigplanet (still cool, but still…..).

I know,…

think of it like that:
You have a few lines where you can progress:
1.) House line (unlock new furniture, create a home)
2.) Battle line (unlock new monsters, create a mini dungeon)
3.) Jumping puzzle line (unlock platforms, traps, create a JP)
…

It’s up to you how your instance looks like and you can combine everything you’ve unlocked. Other players never know what they’ll find in that cave, clearing,… Once they opened it, it will stay permanently if you like.

to build up on that idea of instanced home instances in the world

• homes (like caves) can also be built as mini-dungeons, as mini jumping puzzles or mini-puzzles or even races (like the guild-sprint).
• while players progress in that housing system they unlock new enemies. New platforms to jump on or new animals you can play as in race-like activities.

Example:
Player X has unlocked a troll champion, he can put it into the instance. Each champion goes with a big chest, but these instances can only be visited by a 5man group max.

Player Y chose the path of the jumping puzzle. He hasn’t unlocked an champion of any enemy-type, but he has unlocked a few traps and platforms for a small jumping puzzle.

Player Z has unlocked both, veterans and platforms. He can create a really challenging jumping puzzle with enemies alongside it. Enemies can only be set in a limited number and on certain places, so that the puzzle can’t be too hard. Player Z has also decided to build his home at the end of the JP. Of course he knows a shortcut to this location.

Chrispy.5641:

You can’t do that with a house that only ever going to be Visual, and not only that, but like I said, almost no one will ever see it.

How do you get past that? Not a single person on this thread has been able to get past that issue.

I’m not in favour of housing because of the reason that I mostly play alone or with some strangers in WvW. If housing happens though, it would be nice to see these points adressed.

We know houses can’t work in the open world just because there are far too many players on each server to hinder certain trolls to build those houses in places where it really shouldn’t be. (hope this is still english).

So instances would probably be the right decision. LotRO had a district system: you had instances which had a lot of houses in it, a neighborhood if you like. In that system you could visit houses of a lot of other players. I like this system a lot.

Personally I find it boring to go to other players houses when nothing happens there. I think some of the new mmos have housing where you actually can set up activities for other players.

What if… you find a cave in the open world. You enter the cave and an instance loads. Now you’re in a player created cave-home instance where you find the house of a random player who chose to build a cave home. This player could build this cave and even hide a treasure wherever he wanted in that cave. Once you’ve entered this cave, the same cave will be loaded whenever you enter with that character. Other players could find a cave from an other player who decided to build a cave-home.

Players might build their homes in caves, clearings or even in city-homes. Certain spots in the open world would be open for the player to build a home. If you haven’t built a home yet, when loading one of these maps you’ll be asked if you like to build your home there or visit another players home.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Skin Locker

If you only had one unlocked when you log in, then by the end of your play session you have 3, then you’ve progressed, so to speak.

What I’d like to see when this happens: Milestones. It probably takes forever to complete a collection, so I’d give players certain rewards for completing milestones.

This way progression doesn’t feel endless (like it does now for Legendaries – at least to me personally).

TheDaiBish.9735:

What about if the wardrobe also had another system built in, where you could store your favourite mix and match armour and weapon skins in, as well as their dye channels? Kind of like a template so you don’t have to individually withdraw skins to get your look?

For example:

Template 1 might have the Vigil Boots, Trousers and Helm, and the Orr Karma Shoulders, Chest and Gloves with Red and Black Dye.

whoa nice one! I’d like this. They could even charge gems for each template slots, and allow 10+ templates to be purchaseable. I could see people buying all these and more, if possible.

Harbard.5738:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The personal story instances are the only place I can see this happening. I don’t think it’s worth the development time for that limited gameplay content aspect.

You’ve got a point. What if barren group events could let you get your heroes out? If there’s no one out, you can call your heroes. So many dead zones and untouched group events out there that could use this…

People would probably change servers to low populated ones, to play with their heroes. WAIT… this is actually not bad at all… O_o

I’m starting to like that idea. Let’s see. If a zone becomes more and more crowded, the heroes would leave you… run away. Even when the party isn’t full of Logans. Hmm. But would you be happy to see other players? These would drive my loyal Alts away.

I’m indecisive about that suggestion.

Harbard.5738:

Well this is a horizontal progression CDI. They’re asking specifically about progression and not all other ways of keep people playing PvE. But it’s obvious that if nothing is done in the open world and if they don’t give us a real reason to run events with everyone on all zones other than grind for pink crap, then it’s all for nothing. No matter how many weapons and skills, and skins and wardrobes they dump in the game. That’s the core PvE game and it needs love.

I wonder what happened to that talk about rotating DEs across the zones and make things more interesting. I remember Colin saying it was relatively cheap to make them and that they could add more of them across the zones and rotate them. What happened to that?

If they could tie the whole faction thing with more dynamic and rotating events and a reason to play in the open world, coupled with living story and WITH those horizontal rewards/progression, that would make PvE it come alive again. But that needs its own CDI (asap, imo).

Well I think this would be the place to discuss this. Horizontal progression should happen in gameplay to keep players playing because currently we do dynamic events but get not much out of it but generic rewards like xp, karma and coins.

If people would get unlocks from doing open world content, they’d probably do more of it.

In an earlier forum post one of the devs stated that they had added new events like the ones mentioned by Colin to (last years) Halloween event. He came to the conclusion that because of lack of player feedback this isn’t something players enjoy, so they scrapped the idea of adding new events and increasing the rotation timers of existing ones.

My guess is that instead of adding new events to existing zones permanently, Anet developed those new events we get through the living world releases. The thing is: we are far away from a 200% increase of number of events per zone like Colin mentioned. (His words were: in a zone which offers 100 events at release, a year from now you will see 300 events – something like that).

I see now that just more events wouldn’t have changed all too much, since players have no real drive to do these (other than fun) in the first place. It seems to me that progression through doing these events is missing. It could be any progression, really.

• once you’ve seen 80% of the events in a zone, you unlock the ability to start certain new events by triggering those through npcs.
• once you’ve done 15 unique events in a zone, you get access to new armor skins
• once you’ve pushed a number of chain events to the end point, you get…
  …

Get that purpose to do specific zones, specific enemies, specific things in the game and people would do it… then add more of it. Not before.

(A little reminder: once we had those theories, that certain specific bosses drop the very unique staff skin “Final Rest”, tons of people run these bosses whenever they could. Those guys had a purpose. They weren’t playing trading post to buy it with farmed gold, because it wasn’t even in the trading post. It may have felt grindy (bad, hush) but at least they had a goal to work towards to. Yeah, a Legendary might be the same thing… but a.) you can buy it with real money and b.) the goal is too long-term and the UI which shows progression towards it (the bank) is not really userfriendly at all. It’s quite difficult to see your progression towards a Legendary)

I’m not sure how heroes could possibly be implemented to GW2 in the right way…

GW1 was an instanced game for 8 players max. if I remember correctly. Whenever you visited an outpost (more than 8 players) the heroes were put aside – you were on your own again.

Think of it:
-) PvE open world. Massive lag when a group of players runs around because each of them has 5 npcs following. We already see this problem in WvW.
-) WvW. I kill one of my enemies characters and he still has 4 others? Not to mention the even bigger lag issues
-) Dungeons. This would only work if bosses were meatsacks. Well, some are, but the newer dungeon bosses need the players to act intelligently – something an AI can’t do currently.

The personal story instances are the only place I can see this happening. I don’t think it’s worth the development time for that limited gameplay content aspect.

Drakenvold.9761:

yup,also the Order missions and reputation needs to be new content,nothing game changing or out of what it already exists in game but if i have to repeat DE or kill the already existing bosses its a grind,it can be implemented with new dialogue,new things to do,actual mission and order related stuff

I think this is one of the biggest challenges, to create meaningful content in the existing zones which doesn’t involve / doesn’t feel grind(y).

I also think that Anet misses a lot of opportunities for content. The new healing skills… you simply unlock them for a few skillpoints. My main has more than 100 skillpoints. Why not just create 8 new npcs with small dialogues and (non grindy) tasks to unlock the ability to buy the new skill with skillpoints?

All the UI unlocks are missed opportunities imho, when not earned through interesting gameplay with a lore explanation. What if we get new weapons unlocked for our professions without any task, any explanation, any challenge? I’d be disappointed for sure.

yeah, I just wonder why people have certain things like these in their top3, that’s all. But to each his own

Chrispy.5641:

Dang, weapon skills are pulling ahead of everything else in this thread. I hope its relatively cheap(er than other features) to implement.

this is one of my biggest fears, people want more of the same… Anet already works on new weapons/armors and skill… shouldn’t here be more discussion about new ideas? If Anet thinks that the lack of new skills, weapons and armors is our biggest flaw, then I’d see a boring GW2 future.

Imho the reason why people don’t go to zones needs to be adressed in the first place. What good are new skills if you find no interesting reason to go out there (except WvW) and use it?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are getting close to the formulate section of the thread now and you will see more opinion and metric based discussion from me and everyone else.

Chris

This really gets me excited Chris, I think we need a bit more direction from you devs what works and doesn’t work for you in order to develop good ideas together.

So without a reply from a dev on the idea of zone progression, I try to evolve this idea since I think it is against the design decision of an ever changing world.

Zone progression might be too static. It’s always the same. Maybe it would be more in Anets spirit to make this zone progression more dynamic and bind it to factions on the world, who move around.

Think of it like this: There are small parties of npcs who represent a faction and move around in the world (It’s a bit like Nicolas the Traveller). Possible tasks in order to progress:

A group of Kodan advanced to snowden drifts

• a Kodan scout is missing – try to find him in (Jumping Puzzle xy)
• 15 members of the group tried to help local folks (15 different standard events in that zone have Kodan). Find them, help them and lead them back to the group.
• A Kodan scientist looks for critters to find out if there are signs of corruption. Find and collect 15 different critters.
• The camp needs supply from local surroundings, find and gather 25 wood/ore/herbs from that zone.
• A Kodan wants to trade his rare (random rare or exotic+) items with you, but he want’s an other rare item in return. It’s a rare artifact which only drops from certain mobs in that area. Find such an artifact and you might choose one of three rare (+) items in return (all of them have a Kodan-theme).
• Visit 6 Kodan scouts. They watch over half of the vistas on the map. Find them.

Now after 1 week the group moves to a new zone, but the progression isn’t lost for you. All the above objectives stay exactly the same in the new zone: Find and do a jumping puzzle, find and do 15 unique events,… . If you follow the faction and help them in their endevors, you’ll progress and unlock new exiting faction-specific rewards.

Basically it’s dynamic quests.

No new content, instead Anet uses already existing content to experience it in a new form.

Ronah.2869:

So instead of quests we have heart quests + Vistas, Pois and Skill points

In case you missed it: hearts were implemented as a guide to event-hubs since test-players had no idea where to go in the beginning. They were overwhelmed by the freedom of a dynamic world.

I want to emphasize this:

Anet

It can’t be something that when players run out of things to do we give them more challenges that they need to grind out to do and that add another 100 hours to the game.

It’s pretty clear that Anet is against some of our ideas here.

At one stage Anet had the plan to integrate tons of new events in already existing zones. Because of poor player feedback (?) this idea was somehow scrapped.

I think it would have worked out quite well, if players would see a purpose going to the zones in the first place. Either the purpose is events which are so fun, that you love to return to that zone just for these events, or decent rewards. The nature of dynamic events – dynamic = not always there – makes it really difficult to visit specific events though, so I guess you need just a better reward system or a MUCH higher density of new events.

something interesting I found when looking for another source:

why there are no quests in GW2:

Why did we get rid of quests? We got rid of quests because it forced the world to not change. Every new player that comes into the game has to do the same quests in the same order. How do you try to do that and have the sense that a player’s actions can change the world? Sure my actions can change the world to a certain degree, but not in the sense of ever changing a quest or the circumstances that are causing a quest-giver to say they need your help. So we thought that the kind of content that you release into the world needs to be the opposite of that. It can’t be something that when players run out of things to do we give them more challenges that they need to grind out to do and that add another 100 hours to the game. It just doesn’t work. If you want to be able to have players impacting the world around them, not just progressing and leaving the old stuff behind, then all of your content needs to be about impacting the world." source: http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=32955&storypage=2

relevant because players suggested Order-quests

Khunvyel.3972:

Again, people, don’t you realize that you are wanting and suggesting things which are going to strangle future expansion of the game? We have 8 professions by now. Such a thing COULD become it’s own profession. And it should, quite frankly, instead of violating the theme and style of existing classes.

Anet once stated in an earlier interview, that it’s more likely to add more weapons to current professions than adding another profession. I like this decision because this means I don’t have to level up another character but instead get more depth to my current characters.

I’m going to look for the source for you.
Edit: source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Weapons-before-Professions/first#post2426745

titles + build combined progression

• you choose a certain build (e.g. 30 points in the beastmaster traitline adds “Beastmaster” next to your name in the hero window
• if you complete events / get wxp / complete dungeons / … while having this build active, you progress towards a new title:
• “Beastmaster Adept” – “Beastmaster Hero” – “Beastmaster Champion”

Change the build and you’ll progress in an other build-specific title.

zones in general need a much higher variety of things to do imho. Look at the success of WoW’s timeless isle, there’s so much to do there… things for everyone.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=219459/timeless-isle-guide-coins-achievements-maps-rares-and-more
http://www.icy-veins.com/timeless-isle-wow

Hmm… horizontal progression + costume slots + lore + new weapons…

Imagine:

• every zone has zone progression
• there are “old cross profession npcs” in the zones (e.g. a Warrior/Elementalist npc is located in Timberline Falls)
• these NPCs allow to unlock a costume slot of a specific armor combination (e.g. a Warrior/Elementalist npc allows Elementalists to put heavy armor in the costume slot / wear heavy armor; and also allows Warriors to use light armor as well)
• in order to make this available to your character, you have to progress in that zone (zoneprogression) which includes certain tasks from that NPC.
• the pinnacle of each of those npcs progression would be a new weapon for certain professions (Ele – mainhand sword)

in short:
Example: A warrior/ele npc unlocks a heavy armor costume slot for eles and (further down the progression road) unlocks a new weapon (sword) for eles.

Each withdraw of a skin (which has been stored by the use of a transmutation stone = gems) costs karma.

to further develop this idea:

• give each npc a certain set of armor which fits his profession/combination.
• you can purchase this armor set (e.g. a Warrior/Ele has a Battlemage armorset – skin/costume only)
• it’s a high tier zone-progression reward which costs a lot of karma

My new No.1:

A skin-system like LotRO where players can put in any armor in the “costume slot”.

To make money with this system Anet could
-) charge gems for each “costume slot” – not accountbound but souldbound.
-) charge gems for every time you want to put a non-profession armor in the costume slot

Laurelinde has some good points about the transmutation system, I also like TheDaiBish’s suggestion. This would greatly improve the variety of armor you can wear on your character so people would have much more to work towards to.

Also people would buy much more costumes in the gem store.

Is it really that important to recognize a profession by the armor it’s wearing? I saw some warrior running around with the new grenth-hood skin from the gemstore… it looks really cool and it already destroys the possibility to recognize the profession of that player.

Ronah.2869:

No I want a warrior with a scepter and dagger summoning minions

Then give the warrior the new weapon scepter which has a dark-theme (summoning minions) and a dagger. Taught by a “deathknight” themed npc (A necro-warrior) who survived the old days of GW1.

exactly what Morrigan says, giving each professions new weapons would make professions even more unique. You want a Warrior/Elementalist? Give the Elementalist a mainhand sword (+ offhand sword). Now you have a sword wielding Elementalist (= Battlemage) who has very unique new sword skills instead of having a warrior/ele who has warrior sword skills.

What I can imagine happening: adding new utility skills for specific professions, which have a certain flair. Combining it with one of Nike’s suggestions: a battlemaster who still knows certain fighting techniques from the old days teaches the players his skills (requirement: certain tasks / challenges to unlock).

Example: Warriors and Elementalists can unlock a utility skill called “XY” which shares the characteristics of warrior skills and elementalist skills.

@ people who want more skills (me included): Currently professions have about 70 skills (here: Guardian, included underwater skills). To develop that number of skills the devs needed literally years…

… and then guys come along and demand 40 new skills per profession. Seriously? How can this be feasible in any way? I’d love 40 new skills per profession, but I think more realistic would be a new weapon (3-5 skills) per profession and maybe 1-5 utility skills… and I assume this takes quite a while to design and balance.

Morrigan.2809:

I can’t see your system adding anything to be honest

… it is a system that grows your character and makes it more unique and gives you varied and interesting ways to play that character- to differentiate from your other characters and from those around you so that everyone does not end up the same or every class end up playing the same.

I agree, an Elementalist shouldn’t feel like a Ranger but an highly developed unique Elementalist imho.

Margareeta.3461:

2) Add meaning to existing Personality System
(Charm = Foes less aggressive; Dignity = Foes like they are now; Ferocity = Even yellow and white foes are attacking)

Shouldn’t yellow and white mobs be scared from a ferocious character and run away?

One particular thing I loved about GW1 was the fact that enemies patrolled the area in groups, so you had to watch out for strong patrols to make it through the zone alive. There is one of these patrols (with a champion leader) in one of the north-eastern crystal zones and I really like that…

… have some enemy groups which are really strong and make weaker players want to avoid an encounter at any cost. Areas which hold powerful secrets but are guarded by strong foes. Currently you just run by any encounter with ease.

1.) Head Hunter Challenges:
Fight champions you find on a map in an arena (in each zone) – find and kill them all! Arenas also offer dueling queues against other players.
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/11#post3414208)

2.) Spirit Dancer Mode:
In short: you toggle the Spirit Dancer Mode and from then on hidden demons, evil spirits and other evils appear in the world. Sometimes they are the ancestors of living creatures and join them in battle. They only aggro Spirit Dancers and heroes have to fight both: demons and normal creatures.
A version of a hardmode system in the open world, for people who have progressed past maximal level and world completion.
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/15#post3420201)

3.) Zone Progression:
A tokensystem for each zone which isn’t about grind but finding unique events, artifacts, secrets,… in that zone. More things to do in each zone and prestige skins for people who found / experienced most of it.

Worth mentioning:
-) The New Masters – Nike’s awesome idea how to implement new weapons
-) the lore codex, an awesome idea to unlock lore entries and collecting those
-) “guards and treasure maps” https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/11#post3414263
-) mounts as a +30% speed buff for everyone + a drastical decrease of waypoints (only 1 per map) but instead allowing summoning of friends once each 15min.

I’m currently playing with the thought of making it possible to allow far progressed characters to start “hardmode events” in the normal open world. The key here: those mobs don’t aggro normal players and can’t be hurt by those (no zerging down a mob). These mobs just care about the “hardmode players”.

Not sure if this would be a good idea. Normal players wouldn’t get the same rewards (still they would get rewards), they can support hardmode players and could earn their participation that way.

It’s a bit like Guild Missions (guild race), where not-guildies can support (swiftness) players who have started the event. Instead of a guild as requirement, the requirement to start the event would be a “hardmode character”.

Margareeta.3461:

Hard Mode could be like Ascencion. Character is dropped to level 2, all hearts and personal story is cleared, all dungeon story modes are cleard again, and they need to be done until character can access to another dungeon paths, and so on.

- Foes are giving less xp, but better looking loot.
- Characters can not use high end armors or weapons (meaning level 80) until they achieve back that level.
- Ascension is permanent until character has been reach lvl 80 again.
- Ascended character will get title Ascended.
- Ascended character need to do map completion again and when it is done, star behind of character name sould be very shiny.
- Ascended characters are glowing.

To me this doesn’t sound like a hardmode but as leveling up an alt with much more grind than before. Nothing which makes any encounter more difficult but just having the leveling phase expanded. Some might buy crafting mats and level up via crafting.

It would be a big mistake though to fragment the playerbase. As much as I love the idea of new maps, it would just split a server in two. New zones? Yes, absolutely! But make these main content for ALL playertypes.

The reason why I’m so in love with an idea of hardmode is because of this:

I don’t enjoy dungeons that much. I love roaming around in the world, team up with other players occasionally and explore interesting locations. The most fun: encounter champions with small groups, finding secret passages and starting secret events.

Progression in the open world without forcing me into lv.80 zones only would feel great. At the moment I have little reason to go certain zones because I won’t find too much people there. There is too little purpose / there could be much more to do in those HUGE zones.

So I’d love to progress while doing open world content. Let us look for hidden secrets which feel rewarding to find (not only in the sense of money but also lore and skill-progression / character development) so that people stumble upon dynamic events naturally.

Hard Mode would give lv.80 players another reason to revisit low level zones, if there is a mechanic which allows that. (Spirit Mode hint hint ^^ ). It’s some content tailored for all the people who loved Liadri, Tribulation Mode and the Clocktower.

Ronah.2869:

are you shure it is about the challenge and not the rewards?

well 6 months ago I started a reddit-thread about what achievement people are most proud of… Clocktower was one of the top answers. What was the reward for it?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gyk41/achievements_you_are_proud_of/?sort=confidence

I too think that rewards like Liadri are that important for players not because of how amazing the model looks, but because having it shows other players how good you really are.

Ronah.2869:

Hard Mode is just a tweak of numbers. No one tests these hard modes because they are not meant as a game content but a niche. it is so easy for them to lower your stats but then people will complain the HM is unbeatable and they need a nerf which will make it closer to the Normal Mode.

If you want Hm, play without traits and armor and save in your bank some white low level weapons to sue in your own personal HM but do not complain about rewards.

Not sure why so many are against hard mode. It has potential to progress your character even further, when you find nothing to do in the open world anymore. A challenge is something most GW2 players love, judging on the overly positive feedback on the Liadri-encounter and the mechanics associated as well as the SAB and it’s hard mode. People LOVED the challenge. And SAB hardmode hasn’t been nerved considerably, even though a few came out quite frustrated. This mode is meant to be really difficult and frustrating when not familiar with it.

Just a tweak of numbers? Well it certainly doesn’t have to be. New conditions like the ones suggested are a great first step.

Play without traits and in white gear? There is no reward which fits this risk setting. There can be no hard mode without appropriate rewards.

If you ask me, if Tribulation Mode and the Liadri encounter taught us one thing, it’s that there is a huge demand for hard mode in GW2. Generic rewards are imho a bad reward for tackling difficult challenges (I love the Liadri Mini and the different colors of the Tribulation Mode weapons), so a horizontal reward system would go well with it.

Ronah.2869:

My idea – which is not new to some MMOs – is to add levels to the skills which in GW2 style they don’t mean to be more powerful due to the scaling down system, but they need to have better visuals.

In general I would love that idea,… if GW2 was a singleplayer game. The amount of skill effects which are totally over the top and clutter the screen though… I don’t think it’s a good idea.

If they’d add a slider to decrease the effects, players who have reached the lv.3 stomp would feel cheated, don’t you think. All that hard work and others just turn it off / you turn it off by yourself in order to find the enemies in the chaos.

But the idea in general is awesome. Instead of increasing effects I’d say use different effects. Professions have their signature colours, so it would feel a bit odd to see guardians (blue) with green spelleffects… but there are tons of variations of blue.

Kain Francois.4328:

How do we address Normal Mode players helping Hard Mode buddies?

Normal Mode players can’t damage (nor aggro) Hard Mode mobs. (they can’t see those either). Normal Mode players can support Hard Mode players through buffs though.

See Spirit Dancer Mode – suggestion above

Idea: if grouped with a hardmode player, you can see the outline of hardmode mobs, still can’t damage/aggro those though. The Spirit bond between a normal mode player and a hardmode player comes at a cost though: the Spirit Demons can CC (knock down, cripple, stun,…) the grouped normal player. It’s his choice.

The Lost Witch.7601:

If you are playing for the challenge, would you like for that other player to come over and help you? And if it would be challenging for the three of you, would you even bother on your own? Would you get angry at players that are just walking through and scale up the event? Would the loot be any better? Would the players gather at the best spot to farm and leave the real challenges be?

What does the open world offer in hardmode that instanced content can’t? (Quite a bit, I guess, but it is an important question to ask)

Well ideally it’s still scaling content, so the challenge stays the same, whatever number of players are helping. Zerging, like I mentioned above, is rather unlikely since requirements for Spirit Mode are quite high. You don’t see a whole zerg running around with Legendaries, do you?

Walking through without participating shouldn’t scale an event up, that’s how dynamic event scaling was explained by Colin.

We’re still talking about horizontal progression, so loot shouldn’t be “better”, you just have different skins dropping from Spirit Realm Mobs. Best “farming” spots aren’t in the spirit of the zone progression system, which is about finding events which haven’t been done before by you.

Hardmode – Spirit Mode – offers a whole new and different perspective at existing maps. Remember those old Zelda games where you found an item which gave you a whole new view of your surroundings? It’s exciting: you enter a location which you knew from weeks ago and you find totally different mobs there which run a totally new event. You’re there and know: I earned this bonus content, it was a long journey to get there. You might find certain aha-moments also. Furthermore you know: Progressing in other zones unlocks even more of that exciting difficult stuff for me.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Did completing campaigns to unlock hardmode feel worthwhile and characterbuilding in GW1? Or was it more frustrating that your friends couldn’t join your challenges because they didn’t have it unlocked?

I haven’t played GW1 enough to unlock hard mode, so I can’t give you an answer to that. About the frustration… well friends can’t join you in a lv.80 zone from the get go either, they have to level up to your level first. The thing is: you, as a Spirit Walker, can always help your friends in their battles while in that mode. This stuff happens in all zones, so you can join your friends in their level-up phase and help as well as possible.

The nice thing: even though your low level friends can’t join you in damaging the mobs, they can still help you. They can buff you, support you and heal you. It’s a mode where support-builds can shine, but only a Spirit Walker can do damage on Spirit Demons.

The Lost Witch.7601:

It would be rather weird to see other players slashing at the air…

And if they are going to be in the hidden corners of the world… wouldn’t it be just as easy to make them visible to everyone but warn players about the strength of these powerful monsters early in the game?

Perhaps they would have some sort of dark aura, or a new ‘star’ around their image. (Where elites have a purple star, perhaps these could have a black-green one)

If you make them visible for everyone, then you have pretty hardcore strong enemies aggroing low level players. It seems Anet doesn’t want low level maps flooded by such mobs since they haven’t put too strong monsters in those zones in the first place. Also, as you said, these can be zerged. I guarantee you that most members of a random zerg aren’t far enough progressed, so that they can enter Spirit Mode.
—> you get much stronger mobs than zone-level (lv.80+) which are unlikely to be zerged compared to normal content

The Lost Witch.7601:

And if these new mobs are going to be very popular… will they be zerged just as easily as the other content? (Scaling only goes so far in making things more difficult)

I am not saying that it cannot be done, just offering some difficult questions.

I’m glad you ask those questions. As I said: if the requirements for Spirit Mode are high enough, it’s unlikely that these events are gonna be zerged soon.

The Lost Witch.7601:

And how would we go about unlocking hardmode? I have 5 level 80 characters, but only 70%-ish completion on a single character. Yet I’ve completed all the maps several times on different characters.

Would I need to unlock hardmode for every single character for the feeling of progression? Or do I only need it for one? Or will it count the progress over all my characters?

Now that’s an interesting question. World-completion could be one part of that puzzle, I’d love to see it accoundwide though. Achievements are accountwide, so it’s probably something that includes achievements. I would be strictly against dungeon achievements since I know from my own experience that there are a lot of players who don’t enjoy dungeons but still love every other content in the game.

The idea was to bring Spirit Enemies to the open world, so relevant achievements for unlocking Spirit Mode should have something to do with open world content.

Personally I’m a fan of the zone progression idea, so I’d unlock Spirit Mode for a zone for the top tier of a zone progression rank + World completion achievement needed. Gain ranks by finding more and more unique events and find certain champions etc.